The production of the Terada solid body K Orville guitars and most of the Terada solid body G serial Orville by Gibson guitars were ended in 1993 as a result.įuji-Gen and Terada used different serial number formats (Orville by Gibson Terada decal box). After Fuji-Gen were contracted by Yamano Gakki in late 1992, Fuji-Gen were assigned to make most of the Orville by Gibson and Orville solid body guitars and Terada shifted to its more traditional role of mostly making Semi Acoustic guitars. After opening Fuji-Gen Hirooka Inc, Fuji-Gen resumed large scale set-neck guitar production. Fuji-Gen began making Orville by Gibson guitars in late 1992 and also Orville guitars in 1993 after they established Fuji-Gen Hirooka Inc in November 1991. When the Orville by Gibson series began in 1988, Fuji-Gen were concentrating on making Fender Japan bolt-on neck guitars and so the G serial Orville by Gibson and K Orville set-neck guitars were all made by Terada. The Gibson Les Paul Book by Tony Bacon and Paul Day (1993) mentions that both the Orville by Gibson and Orville guitars, including the K Orville guitars (1989-1993) were made in Japan. I tried it a couple of times and came out with annual figures in the 140,000 to 150,000 range.There were two Japanese guitar factories involved in all of the Orville by Gibson and Orville production and they were Terada (寺田?) and Fuji-Gen (フジゲン?). One thing about the old (formally new)* system being sequential, if you bought a few Gibsons in the same year, or saw the dates on inspection cards somewhere, you could get rough estimates of production numbers for all Gibsons with this system (i.e not Custom shop). As the serial numbers were sequential in the new (now old) system, you can tell your SG was built very early in the year, before they changed to the old (now new) system. When I bought my 2014 SG there was no info about the new (now old) system out there, so I was really puzzled - the number showed it was made on the 400th day of 2014 - not only did that not exist, it had also been built by mid April! The number is 140046667.

Your SG has the new (now old) system YYxxxxxxx, whereas they're now using the old (now new) system YDDDYBPPP.

No, they just changed the system they use.

Gibson guitars serial number lookup