The no serial Greco guitars made by Tokai have square shaped routing holes at the bottom of the pickup cavities whereas the no serial Greco guitars made by Cor-Tek (Cort) have thinner rectangle shaped routing holes at the bottom of the pickup cavities. Other higher priced no serial Greco Les Paul and SG models were made by Tōkai and the Les Paul models have an EG-75 or EGC-75 model number stamped in the pickup cavity and sometimes have fret edge binding. The Cor-Tek made Greco guitars have square shaped, brick like nuts with no slope and also often have shielding paint in the pickup and control cavities. The lower priced no serial number Greco Les Paul and SG models were made by Cor-Tek (Cort) and usually have Cor-Tek (Cort) potentiometers. Some Greco open book headstock Gibson replicas starting from around 1988 had no serial numbers.
Most of the Greco open book headstock Gibson replicas were made by FujiGen Gakki. Since the mid 1990s Greco models have used other serial number formats as well. Sometimes a month letter is used in an MYPPPP format. M = production month (A=January B=February.
Greco Gibson replicas started using serial numbers around 1975 and pre 1975 models had a Greco logo that looked like "Gneco".įrom the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s Greco models have mostly used 2 serial number formats for non Acoustic models. Some of the fakers out there do use legit serial number formats so they pass the serial number search test.Greco guitars have been made by Matsumoku, Fuji-Gen Gakki, Dyna Gakki and others as well.
Plus all it does is tell you that the format is what any company used you still have to contact the manufacturer (Fender, Gibson, etc.) for a verification of the instrument. In July 2010 the MIMs went to a similar format to the USA models - they began using an "MX10xxxxxx" format and stopped putting that extra "S" on the MIM Artist models.Īnd this is why people have fallen out of using sites like Guitar Dater Project - it won't recognize any legitimate Fender serial number after 2009. Plus on the MIMs the serial numbers seem to do their "changeovers" in June/July of a given year. On MIM Artist Models like the Jimmie Vaughan you used to see serial numbers like "SMZ1xxxxxx" for a 2001-2002 model - "S" for "Artist Series", "M" for "Made in Mexico", and "Z1" for "2001". Now the annual "serial number changeover" seems to happen in March of a given year - Fender used 2 different formats in 2010, settling on their current "USYYxxxxxx" format in April of 2010 (with "US10xxxxxx" as the April 2010-March 2011 format, etc.). Of course there are overlaps, but it seem like during the period from about 1995 through 2009 the "annual serial number changeover" for USA instruments happened in January of any given year. So an "SN6xxxxxx" serial number would be for an Artist Series model made roughly during 1996 (per the "N6" part). However, they stopped doing this in 2010 when they changed their serial number formats.
Fender used to use extra prefix letters on some series - they used the "S" in front of the "normal" 2-character year code on Artist series guitars, and they used a "D" in front of the 2-character year code on American Deluxe models.