Phil McKnight (0:01)

The Know youw Gear Podcast the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode 419 on what are we June 27th. We're on June 27th. This is a. We've made it. We made it half the year. We get a prize. I have a lot of topics. I hope you guys have a lot of topics. And we'll have a guitar of the week. As always, some quick announcements. I just want to thank everybody who bought one of the gravy T shirts. That was very cool and I'm pretty excited about that. And what else? Also, you know, I want to thank the moderators. You can tell they're the moderators because they have blue names of the Blue Wrench for taking care of all the questions, facilitating links, you name it, it keeping the chat pleasant and, and, and organized. Mostly pleasant. And thank them for that. And of course thank the sponsors, which are the patrons and the channel members and all of you for hanging out. Just to remind you guys, if you're watching live, there's no commercials during the live part of the broadcast. No commercials on the audio broadcasts on itunes and Spotify and, and all that stuff. And also no ads if you're a patron member. Okay, so let's get into topics. What do we got? We got. I thought I had a bunch. We'll see what we have. And I thought I grabbed a early riser question and it was this one I thought I did, maybe I didn't. This one. Okay, this one's from Griselda who says, hey, watching a YouTube discussion. Problems faced facing brick and mortar stores. Host solution was customers coming in by appointment only preventing tire kickers from wasting dealers time. Thoughts? You know, we'll keep this brief because I've really talked heavily onto the current, you know, trends. What I think of the trends in the current guitar market when it comes to Mom Pops. So just obviously when it comes to the appointment only stores, you know, just my two cents. Again, I'm not here trying to make huge waves out there, but I think the whole appointment store concept is really to facilitate more online sales. That's my opinion. So here's why I base that. Again, the opinion is not so much important as why it's based on that. When I see stores that say, hey, it's appointment only to come in the store, sure, you could take the idea that, hey, they just want, you know, no tire kickers but really what I find is this. Before COVID and that's really a huge, huge changing. You know, a point of change in the industry was a lot of manufacturers refused to sell any product to a retailer who did not have a, quote, unquote, brick and mortar store. So even if you had a website that was selling millions of dollars worth of product, if you didn't have a physical store. A perfect example of this is a beautiful store called Wildwood Guitars, where I think the. If you walked into the store, the store physically isn't even 800 square feet. You walk in, and then it's. It's just. It's just. Just a small, tiny little area, and then a. Attached to a big warehouse. In other words, you could go there, you could pick up some guitars if you want to buy some expensive guitars and stuff from their store. But their store really isn't. Not really part of the business model. The business model is to sell online. What happened during COVID is a lot of stores were able to. Because they had to close during COVID They closed, and they were able to say, okay, well, we could let people in for an appointment only. And the Internet boomed during COVID It's massive boom. I still. I think a lot of you get it. Some of you, I think that you let me move here. I think you guys really don't understand how much guitars were sold during that. And I think the only way I can communicate sometimes to you is this is during COVID You know, my affiliate links to Reverb or Sweetwater and stuff. I mean, they are, I would say, five times more to 10 times more per day what they are now. And I'm sure you hear a number like that. But I want to be very clear. If I say five times more now, I want you to say, I want you to think three times more than ever before in Everness, right? Like, this was booming sales and all on the Internet, and so it was a big deal. And I think a lot of stores, when all of a sudden it was, like I said, all the oxen for everyone to come outside now, and everybody's like, okay, I'm gonna go back in the store. A lot of the stores were like, yeah, you know what? We liked it way better when it was instead of having to help everybody who came through the door, we only have to ring up sales online. And so it's a pretend thing. I guess what I want to say is a lot of stores, I think, that have appointment only are just, you know, pretending to be a physical store at this at this point because they're really just online. They really just want to sell online. I mean, sure do. I think that they hate it. Somebody walks in and makes a purchase and walks out from an appointment. No, no, but I'm just saying it's, it's a way to balance the whole. We still have a physical store, but we are an online dealer. And I think that's the, you know, I think that's the wave of the future. Unfortunately, I don't like it. I bought a guitar from an appointment store. I went to Rainbow Guitars in Tucson, Arizona. It was not a pleasant experience. Nothing wrong. I want to let you know the guitar is great. I still own it. In fact, it's on the wall right there. It's that Strat right there. I bought that from Rainbow Guitars in Tucson. I like to point out they gave me a deal, right? And when I say not a pleasant experience, I don't mean it was a bad experience at all. It just wasn't a pleasant experience. Like I didn't go, I wouldn't go. Yeah, I can't wait to do that again. What happened was you had to message them through the Internet, which I did, and say, hey, I want to come down to Tucson and, and check out this Strat you have and I think I want to buy it. And they said, and they kind of gauged whether I was serious or not, I guess. And then they were like, okay, your appointment's at like one o' clock. I called one of my buddies, I said, hey, you want to drive down to Tucson with me? And it's an hour and 30 minute drive. We'll get a cup of coffee, we'll go down there, we'll check out the guitars in the store and will buy the Strat. And I said, hey, they carry Strandberg. You can check out a Strandberg. And he was like, this is great. And so we get in the truck and we drive on down to Tucson. I said, after the Rainbow we'll go to lunch. Which we did. And we get to Rainbow and there's a sign on the door, it says don't come to the door until your actual appointment time. Like don't knock on the door until your appointment time. And I go. So we went back and sat in my truck and listened to some music and, and waited, which was about 20 minutes until our appointment time. Then we went up to the door and we knocked on the door and they came to door and they let us in and we went in. There was nothing on the walls. Imagine these walls If I took all the guitars off the wall, it was just hangers and there's nothing in the store. And we're like, what is going on here? We thought we were making an appointment to come in the store, you know, buy a guitar but also see the store. And they're like, no, everything's in the boxes. And we put. So they went and they pulled the Strat from the box and I. They plugged it into an amp for me. And the guy stood there while I strummed a couple chords on it. And I said, okay, well, I'll take it. What I was curious about was how the neck feels. So I go, okay, I'm good. I'll take it. And. And then I said, my buddy wants to check out a Strandberg. And they're like, oh, well, does he know which one? You know, again, not saying they were rude, just obviously like, yeah. And I kind of alluded like, ah, he's, you know, I'm buying a serious guitar here. Maybe he's buying a serious guitar too. They went and got the Strandberg, I think, I don't think he played it because I think he didn't want to buy a guitar from them. I don't remember what it was. Maybe it was just he didn't want the guitar. Now I strum the Strandberg. It was nice. And then I said, hey. I said, we went to ring up and I said, when I pulled out my credit card, I pulled up the credit card and the guy was very nice. And I said, hey, before I hand you the card, I go, any deals if I got cash? Because I got cash. And he goes, yeah, we'll take 10% off. You got cash. And I go, done. So I whipped out the cash, paid the cash, bought the guitar, and went to have lunch. I like the guitar. I've told you guys, I like the guitar. I will say this. If I sat in the store, like, if I was in a store where I could walk in on my own, pick it off out the wall and strum it and play it for a little bit more time, I probably would have walked out and not bought it. So good for them. Because it's not that the guitar is bad. I just don't think the. I just don't think the overall neck is great. It's just, you know, at the time I, when I was doing it, it was more of a pass fail system. I was trying to, you know, because I'm like, I'm here out of my, my appointment. So I'm kind of like, you Know. Oh, it doesn't. It's not horrible. So I'll take it again. Nothing bad with Rainbow. I would. I would go back again if they had something I wanted. Because if they have something I want, then something. 