Generally speaking, however, the majority of product dating inquiries deal with Fender electric guitars and basses, and the support pages of the Fender website contains a great deal of useful information. If you find your serial number doesn’t yield any results, press ‘crtl & f’ and enter the beginning of your serial number. This page will then be highlighted in all the results starting with the numbers/letters youve entered. Scroll down to our ‘Manual Checklist’ and you’ll almost certainly find a serial number very close to your own. Giving you a general idea of when your guitar was manufactured.
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1985- On the US Vintage series models, you’ll need to take off the neck and look at the bottom to find the exact date. 1984- On the US Vintage series models, you’ll need to take off the neck and look at the bottom to find the exact date. 1983- On the US Vintage series models, you’ll need to take off the neck and look at the bottom to find the exact date. 1982- On the US Vintage series models, you’ll need to take off the neck and look at the bottom to find the exact date. Vintage series models, you’ll need to take off the neck and look at the bottom to find the exact date.
Solid-body guitars made in the United States are only now available in Nashville. Over the years, a guitar has had a variety of serial numbers attached to it. At the top of the neck plate, at the front or back of the headstock, or on the cover plate of the vibrato , or at the end of the heel.
American-made signature series instruments follow a very similar scheme to the above, but use a prefix S before the decade letter. For example, a Signature Series guitar from 1998 would have a serial starting with SN8 followed by five digits. (For U.S. Vintage Series, check neck date for specific year)CBS sold Fender in March 1985. Serial numbering didn’t change because instruments continued to be made using existing tooling, parts and serial number schemes. Ace Frehley Signature Les Pauls are sold without serial numbers, which are eight digits in length. Les Paul is printed on a standard 8-digit serial number.
Fender Serial Number Decoder
You will need to get the date codes from the speaker frames, the potentiometer date codes, the transformer codes and as much other detailed information you can about the specs and features of your amp. Later, the serial number was moved to the neck plate, https://hookupgenius.com/date-me-review/ probably because the plastic of the first back plates broke easily or because the guitarists removed it to change strings and sometimes lost it. The first documented serial numbers on the neck plate start from the 0246 , 0287 , 0240 , and Stratocasters.
In addition to reissues by SG since 1997, reissues by Firebird, Les Paul, and others have been released in the past. RRR indicates the guitar’s place in the Historic ES production sequence of the year in which it was manufactured. Gibson acoustic guitars have been around since the early 1900s and their popularity is only increasing. Many people want to purchase a Gibson acoustic guitar but are unsure of how to decode the serial number.
They are detailed reference resources with a wealth of information for helping to either establish the vintage of your guitar or bass or for just learning more about Fender history in general. These books are the same resources we refer to here at Fender, when trying to research answers to these same history and dating questions. Some of the models numbers do overlap unfortunately since Fenders primary intention for model numbers was to help their production team rather than provide an accurate dating system for customers. For some of these models, you can find the date by taking off the neck entirely and reading the bottom portion. This isn’t entirely accurate however, since that is only the date the neck was built and not the whole guitar. If your guitar serial number shows you that there is a possibility for more than one year, refer to our fender research guides section to get a more accurate timespan.
ESTABLISHING THE VALUE OF YOUR USED OR VINTAGE INSTRUMENT
Most Gibson potentiometers are full-sized (quarter-sized) CTS or Gibson branded. Fakes are typically cut with paint, glue, or white polishing compound. Several counterfeit instruments have been investigated by me, and none of them are close to the quality of an Epiphone or another major brand. The RRR is an acronym that stands for factory ranking or plant designation. The majority of these numbers will be 5 to 6 digits in length, but the earliest examples will have 4 digits.
As previously stated, plates were not applied in sequential order which makes the serial number ranges used in each year approximate. I recently sold a 1973 strat — it had a mid-72 neck date and mid-73 pots…and a 1971 case. As has been stated above, plate serials are going to be approximative, especially during this period. As Spider-Man posted above one of the examples in the fender Stratocaster book has a higher serial number than mine however it’s listed as a 71. As usual with Fender, there is no hard date for feature changes, they overlap, sometimes a few months at a time, like in ‘64-‘65.
It’s useful for getting specifications if you know the model or area trying to find it out, it lists by years and it seems to be quite accurate. You can’t copy the text, it is imaged and you can get an image unless…(and I won’t tell you how). Since serial numbers aren’t technically meant to date their guitars , you can’t always tell just from a serial number. Chart 4, if your serial number has two letters or more in front of it. Chart Number 2 – First two digits followed by a space and then the rest of the digits, starts with 76 or is only the number 500.