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Dear pianists,
Lately I've been trying to find the date and place of manufacturing by my piano's serial number. It's a Yamaha U1 and the number is H 2410886
While the store which sold me the piano claims the H means the period of time the piano was manufactured (1970-1980) and the number represents the specific year, after looking up the subject in Yamaha's website I read the the H means it is made in China.
Can you please help me understand?

Thank you

Well, the Yamaha web site informs about Yamaha serial numbers and the meaning of the letters which maybe appear in the number. I do not understand what more is to understand about it? If the Yamaha site states, that the H indicates a fabrication in China, then it means that the particular piano was fabricated in China.

To quote the late President Ronald Reagan:

"Trust, but verify"

Or, if you wish the famed motto of the now defunct City News Bureau:

"If your mama says she loves you, check it out".

Yamaha pianos from that time period (1978) were all built in Japan. Okay, they owned the Everett factory at that time in Michigan, but the U1 was never built there. You're confusing the end of the model (U1 with the internal designator, H) with the serial number, a common mistake people make with Yamaha pianos.

Current U1 models are assembled in Japan and Indonesia, but we only get the Japanese ones in the US market.

According to Pierce, the given seven digit number 2410886 is from 1977 - 78.

Numbers with the "H" prefix are from Hangzhou, China. But they were under 360,000 at the beginning of 2015, so this can't be a Hangzhou piano.

I think Terminal has it right, the model is U1H, and the H isn't part of the serial number.

Yamaha's use of serial number prefixes vs. model number suffixes can be confusing. To date, U1's have not been made in China, so by process of elimination, it is as the dealer states.

It would take several pictures to better explain Yamaha's use of the prefix vs. suffix letters in general, but the use of the H is particularly confusing as they are stenciled inside in the exact same way and location.

Yamaha U1 with H model suffix...made in Japan...


Yamaha T118PE with H serial prefix...made in China.

Tricky....

Thanks everybody! My question has been answered. Just one more thing, there was a ticket inside my piano with Japanese words which after a brief translation I found out which have to do with the piano's tuning.
It has a table which probably contains dates of tuning or something else, and has a log from 1952 I think. How is it possible?
Correct me if I'm mistaken please

Add 1925 to the year. It's the year-designation system, used in Japan, during Emperor Showa's (Hirohito) reign. He ascended to the throne in 1926, that year marked as first year of Showa.

And most probably, the last date (15) is also not 2015, but the year of the next and current emperor's era (Heisei). If I am not mistaken, it started in 1989, so 11 should be substracted to convert into Christian's era, i.e. 2004.
I might be wrong though.

Hi, Roy -- Where are you located? By the above interpretation, your piano was tuned as recently as 2004 by someone who knew enough Japanese, or enough about Yamaha paperwork, to note the fact on the card.

the evidence, adeptly elucidated by the contributors who understand the dating system based on the first year of a living god-emperor's reign, strongly suggests the piano was owned and maintained in Nippon, or possibly one of its satellite cultures while serviced by Japanese tuner/technicians.

I am not sure why a historical tenet of Japanese emperor's divinity, something Emperor Showa himself had publicly relinquished, would have to be brought into this discussion.

I also need to be re-educated to be cognizant of any culture(s) that is(are) Japanese enough to use all Japanese writing on a piano technicians' sign-off sheet, yet detached enough from Japan that can only be considered as "satellite".

Anyway, if indeed the last entry of this sheet was recorded in the current Emperor's years, then the last two tunings recorded on this sheet were separated by 15 years. And the same technician, except for once, tuned this piano over the span of 27 years. These are quite interesting.

It's possible, even likely, that this piano has been tuned many times by tuners who didn't know about or didn't bother with the log form. Perhaps it was still in Japan as recently as 2004, and if it's not there now, it's one of those mysterious gray market pianos.

Or the owner did not care much about tuning during the last 15 years, perhaps. The tuner name is the same for all the tunings, except in 1979 (54).

Wow! That's fascinating. Thank you everybody for sharing your incredible knowledge, it's such an interesting story to know.