The Tone Mob Podcast

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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