1 5/8ths can be any era (in my experience there was about a 16th of an inch tolerance to Gibson's necks in the 60s generally, and both 1 1/2 and 1 5/8 pop up every now and then on late 60s guitars - my head hurts with all these fractions, you guys need a metric system!) but also seems common in '64 and '65.įor Casinos the headstock shape changed from a shorter, stumpier design to the familiar hourglass one in late '64/early '65 so that should help you rule out '64, especially with chrome hardware. If it's 1 9/16ths you're looking at '65 or later.
If it's a '64 or early '65 it should have a 1 11/16' nut width and 17° headstock angle, which makes it easy. The serial numbers are fairly comprehensively listed on a few places online including which ranges were reused so they can still help a lot narrowing down a year when combined with features, although I suspect there are still a few gaps here and there. I don't follow Casinos as closely as I do 330s but they do pop up on my radar regularly enough. Most of this is based on ES330s, although the timelines should be more or less the same.
