How do I read an Epiphone serial number?

Most Epiphones built since the 1990s use a factory code of one or two letters, then two digits for the year, then two for the month, then a production sequence. SI04021234 is Samick Indonesia, February 2004. The month has to be between 01 and 12, which makes the format easy to sanity-check.

Where is the serial number on an Epiphone?

Printed or stamped on the back of the headstock on most solid-body electrics, usually below the country of manufacture. On acoustics and hollow-bodies it is on the label visible through the soundhole or f-hole.

My Epiphone serial is all numbers with no letters. How do I date it?

Some Epiphone production, particularly from China, used plain sequential numbers that encode no date at all. There is nothing in those numbers to read. The potentiometer date codes and the specification details are the route to a year instead.

Are Korean Epiphones better than Chinese or Indonesian ones?

Korean-era instruments from the 1990s generally trade at a premium, which reflects both build reputation and scarcity. It is a generalisation rather than a rule: the Korean plants also built the cheapest instruments in the range, and later production elsewhere is frequently excellent.

Serial number lookup

Epiphone serial number lookup

Decode an Epiphone serial to find the year, the month and — where the factory code is one we can identify — the plant and country that built it.

How Epiphone numbering works

Epiphone serials are, on the face of it, the easiest in this whole reference to read: a factory code, then the year, then the month, then a sequence. A serial that decodes to month 13 has been mis-read, which makes the format self-checking in a way Gibson's is not.

The difficulty is the factory codes. Epiphone has never published a complete list, and instruments have been built under contract in Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia and elsewhere, sometimes moving between plants mid-model. The mapping used here is maintained collectively by owners and technicians rather than by the manufacturer, and we mark it as such wherever it appears in a result.

Because of that, an Epiphone result is often best read as two separate claims of different strength: the date, which the number itself supports, and the factory, which depends on a community reference that may be incomplete for your instrument.

Key facts

Factory code: One or two letters at the start of the serial identifying the contract plant.
Year and month: Four digits after the factory code: two for the year, two for the month.
Month check: A value above 12 in the month position means the serial has been mis-read or does not follow this format.
Not one system: Elitist, USA Collection and some Chinese production have used entirely separate numbering.

What goes wrong

Assuming the factory code identifies the country reliably — several plants operated in more than one country over time.
Reading a serial that has no letter prefix at all with this format. Some Epiphones use plain sequential numbers that this system cannot date.
Confusing an Epiphone-branded Gibson-era instrument from Kalamazoo with modern Epiphone production. They share a name and nothing else.

Formats this lookup reads

Every format below has been sourced, documented and covered by tests before shipping. Formats we cannot verify are deliberately absent.

Serial formats supported for Epiphone
Format	Period	Confidence	Reviewed
Factory code with year and month	1990–2030	medium	29 July 2026

Epiphone serial number reference

Every format below is the same data the lookup above matches against. 1 formats are supported for Epiphone, and these tables set out what each one records.

Epiphone serial structure

Epiphone serial structure
Part	Length	What it means
Factory code	1–2 letters	The plant that built the instrument
Year	2 digits	Two-digit production year
Month	2 digits	01–12; a value above 12 means the serial has been mis-read
Sequence	4–6 digits	Production sequence within that month

Epiphone factory codes

Epiphone factory codes
Code	Plant	Country
SI	Samick	Indonesia
SJ	SaeJung	China
CI	Cort	Indonesia
DW	DaeWon	Korea
EA	Qingdao (Gibson-owned)	China
EE	Qingdao (Gibson-owned)	China
FN	Fine	China
GG	Guangzhou	China
MC	Muse	China
KC	Cor-Tek (Cort)	Korea
KS	Saein	Korea
PW	Peerless	Korea
BW	Plant not identified	China
I	Saein	Indonesia
J	Terada	Japan
R	Peerless	Korea
S	Samick	Korea
U	Unsung	Korea
Z	Zaozhuang Saehan	China

Epiphone has never published a complete factory-code list. This mapping is maintained collectively by owners and technicians, and it is the least certain part of any Epiphone result. The date reading does not depend on it.

Common questions about Epiphone serial numbers

How do I read an Epiphone serial number?: Most Epiphones built since the 1990s use a factory code of one or two letters, then two digits for the year, then two for the month, then a production sequence. SI04021234 is Samick Indonesia, February 2004. The month has to be between 01 and 12, which makes the format easy to sanity-check.
What does the letter at the start of an Epiphone serial mean?: It identifies the contract factory that built the instrument. Epiphone has never published a complete list, so the mapping used here is maintained collectively by owners and technicians. It is reliable for common codes and incomplete for rarer ones, and the date reading does not depend on it.
Where is the serial number on an Epiphone?: Printed or stamped on the back of the headstock on most solid-body electrics, usually below the country of manufacture. On acoustics and hollow-bodies it is on the label visible through the soundhole or f-hole.
My Epiphone serial is all numbers with no letters. How do I date it?: Some Epiphone production, particularly from China, used plain sequential numbers that encode no date at all. There is nothing in those numbers to read. The potentiometer date codes and the specification details are the route to a year instead.
Are Korean Epiphones better than Chinese or Indonesian ones?: Korean-era instruments from the 1990s generally trade at a premium, which reflects both build reputation and scarcity. It is a generalisation rather than a rule: the Korean plants also built the cheapest instruments in the range, and later production elsewhere is frequently excellent.