These axes would have serial numbers that began with the letters IC. The only one. I have an 07 'Crafted In Indonesia' standard Strat. The Fender serial number decoder currently supports all documented MIA, MIJ, MIM, MIK and MII formats with the exception of Custom Shop. Indonesian Made.
Fender-Squier history in short Jerome Bonaparte Squier and his son Victor Carroll Squier, two English immigrants who started a violin building and repair company in Boston in 1881. In 1890 Victor opened a store in Battle Creek and a short time later a violin factory at 427 Capital Ave SW. (V.C. Squier Company) Violin, banjo and guitar strings were also produced here. In the early 1950s the company also started making strings for the electric guitars of Leo Fender and became in 1963 an official supplier for Fender Electric Instruments. In 1965, shortly before the acquisition of Fender by CBS, Fender purchased V.C. Squier Company. Before the Fender Squier line of guitars was introduced in 1982, Fender made cheaper guitars such as the Fender Lead series at its plant in Fullerton, California. Until the introduction of the Fender Squier series, Fender had never produced low-priced guitars based on the Stratocaster and Telecaster models. He had always used different model designs for the cheaper models. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Fender was faced with competition from cheaper Japanese guitars. Japanese labor and production costs were much lower than in America, and to compete with, Fender moved the cheaper Fender guitar production from America to Japan. |
Sales in Japan were disappointing, Fender could not compete with Japanese competitors such as Tökai and Greco. Fender started negotiations with various Japanese distributors of musical instruments and reached an agreement with Yamano Gakki and Kanda Shokai to found Fender Japan. One of the conditions of the agreement was that Kanda Shokai stops producing its own Greco Fender guitars. Negotiations with Tökai were broken off and FujiGen Gakki was chosen. The first Squier models appeared in August 1982. Over time, the Squier series has slowly evolved and contains original model designs. The production has also been moved from Japan to various other Asian countries such as Korea, China, Indonesia and India. Victor Carroll Squier |
Serial #'sDATING YOUR INDONESIAN-MADE FENDER INSTRUMENTfromFender moved production of some Fender-branded instruments from Korea to Indonesia in 2008.The serial numbering scheme for these instruments initially used the letters “IC” as a prefixindicating that they were made in Indonesia at the Cort factory. In mid-2009, the prefix was changedto “ICF” on some instruments, indicating that they were made in Indonesia at the Cort factory and wereFender-branded.Both the “IC” and “ICF” prefixes are followed by an eight-digit number, with the first two digits designatingthe year of manufacture, (i.e., 09 for 2009, 10 for 2010, etc.).