Jef Stone

Jef grew up with a luthier father, so an obsession with tone was never really optional — it came with the house. Guitars were things to be taken apart and understood long before they were things to be bought.

That early start led to a career as a sound engineer and pro-audio specialist, running his own recording studio in London — the kind of room where you learn quickly which pedals survive a session and which ones get quietly unplugged. Studio work teaches a particular sort of knowledge, and it is not the sort printed on the box: what a piece of gear actually does at two in the morning, in a real signal chain, when the take is nearly right and something is fighting you. It is also a fast education in which specifications matter and which are marketing.

He founded GuitarBomb in 2021 and has run it full-time since, writing more than 1,800 articles on guitars, amps and effects — breaking gear news and leaks, hands-on reviews, buying advice, and the daily hunt for a deal worth actually taking. The editorial line is the one he set at the start and still enforces: gear is reviewed after it has been played, nothing is accepted in exchange for coverage or a rating, and no manufacturer or retailer sees a review before it runs.

Off the clock he is a fairly hopeless gear hoarder — pedals, valve amps, and guitars ranging from Klon Centaurs to Parker Flys, several of which he has built himself. Most of the listening still happens in that same London studio.