Vol. 27, No. 2
December 2025
Players, Gear & Sound — The Inside
Celebrate the art of tone with The ToneQuest Report®—a year-end tribute to the builders, tinkerers, and serendipitous discoveries shaping modern sound. Dive into Ron Ellis’s Frisell and Bette humbucker sets, CJ Landry’s NASA-honed pedal restorations, and Riverhorse’s hunt for thunderous ’50s Tweed Deluxes. Rediscover practice discipline in “The Intervention,” then explore Maynard Madsen’s Custom GE Boost, marrying NOS germanium magic with heirloom-grade circuitry. Fender’s Rick Heins reflects on three decades of Blues Junior evolution, while Edward Zawadzki’s accidental P90 swap proves tone sometimes emerges by chance. From repair bench to stage, every story honors the living conversation between player and gear.
PLAYERS, GEAR & SOUND
The Inside
Note-To-Note With Ron Ellis
By Riverhorse. Ron Ellis — retired Lawrence Livermore engineer turned full-time pickup maker — walks through the origins of the Frisell Neck humbucker, how the Frisell/Signature pairing delivers vintage single-coil clarity from a Les Paul, and why pickups should never be louder than the guitar beneath them. The interview closes with a bonus first-listen report on the Bette Set.
FROM ANALOG TO ORBIT
CJ Landry
By Riverhorse. Houston-based electronics engineer and musician CJ Landry has spent decades quietly repairing vintage effects pedals other technicians couldn't touch — Deluxe Memory Men, A/DA Flangers, Roger Mayer Octavias, and more — with a network that traces back to AnalogMan himself. ToneQuest sits down with CJ to talk tone, repairs, and a lifetime of never putting the guitar down.
The Tweed Bender
By Riverhorse. In pursuit of long out-of-reach vintage tweed Deluxes, the team tracked down a battered 1955 and a clean 1957, then worked with transformer wizard Bryan Sours to restore both amps to jaw-dropping, timeless life.
The Intervention
By Riverhorse. A guitarist's self-imposed intervention leads to a disciplined practice regimen: five complete songs a week, from the Hollies to Pink Floyd, in pursuit of real creative growth beyond noodling on familiar riffs.
A Titan Of Tighten
Madsen Amplification Custom Ge Boost
By Scott Ulrichs. Builder Maynard Madsen discusses the origins and design of his Custom Shop Ge Boost — a germanium treble booster built with heirloom-quality components and hand-selected NOS transistors. He traces his path from audio engineering school to boutique pedal building, explains what makes germanium boosts unique in a band mix, and previews an upcoming KT150-powered amplifier.
A Versatile Little Beast
Madsen Custom Shop Ge Boost Review
By Scott Ulrichs. The Madsen Custom Shop Ge Boost is a Rangemaster-style germanium transistor treble boost with three capacitor-selectable voices that rewards guitarists who plug straight in — delivering round cleans, expressive bloom, and a dynamic feel that compressors can't match.
CARRYING THE LEGACY
An Interview With Rick Heins Of Fender
By Pete Prown. Rick Heins, Fender's senior product manager for guitar and bass amplifiers, discusses the 30-year legacy of the Blues Junior and the refinements — including the Celestion G12M-65 Creamback speaker and solid-state rectifier — that define the Blues Junior IV 30th Anniversary edition.
FENDER BLUES JUNIOR IV 30TH ANNIVERSARY
Tone To The Bone
By Pete Prown. Fender's Blues Junior IV 30th Anniversary edition brings the same beloved 15-watt, two-EL84 tube formula that hooked a generation of players in 1995, now dressed in Black Western tolex with a Celestion Creamback speaker and a silver faceplate.
OUR GUEST IN THE QUEST
The Serendipitous Swap: A Tale of Two P90s
By Edward Zawadzki. Las Vegas guitarist Edward Zawadzki recounts how a mislabeled Ellis pickup order turned into a happy accident, transforming his 2013 Collings DC290 into the guitar it was always meant to be.
© 2025 Mountainview Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. The ToneQuest Report® is presented as a collective work. Individual contributions may be separately protected by copyrights held by their respective authors.