Dating A Made In Japan Squire
2007 was another transitional year for Japanese-made Fender instruments, with the return to the “Made in Japan” country-of-origin identifier on the serial number decal. This was a running change, and both “Made in Japan” and “Crafted in Japan” decals appear on instruments from 2007 and 2008. Results 1 - 24 of 24 - Vintage Squier Silver Series Stratocaster Guitar, Made In Japan L serial. Dates around 1992 from the FujiGen factory 'O' serial number.
Fender's production methods from the early fifties had the effect the numbers may not beconsecutive. Also overlap of serial numbers and dates come with regularity.Where to find the serial numberThe serial numbers on the guitar are provided through the years on various places.At the top of the neck plate, at the front or at the back of the head or on the cover plate of thevibrato. (Stratocaster)Between 1973 and 1981 there were periods that this is not consistently done.If you want to know the production year of your Fender guitar, you can decipher it with the serial number decoder, or find it in the tables below. Although a serial number is helpful for roughly determining the age of a guitar, this is often notthe exact date. Usually, the production date is stamped or written is on the heel of the neck.To read this it is necessary to unscrew the neck from the body.Most specifications for the Fender guitars are hardly changed. Although there have beenperiods in which major changes occurred as the acquisition of Fender by CBS, and thetransition from CBS Fender to the current owner (Fender Musical Instruments Corporation),most models are in general not changed.At the Stratocasters from the early fifties the serial numbers were stamped on the back vibratocover.
On some Telecasters at the bridge between the pickup and the saddles.Patent numbersBetween 1960 and 1977, were added several patent numbers to the models. These became in the head under the Fender logo stamped.e.g.PAT, 2,573,254 2,968,204 3,143,028 2,976,755 DES 1873042,573,254 for pickup and bridge combination.2,968,204 for the single coil pickup patent awarded in 1961 under other for Jaguar, Stratocaster, Duosonic.3,143,028 the patent granted in August 1964 for Fender's adjustable neck construction.2,976,755 for the split coil pickup design.
If you can not find a serial number (unreadable, worn of),you can approximate the age of a semi/electric guitar on the basis of the potentiometers.The code on potentiometers gives information about the manufacturer and the year and week when it is made.See:The Fender logo that was used can also be an indication from which period the guitar originates.Whether it is an original model or a vintage (also the old logos are used again) depends on your own estimation of the age of the guitar.spaghetti-logo 1950-1965transition logo 1960-1967CBS era logo 1967. Fender has used 3 different logos for guitars. The original logo, also called 'spaghetti logo',the transition logo and the CBS era logo.The spaghetti logo was used in the 1950s and is so named for its thin silver-colored letter with a thin black line.This logo was used in the fifties until the mid-sixties.At the end of 1959 a new logo was designed by designer Robert Perine and Leo fender himself.The logo has fatter golden letters with a thicker black border. The logo was later namedtransition logo, because it bridged the period between the thin spaghetti logo and the CBS era.The first guitar to be branded with this new logo was the Jazz Bass in 1960. All new modelsgot the new logo from that moment on.In 1967 after the takeover of Fender by CBS, the design remained the same but the letters became black with onegold-colored border.
From its small beginnings making electric lap steels in Leo Fender’s California radio shop during the early 1940s, has grown into a global brand that not only encompasses a multitude of musical instrument marques, including, /, and, but has even branched out into areas as disparate as car audio, in collaboration with Volkswagen, and retro styled tennis shoes.It’s hard to imagine now, but at the end of the 1970s, the future looked bleak for Fender. There was an often-justified perception of declining quality over the previous 15 years since Leo Fender had sold the company bearing his name to the U.S. Broadcasting company CBS. Adding to Fender’s troubles was increased competition from inexpensive imported guitars, a large percentage of which were made in Japan at the time. And while the American-made guitars were seen as getting progressively worse, the Japanese-made instruments were getting better. In fact, companies such as and, which also made guitars, were making instruments that were extremely close replicas of the Stratocasters and Telecasters made by Fender during its halcyon days of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.At the beginning of the 1980s, however, two significant and interrelated events occurred that propelled Fender’s transformation into a worldwide brand: the introduction of the Squier subsidiary and the creation of Fender Japan Ltd. An International PerspectiveIn 1981, CBS brought in a new a new management team to turn Fender around.
