History of ibanez guitars

Ibanez brand guitars are manufactured at a variety of factories in several countries under contract from the brand's owner, Hoshino Gakki Group. The catalogs scanned and linked below represent output from the year through the present. During the 's and most of the 's, Ibanez guitars were made almost exclusively in Japan, and the majority of electric models were made at the Fujigen Gakki manufacturing plant. Note: This is a very quick history, and mostly from memory, so take it all with a grain of salt and try to verify what you can from other sources. However, every attempt has been made to provide only verifiable and true information, in an attempt to set the record straight and dispell some modern "myths" about Ibanez model guitars.

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Content:

• Ibanez Guitars, making electric guitar history since 1957
• Ibanez vs. Fender: Which Guitar or Bass Is Best for You?
• History of Ibanez Guitars
• Vintage Ibanez Guitar Catalogs - 1971 through 2007
• Robot or human?
• Ibanez Electric Guitars Explained (All Models Comparison)
• Ibanez: One of the Best Guitar Brands in Japan
• Ibanez Guitars | The Instruments & The History
• The Ibanez Story: An Iconic Guitar Brand
• El Argonauta. La librería de la música.

WATCH RELATED VIDEO: Behind the Ibanez Prestige Series

Ibanez Guitars, making electric guitar history since 1957

Look at the ads on eBay for example or on Reverb and you will find a large number of sellers who advertise their copies of Gibson and sometimes even Fender! In this case, we often see people talking about Lawsuit guitars when it comes to vintage Japanese guitars produced in the 70s, 80s or even 90s.

But is that correct? After the Second World War, the United States experienced a boom period and the market for musical instruments especially guitars was booming. Mr Rosenbloom was experiencing problems in the supply of musical instruments because of very high demand. For example, the waiting time to get Martin acoustic guitars was 3 years!

It is in this context that Mr Rosenbloom decided to set up his own guitar factory to solve his stock problems. He therefore created a new company called Elger Guitars, whose name was composed of the first syllable of the first names of his children Ellen and Gerson.

In , he made his first instruments himself, but he quickly realized that it would not be possible for him to satisfy the demand on his own. So he employed a German luthier named Karl Muller who, with his brother Georg, formed a small production team. They developed the design of new acoustic guitars and built them in a workshop located in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

The German brothers made top-of-the-range guitars for Elder Guitars until In Mr Rosenbloom has decided to stop producing handmade guitars in favour of importing instruments. With a sharp commercial vision for the time, Elger Guitars became the distributor of the instruments of Hoshino Gakki Gen Company, a Japanese musical instrument manufacturer.

In the s, Made in Japan products did not have a good reputation, just like Chinese products nowadays… It is certainly for this reason that Rosenbloom did not want to import instruments whose brand had a Japanese sounding name. Hoshino Gakki had just bought a small Spanish company called Ibanez and claimed to keep the name.

An interesting fact is that the last Elger guitars from to were all made in Japan and they were very similar to the Ibanez that would later be produced in the s. Hoshino Gakki eventually bought Elger Guitars in and the Japanese company won the rights to import and distribute musical instruments in the United States. When it entered the American market, Ibanez was still an unknown company. Quickly, the brand would expand in the 70s with copies of guitars from major brands such as Fender , Gibson and Rickenbacker.

The success of the marked was due to cheap labour and cheaper raw materials than in the United States, as well as a good automation of the production processes that existed in Japan.

To date, we can verify that these factors are dominating a large part of the market. If a copy is well made, it will always find buyers…. However, we must remember that the oldest copies of guitars made in Japan are not totally faithful to the originals because they were made from photos of catalogues or artists.

Despite all this, Ibanez became popular because young American artists could buy these models cheaper than the original guitars e. Elger Co. At the same time, Norlin claimed compensation of 1. In fact, Gibson had been threatening Ibanez with a trial for quite some time. It is therefore no coincidence that Ibanez had already started to change the format of his guitar heads before the trial even took place, more precisely at the end of !

You can check for yourself by consulting the Ibanez catalogues and you will see that the format of the heads was already different on the instruments proposed in the catalogues. From that year on, the heads had a Guild Guitar format. Gibson Norlin would have tried at the same time to harm Ibanez during the NAMM Show, leaving the Japanese brand with an empty stand because it could not have exhibited its models with a head in Open Book format. However, Ibanez had anticipated the problem and managed to expose his guitars and basses with these Guild format heads.

Consequently, the stories of Gibson Norlin suing various Japanese guitar brands are totally false and unfounded. This change in head size occurred as soon as Ibanez began to affix a serial number to his instruments.

In February , Ibanez concluded an agreement with Norlin agreeing to stop copying Gibson heads. So Ibanez stopped producing copies and started making original guitars. It was at that time that the brand launched the Artist Series and relaunched the Iceman model which became famous in the hands of Paul Stanley Kiss as it became his signature guitar Paul Stanley Iceman.

Do not believe the sellers who use this argument wrongly and through in their sales ads to increase the final price of their instruments. An informed consumer of vintage Japanese guitars is worth two. Stay alert and good music to all! Some of the information in this article comes from GuitarAttack. Vintage Made in Japan guitar aficionado! I do not consider myself a specialist, I still have a lot to learn about MIJ guitars.

