Ultradust
Commercial User
- May 19, 2007
- 227
- 1,052
- Disclosures
- General Manager, Moollon
Hi gents, Andi here. A little about the hardware, with what I do know 
As a metal arts/metallurgy major back in the late 80s while working as a session musician in Korea, YJ had a good amount of experience working with metals enough to know how certain alloys can affect tonality, and he's mentioned to me a number of times that as his guitar collection grew he nonetheless kept coming back to the late 50s/early 60s guitars and basses he was able to purchase in his earlier years, knowing that metals used in early production builds somehow had to be different to contribute so much to the overall resonance and timbre of a completed instrument.
Long story short, he did a lot of testing of early 1960s tuner parts, steel bridge/saddle assemblies and the like (even screws) to come up with alloys that could be actually termed "reproductions", and after numerous A/B'ing attempts with his vintage Fenders he finally felt satisfied with them enough to put into production on Moollon guitars and basses he was building(that eventually became known as the Classic Series), starting around early 2007. Even the 3+3 tuners used on the lesser-known Moollon CS and VT guitar models are based strictly on the Klusons found on YJ's 1959 Les Paul Jr: He's very obsessive about what-for-what choice of alloys.
And since YJ personally has to do all body and neck shaping, pickup winding, application of 20 layers of nitrocellulose lacquer & final buffing in a Paju facility a good half-hour away from the Moollon shop, not to mention all assembly, electronics soldering, and setup work (along with wiring up all VintAge Series Moollon pedals), it may be easy to understand why he has a local company do the actual production of hardware, using his alloys...and why the Moollon company can only put out about 5-6 dozen total units/year and not be profitable. ^^
As a metal arts/metallurgy major back in the late 80s while working as a session musician in Korea, YJ had a good amount of experience working with metals enough to know how certain alloys can affect tonality, and he's mentioned to me a number of times that as his guitar collection grew he nonetheless kept coming back to the late 50s/early 60s guitars and basses he was able to purchase in his earlier years, knowing that metals used in early production builds somehow had to be different to contribute so much to the overall resonance and timbre of a completed instrument.
Long story short, he did a lot of testing of early 1960s tuner parts, steel bridge/saddle assemblies and the like (even screws) to come up with alloys that could be actually termed "reproductions", and after numerous A/B'ing attempts with his vintage Fenders he finally felt satisfied with them enough to put into production on Moollon guitars and basses he was building(that eventually became known as the Classic Series), starting around early 2007. Even the 3+3 tuners used on the lesser-known Moollon CS and VT guitar models are based strictly on the Klusons found on YJ's 1959 Les Paul Jr: He's very obsessive about what-for-what choice of alloys.
And since YJ personally has to do all body and neck shaping, pickup winding, application of 20 layers of nitrocellulose lacquer & final buffing in a Paju facility a good half-hour away from the Moollon shop, not to mention all assembly, electronics soldering, and setup work (along with wiring up all VintAge Series Moollon pedals), it may be easy to understand why he has a local company do the actual production of hardware, using his alloys...and why the Moollon company can only put out about 5-6 dozen total units/year and not be profitable. ^^
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