The Lawsuits a potted History

Today most guitar makers have their guitars made in China and believe it or not almost all out of the same factory. Others are made in Korea , Mexico and even India. Many have good quality control and on the whole as far as the more expensive products are concerned turn out a reasonable to very good product. As far as the budget guitars are concerned , they may look nice but that is usually where it ends and are churned out for profitabilty rather than a quest to produce the best musical intruments.  

This is a far cry from a guitar hand crafted by Guitar craftsmen ( luthiers ) from carefully selected materials, naturally dried timbers and who have a pride in what they are making.  A guitar to last a lifetime. Today this pride is still alive and kicking in counties such as USA , France , UK , Germany, Japan and even Korea but you really do have to go to the high end of the market to find guitars made this way in the Historic, Re Issue or Signature series. Today a top quality new Japanese  instrument will cost the same as a USA one but in the 60’s 70’s 80’s with much lower labour and materials rates it was a very different story.

The Japanese, with the exception of a period in the 60’s when they flooded the world with cheap tat have a proud history going back centuries of high quality manufacture and pride verging on fanatasism. It is a matter of honour in Japan to produce the best.

Today of course they produce the worlds best electronics, most reliable cars , best motorcycles, watches, cameras and a million other top quality items. They have a real talent for copying something and improving it and their attention to detail and quality control is legendary.

Many of the Japanese  instrument makers already existed when Rock & Roll and the solid bodied electric guitar changed the world and others would be born around this time to ride the production bandwagon making exact copies of the almost exclusive USA guitars of Fender and Gibson and a lesser extent Rickenbacker.  Even the style of writing on the headstock and shape was copied which later lead to the now famous lawsuits. ( Much quoted but often wrong )

From the word go many ( not all ) of the Japanese makers were crafting fine guitars from fine materials but were let down by the electronics . Within a few years however from around 1976 this had also been sorted and the end product were guitars were very very good . Some of the makers easily matched if not surpassed the USA products of the time. This quality and desirability has never been equalled since either by the Japanese or USA – unless you go way way up the price scale. 

There are potted histories on each of the Japanese makers in other pages and a brief description of the products and almost without exception are made in either the famous Fuji Gen-Gakki factory, the Hoshino Factory or the Matsumoku factory. Most of the guitars on this site are from those factories and era whatever the name on the headstock.

More history -  Gibson, Fender , Rickenbacker and a few others were by 1977ish concerned about the inroads these quality instruments were making into their home market especially as they were finding their  way  in the hands of eminent guitarists of the day and influencing the up and coming wannabes. The Japanese were also way in front with their thinking and were producing re issue guitars well before the main USA makers and if you wanted a Gibson 59 re issue for instance it had to be from the makers listed later. Something had to give.

A lawsuit driven by the main USA manufacturers against the Japanese makers who were producing these instruments was served with the main case centred around the blatant copy of the headstock design. The main case being Norland v Ibanez.  The case was conceded and finally settled out of court. Everything before this time with the open book headstock from the Hoshino / Fuji Gen Factory along with Greco , Burny , Fernandes, Tokai are rightly or wrongly known as the Lawsuit Guitars and are now very collectible and rapidly rising in price. 100% in two years in some cases because of the relative small numbers produced and slowly rising demand as the west becomes aware of them. This awareness has come as a result mostly of the internet.

A couple of things happened about now the first being that the Japanese continued to make superb instruments with slightly re designed headstocks and the second thing was that the American makers licensed some of the Japanese factories to effectively copy their own products. For instance – Greco ( Stratocaster part only ) became Fender Japan – Orville and Orville by Gibson were Gibson Japan  and later became Epiphone Japan for a couple of years. Greco, Burny and Orville without the by Gibson strap line were for the home Japanese   market only.  The Ibanez name was originally purchase by Hoshino to make exports to the USA easier as Japanese sounding names were not flavour of the month in that era.

All very complicated and things were about to change again around the mid to late 90’s as the Japanese economy grew and pay rates soared  much production switched to Korea and most of the old models and techniques were lost. Since then of course China has become the main manufacturing centre in the never ending quest for cheap products . The high end " real " guitars are still made in the home country wether it be Japan or USA