Our 'online' manuals are available in Adobe PDF format. Just click on the model and download the file. If you need a copy of Adobe Acrobat reader, click here! May 13, 2020 8-digit Serial Numbers Between 1993 and 2007 Godin used an 8-digit serial number. Example serial number: 99025147 The first two digits “ 99 ” represents the year the guitar was built. As an example, a guitar with serial number 06053168 was built in september 2005, on a wednesday, and it was the 168th guitar built during that production week. If your guitar’s serial number has 7 digits, the guitar was built in the 90’s and only the 1st digit indicates the production year. If your guitar’s serial number has 7 digits, the guitar was built in the 90’s and only the 1st digit indicates the production year. If your guitar’s serial number has less than 7 digits, you’ll have to email Godin it’s serial number so I can look it up in our serial number lists. On post 1993 guitars, the serial number is engraved behind the headstock.
In 1982 a man by the name of Robert Godin made the very first Seagull guitars ever produced in the Canadian village of La Patrie, Quebec, thus beginning the history of Seagull Guitars.
The initial idea behind this brand of guitar, was to craft beautifully hand-crafted instruments from high-quality tops with astounding finishes.
Seagull guitars are a branch of Godin guitars.
Wood Management and Environmental Efforts
Another thing that’s great about the craftsmanship of Seagull Guitars is the wood management. The wood has been collected in such a way that is appealing to both the eye and hand. Due to the company always evolving, they have created a team designated to sourcing wood for a specific line of guitar.
This is a good idea to deter from using exotic woods. Using reclaimed wood is meant to avoid deforestation.
The process of using reclaimed wood is also used to keep the pricing for their instruments at a range that can be easily afforded by a working musician. Although some other brands of guitars are more expensive, Seagull Acoustic is a brand that provides both quality and affordability.
Another way this company helps to avoid an impact on the environment is to use hydroelectricity in their facilities. By creating a very small carbon footprint they help the environment as well as themselves. Many musicians appreciate the care that Seagull has for the environment and that is one of the reasons why some specifically seek them out.
Production and Location
Seagull Guitars is a brand started, located, and still specifically made in Canada. These guitars are high quality products all the way from shaping the wood to applying the finish.
Seagull also gets the wood for producing their brand name guitars from their own trees, which are carefully managed to keep their carbon footprint small.
One of the best things about Seagull Guitars, or rather the guitar makers themselves, is that they are from a small town in Canada which and are passionate about this brand of guitar. La Patrie has a small population but half of that population work for Godin guitars. This passion shows in the quality of product that Seagull produces.
Differences in Guitar Types
Seagull Guitars puts a lot of detail into making acoustic guitars. They have many models with a number of different tone wood combinations, several different shapes/sizes to choose from and have acoustic and acoustic-electric options.
They also make a guitar style category for anyone who may want a custom guitar.
Innovations and Unique Features to Seagull Guitars
Apart from sustainably sourcing their wood and pressure testing to ensure quality and strength, Seagull have a few other features and innovations that make them unique.
Firstly, and the most visually noticeable, is Seagull’s headstock. This is a tapered headstock and makes a Seagull guitar instantly recognizable. The function of this headstock is that it’s supposed to help the guitar to stay in tune more easily.
They also use a compound curve in the tops of their guitars. This is to help with structural integrity and allows them to use a thinner top. They aren’t arch top guitars by any means – they’re still flat tops, but they have that little bit of a curve around the bridge area of the guitar.
Another thing, which isn’t so much an innovation, but something that is common on Seagull guitars is a wider nut width. This wider nut width makes their fretboards wider. Some players like this wider feel, especially for fingerstyle players. This isn’t on all of their guitars – but a good number of them, especially compared with standard neck widths across other brands.
Finally, Seagull uses their own Godin brand electronics for their acoustic-electrics. The version of the electronics that you get varies depending on the guitar.
Production Process of a Seagull Guitar
The Seagull Guitars brand goes to great lengths to provide great quality guitars, thus putting tops through pressure tests to ensure certain qualities such as rigidness. There are a lot of things to consider when they make a guitar such has what type of tone will the sound carry, or what wood is less likely to sound better with age over the years.
The Different Series of Seagull Guitars
Seagull have a number of different series of guitars, all having different features in common. Two of those series are all solid wood – the Artist Series and the Maritime Series. The rest of the series still feature a solid wood top but have laminated wood back and sides.
The Series in the Seagull line are:
- Natural Elements
- Coastline
- Entourage
- Walnut
Each series have different price points, use different wood combinations and are available in different shapes and some with and some without electronics. Some models within the series will have cutaways and others will be without cutaways.
Check out more on some of these series at the link below:
One Last Note About Seagull Guitars
This brand takes pride in the quality not only of the materials that they use but also the craftsmanship of their guitar makers. They produce high-quality guitars that many musicians take pride in calling their own.
And even their guitars in their top series, that use all solid wood, are retailed at a really reasonable price. And when you get down to their lower series, you can pick up some still decent quality guitars for quite a low cost. You get all of this with a company that is making efforts to sustainably obtain their materials and using processes that limit their carbon footprint.
As you can tell this author is a fan of Seagull guitars!
Photo Credits
By The original uploader was Mikehelms at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons
By Jason (Flickr: Mina & Guitar III) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
O.k. this post should probably be called Godin guitar serial numbers rather than Seagull guitar serial numbers – because it applies to all guitars under the Godin umbrella (Seagull, Art & Lutherie, Simon & Patrick, Norman and La Patrie) but it certainly applies to Seagull guitars.
