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The know youw gear podcast. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast on April 17, 2026. I hope everybody had a fantastic week and is ready for some guitar fun. Okay, so last week I was asked about PRS finishes and the question was why, if PRS switched to nitrocellulose lacquer, which they did officially, maybe unofficially, they switched in mid 2020 to all core and S2s. Okay, so that's how you know some of you are going to be like, well, how do I know if mine is nitro? Well, they have lacquer finishes on some PRS models, you know, before that date. But all USA PRS guitars, cores and S2 switch about mid 2020. And so think about past July. So if your guitar has a manufacturer date past July of let's say, 2020, you're pretty sure that it's going to be a nitro cellulose like finish. But the question last week was why, if they're nitro and it's been basically five years easy now, why are so many of them looking so great? How come they don't crack or finish? And I said, hey, I have a friend who would know the answer to this. And I reached out to the friend this week and he g the answer and he basically said it's because they use a acrylic, like to fill in. And then the nitro goes on top of that. And what that does is it allows the nitro to be a little bit more durable, so there's going to be less cracking. Now, this is a very layman's explanation of this. He sent me a long detailed one and it was just a little too much for me. I was like, okay, we just need to know why it's not doing it. It's because the fact that they put this acrylic undercoat finish on the guitars as essentially to fill in gaps, fill in, seal it, and. And then they apply the nitro lacquer or the lacquer to that. So that's why it doesn't sink. The lacquer doesn't sink and it doesn't crack as easy because it's on. It's a multi finish. And that would also explain, like I said when I was there and I was asking them why, why are they able to get the guitars out so fast? Because when they were showing me the factory tour in the US and going with the guitars, one of the things I noticed was they were able, after painting them, to get them in about half the time, just approximately the Gibson Gets the guitar out because Gibson spends a long time with the, the finish curing and. And they said it's because of trade secret. Well, apparently that's part of the trade secret. So it's, that's how they do it. So that's why you're not seeing so many Relic y worn in pure S guitars. Which is interesting only because I'm pretty sure, in fact I'm very sure that my 2013 Mira core guitar is nitro lacquer because I think that's what they did on those. And mine is relic the hell just it's been beaten and abused and chipped and it's, it doesn't have cracks in it I'm looking at right now. But it has been beaten, abused and I have played the hell of it. Like I said, I had to refread it. I refreaded it with stainless steel frets. I want to say in 2019 I probably 2018 is when I wore out the frets and I decided since I got a refread it, I'm going to go stainless steel. I don't want to have a refread again. But I played the guitar so much, in fact it still gets a good. It's in the top three rotations of my guitars to this day. But it used to be my main guitar for, well, for 2013 because I bought it right. You know, in 2013 is when I got it. So you figure if I did it in 2019, so for six years I was abusing it. So. All right, so that's a follow up to that. The next one came from Deja Dejaja. That's funny. Says Mythos Pedals just announced it will only sell direct now downsizing and focusing even more on high end boutique gear sales at High Voltage Guitars. Smart move in your humble opinion. Well, let's discuss that because it does fall in line with what we've been discussing for the last six years here on this channel. So if you didn't see the announcement, Mythos Pedals, which also has a small music store called High Voltage Guitars that sells like 2 Rock and Novo and some other high end PRs now, right? So Purest guitars, they have decided to go consumer direct now. So no more dealers. So they've already notified the dealers, hey, we're done with the dealer network. We're going to go direct sales to consumers. And also that meant unfortunately downsizing, sizing their staff. So I believe they had, I believe like five employees or something like that. And so now it's just going to Be, I think just three people, possibly like, you know, the, the. So that's it. So they've definitely, you know, think of this. They're. They've really cut it down. So. And they're going to focus on obviously doing direct, but also the store and other things like that. And so there was some discussion. I saw them, I listened to it in the background, what they were talking about. I thought it was yesterday, but why do I think it was today too? I don't know. I don't know which one it was. But anyways, um. Well, couple things. So let me. I'm going to give you some. Some. Some. Some insight on some stuff and then I'll give you my, you know, my what I think of that. Their. Per. Their particular situation. So, like I said, we already know where this is going. I've been talking about Fender going direct, and Fender has definitely ramped up the going direct with the fact that they are engaged in social media now and they're paying affiliate clicks, for instance. Whether you realize it or not, affiliates have actually grown to YouTube now. So, um, eventually what I think is going to happen and it's going to get sidesteppy here is everything will end up like a TikTok store. In other words, your influencers, you're going to make any money on YouTube, it might end up like TikTok and Instagram where you got to sell crap. So it's going to be like, everything's going to feel like a qvc. You know, it's going to be like. I mean, it's going to be me talking and going. But also click link if you want to buy. Speaking of Mythos, guys, click the link to buy a Mythos. You know, it's going to be like that because right now, anytime I type anything into the. Into the description of a video, AI immediately finds that product and puts a link for it for you guys. And of course. And then it's just luck of the draw for me. So, for instance, if you were to buy that direct from Fender, I get paid the highest commission. If you get from guitars, you don't get the second highest commission. If you get it from Walmart, I think I get the third highest commission. And if you buy it from Sweetwater, I get the Sweetwater pays the least. And it just. It's random and. Or I can go in and manually do it, but a lot of it's just random. So direct is definitely something everyone's focused on. It's because of the fact that I've been saying this for Years. Really, all that matters is customers. It's not product. If you have customers, you can find product, but if you have product, you can't always find customers. That's just a fact of business. It's business 101. Mythos has customers. They have a Friday show. If they are converting like I convert, which I don't really have a whole lot of product to sell anything close to my stats, they don't really need anything other than their live show or their. Whatever. Is it live, their whatever podcast. They just. They're talking to an audience. They're talking to an audience of, let's say 1500, 2000 people, 3000 people. They just convert 1% of that. They're. They're doing something. And, and this is the. This is really, like I said, it's just the future, right? Going direct consumer. It's why I've been telling small mom and pops and this is where, you know, think about what Mythos is doing at this point. Now, there's a lot of discussion. They talked about chasing their joy, you know, happiness and, you know, stress, and this is better suited for them. And that's hard for anyone to judge. How do you judge? You know, tell somebody, no, you should do something, you know, that, you know, you don't want to do. But the, The. The. The problem is that we really got to think about the fact that, look, they are really. They. There was dealers that was getting product. Those dealers now have less choices of product to get. There was people who are employed making pedals, and now there's people not employed. So those are downsides. Now, it's not necessarily anyone fault. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that's the downside. We should address that. The point that I'm going to make is what I keep reiterating with the small dealers, the small businesses that watch this show on Friday get away from selling as much new product as possible, go to used. This is going to be a side rant, but it's an important rant. Look, I've said this before. It used to be a brand major store. That's not the case anymore. No one walks in a store and goes, oh, they have fenders. So therefore, they're legitimate store anymore. Because consumers are in there to either loiter or spend. And either way, if they're loitering, who cares? And they might be potential new customers in the future, but if they're there to spend, they're there to spend. You know, somebody tied in, I'm going to die in A question. This is going to be a little all over the place. Somebody asked me a question about when I had a store. Was it tough competing against Amazon and stuff? I remember specifically helping a young man and his mother with a $99amp. And at the time when we had six, six different models, we had a Fender, we had a Line 6, we had a Marshall, we had a Vox, we had a Peavey, right? And we had a Roland, okay, $99amp. There were six choices. Why that matters is because there was a time when you walked in the store, if you had $99, that was the only amp you got. And that's when $99 was a lot more money. And so six choices. I went through each one. I demonstrated. The kid didn't play guitar, so he was learning guitar. So I demonstrated each one and went through every single detail with Mom. Look, this one has chorus and reverb and all the effects. This one I think will last longer. I was obviously talking about the Roland. This one has a brand name, you know, Fender. Who doesn't know this? This one has, you know, a way to plug blue or not Bluetooth, you know, an eighth inch cable into it and have music going around. And the mother with no, like just laughing because I'm trying to have my head just thinking about what she did. She leaned right over. After about a 20 minute, 30 minute demonstration, she took a picture of the one she wanted. And then she said, she's on her phone. I thought she's like, oh, she's texting the husband, I guess. Okay, you know, hey, I'm a, I'm a husband. You know, sometimes you're like, hey, should I get Billy an aunt? And she goes, okay, thank you so much. She didn't know I owned the store. I think she just thought I worked there. That's kind of probably how it come across. And she said, thank you. I just ordered it on Amazon. So anyways, what's my point? My point is in a music store, it would have been a lot better if I had used amp because that's something she couldn't have compete with. In fact, think about this ties into another subject. Somebody was asking me if Sweetwater has their own selling, you know, the gear exchange, why do they, if they have their own used selling platform, why do they sell their gear on Reverb? Customers. That's where the customers are. So if you guys don't know, Gear Nuts, is, is a, is a, is a reverb store that is owned by Sweetwater. So Sweetwater even sells on reverb. Why? Because that's where the customers are again. The customers that matters. I know this because I sat in a store with half a million dollars with inventory, twiddling my thumbs, watching my bills just skyrocket as no one walked in the door. I can tell you what I would have rather preferred. I rather. If you give me a customer, I can get on the phone, I can get the customer what they need. I can find a way to make something work when I don't have a customer. I don't know how to. I can't. You know, you just can't pull that out of thin air. So. So, like I said, Sweetwater can't even do used. And Guitar Center. Guitar center does used. And I think they do used really well. But you can. You can niche them out a little bit too. You know, a couple of my friends who have music stores right now that I talk to, I don't know why they do this, but it drives me nuts. I'm like, guitar center gives me 60% of what they. They take. They buy from me or trade. And you guys are giving me 50. You should give me. You should match Guitar Center. You should do better than them. You should, you know, get the nice stuff. And. And they're like, why? Because they were like, ah, you know, we don't want to buy everything. But I'm like, that's. But you understand, don't let them gobble up this last bit of market you have, which is used. Because as I've told you guys, you know, I met a guy in the parking lot to buy some expensive guitars. Imagine in your head, you know, meeting people. Now it's getting more difficult to meet people in parking lots to make transactions. It's pretty dangerous out there where the city I live in, the police department lets you actually meet in front of the police station and do exchanges. So it's a little difficult. There's a lot of scams on the Internet now. There is a lot of crazy people flipping gear on the Internet now. There is all the problems. We all know about selling used on the Internet. So you can imagine. I think there's opportunity for some of us to walk back in Muse stores to the mom and pops and go, wow, that's a really cool. Made in Mexico Strat for 5.99. I think I'll buy it. It's, you know, it's one I played, it's used, it's. The opportunity's here, and I make the purchase. So like I said my little passionate speech to you Small shops is you need to focus more on the used gear. Because I'm telling you, you know, Mythos is a small business who is supporting small businesses. And now they're not in those small businesses anymore because, like I said, direct consumers. So easy, especially with Mythos. And this goes back to Mythos now. Ready? So Mythos, what I think's happening is regardless of what they said, which a lot of it made sense to me, I think it's just as easy as this. They have the customers, so they don't need anybody else. Why? Let me give you a perfect example. And I'm gonna let something out of the bag right now. So that's just how it goes. This is a story I never told. So I'm gonna tell the story and then explain the nothing and then explain my point. This is gonna illustrate my point, I think, beautifully, about customers versus product. So years and years ago, 2004 or five, I'm gonna say 2005, a customer brought a guitar for repair. And I usually had a guy that I went to for rewinding pickups. In other words, when a pickup was broken, you know, kind of like what Lindy. Lindy Frailin does on his Instagram, where he, you know, takes apart old pickups and fixes them. I had a guy who'd fix your pickup, and I had a customer drop off guitar, and one day, the guy just was out of town for a couple weeks. The situation got tough, and I needed this pickup fixed, so I decided to do it myself. Um, I just taught myself how to do it, you know, as you know, YouTube wasn't. Didn't come around until 2006. So this is