USSR / China · since 1930
Soviet / Chinese copies serial numbers
Leningrad, Moscow, Tula, Jining — instruments without registries.
Soviet state factories (Leningrad and Moscow windworks, Tula) and their Chinese successors produced enormous quantities of woodwinds with inconsistent or absent serials. There is no registry to consult — the archive explains what models, badges and construction can still tell.
The numbering
- soviet-chinese-no-table
Saxophone · Clarinet · Flute · Bassoon · Oboe
This group covers Soviet-era and Chinese/Taiwanese copy saxophones, clarinets and flutes that were sold under stencil names. There is no serial-to-year chart for any of them: the makers either did not number instruments consecutively, restarted numbers per batch, or stamped the buyer's own sequence. dcsax, Stohrer, saxophone.org and the Conn-Selmer tables contain no such charts.
No serial-to-year chart exists for Soviet-era or Chinese copy woodwinds: the makers did not keep a continuous sequence (numbers restart per batch), and none of the sources checked (dcsax, Stohrer, saxophone.org, the official Conn-Selmer serial pages, woodwind.org) carries such a table. These instruments are dated by the stencil name, the keywork generation, the materials and, for Soviet horns, the plant stamp; the number itself is only useful for matching parts. Beware of copies that carry Selmer Paris or Buffet engraving: their numbers will 'resolve' against the original brand's chart and produce a wrong year.
Questions
Can this archive date Soviet / Chinese copies instruments from the serial number?
Not from the number — no public serial chart exists for this maker, and the archive does not guess dates.
Where is the serial number on a Soviet / Chinese copies instrument?
For Saxophones the common location is on the lower body tube near the neck receiver, or at the bell bow — lightly engraved, sometimes two numbers on one horn.
What if my Soviet / Chinese copies serial number is not found?
Recheck the characters exactly as marked, including any letters. Letter prefixes often belong to student or stencil lines. Some periods may not be covered yet — every refusal here says why.