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Post subject: Telecaster Custom date of manufacture ?
Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 6:41 pm
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Can anyone tell me what year my Telecaster Custom was made ? It's serial # is in the 653,500 range. Has a 3 screw neck plate and no letter prefix.
Thanks for any help !


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Post subject: Re: Telecaster Custom date of manufacture ?
Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 8:02 am
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inlandparafan wrote:
Can anyone tell me what year my Telecaster Custom was made ? It's serial # is in the 653,500 range. Has a 3 screw neck plate and no letter prefix.
Thanks for any help !


According to this page (found under "Support" here on the Fender website) instruments with serial numbers between 500,000 and 700,000 would have been made in 1976:

http://www.fender.com/support/usa_instruments.php

Dating a Fender by serial number is never completely exact; The best way to tell when your guitar was made would be to remove the neck and check the dates stamped on the neck heel and in the neck pocket of the body.


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Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 10:46 am
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Thanks for the reply! I thought it might be 1976 but according to dates Fender shows, they started a letter prefix before the number. That said, I thought it might throw it into the 1975 range. Would it weeken the neck joint any by removing it ?


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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 12:08 pm
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inlandparafan wrote:
Thanks for the reply! I thought it might be 1976 but according to dates Fender shows, they started a letter prefix before the number. That said, I thought it might throw it into the 1975 range. Would it weeken the neck joint any by removing it ?


Removing the neck shouldn't weaken the joint; it should be fine to remove it then reinstall it.

Fender used 3 different serial number styles in 1976:

Numbers (without a prefix) located on the neck plate for the first 6-7 months of the year

"76" followed by numbers located on the headstock for 1-2 months

"S6" followed by numbers located on the headstock for the remainder of the year

All this is approximate.


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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 4:55 pm
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You are a wealth of info !! Thanks for the help !!! :D


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 8:26 am
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inlandparafan wrote:
You are a wealth of info !! Thanks for the help !!! :D


I can't take all the credit; this is actually on the Fender website :oops:

While I was a teenager in '76 I wasn't playing yet - didn't seriously take it up until '79. I knew that '76 was when they switched from numbers on the neck plate to "S6XXXXX" numbers on the headstock I did not know about the short-lived "76XXXXX" numbers until I read "The Stratocaster Chronicles" a couple of years ago.


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