really pre YouTube. I was on. On. On websites late at night, you know, forums, reading, like, how do I wind it? What do I do? I had a general idea, and I just started learning to wind the pickups. I wound the pickup, I reworked it. I reworked it. I probably put, you know, 10 hours into something that probably is not going to feasible financially. Fix the guy's pickup. The guy got the guitar. The guy was happy. He was super happy. Here's what happened. Unfortunately, to the person that I used to source that work to, now I got to keep the money. So it didn't make sense to me source it to him anymore. I could just do it for myself. So it was another thing that I would just do myself, fix pickups or wind pickups. And over time, I wind pickups. And then eventually, a friend of mine who was winding pickups, one of his I liked, he stopped Making it. And I asked him for basically the formula and I started making that one. I started modifying it, came up with a version myself. That was something I was not interested in doing. I gotta tell you, I'm not interested in making pickups. Just like I'm not interested in doing a lot of things now. I have enough to do with this gig. But what happened in 2000? I want to say 2000. And we can probably. Look, let me tell you the exact timeline. So we were talking because I want to say if it's 2000 or 2001. Okay, what am I say? 2000. I'm sorry, 2020 or 2021. Okay, so hold on a second. This will come up and it'll help me. So. Okay, try this. Gotta try another shirt. Shirt. I should have had this. Oh, here it is. So it was five years ago. Let me click on it. Pause. And the date. Come on, what's the date? The date was, ah. September 10th, 2020. Okay, so take us back to like March of 2020. Think about this. I want you to think about something. March of 2020. Flatten the curve. I'm not even kidding. That's exactly when. If you guys don't remember, that's exactly when it happened. I know, I'll never forget. Flatten the curve. Because my wife and her mother were in California and they were locking down the state and they had to get on an emergency flight and get home. And then because even though her mother lives in a different state, she had to stay with us for two weeks for the quarantine. So good thing I like my mother in law, huh? So anyways, this is the important part of this. So March of 2020, Crimson Guitars reached out to me and they said, hey, we would like to do this video. You had done one in the past where you built a kit. We want to send you a kit. We're gonna have a bunch of influencers or YouTubers build kits and then you can sell them off and raise money for charity. And I thought, oh, that sounds great. And then they didn't get back to me. And then end of June, right? June, they sent the kit. So this is much different than March. And so when June showed up, this is not at that time. It's not like now where my shop is air conditioned and nice. At that time, my shop was in my garage and it was not air conditioned. And I didn't really know video skills like I do now. So I didn't know that I could overdub later. I didn't think that way. Like film and then overdub or whatever. And the reason that's important is because I couldn't run any kind of AC or cooling or even open the doors to the garage in June. It was 110. It was 100. And it was 110 in the garage. Let's just say that it was 110 in the garage. So when I was building the guitar, if you guys remember the guitar, we built it and sold it. We had Painthofer build the guitar. I was gonna refread it with stainless steel frets. That's the thing I like to do, refread guitars with stainless steel frets. And what happened was I refreaded the whole guitar. I did the video. I put the bridge on. I'm sorry, assembling the guitar. I glued the neck in. I'm doing the whole thing and I'm doing each day. But the day I did the refret was normally, I knew to get out of the garage by 10am but instead I was working and working, trying to get through this. And it was 1, 2 o' clock in the afternoon. It was, like I said, at least 110. Sopping sweat. Just like, I'm gonna die. Okay? There's no air movement, and it's 110, at least. And anyways, I go upstairs, I shower, I go back, I grab the. Get the SD card. And there's nothing on the SD card after the first couple minutes because the camera overheated and turned itself off. Something else I didn't know cameras did. I was new to cameras. I bought a camera. And so I had no footage of the stainless steel frets. And so I thought about, you know, how can I do this? Can I pull a couple frets and then refret those frets and then show that in the video? And I was a little worried about chip out in the fretboard because I glued them in. And I was worried about, like, you know, enough footage of this stuff. I didn't know what to do. So I was a little stressed because I was like, you know, this is the main thing. I'm doing this guitar. It's a kit. I had it painted. I put a bridge on it, put tuning keys on it. I glued the neck. I'm doing the setup and really, the refresh. A big deal. So I thought, well, why don't I wind some pickups? So I wound some pickups for that guitar, some special ones, and I put them in the guitar. And that was also. It solved a problem because I could wind the pickups in the house. So where the AC was, which is important. I made the guitar, we auctioned it off. And as you can see, the video went up in September. That's the timeline. What happens next is I started getting emails from people. Hey, I really want to buy your pickups. Hey, I want to buy your pickups. Hey, I want to buy your pickups. I don't make pickups. But you understand, it's also 2020 and the world's ending. We just got toilet paper again. And I'm thinking, I don't know, what if this. You know, what am I gonna do? You know, I can't do repairs because we're not doing face to face anymore. And YouTube's I'm like, I don't know. I didn't know there was a guitar boom. Like that ended up happening. And then actually was the highest. The channel, you know, the channel took off again, actually. But the important part of the story was I started selling pickups. I Then I decided, well, I better name these pickups. So I named the pickups, and I started a brand, and. And a lot of you guys know that's the Blackstock brand. We built a website, and then I tried to hire people, which never worked out. And then eventually just recruited my wife, and Sean and I would make the pickups. A lot of you watching today probably have them, because we sold thousands and whole time not wanting to actually make pickups. And then, as you can imagine, when YouTube took off again and I was making lots of content and everything was fine, it became a horrendous endeavor to do this back and forth. I hope this gives you insight into actually this mythos arrangement. I'll tell you why in a second. So here I am, and I have all these people who want to buy the pickups. In fact, every time I would mention the pickups, we sold out. And we would take back. We take back orders, and that's all I would do for a week or two is just make pickups. I couldn't even make content. And so we went this way for a while until I eventually decided this is just no more. So just let me tell you. This is why I said this announcement's way too early, but I'm just gonna give it to you. Cause I think it makes sense. We've decided to disband the Blackstock brand. So the Blackstock brand is now what we call officially shelved. In other words, we're not selling it off, but it's gone. Now. Why that is is I didn't want to OEM them. In other words, have another pickup manufacturer make a Blackstock pickup, make the Northern Lights pickup, which is the pickup we sold the most of. And, you know, and then just put my name on it, you know, kind of like, you know how. You know, like how companies have guitars made at Cortech and just have their brand put on it. And so, you know, two of my friends, one of which is the owner of Cortech, and one is Kyle, who owns Cyber Guitars, they own two of the largest pickup manufacturers in the world. And they were like, hey, we'll make pickups for you again, oem, they'll make the pickups, and then we can slap the Blackstock brand on them. And I was like, I'm not interested in that. And. But this ties into what I'm saying. But what I do have is a lot of customers, a lot of people. We receive tons of emails every day from people, even though I shut down the Blackstock website. So, you know, Shawna was shipping Blackstock pickups today because if you were just aggressive enough and said, hey, we want to buy your product. Think about that. We have customers. That that's what you want, is customers. We have customers, tons of customers. So I think that's why direct to consumer is going to get bigger and bigger. Because once somebody like Mythos, who can builds a credible, they have a podcast. They have. They have a relationship with an audience and customers, they really don't need an in between. They don't need somebody in between them and the customer base. They can just interact with their customer base. So you guys know this announcement's not supposed to happen in Maple Till. Maple Till. I'm trying to say May. April. It's April. It happens in May. Officially not. Black stock pickups are gone. The brand, however, the Northern Lights will now continue starting next month as a DiMarzio pickup. So we'll make an official announcement. You can go to the Know youw Gear page to learn more about it. If you go to the New Year podcast website right now, you can learn all about them, their pricing, what they are. They're essentially, they're DiMarzio. They're DiMarzio brand, and they're just the Northern Lights. So if you still want to get the Northern Lights, you'll be able to do that. It's not an OEM because it's under the DiMarzio brand. You're not buying. You're not buying. It's not like DiMarzio is making us a pickup. And then we're going to call it Our own. It's a DiMarzio pickup. Now, it's just if you want to have the northern lights, it's a DiMarzio. Now, what does that mean to you guys? Means the price is half as much because DiMarzio charges half as much. They're made in the USA, in Long island, in New York, and they look like a DiMargio product. They'll have DiMarzio's branding on it. They're just going to be my spec again. You can read all the spec, all the ingredients are the same. So, you know, they were really cool. And you'll see if you read the. Some of the information, it's. I have some. A couple of things that were in my pickup that they had never done before as something they never, you know, built as a pickup. So it's going to be a unique product for them. And this is what the reason why I tell you this is because it's not because I'm a great pickup builder. It's not because I'm super smart and I know a lot about pickups. You know, I'm a pickup guru. What I mean by this, the relationship I was able to to create with either DiMargio or Cortech or all these companies that want to build the pickups is because they know I have customers. That's what I'm trying to say. And that's why I think this Mythos thing is a great learning lesson for you guys and for me. Talking about this week, because it's a reminder of where the future is going. You're going to see more direct. More companies are going to learn that they can just build their own audience. It used to be you'd had to put ads in Guitar World. Think about this. There's 1200 of you hanging out live right now. This episode, if it does like what normal episodes do, It'll do about 45,000 main views with 80% of you watching the entire video. Then it will be busted into sections on the second channel, which then will garn another 150,000 views on average per episode and then another 150,000 streams on other platforms. That's over 200,000, way over 200,000 views per episode per week. And imagine you don't even need that. All you need if you have a brand, this 2000. So I think this is where, oh, DeMarcus in Staten Island. You know what's funny is when I said it out loud, when I said out loud, I was like, I don't know why I said that. So yeah, Staten island. It's right on the side of the package too. Because I know I was looking at the packaging just yesterday and I don't know why my brain. So. But 1982 SC2 says anyone but DiMargio. You know what's funny is I think that's funny, but I actually absolutely love DiMarzio. They are the originator of the first aftermarket pickup. It was created in 1972. They've used the same people and machines all these years. They're still in the same building. They still make pickups the same way. And they've kept their prices lower than everyone else. And they've never made an import product ever. Every single DiMarjio pickup, even when people thought like when they did the ibzs for Ibanez, those are. If you look at the back, they say built in USA. DiMarjio has never not made a pickup in the USA. And he's got about the loyalist roster of artists you've ever seen. As you know, everybody from Steve I to John Petrucci. To think of this, Paul Gobert doesn't even have a signature pickup, really. I think he does. Now. Is the injector technically his? And yeah. So I have no problem with them in any way, like I said. And, and if you, and if you could hear, if you could see how they worked with me on this project. Fair is an under is not. It's not a big enough word to explain what they were to us with this. So, you know, it was, it was great. Um, I'll talk about that more. But anyway, so back to this. The reason this is a subject, and I know that I took too long on this whole subject, I just really want to reiterate. We're going to see a lot more of this. We're going to see a lot of pedal companies, we're going to see pickup companies. We're going to see guitar companies going direct to consumer. Obviously, when the biggest guitar company in the world, Fender, is looking at going direct to consumer, you know, it's a future that's just coming. And especially once they. You learn the term strategic partners. And strategic partners are going to be the key. In other words, strategic partners are like when. So like Fender is going to go direct. Here's what I think is going to happen with Fender. Fender will go direct, but they'll keep Sweetwater Tolman Guitar center, you know, Amazon. That's what they'll call strategic partners. And then they'll probably keep their custom shop dealers. Right. Does it make sense and just get. Again, I'm just giving you a theory. And this is. Even the Mytho said they're going to keep Wildwood Guitars as a strategic partner, basically in the idea that they can order like their limiter edition, Wildwood edition Mythos petals. Right? See, because this is where. This is where what Some of you don't realize that there used to be a system in place that made sense, which is you had an a, a, A way to sell, you know, crates, pallets, I should say pallets of gear to big dealers. But then you would sell them on pops. You need four pieces at a time, two pieces at a time. And there was a whole structure for that. But now when you look at the cost analysis, it doesn't make sense that you have to sell, send 12 pedals to a dealer who you had to remind, order them and come out with new product. And more importantly, you know, we've seen this happen, and