The Moontide Guitars Origin Story

I make instruments that combine handcrafted charm and precision where it matters into one quirky package, perfect for working musicians and anyone who appreciates the charm of catalog guitars but doesn't want an instrument you have to fight to play.
These are not guitars that use the most exotic pieces of wood or the most figured top, these are instruments that are made unique by their body shapes, wiring systems and pickup choices and thanks to the finishes I use,
they will age and reflect your unique playing style.

I have been working with wood since I was 11 and working on guitars since I was 14, I have built many partscasters, repaired old guitars and generally learned what makes a guitar good.
Moontide puts all of my experience in those fields together to create guitars that are not copies of other brands but unique instruments. I love what I do and I'm proud of every guitar I build.

I always liked tinkering with stuff and working with wood. Having grown up on a farm with a single mom meant I had to learn how to use all different kinds of hand and power tools to fix things up and keep them looking nice.
I got my first guitar when I was 13, every guitarist knows the kind, a Eur 50 Stratocaster copy bundled with a tiny little solid state amp.
I didn't really like that guitar all that much and preferred my mom's old Klira acoustic, complete with cracked sides, a broken bridge and frets that compare to a fretless wonder.

I didn't get the chance to experience the catalog guitar era or the 1960s myself, being 28 years old but I did get to experience the next best thing: My very own Silvertone 1448!
I worked my 14-year old butt off to afford the (then normal) $350 and sound-wise it was a giant step up from the Strat copy,
not so much playing-wise but the Klira had taught me a bunch of set-up tricks so I knew how to deal with the rosewood scrap on a metal plate they called a bridge.

I wasn't quite at the point of being able to do refrets yet but I did get it to play and sound great, I remember cranking up the case amp and having the guitar pick up radio stations and being able to sing into the pickup,
that really inspired me and it still left quite the impression on me to this day, I still prefer unpotted pickups after all these years.
I also really loved how the lacquer wore off where my arm rested on the body and on the back of the neck but I didn't know why that was happening, I also didn't know that modern guitars wouldn't be like that at this point.

A year or so later I wanted "more" guitar, the 18 frets and single pickup of the Silvertone just weren't cutting it anymore and being a giant surf lover, I wanted a Jaguar, one in a cool 60s color that would wear just like my Silvertone.
I found out that Jaguars were (and are) quite pricey but one forum sent me on the trail of partscaster you lacquer yourself and I instantly knew that this would be the way to go.
I knew I needed some practice and I used the Strat copy for that, like I said, I didn't know the difference between nitro and poly back then and was quite surprised when acetone wouldn't take off the finish so I looked online for answers.
I think realising there were different kinds of guitar paint and really deep diving into how the golden-age guitars were painted were the turning point, after I found out about techniques like Fender's nails for keeping the body off the table or them sometimes skipping clear coat and leaving out a sunbursts red in the under-the-pickguard area, I was done with production guitars for good.
I wanted something with a handmade touch, something that was imperfect but yet all the better for it, something like my Silvertone.

Stripping the copy didn't go over so well, all of the paint strippers we had in the garage didn't even knock off the shine of the poly and the local hardware store only carried the same brands so I went with the tried-and-tested heat gun + sandpaper method,
I got off the old finish fine but I must've sanded the neck pocket a tad much, the neck was super loose in the pocket and I didn't really like how the acrylic lacquer turned out but I learned how not to repeat my mistakes and more importantly,
I learned how to pre-sand, build layers and final sand. Feeling ready for the partscaster, I went ahead and sold the Silvertone, made a lot of money since they had gone up in price by that time and I used that dough to buy an unfinished ash Jag body and a 1968 Mustang neck that was in dire need of restoration so I had quite the task in front of me.

The painting process actually went fine, I chose Surf Green as the color, got some online advise on how to pore fill an ash body and it turned out great except for one tiny spot where I had some grain sinkage but I didn't mind.
The neck, however, was quite the different story. I decided on medium jumbo stainless frets (yes really, my first refret was with stainless frets) and a brass nut, I didn't want to touch the old finish so there was no painting to be done but the stainless frets really kicked my butt.
I remember using the dremel I had just gotten for Christmas to cut them to size and spending days filing the edges level with the fingerboard edges. I also didn't have any sort of beveling tool so I just did it free-hand and to my huge surprise, it actually turned out decent, that just left the nut and,
not having nut files, I just used a few different hacksaw blades and sandpaper, the nut was a little high but I didn't really know how a good nut worked and I didn't mind anyways. The guitar was actually nicely playable, it looked quirky with its clear coat less Surf Green finish and Mustang neck but at that point I was hooked on building just as much as I was hooked on playing guitar.

Ever since then, I have put together partscasters, repainted friends' guitars, done set-ups, refrets and all kinds of mods on guitars. You can see a bunch of the early mods in my guitar gallery under the "General Lacquering & Experiments" header,
however not all of them turned out great, the Superstrat that I turned into a Tele hybrid and then later sawed into a more Mustang-like shape was a huge disaster, not so much playing-wise but most definitely looks-wise, and on my first "own" body, the half-Jagstang I made a bunch of construction mistakes that resulted in it only being a working guitar for three months,
but I learned a lot thanks to these guitars. Having worked on many different guitars and having built many partscasters and my first attempt at a from-scratch build gave me some real knowledge on how to set up all different kinds of bridges, how to get a neck flat for fret leveling and how to set the relief afterwards, I learned more about painting like how to fix runs and other mistakes,
I learned how to fill holes and make them "disappear", I got to try out many many different necks styles, nut widths, back profiles and fingerboard radii. At this point I hadn't made a neck myself but I knew that one day I'd build myself a guitar from scratch and this is how we get to...

I wanted to build something that would last, something that didn't just look cool but also played really well and sounded great to boot, so I sat down and went over all the things I had seen on guitars, everything that worked well and things that didn't work so well and that's how I got to my models. I spent years building other people's designs so felt it was time to design something myself.
I picked up CAD to design my models and make accurate drawings that I could turn into routing templates. I specifically decided against CNC of any kind, at the end of the day it's just another tool but I feel like you can feel the difference between a "perfectly" made CNC guitar and one that's "perfectly" handmade.
I put perfectly into quotations because I don't believe in perfection, I believe in instruments that feel like natural extensions of their players' bodies and that's what I strive for with every guitar I build. I love the visual elements of old guitars as you can see, not just catalog ones but many different kinds,
on future builds you might see me use translucent tortoise or HIPS for pickguards, the Tolex side binding will also be a constant unless someone requests contours, I just love how it makes the body pop but you will also be seeing neck accessories like binding and more artsy inlays (no blocks though, I really dislike how they look, especially with binding).
You're also gonna see a lot choices focused on making the guitar sturdy, I owned one Gibson and I hated how I had to be really careful with it because of the flimsy headstock. I mostly focus on bolt-on necks because of their sturdiness and the ease of replacement/repair but you're gonna see some set-necks and neck-throughs over the years as well.
My necks usually have a 25.5" scale length, I feel that scale length gives you the best tonal characteristics (tighter bass and more treble, more twang) while still being easily playable, which is also helped by the stainless steel zero-fret. The nut and heel widths were selected primarily for playing reasons, they are 42.5mm at the nut and 57mm at the heel so they should be comfortable for all kinds of hand sizes.
A lot of the construction choices I make also make a Moontide easy to set up, e.g. there's no need to remove the neck from the body with the spoke wheel adjust truss rod and the stacked pots keep both pots in reach of your picking hand for volume/tone swells. My bodies are also focused on staying lightweight and they are a tad smaller/have a thinner waist than models in comparable sizes so they should be comfy for every body shape and size.