Who actually built your Japanese guitar (FujiGen, Deviser, Tokai...) - the Roland GR-500 connection, and what the Japanese used market asks right now (Sept 2026)

[RenSynthJp]

Following on from the Walkman thread - this one is for the guitar-and-synth people, because the factory that built the world's first commercial guitar synthesiser is the same factory behind half the "Made in Japan" guitars on the used market, and almost nobody outside Japan knows the name.

Brands are not factories.

The badge on a Japanese headstock often has nothing to do with who built the instrument. A handful of workshops have done contract manufacturing for the whole industry for sixty years:

- FujiGen (Matsumoto, Nagano). Founded May 1960, electrics from October 1962. In 1978 it formed a joint venture with Roland - that is where the GR-500 / GS-500 guitar-synth controller came from - and in April 1982 it signed the OEM deal with CBS Fender that started the whole "MIJ Fender" story. By 1983 it was making 14,000 electrics a month. Today it sells under its own FGN badge and still does OEM.
- Deviser (also Matsumoto): Bacchus, Momose, Headway, SeventySeven, STR all come out of the same operation; the Asuka factory builds the Handmade series, the cheap "Universe" Bacchus models are imports.
- Tokai (Hamamatsu): the lawsuit-era Love Rock and Springy Sound, plus the TALBO aluminium-body guitar (1983), still in production.
- Kanda Shokai is not a factory at all - it is a wholesaler that owns the Greco and Zemaitis names and has instruments built for it (1970s Grecos were largely FujiGen).
- ESP runs its own ladder: ESP (top, Japan) > Navigator (traditional shapes, Japan) > Edwards (Japan, mid) > Grassroots (budget import) > LTD (export import line). Edwards is essentially a Japan-market brand and the one overseas buyers are usually hunting for.

So "is Greco a good brand" is the wrong question. The right one is which factory and which year.

The GR-500 is the reason I went looking.

There is one on Mercari Japan right now: Roland GR-500 + GS-500 controller, seller states power-on only, no connection cable so nothing else tested - 350,000 yen (US$2,415.00). That is the price of admission for an untested first-generation guitar synth in 2026. For comparison, a Roland GR-1 (the 1992 pedal-format one) with hard case, power-on checked only - 24,900 yen (US$171.81).

What the domestic used listings are asking today (read 16 September 2026, all Mercari Japan private sellers):

FujiGen-built and FujiGen-badged:
- Fender Japan Stratocaster, candy apple red, maple board, seller dates it to the FujiGen period from the Q-serial - 68,000 yen (US$469.20)
- Fender Japan ST-STD with Hot Rails - 59,480 yen (US$410.41)
- Greco Les Paul Custom type, 1977, seller reads the D-serial as FujiGen April 1977, hard case - 229,000 yen (US$1,580.10)
- Greco EG700, 1978, cherry sunburst, pancake-body era - 100,000 yen (US$690.00)
- FGN Neo Classic NST11RAL, 3-tone sunburst, Gotoh hardware - 89,800 yen (US$619.62)

Tokai / Yamaha:
- Tokai Love Rock LS144s gold top, P-90s, 2022 build - 120,000 yen (US$828.00)
- Tokai Love Rock LS-60, 2001 - 80,000 yen (US$552.00)
- Yamaha SG1000, 1978, cherry sunburst, early domestic serial - 129,800 yen (US$895.62)

Deviser / ESP / Hoshino:
- Bacchus Handmade Woodline jazz bass type, "made by Aska" - 89,000 yen (US$614.10)
- Edwards E-LP, early-2000s no-serial first run - 77,777 yen (US$536.66)
- Ibanez Prestige SV5470F, flame top, hard case - 117,000 yen (US$807.30)

And the one every synth person should own anyway:
- Fernandes ZO-3, the elephant travel guitar with the built-in amp, gold hardware, soft case, new strings - 17,800 yen (US$122.82). Runs on a 9 V battery, so no 100 V problem, and it is a very silly thing to run into a modular.

Reading the listing.

シリアル (serial) + 製 (year built) is what a careful Japanese seller leads with, and the serial-to-factory reading is where the value sits - the two Grecos above are priced 129,000 yen apart mostly on that. 美品 = clean, ジャンク = junk/untested, 動作未確認 = "not function-checked" (the GR-500 above). 富士弦製 in a title means the seller is claiming FujiGen build; treat it as a claim to verify from the serial, not a fact.

Getting a guitar home is the expensive part.

Quoted this evening to a Los Angeles zip: a guitar in a hard case (6 kg, 115 cm) is DHL only at US$169.04 (3-7 days) - the economy air service refuses anything that long and Japan Post is not offered on the US lane at all. A 4 kg gig-bag parcel is US$123.71, the ZO-3 (2.5 kg, 75 cm) US$74.65. A pedal-format guitar synth like the GR-1 in a 55 cm box is a different story: US$50.65 economy (10-20 days) or US$79.48 DHL. So for the synth side of this hobby the freight is fine; for full-size guitars budget the shipping as a real part of the price and buy the instrument you actually cannot get at home (a 1970s FujiGen Greco, a Japan-only Prestige colour), not a Pacifica.

Disclosure: I buy and forward through OneMall, a Japan proxy service. The brand-by-brand and factory-by-factory write-up this comes from is here; this is the guitar-synth search I keep open. One buyer's notes, not neutral advice - the factory history holds whoever you buy through.

If anyone wants a domestic price check on a specific MIJ model or a GR-series unit, ask and I will look.