![]() The situation worsened as original sales receipts surfaced, more catalogs were reprinted and a few nearly complete collections of Mastertone Magazine were complied. The system used by the banjo enthusiasts simply did not square with information collected by the guitars and mandolin players. 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.Īs 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. One of the first people to attempt the compilation of a pre-war Gibson manufacturing date system was 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. It is possible that Gibson never kept this data in the way that C.F. Surviving pre-war Gibson factory records do not contain detailed and specific information about production dates for individual instruments. Some of the pre-World War II Gibson banjo manufacturing dates that we commonly accept are incorrect. This is fully consistent with the contentions I have been making lately This banjo is housed in its original “red-line” #511 case by Geib and Schaefer.Thanks Links.I will post that here for record keeping. #258-1 remains in excellent condition with all of its original hardware and finish the one-piece flange is in particularly good condition. This banjo shows one small idiosyncrasy: The “Gibson” decal is placed on the same side of the rim as the factory order number stamp, rather than on the opposite side as was typical practice. Gibson banjo serial numbers serial numbers#The factory order number #258-1 is stamped on the wooden rim and written twice in chalk inside the resonator (see Gibson banjo serial numbers vs. Billek, a Gibson teacher-agent in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in a shipment which also included TB-1 #258-5, one TB-4, and a Kalamazoo-brand guitar. This style 1 tenor banjo was shipped on Decemto J.J. ![]() The rosewood fingerboard was normally inlaid with a fleur-de-lis inlay pattern which is also known by such varying names as “gulls” and “flying birds”. Even though the Mastertone models had by this time gone to the double-cut peghead shape, the fiddle-shaped peghead was retained on style 1, with minor modifications–the two small indentations normally found under the fourth- and first-string tuners were absent, and the “points” of the peghead were sharp rather than squared off. Style 1 had nickel-plated hardware and a dark-finished maple neck and resonator, with white binding on the neck and both edges of the resonator the tailpiece was an inexpensive type referred to in Gibson catalogs as the “Grover first model”. The style 1, priced at $50, was a mainstay of Gibson’s lower-priced non-Mastertone line of the 1930s. ![]()
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