Get your concentrating hat on because they haven’t made this simple!
What you can Find out from your serial number?
Your Godin serial number will tell you different things depending on the time period. There are 3 distinct time periods for Godin serial numbers.
- Pre-1993
- 1993 to 2007
- 2008 to present
Note: Seagull starts their year on August 1. So if the year is 2005, then it starts August 1 2004 and ends July 31 2005.
Pre-1993
You can’t really tell anything from this serial number. You’ll need to contact Godin and tell them your serial number and they can tell you when the guitar was made.
1993 to 2007
- The year the guitar was made;
- The week of the year it was made;
- The day of the week it was made; and
- The unit number of the guitar
I’ll go into more detail about how you can decipher this in a bit.
2008 to present
- The model number
- Whether your guitar is a factory second or not
- What number of that particular model yours is
I’ll go into more detail about how you can decipher this in a bit.
How to Decode Your Serial Number
Again how you decode your serial number depends on the time period.
Pre-1993
This is simply a matter of contacting Godin, telling them your serial number and asking them about it. There is no secret code in these numbers!
1993 to 2007
O.K. now we get into some secret code ?
![Lookup Lookup](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126419793/438303082.jpg)
Between 1993 and 2007 Godin used an 8 digit serial number. This serial number is broken up into 4 different parts.
Let’s use an example serial number to illustrate this. We’ll use – 05034148
Digits 1 & 2
The first 2 digits represent the year that the guitar was built. But this is not the calendar year. Godin’s year runs from August 1st to July 31st. So the first 2 digits, technically represent the “year ended”.
In our example we have 05 as the first 2 digits.
- 05034148
What this determines is that the guitar was built sometime in the year from August 1st, 2004 and July 31st 2005.
The next 2 digits will narrow this down further.
Digits 3 & 4
Digits 3 & 4 represent the week of the year that the guitar was built – remember that the Godin year is August 1st to July 31st. So week 1 is the first week of August.
In our example the week is 03.
- 05034148
This means it was built in the 3rd week of the year ended July 31st, 2005. So it was the 3rd week of August 2004.
So the guitar with this serial number was actually built in 2004 even though the first 2 digits are 05. With me so far?
Digit 5
The 5th digit represents the day of the week that the guitar was built, starting from Monday.
1 = Monday
2 = Tuesday
3 = Wednesday
4 = Thursday
5 = Friday
6 = Saturday
7 = Sunday
So in our example we have a 4 so the guitar with this serial number was built on a Thursday.
- 05034148
The last 3 digits
The last 3 digits represents the order in which this guitar was produced in that week.
So, in our example, it was the 148th guitar built that week.
- 05034148
![Serial Serial](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126419793/294210684.jpg)
So, overall we can tell that this guitar was the 148th guitar built in the 3rd week of August in 2004 and it was built on a Thursday. So we can work out that it was built on Thursday the 19th of August, 2004.
This a bit complicated but usually people only want to know the year that their guitar was built – so you can work that out a bit easier.
Extra Info
If there’s an “AA” or “AAA” in the serial number this represents the grade of wood. Not all serial numbers have this – I think it’s just for maple top guitars.
If there is an “F” in the serial number, this signifies that the guitar is “B-Stock”.
2008 to present
In late 2007 Godin switched to a 12 digit serial number.
The present system doesn’t actually tell you anything about when the guitar was built, which is a bit of a pain, as working out the year of your guitar is often the only thing people want to know from their serial number.
Anyway, this is what the serial number tells you.
I mean I guess serial numbers are really meant for internal purposes for Seagull and for anti-theft measures but sometimes you want to be able to find out the year of production. I imagine if you were to contact Godin they would have this information.
Let’s use another example serial number – 029396000123
First 6 digits
This represents the model of your guitar. You probably already know this but if you’re not sure for whatever reason you can find out.
In our example the first 6 digits are 029396 – this is the model number of the Seagull S6 Original.
Godin Guitar Serial Numbers
- 029396000123
If you follow this link – Seagull S6 Original – it will take you to the S6 Original on the Seagull website. Underneath the title you will see “SKU: 029396”. If you want to find the model number for your guitar go through the models until you find the number that matches your guitar. You should be able to narrow this down reasonably quickly as you should know at least which series your guitar is from.
7th Digit
This digit represents whether this guitar is a “Factory Second” or not.
A “0” represents that it’s not a factory second and a “9” represents a factory second. Note that a “Factory Second” does not mean that the guitar has a functional defect – rather that it just has a cosmetic flaw. These guitars are usually priced a little bit lower and if you can find one you should be able to get a good deal on an otherwise perfectly fine guitar.
In our example the guitar is not a factory second.
- 029396000123
The last 5 digits
The last 5 digits represent the number of that particular model built since switching to 12 digit serial numbers.
In our example the serial number represents the 123rd S6 Original built since Godin changed to 12 digit serial numbers.
- 029396000123
So, overall from our example serial number we can tell that the serial number belongs to an S6 Original that is not a factory second and that it was the 123rd S6 Original to be shipped since Godin began their 12 digit serial number system.
Final Thoughts
This is definitely the most complicated serial number system I have come across so far (I have previous to this written serial number posts explaining Martin’s and Taylor’s serial number systems).
But as I said earlier, it is perhaps the fact that serial numbers are mainly for internal company purposes and for identifying stolen property. But, it would be nice to be able to quickly tell what year your guitar was built from the serial number as well.
Godin Serial Numbers List
This information was compiled from the following – Godin don’t post information about their serial numbers:
Photo Credits
By Jason (Flickr: Mina & Guitar III) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons