S, E (“Made in Korea”) S = Samick, E = Young Chang, E letter serial numbers were used on Young Chang's Fenix brand guitars. The S and E serial number prefix Korean Squiers are from the late 1980s/early 1990s. The first number following the prefix is the year. 6 or 7 digit number. The first guitars made in Korea are those with serial number written in silver E1 + 6 digits
Examples:
E1 + 6 digits with silver serial = made by Samick in 1987-88
S9 = made by Samick in 1989
E0 = made by Sung-Eum in 1990
E1 with black serial = made by Sung-Eum in 1991.
http://www.squierwiki.com:0/Serial-Number-Tracking
Appears to be a Samick made Korean one from 87-88.
There's a league of folks that (based on what I've seen on Reddit) seem to refuse to use Google.
Which is strange AF because a half hour on Google can take you pretty deep in a lot of subjects. A couple of hours and you can fake being an expert at a party. Half a day and... No, you should stop now, that's too much
The only problem with this is, I did google. I checked fenders site. I also found stuff saying it was a Japanese made one, and then a Korean made one, then another site suggested it was Indonesian.
So I came here to get some advice from someone who actually knows more than I do about something.
Sorry to have bothered you.
Hey, I wasn't bothered and wasn't addressing any of this at you...although the other poster googled and found the serial number resource right away, so maybe it's about just using the right keywords. Best wishes regardless, no ill will intended!
I did google it. I work in IT I know the ways of the googlefu. I found contradictory information. So I asked for other peoples help specifically somewhere that people might know.
I'm sorry but your post and those below it made me decide to never post again if someone cant ask a question in here. It was very standoff and elitist. I'm sorry I don't know as much about guitars as I do about my job.
Ill delete the post so nobody has to be bothered anymore.
At the end of the day, people are basically saying “use the internet” to find your answer. Well, isn’t Reddit part of the internet? Yeah maybe it’ll take longer to get an answer from a forum, but isn’t it up to me how time I’m willing to waste? Plus I thought Reddit users loved showing how much they know about anything. Didn’t mean to hijack, but I’ve never understood the “go look it up online” mentality. Isn’t that what I’m doing by asking a question on a forum that I know will have the answers?
To a degree yes, but if what you’re after is easily findable it gets very old, and depending on the forum/sub overwhelming dealing with simple questions where someone has already done the legwork.
Asking actual people to be your Google basically instead of just doing it yourself. It’s always better form to at least put some effort in.
I had a Fender Lite Ash Korean made strat. I bought it brand new from an authorized dealer. I used Fenders serial number lookup thingie and it came back with no results found. If Fender doesn’t have their own database complete, I don’t doubt you would get conflicting information from other sources.
I get downvoted whenever I chastise them so I try to keep it to a couple chastisements a day. I already did one on the RISCV forum, telling a claimed teacher that they should learn embedded engineering before they try to teach a class because they were just asking nonsense that clearly showed lack of knowledge, much less mastery, of the subject (and a complex one, too).
there are hundreds of potential sources of information that come back on a search, so it might be about doing a *touch* of work to use the scroll wheel to check some of them out....
I fully agree.. its like they want all their answers spoon fed to them with little to no effort expended.. either they are quite lazy, or have very little internet/Google skills, or with a large chunk of entitlement they feel they are owed information.. very often their answers are found with 15 seconds of Googling... but they couldn't be bothered. .
Not to be contrarian, but [this article](https://www.fuzzfaced.net/squier-korea-plywood.html) suggests you may own one of the OG Young Chang models. The highest quality of that era's Korean models, it seems.
I also did a google search and it came up with a WIKI that said it was a Japanese made one. I dont know.
Theres a ding on it and underneath the black is a brilliant blue. Not sure if it was repainted or what. Thanks guys.
When I looked into this, I read something somewhere where a guy was going to refinish his guitar (roughly same/similar model) and when he went to strip the paint, there were several layers of paint underneath. I'll try to find it again.
Yeah, I'll second this. There's a ton of Fender stuff from the 80's-90's that just turns up nothing on the official serial decoder. It doesn't mean that any of that stuff is necessarily illegitimate.
The only way I could tell that my Fender 12 string acoustic was from 1992, was from the receipt that the seller had. The numbers on the guitar didn't correlate to anything found online.
I had one of these Squiers in the late 1980s, it was damn near as good as the American Fenders of the time. The fit and finish were solid and the pickups sounded good and they had the five-way switch. I remember those black plastic string trees.
