About the Builder:
Moonstone guitars, founded by Steve Helgeson, has been producing some of the worlds finest hand-crafted acoustic, electric, and bass guitars for nearly 38 years. Self taught, in 1972, Steve set up his first shop in the woods of Moonstone Heights, California. There he experimented primarily with acoustic guitar designs.
In 1974, Steve moved to Arcata, California and developed the Earthaxe electric, while also doing repairs for a local music store. In 1976, Steve moved down the street to a larger shop where he built two large acoustic basses, and continued to produce the Earthaxe line, along with a few acoustic 6 strings.
From the beginning, Steve has implemented the use of highly figured and exotic imported tone woods. He also pioneered the use of Pacific Quilted Maple, Myrtlewood, Maple, and Walnut Burl.
In 1977, Steve settled into an even larger shop, an old church, further down the street. He collected some light production machinery, hired employees, and expanded his line of instruments. By the early 1980’s, Moonstone reached its peak of production, shipping over 1000 guitars throughout the United States and Europe. In the 1988, the Moonstone factory was destroyed by a fire.
By 1990, Steve salvaged most of the equipment and inventory and built a new shop in Eureka, California. Working alone, Steve delved into the art of designing and voicing new acoustic guitars.
Steve personally carves and dimensions the scalloped X-braces on all guitar tops, removing weight, desiring a tall and thin profile. He tap tunes each top until it loosens and vibrates freely as a sound plate (voicing procedure). After nineteen or more years of doing so, Steve has fine-tuned this operation.
Today he still produces guitars and especially hand-crafted acoustic guitars.
More information can be found on this website:http://www.moonstoneguitars.com/ .
About the Guitar:
This is one of the actual/newer production of Moonstone Guitars. The model is a classic one: The Vulcan.
This Vulcan Custom was built for Rene del Fierro, lead guitarist for the Salvador Santana Band (opening for Carlos Santana world peace tour in Europe in 2004).
This guitar features an extreme flame 5A maple top and head veneer, a wenge body and neck, with a chambered body, Tigereye hand-stain top and head veneer in gloss lacquer, natural hand rubbed tung-oil/bee-wax finish on wenge body and neck. It has a brazilian rosewood fingerboard 24 1/2" scale, a Bartolini PBF 49 Neck and a Bartolini PBF 51 Bridge, Tone pros tunamatic bridge and tailpiece. Weight is 8lbs-14oz.
Steve Helgeson about the guitar: This Vulcan is built from the finest tone-woods. Wenge has a particular high, and extremely low resonant frequency, producing extreme midrange punch, and searing trebles. With the Bartolini PBF's, this guitar exceeds the limitation that Rene was getting with his PRS. He needed something better. Rene had heard a Moonstone, contacted me and drove overnight 300 miles for a demo. He played my personal Vulcan standard. The rest is history!
The original wenge knobs were change by Rene to Gibson knobs as they are more practical when playing the guitar.
Check out Rene playing the guitar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4erlBEmd5Q
