The Knockoff That Became a Knockout

Forced to stop copying U.S. guitars, Ibanez launched the all-original Artist line and took America by storm.

AMONG THE MANY guitars that took their design cues from a handful of seminal designs, the Ibanez Artist Model 2617 stood out as distinctly different, even enticingly exotic. And yet it looked undeniably classic.

The golden age of American electric guitar design and manufacture stretched from the early 1950s to the mid '60s. For Japanese guitars, however, the renaissance didn't occur until a decade later. Today, nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century. players are again appreciating the quality and originality that made these late-'70s and early '80s creations so desirable and successful in the first place.

Many fans of Japanese electric guitars refer to the mid to late '70s as the "lawsuit era," a term that references the direct copies of American guitars that arrived from that country just before its guitar makers began creating models based on original designs. In truth, Gibson rarely ever filed lawsuits against Japanese manufacturers, as they would have been difficult to pursue and enforce from such a distance. However, the company did sue Elger, Ibanez's U.S. importer, in 1978, putting the squeeze on any direct copies brought into the American market.

Predictably, Ibanez responded by producing original designs for export to America. In fact, the brand had been designing and building some unequivocally original models before the lawsuit, many of them under the Artist banner, which it had also applied to several guitars that closely aped Gibson's Les Paul and SG. Copies continued to emerge after 1978 but weren't shipped to the American market, making it more difficult for Gibson to enforce restrictions imposed by the U.S. courts.