I recently picked up a very clean 1985 blonde fg100 and I love it. These catalog scans are provided solely for personal academicresearch purposes, so that collectors and others who own one or more of these fantastic guitars can properly identify the model and year of manufacture.Hello, I just stumbled upon this site, glad to know I am not alone in my appreciation for these older Ibanez's.

This website has NO RELATIONSHIP with the Hoshino Gakki Group and makes no claims to ownership of the linked scans. The ICW is a gathering of Ibanez collectors who relish in the challenge of not just collecting Ibanez guitars, but of identifying old models, dating guitars by serial numbers, and generally watching the vintage guitar marketplace to understand how interest in Ibanez guitars is evolving. These guitars are not just beautiful, but are some of the best crafted guitars of all time, by any manufacturer, and represent the pinacle of guitar-making skill and quality.įor a great overall resource for Ibanez guitar questions, check out the Ibanez Collectors World website. The Professional model 2671 was a Les Paul with a vined neck and a fancy headstock.īut soon, the overall shapes of the guitars changed, and models known as the Weir (after Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead), Artist and Musician were introduced.īy 1978, Hoshino had ceased production of all of its copy models and was truly producing 100 original designs. However, this episode has given rise to the term lawsuit guitar, which is used to describe any Japanese copy guitar made in the shape of an American manufacturers model.Īt first, their original designs were subtle variations on the copy models.įor example, the Custom Agent (model 2405) was basically a Les Paul with a fancy scroll headstock, a fancy pick guard, and, yes, fancy inlays on the neck and body. There is a form of urban legend that circulates in the guitar community that has many variations, but usually involves either Gibson or Fender suing Ibanez, Aria, or some other Japanese manufacturer, with the intent to stop that company from manufacturing superior copies. Ibanez models replicated such styles as the Gibson Les Paul, Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, Rickkenbacker styles, and others.ĭue to their high quality, Ibanez guitars and those made under other brands, such as Greco and Aria, quickly earned a reputation around the world as quality instruments at a great value. They were not forgeries, as they were never sold with misleading logos or with the intent to deceive. However, every attempt has been made to provide only verifiable and true information, in an attempt to set the record straight and dispell some modern myths about Ibanez model guitars. During the 1970s and most of the 1980s, Ibanez guitars were made almost exclusively in Japan, and the majority of electric models were made at the Fujigen Gakki manufacturing plant.

Ibanez fg 100