Foxant683

Silvertone - Japan Made Models

• Silvertone Serial Number
• Silvertone 1484 Serial Number
• Silvertone Guitar Serial Number Database
• Dating Samick Guitar By Serial??

1. Silvertone - Japan Made Models (Written by Jimmy Noise / June 2012) Silvertone was a brand developed by Sears Roebuck Company in the early 30’s. The Silvertone brand replaced the Supertone brand on musical instruments sold by Sears. If it has a model number that matches any of the above, then it is a Silvertone guitar.
2. 1/01/2008 We have reevaluated the serial number list to reflect new information. The number of instruments produced in the early years 1893-1905, has been reduced. The serial number lists are NOT 100% accurate.
3. By that serial number, your Silverstone Blues Master guitar was made in Indonesia at the Cort factory there. Samick and Cort share many production facilities, pushing out guitars with the Silverstone, Cort, Squier, and many other brand names on the headstock. Made in the year 2000, and the rest of the serial numbers are run/lot numbers.

The headstock does not say Silvertone but has a logo which appears to be a very ornate letter S and letter R. The back side of the headstock is printed Model # 30 or 300, Made in USA. There is also some numbers and Made in USA stamped on the inside of the guitar. Silvertone Archtop Acoustic Guitars Sears, Roebuck and Co. Introduced the Silvertone brand in 1915 expanding the product line to guitars in the 1930s—the first solid body guitar appearing in 1954. The 1457 amp-in-a-case model built by Danelectro for Silvertone paved the.

(Written by Jimmy Noise / June 2012)

Silvertone was a brand developed by Sears Roebuck Company in theearly 30’s.The Silvertone brand replacedthe Supertone brand on musical instruments sold by Sears.The brand was used on guitars sold bySears; however Silvertone never actually made guitars. All the manufacturingwas outsourced to various guitar suppliers. These included US manufactures andUS importers. To date there has been no information that confirms that theSilvertone directly imported directly from guitar manufactures in Japan. By Searshaving its own brand, it was able to market its guitars as an exclusive SearRoebuck product. The brand was discontinued in 1972. It is not clear why itceased, but Sears Roebuck continued to sell guitars into the 70’s, but notbranded as Silvertone.

This sight will focus on electric guitars made in Japan andsupplied to Silvertone.

SilvertoneLogos

There were two logos used on Silvertone guitars. The first onebeing the word Silvertone painted on the headstock in a thin line. The painthad no clear coat over it and often has rubbed off over the years. Great careshould be taken when cleaning these guitars as to not remove the logo.The logo was the same design as used on otherSilvertone models made in the US.This logo was used on Teisco built Silvertone guitars manufactured up to theend of 1965.

Guitars manufactured after 1965 got a newly designed logo. It’sunknown who designed the new logo, but the new logo was only used on the Teiscoimported guitars by WMI.

Around 1969 imported guitars sold by Sears began to have the new around silver disc. This marked the end of the Silvertone brand on Sears’sguitars. These guitars were supplied by various manufactures in Japan. Theguitars generally had a sticker on the neck plate or the model number wasstamped into the neck plate. These practices fell in line with Kawai builtguitars, not Teisco. But some Teisco’s did have this logo.

Models Supplied byWestheimer Sales Co.

Westheimer Sales was probably the first importer to supply importguitars to Silvertone. It’s assumed that a lot of these would have beenacoustic guitars. However they may have supplied some of the early builtTeiscos as well. It is unclear what actually happened because around the sametime Teisco was in the process of changing distributors in the US.

Models Supplied by WMICorporation– (Teisco)

Silvertone Serial Number

WMI Corporation became the exclusive importer of Teisco builtguitars in 1965. They supplied Teisco guitars to Silvertone during the mid1960’s. The models supplied were either similar or exact models that were soldunder the Teisco brand. The modifications were often slight, but enough to beable to identify a guitar as being either a Silvertone or a Teisco brandedguitar.

The models shown below were built by Teisco and supplied toSilvertone by WMI Corporation. By clicking on the model number, additionalinformation is available.

If you if have a guitar that you think is a Teisco builtSilvertone guitar and it is missing its logo, there are a few things that youcan check to determine if this is your model;

·Firstlycheck the model tag. If it has a model number that matches any of the above,then it is a Silvertone guitar.

·Thesecond way to tell is look at the logo area and check the shape of anyremaining glue residue in the shape of the logo.

·Checkthe nail holes of the logo. Sometimes the logo was nailed on. If the nail holesmatch the locations shown on the Silvertone logo, then it is a Silvertone.

·Thesharkfin guitars always had striped guards and the hex pickup adjustmentscrews.

·The1436 and 1437 have the white cover in front of the tailpiece and came with theblack tip tremolo bar.

Tone Controls: The tone dial works differently to modernand vintage US guitars. The tone knob works backwards. This is based onfiltering of the high frequency. ie Zero being no filtering and ten being fullfiltering. The USguitars work on frequency. Ie Zero is low frequencies. (Highs filtered) and 10being treble (No filtering). A common fault occurs when some people pick upthese guitars and turn everything to 10. Due to the tone knob being theopposite way, the guitar sounds rather muddy and then is passed off as a cheepguitar. Moral of the story is to play around with the switches and knobs todiscover the full sound potential of theses guitars.

Other Imported Models by UnknownSuppliers

There were other imported models that weren’t built byTeisco.It is unclear if WMI suppliedthese non-built Teiscos to Silvertone, or if these were supplied by anotherimporter.

It’s not confirmed, but Westheimer Sales may have sold guitars toSear in the late 60’s & 70’s that were supplied by the Kawai guitarcompany. These guitars are often mistaken as Teisco’s however they are not madeby Teisco, even tho Kawai had bought Teisco in 1967.

Catalogues

Because Silvertone was the exclusive brand of Sears Roebuck, theguitars only appears in the Sears Catalogues.

·Sears Catalogue Links

Unfortunately there is only a limited number of cataloguesavailable to post on this site. If some more become available, we will postthem in the future.

Links

Silvertone 1484 Serial Number

For more information on Silverstone’s we recommend the Silvertone World web page. It seems to have the mostaccurate information available. It covers both US and Japanese made guitars.

Return toGuitars Brand Page

Silvertone Guitar Serial Number Database

This site has been visitedtimes.

(Last Revised: 25^th of June 2012.)

Dating Samick Guitar By Serial??

©2012 MAI Music Publications