Post by Tony Ravenscroft on Aug 13, 2018 10:22:23 GMT -6
A lot of guitar owners read waaaaay too much into serial numbers, as though all they need is to find someone with the Magic Decoder Ring who can speak to the spirits and discern all sorts of secret lore and stuff about their one particular instrument, like the name of the employee who wound the pickups, the order number for the paint color, and the exact model.
Well, it's NONSENSE.
The chances of identifying a specific guitar from its serial number alone are... about zero. You WILL have to present some minimal crumbs of info, like photo(s) or a description of what it's a clone of. Let's discuss why that is so.
A serial number is NOT like a vehicle identification number, the VIN, which often CAN tell you a lot about the vehicle it's attached to.
Look it up on Wikipedia.
Sit down with a dictionary and look up the word SERIAL. A serial number is a number that is part of a series. That's all. This also strongly implies that, because it is a part of a sequence, each number will occur ONLY ONCE, making it unique. (In that particular series, at least.)
Serial numbers are there
Companies that are more "spread out," that rely upon multiple contract manufacturers for various models -- Squier, Washburn, Epiphone -- differentiate them by having a letter prefix on the serial number (one or two letters, actually). So while it's possible that (say) there are two Epiphone guitars with the same eight numeric digits, one number might begin "DW" and the other "SJ."
Small companies don't need big numbers. A store with their own "house brand" guitars has little trouble tracking their sales. A luthier might simply hand-write the date of completion.
A Gibson-type serial stamp works a lot like a vehicle odometer, advancing the count one at a time & not allowed to turn backward.
For the major brands, you can look it up yourself, for free, at the Guitar Dater Project website.
A further note about #4 in the above list.
Around 2015, I got into a protracted online disagreement with a dolt about a Washburn acoustic guitar. He asked for info, based from the serial number and some photos. Well, it was easy.
But then he sets out to show I'm an idiot, because he needs to PROVE it was made in effing Japan
and my data said inarguably early Korea.
Ignoring the serial number and the Blue Book, he went into the guitar with a strong flashlight and a mirror, and found two more hand-written numbers that didn't fit the serial-number pattern, and because each was four digits, and Washburn's earliest MIJs have four-digit numbers, that (in his tiny little mind) clinched it, and he demanded that I tell him which was the REAL s/n.
He refused to believe the obvious: the factory had one bin with a pile of unfinished bodies, and another bin with a stack of unfinished necks, and each before being put in its bin was marked with a reference number -- whether that refers to the date or the supervisor or the worker or the bench, we may never know.
You might run into similar flak from "alien conspiracy" idiots who decide they ALSO know everything about Fender guitars. Once you dismantle a Fender and start looking closely, there can be any number of pencil scribbles and pen flourishes and rubberstamps and crayon lines, with occasional gouges and knife marks. It might have a worker notation telling their manager "I fixed this like you said" or even less, but some people who desperately need to have lives would rather infer that it's A Secret Masonic Code.
Well, it's NONSENSE.
The chances of identifying a specific guitar from its serial number alone are... about zero. You WILL have to present some minimal crumbs of info, like photo(s) or a description of what it's a clone of. Let's discuss why that is so.
A serial number is NOT like a vehicle identification number, the VIN, which often CAN tell you a lot about the vehicle it's attached to.
Look it up on Wikipedia.
Sit down with a dictionary and look up the word SERIAL. A serial number is a number that is part of a series. That's all. This also strongly implies that, because it is a part of a sequence, each number will occur ONLY ONCE, making it unique. (In that particular series, at least.)
Serial numbers are there
- for quality control purposes, so that if something goes horribly wrong with an instrument, the problem can quickly be tracked back to where the failure began.
- for subsequent damage control, so that other instruments produced with the same failed techniques &/or materials can be collected for closer inspection.
- to track output for a given worker, line, team, run, &/or plant.
- to ensure that a contract manufacturer isn't selling your items "out the back door" or misappropriating components (like roughed-in neck assemblies).
Companies that are more "spread out," that rely upon multiple contract manufacturers for various models -- Squier, Washburn, Epiphone -- differentiate them by having a letter prefix on the serial number (one or two letters, actually). So while it's possible that (say) there are two Epiphone guitars with the same eight numeric digits, one number might begin "DW" and the other "SJ."
Small companies don't need big numbers. A store with their own "house brand" guitars has little trouble tracking their sales. A luthier might simply hand-write the date of completion.
A Gibson-type serial stamp works a lot like a vehicle odometer, advancing the count one at a time & not allowed to turn backward.
For the major brands, you can look it up yourself, for free, at the Guitar Dater Project website.
A further note about #4 in the above list.
Around 2015, I got into a protracted online disagreement with a dolt about a Washburn acoustic guitar. He asked for info, based from the serial number and some photos. Well, it was easy.
But then he sets out to show I'm an idiot, because he needs to PROVE it was made in effing Japan
and my data said inarguably early Korea. Ignoring the serial number and the Blue Book, he went into the guitar with a strong flashlight and a mirror, and found two more hand-written numbers that didn't fit the serial-number pattern, and because each was four digits, and Washburn's earliest MIJs have four-digit numbers, that (in his tiny little mind) clinched it, and he demanded that I tell him which was the REAL s/n.
He refused to believe the obvious: the factory had one bin with a pile of unfinished bodies, and another bin with a stack of unfinished necks, and each before being put in its bin was marked with a reference number -- whether that refers to the date or the supervisor or the worker or the bench, we may never know.
You might run into similar flak from "alien conspiracy" idiots who decide they ALSO know everything about Fender guitars. Once you dismantle a Fender and start looking closely, there can be any number of pencil scribbles and pen flourishes and rubberstamps and crayon lines, with occasional gouges and knife marks. It might have a worker notation telling their manager "I fixed this like you said" or even less, but some people who desperately need to have lives would rather infer that it's A Secret Masonic Code.
