There are two important dates for the instruments in your collection. The day you brought it home is probably the most important date for both of you, but the date that it was manufactured, or at least the year, is very important in knowing what you actually have and how much it is worth in the long run.
Sometimes, finding out the year your instrument was manufactured can be quite a surprise. In the summer of 1985, I bought a new Fender Jazz bass from a music store in Dayton, Ohio and it was my main bass for quite a few years. Last year I took it to a local music store to get a tune up and in the process we looked up the serial number to figure out when it was made. It turns out that it was made in 1978 and it had just been sitting in music stores for a few years before I bought it. The value of a 1978 Jazz Bass, though, is actually a fair amount higher than the value of a 1985 Jazz Bass so it was good that I had found this out.
How did we determine that it was made in 1978? There are several ways of figuring it out, but the simplest way is to look at the serial number. Fenders from this time used a pretty simple scheme. The first letter in the serial number tells you the decade and the next number tells you the year so a serial number that started with S8 meant it was from the eighth year of the ‘S’eventies. Ones that started with E were made in the eighties, N for nineties, Z for the 2000’s. Of course, there are some exceptions to each of these cases, but that model works out for most of their American made guitars use that system.
Each guitar manufacturer has their own way of tracking serial numbers. Sometimes they are just sequential and you need to figure out where your guitar’s serial number fits within each year’s production numbers. Other manufacturers will encode the year within the serial number or just start out with the year as part of their serial number.
So how do you find out? Well there are lots of resources on the internet to help you do this and here are some links to ones that I have found helpful, grouped by manufacturer.
- B.C. Rich
- Epiphone
- Fender
- G&L
- Gibson
- Gretsch
- Ibanez
- Martin
- Musicman (Ernie Ball)
- Paul Reed Smith
- Rickenbacker
- Squier
- Taylor
- Yamaha
In addition to these pages, there are a few nice general resources for figuring out serial numbers on the internet. Vintage Guitar Pro has a nice list of resources and the Guitar Dater Project is working on some simple online tools where you can just choose the manufacturer and enter your serial number and it will give you the year.
Now, when you add your guitars and basses at the TweedCase you can not only enter your serial number but also the correct year of manufacture. The TweedCase site also lets you enter the date you purchased and sold your instrument so you can keep track of all of that as well!
If you find any more great resources for dating your guitars and basses, let us know in the comments below.
