As one of the first messages in this forum I of course ask the question that has been on my mind for a long time: Does anybody know anything helping to date Boss pedals by serial numbers?
This really is the big question. We know from "the Boss book" that it is possible to deduct month and year of production through the serial number. Boss says that this is a company secret they don't want to disclose. It should however be possible to crack the code.
A little background on the different serial numbers we find on Boss pedals:
The oldest Boss pedals have a 4 digit number. These can't possibly be a serial number as it much to often ends with 00.
In the early 80s the serial numbers changed to 6 digits. Also on these pedals have I seen a surprisingly large number of pedals with numbers ending with 00.
The 3rd type of number is todays scheme using 2 letters and 5 digits. I don't know for sure when they started using these numbers but suspect they were introduced at the time production was moved to Taiwan (December -86).
So far I have no clue about how to date the pedals using this number.
Even if the old ones ends with 00 the first digits can perhaps tell us something. Gibson later serials is unreadable if you don�t know the right way to do it. The same goes for Fender up to the seventies. If Boss says there is a system there probably is, why should they lie about this? Let�s hope somebody knowing will register and tell us!
I have a feeling that it's almost impossible to date the ink-stamped versions of our Boss favorites. The "serial numbers" recycle back to 0000 after 9900. I've heard of several owners of OD1s with a 0000 serial stamp.
If there is a way to determine date strictly by serial number, not by some other visible difference, I'd love to know what the "code" is.
The Big Question: Dating by serial
Posted - 06/03/2005 : 10:16:48
