That information is traceable to the following information tables. Month codes are included to ensure production accuracy, which means some BC Rich Guitars would have a serial code like A07140024. There’s no way to tell from the number alone.Įach factory was only given a number. If you have a guitar with an eight-digit stamp that says 12124503, it could have been built in 2001 or 2012. The final five digits indicate the production number for that year, allowing for significantly more manufacturing.Įven with this change, some confusion still exists with the model years.With the third digit, BC Rich Guitars shows what quarter during the year the instrument was made.The first two digits indicate the year the guitar was made. The new system uses the following components. Every handmade American product and the imported ones all use the same process now, streamlining the identification process. With all the confusion surrounding the serial numbers for BC Rich Guitars, the company decided to implement a standardized date stamp format that applied to all the instruments. A New Numbering System Was Developed for 2001 Models That means a BC Rich guitar with the serial number F719804 would have been made in 1997 outside the United States. We do know that the import guitar models before November 2000 had a serial number that starts with the letter F, while the American-made ones don’t have that designation. That means you know the production numbers for the instrument, but there’s no idea about the year it was created. The company replaced the year designation with the letters BO, providing a three-digit number instead. In 2000, the bolt-on BC Rich models got their own serial number. This trait was eliminated from the production process in 1999 or 2000. You can also date BC Rich Guitars by the “Made in the USA” script logo. It wasn’t until 1993 that the serial numbers got back on track with this manufacturer. There was no uniform way that the numbers were assigned at the original shop for BC Rich Guitars.Īnything with a serial number that starts with 84 could have been built in 1982 or 1983, but we know it wasn’t created in 1984. Unless you have a guitar that indicates the production was in the early 1970s, there’s an excellent chance that the instrument was made a year or two before the actual date shown on the product. Bolt-on Guitars Never Followed the Same Serial Number Sequence This process continued until the production responsibilities were turned over to Class Axe in 1989. In 1981, they went to being four years ahead. There is a bass guitar with the serial number 82595, but it was actually built in 1980.Īlthough BC Rich Guitars never went above 2,200 guitars for a production year, the serial numbers continued to fall behind because of their setup. When production rapidly grew in 1980, the serial numbers were already up to three years ahead. The problem with those serial numbers is that they only allowed 1,000 units to be created each year. If the instrument had a stamp that said 79012, it was made in 1979 and was the 12th guitar created by BC Rich that year. That meant a guitar with the serial number 74123 would have been built in 1974, and it was the 123rd instrument from that lineup. The final three provided information about the production number. The first two numbers indicated the year that BC Rich Guitars created the instrument. The first stamps use the five-digit code configured in the XXYYY format. When BC Rich Guitars returned to global distribution in 1974, the brand began to use serial coding numbers to indicate when the instrument was created. It’s an eight-digit stamp that also serves as the serial number. This information applies to the handmade instruments manufactured in the United States and the imported ones that were more mass-produced. How to Date a BC Rich GuitarĪll BC Rich Guitars use a year, time, and date stamp to know when it was created. You can know more of what to expect by understanding how to date an instrument from this manufacturer. It’s a fantastic design that delivers enough versatility to be useful in several situations. Not only does the body shape of the instrument speak of the sounds a listener expects, but it also delivers a gritty tone that requires minimal adjustments from the stock setup. BC Rich Guitars are a favorite choice for heavy metal enthusiasts and harder forms of modern music.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |