The appeal of such a gadget is obvious, and a sizable number of prominent guitarists have adopted the ToneWoodAmp with evident pleasure. While Ofer (the guitar player in the house) has focused on spearheading the necessary tech development, Helene has put her marketing and people skills to work recruiting noteworthy artists and generally getting the word out. She\u2019s done a fine job; to have musicians in your corner on the order of Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, Becky Langan, Larry Mitchell, Ben Lacy, Guy Buttery, Karla Davis, Cory Batten, Dayna Manning, Steve Katz, Jerry Douglas, and George Benson is a major achievement. But as Webman explained in a Zoom interview from ToneWoodAmp\u2019s headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, the biggest rewards from her perspective have come when she\u2019s been able to enlist her company in the service of higher causes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where did the idea of ToneWoodAmp come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My husband has a background in sound\u2014he had his own studio when he lived in Israel\u2014and he also loves to play guitar. One day he just said, \u201cHow can I jazz up the acoustic guitar? Why should all the electric guys have so much fun?\u201d And he gathered some odds and ends and he made a prototype that he<\/em> could hear. It was kind of hard to hear, but he got the concept. From there we just rolled on it. We did a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds, we got some engineers involved to make a proper prototype, and the rest is history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How long did it take to develop something that you thought was marketable?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We did it quite quickly. I think it took about a year right from the original idea to getting it out on Kickstarter. We did go to a summer NAMM show to get some input and hear what musicians would actually say. Larry Mitchell was one of the first serious musicians that tried it out. The feedback was always like a little magic show\u2014like, Where is that sound coming from? Because there was nothing out there like it. And what\u2019s beautiful about it is that it keeps the authentic sound of your particular guitar and just makes it sound sweeter, gives it a bit more life. People are finding it to be a creative tool, or if they just want to practice, it makes them want to practice more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The crowdsourcing from Kickstarter really marks the ToneWoodAmp as a 21st-century product. In a previous era, raising funds for a device like this would have been far more complicated.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Without Kickstarter we would not have been able to get the ToneWoodAmp out. So many people supported us and didn\u2019t even really know what we were. It was hard to explain because it was such a new concept. We\u2019re very grateful to everybody who did that. And to be honest, the timing was brilliant for us. To do ads on Facebook at that time didn\u2019t cost anything. Today it\u2019s a new animal. For people to get their message out on Facebook or Instagram now, you\u2019ve got to be creative and figure out how else<\/em> you can tell your story. So there\u2019s always a wall that you\u2019ve got to climb. But if you believe in it, you climb it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How many people have you got working with you now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We have quite a few freelancers, but our core team is ten people, and each one is really a gem. Everybody helps out in their beautiful way. So we\u2019re small but mighty. Covid slowed us down a little bit as far as trying to do what we\u2019re doing now, but we have lots of ideas and lots of energy. And from the beginning, since we were the new kids on the block, we built everything here in Phoenix, from the chip to the casing. We have our headquarters here, and everything is local. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why Phoenix? Aren\u2019t you originally from Seattle?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, but I spent so many years abroad. I went to Israel for one year of school and ended up living there for 24 years. I just loved it over there. I loved traveling and experiencing different countries. And I met Ofer there. But to answer your question, my parents were snowbirds and would go down to Phoenix, so when we came back to America, it made sense that we would land here. You know, it\u2019s funny, my background is in English lit, and that has nothing to do with what I do today. But Ofer and I have always been creative, and it just evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve really never played guitar?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No. I did play piano as a young lady. I enjoy and appreciate music more than play it. And I love people. So that combination works for what I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How has your role within the company changed over time?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, in the beginning you have to wear a hat for everything, right? Now that we have a team, there are fewer hats on my head. But the marketing aspect is what I particularly do. I\u2019m always looking for creative ideas, always looking for more musicians or just folks out there that really love using the ToneWoodAmp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the list of such people is pretty impressive. What did you do to get, say, George Benson on board? He\u2019s in the Phoenix area, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n He is, and we were able to drop in and visit with him. George is such a generous soul; he gave of his time just to be with us, and he loved it. I don\u2019t know how it happened, but we did it [laughs<\/em>]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You just start asking, \u201cWould you like to try this?\u201d and once people tried it, they were in awe. Andy McKee\u2014when we did the Kickstarter, he didn\u2019t know who we were. He didn\u2019t ask for anything; he just went ahead and bought three of them. And this is something that Andy does: He shares with the world things that he believes in. That really helped us on Kickstarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ve also reached out to Olena Gnes, a vlogger from Ukraine now living in the U.S., who recently started a children\u2019s channel on YouTube called Pani Kalyna, featuring songs in Ukrainian.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was aware of her from watching her on CNN, and I really connected to the whole journey of what\u2019s going on in Ukraine on a personal level from a lady that has three kids. She came to the United States with them after her husband went to war. Her youngest child is quite small and was watching all these American kids\u2019 programs in English. Olena wanted to make sure that her daughter continued with the Ukrainian language, and she understood that many kids might need this, both in and out of Ukraine. She\u2019s very savvy. She\u2019s a journalist by trade, and she started this channel. And it\u2019s fabulous. She already has\u2014I checked today\u201417,000 followers, and she started maybe five months ago. I wanted to help her and give her a little something from us. We have the ToneWoodAmp, of course, but I needed to get a guitar to go with that, so we asked our friends at Kremona if they\u2019d be interested in sharing something with her, and they did kindly do so. And now Olena\u2019s using a Kremona acoustic guitar with a ToneWoodAmp on her channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"ToneWoodAmp](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/TWAonGuitar.jpg?resize=750%2C902&ssl=1\")