Moondog Ninja

This was a spruce topped, mahogany back and sides small bodied 12 fret guitar, with small scale length as well. I'm a fingerstyle guitarist and was looking for something within a budget of around 600-700 GBP. The woods and finish were fine. It came with a very classy fibre glass case.

The tuners were a different matter. A slotted headstock in which the tuning pegs themselves were not slotted inside the wood! This meant that when stringing it, i had to make sure that the strings did not slip off the peg, and one occasion it actually made the string snap, such that i had to open another set of strings. The other problem with the pegs like this is that it meant that the tension of the strings constantly varied, thus affecting the tuning and intonation. The strings kept going out of tune. Spoke with Tim Nicolai the chief luthier who couldn't have been nicer, and stated that all future models would be rectified as per my suggestion. It seemed fairly obvious that it would be a problem.
There was an onboard tuner, no opinion really.

The electronics were loose on the first guitar sent, poor glue, remedied on the second and third.

Sound was Ok, if lacking a bit of sustain. To be fair it was a ragtime guitar, and no good really for the Celtic/classical type stuff i do.

Terrible. When i got the first guitar, the nut looked like it had been cut by a 5 yr old. The spacing between the 3rd and 4th strings was twice as big as space between the 5th and 6th! And the nut at first string was cut so deep the string was literally flat against the neck. Flat! Unplayable.

They sent me a replacement which arrived two days later, spacing a lot better, still not perfect. They pride themselves on not using factory eqpt - maybe they should set up a jig to get this done properly.

I'd give this a zero for the first guitar, but the second and third was better

No opinion. Didnt keep it.

Excellent. Very friendly. Open to criticism. They put up with my complaints for nearly four weeks, sending me three guitars in all. The final one was OK but had an intonation problem on the third fret of the bottom E, which i couldnt fathom at all. A luthier friend of mine told me that the whole neck was 1/8 inch too short.

They waived the 14 day refund deal for me, but owing to my dissatisfaction they gavve me full refund within a week of the return. Good luck to them. i appreciate what they are trying to do, but they had then (Summer 2007) serious quality control problems which i suspect was just poor staffing at their Welsh base.

I follow their operation with keen interest hoping that they'll come good. Maybe mine was just one of the bad eggs.