1. Like I said, I have. I have an addiction. If they have gas station sold guitars, I guess I'd buy them there. But my point is, it's not an experience I would like to have. It's right. You know, I think actually since then, I've kind of realized from that experience, I can pretty much just buy a guitar online, play it, and then send it back if I don't like it, which is fine with me. But back to the. Back to your. Your statement about them talking about the future of stores if they go appointment only. No, I think, look, every store has to figure out their business model. I don't know every demographic. I don't know every store. I'm not gonna sit here and say, oh, yeah, every store around the world is. Or even in the United States or even on the west coast, if they did this, they'd be successful. I just have said in the past that I think music stores need to think about the current market and how they're going to, you know, live in it. And I think used is a good thing. One thing about a used inventory is every time you go in the store, it's a new store that's always great. And used is kind of the, I'll tell you example. I have a perfect analogy that actually puts my money where my mouth is, which is always the best way to put stuff. So if you guys didn't see this week, I did the new Herman Lee signature guitar. PRS sent the guitar. I. I was sent a picture of it before. I'm going to tell the story real quick. PRS reached out, talked to Shauna, said, hey, is Phil interested in seeing the guitar? We're not going to really send it to a whole lot of people. And, you know, if he wants to do a deep dive, we're interested in letting him do the deep dive. That's really cool. On a side note, just for this segue, I got to tell you a funny story. I'm going to share this with you maybe over here. Herman Lee was nice. He put a nice comment. Look at that nice comment to me, says, thank you for checking out the guitar. Great playing, too. And then he was really complimentary and said he watches the channel when he said, I have great playing, too. I kind of had my first. I had my first moment in my life Where I'm like, oh, is this what a woman feels like when a guy says she's really pretty? Like, it's kind of flattering, but also you think they're lying. So. So that's kind of. But you know what? Either way, I'll take the compliment. It was very nice of him to compliment the. The video. So what happened was, if you watch that video, just to give you a reference of the video, the guitar showed up on Monday at 2pm in the afternoon. That's this Monday, just this week, 2pm in the afternoon. They were doing the launch at 9:30am I figured the. Every second I'm closer closest to having that right at the launch, because I didn't know. They said there wasn't a whole lot of YouTubers. In my mind, I'm like, there's always 50 other YouTubers getting a guitar sent to them. So I just wanted to get it out. And so I worked diligently and made the Entire video in 24 hours, which is a lot of compressed time to spend time with the guitar. And what's funny about the whole thing is. And why it ties into this long story about guitars and appointments and all this stuff is. And used market is I honestly thought it was the pink one. So if you guys didn't see, there's two. There's like this gray purple one, which is the one I have, and this pink one. And I like the pink one better. I think it's a brighter, cooler color. I just like the guitar better. And when I opened the case, I was shocked because I didn't notice that there was another color. I just noticed the pink one from their picture that they sent me. And so that's my reaction, like, oh, I said it in the video. Oh, I thought it was the pink one. And anyway, so I made the video, and the question is, what do I think of the guitar? Well, I'll tell you what I think. So Shana goes, hey, are you done with the video? I said, I'm done. She goes, okay, they need to send a return label. So I, you know, let me know if you're done so I can tell them to authorize the return label. And I said, I have a different idea. I said, I have some guitars that I'd like to get rid of that we're getting rid of in July. I think I want to buy that guitar. So I said, will you ask PRS if I can buy that Herman Lee guitar? And then she goes, okay. So you're saying you want that guitar? And I'm like. And I'm like, well, actually, I want the pink one. She goes, okay, do you want me to ask them if they can get you the pink one? And I go, no, because I like the one I played in the video. And. And as much as I'd rather have the other color, this is what ties into use gear and why it's effectively cool to have stuff that are unique in your stores is that every good musician knows when you pick up a guitar and you bond with it, you keep that one, right? So as much as I'd like to have the pink one, I would rather not have them send one and then go, this is different than the one I have in some way or some feel or something. So that's why you do it. So? And so they responded back and they said, yeah, they'll let me buy it. So this is the whole point is what I'm saying about guitars and the personal connection. If you're gonna have a physical store, you're gonna be there to have. Let people have personal connections. You can't personally connect to a guitar through pictures and videos and Internet feed. So if you have a store, to me, it's about letting people in. It's about letting people touch things. That's what it's about. If you can't make money because you can't let people touch people touch stuff, do the Internet. That's what the Internet's for. I have a joke. It goes like this. I walked in the store once, and this is a joke. And I said it to Ralph, and I'll never forget it. We walked in a store, and all the nice guitars were either locked in a room behind these two glass doors or in these glass cases on the wall. And I told. I walked up to the. No joke. I walked up to one of the guitarists, and I tapped on the glass, and I told Ralph, I said, you know what's funny? He's like, what? And I go, we're physically here with the guitars, but this is no different than if I was looking at a screen or looking at the guitar in a glass case. To me, it's behind glass. And I laughed and I said, you know what's funny? I said, guitars on the Internet are behind glass too. So why am I here? So that's just my personal opinion. If you want to have a store, you let people touch things. You let people in, you let people get around the gear. If you can't make money doing that or. Well, then. Then you need to change your business model. But I don't really like the fake. Like, I think that's my opinion about this. I don't really don't like the whole, oh, yeah, we're a store you can come into, but only if you make an appointment if you want to buy. Because like I said, it's not that I had a bad experience at Rainbow Guitars. It's just. It's not an experience I want to replicate over and over again a million times. Because, you know, like I said, I could have. I kind of feel like I could have just bought the Strat online from Wildwood, which, by the way, which is where I bought, you know, my PRS C24. And when I buy my Gretch from them and same thing, I get it and I can check it out at home and then if I don't like it, just call the sales rep and they'll send it back or Sweetwater or wherever you want to go. So that is my long 2 cents. I apologize. Let's see what else. No, we're going to another subject. Let's grab another subject. Amanda's threw some question subjects at me. This one's from Johnny Watkins. Watkins. Watkins. Sorry, Johnny. I don't know why I'm saying Watkins. I just saw wa and went, wah. Hey, Phil, I'm going to build an HSS with Floyd Rose kit guitar. Going to go for an 80 super strat sound. Hoping you can recommend a single humbucker combo that will work well. You look, if you're going 80s, you're going single coil or single pickup. You're going super distortion. You're going through. To me, It's Seymour Duncan's JB. If you go DiMargio, it's the Super Distortion. That's the way to go. Or if you think those like, well, especially the Super Distortion a little too much, I go tone zone. So for that's for me, for 80s, you know, sound, that's the way I like to go, you know, I mean, if you want to go active, you can go in EMG 81. I mean, those are all old school, but to me, you just can't. You can't beat either the scene where Duncan JB or the DiMarzio super distortion for that one pickup, you know, just kick you in the throat. Go guitar. So that's it. I was gonna say that's it. Okay, bud. This came from Amanda. Two says, hey, Phil, what two guitars would you pick if you decided to have one studio home, axe, and one gigging guitar? Only stipulation is the two guitars need to be the Same style example, Gibson sg. This is a. Okay, so I'm gonna give you the real answer, and then I'll give you one that I can actually. You guys can relate to. So if I can only have two guitars, one for like recording and one for play, I would have my keys all Delos. It's right there behind me. So right there I would have that. And, and, and I know that's not fun for you guys because you're like, I don't think it's a fun answer. It's. It's sometimes the, you know, the most honest answer is just boring as hell, right? It's like, what meal would you have all the time? And like salad with chicken on it. I don't know. Something, right? So. So probably the Kiesel Delos. And then if I had a second guitar that was the same style, would probably Strat. In fact, I would say that's probably two ways I go. There's almost a compulsion for me to have one telly, one Strat style guitar. But if I think I had the keysel with two humbuckers, I'd go with one Strat with like HSS or something like that. Back to yours. If I didn't pick my Kiesel Delos, I would probably go with two Strats. That's how I'd probably pick it. Oh, a Strat with a humbucker. Humbucker or a Strat. When I, I look, there was a time when I didn't have a ton of guitars. And so what did I have for a guitar? My very. So when I had one guitar and only one guitar. I don't mean when I first started playing guitar like as a beginner. I'm talking about, like years later when I went to, you know, I came back from the army and I didn't have anything. Uh, Shawna bought me a. An Ibanez RG 