History...
I first saw these guitars in 1993, I was watching MTV when LIVE came on with their first really big single 'Selling the Drama'. These guys must have had a sponsorship deal - the singer was playing a Cabriolet SJ Limited; the lead guitarist was playing a Altair USA Custom. At that point, I decided to do two things: buy their CD and buy a starfield.
I don't know of too many other high-profile users of these guitars, the one notable exception being RITCHIE KOTZEN who subsequently replaced Paul Gilbert in Mr Big. Although it has recently emerged that JOE SATRIANI used starfields too - the guitar described as a "prototype ibanez" shown in the title is his although, clearly it's a starfield cabriolet (it even has the starfield logo on the headstock).
The Starfield Guitar Company was a subsidiary of Hoshino Industries, the parent company of Ibanez guitars. In fact, Starfield and Ibanez shared production-lines, the majority of the work was carried out in the Ibanez facility in Japan but the higher -end USA guitars being assembled and hand-finished in Ibanez's custom-shop in California. Note: there are one or two pictures of older Starfield guitars submitted by users of this site - mainly gibson clones - but I know even less about these guitars than I do about the modern ones features in this website
The Starfield range consisted to two basic models: the twin cutaway ALTAIR and the single cutaway CABRIOLET. The altair custom bodyshape was similar in profile to the Ibanez radius (later used for the Satriani signature model) with a touch of PRS thrown in. Altair traditional and classic models shared the same shape but had a simpler slab body. The Cabriolet was an attractive update of the telecaster bodyshape but offset in a manner similar to the musicman axis, designed some years later. The range was designed by Chris Kelly who was the director of Artist Relations for Hoshino/Ibanez.
So, given that Ibanez guitars had reached their zenith with pointy guitars, played by Vai and Satriani et al, it's not too clear why they would choose to build a range of relatively conservative guitars . We could hypothesize and say that the rapid rise of PRS lead to a perceived demand for flame maple and other classic design features amongst the guitar-buying public. This is just pure speculation and the truth was that these new guitars were very close cousins of the pointy Ibanez: the satin-finished necks, while not as wide (two-handed tapping being a popular technique among Ibanez users) were nevertheless very similar in profile Ibanez equivalents.
Whatever their motivation, Hoshino seemed to misinterpret the conservative trend (or perhaps reacted too early to it) because although they received excellent reviews in guitar magazines, there was a significant lack of interest in the shops. It seems that people still wanted wide necks and Floyd Rose tremolos. This lack of demand meant that the vast majority of these instruments were sold at roughly half of their recommended retail price, at least this was the case in the UK.
Hoshino pulled the plug on the Starfield guitar company during 1994 (approx), which is unsurprising given that Ibanez guitars remained so popular during this period. However, the basic design of these guitars, albeit slightly modified and significantly lacking in ostentation, was used for the Ibanez TALMAN range of guitars.
Talman guitars really didn't make too much of an impact either, their big claim to fame being one high-profile user - Tom Morello (Rage against the machine) used one during the Glastonbury festival in the late nineties. Although carrying a number of retro features (tube pickups, etc.) these guitars were very plain and were always going to be the ugly-sister of the starfield. However, Talman guitars have recently resurfaced as semi-hollow jazz-type guitars that are really nice.
And that was the end of the best guitars Ibanez ever made... I might just form a pressure group to persuade Ibanez to produce them again, which might be a good idea now that tastes have firmly shifted toward starfield-type guitars. Having said that, if my band takes off I might be able to get an Altair signature model of my own. Well, there's no harm in dreaming!
Many thanks to Erik "starfield" for his picture of the Satriani guitar