Hello fellow,
Before I make a purchase of my first fender I wanted to make sure that it is a genuine piece.
I life abroad where Fender has no partners or trusted store leaving me only one option to make sure that I'm not getting a Fender wanna be guitar.
The guitar that I'm about to buy has the serial : mz5198180 While on this site's Database it shows that the mexican Fender serial number should be MZ + 5 Digits. and this is what confuses me. Is it possible that this piece is original?
Also I've been told that there is an online tool where I can insert a serial number and it will bring the full details of the guitar including the color, is this correct?

I appreciate your help alot, thank you.

Thank you,

I did find this website when I consulted google It is a good thing that the website Do recognize it, but the thing is why the format is not included on Fender's website.
the official site says it should be MZ + 5 Digits while this guitar has MZ + 6 Digits.
So i'm wondering if somebody has seen a Mexican start with the format like the one I want to buy.

I also did email the customer service but for sure they won't reply before it is Monday which makes my life very hard now

Thank you again Nevine.

I don't know why Fender doesn't correct their website. How hard would it be to change "MZ + 5 Digits" to " MZ + 5 or 6 Digits"?

Fender makes a lot of Mexican Standard Series guitars. They often make more than 100,000 a year so they often need to use 6 digit numbers. (Actually, they don't use all the possible 5 digit numbers -- they don't start at "00001" and run consecutively -- so they switch to 6 digit numbers before they hit the 99,999 production mark.)

So the 6 digits don't mean it's a fake -- lots of MIM Stds have 6 digit serials. In fact, 6 digits mean it's somewhat less likely to be fake than one with 5 digits -- most counterfeiters know that Fender's site says "MZ + 5 digits" and that 6 digits often make customers doubt the instrument's authenticity.

edited to add: But 6 digits don't guarantee it's real. A counterfeiter could have used a 6 digit MIM (or pictures of a 6 digit MIM) as the model for his copies and not be aware that most MIM Stds have only 5 digits.

Oh!! you have left a big burden of my chest!
Tomorrow I will go and get it.

Happy Fendering

My 2006 mim tele is mz and then 7 numbers (including the #6). I kept the info on my 2005 mim strat and it also was mz and 7 numbers (including a #5)

_________________
2002 mim Telecaster
Jimmie Vaughan Stratocaster
Mexican HSS Stratocaster
6 non-fender guitars
2 kids (not for sale)
1 wife (uh....no comment)

I did buy the guitar, and it is a fender
Now I'm spending sometime with the bridge and action settings.
thank a lot everybody

The Jaybird found this thread interesting and thought it deserved a reply. I have a 2010 Strat HSS serial prefex is MX with eight digits! And this guitar was purchased new in the box! go figure

Because the first two digits after the "MX" indicate the year; what you really have is a guitar with an "MX10" + 6 digits for the serial number.

Fender changed their serial number system starting in 2010, replacing the old system where a letter indicated the decade and a number indicated the actual year (of course MIM guitars had the extra "M" for "Mexico" as the first letter). The MIM guitars since about mid-year last year have the "MX10XXXXXX" serial numbers (could be 5 or 6 digits after the "MX10", which stands for "Mexico 2010"). I suspect we will start seeing MIM guitars with "MX11XXXXXX" numbers sometime over the next month or two.

It's even more confusing on the USA instruments; Fender used a number that started with a "10" for the first 3-4 months of 2010, then switched to a number that started with "US10" in about May or so. They didn't really start shipping a lot of guitars with "US11" numbers until April of this year. Also Fender dropped the "D" from the beginning of the American Deluxe serial numbers and the "S" from the beginning of the USA-built Artist guitars.

Since MIM guitar serial numbers change mid-year there are no MIM guitars with just a "10" prefix on the serial number; they went straight from the "MZ9" numbers to the new "MX10" numbers.

And of course none of the on-line guitar dater sites have caught up to Fender's current system.

Just to add to the confusion , mine came out, (was completed), in January 07 but has an '06 serial number presumeably because it was built in '06.


Sweet axe though!

Gridlok

Gridlok 8 - MIM serial numbers change approximately "mid-year", so for example the 2006 serial number series starting with "MZ6" would have been used from say July 2006 through say June of 2007.

The USA numbers (at least since Fender really ramped up production in the 1990s) have tended to change over within the first month or two of a given year.