The guitars that were made between 1978 and 1986 were primarily made by FujiGen Gakki in Nagano. They consist of one letter and 6 digits. The letter signifies the month, and the first two digits are the year it was made. The remaining digits are the build numbers for the month.
You can find out the month of production by the build number. Each month during this period, Ibanez produced 3600 guitars. So builds 1 to 3600 were made in January. And builds 39601 to 43200 were made in December. Our example serial number above, 21546, would have been made in June. Use this information to find your month.
Ibanez Sr 500 Bass Guitar Serial Number Lookup
If your serial number has 1 letter and seven digits and falls into this time frame, here is what it all means. First, the letter is for the factory, which is FujiGen Gakki in Nagano. An example serial number would look like this: F9803215. Here is how to decipher it:
This era of guitars was a bit different. They are thought to be made by Sugi Musical Instruments Ltd. The serial numbering was a bit different as it also included the model. It was formatted as 1 letter and 5 digits. Here is how to decode it:
The guitars made during this period are produced by the Fujigen Gakki factory in Nagano. This serial number system consists of one letter and 7 digits. This letter will ways be an F in this case for Fujigen.
The first 2 digits are the year of production and the remaining numbers are the build lot. You can also figure out the month the guitars were made by the lot number. 1 to 2999 are builds for November. 30,000 to 32999 are for September.
This period has two different serial number schemes. The first is a one-letter and 6 digits configuration. This tells us the factories as well as the year. Here is how to read it for a serial number like C908743:
The second type of serial numbering you will find in this period is one letter and 7 digits. The letter will always be an E in this case, as it represents Sung-Eum Music Co as the producer. The first digit is the year, which is the same as above. The next two are the month, which is a standard scheme of 01 for January and 12 for December. The last few digits are the production number for the month.
During this period, there were many guitars made by Cort Guitars in Incheon that had 7, 8, and 10 numbers. There were no letters, and some of the serial numbers were handwritten. This makes it hard to decipher them, but some information is known.
All serial numbers with 7 numbers during this period consist of the first digit being the year. Starting with 7 which represents 1997. The next two digits represent the month, followed by the build number.
The serials numbers during this period begin with the letter W and have 6 digits. They are made by World Musical Instruments in Incheon. This system is a bit confusing, as the first digit can also be a letter. It tells us the month it was made, but once you go over 9, they begin using numbers.
The month of September is marked as a 9. But then October is an X, November is a Y, and December is a Z. The third digit is the year. The following numbers are the production units for the month. To decipher the year, we see that it starts in 1999. This is marked as a 9 in the serial number. We then begin with 0 for 2000 and climb up this way until 2008.
If your serial number consists of a letter and 8 digits, this is perhaps the period your Ibanez guitar was made. It can also have two letters at the start, followed by the 8 digits. Here is how to break it down:
The Ibanez guitars that were made in China have similar serial number formats. Just as what we have already seen. There will be a letter to start, this tells us the factory. The digits then break down the year, month, and production quantities.
There are a number of different configurations for this time span. First, we have the GS letting with 9 digits that follow. Some people believe it stands for Gio series. But we are not certain who is making them. The next serial numbering you might find is SS plus 8 digits. Again, there is no information about the factory here either.
Many Ibanez electric guitars can be identified by the serial code. This number is normally stamped onto the back of the headstock. But it can also be found on a metal plate near the neck joint. In some cases, the factory code is also screen printed onto the headstock or near the first fret.
Yes, you can use your Ibanez serial code to order parts. Every Ibanez guitar includes a unique serial code. It can be used to identify and order replacement parts. Even accessories specific to your instrument. If you are struggling to find parts, contact your local Ibanez dealer. They can look at your guitar and help you find what you need!
The first serial numbers on Ibanez acoustic guitars appeared in October 1974[1] Serial numbers on solid body guitars came a bit later with the first appearing on the neck plate of bolt-on neck models around August 1975. The practice wasn't fully adopted on set-neck guitars until sometime in 1976.