this is how we know it's a future for us. Because right now, I know a lot of you musicians, and you know exactly what I was saying, what I'm saying when I say this. It used to be if you. You don't even have to talk to a musician in their 70s or 80s, okay, there are people in their 50s and 60s that can tell you this story. They used to go to the bar with a band and they got paid to play the bar. The bar would be like, hey, we need a band. And they go, great. And they throw a price and the band would go play the bar. Why? Because the bar had customers and they needed to entertain the customers so that they would drink more. And then slowly, over time, the bars became like, oh, you need. You want to play. You need to bring the customers. Now the band supposed to bring the customers. Like, what's the. Right. And then you sell tickets. You gotta sell tickets. Like, they. All of a sudden, here's the problem. The band's like, no, we were here to be entertainment, not. Not a marketing system to get people into your bar. Right? This is crazy. And if you watch it now, it's actually worse than that. Now, bands sometimes have to pay the bar or the club to be in the club. A bar obviously, like selling tickets and stuff. And we've seen this before. Again, what I'm trying to tell you is the dealers are supposed to bring the customers. They're supposed to have the customer relationship. And some of these manufacturers are learning, like, we already have the customer relationship. We already have the network to sell to the customer. What it. Why is there an in between in there. And it's just adding cost and it doesn't really benefit. Benefit us in a big way if they're not ordering a lot of stuff. So, yeah, offbeat base gear says it's going to destroy small dealers. Sadly, I think I not only agree with you, but I think, like I said, small dealers. I know a lot of you watching, right? Because I know I talk to you guys sometimes. You reach out and we talk. I'm telling you, I don't think you'll ever be absolute zero. It's never an absolute gone. I don't think small dealers are going to go away 100%. There'll be a reckoning for the next decade still, like, there's been a reckoning the last decade. But right now, just like I said, do what you're supposed to do. Build relationships with your customer base. Keep unique product. Then, you know, do it. Make me want to come and buy from you. I do. I'm an addict. Think about this. I'm an addict. It's not that hard to sell to me. On that note, where are we going to jump to next? I think we covered it. Any feedback on this? Anyone have any different takes on the. On the Mythos thing? You know, my wife, she was listening in the background when I was listening to Mythos in the background, and she said, wow. Their audience, like, was championing them in a great way. And I was like, I agree. I was really. I was really shocked to see that as a whole. It was really great to see that. And because again, you know, I mean, you know, it's. They're just trying to survive, like everybody and trying to figure it out. Brian S. Guitars, One of the moderators says, I buy most of my pedals online. I buy almost all my pedals online. I buy some pedals for. From Zim's guitars because, like, he'll have pedals that go in there. I just got a pedal today right before the show started. So I went, picked it up and that one was from Reverb. And yeah, so I buy most of my pedals online as well. I think that's real common. You know, I think a lot of us are buying online and even the people who say, I hate it and I don't want to do it, I'm like, I hate it and I don't want to do it either. But, you know, it's kind of like Amazon. I didn't want to use Amazon until all of a sudden I couldn't find. Find something. And that's the Only place I can go. That's how it works. So, okay, Let's see. Okay, hold on a second. Mr. Austin, Music says, when will guitar teachers be absolute obsolete? I don't think they'll ever be obsolete. I think one real problem music teachers are having is again, the Internet. Social media Internet. This is, right? You're able to tap a giant resource very inexpensively. This is the biggest thing. So, you know, obviously a lot of teachers online have learned to sell online courses, which are extremely lucrative. You know, you could get 300 students and work all week doing one lesson after a lesson. And if you can sell one lesson course and get a real good rhythm going on the Internet, you're making six figures a year minimum. So you can imagine it's more lucrative to go that route. But I'll always say this, and this is just my philosophy on it when it comes to learning guitar, which is this. The best way to learn guitar is one on one. You know, one on one, person to person. That is the best way. Then the second best way, I would say is a class environment where you're with a group of people. The third best way would be some kind of online digital or video learning environment. You know, like you're like watching a lesson course or you're interacting with that. And then last, I would say is a book, right? And then. Or not last, I mean, next I'd say is a book, some kind of book instruction. And then last, I would say is on your own with nothing because just plunking out of it. And that's A lot of us did that. Just plunking around until you find something that makes sense. Okay? And I will argue this forever. So again, it's not about being right or wrong. It's just. It comes from having the lesson academy for so long. When I say that all those methods work, even you just ran. If you. If I handed some someone a guitar and gave them no instruction and gave them enough time, right? Yeah. I mean, imagine, imagine you had your guitar and nothing to do on a desert island for 10 years. I would imagine you're gonna pick something up, right? You'll learn something. You'll figure out music, you know, just humming and plucking around and plinking around. You'll figure it out. My argument isn't that when I say, when I say one on one's the best, Then class, right? Then digital, like, you know, a video lesson type format, then book, then just plunking around. When I say it in order, it's about speed. You will move the Fastest. Because when you're one on one, you have a tutor, they can correct you instantaneously. See, when you do something wrong, instead of figuring out you were doing it wrong, which you sometimes will figure out when you try to play faster or play something different, that that habit you just created was bad, they can stop you. You know, if you ever had a lesson, the teacher's like, oh, nope, move your finger right there. Okay, good. Yeah, don't do it that way. Feedback. Quick, instantaneous. In a class environment, you're around other people learning, you're getting instruction 101. And you can ask a question from time to time. Again, not as fast as getting tutored in real time, but fast. Like I said, it's about efficiency. It's like when people say, oh, I taught myself and I don't need lessons. I'm like, you don't need lessons. But think about how long it took to teach yourself. Would you go faster if someone was helping you? Of course. It's insane. No one would say not so. That's why I think so. To answer that statement, will teachers be ever obsolete? No, no, because they'll be. But they'll be premium. And how that works, if history's taught us anything, one on one lessons will just be expensive. You'll have to be in a good financial situation to do it. You know, I'm doing that right now. I go to a trainer and I don't know what I pay him because I asked Shawna to not tell me. I like to not know certain things. And one of them is this. Whatever this expense of the gym is costing us. But I can tell you it is really interesting because it's a lot different experience at a gym when I used to walk from machine to machine and just I think I'll do this 10 of these, right? And now the trainer, he has a plan and then we have digital reports and he's giving me information back. And I've been doing this now, like I said, it's coming up almost one year. I've been doing it since June of last year. And yeah, there's no I can tell you right now. Do you need to this to do it the way I'm doing it? With expensive as I'm doing it? No, but it is way easier. This is the easiest I've ever either come off weight or gain muscle, whatever it is. Like I said, I have a report and it's like you lost 40 pounds, you gained 2 pounds of muscle, whatever this is. And they test your water and how much water you're retaining all this stuff. But my point is they know what they're talking about, so it's instant feedback. So, but back to that, my statement that led me to that is, yeah, you can have that, but it costs a lot of money. So, I mean, if I didn't have. If I didn't have the resources to pay the guy, I would probably have just gone online and watched videos on like, here's how you use the gym equipment. So anyways, you know what? Let's have some fun. It's time to have some fun. We're gonna take a little break from that. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna do this. And now it's time for this or that. This or that. Ta da. This is that. Look, you see my foot? That's really funny. Let's move this to there. Okay? It makes it easier that way you don't have to see I'm not wearing shoes today. Okay, so this is that. I did it last week. We did it on the second channel. By the way, if you haven't followed the second channel, if you want to give it a shot, please, we're about to hit 40, 000 subscribers on the second channel. We almost did a million views on the second channel last month. It was 900 and something. Thousand views. So just I want to say thank you guys for this. So this or that. The graphics are not getting improved. But hey, I convinced my wife to do the intro, so I got that going. But I did do some stuff. It's actually kind of funny. She came in today, she's like, what is going on in here? I'm like, it's a lot of things. So this or that. The idea of this and that is to test two pedals and then see in real time what you guys liked better based on that. But more importantly, do I agree? And so what. I agree. So here's what we're going to do. Let's go back to main cam. Let's do this first. I'm going to put which one I think is better, okay? And I won't mess up this time like last week with the purple pen, but we're going to do some fun, okay? So I've decided this is. This is what I like. Now when I say this is what I like. Don't. Don't get like you don't understand play on words here. Okay? And now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hang this here, right? Okay. So hang that there. Ta da. So my answer Is behind the board. I can't change it. This answer is based on playing the pedals today for a couple hours. And also, let's turn on the light because they're gonna need a light for you guys to see the camera. Okay, so we're not doing a guitar of the week. We'll do gear of the week too. But let's talk about the guitar. The guitar is my Moon pie guitar. If you guys don't know, there's a video. I'll put a link when I timestamp this on the Moon pie guitar. I built this guitar out of warm off parts. When you watch that video, you'll notice it didn't have the Duesenberg trim. That's because when I bought this guitar to. To build it and do the video, I had originally planned to put the Duesenberg trim on it. But I could not find the Duesenberg trim. And it drove me nuts. And of course, there was a timeline to get the video out because warmoth helped me with the video by sending the neck and the body. And a couple weeks ago, I was cleaning the shop and I found the Duesenberg trim. And just so you guys know, the reason I couldn't find the Duesenberg trim is that it was in the original box. I couldn't find the box. I found it in a bag that said music man. It was a pouch, that music man. Because when I found the issue with the Kaizen guitar and I sent the Kaizen defective Kaizen to music man, I put all the parts for it in that Duesenberg box so that I forgot I'd done that. So anyways, this is moon Pie. This is a semi hollow guitar. And again, if anyone wants to learn more about what it is, it's got two. This actually has Northern lights pickups in it. So I'm just letting you know because you guys saw the video. See that? We're running through the Synergy 20 head. We're running the clean channel. See, we'll go. Let's go ahead and turn. Turn on your Would you guys hear? Okay, we'll switch cameras again. Look at that. To this one. And port to the board cam. Actually, let's do it this way. Look at that. We got all kinds of stuff going on here. Okay. Okay. So we have two pedals. How this works. Now you've heard the clean. You know how the clean sounds. We're running with the clean. We're going to run the two petals and you guys are going to do a vote. I'm going to Start the vote right now. Please don't vote before you hear the pedals. Last week, everybody was voting for the pedals, but. But, you know. Okay, ready? All right. This, that, and the third option is need none. Okay. Okay. I wish, like I told you guys, for time purposes, I wish that we could just preload these things, but YouTube doesn't let us. Okay. Okay. So we're gonna do neck pickup. I have a coil split on this. I did not have a coil split in the video. So if you guys watch the video's guitar, it didn't have coil split. But I knew today I was doing a demo and I needed a coil split. So I actually installed a coil split about an hour before the show started. Drilled a hole and started the switch and did that real quick. So that's why it has a coil split. Okay, so let's go ahead and run the. We'll start with this. We'll go to that, and we'll. We'll see how it goes. Ready? What do we need to do? Start the pole. There's the poll. Starting with this right here. Where the pick is is what pedal you're hear, Sam. Okay, so that was the coil split mode on the neck pickup. I'm gonna go to full humbucker now, and we'll start again. Here we go. Starting with this. Here we go. Sa. What I'm going to do is I'm going to just adjust the tone control on this one just a little bit. They were dialed in a little bit more accurately to each other, but I noticed they drifted a little bit, so I don't know what changed. Let me go back to this one more time, Sam. Okay, so that is this or that. So what did you guys like more? Go ahead. That's so many controls on this thing. All right, let's go ahead and look at the poll. And I don't want to end the poll. I just want to see it. We have 67% picking that. We are at 210. We're going to stop at 300 votes. So give us 300 votes like last week. We'll try and shoot for that again. 300 votes, and we'll see which pedal you guys liked more and see if you guys agreed with me and vice versa. Okay. 269. Come on. We're so close. 