Neck Pocket Information

[wigglestick]

Greetings Headless brothers!

 

I have an 198? XP2 - s/n N1419, and for the first time I removed the neck. This is the numbers that were stamped there. Does anyone know what these numbers mean? At first I thought it was a build date, but it makes no sense to me with its dots and dashes.

 

Any thoughts?

[Be.eM]

Greetings Headless brothers!

 

I have an 198? XP2 - s/n N1419, and for the first time I removed the neck. This is the numbers that were stamped there. Does anyone know what these numbers mean? At first I thought it was a build date, but it makes no sense to me with its dots and dashes.

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

These numbers all meant something sometimes in the past, but there's no way to find out what. In most cases they follow completely different patterns, some look like a date, some like a serial, sometimes you'll find letters there, sometimes they're stamped, and sometimes written by hand. The wooden bodies of the Newburgh era weren't manufactured at the Steinberger facilities, but came from different suppliers. It's possible that these numbers designate a batch, an order number or something like that.

 

Bernd

[wigglestick]

Really? And here I thought you were going to tell me to turn the picture upside down...and it would reveal all!

 

So the neck pocket syntax is no help in learning what year my bass was made. My s/n is listed in the bolt-on serial database, but without any dates involved.

 

Is the next step writing Gibson customer service then?

 

 

[Be.eM]

Is the next step writing Gibson customer service then?

 

Yep. However, it's possible that they don't know much more, because the logs of the first about 4,000 bolt-on instruments got lost. But maybe they have more sources of info.