The serial numbers are generally a character string containing letters and numbers, although some are purely numeric. Serial numbers can be useful in determining the age of a guitar as well as in which country and by which builder it was produced.
Unfortunately, there is no single unified format used for Ibanez serial numbers. Ibanez guitar production is outsourced to several companies and facilities through the world and the numbering schemes are different in each region and/or factory. The information on this page is culled from several sources both on-line and off-line and represents a distillation of the available information. It applies primarily to electric guitars, but some information may also be applicable to acoustics.
The first step in deciphering the serial number is determining the country or facility in which the guitar was produced. In most cases the country of origin is provided in the same location as the serial number. In cases where you have a serial numbe r but not a country of origin, the origin can sometimes be deduced from the serial number, although in this case it's very helpful if you have at least a rough idea of the date of manufacture.
Note: as of November 2004, the serial number represents not necessarily the year the instrument was produced but rather the model year to which the instrument belongs. It has long been Ibanez's practice to begin production for the subsequent model year in November (or even late October), but the serial numbering change that was implemented in November 2004 acknowledged and formalized this practice.
Note that there is opportunity for confusion with some of the other schemes listed here with regards to the initial letters F and I, however, this format is the only one which has just six characters. It is believed that all Japanese-made models with this serial number format are produced by Sugi Musical Instruments Ltd.
Models produced through 1988 (and perhaps into 1989) have serial numbers starting with "F7" which would normally indicate production in 1987. It seems that FujiGen or Ibanez produced an overstock of these "F7" serial number stickers and so just continued to use them through 1988.
One can perhaps make a reasonable guess as to whether a model with an F7 serial number was actually produced in 1987 or 1988 based on the production sequence (the last five digits of the serial number). Any production sequences above 43,200 may be assumed to be 1988 models, although this rule of thumb doesn't appear to always hold true.
Most Ibanez models with this serial number format were made by FujiGen Gakki. Exceptions are the Ibanez Blazer models which were made by Dyna Gakki and the Axstar by Ibanez models AX40, AX45, AX48, AXB50, AXB60, AXB65, AX70, AX75 which were made by Chushin Gakki (the flagship Axstar AXB1000 bass was made by FujiGen Gakki).
It is also believed that 'Terada Musical Instrument Co., Ltd. of Japan also made some guitars for Ibanez during this period.' It's thought that 'these would be mostly hollow-body guitars, but may also included some solid-body Artist series models.' There is no proof whatsoever for either of these assumptions. It's most likely that this is a big misunderstanding caused by an over generalization in the database of the "Guitar Dater Project" website, which is not able to assign the right factory to a vintage Ibanez guitar based on its serial number. The false information this website generates has been propogated in numerous advertisements of sellers of vintage Ibanez guitars. There is no proof whatsoever of any solid body Ibanez guitar produced by Terada. On the contrary: the fact that the production of solid body Ibanez Artist guitars shifted to Iida Gakki 1987, while hollow-body and semi-hollow Artist guitars became Artstar labels with H serial numbers, shows that the original production before 1987 came all from the FujiGen Gakki factory, which was experiencing capacity problems during that time period caused by their commitment to produce guitars for Fender Japan. If Terada had produced AR models already, they would have continued doing so. The AR and AS models shared the same necks under the Artist flag. Splitting the production up from a situation in which they were already both made in the Terada factory wouldn't be efficient, so it is highly unlikely that pre-1987 AR and AS models were ever made there.
Cort took over production of some models (e.g. the AS80 and AS120) from Samick sometime in 1995. This early Cort production was given 6-digit serial numbers which were hand-written on the label attached to the inside of the guitar.
Some Korean Ibanez serial numbers are purely numeric with no alphabetic characters. According to Jim Donahue these guitars were manufactured in the Cort factory, in which he had the supervision. Because they had no date stamps available when they started, the serials numbers of Artstar models in this factory were written by hand. These handwritten serial numbers are hard to decipher. The production of these Artstar models at the Cort factory was discontinued in 2003. 2ff7e9595c
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