Avalanche: An Interview with Tony Kunda from Case Study Effects Co.
- Nick Rambo
- 16 hours ago
- 7 min read
Two years ago, Tony Kunda fell ill.
The unknown ailment flummoxed his doctors, confined him to bed for a month and led to complete hearing loss in one of his ears.
Not knowing how soon he might recover and whether or not his hearing would ever fully return, he did what anyone would do to pass the time and distract from the reality of his plight — he watched YouTube.
A friend suggested that he check out the JHS Pedals channel.
“He said that they produced a lot of really interesting guitar content that I might like,” Kunda says. “So, I found the JHS Show and marathoned the whole thing. I watched every video they’d put out.”
At one point in the series, Josh Scott — owner of JHS Pedals and the primary personality on its YouTube channel — set out to build a StewMac Fuzz Face pedal kit while on livestream.
On the heels of a comment about Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000-Hour Rule — that being the requisite amount of time for anyone to achieve proficiency with a given task — Scott quips "Any of you can build your own pedal. Any of you can start your own pedal company."
For Kunda — in his words — a lightbulb went off.
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The dirty little secret is that Tony Kunda isn’t really a guitar player.
In truth, he’s “at home and happiest” behind a keyboard. But he does enjoy playing guitar and, just before the mystery illness struck, had pulled all the pedals off his pedalboard with a plan to redeploy a stereo setup infused with a new Eventide H9.
But then he got sick, lost half his hearing — ironically making everything he heard decidedly mono — heard Scott’s suggestion and decided to give it a go.
“I bought a soldering iron and ordered a cheap fuzz kit,” Kunda says.
By the time it arrived from overseas, he’d regained enough strength to attempt the project, piecing it together on his kitchen table. Fully convinced it wouldn’t be functional when he was done and that he’d end up throwing it away and moving on with his life — he wasn’t optimistic.
But then he plugged it in.
“I’ve never had a rush of excitement like I did then,” he recalls of the moment when it came to life.
From there, he was hooked. Over the next six months, he dove headlong into the new hobby until it resembled something more akin to an obsession. He spent hours examining different types of schematics online and taking in all the information he could on everything from component sourcing and PCB design to enclosure types and drilling techniques.
Soon, all his disposable income had been spent on components, capacitors and an ever-growing collection of completed pedals with nowhere to call home.
“I got too into it,” he says. “I had a huge stack I didn’t know what to do with and probably gave away 50 pedals.”
And while he'd imagined what it might be like to start a pedal company, he was always skeptical. His friends, he thought, were just being nice when they told him his creations were great. After all — they were free.
Meanwhile, he’d started an Instagram account to chronicle his sonic explorations, which was discovered by two key sources of unexpected validation.
“I don’t know how he found me,” Kunda says, “but there’s a guy named Schuyler Watson — who goes by Watson’s Tone Supply. He was the first person who ever reached out to me.”
DMs were exchanged and Kunda sent off a pedal.
Watson, it turns out, has a penchant for using his platform to promote smaller builders and was impressed by Kunda’s clean and intentional design choices.
Shortly thereafter, Devan Bumstead saw a different video Kunda had posted and commented on it.
Once more, DMs were exchanged and a pedal was sent off.
This was a habit for Kunda — but things were about to change dramatically.
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Shortly after the mystery illness faded and his hearing had returned, whatever notions of stability Kunda might’ve entertained were quickly unraveled.
In summary — his life fell apart.
Over a very short time span, a succession of tragedies occurred. His father died. Then he learned that his mother’s dementia had reached a stage where constant care would be required. And on top of all that, his daughter got sick, missed a month of school and was hospitalized.
Yet, somehow, in the midst of all that chaos, Case Study Effects Co. was born.
“I’m literally sitting in the hospital as my daughter is in surgery and my Instagram starts blowing up,” Kunda says. “My watch is vibrating like crazy and I have no idea what’s going on. Likes, followers, DMs. I’m like — what happened?”
What had happened was that Bumstead had shared a video of the Bixonic Expandora clone he’d been sent on of his Instagram channel, The Tone Shepherd, which was then reposted by Kurtis Lamberton of Lambertones Pickups.
And. It. Blew. Up.
To be clear, it wasn’t just any Expandora clone — it was what’s now known as the Aspen Overdrive.
“I have a friend who’s a really big fan of the band Delirious?. His birthday was coming up and I was like, maybe I’ll build him something inspired by the Kilt.”
