How To Date Your Yamaha Drums

Until recently, Yamaha's official website readily provided information to users on how to date Yamaha drums. Since the information is no longer available via Yamaha's official website, I have taken the liberty to post it here, and further help readers by putting this information on how to date Yamaha drums into a more readable format since the original text as provided by Yamaha was difficult to decipher. Additionally, while this information is true for most models, there can be deviations from this information on occasion. Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below the article.

1975-1989

Yamaha drums manufactured between 1975 and 1989 are coded with either two-letters or a two-letter prefix in the serial number.

For example, JM or JM1234.

The first letter in the serial number indicates the year of manufacture.

The second letter is the month of manufacture.  

For some very special drums you will notice a dot after the letters. A dot (•) after the letters indicates a research model or first run in production.

1990-2012

Yamaha drums manufactured between 1990 and 1999 will have a serial number in the format of [Letter][Letter][Dash]. This is quite confusing with the 80's serial numbering system as the only distinction between the 80's and 90's numbering is the - [dash] in the serial numbering scheme. To further complicate matters, Yamaha also uses a three-letter serial numbering scheme on certain models, possibly in preparation for Y2K. All Yamaha drums manufactured between 2000 and 2012 have a three-letter serial numbering scheme.

For example, MN-1234 or PIY12345. 

In the first example, the first letter indicates year of manufacture, same as in the 1980's serial numbering scheme. In the second example, the first two letters indicate the year of manufacture.

For Two-Letter Serial Numbers, the second letter is the month of manufacture, For Three-Letter Serial Numbers, the third letter is the month of manufacture.