Penco was a brand of guitars manufactured circa 1974 to 1978 in the same factory (Hoshino Gakki) in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 as the Ibanez

Ibanez

is a Japanese guitar brand owned by Hoshino Gakki. Based in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan, Hoshino Gakki were one of the first Japanese musical instrument companies to gain a significant foothold in import guitar sales in the United States and Europe, as well as the first brand of guitars to mass produce...

 guitars and was distributed by the Philadelphia Music Exchange. The Penco brand was of relatively high quality and part of the "copy guitar/lawsuit guitar" craze of the 1970s. Penco made Martin

C. F. Martin & Company

C.F. Martin & Company is a US guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. Martin is highly regarded for its steel-string guitars, and is a leading mass manufacturer of flattop acoustics with models that retail for thousands of dollars and vintage instruments that often...

 and Gibson

Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

 style acoustic guitars. Some were fully solid wood, & some were laminate

Laminate

A laminate is a material that can be constructed by uniting two or more layers of material together. The process of creating a laminate is lamination, which in common parlance refers to the placing of something between layers of plastic and gluing them with heat and/or pressure, usually with an...

. They also made bolt neck copies of Les Paul

Les Paul

Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...

 electrics, SG

Gibson SG

At the launch of the SG in 1961, Gibson offered four variants of the SG; the SG Junior , the SG Special, the SG Standard, and the top-of-the-line SG Custom. However, Gibson's current core variants as of 2010 are the SG Standard and the SG Special...

 guitars and basses, Rickenbacker 4001 basses

Rickenbacker 4001

The Rickenbacker 4001 is a bass guitar that was manufactured by Rickenbacker as a "deluxe model" of the 4000 between 1961 and 1981 before being replaced by an updated version, the Rickenbacker 4003...

, Stratocaster/Telecaster copies; and the odd mandolin

Mandolin

A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...

 and banjo

Banjo

In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

.
They also made excellent 12 string acoustic guitars. The Penco brand was also put on "lawsuit" Korina-finished Explorer styled guitars. These were identical to the Ibanez Destroyer and the Greco Destroyer of the same period. The Ibanez line was distributed on the West coast of the U.S., the Greco was exclusively for Japan, and Penco was distributed on the East coast of the U.S.