I am glad to see that my post on guitarsite in 2004 went its way... (http://www.guitarsite.com/discussion/messages/79220.shtml)

Since this seems to still have some interest, I would like to add more information to this post about the Mansfield guitars. These discoveries were done after a lot of research on the net, I have found and confirmed at least some of the "mystery" hanging around the Mansfield guitars.

Mansfield was actually an OEM brand from a canadian distributor named Peate's Music store, located on Mansfield street in Montreal. They still have a website with an interesting archive page where you see Martin guitars starting at 24 dollars... Wow! What a bargain! http://www.peate.com/peatearchives.htm

But they no longer have a store, so the 24 dollars Martin deal is off!!!. I think they also operate under a different name and are mainly operating as musical instruments distributors.

I have contacted them in 2004 and they were kind enough to confirm that Mansfield used to have their guitar made by Hoshino-Gakki in the 70's:

"The interesting story behind Mansfield is that years ago, before Ibanez became such a strong guitar line, the manufacturer of Ibanez in Japan used to make OEM guitars for musical distributors throughout the world.

They were approached by Peate Musical Instrument Distributors about 30 years ago to make guitars for them. At that time the Peate warehouse was located in Montreal on Mansfield street. Now you know how the guitars came to be called Mansfield. Subsequently, Peate Music went to other guitar manufacturers for their "Mansfield" guitars up until about 10 years ago. The association with Ibanez manufacturing was discontinued about 25 years ago, so whether your guitar was made by the Ibanez factory in Japan or elsewhere is still an open question."