This
information was sent to me in an email many years
ago. It was in the form of a long list of date codes
corresponding to the first two digits which you can read
from a Pioneer serial number; the first letter would
give the year and the second would give the month. From
what I could tell, the list was 12 months out of line
but once corrected for that it seemed accurate, I still
haven't had anything which gives an unbelievable build
date.
I'm not
part of any online audio communities or forums so I've
no idea whether this is common knowledge. Also I'm not
sure whether it's still accurate for Pioneers being
built now - looking at the serial number format of a
couple of Pioneer DVD players I have here, the formats
seem to have changed; but it should be accurate for
anything vintage.
How to read the numbers
If you look at the serial number on a vintage Pioneer,
it should be two letters followed by a long series of
numbers then perhaps another letter or two. It's those
first two letters you're interested in, you can ignore
everything else.
So, if you had a silver Pioneer with a serial number of
VG20975078M, the first two letters are VG and looking at
the chart that would that would be July 1976.
You'll
notice that there's two possible years for each letter
in the first column, as these will be 26 years apart you
should be able to figure out which one is correct.
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