450, I believe it was, because it was. I think it was a Korean made one, not the 550 made in Japan. And that had two humbuckers in it. So I would play that for a long time until eventually I got rid of that and got a Strat. And then I had a main Mexico Strat. And that's what I played all the time. And I believe it was hss Humbucker. Single. Single. Because I think that's the most versatile guitar for what my. My needs. I can play. I can play anything as long as I have a humbucker on the bridge and a single coil in the neck. I Don't necessarily have to have a humbucker in the neck to get anything I need to get out of a guitar. So to me, it's always some kind of strap. Now, Dr. Frankenstein says Phil does not like Telecasters. I love Telecasters. And if given the fact that I had spent all my years playing on one, I would probably pick the Telecaster as the single guitar. I think the Telecaster might be even a more versatile guitar than the Strat, but it's the time spent on the Strat I've spent. So I've logged so many hours. It's like, think of it this way. I've heard pilots talk about this. I have a bunch of friends that are pilots and they're like, I've logged so many hours on this one plane that they go, that's, you know, what's your favorite plane to fly? And they go, well, you know, I've logged so many hours on this plane. That's the plan. I know the best. But this is the plan I think is exciting to play or fly. I would say guitars. I feel the same way about guitars. I vlogged so many hours on a Strat that I would be. I would never not. I would never not pick a Strat or Strat style guitar or Strat copy. To me, Strats are Strats, of course, this Fender, but then, you know, like Keisel, like any of the copycats, you know, the, you know, that are doing a, you know, a Strat style guitar. As long as I like the neck and the pickup sound good, I'm happy. I've logged so many hours on the guitar that I just feel that I can get something out of it and I can play music on it and I feel good. Do I do. I think it sounds as big and huge as, like a solid guitar, you know, a set neck guitar with a hardtail bridge and two humbuckers. No, and that's why I would want to grab one of those if I was recording for something a little thicker, heavier, you know, down tuned. But it is, again, it's just more of a. I'm. I'm familiar with it on a Strat. I can play a Strat just like that. Keys. I can play it with my eyes closed. You know, you put me in the dark. I can find the 12th fret very quickly and easily. Just not even by listening, just by feeling around. I'm like, okay, I kind of know where I'm at. You know, I kind of get. You get it like, oh, I bumped the heel. Okay, well, Then I know from the heel, like on a. On a Strat. On a Strat. See, I don't want to show you. I don't want to show you the Guitar of the Week. By the way, does anyone figure out Guitar of the Week is a Strat on a Strat? Which I'm not showing you yet. I just know if my hand's here. This is about the 12th fret. Look at that crap right there. See what I'm saying when I say I can be in the dark? I'm showing you Guitar of the Week. I guess you're gonna. We're not doing it yet, so. See, to me, it's like if in the dark, I put my hand there and I'm like. So again, you're just familiar with it. It's like, I know it. And that's, to me, more valuable than all the other things that you could qualify with is, like, the tone, the. You know, whatever. And also, tuning stability on Strats is really good. I can keep my Strats if I get a Strat and it's not great. And what stays in tune really well, I'll just slam the bridge against the body and lock it down and just. I don't have a tremolo arm. That's just how that works. So. So the importance of that is familiarity, and that's why I go to those. And then sometimes I'm not in the mood musically, spiritually, artistically, to be. To play something that I'm familiar with. I want something different. You could think of it a million ways. Look, some people take a vacation every year to the same place. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, by any way. I've done that, too. I've gone, oh, my head's all crooked. I've gone to places year after year to the same place, but I like to go new places, too, right? So. So, same with guitars. I like the familiar guitar, but I also like finding a new guitar. So let's see. Yeah. Robot Shlomo says, I don't own a Fender of any kinds. I never like the Clanky sound. Yeah, I could get that. You know, again, that's going to be a huge, huge thing, you know, for anybody. You know, if you. If you. If you like a Les Paul over a Strat. To me, and it's just my opinion, for what it was worth, I've said this years ago. I don't really think there's a Strat sound. I don't think there's a Les Paul sound. I don't think that at all. I think there's a single coil sound, and I think there's a humbucker sound, and I think there's maybe even a P90 sound. Maybe a Telecaster sound, maybe. But in recordings, most of the time, people confuse Telecasters with Les Paul's more than Strats. So to me, it's. It's. You know, I play a Strat, but I don't really identify it as a Strat sound. Sometimes I play a Strat and it doesn't sound like a Strat. And sometimes it does. Depends on the. If it's got single coils or humbuckers and how hard I'm trying to make it sound like that. But, yeah, I get that. Liam says I regularly practice in the dark. Yeah, I guess, you know, to me, when I say practice in the dark, you gotta understand what I'm really saying is, is that I don't know if you ever walked on a stage and you have to start a song, you're in. Start it. Look, have you ever walked on a stage that. That is dark? And you're going to start the song and you need to know where you're at. Start the first progression. It kind of. It helps to know where. Where it is you're starting, especially if you're like me. And you've done that so rarely that, you know, it's not like I have tenure and I'm like, oh, Hess's old hack walking on a stage in the dark. To me, still, one of the scariest things is starting a performance with being in the dark first. But I've done it a few times, and it's a. It's an interesting experience. And, you know, I guess. And then Luke Splender channel says, hey, glow in the dark inlays. Those are nice if you have them. I have Luma lays on my delos, which is cool. And let's see. Okay, let's go to another subject. Let's do this. Let's take a drink of water and find out where we're at. Okay. This came from antique rocker who says. Hey, guitar topic Phil never talks about. I never talk. There's 419 episodes. I'm pretty sure I've talked about everything he says. Check out Blue guitars online and let's discuss Arch Tops. Any jazz box guitar players you admire for jazz box guitars? Jazz players? No. I mean, here's the thing. This is one of those things. Like, I know jazz players. Like, you know George Benson. I know him. And. And I like Pat Matheny. But that's not a big jazz box. That's a thinner, hollow body, semi hollow body style guitar. So I'm gonna say no. Jazz, jazz and blues, I enjoy a lot but very selective players and very selective, you know, albums. And then that's what I like. So I don't have a huge or deep, you know, plethora of like, here's all the albums I listen to in jazz, especially jazz. Jazz is a little tough. And I used to play jazz, which is really funny. And somebody once told me that more people want to play jazz and listen to jazz. And I go. I laughed going, you know, it's funny. It's like, yeah. I kind of feel like that might be true. And I kind of think the same way about blues, but now I kind of feel that way about metals. How about that? I think more people want to play it than actually listen to it. It's kind of funny if you think of it that way. I think it's funny. Okay. Clan House cat says, hey, saw the Herman Lee asked Paul. I saw Herman Lee ask Paul Smith to make him a Majesty without telling Paul that he wants a Majesty. Okay. Seems like a neat overall guitar. Sure. I don't know what in it. I mean, as someone who has a Majesty and the Herman Link guitar, I don't really associate them together as being alike. I mean, I guess because they both narrow at the sides. It's. I. I want to make the connection. I see where a lot of people made a connection like that. To me, the Herman Lee guitar is just. To me, it's a heavily Ibanez S series influenced Paul Reed Smith guitar. So it's like. It's kind of like how I take it is it's how I think PRs would approach doing that guitar. You know, obviously with having the hindsight of seeing this S series guitar. So a lot of people said it reminded the S series. I got a lot of vibes from that, but I didn't get a whole lot of Majesty vibes from it. Different. I think that's also because of the difference of the neck and the Majesty has the horn. The lower horn is so much more compressed to me the way it sits on my lap. Comparatively to the. To the Herman Lee one. Different. I prefer the bridge on the Majesty much more than I prefer the Herman Lee's goto bridge, you know, for whatever reason. But. But yeah, that would make sense. I guess it makes sense if he told Paul that I just don't. Like I said, I'm just telling you what I experienced from the guitar. And, and you gotta understand, I, I did that guitar. You know, some guitars, when I do the deep dive, I have like the inside of. I've seen some other videos of them or I've tried the guitars many times or the manufacturers like run down the detail sheet of me. To me, they Herman Lee guitar had a marketing sheet which is like, you know, what you see is like a generic marketing sheet, you know, and give PRS credit. At least they give you that. A lot of companies send me product like a guitar and they don't tell me anything like at all. And oh no, they tell me when I released the video go, that part's inaccurate. I'm like, well that's. I mean, what am I supposed to do? You didn't tell me. And I had to figure it out. So, so I approached. You got. Understand. I approached the Herman Lee guitar with like a. And I have to tell you, I knew he had, you know, when I guess for years and leaking this guitar, all I saw was like an Instagram post. He post once of a guitar and I really didn't take much notice to it. In fact, I didn't realize until I was making and editing the video was editing the video that the guitar that they produced was like the prototype he had. I kind of, for some reason when I saw the, the production guitar, I just thought, oh, this doesn't. I don't. I wasn't pinging that remind me of the prototype. But yeah, so. But my attraction to the guitar, as you can understand is, you know, one of the things that is important to me is I'm attracted to very forward thinking, very interesting guitars. Not because I think they're amazing. