i see a lot of articles about earl and sonnys granadas being listed as 1934..
BUT in banjophiles they are listed with the other 3 as 1930 build dates. were they built in 1930 and then sold in 34 or what ?
I think a lot of those dates were propounded MANY decades ago, yes sometimes based on sale date on a remembered receipt, or reports of previous owners and the like. Not many of "our" bluegrass heroes bought their Gibson brand new, so they went by what they had been told (accurate or not).
When I first started getting into understanding old Gibson banjos age, there were all kind of statements from famous players giving what would now be regarded as very unreliable dates.
Ralph Stanley used to say he played a 1923 Gibson Granayda Deluxe, for instance.
I remember Don Reno saying he played a certain 1930s date Gibson RB 4. Now it's well known Nellie was an RB 75.
Very few had access to the old Gibson catalogs until the widespread copies put out by Tom Morgan.
FON collections like the not-always-correct Banjophiles did a service in that they got banjos aligned chronologically at least by the date rims were stamped. Eventually that exposed adjacent rim numbers that didn't align in the expected ways at all. Voila! It turns out Gibson recycled old unused ball bearing rims in later years to produce very different banjos from the original plan.
By the late Depression there turned out to have been a goodly number of excess unused parts in the Gibson storeroom, thus the many floorsweeps.
Perhaps the only numbers we can truly take to the bank are from the Gibson ledgers -- the Joe Spann book in other words.
I find lots of GREAT clues in Banjophiles -- the owner-reported descriptions of the banjos. Which helps one discover the batches of CHROME plated two piece flange mahogany Style 4s, etc.
thanks a bunch , it always confused me ,, in the case of mine being in the 9797 lot .. dave osborne told me he thought it was a 1935... but the banjophiles said it was a 1931. so not knowing when it was purchased or have the files you really are guessing i suppose.
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