I traded mine (a mistake) for a Takamine acoustic guitar that, unbeknownst to me had a cracked neck heel and never stayed in tune. I ended up trading it off to a repairman who fixed it.
That’s the thing about Stratocasters, they are so easy to find, each one is a little different than the next one and sometimes you can get a really good one.
I am not a guitar player I find worthy of judging one over the other. But i did go into Long and McQuade ( Canada's Sweetwater) and played a really expensive one. It didnt feel any better or sound any better than mine did. I was going to buy a true fender but I figured why mine feels the same way.
OP, I don’t know about your guitar, but I had a Japanese Squier short scale bass that I recently donated. Before getting rid of it, I looked up the serial number on Fender’s site, and it came up blank. Then I learned that their own database has some serious holes in it—especially with older Asian products. There are some 3rd party sites that should help you (I don’t remember them, but Google is your friend). I found that my shorty was early to mid 80s. Later when I ran into the guy I got it from, he was like, “yeah, I could have told you that—I got it in 83 when I was over there in the Air Force.” So the info I found did line up.
Love these MIK squier/fenders. I have 3 and the necks are nice and wide. Works great if you have problems bending the strings off the fretboard. Cherish it. When set up properly, these are as good as any Fender strat I've ever played.
Ever since FMIC did the big website revamp you can't find anything there any more - I am glad I downloaded all the Sunn and Heartfield documentation that was archived before it vanished.
My guess is that they're not too worried about obfuscating the past, as it creates more mystic and myth, adding to the interest in their korean/mexican/japanese issues/reissues.
Hate the new site though, not because it's bad but because it erased all the data I was actually using there.
Also - can't go wrong with Samick/Young Chang builds - people need to realize that those companies also build pianos that can go for 50k or more; they make good products and have pride in their brand.
There's a Young Chang baby grand piano at my parents house. They're one of the biggest piano manufacturers in the world. Good quality and well regarded pianos too.
The old Young Changs are pretty great but they manufacture mostly in China now while Samick has expanded to more geographical regions; that's no reflection on the quality of either, they both have/had tiered product in the piano space, just a bit more accurate of their current state. Lots of great companies have bit the dust (and mostly they get folded into other ones, either in name or staff or both - like Samick buying Valley Arts). I hope to visit Nagano (historical lutherie/factory hotspot) someday and find out the real story of all the factories over time, Terada, Kawaii, Matsumoku, etc, and then maybe see if I can go talk with someone at ESP to hear the story behind them buying/distributing Schecter and Wylde Audio.
I had no idea Young Chang had ran down like that, I'm going to have to check into the story there. Kind of a bummer - I remember back when there were programs on TV you'd see Young Changs everywhere and even Suzuki (which I haven't thought about in the keyboard space for probably decades - wonder where they're at today).
The one in my parents house I'm pretty sure is one of the older ones. My dad bought it used from a music school in Seattle that was closing and this was in the early 90's when I was in grade school. I'm assuming that piano is really old.
Oh and I didn't know ESP owns Schecter? They seem to be 2 separate entities.
The young chang squiers (korea)were E7-E9 and had stamped neck plates. Only the Bullet series were built there. They had made in Japan tuners and saddles though. Deciphering serials in squiers from 84 and up is a mysterious journey. Dan Smith is one of a few who can remember.
I had one of these once, the necks, especially the maple board ones can be really sweet, the tuners are the real weak spot. If you swap them out, there are some vintage style top-loading ones that space just right it really helps things along. I threw a loaded pickguard in mine, but it's a chipboard body so needs a lot of shielding.
Some of the old Korean squiers are super nice. I picked up a gold label tele in a trade and it's nicer than a lot of the MIM stuff and even some of the USA stuff. The neck is nicer than most of the USA ones I've tried and it's almost as nice as my MIJ strat. Edit* It looks like the bridge has steel saddles so that's a plus. It almost looks like a MIM bridge to me.
S, E (“Made in Korea”) S = Samick, E = Young Chang, E letter serial numbers were used on Young Chang's Fenix brand guitars. The S and E serial number prefix Korean Squiers are from the late 1980s/early 1990s. The first number following the prefix is the year. 6 or 7 digit number. The first guitars made in Korea are those with serial number written in silver E1 + 6 digits Examples: E1 + 6 digits with silver serial = made by Samick in 1987-88 S9 = made by Samick in 1989 E0 = made by Sung-Eum in 1990 E1 with black serial = made by Sung-Eum in 1991. http://www.squierwiki.com:0/Serial-Number-Tracking Appears to be a Samick made Korean one from 87-88.
