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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This week on The Tone Mob Podcast, Blake hangs with Shea Sterner of thisheavyearth, a Portland-based builder making heavy pedals, brutal solid-state amps, and gear that looks like it crawled directly out of a fantasy-metal record sleeve.

Shea shares his path from punk and metal scenes in Pennsylvania, to recording experiments in Texas, to learning repairs and circuit design in Salt Lake City, and eventually launching This Heavy Earth in Portland. The conversation gets into acid-etched pedals, self-taught PCB design, the FleshRot amp and preamp world, Ampeg VH140C inspiration, HM-2 chainsaw tones, baritone guitars, and why solid state deserves a much louder seat at the table.

They also dig into building a gear company with your spouse, NAMM stories, fantasy artwork, plugins, small-business chaos, and the joy of making sounds that can swing from beautiful to absolutely disgusting with a single stomp.

Check out the brand's offerings HERE https://www.thisheavyearth.com/

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Douglas Robinson is best known as the voice of The Sleeping, but with his new project Held, he’s stepping into a whole new role: guitar player, riff writer, and newly minted Gibson SG obsessive.

On this episode of The Tone Mob Podcast, Doug joins Blake to talk about Held’s new record Grey, rediscovering the guitar after years of primarily being a vocalist, and the strange joy of realizing people are just as excited about your riffs as they are about your voice.

They get into the punk rock roots that shaped his approach, the difference between playing with personality and playing for internet points, the disappearing mystery of rock bands, and why sometimes the best music still starts with a few people in a room figuring it out together.

There’s also plenty of gear talk, including Gibson SGs, Fender Tone Master rigs, Mesa cabs, Boss delays, and the eternal truth that Jersey pizza people are always prepared for combat.

Held’s Grey is out now. Go listen.

Get more info at:

https://www.heldsounds.com/

https://thesleeping.net/

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Mark Morton joins the show today, and we somehow manage to talk about the gravitational pull of the electric guitar, the operational realities of a world-class metal band, parenting, vintage Gibsons, noise gates, and New York pizza without anyone needing a liability waiver.

Mark gets into the early magic of the guitar, back when the instrument didn’t just look cool, it felt like a secret door. A wooden plank with wires, knobs, and just enough electricity to rearrange a kid’s entire personality. From there, we talk about the family support that helped him chase that feeling, and how that same idea now shapes the way he supports his own kids as they find their own creative obsessions.

We also dig into the less glamorous, more interesting machinery behind one of metal's most popular acts. Touring, family, business calls, merch approvals, stage production, the whole industrial riff-farm. The rock and roll fantasy is still in there somewhere, wearing sunglasses indoors, but these days it has a calendar invite and probably needs to approve a hoodie sample.

And yes, there is plenty of guitar talk. Mark breaks down his move to Gibson, the creation of his signature Les Paul, his love of vintage instruments, the L.o.G writing process, and why some guitars feel alive while others just sit there like expensive furniture with strings.

Plus: the Boss NS-2 gets its day in court.

Bring a slice.

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Joey Bradford of The Used is back on The Tone Mob, and this one wanders through the good stuff: touring, dad life, studio rabbit holes, guitar rigs, loud amps, weird pedals, and the eternal human illness known as “maybe I need one more piece of gear.”

Blake and Joey talk about what it’s like to spend a massive chunk of the year on the road, then come home and try to be a normal dad like you didn’t just spend the last several months vibrating in a bus bunk. They also get into Joey’s home studio, producing bands, experimenting with sounds, and why sometimes the ugly little noise in the corner is exactly what the song needs.

There’s plenty of gear talk, of course, because this is still The Tone Mob and we have paperwork to maintain. Digital rigs, real amps, analog pedals, guitars that multiply when no one is looking, and the quiet thrill of walking into a music store for “just a patch cable” all make an appearance.

But the bigger theme is this: rock music is not dead. It was never dead. It was just out in the garage with a half-dead cable, a loud amp, and a kid learning a riff that might ruin somebody’s afternoon in the best possible way.

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Ryan “Fluff” Bruce is back, and this time it’s less about chasing tones and more about chasing sanity.

After more than a decade in the YouTube trenches, Fluff joins Blake to talk about what happens when the thing you built starts to feel like a treadmill set to “forever.” Social media burnout, algorithm roulette, and the strange reality of being “internet famous” without it always translating to real life… it’s all on the table.

They get into the evolution from scrappy early content days to a world where nobody cares about subscriber counts anymore (seriously), why passion still beats strategy every time, and how Fluff is shifting his focus toward building something that actually lasts. Along the way, there’s talk of signature guitars, starting new ventures behind the scenes, and why doing cool stuff with cool people might be the only goal that actually holds up.

Also: vintage gear chaos, tuning guitars lower than nature intended, and a brief but important appreciation for YouTube dads teaching the world how to fix toilets.

It’s thoughtful, it’s a little existential, and it’s exactly what happens when two long-time creators zoom out and ask, “what are we even doing here?”

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This week I'm serving up something a bit different!

There is another podcast I do called Tape Spaghetti with my good buddy Scott Marquart. On that podcast, we explore strange musical stories, and I'm giving you a sample of it here. Let's get into it!

OG show notes:

You already know the chorus. In fact, you've probably scream-sung it at a bar. But, what do you know about the band behind Tubthumping?

What if we told you that the biggest pub anthem of the '90s was written by militant anarchic agitators who supported striking miners, clashed with fascists, and called a crumbling Victorian mansion home?

Yep, Chumbawamba is probably a LOT more interesting than you might have imagined. In this week's episode of Tape Spaghetti, Scott & Blake trace the band’s journey from punk squatters in Northern England to Britpop chart-toppers, and the ideological tightrope they walked along the way.

Some might have accused them of selling out, but when "Tubthumping" became a global smash, the band used their spotlight for disruption: rewriting lyrics on national TV, provoking politicians, and donating profits to radical causes.

Here's what happens when anarchists accidentally write one of the catchiest pop hooks ever recorded.

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