300. I'm gonna end it at 300 exactly. Well, 300. Whatever. I click the button. Okay. 283. Come on. Some of you guys vote. This is fun. We're almost there. A couple. Oh, there we Go. All right, so we're in the poll, and let's go ahead and grab it. All right, so what I show is that one by 58% to 33%, 9% said they didn't like either. They don't like any of these. So what is this? Or that today I actually made this cool little swingable arm. Look at that. Okay, here we go. All right, we had the King of Tone and the Duke of Tone. I know you see a Princetone. We'll get to that in a second. So you guys voted majority. You like the Dukatone, which, by the way, looking at the Duke of Tone. Okay, just to give you a reference, for those that don't know some of the pedals, the Duke of Tone is a pedal that sells for about $159, is sold by MXR, and is made in conjunction with. With the people who made the King of Tone. So this petal is $159. However. However, if you look at the actual King of Tone, King of tones, version 4, which is what I'm using, they're now trying to get about $900 for them to $800. So just to give you a concept of that, Think about that for a second. The difference between these two pedals, this one's about 7, $800. Unless you're on the waiting list. This one's $159. You guys picked this petal, so let's. Let's play. Let's play for a second. What did I pick? Since it's still behind me, I picked this. So I picked the King of Tome. So I did not agree with you guys or you guys did not agree with me. So which is interesting. But I thought we would have an extra little fun second on the game. A little bonus, if you will. Let's grab the guitar again. And now, since we have a winner, which is the Duke of Tone, what I'll do is I'll compare that to. Just want to make sure they're all in the settings. I'm going to compare it to the Prince of Tone. So if you guys don't know, the Prince of Tone sells for about $350. Okay, so I've gone ahead and we'll go back to this. That we don't have to go through the whole process again. We don't have to make this too long. There's the board cam. Okay, so obviously you guys know which one's which. So, I mean, it's. I mean, I guess. Should I just show you guys and Call it a day. Let's just go ahead. Let's just a B this real quick. Okay. We'll start with the duvetone. And that's all I want to see is what you guys think of how comparable these two pedals are. Right. Since like I said, 100. Think of this. 150. 350. 750. Here we go. Okay, so with that one, I'm curious to see what you guys think, which ones you like. I'll just get a vibe. What you guys like, Duke or Princetone? I thought they sounded almost identical in the room. I would say, you know, if you look at the knobs, how I have the knobs all set. Let's go back to that. Let's split the cam again. Okay. When you look at how the knobs are all set, you can see I have to set them totally differently to get them anywhere close. And, you know, they're real sensitive to the guitar, as you can imagine, because they're transparent type overdrives. I found that this one always sounded brighter than this. So one of the things I liked was it was a warmer, darker sound with the king of tone. So I think ultimately in the room, you know, just me and myself and I. And the tone of the room, I like this. But I can imagine on stage you'd probably want the Princetone, because again, our Duke, it's already cut a little bit through the mix. But these two, the difference is very subtle. In fact, if you keep messing with them, you'll eventually get them very close to each other. And I thought this one would be a fun one because of the fact that. That they're so different in price. And, you know, if you can imagine, when you're going through your pedals, sometimes you're like, okay, do I really need this crazy, expensive one? Maybe I should, you know, try the remake and see how it is. But I think the remake was pretty good. Let's see. Fire. Medic says the Prince is a little stale. Yeah, you know, it's funny is like I said, they all have a little bit difference in their. In their character and in AB, which is why ABs are bad sometimes is it throws your ears off what you hear. Right. So when one sounds bright, it makes the other one sound extra dark. And once one's dark, it makes the other one sound extra bright. So comparative things I can tell you as a. As a content creator on the platforms for all these years, comparing stuff is usually a bad idea. It's fun entertainment. This is why I like doing it this way. You know, for years, when I do it as a video, and almost all the channels I've talked to say the same thing. It'll get you abused. But it really. You don't learn a whole lot because, like I said, it throws your ears off. If you have to compare, you know, then you're. You're really. You're not gonna. It doesn't do what you think. Like I said, you don't really learn which one's better. You just learn that your ear anchors to one more and then now starts critiquing the other one with what it heard. But I thought this would be fun because this is a blind test. Somebody said on the second channel that it's not a double blind test that I should be blind to and not know. And I'm like, look, man, there's only so much we can do with this budget, right? I already have a cool swinging arm thing here that I made with the sign, so this is already enough. And so you guys know, if you guys want me to continue doing this, I will. I will buy. I'm gonna buy a line selector pedal so that we don't have, so it'll be even faster. I can do with my foot. We can. We can get this process going faster. We'll do gear of the week, but not right now. Let's take a minute, go back to stuff. But before I do that, I want to go ahead and do the thumbnail this week. Even though there's no guitar of the week. I just got to do the. There's your thumbnail, so. And, hey, at least I give you an update on the Moon Pie. We. We don't know still what we're gonna do with the Moon Pie eventually. Like I said, probably keep using it, and then eventually it'll probably end up going to some kind of charity. We thought about selling it for a charity. Alex said we just don't know. Right. You know, I. The. It's really tough. It's really tough to. I find everything kind of figures itself out. So there you go. A couple people mentioned my dare shirt. I just gotta tell you, the dare shirt, the thing that makes me laugh, is my favorite thing about the dare. You guys are. Remember dare, right? Dare to keep off drugs, Right? Just say no. Remember? Just say no. Remember Nancy Reagan? Just say no. I learned something from Nancy Reagan in my 30s. Took me to get to my 30s to figure this out. Nancy Reagan told me to say no to strangers when they try to offer you drugs. I got to my 30s and realized no stranger ever offered me drugs. So three things that I was afraid of until I was in my 30s, because of growing up in that time, Strangers were going to just come up to me out of nowhere and try to give me drugs. That never happened. I would probably die in quicksand or get lost in the Bermuda triangle. None of those things ever happened. So. So just let you know sometimes they're not always right. Okay, let's. Let's go to another subject or question, and then we'll do gear. We'll do gear of the week this week, too. We have a gear of the week segment. I'll be fast. This one is Amanda grabbed. It says, hey, Phil, I think, oh, no, this came for Chris says, hey, Phil, how can I put dimarjo humbucker into an EVH Wolfgang special? Despite the odd pickup leg screw mounts? Yeah, you're talking about. Because the EVH has the doubles on one side. You can absolutely do it. The thing about. The thing about DiMarjo pickups is they do all three types. They do long legs, short legs, and then, of course, like I call them, ears. They're flat, right? They're short legs. For the EVH pickups, they have short legs. So you want to make sure you have a DiMarzio pickup with short legs. I don't think there's an issue because the way the EVH is, is the EVH pickup leg is round like this, like a hump. And the. And the. And the DiMargio one's more like that. Right. So I think, if I recall the pitch, the problem is, is that when you try to direct mount the DiMarzio, this piece right here is going to be just wider than the. So you got to take a dremel or cut that off. The hole will be about there. So you just cut this part off. Okay. And. And it should fit. Now, on this pickup, you have two screws, but there's also a hole for the center. So you're just gonna have to put a new hole in the center. It just takes some modification. The important part that you do whenever you do direct mount pickups, I don't care what the brand is. I don't care if it's a, you know, Keisel guitar. I don't care if it's a Duncan Seymour Duncan or demarzio or evh. The biggest problem with the biggest absolute, number one problem with direct mount pickups is if you screw up the length of the screw, you will drill through the back of the guitar, or you will screw the screw through the back of the Guitar. So you need to make sure you measure the total distance you have. And so, for instance, if you have a screw, if you pull the screw out and the screw is this long, okay. And the leg is this long, right. You need to make sure that the total length of whatever you're putting back is not exceeding that distance. So if you have a shorter leg, you need to put a shorter screw. If you have a longer leg, you might have to put a short. In fact, you know what? Just always go with a shorter screw. But. But that's what I would. I would suggest you first. Yeah. And Steve says EVH has a round. Yeah, I know it has a round, but that's what I'm saying. DiMargio's is pointier. And it goes long. It goes further out. It. It looks exactly like my drawing. The. The EVH is rounded. And I have. I still have. I don't have the insane amount of pickup collection I used to have. It's. It's not that nuts, but I still have an insane collection. So I can tell you, I've just recently look at these pickups. So you're gonna have to mod the DiMaggio. Like I said, the. The width of the DiMaggio legs are going to be just a little too long. They got to be cut in a little bit. That's it. But that's the only mod you should have to do to the pickup. And then, of course, make sure that your pickup screws that you're drilling into the guitar, everything is legit. You know, it's like not too long and not too crazy because you don't want to cut through them. So that's my. That's my advice. North Fork Gardens. This came from, man. It says, hey, Phil, what kind of pickups do you prefer for a center block hollow body? And why I like. I'm going hollow body. You know, I got a lot of hollow body guitars. If I'm going hollow body, I'm trying to go for a softer sound. So I tend to go for a more PAF sound, you know, softer sound. Something that's not kicking the amp. I don't like to. I don't want it to break up. So I would say anything. That's PAF is way to go. I don't like the more aggressive pickups in my hollow bodies. Because if I'm playing hollow bodies, I'm trying to play a little cleaner. A little. A little cleaner. Kind of like, think about this. Like, that amount of gain I was running through the king of tone petals and Stuff with that hollow body. That's the max amount of gain I'd want to see for that kind of thing. Which is kind of funny in a second because you'll see when I do the gear of the week, why that won't make sense, but at least the description makes sense. Dreadlocker 3 says. Hey, Phil, any opinion on the new Epiphone? Future Futuras? Is it. How do you say it? Is it Futuras? I don't know. Futures waiting so dearly for a review. Yeah, we're buying a Futura. So, you know, I. I reached out to a friend that works at Guitar center and I asked if they had some coming in stock because otherwise I was gonna have to, you know, pay to expedite one. Because I want to get it out, like relatively soon, like next week while it's still hot on the table. But I'm trying to get my hands on one right now. I'm buying one. Ideally, I'd like to buy two, but it's just not gonna make sense. You know, that's. Obviously, it's, you know, $1,800 in guitars. It just won't make sense. But for 900 bucks, we can make it more feasible for video. So I plan to buy a Futura. What are my thoughts on them? You know, the funny thing is, the Venture 3, Ventura, Ventura 3, whatever Fender released this week, I couldn't get through a damn video. They were so boring. I was waiting for whatever it was. And I, as a Fender fan, I just. I don't know what to think of that. And I'm wrong, by the way. I know I'm wrong because somebody's gonna say in the comments, phil, what about the blah, blah? I couldn't get that for far. My attention span just was not interested. But the Futura things, Futura, whatever, the, the Epiphones, I was like, what? This is crazy. Flip flop finish, stainless steel frets. This is nuts. This is. This is crazy. A gig bag. 899, you know, 899 is a lot, but some of the epiphones have been 12 and 1500 dollars for so, so for so long now that I was like, wow, sub $1,000 seemed. Seemed like a smart move for Epiphone where the Fenders were a little less exciting. I felt like, you know, okay, gold. And I guess, and I want to be clear, some of it's because I'm a guitar player and it's just my guitar player thoughts, but some of it's a content creator and I was Like, I want to make a video about a. The. The new Epiphone. I was like, let's go through it. Let's talk about the features. Let's look what's inside. Let's see what's going on. Let's break down the finishes. And then the Fender. I was like, how do I make a video about gold? Oh, I can. They got a gold one now. Got gold. So. So, yeah, so, yeah. So Epiphone definitely gonna do the video. Like I said, if they don't get one, he said, they have four on a truck coming to that guitar center. And if they don't have one, then I'll just order one online. So, you know, I kind of put some fillers out to some pop shops on Reverb too, you know, and I didn't really get any bites, so it's. It's tough. Like I said, I just want to be very clear about this. Oops. I would prefer to buy the guitars from a mom and pop. Do the shout out for the mom pop. But like I said, I get 10% off if I buy it from guitar Center. And that may not sound like a big deal, but you understand, I'm going to buy this guitar, make a video, and then I'm going to flip this guitar. I'm just trying to make it make my hours make sense. Right? You know, if the video can. If that video can do 100,000 views for this channel, then I will be in the whole two, $300. And then when I sell the guitar for about $700, because whatever, it's going to get used. It's not going to get the same as new. You gotta understand, I'm just trying to figure out how to make this work, guys. So I'm just giving you the answers. Let's see. I. This one's. This is. This came from Amanda. Pulled this one, too. This one says, hey, that Fender Jazz Master is looking good. How do you like the vibrato system on them? I like the vibrato system on them, but I. I think the. The vibrato system that's on the Novo, which is by that. Is it maestro? Is it maestro or mastro? Mastro bridge. Type that up. Make sure I get that correct, too. Mastro. I thought it was Mastro bridge is far superior. Guitar bridge. I can't remember. It's in the video. Mastery. Thank you. Mastery. I found it. Mastery bridge. I like this bridge. So ultimately, I will probably put something like that in one of the jazz masters, but the jazz master bridge is great. I Just like this. Better. By far, the mastery. The novo guitar was a very cool guitar. I really enjoyed it. Okay. Like I said, and. But. And a. But the highlight of that guitar was the tremolo, which. Which