Need to figure out what year your Taylor guitar was built? It's actually pretty simple. Taylor guitars have been around since the mid-'70s and have utilized three primary serial number systems over the years. Using these will give you the year of manufacturer, and for more recent guitars, it will even give you the exact date the guitar was made.
If your Taylor serial number is less than six digits long, that means the guitar was made between 1975 until the end of 1992. Here's the breakdown of serials from that era:
10109 to 10146 | 1975 |
20147 to 20315 | 1976 |
30316 to [--]450 | 1977 |
451 to 900 | 1978 |
901 to 1300 | 1979 |
1301 to 1400 | 1980 |
1401 to 1670 | 1981 |
1671 to 1951 | 1982 |
1952 to 2445 | 1983 |
2446 to 3206 | 1984 |
3207 to 3888 | 1985 |
3889 to 4778 | 1986 |
4779 to 5981 | 1987 |
5982 to 7831 | 1988 |
7832 to 10070 | 1989 |
10071 to 12497 | 1990 |
12498 to 15249 | 1991 |
15250 to 17947 | 1992 |
Starting in 1993 and up until 2009, finding the year of a Taylor is as easy as looking at the first digits of the serial number. For guitars from made prior to 2000, you'll find a 9-digit serial with first two digits denoting the year. For example, a 9-digit Taylor serial starting with '96' indicates a guitar made in 1996.
Starting in 2000, this same format was used but expanded by two digits to accommodate the full year. A Taylor from 2006 would have an 11-digit serial starting with '2006'.
There's other information contain in the 9- and 11-digit serials of this era. The four digits after the year indicate the month and date production started, and the final three digits mark where the guitar falls in the total number produced that day.
Here's an example to go off of: 20040409008
This would be the eighth Taylor made on April, 9th 2004.
Starting in 2009, Taylor adopted a new system which changes the order and information contained in the serial a bit. These serials follow a 10-digit format with the years falling in the second and seventh positions in the sequence. The first digit indicates which factory the guitar was made in (1 for El Cajon and 2 for Tecate), while digits three through six reveal the date of production.
Here's an example of the most recent serial format in action: 1112122002
This serial would be for the second guitar produced in the El Cajon Taylor factory on December 12, 2012.