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I think the, the Strat Les Paul telly world is a perfect world in my opinion. Like, I feel they're great, but I am drawn to all of the craziness that people can come up with, whether that's a park or the, you know, the Kyber guitar from Kiesel or this Herman Lee guitar or the Majesty from Music man. Just something a little bit different, a little off, you know, off the beaten path kind of logic. And, and I'm always excited about them because I've told you guys and this is just what I believe. But I think what I believe is, I think it's not even shown how much I believe it. I think it's the, it's the actual undefinable, truthful way it all works, which is everything works from top down. Which means if you want an affordable guitar that has features like the Herman Lee guitar, they have to make the expensive one first. No one wants to make. You know, no one that I know in the guitar industry wants to try to figure out how to make a new instrument that has new features and a new look and then sell hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of them at a low margin. No one is interested in doing that. I mean, that like. I mean, no one. No one is like, hey, I have a great idea. Why don't we make something really crazy that people might like and try to sell a gazillion of them? And what's great about a guitar like the Herman Lee guitar or just tons of guitars like that in general is you make a guitar with this in crazy price tag. Of course, the guitar. Everybody's like, oh, my God, $7,000 is ridiculous. Is ridiculous. The. However. However, as I said in the video, I. I thought it was going to be $8,000. And somebody put in the comments, they're like, they basically decided I was a shill for PRs for saying that. I thought it was funny. Hey, good for you for think of that. They go, hey, Phil's a shill, obviously, because he's saying, oh, PRs should have charged eight. Which I didn't say they should have charged eight. I said, I thought they were gonna charge eight. It looks like it should be cost eight to me. And my wife, Shauna, she watched it and said she was just curious. She's like, hey, so why do you think it's worth eight? I thought, you know, it's funny you think people would talk like that more in the comment sections. Hey, Phil, you said you thought it was worth eight. Could you tell me why instead of Phil, you're wrong. I said, yeah, because they got like 10,000 for the Oriante guitar. And I know that was a private stock, but essentially this is just whether you think it's a private stock or not. This is by how they look doing it. It's a private stock to me, right? So to me, it's a very limited guitar with a lot of exotic features. They tend to be priced heavy. I think they may have, and I have no inside information on this, they may have priced at 6, $800 because the market's weak. I think. I think I. I think they want to guarantee they sell out the 200. My prediction is they sell out the 200. And then my next prediction, which, by the way, the guy who said, oh, yeah, Phil just said that because he's a shill. Well, I bought one. So let me tell you what I think. I think by next year it's worth 10,000. I didn't buy it for that reason, but I'm telling you, that made it easier for me to make that decision because the way I looked at it is this is how I looked at the Herman Lee guitar. My decision. If I don't want it, I can get rid of it for what I got into it. And if I do want it, I probably will never have a chance to buy one again. So there you go, I guess. I don't know. So, yeah, you know, more. More. 10 guitar says it looks better than the Orion. Well, again, I was kind of like shocked at it as a, as someone who's. I said it in the video that's done so many PRS guitars. I was like, you know, considering it's so different from what they do, you would think they would put some ridiculous price tag on it. I mean for, for reference. For reference. For reference. And again, by the way, so no one is confused, especially on the podcast, I don't get anything if you buy a prs. So I'm not trying to sell one to you. But also I don't think you guys could get one if you wanted one. I think they're going to be really hard to come that their Herman lease. I think the 200 because remember, they sell to the dealers. And this is what I've seen in the past. What people don't seem to understand is a lot of the dealers buy them and then they stash them away. Or if they don't stash them away, they sell them off to these to their really good customers. But I wanted to show you where I kind of come up with this logic has nothing to do with PRs. It has to do with what you guys talked about. So okay, do this. So I'm gonna take a gander at this. So here's a guitar. This is a Majesty six string, like a lot of you have compared to the Herman Lee. And of course you could say, well has the, the transducer pickup. But keep in mind the Herman Lee has the Fishman's, which are very elaborate and expensive. This guitar is 5,600 right dollars. So you got to think that the Herman Lee at 68 is $1200 more than this. But the Herman Lee is a limited edition one. And I can tell you right now if you find this is that this is at Sweetwater. If we go on some other more premium type Music man dealers, you're going to find that you can find private stocks all day long for 7,000. Not private stocks. Majesty's right. Music man for $7,000. That just seems to be the market for that kind of guitar. It's a really crazy guitar. But no one asked. But I'll tell you what I think. I think that they made the Herman Lee. I think they made him limited. I think they made them exp. As expensive as they could get at the time. Like I said, I think I want to ask a question to you guys. Okay, Just for rhetorically. If the Herman Lee guitar came out in it's 2025, it's June. If it came out in June of 2022 during the guitar boom, you think they would have been $6,800. Again, no one knows the answer, right? It's because, you know, it's. It's a situation that didn't happen. But my brain kind of says no. I think they would have put them higher and they would have sold out even faster. And again, I don't know they're sold out. I'm just going to assume that they sold the 200 because my theory is always that if they, you know, they always, always want this to sell out because that's good. That's good marketing, right? Oh, we sold all 200. So. But, but, but like you said about the Oriante and all the other guitars, I. That's why I thought it was more. I don't know where I was losing my point. Just trying to say I think they were. I thought they were gonna charge more. And the Majesty's a lot, and so guitars like that are a lot. Okay. And then. Oh, somebody's asking about the blue guitars or a Japanese guitar. So I know that we did. I got sidetracked on the jazz thing because they were talking about blue guitars as the brand. Let's take a look at blue guitars. So, no, not blues guitars. Come on, Internet, help me out here. Blue guitars as a brand. I'm pulling it up right now. I'm going to assume this is the brand because it's called blue guitars and it happens to be hollow bodies guitars. Are they crazy expensive? Can we learn anything about them? Oh, Bob Benedetto. Yeah. So that's who's behind these Benedetto guitars. So, okay, so this is interesting because I can tell you that, yeah, Benedetto. I've played Benedetto, so I already know if these are Benedetto guitars. These are 20 grand, right? That's. I mean, that's. I don't See pricing. I apologize. So if somebody knows the what a blue guitar goes for, tell me. I Bennett. So I was. Benedetto was. For a short time. I say short time. I mean, it could have been a couple years. They were distributed by Fender, so Fender was the distribution for Benedetto guitars. And when I was a Fender dealer, they came to me and they're like, hey, you want to carry a Benedetto guitars? And they brought me one and let me play it. And I remember they handed to me. They. They. Oh, talk about sucker punch. They handed to me and I played it and I go, wow, this is amazing. And they go, yeah. They go, you want to be a dealer? And I'm like, well, I think I do. I go, how much does this one go for? And they're like $20,000. It was like retail. I was like. And I laughed. I was like, I'm gonna buy a Honda Accord. So. So I go, yeah, that would be. That'd be great. But no, so. So blue guitars are. If they're. If that's Benedetto, then yeah, they're amazing. I would imagine. So. Will I get one on the channel? Probably not. So the. We did have the coffee with Phil last Sunday with the. The top tier patrons. And we discussed and decided three guitars for independent deep dives. And I've acquired two of the guitars already. They're downstairs. And you'll see those videos very, very soon. But on