Today, Ibanez is known as the brand that constantly pushes the boundaries of guitar innovation, with guitars featuring 9 strings or 30 frets. But where does this venerable brand come from, and how did it end up reaching such extremes?
Judging by the name, one might imagine that Ibanez traces its roots back to a 17th-century Spanish luthier, someone like Pepe Ramiro Ibanez, handcrafting 9-string guitars with pure elbow grease. In reality, Ibanez has always been a Japanese brand. The name Salvador Ibanez indeed comes from a Spanish luthier whose instruments Hoshino Gakki imported starting in 1929, but within a few years, Ibanez became the name chosen by the Japanese to conquer the world.
From Copies to Originals
After supplying classical instruments to music shops, Ibanez ventured into the electric guitar market in the late 1950s. At the time, Japanese manufacturing was so much cheaper than American labor that Ibanez quickly became the go-to brand for beginners seeking an instrument resembling the famous American models. Ibanez had its guitars built in various factories, gradually establishing its name, before settling in the late 1960s with the FujiGen Gakki plant (now globally renowned for its build quality). This ushered in the era of the infamous “lawsuit” period, when Gibson pressured them to stop making identical copies of their star instruments. Truth be told, the Ibanez copies of the time were remarkably convincing and are still traded at high prices today. They even went so far as to copy Gibson’s more obscure models, like the double-neck SG or the Explorer.
Endorsements Galore
But with Gibson breathing down their neck, Ibanez knew a lawsuit was a losing battle. So they shifted focus to their own models, developing the Musician, Performer, and Roadster series. These featured neck-through designs and ultra-complex electronics (including a preamp developed with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead), as well as Strat-inspired models with humbuckers—an early step toward the superstrat. But it was artist collaborations that propelled Ibanez to the forefront. George Benson, for instance, approached them with the idea for a smaller hollow-body guitar, resulting in the iconic GB model, still in production today—a jazz guitar about the size of a Les Paul. They also signed Paul Stanley of Kiss with the Iceman, still their wildest original design. Around this time, they also ventured successfully into effects, with their most famous pedal being the Tube Screamer, which remains the gold standard to this day.
The Guitar That JEM
Next came the hard rock virtuosos of the era, always in search of faster, easier-to-play instruments. Paul Gilbert, Joe Satriani, and most notably Steve Vai, whose JEM model showed Ibanez was willing to try anything to satisfy its endorsers. The JEM had a Strat-like shape, but sleeker and sharper, with an ultra-thin neck, scalloped upper frets, the iconic “monkey grip” handle, an HSH pickup layout, and a routed cavity behind the Floyd Rose tremolo for maximum pitch bending. Released in flashy colors, it became a huge success, and in 1986 Ibanez introduced a more affordable version, the RG550. This defined Ibanez’s identity as a maker of fast, feature-packed instruments, cemented by ads featuring shred guitar heroes with their Ibanez axes in hand.
One More String
In 1987, a second Steve Vai collaboration appeared: the Universe. It was the first mass-produced solid-body 7-string guitar. At first, success was slow, and the brand even considered discontinuing it, but by the mid-90s, with bands like KoRn and Limp Bizkit rising, the 7-string became the must-have instrument of nu-metal. During the 90s, Ibanez also branched into the underground scene with artists like The Offspring’s guitarists and J. from White Zombie. Around this time, John Petrucci of Dream Theater also developed a model with them.
To Infinity and Beyond
The 2000s also saw a wave of high-profile endorsers like the guitarists of DragonForce, while long-standing artists continued to fly the Ibanez flag worldwide. In 2007, the RG2228 made waves as the first mass-produced 8-string guitar. Today, such instruments have become standard, popularized by bands like Meshuggah and Animals As Leaders. Ibanez remains at the forefront of innovation, recently unveiling attention-grabbing NAMM models: the RG550HX with 30 playable frets, and even a prototype 9-string guitar… so stay tuned!
