“My wife calls me a nerd when it comes to guitars and music,” Martin Guitar CEO Thomas Ripsam tells Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto in this episode of Inside the Noise. “And I’m pretty proud of that.”

It’s a story that resonates with a lot of players and their partners. But the tale was also a factor in Ripsam’s journey to Martin. Throughout his long career as a strategic business consultant, Ripsam always prized his relationship to music, and he reached out to the company when Chris Martin IV announced his retirement as CEO.