Fender Artist Banjo S Serial Numbers To Date

Below well go into detail about the various serial number schemes employed by Fender as far back as 1950.

Youre not alone. 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.

The most important thing to keep in mind when dating a Fender is the highly modular nature of the designs.

Like Henry Ford, part of Leo Fenders genius was in optimizing the companys production efficiency.

His guitars were built en masse by an entire factory, not a single luthier toiling over one instrument at a time.

Features like bolt-on necks and pickups wired into the pickguard all helped the Fender factory churn out guitar after guitar, day after day.

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.

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.

Once you have the information you need, if youre 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.

Design Changes and Features Perhaps the best place to start when dating your Fender is to get an approximate idea of the era based on the instruments design and components.

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.

For starters, theres the Reverb Price Guide which has thousands of entries with pictures and details on various guitars and other gear.

Some browsing around the Fender section of the Price Guide can definitely help you find which model you have.

We also have some other blog posts related to Fender that can hopefully be of some help.

Theres A Brief History of the Stratocaster Part I and Part II that follows the evolution of the most popular Fender guitar of all.

Similarly, take a look at Behold the Jazzmaster for general timeline of the history of everyones favorite offset guitar.

For Fender during the turning point era of the mid-60s, check out Fender and the CBS Takeover.

Body and Neck Dates Through much of Fenders production history, Fender workers would print or write a production date on both bodies and necks where the two pieces meet.

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.

Here is what the neck date and body date look like from a 1952 Telecaster: If youre not comfortable removing the neck of a guitar to peek at the date marker, I encourage you to take it to a local tech or luthier.

I will also mention briefly pot-codes as a resource (numbers on the internal potentiometers of the guitar).

These can definitely be useful in cases where no other numbers exist, but just tell when the pot itself was made.

Fender Artist Banjo S Serial Numbers To Date

Who knows how long it was waiting in the Fender factory before finding its way into a Tele Serial Numbers Like the body and neck dates, using serial numbers to date a Fender is not a sure bet.

At many points in Fenders history, serial number usage overlapped again owing to the modular manner of production.

Fender Artist Banjo Serial Numbers