Show Notes
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
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from The Tone Mob Podcast
When somebody asks what you do for a living, sometimes the easiest answer is simply... “guitar.”
My buddy Philip Carter from the 40 Watt Podcast is back, and this one started the way a lot of our conversations do... We were talking about guitars before hitting record and eventually realized we should probably be recording this nonsense.
Shelby Pollard of Black Bobbin is back on the show, and apparently we had some things to work through.
Zoe’s path into guitar building is a pretty fascinating one. She grew up surrounded by artists, started out as a drummer, dove deep into piano and composition, and at one point thought she might pursue film scoring. Eventually, though, she realized she missed actually making physical things with her hands.
My buddy Jason Verlinde of The Fretboard Journal is back on the show, and this time we’re fresh off the Fretboard Summit in Chicago.