A wholesaler that became a brand.

Fernandes began as a wholesaler. Its own history, archived in 2015, says Saito Gakki was founded in Bunkyō, Tokyo, in February 1969 and started by selling guitars wholesale in Tokyo; the credit agency Tokyo Shoko Research gives the company’s founding date as 25 February 1969. English Wikipedia says it began by distributing flamenco guitars built by subcontracted Japanese factories; Japanese Wikipedia says classical guitars. In October 1972 the firm took the name Fernandes, and its history says it released the first Fernandes original guitar that December, although an older page on its website dated its first electric guitar sales to 1971. No source we found names a founder, so we do not.

From the start Fernandes designed and sold guitars rather than building them. Tokyo Shoko Research reported in 2025 that its manufacturing was “basically outsourced.” English Wikipedia names Kawai, Matsumoku, Dyna Gakki and Tokai among the Japanese makers that built its guitars, and says cheaper models came from Korea from the late 1980s and from China from the 2000s. Its history lists moves to Mejiro in 1973 and to Shimo-Ochiai, in Shinjuku, in 1976; an Osaka office opened in 1973 and became a separate company, Osaka Fernandes, in 1977. By 2024 its head office was at Toda, in Saitama, with its registered office in Meguro, Tokyo, according to Tokyo Shoko Research.

Its early range, by its own account, was copies: guitars modelled on Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker designs, including an “FST” copy of the early Stratocaster that it says was especially popular. In 1973 it gave a second name, Burny, to a range of set-neck, mahogany-bodied guitars with vintage-type humbuckers — the Gibson-style side of the business. The company said the name began as a typing error for “Bunny” and was kept because it also suggested “burn.” A Burny Les Paul-style model followed in 1975, and from 1981 Fernandes called its replicas The Revival, promoting them in large catalogues the size of an LP sleeve.

Artists, an elephant and endless sustain.

Fernandes then turned toward its own designs and toward artists. Its first artist models, its website said, appeared around 1973, for the singer Eikichi Yazawa and the guitarist Kazuo Takeda. It became best known in Japan for signature guitars: the Sankei Shimbun reported that Tomoyasu Hotei completed an original model with Fernandes in 1985, and X Japan’s hide was among its best-known players, with Burny making hide models from 1993, by the company’s account. English Wikipedia, citing Guitar Player, says Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong plays a Fernandes Revival Stratocaster-style guitar he calls “Blue.”

Two products defined it. The ZO-3, launched in March 1990, is a small electric guitar shaped like an elephant, with a built-in speaker; the company’s history said 200,000 had been sold by June 1995. The Sustainer, which the same history says first appeared in its guitars in September 1991, uses an electromagnetic driver in the guitar to keep a string vibrating for as long as a note is held. John Schneider’s The Contemporary Guitar describes the principle; unlike the hand-held EBow, it leaves the player free to use a pick. MusicRadar reported in 2009 that U2’s guitar technician said The Edge was using a Fernandes Sustainer guitar on a new version of “Ultra-Violet,” and his listed guitars included Fernandes Native and Retro Rocket Sustainer models.

The company also grew beyond guitars. Its history lists its own amplifiers from 1974, its own tremolo system from 1982, an American company in 1984 and Fernandes Guitars U.S.A. in 1992, a guitar-engineering school in 1985 and Japanese distribution of DOD and DigiTech effects from 1986. Tokyo Shoko Research reported that its annual sales reached the ¥4 billion range in the year to January 1999.

Design and documentation.

The seven European and Japanese guitar brands in this guide have been owned and run in different ways: some are one-maker workshops, some sit inside larger music groups, and one has stopped trading.

In Germany, Framus was founded by Fred Wilfer in Erlangen in 1946 and went bankrupt in the later 1970s — sources differ on the year; his son Hans-Peter Wilfer revived the name in 1995 as part of Warwick, in Markneukirchen, English Wikipedia says. In Sweden, Hagstrom began in 1925 as Albin Hagström’s accordion business and made guitars at Älvdalen from 1958; the brand returned in the mid-2000s, and its website today is published by Musik Meyer of Marburg, Germany, its European distributor. In Finland, Ruokangas, founded by the luthier Juha Ruokangas in 1995, has worked from Harviala manor in Janakkala since 2011 and is solely owned by him, English Wikipedia says.

In France, LAG was founded in Toulouse in 1981 by Michel Chavarria and has belonged since 2002 to Algam of Thouaré-sur-Loire, near Nantes, French Wikipedia says.

In Japan, Tokai Gakki was founded in 1947 and is based in Hamamatsu, according to its website; English Wikipedia says the Grace Company bought it in 2021. Aria grew from Shiro Arai’s Nagoya trading company of 1956, Arai & Co. Fernandes, founded in 1969, stopped trading in July 2024, and a Tokyo court opened bankruptcy proceedings in July 2025, Tokyo Shoko Research reported.

Where the guitars are made varies too — French Wikipedia says LAG’s entry-level and mid-range guitars come from China and South Korea — and the makers do not always say.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A brand that stopped trading in 2024.

Then the business shrank. Tokyo Shoko Research reported that a growing second-hand market and tougher competition hurt sales, which fell to ¥166 million in the year to January 2022, with a net loss of ¥24 million. Osaka Fernandes, a close distributor though not linked by shareholding, entered bankruptcy proceedings in April 2023. Fernandes stopped trading in July 2024 and applied for bankruptcy, then withdrew the application. It filed again in June 2025, and on 9 July 2025 the Tokyo District Court opened bankruptcy proceedings, with debts of about ¥730 million owed to about 60 creditors, according to Tokyo Shoko Research and the Sankei Shimbun, both reporting on 16 July 2025. Many reports from 2024 describe the company as bankrupt from that month; the formal proceedings began a year later. When trading stopped, the Sankei reported, Hotei wrote on Instagram that he found the news “very lonely and regrettable.”

The name may outlive the company. Tokyo Shoko Research quoted people involved as saying that part of the FERNANDES trademarks had been transferred to another company; it did not name that company, and we found no announcement of a new owner or of new guitars in the sources we checked. The Japanese company website returned an error when we checked in October 2026, and fernandesguitars.com, the old American address, now describes itself as an independent archive, not the company.

For a design guide, Fernandes shows how a guitar brand can be built without a factory — on contract makers, artist names and two inventions, an elephant and a sustainer. Compare ESP, another Tokyo guitar company of the 1970s, and Ibanez, which also moved from copies to its own designs. For this guide we use a navy, a signal red and a chrome grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Fernandes’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.