The Origin of Lambertones: From Garage Hobby to Global Brand

If you’ve ever plugged into a set of Lambertones Pickups, you know there’s something special happening. It's not just about tonal clarity or punchy dynamics — it’s about unlocking your voice as a player. With pickups shipped to 52 countries and counting, Lambertones has evolved further in the seven years its been operating than we ever could have dreamed. With so many options to choose from in the guitar pickup world market, we created a niche for ourselves to enhance clarity, dynamic range, and note articulation. The science of how guitar tone is produced isn’t necessarily complicated. Still, applying the variables and manufacturing process is pivotal in shaping the quality of tone in the end product.

If you want to know more about the nuts and bolts of pickups you can read more in this post about the secret sauce behind Lambertones clear and dynamic tone specific pickups.

In this post we’re going to take a look at who we are, why we do what we do here at Lambertones, and where it all started.

The Origin of Lambertones: From Garage Hobby to Global Brand

Before diving in, here’s what you can expect to learn from this post:

• A window into the early days of the Lambertones workshop

• The “why” behind the brand and why it still matters today

• How bootstrapping determination and coffee-fueled nights led to creating the best electric guitar tones on the planet. 

Whether you’re an artist chasing the perfect tone or someone who just loves a good origin story, this post is for you. Lambertones wasn’t built overnight, and it definitely wasn’t built by accident.

Who Is The Founder Of Lambertones Pickup

So who’s behind all of this? Well, that would be me - Kurtis Lamberton. Welcome! 

My background in fixing things and appreciating how things are made came from my dad. He taught me that taking things apart is the best way to know how things can work together. This fascination led me to a University degree in Automotive Management, with a side-step degree in Digital Photography, and a short pivot into the Electrical Engineering field of study. As a lifelong musician and lover of music, I went to as many shows as possible, but always wanted to be on the other side of the curtain where my hero musicians were. 

I ended up working for a small guitar manufacturing outfit that was incredibly toxic to its employees and I lasted 8 whole weeks, BUT I got just enough of a taste of what it was like to peel back that curtain, accessing some of my artists heroes, and playing a small part in helping them tell their story that I was hooked - I wanted to create something valuable for the music industry. Because I am a drummer, guitar tone is what I listen to the most when playing, and my goal to help guitar players gain confidence by sounding their best having incredible guitar tone was born.

How Did Lambertones Start

Early Days: 2017-2018

In the latter half of 2017 I bought my first guitar pickup winder. I scraped components together to make a guitar pickup, mostly from premade parts kits, and began prototyping our best-selling humbucker model, “the Crema”. My wife and I had just gotten married and were launching our so-called "careers" from the basement of my parents' house. The name "Lambertones" was honestly a goofy mash-up of my last name, Lamberton, and the thing I was chasing - tone. My wife wasn’t exactly a fan of the name at first (understandably so), but somehow, it stuck... and here we are. Below is a picture of me with the first Lambertones pickup winder in the basement. 

Launching the Brand: 2018-2020

The Lambertones website launched February 1st, 2018 with its first order coming on the 8th by a friend of mine named Joshua. I was his mentor when he was a freshman in college, and years later he returned the investment by trusting my dream and honoring me with the first website order placed. He has since started a very successful coffee company, so if you’re ever in the Walla Walla, WA area - go enjoy a very nice cup at Carte Coffee and tell them Kurtis sent you.

Why did I share that detail? Because beginnings are hard! You don’t know the level of confidence that Joshua’s (full-priced btw) order gave me to weather the difficulty of starting a business in an industry I had zero knowledge of or connections in. I didn’t have an uncle in sales at Sweetwater to get me a meeting with a product rep, everything that has happened came from organic, and sometimes grueling, effort to provide value to a community that didn’t know me or owe me anything. 

Speaking of coffee, my wife was working nights at the hospital at that time, so all noisy processes and tone R&D happened in the middle of the night with plenty of brew while she was at work. I didn’t have extra money to buy a quality amp modeler at that time to prototype during the day, so all tones were tested on tube amps after dark.

Before pickups were available to buy, I setup a 10’x12’ spare bedroom in our house to be the Lambertones production shop. The space was so tiny that until we got our first commercial space in mid 2019 I had to move all of our amps, guitars, packaging boxing and foam out of the bedroom and into the living room every day so I could use the workshop. 

During this period we took some really vital steps to setting up the brand to scale: 

• Spent countless hours interacting with difference Facebook groups and forums helping guitar players diagnose their wiring issues all the while learning what was important to their journey in finding their sound.

• We finalized our core pickup models after doing test runs and comparing feedback from user experiences.

• Set a new standard for individual pickup coil production, carefully controlling every variable of the pattern in a way that we can scale with multiple winding machines. 

Global Recognition & Hardship: 2020-2021

In late 2019 Lambertones partnered with 920D Custom, a small wiring harness company in Conway, AR on a YouTube video series that took off and ended up introducing us to Brian and Bradford from the Worship Tutorial YouTube channel. The partnership and content generation from these connections brought a legitimacy to the brand and enough traffic to weather the COVID storm during 2020 and into 2021 while supply chains and buying habits were inconsistent. 

In July of 2021 I was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that caused me to lose complete function of the right half of my face including my ear and eye. I wasn't able to walk for several weeks and it was unclear if I would ever function "normally" again. By the grace of God I have mostly recovered, with about 85% functionality of my face. My balance has mostly returned, and my hearing has completely recovered so I could continue prototyping new pickups, and the Lamber'Tron model was born in late 2021.

We moved closer to family in Southern California near the end of that year where it was back into the house/garage for two years while we looked for permanent space to sustain the growing business model and personnel. 

The Journey Continues: 2022-Present

Today, Lambertones Pickups are played on stages and in studios worldwide. It’s still crazy to me.

I've had wonderful people join me in pickup production, customer service, and marketing roles over the years - all have been wonderful and brought immense value to our brand growth and experience. We’ve had the chance to partner with some phenomenal custom guitar builders, boutique music stores, collaborate on signature artist tones, and continue innovating new ways to serve guitar players better. But and the end of the day and under all the social media posts, giveaways, and collaborations we are still about the same thing:

Love Your Tone.

Every single pickup that leaves the shop today is still built with the same DNA that started it all: an obsessive attention to detail, a love for the players and their sound, and a refusal to settle for average. 

If you're curious about if you could love your tone with Lambertones Pickups installed, you can check out our best selling single coils pickups and our best selling humbucker pickupshere, we are excited to welcome you to the family!