How to identify Gibson Basses from serial numbers

[rd_artist]

Before 1976 it's a little tricky because Gibson didn't have a consistant serial number system starting in 76 they went to a system as follows:

for example a number like 72349381 would be as follows the number (7) is the decade, the next three numbers (234) is the two hundred and thirty fourth day of the year, the fifth number (9) is the year of the decade, the sixth number is the factory code and the other number would be production line number. so in this example the instrument would have been made on the 234rd day of 1979 in factory 3 and would have been the 81st instrument built that day.