Other collectors began to see the problems as well, especially those who collected Gibson guitars and mandolins.

Tom Biggs originally voiced his concerns to me on this topic over 15 years ago.

These materials first became widely available in the 1990's when Tom Biggs placed a large collection of Gibson information on his Internet website.As the data began to mount, cracks began to appear in the accepted dates. Vintage instrument dealers like George Gruhn, John Bernunzio, Stan Werbin, Stan Jay and legions of private individuals followed the example of these earliest pioneers and collected their own lists of Gibson numbers. Roger Siminoff began building on that early data when Pickin’ Magazine published his Gibson Banjo “Serial Number” list in the 1970's. Davis Kennedy worked at Gibson as the Supervisor of the Custom Department from 1965 through 1968 and collected his data firsthand from the Gibson factory employees during that period. Kennedy laid out the first important information that would be used for years in assigning production dates for Gibson banjos. In a letter published by Bluegrass Unlimited magazine in March 1969, Mr. However, by combining other contemporary external source material and the surviving original Gibson factory records we are now in a position to make some badly needed adjustments to our Gibson banjo manufacturing chronology.One of the first people to attempt the compilation of a pre-war Gibson manufacturing date system was Mr. It is possible that Gibson never kept this data in the way that C.F. This is fully consistent with the contentions I have been making latelySome of the pre-World War II Gibson banjo manufacturing dates that we commonly accept are incorrect.Surviving pre-war Gibson factory records do not contain detailed and specific information about production dates for individual instruments. Thanks Links.I will post that here for record keeping.

Bozeman instruments began using 001-299 designations and, in 1990, Nashville instruments began using 300-999 designations. When acoustic production began at the plant built in Bozeman, Montana in 1989, the series numbers were reorganized. The Kalamazoo numbers were discontinued in 1984.

Gibson banjo serial number list