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If you wanted a total history of Ibanez you´d have go back to 1908 when a company named Hoshino began as a sheet music store and later music products distributor in Nagoya Japan.
If you wanted a little less completeness than that you´d go back about forty-five when Hoshino began distributing a Spanish guitar named Ibanez. Or perhaps you´d simply go to the Mid 60´s when Hoshino, who by that time had purchased the rights to the Ibanez name, began shipping incredibly funky looking guitars to the United States, many of which were actually sold in department stores.
But for most of us, Ibanez pretty much begins almost 30 years ago, when Hoshino opened an office near Philadelphia, PA for more efficiently distributing Ibanez guitars to the United States. Most of those guitars were Ibanez´ famous high quality (but very inexpensive) copies of just about everything–you name it, we probably made a version of it. At that time many American instruments were going through an unfortunate period of increasing prices with decreasing quality, and these copies hit a ready market.
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