independent video, there's no way I'm gonna try to spend $20,000. But if I could borrow one for a couple days, I would love to do a deep dive. The problem is though, is the Herman Lee and a couple other guitars like that have come through now for deep dives. And they have been a little. You gotta understand the. The Her. The Herman Lee was a little nerve wracking because it was obviously had to go back to prs. Like you have to say, when I'm taking the pickups out of stuff and looking at stuff, you know, you don't want to scratch anything or mess anything up. So it puts a little pressure. So I can imagine a $20,000 guitar would make me a little nervous. My butt would pucker a little bit on that. Okay, let's. Oh, by the way, we have a channel member for 12 months and says, hey, Phil, is it worth a revert bump? Sold a strat 574. Processing fees were $17. Selling fees, $26.89. Tax, $36. The bump was $24. And it let me. $390. So I would ask. Could I ask you guys. And if you don't mind, go here. Poll. Is it worth it to pay for reverb bump? And don't worry about this. Hold on. And if I'm typing fast, and I know sometimes even though I'm typing fast, you guys are going to. Okay, is it worth it to pay for a reverb bump? We're going to start a poll. Okay. So for those of you that are not sure what that is on Reverb, when you list your item, which by the way, actually worse is not only when you list your item does it give you an option to pay them a fee to have your products sorted to the top and highlighted. It's actually, I've noticed recently it defaults and almost tricks you into paying that. So some of you might be paying it not even knowing it. One of the things I. So let me tell you what. I don't like one, I don't want to do that. But I also have a different world, which is when I usually post stuff, there's some people looking for it because I have this channel. So there's a. It's hard for me to relate on somebody's like, I'm trying to get attention to my product and I'm putting on reverb, you know, selling my guitars off things that I don't personally as a customer like it. Because I like to sort everything by just listed. Cause I look every day at the same like 20 things. And so I'm always like, did something list today? And every day it's like that same. All the bumps come up first. And you're like, kind of scroll past that crap. I'm trying to get to what was listed today new. But I. I kind of feel like, no, if it's going to sell. I guess a bigger question to you would be is they took $24 because it's. I don't know if it's a flat fee or a percentage, but it took 20 in your case. You said they took $24, $24 to bump your guitar. I would almost argue you could have lowered the price $24 and make it more appealing to somebody. I would probably start with that. I think that's my logic. And this is a good segue to talk about the N4 guitar. You know, one thing that happened when I bought the N4 guitar, which happens to me pretty on the regular, is when I saw the N4 guitar on reverb. Let me tell you the whole story. So the store that had the N4 Padauk guitar and reverb had it listed for 10% below map. So 10% below the normal price. I saw that they were a legitimate store. I went to their website. Their website had it posted for the full price. I emailed them personally and said, hey, I see that you have it listed for on reverb for 10% below the regular price, but full price on your website. If you want to lower it 10% on your website, I'll buy it on your website so you don't have to pay reverb fees. Because I would rather give my money to that small business than to reverb. I don't hate reverb. Some people are like, they hate them. It's not a hate thing. I just reverb. Look, as someone who's ran small businesses, someone who's operated small business and currently technically has a small business, I'd rather keep money in the hands of people who are more like me than less like me. People who will turn that money back into the economy, turn that money back into, you know, maybe taking their kids to, you know, to. To sports after school or something. Right. Versus a company who's going to give a dividend to investors or, you know, whatever. I'm not trying to make that evil. I don't care what you guys think. I don't think that big corporations are this, the whole corporations, just because they're a big corporation evil. What I'm just saying is I'd rather just put my money like I told you guys. You know, if you want to click on an affiliate link and kick me back 3% or whatever, that's great. But I tell you all the time, if you want to call them and get 10% and keep in your pocket, I'd rather you have 10% in your pocket than me have their three. The 3%. But if you gave me the option of you just paying full price to them, please use my damn affiliate links like give me the money, stop giving it to the billion dollar company. So back to reverb. I would rather, you know, give it to the seller or to another person, you know, a small business. And then they responded to me like, nah, no matter what, we have to pay fees. Which I think just they didn't understand what I'm saying because. Or they didn't understand and they said just buying a reverb, which I did. So that's what I'm saying. Before I would pay for reverb bumps, I think I would just discount the price to somebody and see if that works and then if no one bought it, then I would probably raise that price and then maybe pay for the reaver bump. But that's my thought. The poll has been going. Let's take a look at the poll. I don't want to end it. I want to see it. Can I see the poll? I can. The poll says, oh crap, no. 92% of you said the reverb bump is not worth it. So I'm going to end the poll right there. So that's where we are as a collective of 1200 guitar players slash drummers and there's probably four bass players here. Said no. Back to my new new infor. I want to give you the Update on the N4. It's been. Today is the fourth week since. Since the issue with the guitar. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, you're gonna have to watch the last three podcasts. I'm sorry, it's too much stuff to go over. I bought a very expensive USA made Washburn N4 guitar and I did a guitar of the week with it that literally I got it out of the box and brought it on the show and showed you because it had arrived that day. There's a defect. The defect is cosmetic. There's none for sale anywhere. And the weight on this one is good. In other words, it's eight pounds. And so defect or not, I'd like to keep it, but I don't think it's right that the manufacturer made the guitar wrong and doesn't have to give up something. I think again, it's all in the fairness of it. So I reached out to the retailer which after about three weeks really didn't seem to go anywhere. So I reached out to Washburn and that seemed to go less better. So where do we end? I'm gonna tell you, it's all been satisfied. It's all done. Okay. What happened after last Friday's show that Saturday morning? Ish. The next day the somebody from that store reached out to me and said that they had heard back from Washburn. So obviously they okay, and Washburn is going to give me $107. So I responded to them and said, thank you for that. Right. Hey, that's better than nothing. I know somebody's going to have emotional response reactions to that. I thought it was a strange number. It's not so much the amount that's odd to me as the number I don't know what percentage it came off of. The total sale price I paid was like, $2,600. So, you know, I was saying, like, you know, 10% off kind of 200 bucks kind of thing. But, hey, whatevers. Whatevers. Because I told you guys. I figured. So I. And so you guys don't think that I'm Sometimes, like, everybody goes, you're overly nice. Look, I'm not overly nice. I just assumed no one was gonna give a shit. That's. Excuse my language. I thought the store wasn't gonna care, and I thought Wash was gonna care. Here's what I've decided. After a month, the store took care of me. They got. I don't. I don't know. Look, I'm telling you what they told me. They told me that Washburn is authorized or is paying $107. Whether the store ate that 107 bucks and Washburn didn't take care of them, I don't know. That I don't want to say that is like, start a rumor about that, but that's a possibility. It is. Washburn never got back to me. So screw Washburn. And again, not because they didn't take care of me. I'm like, you never responded. I followed up with them again. I'm like, hey, I'm just trying to. Again, trying to help. And really what it came down to is this. You know, would I ever buy from Washburn again? No. I got my. I think I got a Paduke in four and a Natural in four now. And I have my Swirl in four. I have enough M4s. I don't see myself. I would never buy from them again. And. But what I did learn from this experience was 1 think I want to thank the dealer. I'm not going to say the dealer's name. Some of you may know it because I saw me. Saw it in a screenshot. The reason is, is I don't think. I think the dealer did what they. They thought was right. And I don't necessarily have an issue with what they did. So I want to tell you I'm happy, which is I'm the guy who spent the money, so I'm the one that's supposed to be happy or not happy with it. I'm happy that I got something back because, again, the dealer originally gave me 10% off the guitar. Keep in mind, like I said, not specifically me, it was 10% off, but with 10% off the guitar. And then this. This is. You know, the guitar could have been $3,000. So now I'm into it for, like, $2,500. You know, after you know, so, but as a company, here's what's funny, man. They didn't even respond to my last email, which I been all I asked for. And so, you know, when I asked it, I did follow up with the dealer