Spotting A Counterfeit Gibson Acoustic Before Spending Your Life’s Savings

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• 1928: Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, a breakthrough in the development of antibiotics.

• 2008: SpaceX's Falcon 1 became the first privately-developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.

Spotting A Counterfeit Gibson Acoustic Before Spending Your Life’s Savings

The market of fake Gibson’s for sale is spreading like wildfire all over the internet as well as local community buy and sell sites. For unsuspecting buyers this can be terrifying for someone who doesn’t know how to identify a fake. They end up spending thousands of dollars and are out a lot of money they can’t get back. I recently had a fake Gibson acoustic come into the shop I work at for some work to be done on it, so I want to talk about acoustics specifically in this article. At first glance even I with tons of experience with guitars could be fooled until further investigation. Let’s talk about what you can look out for and how I identified this as a fake.

First give away…. no serial number. There are many different places where you can find Gibson serial numbers depending on the make and era of the guitar. For acoustics modern Gibson’s have an orange oval shaped sticker with the model and serial number inside the body. Seventies era vintage ones will have a rectangular sticker sporting a retro paisley like design in white and orange inside the body. Some very old Gibson’s can have a stamped serial number on the neck block such as my 59’ LG-O. My 67’ B-15 has the serial number on the back of the head stock. It’s never consistent and will vary from guitar to guitar but you will be able to find one on an authentic Gibson unless it’s been removed on stolen property. This particular fake didn’t have a serial number, but some fakes will go as far as putting fake serial numbers on the guitar. I recommend using online sources or reaching out to Gibson directly to validate the serial number if you suspect it’s counterfeit. A real one should show you the date it was made and what factory it was built at using sites like the guitar dater project or other similar ones.

Second issue… the truss rod on the fake used a 4mm allen key to adjust it which is very common on most guitars, but Gibson does not do this with their truss rod instead they use a nut and you need a special Gibson wrench to adjust it. To add insult to injury as you can see pictured, the truss rod cover bottom screw did not even go into the wood, it was floating in a gap suspended in air. A totally false screw. What this fake did get right is only having two screw holes on the truss rod cover. If you ever see 3 in the form of a triangle similar to an Epiphone that’s a sign of a counterfeit as Gibson does not do that.

Since we are focusing on the signs around the head stock area the next thing was this guitar had a cheap plastic nut when most Gibson’s will have a real bone one such as a Tusq, Graphtec or something of higher quality. The nut slots cut for the strings were also spaced out improperly showing that Gibson quality control did not take place here.

The logo... the letters were clearly not all shaped properly and I noticed that on the bottom of letter “I” it was too pointed and should be more rounded. The letter “G” had some inconsistencies but unless you really knew what you were looking for you wouldn’t have noticed these subtle differences.

The finish on the guitar was poly and very poorly done, this was a sign because real Gibson uses nitro. It appeared like there were dust particles and smears like something landed on the poly when wet and was never buffed out and wet sanded. Gibson can have their own quality control issues but I’ve never seen any to that extreme.

The construction… check that the guitar is solid wood as a real Gibson will be and not laminate. If the wood grain doesn’t match on the inside and the outside, it’s laminate veneer which is very cheap. This guitar was also very light making me think it did not have the weight of solid wood either. This will affect the sound as well, and this guitar sounded and played like a $300 guitar, not a Gibson. The fret edges were rough, the binding had some quick and dirty filing done to it to try and fix this but that’s not how a Gibson luthier would do the job. There shouldn’t be a noticeable slant on the binding like a ramp, this shows a file was run up and down it instead of a trained luthier approaching the frets with an upwards filing motion fret by fret. The saddle was cheap plastic again and was very low. A brand-new Gibson typically has a very high saddle which creates more tone and projection due to the break angle. A Gibson should only potentially have a low saddle when it’s older and due to its age will start to need a neck reset so therefore, saddles will be shaved to compensate for the neck angle change for lower action. Pretty much all brand new Gibson’s seen on store walls have very tall saddles and low action regardless because the neck is factory fresh set at a perfect back angle.

I hope this information helps you make an informed decision before buying your first or next Gibson acoustic guitar. Keep in mind this just covers the prominent surface level signs. You may see there can be a lot more counterfeit errors that arise depending on the factory making them. There are so many varieties of fakes out there that the signs I saw on this one may be different on the next one. There are bad fakes and they're well-made fakes too…. So, it’s important to always do your research and stay informed or reach out to your local music shop to look over the guitar. Never rush or feel pressured into buying an expensive instrument, they should be looked over thoroughly. When it comes to buying a brand new Gibson only licensed dealers are allowed to sell them. I won’t use their real website name but Ali Speedway (you know who I’m talking about) and other similar sites for example are not licensed Gibson dealers none of their guitars are real and are all counterfeit.

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