Famous Brands

When it comes to brands, situation with guitars is rather simple. Fender and Gibson are on the top. While Fender guitars have clean sound, Gibson ones have little more distortion by default, so they are more useful for unexperienced players, because errors are less noticeable.
The fact that Fender and Gibson are on the top doesn't mean that all other guitars are trash. There are many guitar manufacturers that make really good guitars. Here will be listed some most notable guitar manufacturers.

The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation is de facto most famous guitar manufacturer in the world. It was founded in Fullerton California, by Clarence Leonidas Fender (Better known as Leo Fender) in 1946. He was most important because of its role in bringing solid body electric guitars to the masses with its low price. Electric guitars were made since the late 1920s, but nobody made such a commercial success than Fender. Other guitar manufacturers made hollow-body electric guitars, but Fender was first who made solid-body versatile guitars. First, other manufacturers laughed at Fender, calling his guitars "shovels" and similar names. But later they realised that Fender's design ain't that bad, so they accepted it. Most known Fender's guitar is Stratocaster.

Fender Stratocaster

The Gibson Guitar Corporation is the second most popular guitar manufacturer in the world. Its headquarters are located in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Top of Gibson guitars is not like standard electric guitar tops, but it's more like acoustic guitar top. The most popular Gibson guitar is Les Paul, named by famous guitarist. Later, for some reasons, the body design of Les Paul was changed, and new guitar was named Gibson SG. The Les Paul returned to the Gibson catalogue in 1968 due to the influence of players such as Eric Clapton and Peter Green.

Both Les Paul and Gibson SG later became very popular with hard rock and heavy metal guitarists: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Joe Perry (Aerosmith) and Ace Frehley (Kiss) preferred Les Paul, while Angus Yound (AC/DC), Tony Iommi and Frank Zappa of Mothers of Invention preferred Gibson SG.

Gibson Les Paul, most known guitar from Gibson

The Epiphone Company is another guitar manufaturer. It was bought by Gibson in late 1950s. 'Till then, Epiphone was actually main Gibson's rival in archtops. Their professional archtops, including the Emperor, Deluxe, Broadway and Triumph, rivaled Gibson ones. Sadly, company's weakness after WWII allowed Gibson to buy it.
Most known Epiphone guitar was Epiphone Casino VT. This rythm guitar was most famous for being used by The Beatles.

Gretsch is a U.S. musical instruments manufacturer, mainly known for electric guitars and drums. It's most famous electric guitar is White Falcon. After many years of tough times, in 2003 Gretsch and Fender reached an agreement, giving Fender most control over production, although the Gretsch family still owns Gretsch Guitars.