was tough because I was like, all right, well, that's the thing. I can get somewhere else. Right? That was my favorite thing about that guitar. Everything else. When people say the neck was great, I thought the neck on the jazz masters were great. I, you know, like, I don't know. It was great. It was great, but, you know, not so great. I had to have it. Let's see. Robot Shlomo says. Phil, I've been getting more into doing my own setups and looking for a more accurate tuner. Would the Polytune 3 with strobo do it, or is Peterson Strobo stomp the way to go? I like both. I think both are pretty accurate. You know, I think the Petersons are accurate within like 0.3 cents. You know, I like Peterson. I have Peterson, but for almost everything. But like here, watch where is one of my favorite the Polytune 3? Let me look at it, make sure. Okay, so I'm imagining the benefit to you with the Politoon 3, because I'm just trying to figure out is that it's $63.90. I can tell you this if this helps. Peterson say, buy once, cry once, you're going to get quality. You don't have any regrets if you want to go down the road. However, if dollars are the issue, because that's sometimes, you know, hey, how do you justify spending some more money, you know, on something you really don't need? I totally understand that. Daily. I will tell you that I love polytune stuff. Whenever I'm really nervous about a guitar, I'm gonna use either my Peterson or a polytune. But I use my Boss tuner, the TU3, a lot too. So I'm gonna say the polytune for $63.90. You know, I don't think if you got that, you would play a guitar and go, oh, man, the intonation's whacked. The thing about Peterson is it's not that it's so much more accurate. It is a little more accurate, but it's really easy to detect when you're watching it visually where it's at. So that's the advantage. So I guess my answer is going to suck, but my answer is the Peterson's a better purchase, but it's more money. So if you have the money and it's not A money issue. You're just trying to decide which one to get, spend the money and be happy. However, if you're trying to justify cost, then trust me, if you get a Polytune 3, you're not going to be any bad shape. You're not going to have any problem. Okay? So like I said, I really believe, like all the Korg, Boss Peterson, TC Electronics, all of them make such great tuners. Now, these tuners are so good now. And when I hear people go, oh, they suck. I'm like, compared to what? Not 20 years ago. 20 years ago, it's like. It's the we 20 years ago, much less 40 years ago. We were using tuners that were not nearly as accurate on, you know, like I said, it's not like you people understand. Think about this for, you know, if I was charging someone to do their guitar, that's the best way to put it. Let's do this. If charging somebody guitar, maybe spinning the best and buying the best, like a Peterson, makes a lot of sense, but if you're doing it for yourself, it's gonna be more accurate than you need it to be for yourself. And also, you know, rockstars have done way worse, use way worse tuners. So and so. Let's go. Let's go on. Old man friend says, hey, Phil, do you know if the Fender strap pickard will fit on a Kiesel Delos? I believe it does not because I believe they modify it. What I need to fill or drill holes. I don't know if you're gonna have to drill holes. I just know it doesn't fit because it's got a little cutaway. One thing that's weird about the delos I always thought was weird is it's got this little cut mark on all of them. I thought it was at first. I thought it was for years, like a year or two. I thought it was my delos. Like, oh, they must have just cut the. The guy cutting the pickard might have made a mistake. And then as I'd get more delos, I'd go, oh, yeah. They're all like this. This is something they're doing at the factory. It obviously works. It gets it out of the way of the Godo 510. But can you mod the strap pickard? I don't know, but I. But as far as I know, they don't. They're not one for one, they don't fit. Especially lining up the holes, as far as I know. So I haven't tried, but it doesn't look that way to me. So let's see what else. Pitch pipes. Marty's bringing up pitch pipes. Oh, it was the worst. So I think I told this, but it's. It's crazy to think this, but when I. When I got a guitar, my first guitar, which my JB player with my CMC amp and a cable, I got that free crap. Two, you know, two cent cable and guitar and the amp. That's all I got, okay? And. And then later I got a chrome guitar stand. I was able to get that, but tuner was not. I couldn't afford a tuner. You know, my mom couldn't afford the tuner, so we didn't have a tuner. And so I had no way to tune my guitar. And people, old dudes would be horrible. They would, you know, like, I need to tune my guitar. Like, tune it with your ear. I'm like, what the hell does that mean? And then like, somebody's like, use a piano. I'm like, why the hell would you think I have a piano? We don't have pianos in my house. And so I had no way to tune in my guitar. And so what was funny was for the first year of learning guitar, I would go to guitar lessons. I've told the story before, and sometimes I go and sometimes not because my mom didn't understand. I've told the story. My mom didn't understand how guitar lessons work. She didn't know she had to pay every week. So when she had money, I got to go to my lesson, and when she didn't have money, I didn't get to go to my lesson. So. But what I would do in my lesson is my teacher would tune the guitar. So we would tune the guitar. And then. And then all week for a day or two, I would practice what he gave me until the guitar slowly fell out of tune. And then when it fell out of tune, I would just make music or make up stuff with my guitar and the tuning it was in. And I would just figure things out and then wait till my next lesson to get the guitar tuned up again. And then my friend got a tuner. So sometimes when I go to his house, I would tune up. But I finally got a tuner about a year later. So a year later, and it was expensive. I got a Sabine tuner that was $50 then. It's like a million dollars now, by the way, if you guys don't need, you need a conversion of that. So it's crazy to me sometimes to this day. Okay, I'm not Making this up. Sometimes I look at all the tuners. I have tuners everywhere. Like on my pedal board right now. There's a tuner all over. There's clip on tuners. They're clip. These are clipped, by the way, behind, almost all the guitars are clipped on. I have tuners everywhere. I look at tuners now. The way Tom Hanks looked at the. A lighter in Castaway. Do you remember the scene where Tom Hanks is like flicking the lighter and he's just looking at how instant he gets fire? You know, right when he was on the island, he was just trying to make fire. And the whole time it was like. It was this impossible task. And then he's like, one. And then in the scene where he's just with the lighter, he's just like, you know, like, that's how I look at tuners now. I see tuners. I'll walk over and there's a tuner right there. And I go, I should tune up. And I look at it and I'm so cavalier about it. But sometimes I'll look at a tuner and go, yeah, I remember when this was an impossible thing. And I actually. You know, it's funny. Here's the funny. You guys sometimes like store stories. I'll tell the store story. That's kind of funny. So when we open the store, very first just had opened, right? So store's brand new, right? We're in the first location, which was a smaller location. And. And we were buying, you know, a product for the store, accessories, right? And I had decided, because I didn't know any better, I should carry Sabine tuners. Because Sabine tuners is that tuner I got, right? It was a nice tuner. So I contacted the Sabine, and Sabine sent a sales rep app. Sales rep out. And they came to the store and they were like, hey, these tuners are made in usa. And I was like, oh, they're made in usa. I didn't know that. It was cool. And they're like, they're 50 bucks. And I'm like, that's it. I was like, that's what? Because I was like, well, they were 50 bucks when I was a kid. This is great, right? They're cheap now. And so we bought all these Sabine tuners, and people would come in the store, and that's my first taste of. It was like, somebody come to the store, and you're like, hey, you got a tuner? And I'm like, yeah, I got some buying tuners right here. Made in the usa. Best quality. Got Three different kinds. And here are the three kinds. And they go, how much? And I go, $30, $50, $70. And they're like, no, thanks. They leave. Couldn't sell a tuner. And then we got the phone call one day, and this lady calls, and she calls, and she's on the phone, and I hear Shawna on the phone, and she's like, oh, yes. Yes, we do. And yes. Oh, yeah. No, my name's Shawna. Come on in the store, right? And I'm like, okay, what's going on? You know? Cause, you know, new customer. You're in that still mode for a while. Like, what a customer? And she gets off the phone and go, what was it? What'd they want? They want to buy all the guitars. She goes, it's a lady on the phone. She wants a tuner, and she wants a tuner. It's Made in USA because she only buys stuff made in the usa. And I'm like, that's what we have. She's like, I know. She's on her way. And I go, this is amazing. And the lady shows up maybe an hour later, 30 minutes, not that long. She walks in, she's got a kid, like, on her arm, and she's towing a kid behind her. She comes in, and she's like, I called about the tuners. And we're like, right here. You gotta stand. Like, we're a new store, so there's both of us. We're. She's like, we're giving her concierge treatment, right? We're like, come over here. Take a seat. You know, Right? Do your kids need any, you know, anything to drink? Here's our tuners. Let's get them out and show them to you. Here's the Sabine tuner. It's the best. It's Made in the usa. And she's like, oh, that's great. And then she's like, yeah, we need a tuner for my husband's guitar. And I go, great. And she goes, we only buy Made in USA products. And I'm like, well, you know, hey, that's great. It's nice to support small businesses like us and support the USA, you know, right? Hey. And I said, it's $50. And she goes, that's ridiculous. Now, this. The story does not go where you think it goes. Just does not. And she goes, that's ridiculous. And we're like, now, remember, we were paying 35 for them, so just so you know, we make $15. Okay, now me, I'm an idiot. So what Do I do. I will give you a discount. I'll give you 10% off. 45 bucks, right? My wife's like, moron. No, she's not standing there. And so anyways, I go give a discount. 10% off. First time customer, 10% off. And then she's like, that's. That's too much. I'm. I don't even want to spend half that. And I'm like, well, crap, my lady. I didn't say this. I don't think in my head, crap, lady. I spent more than half that. How are you going to spend half that? And I was like, I'm like thinking, I finally got the customer. This lady wants a USA tuner. I have it. She said. She said, by the way, she goes, I tried all the stores in town. Now all they have is cheap Chinese tuners. Like, I know we got USA tuners. So she leaves, okay? She leaves. And it takes forever. We sell tuners. And then so what we do is we made the decision that all companies make. We go, we gotta get some other tuners in here. So we started bringing in the Korg ka and the GA10s, which were 14.99 at the time. I don't know where they're made. Probably Taiwan, but doesn't matter. $14.99. So we bring those and we'd sell them like water. And then one day, the Sabine rep came in the store. He comes in the store and I'm like looking at our pile of Sabines that we still have. We sold like two. And he goes, hey, good news. And I go, what? He goes, we've. We've lowered the price of Sabine tuners. And I go, you've lowered the price? And they go, yeah. So they go, but check this out. They're still $50 street price. I'm like, okay, but your cost now is $15. I'm like, $15 35 to 15. Wait, what? I'm gonna make $35 on a tuner? That's like insane, right? Like double mark's insane for accessory. That was insane. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, $15 your cost now. And he goes, you just gotta buy 10 of them at a time. Box of 10. So just, you know. And I go, why don't we tuners right now? He's like, well, just get a box of 10. You know, just get a box of 10. It's the same, right? So I go, okay, get a box of 10. Of course, my wife's like elbowing me to the side. What Are you doing? We still got 20 tuners sitting there we can't sell. I'm like, these are gonna be 15. We're gonna. These are so much better. We're gonna sell so many tuners now. Box shows up at 10 made in China. Sabine shot down, shut down the US system factory, and they moved everything to China. And they dropped the cost to the dealers, and they kept the price to the consumers the same. And the idea was that we would be more motivated to sell them with a bigger margin. And they rotted until we clearanced them all out because Everybody just bought GA10s and CA10 cork tuners. So why the story matters? I don't know why the story matters. Me and my wife have had this conversation at least 20 times since the then in our life about that lady. The lady who was like, I only buy usa. I only buy the best. And then she basically told us that she wanted to pay half that, and she left. And then we think of her every time the Sabine rep goes, hey, yeah, people complain about the price. So what we're going to do is we're going to move everything to China. And I'm like, yep, so tuners. That's my whole tuner discussion. Let's stop talking about tuners. Let's go on to another subject. I think we've covered tuners for now. Bunky Mucket. Bunky Monket. Bonky Monket. I don't. I love it. Bonky Mucket. Love the name. Says. Hey, Phil, have you ever toured the factory where Boss makes their pedals? I have not. That would be one. I would love to do so, but, you know, I. I could try and reach out, but I don't have any real hookups with Boss, so. Had conversations with Boss over the years, and nothing ever leads to anything for me, so. But I love this stuff and support them. I mean, bye. But we'll see. Maybe I can figure it out. Okay, let's see. Alex. KD5JT with floppy disks as his avatar, which is awesome. Says, hey, Phil, what's the math on guitar company giving a YouTuber a free expensive guitar to promote? I've never heard of that. By the way, how many three to $5,000 guitars do they expect to sell from one video? Enough to cover the one they gave away. You're not gonna like anything I got to say, Alex. So I'll just say it, and then we'll get past it together, and then we'll. We'll. We'll move on. I've never seen a company give anything away. It's a trade. You know, the viewership, which I am also part of, as I am also a person who consumes YouTube and loves the guitar community too. We're all guilty of saying this. Oh, they gave them free stuff. No one gets anything free. They get it on trade. It's a barter system. It's, hey, we send you this and you're gonna make content. And they do that because they believe the content. Let me ask you something, Alex. Do you