• Guitar Serial Numbers

So there I was in Israel coming towards the end of my stay. Had the guitar itch again. Had heard about a ‘local’ Israeli brand called Budagov which was supposed to be quite good. Finally managed to get into a guitar store to try a few and was very disappointed. All the stuff was made in China and quite poorly at that.

Guitar Serial Numbers

Jagged fret ends, cheap hardware – you get the drift. And priced two to three times what they were worth, depending on the model. Anyway my gracious host saw my dejected face and even though it was raining cats and dogs outside decided to take a detour and take me to another store she knew about.

This was a much nicer place with a lovely ambience and a friendly guy behind the counter. An assortment of Fender and Gibson guitars lined the walls.

Sponsored Content. I have a Valley Arts California Pro with serial number: CAL 01827, green with gold mecs and floyd rose and 24 frets, made in USA.It seems impossible to find out on the web the year of that guitar (i've seen valleyarts, gibson and samik website, no way.).Could you please help me in knowing the year and place.

My eyes though were immediately drawn to one particular guitar on display. It was the only used guitar for sale in the shop and the headstock said ‘Valley Arts’. This is what I saw. I took the guitar down to have a go and its weight was astonishing (it later measured in at a hefty 9.13 pounds!). ‘That’s a 1990 Valley Arts Guitar’, said the store guy.

‘Has original seymour duncan pickups’. I plugged into a Fender Blues Junior and had a go. The guitar was fantastic. Sounded great – crisp with a lovely mid range and articulate highs, tight bottom end. The unfinished maple neck was very comfortable, the fret job was superb, and the Kahler Floyd Rose tremolo was amongst the best I have tried.

The back plate said ‘Made in USA’. I fell in love with it immediately. Spent half an hour after that trying out various other models but nothing came close. I wished I had played the Valley Arts last – would have enjoyed those other guitars a lot more. Went back to my room later in the evening and spent a few hours trying to find information on the guitar.

I did not know the model type or the serial number – had forgotten to note these down in my enthusiasm – I did have the picture given above though. I soon found out that there was almost next to no information on the type of Valley Arts guitar I had seen – the obligatory valley arts website for ‘Pre-Samick & Pre-Gibson’ guitars that comes up with any Valley Arts search had no guitars that matched the head stock I was seeing on this baby. Internet pictures that did match had no additional information that could help; there was one blog post from the UK about a very similar guitar with the black headstock and the guy concluded that it was the real deal offering detailed gut shots and his inferences on them.

I did learn about the fire that destroyed the Valley Arts Guitar Store in 1990 and how Samick came on as a partner in 1992 and then bought out VA in 1993. Guitars before this were supposed to be magic and after this ‘really shitty’ to quote some of the forums I saw. It started with scouring the internet forums – this usually solves most problems. Ran into a number of dead ends before striking gold in the form of a. Emailed Martin Miranda, who was the VA factor manager from the Pre-Samick days and he confirmed my guitar was a Samick.

He also suggested the names of two guys – Martin Bravo and Karl Sandival – Martin had been the paint and finishing guy at VA and stayed on after the takeover. Besides him all remaining 16 original VA employees left over the course of 18 months. Turned out that Martin was now working with Thorn guitars in Los Angeles. Only problem was he only spoke spanish and was not accessible on phone or email. Ron Thorn turned out to be a gem.

I emailed him the VA Brochure I mentioned above and he not only got Martin to answer my questions but also named many of the men in this photograph in the brochure. The California Pro range was meant to replace the VA Standard Pro series. The Standard Pro was a budget version of the VA Custom Pros and were made with bodies and necks shipped from Godin (then LaSido) in Canada.

Apparently Samick saw it as replacing one foreign supplier with another. The VA Custom Pro bodies were made in house; the necks were Warmoth in the early to mid-80’s (apparently the compound radius feature was one of the main reasons these necks were so comfortable to play), and then designed in house from the late 80’s onwards. Actual maufacure of the necks was never done at Valley Arts though. To quote Dan Grosh from a forum post, “At Valley Arts we never made any necks on the electrics. The LaSido necks were used on everything in the later years. The Warmoth necks had a round truss rod hole, the LaSido necks had a square hole. Most of the bodies we were making in the later years, but not the Standard Pro.

