Is My Vintage, Made-in-Japan Guitar a Real Ibanez?

I have been playing, collecting, repairing and analyzing vintage Ibanez (and other MIJ guitars) for over 30 years, and I am often asked this question. The reason I get asked it is because many people who are selling an old guitar without the Ibanez brand on it put something to this effect in their ad:

• "Made at the Ibanez factory", or
• "Made for Ibanez for sale in another country", or
• "Everyone knows Ibanez sold guitars without logos on them to avoid the lawsuits"

So, if you have found  this article because you are considering buying a cool old guitar, the information I have presented  below should help you avoid paying more for a guitar than it is actually worth, or finding out later, when you go to sell it, that it really isn't an Ibanez at all.

The Bottom Line
Let me get right to the point:
If a guitar does not have a valid "Ibanez" logo on its headstock,
then it's NOT an Ibanez guitar.

That gets right to the point. Hoshino Gakki (the Japanese trading company  that owns the "Ibanez" brand name) took great pains to address the issue way back then, but these days, nobody seems to take their word for it.

Hoshino Gakki, Fujigen Gakki, and the "Ibanez" Brand
To understand why a lot of people get confused about the issue of whether a guitar is "made by Ibanez" or "made at the Ibanez factory" we have to look at the relationship between Hoshino, Fujigen, and "Ibanez".
First, "Ibanez" is just a brand name. (Yes, it's confusing because even Hoshino refers to themselves as "Ibanez" in their modern advertisements.) There is no "Ibanez" company or factory. What does exist is a Trading Company named Hoshino Gakki Group. That company owns the Ibanez and TAMA brands (as well as some other minor brands). They are based in Japan, but also have a US subsidiary, Hoshino USA, headquartered in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. Hoshino owns no manufacturing facilities beyond a small custom shop in California. All of its guitars are built by various manufacturers around the world. Currently, Ibanez brand guitars are sourced from factories in China, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan (and possibly other countries I don't know about).
During the 1970s, Hoshino used a single Japanese manufacturer for its electric guitar production. That company is named Fujigen Gakki. Currently Fujigen makes its own line of self-branded instruments, but in the 1960s up through the present, it also contracts with a number of other companies to produce instruments with other brand names on them. Beginning in the late 1960s, Hoshino began contracting with Fujigen to produce Ibanez-branded instruments. Through the 1970s and early/mid 1980s, Fujigen was the exclusive manufacturer of electric Ibanez guitars and basses.

The Big Confusion
It's this intricate relationship between distributor (Hoshino), brand (Ibanez) and factory (Fujigen) which makes for much of the initial confusion surrounding MIJ guitars and their origins. You see, Fujigen did not make Ibanez-branded guitars exclusively. It always had contracts with other distributors and even made non-branded guitars that could be sold by anyone willing to purchase them wholesale. Fujigen is known to have produced guitars with these brands during the 1970s:

• Greco (for the Kanda Shokai trading group)
• Antoria
• Crestwood
• Electa (note: Not Electra, with an "r")
• Carlo Robelli
• Yamaha
• Epiphone

And, there are obviously many more. To confuse matters more, Kanda Shokai (the Greco brand owner) entered into a contract with Fender and Fujigen to produce the first of the "Joint Venture" Squier stratocasters and telecasters, beginning in 1982. So the waters muddy even further.
The result is that people get confused about WHERE a guitar was made and WHO it was made for. Since Fujigen is one of the major Japanese guitar manufacturers, people assume that any guitar they've made was "made at the Ibanez factory" or was "made for Ibanez under a different brand". That's simply not true. To add to the confusion, there were other large guitar manufacturers in Japan at the time (Matsumoku was one and Kasuga was another) and people have made the leap to say that literally ANY guitar stamped "MADE IN JAPAN" must have been produced at the Ibanez factory or for Ibanez.
Some brands known to have come out of the Matsumoku factory:

• Aria
• Cortez
• Cort
• Electra
• Ventura
• Westone

Kasuga Factory Origin:

• Fernandes
• Burny

Here's a quick way to tell if you have a Matsumoku factory guitar (whether branded or not). On its neck plate (or stamped into the guitar, or on the truss rod cover) it will say, "STEEL REINFORCED NECK". That's a dead giveaway that you've got one of "Uncle Matt's" guitars.

No Name MIJ Guitars
Another big point of contention is the subject of no-name (unbranded) guitars. As I said above, Fujigen and the other manufacturers produced guitars with no logos at all for sale around the world. That in itself shouldn't cause much confusion, because we know (from Hoshino) that "if it doesn't say Ibanez" it's not an Ibanez. However, Fujigen Gakki, the manufacturer of Ibanez-branded guitars would provide stock, no-name images to Hoshino and other distributors for use in their catalogs. It made sense. Fujigen only had to take one picture of a guitar instead of one with each different brand on it. I can't confirm this, but Fujigen may have gone as far as to produce the majority of the catalog, and Hoshino would put its "Ibanez" brand on the front and back covers. Some people have found online copies of these older catalogs (a good source for these can be found at Vintage Ibanez Guitar Catalogs - 1971 through 2007) and point to the pictures without logos as evidence that "Ibanez" made unbranded guitars. As we can see now, that's just not true.

Denne artikel stammer fra www.chucke.com/guitars hjemmeside.
Jeg har forkortet en smule, ligesom jeg har udeladt billeder
som jeg ikke har rettighederne til.

Post Scriptum:

En Ibanez guitar uden navn kan faktisk godt være en rigtig Ibanez. Sagen er jo at de japanske guitarer ikke var særligt anerkendte i "gamle dage". En del af dem, der ikke havde råd til at købe feks. Gibson eller Fender, købte en fed japaner og fjernede firmanavnet fra guitaren. Så var det jo næsten en rigtig amerikaner (???)
Jeg finder jævnligt gamle Yamaha, Ibanez, Kasuga og Aria guitarer, hvor logoerne er blevet fjernet. Fede instrumenter, der er blevet endnu billigere, da de nu slet ikke hedder noget.
Man oplever såmænd også at der er blevet monteret en Gibson eller Fenderlogo på en god gammel Japanerguitar.