bossarea, I apologize if this has been brought up before, but I researched my collection last night so I could approximately date my pedals. The Taiwan issue pedals also have a unit number that's very similar to the serial number. Could you give me a little more detail as to what the unit number actually signifies? Thanks
Not sure I understand what you mean. The serial number consists of 2 letters and 5 digits and is located on the bottom label. I'm not aware of any other number than that.
While researching my numbers on the site linked above, the MIT pedals I have showed the date manufactured as well as some kind of unit number for the pedal. It was very similar to the serial number itself. For example, I have a PSM-5 with serial number IB32386. The decoder said it was manufactured in April 1990 and said it was unit number 92386. My GE-7, serial number JM61621 was manufactured in September 1999 and it stated it was unit number 101621. It's the unit number thing that has me curious.
Ok, now I understand. The second letter and the first number determines when the pedal was made. The first letter and the 4 last digits tells us the serial number of the pedal. The serial number is per model so your GE-7 is 101621 GE-7 made.
Early pedals will always have a serial number starting with Z. When 10000 (last 4 digits, 0000-9999) pedals have been made, the letter is incremented to A and for every 10000 pedals the letter changes. When 259000 pedals have been produced they start over again.
There's a more detailed explanation of the numbering system if you follow the link from the serial number decoder to Steve's (phostenix) homepage.
do we have to click the image first on what type is our serial number before entering it? i noticed i had to do this first or else the decoder wont work. i don't think there is an instruction to click first.
You don't need to click the pictures first. There's no hyperlink on them so clicking them does nothing at all.
The edit control where the serial number is entered must be clicked first. That's just to give it input focus so that numbers entered on the keyboard actually gets sent to the right control on the page. I should have set this in the code but it slipped my mind when I was working on it.
The serial number decoder needs an update. I think the results it gives on the old 4 digit codes are a few months wrong. It doesn't handle 6 digit codes starting with 00 to 04 and assumes 05xx00 was made the same month as 0500 which probably isn't right.