Fender serial numbers: Mexico (Ensenada), 1990 onward

MN covers the 1990s (M for Mexico, N for the nineties) and MZ covers the 2000s, each followed by a single digit giving the year inside the decade: MN4 reads 1994, MZ3 reads 2003. From 2010 the prefix is MX and the two digits behind it are the year outright, so MX21 reads 2021.

Of the three, MX is the one still in use, which makes it the place a Mexico serial can be newer than the records we hold. When that happens the answer says the number is past our records, and points you at the checks that would settle it sooner.

An M serial carries a nominal year. Fender's US dating documentation is direct that a serial number is not always a precise guide to when an instrument was actually finished, and our tables extend that caveat to the Ensenada runs: nothing in the Mexican scheme makes it immune. So an instrument whose serial reads 1999 may well have left the factory in 2000. Every M answer that lands on a year states it at probable confidence.

An M prefix places the factory and the year, and stops there. It says nothing about the model, the woods or the pickups: a serial number dates an instrument, it does not identify or authenticate one.

On an Ensenada-made instrument the serial is stamped on the headstock just below the logo, and which face carries it depends on the run: the earlier M prefixes were stamped on the front, the later ones on the back. Fender's own Mexican dating article names no position at all, so check both faces before deciding a number is missing. Wherever it turns out to be, the reading is the same: the position adds nothing the prefix has not already said, and it does not tighten the year either.

• United States, 1976 onwardThe headstock letter-prefix scheme, from the 1976 changeover to the US-prefixed numbers of the 2010s.
• Japan, Made in Japan and Crafted in JapanJV, SQ and the reused letters, and why the headstock wording settles the era.
• Every Fender era in one place The full brand hub, covering 1976–present.