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• #GIBSON CUSTOM SHOP SERIAL NUMBERS SEARCH SERIAL NUMBER#

In a case like that, we’re clearly dealing with a fake guitar.”ĭavidson is referring to Gibson’s system—in effect since 1977—of including a guitar’s build date within the serial number sequence. Or it might be an eight-digit serial number that indicates it was built on the 700th day of the year. We don’t start any eight-digit serial numbers with a five. But there are some obvious indicators—if it starts with a five, for instance. “A lot of the counterfeiters are using the standard eight-digit series. €œWe get calls from pawn shops and used music stores every day, and a lot of the guitars that people ask us about end up being fake Gibsons,” he says. €œWe’re always trying to get things more accurate,” explains Marlow, “so we changed the Les Paul Classic font because we found a stamp as close to the ’60s version as we could.”ĭavidson is quick to point out that consumers have good reason to be alarmed by real or perceived discrepancies on Gibson models. That’s exactly what happened following a recent modification in the font size of the serial numbers used on the new Les Paul Classics. With consumers and collectors as attentive as Gibson’s, even miniscule changes in design and manufacturing can translate into a chorus of ringing phones in Gibson’s Customer Service department. “We were getting close to having so many guitars come through the factory that the serial number would probably lapse in a day and then start repeating itself so we added that extra digit.” €œWe added another digit to reflect the batch of the day,” says Gibson USA Support Coordinator Eric Marlow. To combat the problem, the company upped its serial number sequence last year from eight digits to nine. Today, Gibson USA takes great pains not to recycle serial numbers. The ship date can help us, but if it’s a weird serial number, we’ll ask for photos.” €œSometimes I’ll literally pull up 10 guitars, and five of them will be so similar you’re not going to know what the customer has. To illustrate his point, Davidson types in a serial number from memory and it quickly pulls up three different guitars—an SG, a Steinberger, and a Les Paul. Serial numbers can pull up multiple guitars from multiple years.” “A lot of people think you can just dump these formats into a database where you can pull up the date, but there’s so much more to it. €œIt doesn’t always date the guitar,” says Davidson. “We make sure all the guys have a copy of Gruhn’s Guide.”ĭavidson also recommends the Blue Book of Electric Guitars.Īnother resource for IDing and dating guitars is Gibson’s computer database, which catalogues scores of serial numbers from 1987 on through the present. €œAt least a quarter of the calls that Gibson’s Customer Service team gets are related to the dating and IDing of guitars,” Davidson says. When faced with a question about a guitar’s date, Davidson most always refers to his beyond-dogeared copy of Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars. Even then, there may be four other guitars—of all different models—with the same number sequence. It can take Davidson several hours to locate a specific serial number, if he can find it at all. The earliest volumes contain hundreds of yellowed pages covered front and back with rows of handwritten numbers. With vintage Gibsons selling at auction for as much as half a million dollars, Davidson will sometimes roll up his sleeves and poke around in the ledgers, but only as time allows. Inside a locked closet just outside Davidson’s office are some of Gibson’s most enduring written materials—shipping records dating from 1936 to 1970. That’s not the only bit of history transplanted from Kalamazoo to Gibson’s Nashville, Tennessee headquarters.

In line with Gibson’s adherence to tradition, the guitars that come through Gibson’s USA plant are impressed with a serial number from the original stamp used at Gibson’s early Kalamazoo, Michigan plant. Gibson has had so many different schemes over the years, and now we’re using reissue serial numbers that look like the old serial numbers.” “Some can tell you a lot about a guitar, and some don’t really tell you anything. – “Serial numbers can be extremely tricky,” says Gibson Customer Service Manager Jason Davidson, whose team fields calls and emails regarding every Gibson division. Here’s some more about Gibson Serial Numbers… But, with more than 75 years of shipping records in the Gibson books, and dozens of variations on numerical schemes used over the years, serial numbers sometimes do little to shed light on the origin of a mysterious Gibson. But that related only to Gibson guitars made from 1975 to Present. Last July we posted an article entitled “When Was Your Gibson Made?”, taken from the excellent Backstage Pass area of the Gibson site.