Schecter Van Nuys Serial Numbers
A couple of months ago I bought this used Schecter Tele in a local shop. It's a heavy monster, almost entirely original except for the Seymour Duncan bridge pup and the missing headstock logo sticker. It's a 1-piece rosewood body, 1-piece rosewood neck with gold finish brass hardware and very thin nitro finish. I can't find anywhere a clear indication as to its age, other than based on its specs it's most likely a late '70s or early '80s model.
It plays great, sounds great and weighs a ton and a half. Any info helping to identify it further is greatly appreciated. EDIT: Based on Superrock's input (see his post #19 below), it appears the guitar isn't made out of rosewood as I had thought, nevertheless it's still a great guitar. Here's the accurate info: Body: African Ovangkol (Shedua), cca. '78-'79 Neck: African Ovangkol (Shedua), cca. Thanks, gents!
Oct 23, 2018 The number is its serial number, and those were sequential. The missing number would've been the wood code, and these omissions seemed to happen, years into Van Nuys production. According to early-Schecter employee (and TGP member), Brad Hodges, ' Dave made his first three Schecter necks by hand for the 1977 Anaheim NAMM show.
It is a beauty indeed and it plays like a dream. I've always been a Les Paul guy searching for a good Tele to add to my stable. This one was just too good to pass and despite its weight (~10lbs) I can comfortably play it standing up for a couple of hours with the help of a wide padded strap.
By the way, the solid brass pickguard alone weighs almost 1lb. The electronics need fixing, though. The volume pot is hard to turn and the shaft is wobbly, the 3-way switch is scratchy and the bridge humbucker will be replaced with a proper Tele single coil. Don't forget that back then Schecter did as much business (if not more business) in parts as they did in complete guitars, plus until the early 1980s their dealers (the 'Schecter Shops') assembled guitars that were considered the same as the Van Nuys-built 'factory' guitars.
I don't see a serial number on this one so I suspect that this one may have been built by either a Schecter dealer or by someone else using Schecter parts - at least most of the hardware not counting the tuners looks to be from Schecter. The Duncan pickups could have been 'stock' by whomever built it. Some of the Schecter necks had a raised plastic logo (like the raised signature on a PRS or the raised chrome decal on Fender American Deluxes) instead of just a decal, and some didn't have a decal or logo at all. This one could have had the raised logo or it could have been blank. It's a very nice guitar; these are great finds.
Thats the baddest one to surface in a while. Bad meaning good lawd schwing factor is strong with this one.
As you requested, i have in front of me my old catalogs and here are the wood codes: F7270 at the neck heel stands for shedua, or african ovangkol. The 6118 is a sequence number putting the neck about 2/3 the way into the van nuys timeframe, of '81ish or so. The body wood code F6270 is in fact also shedua!
The 2625 number puts that closer to '78-'79. That is a beauty. Congrats on the wicked piece of history. Any other questions hit me up.
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