A History Of Ibanez Guitars

As part of a series on famous guitar manufacturers, I’m going to take a look back at the storied history of Ibanez Guitars – the first Japanese guitar maker to really make a go of it in the United States. With the company recently passing the milestone of its 100th year in business, I thought it would be good to take a trip in the Wayback Machine and find out where they got their start.

The company that would become Ibanez Guitars was founded in 1908 as Hoshino Gakki, a subsidiary of a bookstore company known as Hoshino Shoten. They imported a variety of Western musical instruments as well as producing traditional Japanese instruments. In 1929, the first recorded use of the Ibanez name appears, as the company began importing Spanish guitars from the Valencian luthier Salvador Ibáñez. When Ibáñez’s workshop was razed to the ground during the Spanish Civil War, Hoshino Gakki purchased the trademark and decided to start making guitars for themselves.

With the rise of rock & roll and the Japanese variant known as “group sounds,” Ibanez guitars began to grab a foothold both at home and abroad. Electric guitars were the hot new trend, in a number of styles and configurations, and Ibanez led the pack with some extremely experimental designs. They also produced knock-offs of many popular American styles from brands like Rickenbacker and Gibson. However, starting in the 1970s, Western guitar makers began to be more protective over their trademarks, removing imitators from the market left and right. Ibanez was the target of several lawsuits, but they rose like a phoenix from adversity to enter a new period of prosperity in the 1980s with some extremely important celebrity endorsements.

Two of the most famous Ibanez guitar players found their stars rising in the Me Decade – first, Steve Vai, the legendary metal sideman who got his start with Frank Zappa’s band before backing up David Lee Roth, Whitesnake, and many others, started a relationship with Hoshino Gakki that led to the introduction of the Ibanez Universe, a quirky seven-string guitar. Secondly, the lightweight Ibanez R series quickly became the favorite axe of wild prog explorer Joe Satriani, who became attached to the brand and soon had his own signature line, the JS series. Other famous Ibanez guitar players include Marty Friedman of Megadeth, who has his own signature model; Herman Li of Dragonforce; and Paul Stanley of Kiss.

Ibanez has survived for a century producing high-quality guitars for rock and metal, with great response and sound at an affordable price. Here’s looking forward to another hundred years of Ibanez guitars!