From the MTD site, the words of Mr Tobias:
Tobias Guitars was started in Orlando, Florida in April 1977. The first serial number was 0178 - January 1978. After 578, I went back to 179. My first shop name was The Guitar Shop. I sold that business in 1980 and moved to San Francisco to be partners in a short-lived manufacturing business called Sierra Guitars. We made about 50 instruments. I left S.F. in May of '81 and started a repair shop in Costa Mesa, Ca.
I stayed in Costa Mesa for several months and then moved to Hollywood. The first California serial number was 240 and it was a solid mahogany 6 string guitar. The first South Cal number was 250. It was one of four mahogany LP junior style neck thru.
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After several attempts to move the business to larger, better equipped facilities, I sold Tobias Guitars to Gibson on 1/1/90. The first Tobias Gibson serial number was 1094. At that point, Gibson was instrumental in moving us to a bigger shop in Burbank and setting us up with a great spray booth and dust collection system. We finally met So Cal safety codes. Basses built during 1990-1992 era were built initially by the same crew that had helped establish Tobias Basses as one of the most sought after basses on the planet. We added several people during 1990 and ended up with a great 10-man shop.
Business was still very good and we were not able to make anywhere near enough basses to fill the orders. Instead of trying to jack up production, we tried to get outside vendors to build for us. We had 110 "Model T" basses made for us by a very fine builder in New England, and then we got the Terada factory in Nagoya, Japan to make the "Standard" bass for us. This was and is a great bass, but the $/yen ratio killed the project. There were about 400 Standards.
Late in 1992, it was decided that in the best corporate interests, Tobias would move to Nashville. After much deliberation, no one from the original Tobias Guitars crew went to Nashville. The final LA Tobias/Gibson serial number is 2044. Despite Gibson's ownership of Tobias, all of the basses made up to 2044 were built by the my regular crew. The first production from Tobias/Nashville consisted of about 60 basses that were not numbered or finished by this crew.
I left the company in Dec '92 and was a consultant for Gibson for the operations they set up in Nashville. They had some trouble at first, but have since done a fairly good job making Tobias basses.
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S/N 2044 or before = made by Mr Tobias and/or his crew, but anything 1093 and under is "Pre Gibson."
Standard and Model T not made by Tobias crew, but still made while M.T. was with the company, or "Pre Nashville."
The "Nashville" designation refers to basses made after the Gibson buyout, when Gibson moved production to Nashville from CA. No Tobias employees made the trip, after this point it was strictly a Gibson operation.
These were made for a while, mixed reviews. Personally I had a Nashville Killer B that was flawless.
Production in Nashville stopped (90's some time?) and the only Tobias basses made were the "Toby" lines from Korea, sold through Musicyo.com; budget basses, but generally thought to be excellent for the money.
Gibson recently started production of high end US basses in Arkansas. Again mixed reviews, I have been unimpressed with these, except for the price tag which is IMO steep, but some feel it's worth it. Toby line discontinued, then reappears briefly, then disappears again.
Both pre and post Gibson models included Basic, Classic, and Signature.
Standard and Model T are in a grey area, not manufactred by Tobias crew or Gibson crew.
Gibson only products: Killer B, Growler, Renegade.
Besides the serial numbers, there are obvious physical differences in the models, and even within the same model that are tipoffs. For me, there's also some hard to quantify sense or feel the old ones have that the the newer ones I've played lack. I have not played an Arkansas era neck through, however.
The workmanship is very good, not quite up to Alembic-level quality, but noticeably better than on my '98 KB-5. There are a few places where you can *just* feel the edges of the laminate joins on the body, but the neck laminate joins are perfectly smooth, so I'm hardly ever going to notice it. Sound-wise, the 9V Bartolinis are doing an excellent job, it has a sweeter and more refined sound than my KB-5, probably due to the different pickup placement. The KB-5 with 18V pups still sounds fatter, but the Classic has far more tonal variety and more spunk, just what I was after!