The Kilt, of course, is the signature drive pedal of Delirious? guitarist Stuart Garrard (Stu G) — made, ironically, by JHS Pedals.
Kunda started with a standard clone of the Expandora (where the Kilt finds its origins) and put a video of that design on Instagram. The subsequent comment from Blumstead kicked off a conversation and the standard offer to send a pedal, but took an interesting turn.
“He asked how it stacked up against the Kilt,” Kunda says. "And then he offered a list short list of things he didn’t like about the design."
Now a full decade into existence, the JHS Kilt is no stranger to pedalboard culture, but does come with known concerns about output volume. For Bumstead — who used it as 3rd stage drive into a slightly overdriven amp — the overt lack of headroom had him frustrated.
“Can you fix that?” he asked.
To which Kunda replied: “I can try.”
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Definitionally, a case study is a qualitative research method that involves detailed analysis aimed toward the comprehensive understanding of a subject in its natural setting through rigorous examination.
And, being a trained engineer, this is how Kunda sees pedals.
He wants to know them inside out — breaking down everything about a circuit to figure out what works, what doesn’t and why. So it seemed apt to name his company as a riff on that idea, a concept first suggested by his wife, based on Kunda's affinity for midcentury modern architecture of the same name.
But if there were ever to be a case study done on Case Study Effects, Kunda believes the title would be ‘How Not to be Prepared for Your Business to Scale’.
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Kunda feels as though his business has dragged him along with it.
The night his Instagram exploded with interest, he went home and hastily scrambled together what he regards as the most poorly-coded website of all time. He added a simple waitlist feature — name and email.
Within three weeks, he'd collected more than a thousand of each.
But for someone who had been naturally skeptical about the pedal industry and who wasn’t equipped to scale at that rate, it was a daunting task.
“If you read anything about the cottage industry of pedals, everyone says there’s no money in it because it’s a completely saturated market with a thousand different builders and you will sell 10 pedals a year,” Kunda recalls thinking prior to the night everything started.
But with a sudden influx of more than a thousand orders to fill, he had a different problem.
“At that point, I was putting every component in by hand, drilling the by hand, and it took an hour to build a single pedal,” he says. “And I’m looking at this waiting list like, well — I’ll be done in 36 years.”
So, he quickly optimized production, figured out a surface mount design — while still offering a slightly delayed handmade option for those on the waitlist expecting one — and enlisted his wife, Kate, in the process. She learned how to solder and, according to her husband, has probably built more Case Study pedals than he has at this point.
But the most important thing? Keeping people first.
“I went into this knowing that I cared more about the relationships than a pedal will ever mean to me,” he says. “I’ve had the opportunity to be on calls with people I never expected to meet. So, if I never sold another pedal, I’d be fine because the relationships that have come out of it have been the most remarkable part. That’s what I love about this.”
For his part, Bumstead is proud of the role he played.
“I feel like our partnership really helped launch his company,” he says. "Of course, there were others out there loving his stuff, but we had something special that people gravitated to and trusted enough to jump on the list.”
Equally, Lamberton — who is an adamant believer in collaboration and re-shared the original video based on the fact that his pickups were being used in it — is humbled by the fact that such a simple act helped launch Case Study's breakout.
"There's so much opportunity lost when content creators forget to tag those responsible for what they're sharing," he says. "If something as simple as that can revolutionize someone's business model, that's pretty wild. I'm grateful that it worked out and it makes me even more vigilant for the future. Maybe that's a lesson for all of us."
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Fresh off the completion of his 1000th pedal, it's clear Kunda has learned to thrive in the chaos. And while the mountain may have triggered an avalanche, he’s loved every minute of digging his way out — one pedal, and relationship, at a time.
Note: I reached out to Josh Scott from JHS Pedals for comment on this story. Unfortunately, due to a recent cycling accident, he was unavailable. I wish him a speedy recovery. That said, I think it's worth noting that Kunda and Scott have never met or spoken. And while the phrase 'Kilt Killer' has been thrown around in relation to his Aspen Overdrive pedal, the fact remains that Tony loves (and still uses) JHS Pedals. Moreover, he knows that Case Study wouldn't exist if it wasn’t for those two inspirational, livestreamed sentences from Scott back in 2023. And, perhaps, he's not alone.
For more info on Case Study, visit casestudyeffects.co
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Photos Courtesy of Paul Hanon: premierheadshots.com