Serial Number: 94666

Year shipped: 1937

FON: 9.3 0-2

Headstock: Large, ‘flared’ headstock with horizontal ‘Gibson’ script logo

Neck/fingerboard: 20 fret fingerboard with pointed end and narrow block inlays from the first to the seventeenth frets. Has the same 25½ inch scale length as an Advanced L-5 (16-inch L-5s usually have a 24 ¾ scale length – see bottom image). Wide neck heel

Body: Maple back and sides

Hardware: Gold-plated metal parts including hinged tailpiece with silver centre insert and three engraved diamond and individual open-back Grover 98G ‘Sta-tite’ tuners with butterbean keys. Long bound pickguard

Notes: The wide neck heel, ‘Advanced’ style fingerboard, ‘flared’ headstock and Advanced-style long bound pickguard are features more usually found on 17-Inch L-5s suggesting that the neck may have been replaced at some point.

Joe Spann tells us: “Gibson factory records indicate that L-5 serial number: 94666 was originally shipped on Saturday, December 11^th, 1937 to Edgley Music Shop of Dallas, Texas in a #535 hard-shell case. The instrument did not sell and was subsequently returned to the Gibson factory on dealer exchange. It was shipped for the second time on Friday, February 11^th, 1938 to Fife Music in Hollywood, California in a #515 hard-shell case. There is no record of any further returns to the factory through January of the year 1953.”

This is one of just eleven 16-inch L-5s shipped in 1937