The huge success of Fender electric guitars and Gibson electric guitars helped Ibanez make the decision to start creating the Ibanez electric guitar. In the 1960s Japanese guitar makers started to mainly copy American guitar designs and Ibanez branded copies of Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker models started to appear. This resulted in the so called Ibanez lawsuit period. After the lawsuit period Hoshino Gakki introduced Ibanez models that were not copies of the Gibson or Fender designs such as the Iceman and Ibanez Roadstar. The company has produced its own guitar designs ever since. This forced the Ibanez designers to come up with their own ideas.
Ibanez electric guitars really started to take off in the early 1980's when Hoshino Gakki's relationship with Steve Vai became more solid and the Ibanez Jem was born and the Ibanez Universe models and after the earlier successes of the Roadstar and Iceman models in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Hoshino Gakki entered the superstrat market with the RG series which were a lower priced version of the Ibanez JEM model. Steve Vai used the Ibanez electric guitar exclusively and that is quite a statement to the quality, sound and design of The Ibanez Electric guitar.
Famous guitar players from all over the world and varying styles choose Ibanez as their one and only electric guitar. Like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani are just a few of guitar players that choose the Ibanez electric guitar. Now Ibanez electric guitar offers many different electric guitar models.