Gibson Nashville (Massman Dr)

Name: Gibson Nashville (Massman Dr)
Address: Nashville, TN, USA

Nashville, TN, USA^{[1, 2, 3]}. Built for 1 brand on record.

Street address 641 Massman Dr appears only in a Wikipedia table (S059), so location stays city-level and no coordinates are set. Opening year conflicts: 1969, 1974, 1975, 1976 (a forum account has construction in 1974 and opening in June 1975; no primary source). 'opened' is left blank for that reason; see production conflict K027. Custom Shop began 1983 inside this plant and moved to its own building in 1993. Headquarters moved to Cummins Station in 2019 (S283) and hollow-body production moved here from Memphis in 2019 (S288). No closure found. Acoustic work is in Bozeman (P067).

More: every plant in the USA, the Gibson lineage.

Where it is

No location is on record for this plant (USA), so it is not mapped.

Brands built here

Every headstock this plant has built for, on record. A contract plant can sit behind several brands at once.

Brand	Lines	Years
Gibson	Gibson USA, Gibson Custom Shop	1969–now^[1]

Who ran the plant

The operator is not always the brand owner. Follow a company to see every plant it ran.

Years	Operator	Source
1975–1986	Norlin Corporation (ECL)	unverified^[1]
1986–now	Gibson Guitar Corp. / Gibson Brands, Inc. (2013) / Gibson, Inc. (2024)	unverified^[1]

Production record

Years	Brand	Line	Role	Source
1969–now	Gibson	Gibson USA	full build	disputed^{no source}
1974–now	Gibson	Gibson USA	full build	disputed^{no source}
1975–now	Gibson	Gibson USA	full build	unverified^[1]
1976–now	Gibson	Gibson USA	full build	disputed^{no source}
1983–now	Gibson	Gibson Custom Shop	full build	unverified^[1]

Where its materials come from

What reaches the plant, in what form, from where, and who supplied it. A plant building for several brands draws on the same supply for all of them.

current linkended or undatedorigin, region or country centre

Material	Form	From	Supplier	Customs	Years	Source
Madagascar ebony Diospyros spp.Fingerboard blanks. Per the non-prosecution agreement (S280, read via summary): 'Gibson ordered ebony fingerboard blanks' through a Hamburg company named only as T.N. GmbH, which sourced from R.T., a forestry operator in Madagascar; Gibson 'continued to order Madagascar ebony fingerboard blanks after June 20, 2008'; shipments entered 2 Oct 2008, 22 Dec 2008, Apr 2009 and 28 Sep 2009. Supplier is left blank because the agreement uses initials only. The agreement does not name the receiving Gibson facility; Nashville is assumed from the 2009 raids and is NOT confirmed (Memphis P066 possible). Proposed grade: primary once archived and quoted.	blank	Madagascar	Not on record	—	2008–2010	unverified^{[4, 5]}
Material not namedEbony and rosewood fingerboard blanks from India are referred to in S280 (the tariff-classification commitment and forfeiture cases, e.g. '25 Bundles of Indian Ebony Wood'). No year, species or facility stated; species left blank. Receiving plant assumed Nashville, not confirmed. Supplier set to Nagel (CO083) because the AP report (S316) says Gibson used Hamburg-based Theodor Nagel GmbH as its importer in both the Madagascar and the India cases, and the ABA Journal (S317) says the India airway bill names Theodor Nagel with a note to Luthiers Mercantile International, Windsor CA, for about 2,500 ebony fingerboard blanks; both are secondary press read through a summarising fetch tool. Mongabay (S318) says the India sawnwood was exported as HS 9209 (instrument parts) and imported as veneer under HS 4408, which is the classification dispute. Whether Nagel and 'Theodor Nagel' are the same entity as CO083 is assumed from the name. Proposed grade: secondary.	blank	India	Nagel GmbH & Co KG (Hamburg)

Sources

Every numbered marker on this page points here: the document, its grade and the passages relied on. An era is computed, so it cites the facts it was derived from. A fact marked “no source” has no claim attached yet.

1
Wikipedia: wiki/Gibson (guitar company)graded community
2
Gibson to move HQ to Cummins Stationgraded secondary
3
Gibson walking from Memphis as hollowbody production moves to Nashvillegraded secondary
4
Gibson Guitar Corp. non-prosecution agreement (Lacey Act), statement of factsgraded primary
5
Gibson Guitar Corp. agrees to resolve investigation of Lacey Act violationsgraded primary
6
Feds: Gibson wood seizure tied to criminal probe (AP)graded secondary
7
Knock on wood: importers fret after feds raid guitar maker under Lacey Actgraded secondary
8
Background: the Lacey Act and the Fish & Wildlife Service raid on Gibson Guitarsgraded secondary
9
Details come to light on Gibson's Lacey Act raidgraded secondary