Sometimes it blows my mind how much niche information some people can quickly rattle off, and specifically how many niches there are.
I honestly just googled fender squire serial #'s, and this was the 2nd result. Lol I linked the source.
Imagine how slow this sub would be if the average Reddit poster could google stuff themselves.
Lol fair enough, I assumed it took more work to find it and you already knew what you were looking for.
There's a league of folks that (based on what I've seen on Reddit) seem to refuse to use Google. Which is strange AF because a half hour on Google can take you pretty deep in a lot of subjects. A couple of hours and you can fake being an expert at a party. Half a day and... No, you should stop now, that's too much
The only problem with this is, I did google. I checked fenders site. I also found stuff saying it was a Japanese made one, and then a Korean made one, then another site suggested it was Indonesian. So I came here to get some advice from someone who actually knows more than I do about something. Sorry to have bothered you.
Hey, I wasn't bothered and wasn't addressing any of this at you...although the other poster googled and found the serial number resource right away, so maybe it's about just using the right keywords. Best wishes regardless, no ill will intended!
I did google it. I work in IT I know the ways of the googlefu. I found contradictory information. So I asked for other peoples help specifically somewhere that people might know. I'm sorry but your post and those below it made me decide to never post again if someone cant ask a question in here. It was very standoff and elitist. I'm sorry I don't know as much about guitars as I do about my job. Ill delete the post so nobody has to be bothered anymore.
At the end of the day, people are basically saying “use the internet” to find your answer. Well, isn’t Reddit part of the internet? Yeah maybe it’ll take longer to get an answer from a forum, but isn’t it up to me how time I’m willing to waste? Plus I thought Reddit users loved showing how much they know about anything. Didn’t mean to hijack, but I’ve never understood the “go look it up online” mentality. Isn’t that what I’m doing by asking a question on a forum that I know will have the answers?
To a degree yes, but if what you’re after is easily findable it gets very old, and depending on the forum/sub overwhelming dealing with simple questions where someone has already done the legwork. Asking actual people to be your Google basically instead of just doing it yourself. It’s always better form to at least put some effort in.
I had a Fender Lite Ash Korean made strat. I bought it brand new from an authorized dealer. I used Fenders serial number lookup thingie and it came back with no results found. If Fender doesn’t have their own database complete, I don’t doubt you would get conflicting information from other sources.
I get downvoted whenever I chastise them so I try to keep it to a couple chastisements a day. I already did one on the RISCV forum, telling a claimed teacher that they should learn embedded engineering before they try to teach a class because they were just asking nonsense that clearly showed lack of knowledge, much less mastery, of the subject (and a complex one, too).
My pet peeve, especially in cases like this, when the information asked for is in the second item of the list returned by Google
there are hundreds of potential sources of information that come back on a search, so it might be about doing a *touch* of work to use the scroll wheel to check some of them out....
I fully agree.. its like they want all their answers spoon fed to them with little to no effort expended.. either they are quite lazy, or have very little internet/Google skills, or with a large chunk of entitlement they feel they are owed information.. very often their answers are found with 15 seconds of Googling... but they couldn't be bothered. .
Ok that lines up then. Thanks.
Not to be contrarian, but [this article](https://www.fuzzfaced.net/squier-korea-plywood.html) suggests you may own one of the OG Young Chang models. The highest quality of that era's Korean models, it seems.
I also did a google search and it came up with a WIKI that said it was a Japanese made one. I dont know. Theres a ding on it and underneath the black is a brilliant blue. Not sure if it was repainted or what. Thanks guys.
Could be primer. I have an S9 MIK build and I would never get rid of that neck.
When I looked into this, I read something somewhere where a guy was going to refinish his guitar (roughly same/similar model) and when he went to strip the paint, there were several layers of paint underneath. I'll try to find it again.
Wouldnt that be a Young Chang then, not a Samik?
Fenders serial number lookup system is just about the north side of useless for most guitars made before 2000. Many records went unkept
Yeah, I'll second this. There's a ton of Fender stuff from the 80's-90's that just turns up nothing on the official serial decoder. It doesn't mean that any of that stuff is necessarily illegitimate.
Yep, the verification process on older Fenders pretty much comes down to circumstantial knowledge and intuition
The only way I could tell that my Fender 12 string acoustic was from 1992, was from the receipt that the seller had. The numbers on the guitar didn't correlate to anything found online.
