Ibanez Guitars

The roots of Ibanez guitars go all the way back to Nagoya, Japan, to a company named Hoshino, which was founded in 1908 as a sheet-music store and later broadened its line to include other music products. A few decades after it began, Hoshino started selling a Spanish guitar model called the Ibanez, which, in 1957, became the namesake for the company.

The 1960s and 1970s are known today as Ibanez’s lawsuit period—the company produced a variety of imitations of guitars by Fender, Gibson, and others. The imitations earned a reputation for low prices and relatively high quality, but Ibanez’s strategy ultimately resulted in a lawsuit brought by the parent company of Gibson in 1977...