Cort Guitar Serial Number Checker
Macabeo Eastman
The first serial numbers on Ibanez acoustic guitars appeared in October 1974[1] Serial numbers on solid body guitars came a bit later with the first appearing on the neck plate of bolt-on neck models around August 1975. The practice wasn't fully adopted on set-neck guitars until sometime in 1976.
The serial numbers are generally a character string containing letters and numbers, although some are purely numeric. Serial numbers can be useful in determining the age of a guitar as well as in which country and by which builder it was produced.
Unfortunately, there is no single unified format used for Ibanez serial numbers. Ibanez guitar production is outsourced to several companies and facilities through the world and the numbering schemes are different in each region and/or factory. The information on this page is culled from several sources both on-line and off-line and represents a distillation of the available information. It applies primarily to electric guitars, but some information may also be applicable to acoustics.
The first step in deciphering the serial number is determining the country or facility in which the guitar was produced. In most cases the country of origin is provided in the same location as the serial number. In cases where you have a serial numbe r but not a country of origin, the origin can sometimes be deduced from the serial number, although in this case it's very helpful if you have at least a rough idea of the date of manufacture.
It is also believed that 'Terada Musical Instrument Co., Ltd. of Japan also made some guitars for Ibanez during this period.' It's thought that 'these would be mostly hollow-body guitars, but may also included some solid-body Artist series models.' There is no proof whatsoever for either of these assumptions. It's most likely that this is a big misunderstanding caused by an over generalization in the database of the "Guitar Dater Project" website, which is not able to assign the right factory to a vintage Ibanez guitar based on its serial number. The false information this website generates has been propogated in numerous advertisements of sellers of vintage Ibanez guitars. There is no proof whatsoever of any solid body Ibanez guitar produced by Terada. On the contrary: the fact that the production of solid body Ibanez Artist guitars shifted to Iida Gakki 1987, while hollow-body and semi-hollow Artist guitars became Artstar labels with H serial numbers, shows that the original production before 1987 came all from the FujiGen Gakki factory, which was experiencing capacity problems during that time period caused by their commitment to produce guitars for Fender Japan. If Terada had produced AR models already, they would have continued doing so. The AR and AS models shared the same necks under the Artist flag. Splitting the production up from a situation in which they were already both made in the Terada factory wouldn't be efficient, so it is highly unlikely that pre-1987 AR and AS models were ever made there.
Cort took over production of some models (e.g. the AS80 and AS120) from Samick sometime in 1995. This early Cort production was given 6-digit serial numbers which were hand-written on the label attached to the inside of the guitar.
Some Korean Ibanez serial numbers are purely numeric with no alphabetic characters. According to Jim Donahue these guitars were manufactured in the Cort factory, in which he had the supervision. Because they had no date stamps available when they started, the serials numbers of Artstar models in this factory were written by hand. These handwritten serial numbers are hard to decipher. The production of these Artstar models at the Cort factory was discontinued in 2003.
This category includes several lower end guitar models in the RX and RG series as well as a number of ATK series bass models. It is believed that the necks of these instruments were produced in Japan by FujiGen while the bodies were made by Cort in South Korea. In addition to the serial number stamp, the back of the headstock often has a sticker proclaiming "Made in Japan".
This format overlaps with the standard FujiGen format, leading many to use the FujiGen format to try to parse these serial numbers. All of the LR10 serials start with either "L80" or "L81" which leads many to the incorrect assumption that their guitars were made in December of 1980 or 1981.[6]
This format overlaps with the standard FujiGen format, leading many to use the FujiGen format to try to parse these serial numbers. All of the JP20 serials during 1982 through 1986 start with "J80" which leads many to believe these guitars were produced in October 1980.[7] Starting sometime in mid-1986 production of the JP20 moved to Terada. The serial numbers of these later JP20s fit the standard format used for Ibanez guitars produced by Terada.
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Again, there are many things you can do to support the Cort and Cor-tek workers from wherever you are. Contact us at cortguit...@gmail.com, Sign the petition, forward this to music and guitar blogs, and tell Fender you want to see justice for the Cort guitar workers!
In the '70s and '80s, Cort often used serial numbers on a sticker that began with the prefix "W.O.". If you see that, the guitar was not made by Samick, it was made by Cort. While I have not dedicated any research to Cort guitars, I have found something that may be helpful for Cort owners; the below example has a box switch (likely from the same supplier Samick used) that dates to 1986, and the serial number ends with "86". It could be a coincidence, or it may not be. If any Cort owners can verify or debunk this idea by comparing their own switch and serial number, please let me know.
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