These dates will tell when the original part was manufactured, but are not exact indicators of when the guitar was actually put together and finished. Through much of Fender's production history, Fender workers would print or write a production date on both bodies and necks where the two pieces meet. Learn everything you need to know to choose the right Stratocaster for you. Systems using Intel processors based on the 2010 “Westmere” micro-architecture (e.g. For Fender during the turning point era of the mid-'60s, check out Fender and the CBS Takeover.įree vmware linux images. Similarly, take a look at Behold the Jazzmaster for general timeline of the history of everyone's favorite offset guitar. There's A Brief History of the Stratocaster Part I and Part II that follows the evolution of the most popular Fender guitar of all. We also have some other blog posts related to Fender that can hopefully be of some help. This can be a tall order for someone less versed in guitar history, but we do have some resources here on Reverb to help you out. Perhaps the best place to start when dating your Fender is to get an approximate idea of the era based on the instrument's design and components. Once you have the information you need, if you're interested in selling your Fender, you can use Reverb to get it in front of the largest audience of musicians in the world by clicking on this link. Instead, the best approach to dating a Fender is to combine indicators from the design of the instrument, the dates found on the neck and body, along with the serial number. The last three (or four as of 2005) digits signify the location of production and batch number, respectively, but this information isn’t necessary to.
For example, the serial number 90237XXX corresponds to a production date of 1/23/97. The first number of the sequence indicates the decade of production, followed by the three digit day of the year, and finally the year. Starting in 1977, Gibson adopted the current date-based serial system which codes for the year and day of production.
So double check the serial numbers on those 1970s L. It is estimated that Gibson’s Kalamazoo plant continued to use the six-digit serial numbers through 19. Certain guitar models built in the late 1970s can be used to demonstrate the old-style, six-digit serial numbers. The 1st digit indicates the year of manufacture for the 4 & 5 digit serial numbers, these were used from 1989-1999. There should be a space after the 1st digit with the 4 and 5 digit serial numbers, and no space with the 6 digit numbers. Most will be 5 to 6 digits in length, but the earliest examples feature 4 digit serial numbers. This also means that various parts used on a particular guitar may have come from different points in time, so no single number can absolutely define when the instrument was built. Features like bolt-on necks and pickups wired into the pickguard all helped the Fender factory churn out guitar after guitar, day after day. His guitars were built en masse by an entire factory, not a single luthier toiling over one instrument at a time. Like Henry Ford, part of Leo Fender's genius was in optimizing the company's production efficiency. The most important thing to keep in mind when dating a Fender is the highly modular nature of the designs. Fenders rank as the most frequently bought and sold instruments on Reverb, and finding a precise date of manufacture can be key to determining the value and specifics of an instrument. So you need to figure out the year of production for your Fender guitar or bass.