Industry Musical instruments Website www.fujigen.co.jp Founded 1960 | Area served Global Headquarters Matsumoto Type of business Private | |
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Products Guitars, bass guitars, violins | ||
Fgn fujigen guitars japan documentary and factory tour official
FujiGen Gakki (Japanese) フジゲン 楽器 is a musical instrument manufacturer based at Matsumoto in Japan and is named after the famous Mount Fuji. Gen means stringed instruments and Gakki means musical instrument - the name is literally translated to "Fuji Stringed Musical Instruments". FujiGen does OEM guitar manufacturing for well known guitar brands and they also manufacture their own brands of guitars such as Heartfield and FgN.
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History
FujiGen started production in 1960, making violins and classical guitars. In 1962 FujiGen started production of electric guitars. In the 1970s FujiGen started making guitars (OEM) for companies such as Hoshino Gakki (Ibanez), CSL (Antoria), Kanda Shokai (Greco guitars) and Yamaha. In 1977/1978 FujiGen went into a joint venture with Roland to produce guitar synthesizers. In 1981 FujiGen opted out of acoustic guitar production to mainly concentrate on solid body guitar production. FujiGen obtained a CNC router in mid 1981 for making guitar parts and also began to manufacture their own pickups starting in late 1981.
In 1981/1982 FujiGen obtained the Fender Japan contract which lasted until 1996/1997 and in 1983 FujiGen were producing 14,000 guitars a month with 80% of the guitars being made for export markets and 20% being made for Japanese domestic markets. In mid/late 1992 FujiGen obtained a part of the Orville by Gibson contract which ended in 1998 and from then on have made Epiphone Japan solid body guitars, some Gretsch models and their own branded FgN guitars. FujiGen still does OEM guitar manufacturing for companies like Ibanez and Epiphone but in much smaller quantities than in the past. FujiGen has three factories: the Omachi factory in Omachi, the Hirooka factory (established around 1992) in Shiojiri and the Matsumoto head office factory in Matsumoto.