He died in Kalamazoo on 11 February 1944 at the very young age of 58 and is buried there. The Great Depression killed his business and he was forced to seek employment as a painter at the Checker Cab Company factory. Williams and General Manager Harry Ferris, late in 1924.īy 1926 Fred was working around Kalamazoo as a housepainter, and in 1930 had started his own auto-body repair shop with his eldest son. By 1920 he was the Foreman of the Finishing Department and evidently left Gibson at or about the same time as Master Lloyd Loar, Sales Manager Lewis A.
#Gibson guitar serial numbers 0516 serial number
According to my revised serial number chronology this instrument would have shipped in August 1921.įrederick Martin Miller, the creator of the "Cremona Brown" sunburst was born in Mecklenburg, Germany on 25 February 1885, emigrated to the United States in 1891 and was working at Gibson by 1909. The modern electric guitar is no exception use it frequently enough and the paint. If you don't think the finish is about as beautiful an effect as you have ever seen on a mandolin or violin, just ship back the instrument and we will send it to somebody who likes it."Īccording to my serial number list, the earliest Gibson instrument yet seen with a true "Cremona Brown" sunburst finish is H-4 #65241. I like working maintenance on my guitars and if I could. Very soon we expect to have available a few F-4 mandolins, H-4 mandolas and K-4 mando-cellos in this new Cremona Brown finish, which for the time being we will bill at $5.00 additional to the regular wholesale price. In fact, everybody was so enthusiastic about Fred's work that we forthwith commissioned him to put through a special lot of Gibsons in this new finish, which he calls Cremona Brown. KickstartMyHeart wrote: The Pacer Classics and the rest of the low level models come from Indonesia, some other models like the new 84s and the Satchel or Vintage labeled models come from Korea. Practically every girl in the office said she adored it and even the janitor raved over it. Fred had been taking liberties with the catalog finish specifications and while the F-4 was an F-4 in every other respect, the finish was about "F-100%", according to our estimation. Not so very long ago Fred Miller, Foreman of the Gibson Finishing Department, brought into the sales manager's office, a Gibson mandolin that looked not a cent less than a million dollars. Here's a short article from the January 1921 issue of Gibson's "Sounding Board Salesman" magazine, which identifies the man. Turns out that Master Lloyd Loar had nothing to do with it. Like so many of Gibson's now world-famous innovations, the "Cremona Brown" sunburst finish used on the Master-Model instruments from 1922 forwards was the invention of an obscure employee.
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