Lester walks Rhett and Zach through his origins in amp-building, repairing instruments and amps in the back room of the shop where he gave guitar lessons. He played in rockabilly bands and had an affinity for old ’50s and ’60s Cadillacs that needed work, but he couldn’t afford to pay someone to fix them up, so he had to learn to do it himself. In his freshman year of college, he’d buy old amps and rent books from the library to figure out how to repair and mod them. Eventually, his voracious fandom of Two-Rock amplifiers helped him connect with the brand’s founder, Bill Krinard.
On Two-Rock’s building philosophy now, Lester says his approach is more about feel more than sound. “We build them for the artist, not the audience,” he says. Two-Rock’s obsession with delivering high-fidelity sound goes into every piece of the amp; Lester says each part is manufactured to spec in California, and part of the brand’s high price tags is thanks to how well they treat their employees. “We’re all tinkerers and geeks,” Lester grins.
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Later, Lester explains how they design high-wattage amps that don’t blow your eardrums, and how Two-Rock is “tipping their hat” to Dumble-style amps. Building amps for a job is indeed hard work, but Lester wouldn’t have it any other way: “I just get to build my dream guitar rig, that’s all I do.”
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He continues: “I know that we need to feel magic. I like it too.… But I love that element of proving simplicity of all this stuff and making it digestible to younger players and taking the chaos out of decisions. So, for me, that’s where the collecting started happening. Everything I’d ever heard anyone say about a pedal, I immediately needed to find the pedal and see if it was true.”And while the trio have plenty of inside-baseball stuff to cover, from how they’ve approached their YouTube content to how they tackle endorsement cold calls to branding—“products are not that important in the long term. Brand is more important than products.” But Josh is here to talk about his relaunch of the Ross brand and his YouTube documentary about the brand. The story, he says, is “more important than the pedals even. I just love the stories and stuff."
The pedal circuits were the easiest part of the whole thing. It’s awesome to have worked so hard and to see the impact that just a good story has. We got inundated with messages … saying, ‘Man, I cried about pedals.’”“I just really love the history element,” he says later, “so much that it feels like this really natural piece of being able to tell those stories and then move the story forward … One of my favorite things to do is taking some classic thing and replicating it perfectly. Like, I love the science of that.”
Alt-Tuning Curious with Ariel Posen
Posen and Rhett swap horror stories from working on film sets, where they were expected to do way more than their job descriptions covered. Both agree that the film life is infinitely worse than touring. “I don’t know shit!” protests Posen. “I’m just a guitar player, dude!”
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Posen discusses how he got into playing slide in standard tuning by learning George Harrison leads (blues slide guitar was never his thing), but Canadian guitarist Kevin Breit inspired him to try open tunings, a process with “a lot of trial by fire, lots of, ‘oops, sorry!’” Blake Mills’ 2014 record Heigh Ho prompted Posen to chase lower tunings, although Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Big Wreck lit that same candle years earlier. For the open tuning-curious, Posen suggests starting in open E.
Posen talks about how he wrote his new record, and the honesty and simplicity behind his favorite lyricists like Jason Isbell. Finally, the trio dig into how to stack and squeeze the best sounds from your fuzz pedals. (Is a mini version of the Mythos Argo fuzz pedal coming? Zach doesn’t say yes—but he doesn’t say no, either.) Finally, the crew dips a slick Americana rig that draws near perfect scores.
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On this episode of Dipped In Tone, Rhett and Zach chat with special guest Warren Haynes. The Gov’t Mule leader talks about the band’s latest, Peace… Like a River. This record of originals was recorded simultaneously with 2021’s Heavy Load Blues, in the same studio, using a completely different set of gear. “We setup all our normal Mule toys in the big room with the high ceiling, we setup a bunch of vintage gear, small amps, and old guitars … in the small room,” Haynes shares, as he details the differences in each rig and talks about his go-to blues rig, which includes vintage Gibson amps—“they were flying by the seat of their pants, a lot of it was experimental,” he says on why they’re some of his favorites—a Supro, Alessandro, and more, plus a slew of vintage guitars, including Danelectros and Gibsons. “The surprise factor was part of it,” Haynes says. In the course of talking amps, Haynes might have let the cat out of the bag about a special project.
What does it take to be effective when sitting in? “A lot of times,” Haynes explains, “I’m just trying to find something that fits and stay out of everybody’s way.” Pragmatically, he later adds, “Really, the most important thing to remember is that the song’s gonna be fine without your part, so there’s no reason to feel like you have to do anything. When it comes time to solo, that’s a little bit of a different story.” He later reminisces about sitting in with Bob Dylan, and, during his time as a member of the Allmans, having Eric Clapton join the band onstage.