What is this guitar? Alembic?

[gtrguy]

I remember seeing a few Moonstones back in the day and I was always impressed with them.

[welovecats]

I have a 1979 Moonstone Vulcan Deluxe guitar, and I love it. Solid burl maple.

[welovecats]

Here’s a vintage ad and my Vulcan

[BeenDown139]

Sweet!
Bet it looks spiffy under teh coloured lights ;-)

[hammer]

Very nice! I’d love to get my hands on one of their acoustic basses though I hear they are quite rare.

[hammer]

I have a set the manufacturer of which I cant remember at this point that I’m going to try out. But I’ll definitely connect with the pyramid flats guys to see if they can provide what I need.

[welovecats]

A few more cool Moonstone facts and pics:

Steve came to Humboldt County in 1970 to attend the College of the Redwoods for a wildlife management degree, taking up residence in a cabin among the redwoods, to find a staging area for his falconry hobby. He was a licensed falconer for for 12 years.

[welovecats]

It was at the College of the Redwoods that Steve started building his first guitar in the college wood shop. "I wanted an acoustic bass because I’d go to Yosemite and there would be 50 guitar players out in a meadow, and no bass players, so I figured I’ve have a crowd around me," he said.

Steve was a self taught luthier who had no one to apprentice under, and had only Irving Sloan’s book Classical Guitar Construction to teach him the basics.

Note: Here is an early pic of Steve (far right) playing a large acoustic bass in a band. Steve was an imposing 6-foot-6 Swede. I don’t know if this is the bass he was referring to above or not.

[welovecats]

Steve shelved school in 1972, and moved to Moonstone Heights, a vista point that overlooks the Pacific Ocean at Moonstone Beach, 12 miles up the coast from Arcata, California. Here he started building his first dreadnaught sized guitars, hence the name Moonstone.

[welovecats]

On Moonstone, continued:

By 1974, the first Moonstone solid bodied electric guitar prototype, the Earth Axe, was completed.
Because of its high density and sustaining quality, Steve chose solid burl maple for the Earth Axe and later when he started making the Vulcan.

Here’s a pic of the Earth Axe:

[welovecats]

Finally, on one of his trips to Los Angeles (selling the Earth Axe to stores from the trunk of his car up and down the west coast), Moonstone got its first big break. While Steve was showing his instruments at SIR (studio instrument rentals), Leland Sklar, bassist for Jackson Brown, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and his own recording band, dubbed The Section, walked in and started checking out the instruments. During their discussion, Sklar commissioned Steve to do something outrageous for him, along the lines of dragons or gargoyles. Since Steve was a falconer, they settled on the Eagle bass; in early 1978, Leland took possession of a double necked Eagle carved body bass. On top was a short scale 30" piccolo neck, and on the bottom was a long scale 33 1/2" neck, with hand carved, removable peg head caps in the form of an eagles head with red fire opal eyes lit by leds. Steve made guitarist Danny Kortchmar a matching (single necked) eagle guitar, and the instruments were featured in the 6-page color insert that accompanied Jackson Browne’s album Running on Empty.

[welovecats]

Despite the notoriety of the eagle designs, an official Eagle model guitar wasn’t introduced until 1980, and even though it appeared in the catalog, it was really a custom shop guitar, carved by Steve by hand, and only 11 were ever made. The boom years of Moonstone were 1978-1984, with the most successful models including the Vulcan and Vulcan Deluxe guitars, Eclipse bass, and hollow bodied M-80 guitar. There were 162 Vulcans made in this era, making it the flagship of the Moonstone line.

Steve Helgeson, circa 1979-80, with the Eagle and two Vulcan guitars:

[welovecats]

From December 1976 to the end of 1978, Morley distributed Moonstone, from the tail end of the Earth Axe to the early Vulcan guitars. During those years, Morley and Moonstone shared a Namm booth. In 1981, after that partnership ended amicably, Moonstone finally had their own Namm booth.

The Vulcan used Bartolini pick-ups, the Bartolini Beast II for rhythm and the Bartolini ES1 for the bridge.

Morley Vulcan ad and Vulcan electronics layout: