Takamine

Steel-string guitars/ Acoustic guitar-bass
Takamine is a Japanese guitar manufacturer based in Nakatsugawa, Gifu, Japan. Takamine is known for its steel-string guitars. Takamine had its early beginnings while guitar playing and music was gaining popularity in Japan during the early 60's. As their business grew they saw the need to develop their skills and attract design and manufacturing talent. One of the most important additions to the company was one Mr. Mass Hirade.
Hirade joined Takamine in 1968, and made great improvements upon design and build quality, and set forth with his staff to energize and strengthen the business. The factory began producing their world class "Classical" that to this day still carry the Hirade name. Through Hirade's dedication and commitment to Takamine, he was able to begin an overseas trading business in 1975. Takamine Guitars were able to reach out to guitar players around the world. Takamine was finally placed in the hands of musicians who had only heard about their great sound and fine craftsmanship.
Every year since 1987 Takamine presents a Limited Edition Guitar model, which gets produced in very limited quantities up to a few hundred guitars for the world wide distribution. These guitars always come with the latest pickup/preamplifier combination available and artful inlays, often with motifs focusing on nature or astronomical phenomena. The first book about Takamine guitars was released in November 2007.

Dean

Dean Guitars is an American manufacturer of guitars. It was founded in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois, by Dean Zelinsky, and is currently owned by Armadillo Enterprises in Tampa, Florida.
After nearly ten years of production, Zelinsky sold the company to Oscar Medeiros, who had ownership of the brand name and trademark until the mid 90s.
Medeiros stopped manufacturing Dean Guitars in the mid 1990s or so when Armadillo Enterprises purchased the company in 1997. Production of the uniquely shaped Dean electric guitars and other musical instruments accounts for the majority of Armadillo's sales each year. In late 2008, Nathan Karls, formerly of Megadeth joined Dean Guitars as lead engineer.

Dean Guitars is best known for their line of electric guitars that include the ML, Razorback, Cadillac, Soltero, Split Tail, Vendetta, z and the Dean V.

Dean bass guitar models include the Demonator, Edge, Metalman, Rhapsody, EVO and Zone.
Dean Guitars offers a full line of acoustics as well. In addition to the traditional acoustic instrument shapes, Dean also has acoustic versions of their ML and V electric guitars.
In 2007, Dean Guitars began producing their own pickups in their USA facility called Dean DMT.
At the 2009 NAMM trade show, they unveiled the new Dime Blacktooth amplifier, which will be shipping mid-year.

Ovation

Ovation Guitar Company (acoustic guitars, Ovation has also produced solid body electric guitars and active basses), a holding of Kaman Music Corporation, is a guitar manufacturing company based in New Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Ovation primarily manufactures acoustic guitars.
Ovation guitars are differentiated by their composite synthetic bowl, rather than the traditional wooden back and sides of the modern acoustic guitar as produced by luthiers starting in the late 18th century. Ovation has also produced solid body electric guitars and active basses.

Developed starting in 1966 and introduced as the 'Balladeer' in February, 1967, Ovations reached the height of their popularity in the 1980s, where they were more often than not seen during live performances by touring artists if acoustic guitars were being played. Ovation guitars' synthetic bowl and early use (1971) of preamps, onboard equalization and piezo pickups were particularly attractive to live acoustic musicians who constantly battled feedback problems from the high volumes needed in live venues.
The first Ovation guitar was developed in 1966 by Charles Kaman (born 1919). Kaman, an amateur guitarist from an early age, received his bachelors degree in aeronautical engineering from the Catholic University of America in Washington, and then worked on helicopter design as an aerodynamacist at United. Eventually he founded his own helicopter design company, Kaman Aircraft, in 1945.
In 1972, Ovation introduced one of the first production solid body electric guitars with active electronics, the Ovation Breadwinner. The model failed to gain widespread popularity, however, and production of the Breadwinner and the Ovation Deacon ceased in 1980. Ovation made several other solid body models up until the mid 80s. Many of these guitars have become collector's items since only a few thousand were made of each model. Since that time the company's main focus has been acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars.

Other Ovation innovations include composite tops and multiple offset sound holes on guitar tops, pioneered in the Adamas model in 1977. Kaman Music has also sold budget guitars and even mandolins and ukuleles, based on similar design principles to the Ovation such as the Korean-built Celebrity series and the Korean or Chinese-built Applause brand.