Hi Shinjiro,
The way I've always understood it, serial numbers of guitars of this era (around 1978 - 1982?) seem unrelated to whether the guitar is a Springy, Breezy or even Les Paul Reborn, Love Rock etc.
The initial number, as you stated, should be the year. 2nd number always seems to be zero. The 3rd number (usually always 1 or 2*) is the production run number, not related to the number of the guitar itself per se.
*I've seen a few with the 3rd number as an "0", however, & am not sure what this denotes. If anyone can chime in with definitive info, please do!
So 901XXX should be a guitar from the first production run of 1979, early in the year. 102XXX from the 2nd production run of 1981, late in the year. As for an ST-80 numbered 0010550 *definitely* being the exact 550th guitar built in the first production run in early 1980, I think that's prolly a little too fanciful : -
From what I understand of production methods at Fender in the pre-CBS days, from people who were there at the time, the neck plates for any particular production run were kept in a large box or barrel, usually all jumbled up & in no particular order. The worker attaching the neck simply reached in & grabbed one (like a "lucky dip") without any regard for the actual number on it. A guitar made a couple of days or even a couple of weeks after another could easily get a lower number. According to Forrest White, Fender was far more interested in getting guitars out of the door as fast (& cheaply) as possible rather than 'wasting time' anally determining the exact order the guitars were started, or finished in.
Anyway, with their less-than-perfect serial numbering systems & lousy (practically non-existent?) record-keeping, I doubt things were much different at Tokai in the late 70's early 80's. :roll:
