The Tone Mob Podcast

This week on The Tone Mob Podcast, Blake hangs out with Colt Westbrook of Walrus Audio for a conversation that wanders through guitar pedals, business experiments, digital rigs, tube amps, customer service philosophy, and the delicate art of telling your friends they can’t just show up at the factory and hang out all day.

Colt walks through how Walrus has evolved over the years, from the early days of pedals like the 385 and Monument to the creation of entire product ecosystems like the Mako DSP line, Canvas utility gear, and the more affordable Fundamental series. Along the way he shares some surprisingly candid insight about what worked, what didn’t, and why “budget” pedals in the boutique world often aren’t nearly as profitable as people assume.

The guys also dig into what working at a pedal company actually looks like day-to-day. Spoiler alert: it involves a lot less shredding and a lot more soldering, packing boxes, managing teams, solving problems, and trying to keep people from treating the shop like a guitar-themed coffee hang.

Naturally, there’s plenty of gear talk too. Colt walks Blake through his current guitars, his pedalboard, why EQ might be the most underrated effect ever, and why he’s leaned more into digital rigs lately while still respecting the glorious chaos of tube amps turned up loud. They also get into Boss HM-2 love, the mysterious Terra Echo, Quad Cortex rigs, and the never-ending quest for consistency without killing the magic.

Colt also shares some genuinely solid advice for anyone dreaming of starting their own gear company: build something great, make it meaningfully different, and treat your customers like they actually matter.

Oh… and somewhere along the way we learn about a teenage band that shared one distortion pedal between two guitarists, and the Oklahoma pizza place that fueled their rehearsals.

If you’re into guitar gear, building brands, or just hearing how the sausage actually gets made in the music industry, this one’s for you.
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Steve Sladkowski of PUP joins Blake for a conversation about the strange business of building a life out of noise.

This one wanders into the good stuff. The human stuff. The part nobody puts on the laminate. Imposter syndrome. Burnout. Getting older. Learning that rest is not the same thing as quitting, even if your brain, like an underqualified middle manager, keeps sending panic memos in all caps.

Steve talks about PUP’s early days, growing up in Toronto, falling into music through school programs, and slowly realizing that the thing you love might become the thing that carries you, if you’re willing to drag it uphill long enough.

There’s also the darker chapter. The moment when Stefan’s voice gave out, a doctor delivered the kind of sentence that can rearrange your organs, and the band had to stare down the possibility that the whole machine might stop.

What comes through here isn’t just the crisis itself, but the way a band survives something like that: by choosing not to let fear, blame, or bad luck rot the foundation from underneath.

And then, because no Tone Mob episode can go too long without somebody describing an amp like it’s their best firend, the conversation rolls into guitars, pedals, and the slow, stubborn art of figuring out what actually works. Fender guitars. Vibroluxes. Dr. Zs. Roland Cubes. Road-tested pedalboard choices. The glorious stupidity of moving real air. Steve talks about finding gear that feels like home and hanging onto it, which is maybe not so different from finding people like that too.

It’s a conversation about surviving long enough to mean it. About staying curious. About making peace with the fact that even after years of doing the thing, some tiny part of you still expects a knock at the door from a guy holding a clipboard and bad news.

Check out all things PUP on their website HERE https://www.puptheband.com/

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RJM’s Ron Menelli: The MIDI Wizard Behind the Pros’ Pedalboards

Description
Ron Menelli from RJM Music joins Blake Wyland to tell the long, nerdy, wildly practical story behind one of the most essential “behind the curtain” brands in modern guitar rigs.

Ron walks through his early days building circuits from Radio Shack notebooks, studying electrical engineering and computer science, and eventually bailing on the corporate telecom world to build something of his own. That leap leads to RJM’s first big breakthrough: the AmpGizmo, a solution that brought MIDI control to the era of giant channel-switching amps with giant multi-button footswitches.

From there, Ron explains how RJM evolved from amp control into full rig command centers, including the RG16 and the Mastermind ecosystem, and why products like the PBC-6X became the best-selling “brain” for players who want one button to handle loops, pedal order, and MIDI commands in a single move.

You also get a real talk segment on the business side: what it’s like building gear for a small, pro-focused niche (where your customers are the artists everyone else watches), why Ron intentionally keeps RJM small, and what he’d tell anyone trying to start a pedal or guitar company today.

Plus: a deep dive into MIDI 2.0, why it’s taking forever, and why the promise of “plug and play” control could finally make MIDI less terrifying for normal humans. Then we wrap with the essentials: favorite Boss pedals (OD-1 love), a Rush-inspired tap-dance origin story… and Chicago thin-crust pizza supremacy.

Check out all the stuff at rjmmusic.com

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Kris Crummett is on the show, and this one rips.

Kris has been in music for basically his entire life and has worked on records by Issues, Sleeping With Sirens, Dance Gavin Dance, Alesana, Jonny Craig, Emarosa, Night Verses, and a whole lot more!

If you’ve ever wondered why one record punches you in the chest and another one sounds like it got sat on, Kris explains exactly why. We go deep on his path from making demos in a garage with ADATs and a Mackie mixer to becoming one of the most trusted names in production and mastering around Portland and beyond.

This is not a fluffy “studio guy” interview. Kris gets into the real stuff:
how his early demos beat local “pro” studios,
why bands accidentally sabotage their own masters,
what mastering engineers actually need from you,
and how knowing when to stop tweaking might be the most important skill in the room.

We also talk about the shift from chasing the band dream to building a career behind the scenes, the difference between hearing music as a fan vs hearing it like a technician, and why AI might create less of a takeover and more of a backlash toward real, human music.

Give Kris a follow HERE https://www.instagram.com/kcrummett

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Ian Martin Allison is back, and this episode is a full-on gear-nerd thunderstorm with actual life lessons hiding in the lightning.

Blake and Ian go deep on signature basses, the Walrus Mantle DI drama, and the eternal internet question:
“Why is this thing expensive if it only has a few knobs?”

Turns out, transformers cost money. Craft costs money. Not cutting corners costs money.
And sometimes the loudest opinions come from people who were never the customer in the first place.

Inside this episode:


how Ian went from collaborator to Creative Director at Scott’s Bass Lessons


what it really takes to design gear people obsess over


why a $400 bass can absolutely punch above its class


how brands weaponize price perception (and why we all fall for it)


short-form vs long-form content, and where music media is headed next


the creative freedom that shows up when you stop performing “cool” and just be yourself

There’s also a perfect dog interruption, some very real talk about staying in an industry because you love the people in it, and a reminder that we’re living in a golden era of instruments, pedals, and options.

If you care about tone, product design, content strategy, and building a creative life that doesn’t make you dread waking up, this one hits hard.

Keep up with all things Ian on his website HERE https://ianmartinallison.com/

Give him a follow on his social media HERE https://www.instagram.com/ianmartinallison/

Support The Show And Connect!


The Text Chat is back! Hit me up at (503) 751-8577

You can also help out with your gear buying habits by purchasing stuff from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tonemob.com/reverb⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tonemob.com/sweetwater⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or grabbing your guitar/bass strings from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tonemob.com/stringjoy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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