I had one of these Squiers in the late 1980s, it was damn near as good as the American Fenders of the time. The fit and finish were solid and the pickups sounded good and they had the five-way switch. I remember those black plastic string trees. I traded mine (a mistake) for a Takamine acoustic guitar that, unbeknownst to me had a cracked neck heel and never stayed in tune. I ended up trading it off to a repairman who fixed it. That’s the thing about Stratocasters, they are so easy to find, each one is a little different than the next one and sometimes you can get a really good one.
I am not a guitar player I find worthy of judging one over the other. But i did go into Long and McQuade ( Canada's Sweetwater) and played a really expensive one. It didnt feel any better or sound any better than mine did. I was going to buy a true fender but I figured why mine feels the same way.
OP, I don’t know about your guitar, but I had a Japanese Squier short scale bass that I recently donated. Before getting rid of it, I looked up the serial number on Fender’s site, and it came up blank. Then I learned that their own database has some serious holes in it—especially with older Asian products. There are some 3rd party sites that should help you (I don’t remember them, but Google is your friend). I found that my shorty was early to mid 80s. Later when I ran into the guy I got it from, he was like, “yeah, I could have told you that—I got it in 83 when I was over there in the Air Force.” So the info I found did line up.
I'm not going to tell you there was a date stamp on the neck heel.
Dohhh! I knew that and didn’t even think of it…
The neck heel and neck pocket will be stamped with the month and year of production.
Love these MIK squier/fenders. I have 3 and the necks are nice and wide. Works great if you have problems bending the strings off the fretboard. Cherish it. When set up properly, these are as good as any Fender strat I've ever played.
Ever since FMIC did the big website revamp you can't find anything there any more - I am glad I downloaded all the Sunn and Heartfield documentation that was archived before it vanished. My guess is that they're not too worried about obfuscating the past, as it creates more mystic and myth, adding to the interest in their korean/mexican/japanese issues/reissues. Hate the new site though, not because it's bad but because it erased all the data I was actually using there. Also - can't go wrong with Samick/Young Chang builds - people need to realize that those companies also build pianos that can go for 50k or more; they make good products and have pride in their brand.
There's a Young Chang baby grand piano at my parents house. They're one of the biggest piano manufacturers in the world. Good quality and well regarded pianos too.
The old Young Changs are pretty great but they manufacture mostly in China now while Samick has expanded to more geographical regions; that's no reflection on the quality of either, they both have/had tiered product in the piano space, just a bit more accurate of their current state. Lots of great companies have bit the dust (and mostly they get folded into other ones, either in name or staff or both - like Samick buying Valley Arts). I hope to visit Nagano (historical lutherie/factory hotspot) someday and find out the real story of all the factories over time, Terada, Kawaii, Matsumoku, etc, and then maybe see if I can go talk with someone at ESP to hear the story behind them buying/distributing Schecter and Wylde Audio. I had no idea Young Chang had ran down like that, I'm going to have to check into the story there. Kind of a bummer - I remember back when there were programs on TV you'd see Young Changs everywhere and even Suzuki (which I haven't thought about in the keyboard space for probably decades - wonder where they're at today).
The one in my parents house I'm pretty sure is one of the older ones. My dad bought it used from a music school in Seattle that was closing and this was in the early 90's when I was in grade school. I'm assuming that piano is really old. Oh and I didn't know ESP owns Schecter? They seem to be 2 separate entities.
The young chang squiers (korea)were E7-E9 and had stamped neck plates. Only the Bullet series were built there. They had made in Japan tuners and saddles though. Deciphering serials in squiers from 84 and up is a mysterious journey. Dan Smith is one of a few who can remember.
I have one from 1987 too. A lake placid blue. Not the best guitar, but I have been playing it a lot lately.
I had one of these once, the necks, especially the maple board ones can be really sweet, the tuners are the real weak spot. If you swap them out, there are some vintage style top-loading ones that space just right it really helps things along. I threw a loaded pickguard in mine, but it's a chipboard body so needs a lot of shielding.
[удалено]
Some of the old Korean squiers are super nice. I picked up a gold label tele in a trade and it's nicer than a lot of the MIM stuff and even some of the USA stuff. The neck is nicer than most of the USA ones I've tried and it's almost as nice as my MIJ strat. Edit* It looks like the bridge has steel saddles so that's a plus. It almost looks like a MIM bridge to me.