and the dealer said if they hear anything, let me know. And it's been a week and they haven't heard anything either. I said, hey, I'd like to know what Washburn thought, considering if you go online and look at infor is right now on Sweetwater, or if you go online and look at in current new infores on Reverb, they're all defective in my opinion. It's just my opinion of taking apart and deep diving over a thousand guitars. So it's. It's not like I'm saying my opinions the, you know, because it's. If I think it's the gospel truth. But I'm saying, you know, it's not a thinly, thinly educated opinion. It's hey, this isn't right. The nut's not supposed to stick out one side more so than the other. Well, first of all, it's not supposed to stick out at all. It's definitely not supposed to stick out, you know, twice as much on one side than the other. And, and I guess that's my point. So my point is I would never buy from Washburn again. If I do hear from after this, great, I'll share the information, what they say. But I. My takeaway is from the guitar and from their responses. They just don't give a shit. And what's great is, is, you know, I learned a lesson. Here's a lesson I learned. I learned a lesson a lot of us had learned. You know, sometimes I just love an artist so much that it doesn't matter that I, you know, so I like Nuno so much. I like Extreme so much. I just love Nuno's playing so much and him so much that I want his guitar even if I don't have a positive opinion of the guitar company. So again, and I'd like to point out I'm not mad about the defect. I'm not even mad about the. The refund amount again. I thought it was fine. I just know. And the reason I'm saying you guys are probably reacting is like every Friday told this week, they said what they. They seemed upset. I didn't seem upset. I was like, huh? I thought the answer was gonna be zero. But anyways, what's my point? My point is, is I was hoping they would give me something to tell you Guys, not only on the podcast, but of course I, I bought the guitar knowing I was going to do a deep dive. I did not want to do a deep dive and sucker punch them and saying, hey, here's a problem with their guitar. And if you're thinking about buying one, you should be aware of this. And well, that's happening no matter what. So there's nothing I can do about it. So we'll see. Who knows? I don't know. I don't think a whole lot of people buy N4s anymore. So it's, I mean, obviously, like I said, they make about 200 and some of them a year. So I mean, that's not little, it's just not, you know, thousands. But anyways, that's my. I gave. I told you guys, I promise you from day one I would tell you the whole story as it unfolds. And the end result, that's the end result. So 107 bucks. I'm happy with the guitar and Washburn doesn't care. Okay? Oh, and if somebody clips this and sends it to somebody Washburn, and then you reach out to me, keep in mind, you're not going to change my opinion about you not caring. You didn't care. But I will update anybody with anything you say. Okay? Sean says. Phil, why do companies use tusk and plastic and other synthetic materials instead of bone? Bone is super cheap and it seems also to be premium. Is a plastic really that much cheaper? So again, you know, I don't have a, I don't have the answer, but I have a theory and I can give you that theory. So there's a lot of things that people transitioned. Transitioned to. So for instance, you know, kind of like stainless steel, right. Things become buzzwords, you know, oh, it has a tusk nut has a graphite. I think graphite is probably the more important thing. Has a graphite nut. You know, it has a, you know, it has a Floyd Rose, right? Think of the 80s, right? Like everybody guitar has a Floyd Rose. Like, you know, you're citing things of quality. Oh, I'll Ninko5 like all of a sudden. I always think it's funny, I tell people what alnico the magnet is alnico that the magnet isn't a pickup. But people seem to think that that seems that I'm some giving some statement of quality and I'm like that the. The type of magnet is not a sense of quality. A 5 versus a 2 versus 8 means nothing. Or if it's ceramic or alnico means nothing in the quality, it's just a description of what it is. And so I think what happens is it's kind of like. And I would say right now, for some reason, you know, there's trends. The trend right now is El Ninco 5. Everybody's saying it's got an El Ninco 5 pickup in it. And I'm like, right, but that doesn't mean it sounds good, just means they use that type of magnet. Right. Same with the synthetic material nuts. I think for a while it was about, they were considered premium. I mean, companies like Taylor use, you know, synthetic materials for bridges and, and nuts. And you know, that goes on for a while until everyone's got a synthetic nut. And really, I really think what it comes down to is you put premium parts on a good guitar because you're trying to make a premium instrument. Then you put premium parts on an inexpensive guitar so that people buy the cheap guitars. So they have things to state like this guitar is good because it has a synthetic nut. It is a good guitar because it has an Alnico 5 pickup. It, it is a good guitar because it has stainless steel frets. None of those things are really statements of the quality of the instrument. They're just the components or the type of components on them. And then what happens in is, is then eventually, because all the cheap guitars have these state stated components in them, then the high end companies revert back, it goes wacky again. They go, oh, well, now we put bone nut on these guitars instead of graphite. Oh, now we're putting nickel back on these guitars. Right? Because again, it's about trying to differentiate yourself from, you know, inexpensive to expensive. So Sean, to answer your question, I think that's why they do it. Some manufacturers like it. One of the best things, Sean, that I can tell you, that tusk with a Q, like synthetic materials bring to the, to the party over bone is they are already pre made. So a lot of manufacturers buy them pre made. You can buy pre made pre slotted bone nuts as well too. But I don't know how that works in the mass market. In other words, like me right now online, I could buy a pre slotted bone nut or a tusk nut. But I think as a manufacturer, maybe what we're seeing and you're seeing is yeah, the bone nut is not as expensive. So why wouldn't they go with that? But maybe a correctly slotted nut already made. I mean, some tusk nuts are like literally drop in ready, just poof. It's just in no work whatsoever. I Have dropped in graphite and bone nuts from Graphtec and from Tusk, which is the same company. Just. They're two different. They're two different product names. I have dropped them in guitars, and you're like, crap, I'm done. Two dots of glue, and then maybe smooth out some of the slots, and within minutes, I'm done. I. My preference is bone nuts. That's just what my preference to work on and do it is. But for a long time before bone nut, I was graphite, so that's kind of my thought. Speaking of which, you know what it's time for? It's time for now. It's time for guitar of the week. It's time for guitar of the week. All right, so guitar of the week. It's a Keisel. No. It's funny. I'm like, you already saw it. I almost want to grab a different guitar, but I'm not gonna. It's a Strat. What do we have? It's a special Strat. Why is it special? I don't know. Just is. So what do we have? We have a Fender American Standard. This is a 2008. So it's a recession guitar. I don't know what that means, except for it was during the recession. So American Standard Strat in Sunburst. Look at that. But if you notice the pickups are brown. We'll switch cameras. So you can see that these are Wiggins pickups. If you remember, I've done some videos of Wiggins pickups. William Wiggins makes these pickups out of wood. The entire pickup's made of wood. In other words, the bobbin on the top and the bottom and the bottom. This is a special set that he made for someone that has the birds. Look at that. There's different birds. I'm gonna give you the. Ooh. So there's two birds on a. On a branch. Any of the bird lovers out there may know what those are. I don't know what they are. And then the middle pickup. Look at that. Two birds soaring through the air. And then there's another beautiful. That's a hummingbird. Okay, so. Hey, the next pickup. I know it's a hummingbird. His wife Renee, is an art. Went to high school with Renee, and she was a. An artist then, you know, when we're in high school. And so she did these. She designed these birds or made these birds for this. This person who bought it, and I bought it off them. So I have this guitar secondhand. And of course, the guitar looks like it's never been played because he never played it. He bought it and he put the pickups in it and he cherished it. And then he decided it was time to go. He had. He was moving and he's. He's like downsizing. And this guitar is going to go. So I thought I would play it for you today. And you can hear the Wiggins pickups. If you want to learn more about Wiggins pickups, you just. It's W I G G I N S. Wiggins pickups, they're made down in Tucson, Arizona. And he makes. As far as I know, he still makes beautiful pickups. I haven't talked to them in a little while. You know, it's the COVID thing now. You kind of look back and you go, I haven't talked to him in a few months. You go, well, it was before COVID so it was five years ago. You're like, holy crap. All right, let's. Let's talk about what we're playing through. What are we playing through? We're playing through the Amplified nation, right, Right there. Wonderland Overdrive amp. And I have the new X Atlantic delay and reverb