Fender Serial Dating. First, narrow it down by the country of origin. Serial dating is easiest for instruments made in the USA or Mexico, but is also possible for those made in Japan, Korea, China, and Indonesia. For US instruments, the serial number will start with a letter. That letter indicates the decade. S for 1970s; E for 1980s; N for. Guitars by Leo - The G&L Guitars and Basses Tribute Page. The G&L® Registry Number of Instruments. Show only the following serial number: Show only serial numbers in the range: to (Click Here to view valid Instrument serial number formats.) Show: Instruments per page: Sort in: Ascending Descending. Fender Serial Dating. First, narrow it down by the country of origin. Serial dating is easiest for instruments made in the USA or Mexico, but is also possible for those made in Japan, Korea, China, and Indonesia. For US instruments, the serial number will start with a letter. That letter indicates the decade. S for 1970s; E for 1980s; N for.
O.k. this post should probably be called Godin guitar serial numbers rather than Seagull guitar serial numbers – because it applies to all guitars under the Godin umbrella (Seagull, Art & Lutherie, Simon & Patrick, Norman and La Patrie) but it certainly applies to Seagull guitars.
Get your concentrating hat on because they haven’t made this simple!
What you can Find out from your serial number?
Your Godin serial number will tell you different things depending on the time period. There are 3 distinct time periods for Godin serial numbers.
Pre-1993
1993 to 2007
2008 to present
Note: Seagull starts their year on August 1. So if the year is 2005, then it starts August 1 2004 and ends July 31 2005.
Pre-1993
You can’t really tell anything from this serial number. You’ll need to contact Godin and tell them your serial number and they can tell you when the guitar was made.
1993 to 2007
The year the guitar was made;
The week of the year it was made;
The day of the week it was made; and
The unit number of the guitar
I’ll go into more detail about how you can decipher this in a bit.
2008 to present
The model number
Whether your guitar is a factory second or not
What number of that particular model yours is
I’ll go into more detail about how you can decipher this in a bit.
How to Decode Your Serial Number
Again how you decode your serial number depends on the time period.
Pre-1993
Taylor Guitar Models
This is simply a matter of contacting Godin, telling them your serial number and asking them about it. There is no secret code in these numbers!
1993 to 2007
O.K. now we get into some secret code ?
Between 1993 and 2007 Godin used an 8 digit serial number. This serial number is broken up into 4 different parts.
Let’s use an example serial number to illustrate this. We’ll use – 05034148
Digits 1 & 2
The first 2 digits represent the year that the guitar was built. But this is not the calendar year. Godin’s year runs from August 1st to July 31st. So the first 2 digits, technically represent the “year ended”.
In our example we have 05 as the first 2 digits.
05034148
What this determines is that the guitar was built sometime in the year from August 1st, 2004 and July 31st 2005.
The next 2 digits will narrow this down further.
Digits 3 & 4
Digits 3 & 4 represent the week of the year that the guitar was built – remember that the Godin year is August 1st to July 31st. So week 1 is the first week of August.
In our example the week is 03.
05034148
This means it was built in the 3rd week of the year ended July 31st, 2005. So it was the 3rd week of August 2004.
So the guitar with this serial number was actually built in 2004 even though the first 2 digits are 05. With me so far?
Digit 5
The 5th digit represents the day of the week that the guitar was built, starting from Monday.
1 = Monday
2 = Tuesday
3 = Wednesday
4 = Thursday
5 = Friday
6 = Saturday
7 = Sunday
So in our example we have a 4 so the guitar with this serial number was built on a Thursday.
05034148
The last 3 digits
The last 3 digits represents the order in which this guitar was produced in that week.
So, in our example, it was the 148th guitar built that week.
05034148
So, overall we can tell that this guitar was the 148th guitar built in the 3rd week of August in 2004 and it was built on a Thursday. So we can work out that it was built on Thursday the 19th of August, 2004.
This a bit complicated but usually people only want to know the year that their guitar was built – so you can work that out a bit easier.
Extra Info
If there’s an “AA” or “AAA” in the serial number this represents the grade of wood. Not all serial numbers have this – I think it’s just for maple top guitars.
If there is an “F” in the serial number, this signifies that the guitar is “B-Stock”.
2008 to present
In late 2007 Godin switched to a 12 digit serial number.
The present system doesn’t actually tell you anything about when the guitar was built, which is a bit of a pain, as working out the year of your guitar is often the only thing people want to know from their serial number.
Anyway, this is what the serial number tells you.
I mean I guess serial numbers are really meant for internal purposes for Seagull and for anti-theft measures but sometimes you want to be able to find out the year of production. I imagine if you were to contact Godin they would have this information.
Let’s use another example serial number – 029396000123
First 6 digits
This represents the model of your guitar. You probably already know this but if you’re not sure for whatever reason you can find out.
In our example the first 6 digits are 029396 – this is the model number of the Seagull S6 Original.
029396000123
If you follow this link – Seagull S6 Original – it will take you to the S6 Original on the Seagull website. Underneath the title you will see “SKU: 029396”. If you want to find the model number for your guitar go through the models until you find the number that matches your guitar. You should be able to narrow this down reasonably quickly as you should know at least which series your guitar is from.
7th Digit
This digit represents whether this guitar is a “Factory Second” or not.
A “0” represents that it’s not a factory second and a “9” represents a factory second. Note that a “Factory Second” does not mean that the guitar has a functional defect – rather that it just has a cosmetic flaw. These guitars are usually priced a little bit lower and if you can find one you should be able to get a good deal on an otherwise perfectly fine guitar.
In our example the guitar is not a factory second.
029396000123
The last 5 digits
The last 5 digits represent the number of that particular model built since switching to 12 digit serial numbers.
In our example the serial number represents the 123rd S6 Original built since Godin changed to 12 digit serial numbers.
029396000123
So, overall from our example serial number we can tell that the serial number belongs to an S6 Original that is not a factory second and that it was the 123rd S6 Original to be shipped since Godin began their 12 digit serial number system.
Final Thoughts
This is definitely the most complicated serial number system I have come across so far (I have previous to this written serial number posts explaining Martin’s and Taylor’s serial number systems).
But as I said earlier, it is perhaps the fact that serial numbers are mainly for internal company purposes and for identifying stolen property. But, it would be nice to be able to quickly tell what year your guitar was built from the serial number as well.
This information was compiled from the following – Godin don’t post information about their serial numbers:
Guitar Identification
Photo Credits
By Jason (Flickr: Mina & Guitar III) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
DSL carries a wide variety of foodservice brands, and the way to tell the age of the equipment you are dealing with can be a challenge unless you are well acquainted with it. To help clear up the mystery, we have compiled how to tell the age for two of our biggest brands, Taylor and Henny Penny (separate blog that’s soon to follow).
To find the serial number on a Taylor machine, you have to go to the front of your machine and look on the left side of the machine (your left). It should look something like the Taylor 430 (top of blog) from our test kitchen.
Determining information from a Taylor machine is a fairly easy process. The letter at the beginning of the serial number denotes which decade or ‘series’ the machine is part of. The first number after the letter distinguishes the year of the decade that it was manufactured, and the next two numbers the month of the year. The next four numbers after the month are simply the production number for the piece of equipment. The major ‘series’ are:
K = 2000-2009 series 8 = 8 years after 2000, or 2008 12 = month 12, or December 4715 = production number
Guitar Lookup By Serial Number
Thanks for reading and we hope that you have found this information useful. If you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to contact us, and don’t forget to check out the blog explaining how to read Henny Penny equipment!