Yep, cool guitar handbrake! Believe it or not, that same style Barth guitar was the instrument used by Bob Spickard on the Chantays "Pipeline," little known fact!
When Semie worked for Rickenbacker in the mid-1950's, he studied under Paul Barth and Roger Rossmeisl. In fact, you'll find this same subject tackled on some of the older posts on this forum, but I'll go over the basics again. Paul Barth brought about the zero fret and the neck/body "tab" that extends under the rhythm pickup....Roger Rossmeisl brought about the german carve, and other german aspects of guitar building, like the neck volute on the back of the headstock. These same features were all used on Mosrites later on.
Barth made these guitars like yours right after he left Rickenbacker in the late 50's. Then in 1960-1961 he made the exact same guitar but branded them Magnatones (see the ad Adam posted). Around 1966 he started Bartell and made some of the Acoustic Black Widows as well.
Semie kept in touch with Paul Barth through the years. Terry McArthur told me that when he was making the necks for the 1959 TNM Custom doubleneck, he and Semie went down to Paul Barth's to get the truss rods put in. Am I getting that story right, Terry?
I recently bought this crazy guitar off ebay for a couple hundred bucks (thanks to Adam for showing me the auction), and it's branded "National" on the back of the headstock. Everything about this guitar points towards Paul Barth, from the zero fret to the Rickenbacker bridge. Compare it to the one you posted, there are a lot of similar features! By the way, this is perhaps the nuttiest guitar I own, and that's sayin' something...
Deke
And some pics of the Paul Barth-made Magnatone guitar:
