PRS serial numbers

We cover PRS serial numbers from 1985–present.

We track 13 serial-number formats across 12 eras for PRS.

It depends on the era. We document 3 placements for PRS instruments. See "Where to find the serial number" above for the exact spot for your instrument's era.

Yes. Some PRS serial numbers can't be dated from the number alone: Pre-1985 PRS instruments and early build numbers; SE series instruments (Korean and Indonesian).

The year is at the front, and how much of it is there depends on the scheme. Two digits and they are the year itself, which is the set-neck run from 2008 onward. One digit and it is only the year's last figure, so a serial from the 1985 to 2007 run still needs its decade settled. On an acoustic the year is the pair of digits behind the leading A. Whatever sits past the year is build order in all three, and on the single-digit numbers the size of it is what settles that decade.

Because a single-digit year prefix repeats. PRS used one digit for the year from 1985 through 2007, so a leading 7 fits 1987, 1997 and 2007 equally and nothing in the serial itself rules two of them out. The answer holds all three and asks one question, roughly how large the number after the prefix is, because PRS's published year-end sequences climb without overlapping. Answer it and the reading resolves to a single year. Say you're unsure and all three years stay on the page.

The year those two digits name. PRS moved to a two-digit prefix in 2008, so a serial opening 08 is 2008 and one opening 23 is 2023, with no decade left to separate: the reading is a single definitive year. Those numbers are eight digits long, the two-digit year and then six more for the build sequence.

Not to a year, with one exception where it can hand back an acoustic year instead. On an SE the year lives in the leading letter, or in a leading pair on the Indonesian instruments, and PRS charts those letters separately from the numbers here, so a serial opening with any letter but A, or with one of the two-letter codes, and carrying four to six digits behind it, comes back naming the era it belongs to, with its guide linked and no year on it. A leading A is the exception, because our acoustic chart claims an A followed by five, six or seven digits and it's tried before the era we set aside. Count the digits after the A, then read the two that sit straight behind it. Seven digits is a shape no SE serial takes, so that answer stays certain. Five or six digits is exactly the shape an SE serial can take, so there we do not pick for you: the acoustic year comes back with one question, whether the headstock says SE, and your answer settles it. Say no and the year stands as certain. Say yes and the result becomes the SE era instead, with PRS's own letter chart linked. Either way the two digits after the A have to read 09 or later and name a year our records reach: below 09 the acoustic reading does not apply, an A with five or six digits falls through to the SE reading instead, and an A with seven digits matches nothing in our data at all, because no SE serial runs that long. Check the headstock before you take a year off an A number, because an SE says so there, and that marking is what puts the number on PRS's separate SE chart.

No. Every chart here reads a year out of the number and stops, and none of them names a plant. PRS's own year-identification page, the source behind these charts, names no factory, city or country for any line it dates; the closest it comes is charting the SE instruments under Korea and Indonesia headings, and those are the numbers we deliberately don't date. A PRS serial dates the instrument without placing it.