Serial number lookup
Gibson serial number lookup
Decode a Gibson serial to find the production year, the day of the year it was stamped, and — for older instruments — which plant it came from.
How Gibson numbering works
Gibson's eight-digit serial number is unusual among guitar makers because it encodes an exact day rather than just a year. The catch is that the digits are interleaved: the year is split across the first and fifth characters, with the day of the year sitting between them. Read the number left to right as a date and you will get nonsense.
That interleaving is also why Gibson serials are unusually good at catching transcription errors. If the middle three digits do not form a real day of the year, the number has been mis-read — the format has a built-in checksum that most manufacturers' serials lack.
Gibson has run several numbering systems in parallel throughout its history. Custom Shop instruments, Historic Collection reissues and Bozeman-built acoustics have all used their own conventions alongside the main production sequence, so the first question to settle is which system you are looking at.
Key facts
- Eight digits, 1977–2013
- Year across digits 1 and 5, day of the year across digits 2 to 4, ranking or batch across digits 6 to 8.
- Nine digits, 2014 onwards
- The first two digits give the year. Nothing else in the number encodes a date.
- Ranking numbers
- Until 1984, 001–499 indicated Kalamazoo and 500–999 indicated Nashville. After the Kalamazoo plant closed the split stopped meaning anything.
- CS prefix
- A Custom Shop instrument. Only the last digit of the year is recorded, so the same pattern repeats every decade.
What goes wrong
- Reading the number as a straightforward date. The year is split across two non-adjacent digits.
- Assuming a five-digit number on a Les Paul reissue is a production sequence — it is a Custom Shop number whose first digit is the year.
- Treating the ranking digits as a plant code on any instrument made after 1984.
- Expecting a Bozeman-built acoustic to follow the same conventions as a Nashville electric.
Formats this lookup reads
Every format below has been sourced, documented and covered by tests before shipping. Formats we cannot verify are deliberately absent.
| Format | Period | Confidence | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eight-digit stamped serial (1977–2013) | 1977–2013 | high | 29 July 2026 |
| Nine-digit serial (2014 onwards) | 2014–2030 | medium | 29 July 2026 |
| Six-digit serial (1975–1977) | 1975–1977 | medium | 29 July 2026 |
| Custom Shop CS-prefix serial | 2000–2029 | medium | 29 July 2026 |
| Custom Shop Historic reissue serial | 1993–2029 | low | 29 July 2026 |