Ibanez is the best known brand of Hoshino Gakki Ten, a Japanese company that started in the guitar business in the 1920s as an importer. In 1962, the company broke into the US market the easy way, by forming a business partnership with American dealer Harry Rosenbloom of Ardmore, PA, who was selling guitars under the Elger brand. Model 882 was one of the earliest Ibanez-brand solidbodies.

Ironically, Ibanez was still only producing acoustic guitars at the time, so the 882 was out-sourced to other Japanese makers. It was obviously based on Fender’s Jazzmaster but, with it’s rocker-button controls and it’s simple, Bigsby-like vibrato, it was not an outright copy.

Through the 1960s, Ibanez maintained it’s own identity with models largely inspired by Burns of London, but they fell by the wayside in the 1970s when Japanese companies began unashamedly copying classic Gibsons and Fenders. The “copy era” ended when Gibson filed a patent infringement suit against Elger in 1977, after which Ibanez went on to become one of the most respected of Japanese makers.