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 Tonebone
History |
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....Way
back in 1976
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...
in
Montreal Canada, Peter Janis and Denis Rozon meet.
Peter was a budding
young guitarist that was playing in bands and
working at Steve's Music Store
to pay for new gear and Denis Rozon was an office
equipment technical representative with a passion
for guitar sounds and electronics. Peter was dissatisfied
with the options available to guitarists and wanted
to find solutions. Denis loved to tinker!
The two original 'Boneheads' started collaborating
on the first generation of tube distortion pedals
and developing new products including the world's
first 3-channel guitar amplifier. According to
Peter Janis: "Our 1st distortion pedals were
just plain average! They had huge top end and
did not yet have the sweet tone that we were searching
for. But it was a start and we knew we could only
go up from there. The amps on the other hand were
turning heads from day one! This was the foundation
from which we built our careers".
The two guys started
a company called Forest Electronics as a sideline
to their jobs. In the 1980's, Peter was hired by
Fender, then owned by CBS, as the product director
for the Canadian market. In summer of 1987,
Denis took over Forest Electronics full time and
continued to build custom 3-channel guitar amplifiers
for the boutique players. These years were extremely
valuable as Denis worked with hundreds of musicians,
custom designing products all the while gaining
a greater understanding of what guitarists truly
want and expect from their equipment.
Peter gained invaluable product development and
marketing experience from his association with Fender
and was directly involved with the company's 5-fold
growth in less than 8 years.
In 1991, Peter was asked by Fender President Bill
Schultz to move from Vancouver, Canada to Fender's
Los Angeles, California headquarters. [Peter states]:
"Fender is a great institution and no one knows
more about running a business than Bill Schultz
and his team. I was honored to be part of it and
cannot thank them enough for what the Fender organization
did for me. I just felt that in order for me to
pursue my creative dreams, I wanted a more intimate
environment and felt that it was time that my product
development skills be invested in my own company.".
In 1992, Peter
started C-Tec as a distribution firm and a few years
later, developed the Radial
Engineering brand and product group. Radial
products have attracted a diverse range of musicians
and firms including Tony Levin, Bryan Adams, Sony
Broadcast, and Cirque Du Soleil just to name a few
and today, Radial DI's are considered to be the
very best made.
During this time, Denis continued to develop products
for different companies and honing his skills in
the area of hi-fi and guitar tube amplification.
In 1998, he played a major engineering role at Tenor
Audio in Montreal in developing the award winning
Tenor OTL (Output Transformer-Less) tube Hi-Fi amplifiers
and their range of very high-end audiophile tube
products.
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Denis Rozon: "I
was enjoying the development of these incredible
products and shared in the joy of winning Best New
Technology at a recent CES show, but I felt something
was missing in my life... I wanted to get back to
my roots and my love of guitars". Denis decided
the time was right to get back into making tube
distortion pedals and Tonebone was launched over
the web late 1999.
In Y-2000,
Peter called Denis to tell him that he wanted to
get back into
making guitar products and had a project in mind.
The 1st Radial product the two co-developed was
the Radial
JD7 Injector, which is a guitar signal distribution
system. Denis joined C-Tec and Radial as Chief Engineer
early 2001 and Tonebone came as part of the package
beginning 2002. Janis
continues: "It was like putting on and old
pair of shoes. Working with Denis is easy and fun.
I can be 3000 miles away and Denis knows exactly
what I want. Furthermore, I know where his engineering
mind will go as we develop new ideas. It truly is
a perfect match!".
"We have a simple plan: we want to build the
very best and most innovative products in the world.
What could be easier?" |
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