The three executives, John McLaren, William “Bill” Schultz and Dan Smith, were music industry veterans who had previously worked for Musical Instruments’ North American operation. The three knew that they had a tough job ahead of them.“We were brought in to kind of turn the reputation of Fender around, and to get it so it was making money again,” Smith said, as quoted in “The Fender Book,” by Tony Bacon and Paul Day.
“It was starting to lose money, and at that point in time everybody hated Fender. We thought we knew how bad it was. We took for granted that they could make Stratocasters and Telecasters the way they used to make them, but we were wrong.”. The new management team decided to fix Fender’s fortunes by using two different, but complementary approaches:First, they would tackle declining quality by significantly upgrading Fender’s California production facilities and implementing a new quality control program. At the same time, Fender decided to take the fight against inexpensive imported copies to the source and confront the makers of copycat guitars on their home ground by manufacturing guitars in Japan.This was a bold move; essentially Fender would be creating its own copies and competing with itself.
However, this was not the first time this approach to competing with low-cost foreign imports had been tried; it could be argued that had done something similar with the brand after moving production overseas in the late ‘60s after ceasing the manufacturing of Epiphone instruments in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The big difference here was that Fender was not only intending to make inexpensive instruments for the American market, the company also intended to make high-quality guitars for the domestic Japanese market and to compete with the Japanese makers on their home turf. Repurposing the Squier Brand. '80s Squier BulletIt was clear that the way forward for Fender was to take on the makers of knock-off guitars by introducing their own budget models.
But the challenge was how to do that while protecting the image of Fender as a high-end guitar brand. The answer was to market them under the Squier brand, which was the name of a string manufacturer and one of the first to make strings specifically for electric guitars.Fender had bought Squier in the ‘60s and Fender continued to sell strings under that name until 1972.
Marketing electric guitars under the Squier name would enable the company to distance itself from the venture if it failed while protecting the prestige of the Fender brand.The Japanese car company Nissan had done something similar in the 1960s when it sold cars in the American market under the Datsun marque. There was a slight controversy surrounding the new guitars when early ‘80s rocker Billy Squier filed a lawsuit against Fender claiming it was unfairly using his name.These new Squier instruments came in two basic flavors: budget/student instruments, such as the “Bullet” series (more on these in part two), and lower-cost yet identical-looking versions of standard Fender models, especially Stratocasters and Telecasters. Fender Partners with FujiGen Gakki and Kanda ShokaiAs noted earlier, one of the big challenges facing Schultz and the new Fender management team was increasing the quality of the American-made instruments. Fujigen-made Fender '86 TelecasterOne of the first things they did was to virtually shut down Fender’s Fullerton plant to revamp manufacturing.
This left a problem: where to make the guitars? The answer was to move production to Japan, to some of the very same companies which had been making Fender copies.And so, on March 11, 1982, Fender Japan Ltd. The new company was a joint venture between Fender and two Japanese distribution companies, Kanda Shokai and Yamano Music. Yamano had strong ties with Fender, having been a distributor of Fender products since the 1960s. Fender was the senior partner in the new company, having three board members out of six total, and owning 38 percent of the stock.
The actual instruments were built by FujiGen Gakki, which as previously noted, also was the maker of Ibanez guitars.FujiGen Gakki (the word 'Gakki' is Japanese for musical instrument) was founded in 1960 and made their first electric guitars in 1962, although like many Japanese makers, they originally specialized in classical guitars. That changed in 1965 when the popular surf rock group, the Ventures, toured Japan. The Ventures had an effect in Japan similar to that which the Beatles had in America; suddenly everybody was interested in playing electric guitar, and FujiGen began to focus more on electric guitar production to help meet the demand.