believe any of these companies are so good and nice? I mean, let's be honest. I have a few friends in this industry and I love them dearly. I feel I picked the choice friends in this industry who are honest, they have integrity, they're good people. And there is a lot of not great in any industry, but the music industry is definitely not different. What I mean by that is you think Fender, out of the goodness of their hearts, like, hey, let's send 500 YouTubers a free guitar. Why? Because we just love musicians. Let's just give away guitars. Why aren't they giving you guys free crap? Hell, they can't even half the time give you what you paid for. And Right. So the. The lie is they don't give anything away for free. They send it in exchange. Now, here's the next part of the equation, Alex, to your question. Do you think they aren't smart enough to be. Get the upper hand? I fell for it all, by the way, as a YouTuber, you know how I told you guys this story. I've told so many different iterations of this. I. I can tell you. I can tell you for exactly how much money have I made Sweetwater. Since I've been on YouTube, I can't tell you exactly how much money I've made. How much money is talking about Sweetwater have you guys converted into sales? I don't know, but I can tell you what affiliate links have done. $6 million. Sweetwater's got $6 million. Let me just tell you this. I mean, it's worth something, right? So the question is, when a company sends a YouTuber a free guitar, which now we. I hope we all agree was. Is really just an exchange of product for work, right? This would be no different than if you go, hey, I need my. My plumbing done in my backyard, and it's $2,000, and they go, well, how about we just. I work actually at Fender. Why don't you give you a $3,000 guitar? And you're like, okay, we barter. So you're Just bartering. So the system is a barter system. And the only reason it works, by the way, is because half these companies haven't heard of the irs. And it's really strange. It's really strange thing. One day, if you guys all work. I know a lot of you guys work corporate jobs. And you know, when you get a. When the company gives you a, hey, here's a plaque for doing great, Dave. Oh, and by the way, we're deducting $30 out of your paycheck because they got to value that to the IRS. Trust me, once YouTubers are gonna have to start paying for these free gear on tax forms, I'm sure it's gonna change the industry a little bit too. But it's a little confusing the way everybody does it now. But back to the. Back to the original analogy. So company sends a product to a YouTuber, obviously not out of the goodness of their heart, but obviously for some kind of barter. The question now would be, do you think that this company doesn't know what the video is actually worth? So let me put it this way. There are people in YouTube, just not guitar, YouTube, just YouTube. They make a living. That's what they do. They go on social platforms and they literally figure out what everybody's worth. They can tell you if you're a micro influencer, a macro influencer, they know what everybody's value basically is, and they go to that, and they go, okay, if you send this person this product and they make content, this is what it's going to convert to. A lot of them are doing that now. Don't get me wrong. Is a guy in Nebraska building guitars out of his garage sending a guitar to a YouTuber? Is he really thinking like this? No, no, he's just thinking if he can just get anyone to see his guitar, that's probably good. And he might be. I wouldn't say desperate, but he might be willing to take a deal like you're saying, where he sends somebody a three to $5,000 guitar and they're lucky if they sell one. And does he break even on that? No. But trust me, the bigger companies, they know exactly what the conversion is going to probably be, and they know how to do it. And here's what you're really missing. Everyone is they don't look at any1youtuber as the value. It's an army. It's like going to war. They don't go, how strong is this one private? They go, hey, you know, if we got a thousand privates out there, Fighting, what is that worth, right? What's the odds that one of them is going to push through the line? So that's what they're doing. They're playing. It's like. It's like roulette, right? They're just placing, placing guitars on numbers. That's how they're looking at it. They're like, hey, if we can get 10 influencers of varying degrees, what's the odd that one of them makes the video that takes off in sales. So, Alex, what's funny is you could look at one YouTuber and say, okay, he got a $3,000 guitar. Did he even sell one? And the answer is no. But another YouTuber got a $3,000 guitar and he sold 500 of them. And they don't know which one's going to make it. Because even though some of us look at a number like one YouTuber got 2,000 views and one got 100,000 views. That's not the game they're playing. They're not talking about eyeballs. They're in the business of conversion. In other words, how many people click the button and buy the product online? And the most? Some. That's why, like someone like me taking your guitar apart and pointing out that the frets are sticking out and giving you $150,000. 150,000 views. That's why it doesn't have as much value as the guy who says, this is the greatest thing I've ever played in my life. And he got 1500 views. You see what I'm saying? So it doesn't always have to be views. It can just be conversion. And so what do I believe? I believe that what will happen in 10 years? I'd say 10 years from now, we'll have to see if I'm still around on YouTube. We can all talk about it then in 10 years. Much like they learned in the 50s when the musicians made the record companies tens of millions of dollars and they got a free Cadillac. I think you're gonna find it's a lot of influencers are gonna find out they got a $3,000 guitar, but they made a company a million dollars. I've made a dozen companies a million dollars. And that was before my channel was actually even on most of your guys radars. So I didn't know that was happening, you know, so I don't know. But what so. And then, Alex, this is how. It's really weird. And this is my last little tidbit on this since we were on the subject. The question isn't how many views you get? The question isn't any of that stuff. The question is, who's the audience? And like, I'll give you example. If you teach guitar lessons and you do weekly guitar lessons and then you review a product, you could get some of your students to buy something. But I would imagine there's 1400 of you hanging out here on a Friday afternoon on a channel called Know youw Gear. You're probably gear addicts like me. You probably have some variation of a room that looks like this. A bunch of stuff. Right? Right. You just have a bunch of stuff like me. We're all addicted to it. Addicted to looking at it, addicted to buying it, addicted to talking about it, addicted to the people who played it. You know, the artists. And then you got to think, well, what value do you have? You, the audience? What value do you have these companies? You have a lot of value because you are hanging out, talking about gear on a Friday afternoon. And so, like, I've said this before. They don't care about me. They don't care about the influencers. They care about you and who can get product in front of you. Because you guys will buy. We were mentioning Mythos earlier, and I saw when Mythos was saying that Josh Scott from JHS Pedals said. I'm trying to quote the quote. This is the quote they gave that Josh Scott said. They said, we live in an interesting time where someone will see a picture of a pedal. That's it. They don't even hear it. They don't know anything out. They just see the picture, and they just click on their phone and they buy it. And I'm like, it's not the time. It's the person. The person on the other end is an addict. So we're all, I'm an addict, so I am. I just don't. The addiction I have is not bad. So what I mean, bad for me. So I'm not ashamed of it. I like gear, I like music, and I consume both on the regular. So, Alex. That's why they do it, by the way. I want to make sure, Alex, you understand I'm not talking to you like, I'm talking, you know, at you or anyway, I'm just kind of giving you that insight. It needs to be a little bit more focused for you to understand people. Because sometimes all a lot of people see is they're sending free gear out. And one of my problems, I would have never figured this out. Me. Cause I'm too dense and dumb. Sometimes I have to learn everything by Experience. Like I said, experience is the worst way to learn, right? Because it takes the longest. You know how I learned that I'm right. When all of a sudden, a company offered me something, and I thought, wow, I have to work for three days for that. And I was doing the math, and just to give you an idea, and I'll just. And I'll. Because sometimes, you know what they say, Put your money where your mouth is. I'm going to fix it starting next week. I had a long conversation with my wife. Okay? So I just wanted to let you guys know. This year. So it's April 17th this year, since January 1st, I've made 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 deep dive breakdown videos. Breakdown videos. 6. I don't know how many weeks that is. Anyone want to help me? So we're January, February, March. So we'll call that 12 weeks, right? 4, 8, 12. And then we'll give us two for this. 14 weeks in. I should have 14 videos. I have six. In other words, I'm not even making half the videos. I'm going to just tell you honestly why right now. Why I didn't make a video this week. I didn't make a video last week. I just want to be very clear why honest about it. I didn't make a video because I did almost all I did. Two of those videos were sponsored. So out of the six, two were sponsored. When I say sponsored, one was paid and one was not paid. But they loaned me the guitar. So I did four independent videos. One where it was sponsored in the idea that I got to borrow a guitar, and then one where I actually got paid to do the video. I'm in the hole. I lost. I have lost money doing this. I'm not going to stop, by the way. I have patrons. I've been doing this a long time. I'm fine. But it didn't. But it. I'm just telling you guys, I told my wife, I go, you know what? I've worked so far this year. I haven't even made a dime on any videos this year. Not a single dime. In fact, when I tell you I have a sponsored one, the sponsor hasn't even paid for how much I've lost on the other videos. So what I did is, I'm not upset. I. I'm not complaining. It's gonna sound like I'm claiming I took two weeks off. Cause I go, why make content? I cannot make anything and make zero. I'm negative. I worked and I made nothing. I actually paid money to make content. So, so like I said, there's. The benefits are definitely for the companies. They're not so much for the content creators. Which is why you see so many content creators quit. I keep seeing left and right, younger, younger or younger meaning younger meaning newer channels quitting all the time because they can't make a living doing this or they can't make not a living. Just break even on it and on their, and their expenditures. And it's tough. And like I said. And then when the companies are involved, yeah, it makes it easier. But then you're. You're making content that people don't want to watch because it's company driven. So. But that's the answer your question. I guess my. I should have just said there's no such thing as free gear. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Think about that. Now that saying has more. So let's see. David says six videos. Oh, David's gone. So you guys know six videos not include the lawsuit guitar. That was a, that's not considered a deep dive video. I'm just talking about deep dive. I've made more content than I just said. I'm just talking about deep dive videos. I've only made six, which we're trying to make one a month. No, David says the six videos does include the lawsuit guitar. No, no, it does not. Okay, let's, let's, let's take a, let's go a different direction. Right? Okay, so this is fun. All right. And then. Gentle glance. I want to say. I don't know how to say this, Jen. Anyone says, hey, but you're doing what you. What you love. Yeah. Well, you wouldn't do it any other way. Like I said there. If there was not. That's why I tell everybody that does this content. It's not even about doing something you love. You gotta like doing it because you're gonna do it a lot. This is a lot. You're doing it every day, all the time. So, yeah, absolutely. Like it. Yeah. If I didn't make any money on YouTube, I'd make content, but it would look like what you just saw me pull, where I just didn't make content for two weeks. Where I went, well, I'll make a lot less content because, you know, the driver starts getting a little smaller. Right. You know, and, and also the reason I also took two weeks off is because I also wanted to rethink what was going on. Because like I said, you know, when you make four, I'm just gonna say four of those six videos when you make four videos, and the total total is net net loss, a couple hundred dollars. You're like, okay, wait a minute. Well, that means I'm making four more videos. I'm gonna be deeper in debt, you know? Right. You don't want to go the other way around. But speaking of which, let's talk about something fun. So we talked about the. The new Epiphone guitars. We talked about the new Fender guitars, but we didn't talk about the. What to me, was the most exciting release. And it's partially because I'm excited about it, partially because the owner is my friend. So let's talk about the Synergy release and why, because I can give you some insight on it. So I've had the Synergy module that got released here for a while, at least a month, maybe a little longer. And I'm super, super excited about this. So let's look at this. So if you didn't notice, Synergy released a new module. And why this matters is this particular module. Let me go here, sort by new newest product. There it is. Is the new Marshall JCM800. So what matters about that is I have it. That's my Synergy. I have. Like I said, I've had it for last month. So I've been playing it for the last month. This is absolutely the best module they've ever done. And it really is important to talk about for two reasons. A lot of you like me. When I first got into Synergy, I'm sure was like, I don't know. If I get into Synergy, I have to buy all the modules. I'm actually good with just this module. So, you know, I like my Saldano, I like my Friedman, but this is the. This module does it all for me. It's the 800 sound. And as you know, throughout the years, there was many different 8 hundreds. But this is the 800 sound. But I can get the plex. I can kind of coerce the Plexi sound out of it. So I thought we could check it out. So you're looking at my actual one. So, you know, that's what I. That's my camera right there. Let's go here. Let's get the guitar. We'll use the Moon Pie guitar again. I thought I'd give you guys a little sample of it. Like I said, you heard earlier, this is the Synergy clean. I was using the Synergy clean for the pedals. All