I bought Han's book and am now even more confused about build date. It has the Kluson tuners that were supposedly replaced by import tuners in 1966. It also has the black lines in the Chesterfield peghead. Serial is AE-428 but I saw a AE-392 w import tuners and a AE-502 with the oval guarantee label without the Hoboken on label.
I wouldn't worry about that too much, I'd go by Hans' most recent assessment in this thread. He's explained before that during that era, for a variety of reasons, guitars didn't always leave the factory in "serial number order".
For one thing, they might have built a few "superstructures" and then finished 'em at later dates with then-current parts for example.
Then add to the potentila confusion by relocating the whole factory from Hoboken to Westerly in late '66 to early '67, and all kinds of possibilities come to mind.
Alos consider that it's possible either your guitar or the earlier one has had the tuners swapped out at some point.
It IS, by the way,
real purty, I bet I'd love it to death.
:smile:
