The Indonesian codes
| Code | Plant |
|---|---|
| SI | Samick |
| CI | Cort |
| I | Saein |
Reading the serial
Identical in structure to every other modern Epiphone: factory code, two-digit year, two-digit month, sequence.
One point of care: SI and S are different codes, for Samick Indonesia and Samick Korea respectively. Our decoder matches the longest code first, so SI04021234 is read as Samick Indonesia rather than as Samick Korea followed by a stray digit — but when reading a serial by eye it is an easy mistake to make, and it moves the instrument between countries and usually between decades.
Examples
- SI04021234 — Samick Indonesia — February 2004
- CI11091234 — Cort Indonesia — September 2011
Worked example
Take CI11091234. The prefix CI is Cort's Indonesian plant. The next two digits, 11, give 2011. The two after that, 09, give September — and because that value has to fall between 01 and 12, it doubles as a check that you have split the number in the right place. The remaining digits are a production sequence within that month and carry no further meaning.
If your reading produces a month of 15 or 00, you have almost certainly mis-identified the length of the factory code. Shifting your split by one character usually resolves it, and a valid month is good evidence you have found the right boundary.
Why production moved to Indonesia
Indonesian plants took on much of the volume that Korean factories had handled through the 1990s, as costs in Korea rose and those factories moved upmarket. That transition is why Korean-era instruments now trade at a premium: not because the Indonesian ones are poor, but because the Korean ones became scarce.
The practical consequence for dating is that a prefix tells you which supplier held the contract, not which decade the model was current. Cort and Samick both operated in Korea and Indonesia, so the country is carried by the specific code rather than by the company name behind it.
SI and S
Common questions
- What is the difference between an SI and an S prefix?
- SI is Samick's Indonesian plant and S is Samick's Korean plant. They are different codes for different factories in different countries, and the two are easily confused when reading a small decal.
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