right, Just get that. That's your clean sound. So that's your. Okay, let me go back to you guys. So I can see. And what's great about this is instead of like doing a, hey, you know, check out this module. If you guys have any questions about it, ask, ask now. So this is an actual Marshall. This is Synergy and Marshall working together. This is a big deal for me because at this point that means now that Synergy has a Plexi Marshall and a JC100. So of course once they get, if they do, but I hope they do once they do the Silver Jubilee, that's, that's the trifecta. That's all the Marshalls that you need. There's three tubes in this instead of two. That's new. But more importantly, it's because they're doing the same idea that they were doing with the, the Royalist pedal where. And the Tonking Imperial pedal where there's a zero watt amp in this module. So that's how they're getting more of a. That's why I said this is their best module. The other modules are great, I've always liked them. Obviously I'm not getting rid of any of those, but this module to me is just a step up above to the point where I'm like, I hope they kind of re. Go. I mean, I hate financially for this because I'm have to rebuy some of these modules, but I hope they go back and, and they, and they, they kind of revamp the, the modules with this kind of feature. But anyways, back to this camera. Okay, and let's go here and let's try the. They're identical channels. So in this amp you have a clean channel, but then you have the green and the red. The irony is the green and red, you're thinking the red is going to be hotter. It's not. It's the same channel. So if you're Familiar with the JC100, you know that it has a three band EQ, a presence control. You have a, you have the, the volume number and then you have a gain control essentially right here. Then you have a bright switch. This is a three way bright switch right there. But then over here is the inputs and you have a high and low. So since they're the same preamp twice, I just put one in the low mode and one in the high mode. Okay, so let's go ahead and play a little something and. Am I good? I'm good. All right, let's hear play. Let's go ahead. There. Now what's cool is, as you guys know, the 800. We used to think of the 800 back in the day as the higher gain amp. This is not a high gain amp. It's a high mid gain amp. In other words, what I mean by that is it's not a Diesel, it's not a Saldano, it's not a 5150. It's the, it's. It's a. It's the hottest. It's hotter than a Plexi, but it's not like a jvm. So this is a nice little sweet spot. I actually like the gain right here. This is where I like it. But let's go to the second channel where I got it beefed up a little bit more. Now this is the higher output input stage. Let's go back to this and let's try that. Now what I do is hit a boost. Whoops. Let's do that. Okay, there's a boost. And we'll start with boost. Because I got the mic on. Let me hit. Turn my mic off, Sam. Okay. And then last, because it's on the sin 20 head, you have the clean channel too. So. So that is the synergy module. And I thought what's interesting is there's a ton of great videos, including the one that Michael Nielsen did, of course. His was amazing where he goes through the module and gives you all the tones. I wanted to do two things. Let's. Let's do this. Let's. Let's go here. Okay. And I'm gonna pull the module out so we can talk about this. Okay. So here's the module. So one of the questions was, does it have tubes in it? It actually has three tubes in it. You can see the three tubes right there. And this module is actually warm right now. It's not. So that'll let you know it's hot. It's been on this whole show. I wouldn't. I don't know if I'd put it on my face, but it might be able to cook an egg. So you got three preamp tubes. So there's actually preamp tubes. There's also a switch right here that actually kind of changes the way the attack on this is. So you can make it more aggressive and less aggressive in the attack. I have not messed with that switch very much. And then like I said, looking at the knobs, what's tough is the knobs are so tiny and the writing is so tiny. For me, it's hard to see, but it's pretty straightforward. Like I said, you got the preamp, which is your gain control, the three way bright switch. And I like that they have the two channels, you know that you can kind of get the gain and high gain. Because I like to do the. Like I said, the lower, the lower input gain on the bottom one and then run a tube screamer or a boost in front of it. I actually like that, prefer that than you're running their actual higher gain because I find it's a little meatier, a little fatter on the notes, especially when the volumes turn down. The thing that's crazy about this is this. This is what I want to show you. So this module, because it has three preamps, it's $50 more than normal. So normally 399. So this is 450. So you can get this combo here. Like let's. Right, just throw this at 15, 19. Okay. And you get the Marshall and the synergy send 20 head. What's interesting about that, I've talked about this before is Marshall. Marshall amps. Let's find the JCMA 100. And here you go, Studio Classic. So the actual Marshall, if you wanted the studio classic, it's 1350. Okay? So basically it's $160 more for the Synergy and this module. But what's crazy about that is think about this. This has two 800 channels and a clean channel. And IR impulse response is out. So, so it's a three. The Synergy 20 is a three channel amp. It actually has a clean channel. Because one of the things, if you guys know I had this amp, I did a video on it. If you go here, I had the, the, the Studio Classic and I liked it. One of the things I didn't like was it was either you could run it kind of clean and run as a pedal platform and that's fine. But you know, that's not the whole point. The point is to get the Marshall sound. But the issue was you had the Marshall sound and you can clean it up with your volume control like they used to do back in the day. But it's not, it's tough when you don't have a dedicated clean channel sometimes. Because sometimes I just want a dedicated clean. So this is the Marshall that I wanted Marshall to build. It's a two channel JC under JCMA 800 with a clean channel. So I thought this was worth talking about. So again, a lot of people asked me if I saw the release of this. I was embargoed, like everybody. Until I think the 16th, I wasn't allowed to talk about it. In fact, I think I was told I'd get killed. But he's my friend, so he just says that to me. I think if you share this with anybody, I'm gonna kill you. He didn't say that, but it'd be funny if he did, so I thought I'd share with you. And I know one of the questions. No one asked this, but I know it gets asked a lot. What about my Saldano preamp? Is that still, you know, because that was one of my favorites. Just like the Friedman. Those are. Those are great. But I actually think this is the most useful for me, personally. I have the Plexi preamp, and I have a video. If you go on my second channel, going through the plexi preamp as well. And I like that preamp. It works great. But I, I. What I like about this is I don't even really need anything. I can just use this into the. Into the synergy 20. And it works. It just works fantastic for me. And I can tell you right now what I. I'm putting these poor guys at Synergy and Marshall, you know, because I'm sure as soon as they come out with something, we're like, only if you did this. Only if you did that. Look, as much as I love this, I'm really stoked. I hope they. I hope this does well. And if this does well, I'm hoping because it does well, they'll do the Silver Jubilee, and. And that'd be fantastic. So, I mean, that would be everything I need and more in a mar. In the Marshall sound. That's the, the three Marshall sounds I need. Does anyone else have any suggestions besides those three marshals? What other Marshall would you want them to do if they did a Synergy module? Plus, I think having two Marshall modules now with Synergy, and of course, having Saldano, Diesel, Tone King, Dr. Z51, or EVH. Not EVH. I'm sorry. PV. Fry it. Having all these brands now, obviously the Freedman guys, too, and Morgan, I think, will open the door for the modules we really want to see, too, which is Fender orange and maybe two Rock. That would be one I'd like to see. Or a Dumble. That would be nice. You know, so Brian says, did you get the Synergy mod Imperial module? I did not. I, I, I have not tried. Or did I try that module? I think I tried it. I'm not really interested in any of the clean modules anymore. From center. From Synergy, I have, like, the T Deluxe. I have the B man. I have stuff like that. But here's the thing. I really like The Clean channel on the Synergy 20 head, it does everything it's supposed to do. It's clean. It has a high clean headroom for in a room like this. Obviously, you know, in a gig it's gonna be tough because it's 20 watts, you know, and 20 watts on clean, you know, it's going to start breaking up a little bit. But I can, I can make that work. And to me, so me the amp is about owning a, you know, a three channel amp that's effective for me. Having a mid gain, a higher gain and then a clean. That's the three things I need. But oh, David says he'd like to see ingold modules. They have two. They have the Fireball and they have the Savage. So they have two Engel modules as well. Like I said. So Michael also said the jvm. Yeah, the JVM would be great too. I like, I would want the jvm. But after they do the Silver Jubilee, main reason is, is because I have a Silver Jubilee. So if they do a Silver Jubilee module, I can get rid of my super Silver Jubilee amplifier because I won't need it. I'll use that. So. But very exciting. So I thought that was cool. I thought that was a cool release. I think that's a big deal. And the, in the Synergy lineup, I think the Synergy thing is growing on people especially I think having the 20 watt head. I still. My only negative critique of synergy 20 watt header combo is I wish I had reverb because then I don't need anything. Like then it would be perfect. But so. And then Brian says once you have the head, most the modules are 399. All the modules are 399 except for the three. This one, the three. This one's 449 because has three preamp tubes. So because it has one more tube and a little bit more technology in it, they gave it $50 more. And they do that on purpose. The owner of Synergy told me this. Like I said, we're friends. So he said, you know, he, the brands, he doesn't want the brands going, hey, our module should be more than this brand because we're this brand. He said all Synergy modules have to be the same price. So the only reason, and the only reason I know this is because he was telling me the only reason that they did the $50 bump for the 800 was because again, it had more tech in it, it has more cost. So they had to pass the cost on. But other than that that's the only reason. It's not more because it's Marshall. It's not more because it's an 800. It's more because it's physically got more in it. Somebody said a train wreck. A train wreck would be great. Like I said, I can tell you they're not cheap, the modules, but I. And I have no desire to collect them all. I think I have seven or six, which is a lot more than I need. And I can tell you right now, like, I have no. I have no desire to get the Z Rack or I know I have the Z Wreck. That's the Duck G. I have no the Imperial. Other than do a video. Like if I got them, I just do videos with them. So. All right, let's. Let's button up the show and. Okay, I'm looking real quick and my. This came from vintageradius. It says, hey Phil, do you like chorus like chorus pedals? And do you prefer dedicated chorus pedal or. Or a delay with modulation on the delay repeats? I used to not like chorus at all, but then this horrible channel called Big Hairy Guitars, which is like Michael Nilsen channel dude. I don't know what it is, but he got me addicted to chorus pedals. And now I have an insane amount of chorus pedals. When I say insane, like six. I don't know, way too many. So I. All of a sudden I'm like, I need a chorus pedal. Yeah, he's right. I need a chorus pedal. I have a chorus pedal on my board now that I'm using all the time. It's a boss one. It's the boss CH one. Although he recommended the vintage one, so I bought that one as well. And then I bought a Waza and then I got a couple others. But I. I tend to like the CH one. That's the one I'm using. So striving makes a good one. A couple other companies make a good one, but for some reason I'm always just using the boss. It's like the. The boss. The. To me, the Ch1 chorus pedal for boss is the same as their tremolo pedal. It's like this go to just it. It. It's not the most boutique y cool. It just sounds good. And because it sounds good, it works for me. So my board delays with like the modulation, modulated repeats and stuff. I tend to usually use digital delays. I've always been more of a digital delay person than an analog delay. However, the delays I'm currently using, like, because I have. I have multiple boards now again, because now I got a board for the this or that section and then I need a board in the, in the shop because I'm demoing you guys guitars now when I'm doing the breakdown. So I have that. And so I moved my new X Atlantic delay reaver pedal into that pedal board because it's just easier because it's all in one on board. So on this board now I have the El Capistan tape delay by Strymon and then I have a Ibanez DL10 digital delay on my board. So I have two different delays and I, I use them differently. I use the DL10Ibanez delay for, for clean sounds and I use the El Capistan for overdrive sounds. And the reason is, is because the Synergy delay pedal, the El Capistan does not color my distorted sound. When I, when I turn it on and turn it off, I hear no difference in the overdrive tone. It just sounds the same where the Ibanez one warms everything up and that's great, but then it makes your overdrive a little muddy sometimes and that gets a little tough. So I like, I like to have, I use that for clean because it warms up the clean saddle. And then Kevin Smith says, what's the wattage of the JCM 800 Synergy? So the amp, it depends on the amp. The amp's 20 watts. This module has no wattage. It has a zero watt amp in it which, but creates no power. It's just for simulating the power section sound of the Marshall. So the module has no power, but the, the sin 20 has 20 watts of power. So the same as the, as the SC2 8, 20h, the this, the Cloud, the Studio Classic. They're both, I believe 20 watts. Look at that. So these are both 20 watts. See, so the Synergy is the same. Can I go backwards and just go to the Synergy, go there one more time Backwards. There you go. Yeah. So both are 20 watts. The main difference is, well, besides, this is ugly as hell. The Synergy is ugly. It's my downfall of this. I wish they would make a cool wood box for it and just charge a little bit more. The other thing that's cool is the Synergy comes with this foot switch. So you get to, so you have a three button foot switch for all three channels. That comes standard on the, on