Those came from LaSido already painted.”. The ones with this headstock (like mine) had both the body and neck built in Korea. Assembly, hardware installation, and set up were in the US. All the examples of these guitars that I have seen on the internet have 24 frets and are 24 and 3/4’ in scale length (similar to the standard Gibson scale length). The body is 7/8ths the size of a traditional Stratocaster. A new serial number series was started for these guitars beginning with CAL. The series seems to start from CAL 0100.

More on this later. The one’s with this headstock had the body made in the US, the necks were made in Korea; so these were higher up in the pecking order. Assembly, hardware installation, and set up were in the US. The original Pre-Samick California Pro’s did not have any black headstocks. There were only 100 of those made making them rare VA’s along with original VA’s with the inter-lock joint of which only 16 were made.

There was quite a range of California Pro’s with this black headstock with uninspiring names like ‘Deluxe Model 8R’. There were 22 as well as 24 fret versions and both standard Fender (25 and 1/2’) scale length as well as the Gibson scale length. These guitars retained the old VA series numbers.

There were about 2,600 Pre-Samick VA guitars made so numbers higher than that are Samick, and later Gibson. I own an original VA Custom Pro with serial number VA 1916 – the production date stamped on the inner side of the neck heel is Feb 1993.

Production really seems to have been ramped up in the last year of the original VA Custom Shop. Also the fretboard may differ from the standard rosewood used on the Samick California Pro’s in the Transition Guitars – one of the examples above (CAL 01041) has an ebony fretboard. Interestingly this may not have all been planned – apparently the first batch of necks sent from Korea for the Cal Pro’s had 22 frets instead of 24. These could not be used and new 24 fret necks were ordered from Korea. It stands to reason that existing (Pre-Samick) necks lying around in the shop were bolted onto the Korean bodies.

Coming back to serial numbers. The Samick VA Custom Shop shut down in 1998. The latest example of the CAL series I have found online (on a Japanese auction site) is CAL 01916. Mine has been dated to early 1994 by Martin Bravo and is CAL 01084.The two true ’transition guitars’ have serial numbers of CAL 01041 and CAL 01066 respectively. Assuming the serial numbers started from CAL 0100 in 1993, this puts the total output at about 800-900 CAL series guitars over 4 years. A paltry number by today’s production standards.

The hardware used gradually changed over the Samick period. My guitar has original Seymour Duncan pickups – by 1995 these pickups had become ‘Duncan Designed’; these are pickups made in the Far East based on Seymour Duncan specifications. Bridges used through out seem to be good quality – mine has a Kahler Floyd Rose, others had similar bridges as well as Wilkinson trems. Note that all of the guitars mentioned in this article barring the one that says Samick on the headstock have ‘Made in USA’ on the neck bolt on plate.

This is misleading due to reasons explained above. So there you have it. Everything I have managed to dig up on the lost years of Valley Arts under Samick. I really like both my VA Custom Pro as well as the Samick VA California Pro though the Custom Pro is definitely better constructed. The California Pro is more basic – the main difference between the two is the quality of the neck; the bird’s eye maple neck on the Custom Pro is quite lovely and the ebony fretboard and fretwork are immaculate. Also I think it has a two piece body as opposed to the 4-5 piece body of the California Pro.

Other than that the hardware on both is exactly the same quality wise and sonically there is nothing to tell them apart. I’d buy the Samick VA again if I had to in a heartbeat. Hi A.K, Thanks! I paid $1200 but keep in mind that I bought the guitar in Israel where prices are higher per se.

These guitars now retail for around $600-700 in the US and up to $1500 elsewhere depending on where you are in the world. I have no idea how much these sold for new. Yes would love to see the pictures you have. Please upload them to google drive and paste the link here for all the visitors to be able to have access to them. The aim is to build up awareness regarding these guitars on the internet. So little information out there. Absolutely crucial info on my California Pro, my most grateful thanks indeed.

I have CAL 01190, a translucent black strat with the coloured graphics headstock & gold hardware, Duncan p’ups on a 3 piece body, natural maple neck with 24 fret rosewood board. Its well balanced, resonant, & a great player too but I’m planning an update for it such as improved trem, EMG SVL20s, & new wiring to include active boost. It cost me about £600 + import fees to the UK from Florida & I’m very pleased with it. I’d have another any day!!