Mr Tonecat of Tonecat Pedals

Last week I spoke with Glyn of Mr Glyn’s Pickups and this week I am having a chat with Ryan (aka Mr Tonecat) of Tonecat Pedals to trace how a doodled badge on a retro cab morphed into a fledgling pedal-making venture.

Tonecat particularly came to my attention through their Instagram page and their brilliant Blankslate Overdrive which allows the user to scribble and draw whatever design they may like on the housing.

From doodles to drives
“It all started years ago when I built a 10″ Celestion-loaded retro cab,” Mr Tonecat tells me. “My daughter and I were sketching badge ideas on it and Tonecat was one of those scribbles.”

But Tonecat (as a business) didn’t really kick off until recently, May 2025, when the Blankslate Overdrive prototype took flight and pre-orders spiralled in. Just two months old and Tonecat is already seeing some great feedback and a following. Mr Tonecat notes that he is still holding down a day job, so Tonecat isn’t “spitting out 100 pedals a day” but people seem to be loving what he is doing.

A story in every stomp
“What sets Tonecat pedals apart is that they’re as much about personality as they are about tone,” Check out their Instagram page and you will see that the Tonecat Universe continues to expand with a narrative around the pedals. Ryan says that the pedals are story driven, the story comes first and then the pedal. He notes that there are even secret missions hidden in the Vanishing Tail Pedal that once cracked, can score you a T-shirt.

And that DIY Aussie spirit? “There’s a streak of DIY stubbornness (I take this to mean the ‘I’ll work out how to do it myself, with what I can source here‘ attitude that we see in small builders of all hobbies and industries) in everything I do, hand-built and unapologetically independent. We test our tones in dodgy power conditions, loud rooms, with good mates: real-world Aussie conditions, right?”

Wins, hurdles and hard-won advice
The biggest win so far?:

Seeing someone daughter across the world post a customised Blankslate using colour pencil and dad’s riffing with it! That moment when something I made in my little studio shows up in someone else’s creative process—that’s the gold.

But the biggest challenge is cutting through the noise in a saturated market. My antidote has been being weirdly specific and unapologetically me.

Their advice for anyone launching something new:

• Don’t wait for perfection—launch it and iterate in public.
• Find your people.
• Build what you’d want to use.
• And then keep going.

Musical roots and dream gigs
Although Tonecat pedals live in the overdrive realm, their creator’s first love was funk and soul. “I traded my Oasis cassette for Jamiroquai’s Travelling Without Moving, that bass line hooked me for life. But I also love Japanese fusion bands like Casiopea and T-Square.”

Ride-or-die rig
“My Fender Strat Plus (USA) and Hot Rod Deluxe amp. I love digital tech and I do own few amp simulation modelling pedal but they don’t have same ‘romance’ as the old analogue gears. I also had this Boss old Ds-1 (first pedal) and it’s beaten down so much but still gold.”

Where to explore the Tonecat universe

• Reverb (AU shop)
• Instagram
• Coming soon at notpedals.com, which shares their indie-DIY ethos.
• I saw recently that they will also be at Found Sound (my article on them here)