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Ibanez Guitar Shops
Ibanez are currently owned by the Hoshino Gakki company and base much of their enterprise in Nagoya, in Aichi, Japan. They were one of the first manufacturers of guitars in Japan to gain a significant proportion of the market share in the USA and Europe and blazed the way for other companies such as ESP to sell guitars abroad. The Hoshino Gakki company began in 1908 as a musical instrument sales division of the Hoshino Shotenbookstore
company. In 1935 they began manufacturing their own stringed guitars and instruments. The company had little presence in the Western world until
the mid-1960s. The Ibanez name dates back to 1929 when Hoshino Gakki started importing Salvador Ibanez acoustic guitars into Japan from the famous Spanish luthier Salvador Ibáñez (1854 - 1920), but when the Spanish workshop was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War
(1936 - 1939) and the original guitars became unavailable (and very
much sought after because of their excellent quality), Hoshino Gakki
bought the Ibanez brand name rights and started making Spanish and acoustic guitars on their own, first as "Ibanez Salvador", and later as "Ibanez".These guitars have seen a huge surge in popularity that began in the late 1950's when the company began to showcase some unusual and unique designs. The company also produced copies of more popular Gibson, Fender, Dan Armstrong and Rickenbacker guitars that they sold at a significantly reduced price. The low price combined
with the relatively high quality of the guitars made these models very
popular. Many guitar aficionados feel that the early and mid 1970s mark
a low point in the quality of guitars from the major manufacturers,
which helped contribute to the popularity of the companies copies. The infamous "lawsuit period" occured with the major manufacturers stopping smaller companies producing similar designs so Hoshino Gakki introduced new models that
were not copies of the Gibson or Fender designs such as the
Iceman and Roadstar guitars. The company has produced its own unique
guitars ever since. The late 1980s and early 1990s were an
important period for Hoshino Gakki's Ibanez brand. Hoshino Gakki's
relationship with Frank Zappa's former guitarist Steve Vai resulted in the introduction of the Ibanez JEM and the Ibanez Universe models and after the earlier successes of the Ibanez Roadstar and Ibanez Iceman models in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Hoshino Gakki entered the superstrat market with the Ibanez RG series of gutiars which were a low priced version of the Ibanez JEM model.
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