Gibson serial numbers: 1977 to the present

Most serial schemes put the year at the front. This one does not. The first digit and the fifth digit are read as a pair, and together they give the last two figures of the year: in 01161234 the 0 and the 1 make 2001. Between them sit three digits for the day of that year, so 116 is the 116th day of 2001. The three digits on the end are a ranking number counting that day's production. The standard format also carries a MADE IN USA stamp impressed below the number.

A nine-digit Gibson number is read exactly like an eight-digit one. The extra digit is not part of the date at all: from July 2005 Gibson slid a batch number into sixth place, ahead of the ranking digits, so everything the year and the day depend on already sits in front of it.

The chart for 1977 to 1999 shows two rows. They are the same scheme, split by which year digits can pair up. A leading 7 pairs only with a fifth digit of 7, 8 or 9, because the coding opened in 1977 and those are the only years a leading 7 can reach. A leading 8 or 9 pairs with any fifth digit at all, which covers 1980 through 1999.

That leaves a gap on purpose. A number whose leading 7 pairs with a fifth digit of 0 through 6 would read as 1970 to 1976, years this coding did not exist for, and years that sit inside or beside the era we decline outright. We match neither row against it and put no year on it.

An eight-digit Gibson number that opens 94 is read differently from everything else on this page. It is 1994, Gibson's hundredth year, and the six digits behind the 94 are a production ranking with no day of the year in them at all. Gibson's own wording is that many instruments from that year were numbered this way, which leaves room for a 1994 Gibson carrying an ordinary day-of-year number instead.

The ranking number counts a day's production, and across the 1977 to 1999 run it also hints at where the instrument was built. The low band, 001 to 499, points at Kalamazoo, Michigan; the high band, 500 to 999, points at Nashville, Tennessee. The two ended separately: the low band closed with the Kalamazoo factory in 1984, and the high band carried on naming Nashville until 1989. Bozeman, Montana has handled the acoustic line since that year, and the electric line runs out of Nashville.

Treat the band as a likely plant rather than a settled one. Our tables mark the plant as probable on every era that carries the hint, while the year standing beside it is definitive, because the ranking number is the only evidence for the plant that the serial carries at all.

Between 2014 and the middle of 2019 many Gibson numbers carry no day at all. Nine digits, with the model year in the first two and a straight count of that year's production in the seven behind them: a number opening 15 belongs to the 2015 model year, and what follows only says where in that year's run it fell. We do read these numbers, and the answer names a single year. It is also the one reading on this page that comes back at probable confidence.

The reason sits in the phrase model year. A model year opens in the autumn of the calendar year before the one it names, so an instrument stamped 15 may have been finished late in 2014 rather than in 2015, and the digits carry nothing that would tell those two apart. We give you the year Gibson stamped, name it as a model year, and leave the confidence at probable. Gibson closed the run in the middle of 2019 and went back to the day-of-year coding, so a 2019 Gibson can carry either shape: a nine-digit model-year number, or a standard number with the day in it.

The 2020s coding has no end year written into it. What bounds it is the newest year our Gibson sources were actually checked, and past that point the answer says the serial is newer than the chart we carry, and points you at what to do about it.

From 1977 on the serial is die-stamped into the back of the headstock, with MADE IN USA impressed below it. An instrument from before 1977 carries its number in the same place, so the position settles nothing on its own. Count the digits, then read the first and the fifth: that is what tells you which scheme you are holding.

• 1961 to 1975The three checks that place a year on a six-digit Gibson, and what the number itself narrows.
• Every Gibson era in one place The full brand hub, covering 1977–present.