the amp too. It's built into the price and, and you don't have to buy it with this module. But when I bought my Synergy 20, I bought an open box Buy on Reverb. And I got it for a couple hundred bucks less than, than the map for an open box. And the open box was one of those stores on Reverb that didn't actually open the box. They just gave you the deal. So you can, you can poke around for deals sometimes if you're trying to, if you're trying to keep it easy on the wallet for sure. Average Joe says. Average Joe says Digitech Multi chorus pedal is great. Yeah, you know, that's one I should check out. I know I've tried one in the past and I always loved it, but. Yeah, it's not, not something to put me back on the radar, but now I need to now because your suggestion, I need to go look. So I have. Somebody asked on the second channel, somebody asked, you know, is this or that, Is this a way for Phil to justify making more. Buying more pedals? You know? Yes. No, no, I started buying more pedals. And we'll end up, we'll end on the. We'll do one last question, but I'll answer a question that came in before. Somebody said, phil, now that you're collecting petals again, you know, vintage. They said vintage petals is. They said, does that mean you've kind of rethought your logic on vintage? That vintage is really more of a hype thing. And, and I, I, I gotta refrain, rephrase what I said on that episode, because the way I said it, I went back and watched what I said. What I said was correct, but it was missing a key component to what probably would make that question make more or less sense. So I made a comment that because of the, the tariffs, right? And the, some of the new mod, the pedal builders saying, hey, because of tariffs, we're going to double our prices or triple our prices. And I made the comment that, you know, we've always had like this kind of social contract. In other words, as a guitar community, we know that not everything's made in the usa. When it says made in the usa, we all kind of know that. But, you know, when you're paying $300 for a pedal, you're kind of. And it says made in the usa, you're just kind of assuming that, you know, the majority of it's because the cost is in the higher labor and the higher, more expensive components or whatever happens. And so when they were basically saying, you know, hey, because of tariffs, we've got to triple the price. Now here's the trick with this. I had some stuff done in the house. I had something installed in the House. This was in November of last year. And they said, hey, because of tariffs, you know, there's a fee. And I said, how much is the tariff? And they said, I think it was $35, something like that. And I was like, that's it. I mean, we're talking about $10,000 expense was a big expense for the House. And I go, that's it. And they go, well, that's the only component that's getting tariffed. And I go, okay. So they go. And that was their way of telling me everything's made. They go, everything's made in Florida except it's one piece and we got to give. You got to charge a tariff on that. And I go, okay. And so I understood what they were saying. Like, the tariff is on one part of this big, you know, the big overall thing. But when you have somebody say, like, if somebody said, hey, this is all made in USA and it's $16,000, you go, that's crazy. And they go. And they go, well, because of tariffs, now it's 30. You'd be like, wait, I thought it was made in usa. And they're like, well, I mean, not really made here and kind of finished the last. You know, it's like a marathon. We just high five at the end and say, made in usa. You're like that. So that's what I was talking about on that podcast. And what I was saying was, as I decided to go back and start buying pedals again and get back into pedals, there was some companies that I just didn't want to support anymore. I felt like they were either misleading or, you know, I just didn't like the idea. And I used the analogy then I'll reuse it. Now. It's like, I didn't like the idea being told, hey, this costs more because it's organic. I'm using this as analogy. And they said, oh, and by the way, make sure you wash off the pesticide at the end. You go, wait a minute. I thought there's no pesticide because it's organic. And you're like, well, it's organic, but then we still have to use pesticide. You're like, well, wait a minute. It is either is or isn't the thing you're saying, right? I'm paying more for organic. My logic was, I was paying more for main USA pedals. I know I can buy pedals made overseas for $50 that are great. I wasn't buying them because they weren't great. I was buying them. I was Buying pedals here, trying to support small businesses, trying to support small builders, trying to support my country, trying to support, you know, try to enjoy this, this, this hobby that I have, this thing I love. And so I told that whole story. The reason I'm reflecting on this is because when somebody said hey, you're buying vintage pedals. I'm not buying vintage pedals. I'm sorry, when I said I'm buying older pedals, that's the word I said and that's the what the confusion was. Older meaning I'm buying the pedals, you know, five, six years old, you know, seven years old tops. What I mean older is I'm buying used because buying used. I'm not buying new pedals from some of the builders now. I'm not supporting some of the builders is what I'm basically was trying to, trying to say was to say I don't need to support some of the builders now anymore. Right? I'm, I support the ones I like and I don't support the ones I, I don't, I don't want to support and, but I still buy their pedals. I just buy them used. So that's why I was buying older pedals and then some pedals I did buy the TS10 by Ivan is, but that's because I was buying all the pedals on the John Muir board again for a concept of a video. So. Nellis says, are there any US semiconductor manufacturers making phones in the US Look, I'm not an expert on that, but I can tell you two things. So my father in law, he's traveling the country as a superintendent for a company who's building fabs. And so they, he's, according to him, they're built, there are opening fabs left and right all over the place. But I would bet that almost all of those components are going to US government contract stuff. So where I live there's a lot of U.S. government contractors, you know, companies that work with, with the, you know, making parts for anything from weapons to top secret stuff to anything like that. And there's a lot of them here. So they, what they do is they, they tend to have to buy from US manufacturers. So and again, like I said, I don't fault someone who making, using import parts to build a USA made product. Not at all. I just feel like they leaned some, not a lot just for clarification, some companies leaned in on the whole, look at me, I'm an independent small builder making USA made stuff. And then when the tariffs came, they were like hey, you guys are now going to have to pay more because where I'm being tariffed. And we're like, wait a minute. I. I knew you weren't making all USA stuff, but now it doesn't sound like you're making any USA made stuff. And then I. I'm not gonna say who, because again, it's just. You can find the videos that I saw. I watched one guy basically narrow it down to one component was in the USA. And I'm like, well, wait a minute, it's 300, because you would one thing in the USA. So I was like, whoa, okay, I'm okay with that as well. Then when I say okay, I mean, I can understand it, except for that's not how it was presented. Until, of course, you had to run a price increase on me. So I did. You know, you get the idea. Okay, let's send on one last kind of other note, right? And then. Oh, okay. Sounds of SoCal says, hey, Phil, I thoughts on the cost of the new JC170 module. Inflation or a premium on this particular module. So we covered that. It's $50. Look, this is horrible. But I thought I. I bet it was gonna be $100 more. So I go, oh, it's gonna be $499 because it's got an extra tube in it. And then the owner of Synergy goes, no, 50 bucks. And I go, Only 50. And he goes, that's a lot. 50 is a lot. And I'm like, well, the preamp tube's like 20 bucks. Just the tube. It's 20 bucks. So I'm like, all right, then you got to have the tube socket. I was like. I'm like, look, I'm not for paying more. I'm not for us to actually having to pay more. But I was like, just. Just that extra tube and the tube socket is half of that $50 right there. Just in the components, you're paying out, not. Not to mention any other labor and then a markup on that. So I was like, oh, okay, 50 is reasonable. So, yeah, it's 50. Just for that reason. That's it. So. And I can tell you for certainty, because again, I've had conversations with the owner on the phone. He has no intention of raising the prices anytime soon. So on the. On the stuff he's done, you know, he's like everybody else. He's. He knows. Look, it's. It's. Every price increase is cutting how many people buy, and that's hurting them right now. So the market is I saw, I saw an. Did you guys read the article about Pepsi saying they lost a billion dollars? And they say, I think it's. And they were saying that partially it's because when The Doritos hit $7 a bag, people stop buying them. And I made the joke to my wife. I said, hey, now we know $7 is the magic number of Doritos and people are not buying Doritos anymore. Right. And so that's what I'm saying. You can see that in everything now, you know. No, the synergy guys know that if they were to take all the modules to 450, it would. It would kill it. Because, you know, everybody's just. Right now, everybody's. The pinch is real. I'm sick of it. As you guys are. Okay. And then. Okay, that one's tough to do in a short amount of time. Okay, All right, hold on. Do this one. Oh, okay. I went through these. I'm like, I'm just scanning through. I'm just trying to make sure I didn't miss anything. Okay, so. And then this one's an easy one. So we'll use. We'll do YOLOs. YOLOs says, hey, Phil, do you humidify your music room to protect your collection? I do have a humidifier. I do not run it. So in here I have so in all of the rooms that have guitars. So they're the shop. And this, this is my office. And then I. I don't keep really anything in my bedroom, but. But I do have a sensor in there. And then I have one in the front room. So I have them pretty much fairly around the house. I have sensors that tell me what the humidifies humidity is. Right now it's 43%. The magic number for me is 39%. So once I see the sensor hit 39 under 40, I will tend and I. And not just immediately, but if I see it and then I notice the next day it's like, wow, it's still 38, 39%. It's under 40%. I will turn on the humidifier. So I have just a little humidifier that I have. It's one of the cold mist ones. Some people have a problem with those. They're like, it puts a residue on everything. I'm like, I've never had any problems with it. I used to have one of those big four gallon tank thing, eight gallon tanks from those, because we had one in the store. So I brought it home and I had one for a while, but I got rid of it. Here's why I really don't like to humidify. I just have learned it's not about the guitars cracking or any of my issues like that. I've just learned that if the humidity drops into the 30s for any length of time, you're going to get a couple guitars with fret sprout, and then I'll have to deal with that. So I just try to keep it relatively humid and, you know, relatively not dry because I live in a very dry environment. So that's. That's what I do. I can tell you that most the time the humidity in this room is about 43 to 45% humidity. 60% is on the high end. So if it's raining outside and I decided to open the window, it'll get up to 60. But generally speaking, I don't think it ever gets that high for me. Obviously, where I live, we never use dehumidifiers anyway. So to answer the question, do I humidify the collection? I don't specifically humidify them. I just. And like I said, if I take notice when it's dry, that I go, hey, let's put a little moisture in the room. Just because I don't. I want to avoid any kind of serious problems if I don't have to do it. So. So that's, that's why I do it. For those that have, you know, I saw some of the comments in here, like, hey, I have 20 humidity. I have this same look. What I can tell you is, is that if just because you have low humidity does not mean the guitar is going to. The neck's going to shrink or it's going to dry or the guitar is going to crack. It may already be dry enough. Right. I have guitars that I can tell you right now that doesn't matter how dry it's going to get. They're not going to shrink. The neck's not going to shrink, and they're not going to crack. They're. They're already as dry as they're going to get. So the, the trick is, like I said, what guitars don't like is the change. They don't like to go from dry to humid or humid to dry. They don't like to go from hot to cold, cold to hot. They're okay and hot. They're okay and cold. They're okay dry, they're okay in wet climate. They just. The transition is because, again, it's the speed of it, right? And so that's why when you see it change, that's when you take notice. I tend to Pay attention When. When my central system changes. So some of you guys have a real big problem because you live in normal places where I'm sure your heater, you're like, oh, now it's. The heater is going to turn off and you go to ac, you know. Right. I remember a time many years ago we used to have a. To do that manually. I remember, like sliding out a piece of metal and sliding another piece of metal. Like, now it's time of the year for AC hot heating and now it's time for cooling. But because I live in Arizona this year, if I. My heater was on three or four times the whole year, that would be a lot. And, and actually we use the heater to just take the chill out of the air sometimes. Like, oh, it's, you know, well, we think it's cold and we go, it's 67 in the house. It's freezing. So we use the heater to take the chill out, to take it back up to 70. So that's my answer on that. But you need to. You need to be mindful of it because like I said, those, those, those situations can damage guitars. Especially if you live in places where it's a little drier or it's a little colder or it's not gonna be hotter, but it could be colder. All right, on that note, I want to thank everybody for hanging out, for doing the show. Also, like I said, make sure you check out the second channel if you would. If you think you're gonna like it, because it's about to hit 40,000,000subs. That'd be a huge momentum, momentous occasion for us. We're super excited about that. Thank you guys for supporting that. Thank you for mentioning all the comments that said to do this or that again. I wasn't sure if I should do it again. If you think I should continue to do it, we'll keep doing it and refine it a little bit. Maybe make it better. Give me suggestions. What do you think would make it fun or more, you know, more interesting? And on that note, I want to thank all of you and you guys have a great weekend. Play guitar, have some fun, and know your gear. The Know youw Gear podcast.