How to date a gibson les paul classic. The first digit of this style serial number indicates the last digit of the year it was manufactured. There are always exceptions to these rules the two listed below are worth noting. The 1st and 2nd indicate the year help manufacture for the 6 digit serial numbers which weve been using since.
Your guitar should be relatively easy to date. For example this les pauls serial number is 76227 so it was made in 1957. The last three or four as of 2005 digits signify the location of production and batch number respectively but this information isnt necessary to.
For example the serial number 90237xxx corresponds to a production date of 12397. Starting in 1977 gibson adopted the current date based serial system which codes for the year and day of production. If your gibson les paul has an eight digit serial number stamped on the back of the headstock youre in luck.
Most will be 5 to 6 digits in length but the earliest examples feature 4 digit serial numbers. The first number of the sequence indicates the decade of production followed by the three digit day of the year and finally the year. Gibson used 5 or 6 digit ink stamped serial numbers on les paul guitars from 1952 until 1960.
This model features an ink stamped serial number with no made in usa just as we used on the original 1952 1960 les pauls. This model features an ink stamped serial number with no made in usa just as we used on the original 1952 1960 les pauls. First released in the early 1950s the les paul has now been produced in thousands of variants over the years with the core design spinning off into a vast constellation of les paul sub models and families.
In 1994 gibsons centennial year many instruments have a serial number that begins with 94 for the year with the remaining 6 digits indicating the ranking number. The new model year typically launches in the fall dating the current model year winds down. The gibson les paul is considered to be one of the two most important electric guitar models of all time.
Gibson usa to present these serial numbers cannot be dated to a specific day of the year. Eight digit les paul serial numbers follow a ydddyppp scheme where yy is the production year ddd is the day of the year and ppp is the instrument rank andor plant designation. Most will be 5 to 6 digits in length but the earliest examples feature 4 digit serial numbers.
Do you have a gibson les paul with an ink stamped serial number.
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