on. And I thought I'd play something for you guys. And interesting enough, the reason why I picked this guitar today is, you know, kind of funny that, you know, the first question was like, if you could only have one guitar, would be. And I said a Strat. This is why this is where I live. Like, when I. When I think about, like, what I need for a tone, I don't necessarily need an expensive Tumble clone amp, but a light overdrive into a Fender amp is definitely where I live and reverb and delay. But of course, if you got Amplified Nation amp, you might as well use it. So let's go ahead and play the guitar. Here we go. I'll just play a little bit. I'm going to start. I'm going to back up. I'll start with the neck pickup. That way you can hear the pickups. I have. The amp is set with just a little bit of overdrive, and that's all I'm going to use. That's how I normally play. This amp is just as a one channel amp, even though it actually has two channels. Here we go. Okay, now I'm gonna go to the middle and neck. This is my favorite position. Here we go, Sam. Okay, now I want to take you to the bridge. Hey, the bridge in the middle pickup. We're on a drum track, too. What's funny is I can't hear the drum track. So I need volume. I was like, oh, monitors would help. All right, let me try it with a drum track for a second. We'll do it, Sam. Okay, so that's a simple. I just want you hear how it sounds off that. Just to me a beautiful sounding guitar. Of course, always a Strat sounds great to me. But this is about the gain I use on a normal basis. I'm going to play last little couple more aggressive hitting the guitar to see and then we'll stop. All right, so that is the 2008American Standard Strat. Which. And I think the takeaway is, you know, I just like Moe's were kind of reiterating sometimes when we talk, especially when I weak when it was like, you know, the, the Deep dive was this crazy expensive seven thousand dollar guitar. And then we get talking about expensive guitars and I understand this is an expensive guitar because it's an American made Strat. Keep in mind though, 2008, this guitar was $999.99. Does that make anyone a vomit now to know that's what this was new. The original receipt was in the case, by the way. I also know that because I sold it brand new. In fact, I sold it brand new. And then he bought the pickups directly from Wiggins and asked Renee to do the artwork. And then I installed them for him. And then when he decided to move out of the state, he said, hey, you want to buy some of my guitars? And I bought some. So this is one of them. And to me, whether the Strat was made in the USA or Mexico, I think a Mexican made Strat with these same pickups would sound the same. So say the only thing I really kind of like more is maybe the two point tremolo, maybe. But beautiful guitar. And then I thought it'd be fun to do guitar of the week and, and try something funny. Jeremy says skunk stripe. Yep. This has the walnut skunk stripe in the back. Does it need it? No. So if you guys don't know the reason why a lot of Fender guitars have a walnut skunk stripe is because the guitar necks, especially if they're maple, actually if they're maple are made of one piece. The entire neck's one piece. And they got to get away to get the, the truss rod in there. So what they do is they, they route this out, they install the truss rod and then they put the walnut cap in there. And so the question is, well, why do they do it if they don't? Because obviously here's what is funny. There's it doesn't really matter. What it means is the reason they do it is because I think it's part of the Fender look. Very rarely, I don't know if I've ever seen a Fender neck without a skunk stripe. I mean, it never like clicked and go, oh, this doesn't have a skunk stripe. This is strange. I'm trying to think if I've ever. You know. Actually that's not true. Let me tell you why. If a guitar is vintage, a reissue. Let me, let me show you. So this is a 60s reissue strat and no skunk stripe. So I believe for aesthetics accuracy. So originally the Fender maple neck guitars would have the walnut stripe. And then when they went to rosewood fretboards, which started in the 60s, they didn't need to insert the truss rod that way because they could just insert the truss rod before they glued on the fretboard. They didn't put the skunk stripe there. And then later I think they just added it back. But I think it's because, like I told you, I think Fender likes to put a premium on making things look the way they're supposed to look. This is a 61, 62 reissue. It's a Journeyman 62, I believe, 61 reissue. So let's set this here. I'm laughing because right now, some people. Every time I take a guitar off the wall and set it here in the show, somebody always puts in the comments like, my. My OCD is going nuts with an empty spot. Okay. The. Oh, Jeff says the maple cap necks don't have a skunk stripe. So, yeah, I'm sure that there's some that just don't and some that just do. But yeah, I mean, it's. I've never really put a lot of thought into it, you know, isn't that funny? It's not like something that's ever, you know, occupied my, my, my mind for, you know, any. In a long amount of time. This. We're going to jump subjects. We cover guitar of the week. Christian says, hey, Phil, we, we. We in a slow market. I understand we're all typing funny. He says, hey, we're in a slow market. Most guitar market makers make their money from their import lines. This is true. Why doesn't G L make a new bold guitar under $500? You know, it's my guess. And again, I'm just going to tell you my guess about positioning. In other words, you have to be in the position to do certain things. And look, one of the benefits of a company doing well during a boom when we had a boom like Paul Ridge Smith is that they have the foresight to know that the boom doesn't last forever. I told you guys, I've made fun of companies who looked at the boom and think this is the future. Every day we will sell like it's Christmas, right? There are now a new. How many times did we hear during COVID there's now millions of new guitar players who are going to buy tons of guitars. And some people thought that and they were wrong, but some people were like, hey, the market isn't going to stay like this and when it goes back, what are we going to do? And I think companies like prs were like, hey, we'll come out with some more affordable SEs and we'll grab some of that market. And I think some companies are smart to do that. And gnl, I don't think is positioned correctly to capitalize on that. Do I think they should do that? Absolutely. I think, I think GNL should work on and up their import game, especially in the new market. But again, you would have to look. It's not a very easy thing to do. It sounds easy, right? It's not. They have their guitars made by Cortech. My guess is that turnarounds like are six months and I'm just guessing it probably could be a year. You understand? They. They're. It's not like they can go, hey, the market's slowing down. Let's order a 400 inexpensive guitars. It doesn't work that easy. So they're not in a position to do it is my guess. Let me give you an example of that. So, you know, so G and L a couple episodes ago, I want to say not how many episodes. About three months ago, you guys mentioned that I. You really like it if I did a GNL tribute of the what guitar? There was a guitar that you're specifically interested in and it was this one and Gino tribute. What guitar was it? Because I have it pinned. It was. It is. I shouldn't say it was. It is. The guitar you guys are interested in me doing a video is called the Fallout. Okay. So I reached out to G Nail because I know those guys, obviously. And I said, hey, and look at that. Exactly what it looks. See Backorder. And I said, hey, my audience is really interested in the Fallout. I'd like to do a detail of the fallout. It's a 599 guitar. It could be a hit. Hit, you know, obviously, you know, if the video does well they'll buy a lot of guitars. Good for you guys. And they were super awesome. They're like, yeah, we'll totally get on that. And then they mailed and messaged me a day later and said, we don't have any and we're not gonna have any until probably August or maybe September. So, you know, that's the problem. So think about this. So you're asking like, why don't they make a 500 cool import guitar? They can't even get you the $599 guitar. That that would help them right now. Trust me, if they had a fallout, I would definitely do a video. Whether they sent one to me or if I just bought one on Sweetwater, that would be in my deep dive cycle right now of guitars. And you know, you guys know the channel. You know, I could get 20,000 views. I could get 200,000 views. Either way, it's going to translate to some sales for these guys. They don't have the guitars to sell you, so. So their problem is they can't even sell you what they do have much less worrying about something new. But maybe they are working on something new. My guess is no. Litface says, hey Phil, you said once that you want a delos without a pick guard. Do you have a keezel kit coming? I do not have a Keezel kit coming. I did not order the kit after we talked about on the the Friday show on Father's day weekend. The weekend got away from me. So I 10 I work the weekends too. So I. I do a lot of the Patreon stuff on the weekends. I'll do the clinic and I'll do the hang and I'll do the bonus podcast and. And so that takes up some time and then sometimes I have to have a video done by Monday or Tuesday and so I didn't get a kit. We'll see. They said publicly they'll never make a guitar a delos without a pick card. So I don't know whether I get them to do it once or I have no idea. Dr. My balls itch with a Z says thinking about