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Moonstone Vulcan Custom Extreme
by James Egolf
Lavishly beautiful, unbeatable tone, staggering price tag – that we would gladly pay!

Reviewing custom guitars poses a unique set of challenges. Rarely do custom builders have guitars kicking around to send out, simply due to the nature of the beast; everything in the shop is being built for a specific customer, to that customer’s specifications. This raises additional difficulties. Is it okay with customer A to send his guitar out to be reviewed? If customer A is fine with this, are they also okay with the month or two additional wait? The answers to these questions are generally no, and with good reason. Who the hell wants to save up for their dream guitar, sit through a seemingly endless wait from the builder, then voluntarily add even more time just so some shaky-handed, bleary-eyed guitar journalist can ruin a set of strings and cover their new baby in fingerprints before they’ve even seen it in the flesh?

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True American Originals
By Richard A. Riis, Jr.

In September of 1977, I returned to finish graduate school at Cal State University, Humboldt, in Arcata, California, bringing with me a menagerie of vintage guitars and amplifiers. Soon after I arrived, I started looking for a repairman to do a fret job on my ’59 Les Paul Custom. Thinking there would be nobody in the area who could do this type of work, I resigned myself to believing I would have to take it to San Francisco, four hours south. However, the owner of a local music store told me of a local luthier who was making custom guitars, and he was sure this guitarmaker could help me. I got the address and went to the guy’s shop. Driving up to the shop, I saw this big blue sign over the main entrance which read "Moonstone Guitars" on a building that looked like an old church – it was.

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