I am just an enthusiast who wants to share the results of his research. I hope that my work will be useful. Does anyone know anything about Maya Gibson copies please and likely value? Your email address will not be published. For sale, Lawsuit Japanese guitar. Very rare! If a copy is well made, it will always find buyers… However, we must remember that the oldest copies of guitars made in Japan are not totally faithful to the originals because they were made from photos of catalogues or artists.

Gibson Vs Fernandes? An unknown but interesting fact, Gibson sued Fernandes Japan, at the start of the s because of Burny guitars. As a result, Gibson lost the trial. Consult the catalogs! All the catalogs are available in the section Ibanez Catalogues. Author Recent Posts. Follow VJG. Frankie Benedittini.

Latest posts by Frankie Benedittini see all. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

Ibanez vs. Fender: Which Guitar or Bass Is Best for You?

Look at the ads on eBay for example or on Reverb and you will find a large number of sellers who advertise their copies of Gibson and sometimes even Fender! In this case, we often see people talking about Lawsuit guitars when it comes to vintage Japanese guitars produced in the 70s, 80s or even 90s. But is that correct? After the Second World War, the United States experienced a boom period and the market for musical instruments especially guitars was booming.

History of Ibanez Guitars

Today Wired Guitarist is going to give an overview of the rich history of Ibanez Guitars! Specifically their bread and butter Japanese models. How have they fared over the last 30 years, and what state are they in currently? Why are we qualified to speak on the topic? In fact, we love the brand so much that when we launched our store , we made sure to become authorized Ibanez dealers. These were by and large fantastic, by the way. However, by , a lawsuit against them had settled, and they had to do some rebranding. In this time, they were producing some original models that for the most part were either too experimental or unrefined to catch on.

Vintage Ibanez Guitar Catalogs - 1971 through 2007

They may have been a relative latecomer to the scene, but Ibanez guitars have forged a reputation amongst musicians as a serious choice of instrument, not least when setting up to play jazz. In this article we take a brief look at the history of Ibanez guitars and pick out four of their best-loved designs, made famous by some of the best jazz guitarists in history. One of the largest and most popular manufacturers of electric and acoustic guitars today, Ibanez are known world-wide for producing a huge range of high quality instruments to suit a variety of genres and budgets. S guitar manufacturers.

Robot or human?

The Hoshino Gakki company began in as the musical instrument sales division of the Hoshino Shoten , a bookstore company. The modern era of Ibanez guitars began in and the late s and s Ibanez catalogues show guitars with some wild looking designs. In the s Japanese guitar makers started to mainly copy American guitar designs and Ibanez branded copies of Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker models started to appear. This resulted in the so-called Ibanez lawsuit period. During this lawsuit period Ibanez started producing guitars under the Mann name to avoid authorities in the US and Canada.

Ibanez Electric Guitars Explained (All Models Comparison)

Many people around the world have dedicated their lives to music. It may be by having a musical career or by creating musical instruments that would enable other people to play beautiful music. There are several musical instruments that one can choose from to play music, but probably the most common musical instrument used around the world is a guitar. There are different kinds of guitars that one can play. Moreover, there are also various brands that offer unique pieces of guitars. One of the most famous brands is Ibanez.

Ibanez: One of the Best Guitar Brands in Japan

Instead of investing resources into research and development, Ibanez began producing high quality, low priced copies of successful Hagstrom and EKO models. These guitars were exported to the U. Hosino U.

Ibanez Guitars | The Instruments & The History

The history of Ibanez guitars is one of the most interesting ones in the guitar world. It all began in when Hoshino Gakki, a Japanese Musical Instruments company began importing and further-on, bought out the Spanish company Salvador Ibanez guitars as it was pretty much destroyed during the Spanish civil war. Most of its offerings were blatant copies of classical American brands such as Fender, Gibson and Rickenbacker. However after a lawsuit filed against it in by a less than amused Gibson, Hoshino was forced to adopt a different business model.

The Ibanez Story: An Iconic Guitar Brand

Bacon, Tony. Ibanez is the most important Japanese guitar brand, and this new book tells the story of its electric guitars, tracking the fortunes of this impressive brand. At first the guitars were cheap and basic, and in the s, Ibanez was best known for its copies of leading Gibson instruments, including Les Pauls, SGs, and Explorers. As the Japanese music industry gained maturity and increased quality, Ibanez made more assured instruments with original features; and in the late '70s and early '80s, it hit new peaks of achievement. The big break came in the late '80s with the arrival of Steve Vai's impressive and spectacular JEM signature models. In recent years, the company has continued to provide great modern electric guitars.

El Argonauta. La librería de la música.

Ibanez is a Japanese guitar brand which is owned by Hoshino Gakki. Based in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, Hoshino Gakki was one of the first Japanese musical instrument companies to gain a significant foothold in import guitar sales in the United States and Europe. Ibanez sells electric and acoustic guitars and basses and other stringed instruments such as ukuleles, mandolins and banjos.