Can I date a Sherwood by serial?

No decoder and no official archive — the years come from dealer literature, and no year can be read from a Sherwood serial number.

How do I tell Sherwood versions apart?

By the valve complement, with one honest note: whether the slanted-preamp-valve S-5000 is early or late is still undecided in the sources.

The maker's archive

Sherwood Electronic Laboratories hi-fi.

Sherwood has no serial decoder and no official model-year archive: the years used here come from dealer literature and collector threads, and everything else stays empty rather than guessed.

Country: USA
Active since: 1953
Coverage: 1959–2023 · 16 code systems
Dating tier: No serial table
In the archive: 0 series · 16 code systems · 6 models
Years documented: 1959–2023

What dates this maker

Model year from dealer literature (S-5000 and S-8000 from 1959).
Tube complement and circuit revisions.
EIA component date codes on the parts.

Watch out

Nothing in a Sherwood serial number documents a year.

Sherwood version identification by output and preamp tubes1959-1970s · 7 rows · Low confidence

Sherwood has no serial-dateable layer1953-1980s · 2 rows · Medium confidence

Hunts capacitor date code (WHITSUNDAY)1950s-1969 (Hunts taken over by Erie in the late 1960s, probably 1969) · 25 rows · Medium confidence

British year-letter date codes (TCC, Dubilier, Radiospares, Woden, Welwyn)1950s-1960s · 4 rows · Medium confidence

Mullard 'mustard' capacitor date codelate 1963 onwards (used occasionally in late 1963, more frequently from mid 1964) · 3 rows · Medium confidence

Egen potentiometer date code1960-1964 (year letters documented by the source) · 2 rows · Medium confidence

EIA component source/date codeswhole vintage period · 1 rows · High confidence

Safety warnings that apply to any vintage valve hi-fiwhole vintage period · 4 rows · High confidence

Japanese electrolytic capacitor date codes - the shared YYWW mechanicdocumented samples 1993-2023; no maker states when a format started or ended · 0 rows · Medium confidence

Nippon Chemi-Con date code (year digit + bracketed character)2000s production (the repair page was published November 2005) · 2 rows · Low confidence

Nichicon date code (plant letter + YYWW)1990s-2010s (documented 1993 and 2013 samples, same format) · 4 rows · Medium confidence

ELNA date code (four digits, YYWW)1990s-2000s (documented 2000 and 2003 samples) · 2 rows · Medium confidence

Rubycon date code (plant letter + YYWW)1990s-2000s (documented 2002 and 2008 samples) · 3 rows · Medium confidence

Matsushita / Panasonic lot-code date (xYMD), SMD parts2020s SMD parts (documented example decoded as April 2023) · 1 rows · Low confidence

Nichicon month letters J-Z (official notice, power capacitors and reactors)2004 production numbers; the notice itself is dated 2022-04-01 · 4 rows · High confidence

Class A heat, bias and the dating trap - safety notes for this wavewhole Class A vintage period (1967-present) · 3 rows · High confidence

6 Sherwood Electronic Laboratories models are catalogued with their production years, specs and safety notes.