Fender serial numbers: Japan, Made in Japan and Crafted in Japan

Japanese production opens in 1982, and its first two prefixes belong to nobody else. JV runs 1982 to 1984; SQ runs 1983 to 1984. Fender documents both as spans rather than as year-by-year charts, and nothing on the instrument splits them further, so a JV number comes back as all three years and an SQ number as both. That is where the reading ends.

In 1997 the decal above the serial changed from Made in Japan to Crafted in Japan, and the serial letters carried straight on across the change. The result is that A, O, P, Q and S each name two separate spans, one under each wording, and the digits behind the letter do not separate them.

T is the awkward one. Fender charts three runs against it rather than two: Made in Japan from 1994 to 1995, Crafted in Japan from 2007 to 2008, and Made in Japan again from 2007 to 2010. The wording does less work on this letter than on any other. It splits the Crafted in Japan run off and leaves the two Made in Japan runs standing side by side, 1994 to 1995 and 2007 to 2010, with nothing in the digits to choose between them.

So the reading branches on one question: which of the two phrases is printed beside your serial? Answer it and the candidate set collapses to a single span, or on T to whichever runs share the wording you gave. Leave it unanswered and everything stays on the page, because a number that fits 1985 and 1997 equally has not been narrowed.

Even once the wording has settled which era a letter belongs to, the serial rarely narrows to a single year. Fender records these letters against multi-year runs, and it states outright that its records on the early Japanese-made instruments are not complete. Where the table can only offer a span, the answer shows the span.

An S followed by six digits has more than one reading, and this page carries two of them: on a Japan-made instrument the S is a series letter, and the headstock wording decides between the Made in Japan span and the Crafted in Japan one, exactly as it does for the other reused letters. If the first of those six digits is 6, 7, 8 or 9, a third reading opens up, a US instrument from the late 1970s or the first year or two of the 1980s, where that digit is the year the number nominally marks. Its table is on the United States page. In every case the country wording beside the serial is what narrows the field, and no country wording at all points away from Japan.

Made in Japan or Crafted in Japan is printed or stamped above or beside the serial, on the back of the headstock. That wording is part of the reading: cover it and the number loses half its meaning.

• United States, 1976 onwardThe headstock letter-prefix scheme, from the 1976 changeover to the US-prefixed numbers of the 2010s.
• Mexico (Ensenada), 1990 onwardThe MN, MZ and MX prefixes from the Ensenada factory, 1990 to the present.
• Every Fender era in one place The full brand hub, covering 1976–present.