By 1970, the company had started to specialize in making instruments for other companies’ brands, and by the early 1980s was producing up to 14,000 electric guitars per month.Although Japan has had a musical instrument industry since the 1880s, in the United States the country had been better known for inexpensive consumer goods — such as the ubiquitous transistor radios of the 1960s — than for high-quality musical instruments. Consequently, there were doubts back in Fullerton about the quality of the new Japanese Fenders, but those doubts were soon dispelled when the Japanese instruments arrived in California.Marketing executive Dan Smith, quoted in “The Fender Book” recalled, “Everybody came up to inspect them and the guys almost cried, because the Japanese product was so good — it was what we had been having a hell of a time trying to do.”. '83 Squier Bullet BassIf at one time an inexpensive electric guitar was synonymous with a low-quality one, the new Japanese instruments showed that this was longer the case. In fact, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was generally acknowledged that the build quality of Fender instruments made in Japan equaled, or even succeeded their stateside counterparts.The first of the FujiGen Gakki-made Squier guitars were shipped to European destinations: Germany, the Benelux countries, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. They were especially popular in the UK, due to their excellent value for money. The price of a new Squier electric guitar was about the same as a copy, and just slightly more than half the price of its U.S.-made Fender equivalent.
Fender: For SaleFender faced yet another crisis in 1984; CBS put Fender up for sale. Fender President William Schultz led a consortium to buy the company, but unfortunately the sale did not include the recently upgraded Fullerton plant, any of the guitar making machinery, or any of the then-current patents. This left the Fender company with no manufacturing capability in the United States.
The solution was to turn to Fender Japan to build all of the company’s guitars, which would be the case for a period of some months. Fender was able start a new factory in Corona, California, about 20 miles away from Fullerton, by the end of 1985, but the vast majority of Fender guitars sold in 1985 were made in Japan.Although Fender used Fender Japan to replace its temporarily disrupted manufacturing capacity, one of the most significant results of the enterprise was turning Fender into a truly multinational company, rather than just a guitar maker that outsourced musical instruments from overseas. As well as making budget instruments and vintage copies, Fender Japan began to design and market instruments that were not based on earlier Fender designs, such as the series and series. They also began to make the “Super Strat” style guitars that were fashionable in the mid-80s.
More on these guitars and others in part two. Fender PerformerChanging market conditions recently have meant the end of the three-way partnership of Fender Japan Ltd.
Although Fender still manufactures guitars in Japan, Fender Japan Ltd. As an entity ceased to exist on March 31, 2015.
What Does Made In Japan Mean
At the beginning of April that year, Fender Musical Instruments (Japan), a wholly owned subsidiary of Fender Musical Instruments, assumed responsibility for the Japanese Fender instrument manufacturing.The significance of Fender Japan as a business venture is probably even more important than the instruments it produced. It represents an American musical brand name going truly worldwide with both manufacturing and marketing, something that Leo Fender would have probably not been able to conceive of while working with Doc Kauffman in his California radio shop in the 1940s. Fender Japan was instrumental (pun intended) in Fender becoming the global brand that it is today.
Made In Japan Squier Telecaster
Hill is a native of Los Angeles who has been mostly resident in Scotland since 1994. He holds a BMus (Hons, 1st class) in composition from Napier University and a MMus and PhD in organology, the study of musical instruments, from the University of Edinburgh. A founding curator of the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, he is also curator of the John C. Hall collection of musical instruments in Santa Ana, California. His book “The Rise of the Electric Guitar, 1740-1939,” will be published in 2016 by the University Press of Mississippi. Besides academic pursuits, he has enjoyed a varied musical life that includes being a Nashville session player, art music composer, double bassist and guitarist.