The Tone Mob Podcast

Jesse Honig of 29 Pedals finally joins The Tone Mob, and we are digging all the way into the beautifully nerdy machinery of his story.

Before launching 29 Pedals, Jesse spent years inside studios, tape machines, consoles, repair benches, and the general glowing underworld of professional audio. He worked as a roadie as a teenager, became a studio assistant in Philadelphia, built a life as a session player, engineer, and tech, then eventually found himself working with companies like Slate Digital and Manley Labs before deciding it was time to build something of his own.

That something became EUNA, a deceptively “simple” pedal that helped turn the humble buffer into a serious tone tool. Blake and Jesse get into why guitars are terrible at driving cable, why input impedance matters, why pedalboards can be treated like modular studio channel strips, and why 29 Pedals approaches design from a very different angle.

There is also talk of OAMP, fuzzes, overdrives, true bypass, manufacturing headaches, component changes, guitar strings, weird gear obsessions, and the joy of solving problems most people do not even realize they have.

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Ron Jackson has one of those jobs that sounds suspiciously like something a music nerd invented while staring at the ceiling.

As the host and producer of Musora’s Covers On The Spot, Ron brings bands into the studio, hands them an iconic song from somewhere outside their natural habitat, and gives them only a few hours to rebuild it in their own image. The results have included Emily Wolfe dragging Billie Eilish into the smoky riff dungeon of Black Sabbath, Archspire attacking Rosé and Bruno Mars with impossible quantities of technical death metal, and Thursday being forced to figure it all out while Ron quietly watches the pressure gauge climb.

Ron joins me to explain how the show came together, what makes a band right for the challenge, and why convincing touring musicians to spend their day off writing a surprise cover is not always the easiest pitch in the world.

We also get into Musora’s evolution beyond Drumeo, Ron’s former life as an English and musical-theater teacher, the strange experience of working with your musical heroes, and the delicate art of being an enthusiastic fan without becoming what musicians lovingly call “a punisher.”

Naturally, we also discuss Thrice, vintage Gibson Grabbers, the Rusty Box, questionable bass purchases, Boss pedals and a long-lost shrimp pizza that may now exist only in legend.

Check out the INSANE Leperous episode HERE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te2MR6j5Qhg

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Sal Mignano has never been particularly interested in making the bass behave itself.

As a founding member of The Sleeping and one-third of the thunderous new project Held, Sal writes riffs from the bottom up, stacks distortion pedals into increasingly hostile little ecosystems, and believes the bass should do considerably more than quietly hold everyone’s coat.

Sal joins Blake to tell the wonderfully accidental origin story of Held, including free studio time, a last-minute guitarist cancellation, and Douglas Robinson being gently shoved toward the six-string. They also dig into Sal’s long musical history, from funk bands and Skycamefalling to The Sleeping, along with the lessons he learned from the late John “Beatz” Holohan of Bayside.

Naturally, there is gear. A lot of gear. Sal walks through his collection of gloriously battered Gibson Grabbers, vintage Rickenbackers, Fender basses, obscure pedals, enormous Gallien-Krueger touring rigs, and the wonderfully inconvenient magic that still keeps real amplifiers alive.

They also discuss the digital takeover, recording with actual producers, surviving the social-media era, and why thirty seconds of flawless internet guitar probably consumed somebody’s entire afternoon.

Check out Held HERE https://www.heldsounds.com/

Check out The Sleeping HERE https://thesleeping.net/

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Barton McGuire doesn’t believe a guitar pedal should politely prevent you from making a bad sound. Where’s the adventure in that?

In this episode, Blake sits down with the founder of Cosmodio Instruments to talk about accidental self-oscillation, homemade noise contraptions, imposter syndrome, and the long road from stuffing circuits into RadioShack boxes to running a growing pedal company.

Barton explains why Cosmodio builds “adventurous pedals for adventurous people,” how the Gravity Well helped put the company on the map, and why a pedal should offer more than a carefully fenced pasture of acceptable guitar tones. Sometimes you need a beautiful chorus. Sometimes you need the machine to cough sparks and open a portal.

They also dig into the realities of launching a small business, learning from criticism without being emotionally flattened by it, assembling the right team, and accepting that anything worth making will eventually irritate somebody on the internet.

Plus: the Cosmodio Splinter Twin, glitchy pitch shifters, no-input feedback, Ryan Burke’s approach to trolls, New Zealand pizza, and the enduring importance of twisting the knob you probably shouldn’t twist.

Check out Barton's work HERE https://cosmod.io/

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Will York of Thunder Road Guitars PDX joins us to tell the real story behind one of the West Coast's favorite guitar shops.

Before Thunder Road Portland became a destination for vintage guitar weirdos, touring players, local lifers, and anyone who enjoys staring at old offsets under flattering lighting, Will was a Gainesville, Florida kid chasing music any way he could. That road eventually led him west to Lollar Pickups, then to Thunder Road in Seattle, and finally to opening the Portland shop in 2017.

This episode gets into the unglamorous, deeply human side of building a guitar store: living in the basement of the first shop, putting every penny into the business, surviving the COVID guitar boom, buying a commercial building, learning when to delegate, and navigating a major open-heart surgery scare right in the middle of it all.

We also talk vintage guitar shows, rare finds, the difference between selling new and vintage gear, why guitar stores should actually feel welcoming, and why Will still believes the whole thing works best when everyone remembers how lucky we are to play with this stuff for a living.

Plus: gold-hardware Jaguars, first-year Jazzmasters, Paul Bigsby lore, TK Smith guitars, Boss pedals, Portland pizza, and a very important reminder that nobody regrets buying the guitar. Selling it? Different story.

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