assembling my first parts of caster. I want a hardtail body in shell pink. Where's the most affordable place to get it with decent quality. So my, my advice when building a parts a caster guitar is to go one of two ways. Go on reverb or ebay. Try to find parts that you can assemble. Like buy a nice body and buy buy a nice neck. I don't care about the bodies. So for me, like, let's look at guitar fetish. Guitar fetish, I think is a good place for bodies. It's just one of the fate. I'm not like highly endorsing them, but I did buy one of their bodies from them and it was fine. So going to guitar bodies, I'm going to share with you. Oh, look at that. Look at this. We'll go here. Guitar bodies. We're gonna go. What did you say? What kind of guitar did he say? He said parts of caster kits. I. Parts Caster. I'm thinking Stratocaster or a Telecaster. So either way we'll be covered. Let me do this. We'll do Stratocaster in pink, right? You said pink. Well, there's a burgundy mist, metallic pink. There's a paisley pink. 102 bucks, guys, come on. Here's a metallic pink. And I thought there was like a shell pink. There's neon pink. I'm pretty sure there's a shell pink. Look, there's a shell pink as well. So there's a bunch of pink bodies. And I'm pretty sure if we go to the Telecaster bodies, do they have Telecaster bodies? They have the same, essentially the same assortment of colors. Yeah. Like, here's a shell pink. And then again, I highly recommend getting something like this as a body. Hundred bucks, ninety bucks. And then spend the money on a good neck. Get yourself like a warm off neck or something quality. If you really want this guitar to be around for a long time. When I say that, I don't mean like be around because I think if you buy a cheap neck, it's not gonna last. It'll last forever. But it may have problems. Maybe the neck will warp, maybe, you know, maybe, you know, frets will lift, whatever. So you can get yourself a good quality neck. You could also just get a Fender made in Mexico neck. Or you could just get, you know, find necks online that are affordable. But I, that's what I would do. I'm. I'm just telling you what I would do. I would get myself a affordable body and then get a nice neck. I really don't care. I've said this before. I don't care if a body has three pieces of wood. I don't care what the body's made of. I don't care if it's basswood, I don't care if it's walnut. I don't care if it's maple. I just mostly care how it looks. Right. Is it a cool color? Is it Something cool looking. And then I'll stick what the neck is everything. If I don't like the neck, I will never get on with the guitar. It'll never happen to me. I don't care how good the guitar sounds or how good the guitar looks. If I don't like the neck, it's just never gonna happen. I'll force myself, which I do. And even knowing I. I will force myself. I force myself to play it even though I don't want to. Until the point where I finally give up and go, yeah, it's just never getting played enough. So that's where I would start. And I like guitar fetish for parts. I actually am working on a guitar fetish. Parts of caster right now. I bought a. I was telling the patrons this on the last clinic because we're doing a kit build on the clinic right now. And the next clinic is going to be a parts of caster thing. The parts casters. I have a crook neck. So if you guys don't know who crook is. Crook used to make or made guitars for Brad Paisley, which were Paisley and anyways, so I have this telly neck that's a crook neck. Now crook doesn't make the next. They had somebody make the next for him. But I. Anyways, it's a crook neck. And so I have this nice neck. And I was like, oh, what are we gonna do with it? So I bought a really nice paisley telecaster body from guitar fetish. And I'm putting it together. I'm going to put myself a little. I'm going to make myself a little cool little telecaster Because I was looking around one day going, I got a nice telecaster neck. I got a nice set of telecaster pickups. I got a nice telecaster bridge. I got. I got all the components. I go, why is this? I'm just laying around. I should build a guitar. The only thing I didn't have was the body. And I was like, oh, well. And then I bought the body on. You know what happened? G? Guitar fetish was in. Came in my Instagram feed and was like 15 off. It was weird. Just for the record, it was a weird thing because it was like 15, 20 off. I was like, oh, that's cool. And I did it. And then the discount was not what it kind of implied. It was weird. But I bought it. It was still 100 and something ducks bucks. I think it's because it said it was like 100 $909 down to 99. And then I bought it and Was like, it went right back up to 109 bucks or whatever. But 109 bucks I paid. I think I paid 120 for the body with shipping and stuff. It was, it was definitely worth it. Yeah. So that's my, that's my parts. A caster thought process is do that or like I said, find use guitars and disassemble them and make guitars out of them too. You could do that as well. So you could buy a guitar and start cannibalizing it and you know, use like the core of it. So maybe if it has the, you know, the body you want, you could take the body and then add stuff to it. Those are two ways to go about it. I'm not old, I'm vintage. To the Super Chat. Thank you. I appreciate that. Daniel O' Leary says, Hey, I bought a 98 made Mexico Strat two years ago. Great condition. Looking at a Player 2, is that an upgrade? What would you do? Love the show. So the player two, is that the. That's the new made Mexico is correct. Right. So we're going to do player two. How is that? You know what's funny is I can't even keep up. I'm looking at a players two right now. Oh no. Player two is the main USA one. So I did a players two. I must have done my Jazz Master Player two. So as an upgrade, you know, it's funny, is like it's stuff this. You think all this stuff's hardwired in my head, but after a while it's like I can't. Fender especially, I can't keep up all the known model number. They're just changing the names of stuff all the time. Upgrading from a made in Mexico Strat to a Made in the USA Strat or Telecaster. I don't think it's necessarily an upgrade as so much as a collector grade change. Right. Like I said, the premium is on the fact that it's made in the USA and that's it. I'm very upfront about this. I own Gibsons and I own Fenders because I'm at a point in my life where I can just afford Gibsons and Fenders. I love them, they're great, but I don't specifically pick them because I go, oh my. This main USA standard Strat is better than the made in Mexico Strat. It's just not that way to me. Some people have hard opinions about it. Generally I don't have a lot of hard opinions about it. I just kind of like this is. Again, I just know, long term wise, Made in USA stuff will always go up in value and you have to understand why it goes up in value. That's probably where a lot of people are confused because think about this. To say something that's made in the USA is going to hold value is not an accurate statement. That is not the statement. In fact, don't confuse, you know, American Pride, which, which I have as an American with American guitar values and where, where that the perception of value comes from. So what, here's what I mean by that. I like the idea that like companies like Easel and companies like, you know, sir and, and Tom Anderson, they build guitars in the usa and you know, because again, it's people in my country working and doing something that I love, which is guitars, that's great, but just because they're made in the USA doesn't make me think they're superior anyway or that they're more collectible or they go up in value. The thing that makes guitars go in value like that Made in USA like Fenders and Gibsons is the same reason. And I'm, I'm probably going to have some poor analogies because obviously this is live and I'm, I don't have a preloaded speech or. But I, I want to communicate what I'm trying to think here and I'm going to use some generic things until I probably hit something that makes sense. So like when you go to a country, like you go to Germany and you have a German beer and it's amazing, right? It's not about like saying, oh, German Germany has the best beer. It's about saying there's something cool about drinking a beer from Germany because they are known for having great beer, right? So, and I'm used food because it just makes sense. Like think about food and then you think about the origin of the country that comes from. And when people go like, I have a friend said this once and it's not something he thought of. Just said it to me and it made me laugh. Once he was talking about seafood and he said, hey, the further you get away from the shore, the worse the seafood is. So when you're on the west coast, the east coast of the United States, whenever I'm on the, you know, the coast, I tend to eat a lot of seafood. Not so much in Arizona, right. Like, and probably less so in Utah, right. Like just again, further you get from the ocean, the food tastes, you know, the seafood doesn't taste as good. So somebody said Belgium, like Belgium chocolate, right? So think about this. So you have an item and then you have that. It's, it originated from, from a place and then it's known. That place is known for doing great quality. Does that mean that I can't get good chocolate somewhere else? No. Does it mean I can't get a good beer somewhere else? No. Does it, what it means is, is that there is a premium that mentally we attach to the originator of or the thing that made it famous or this, the thing, the place is known for, making the thing really well. Fender made in usa, Fender made in Mexico. Fender made in Indonesia. Fender made in Japan. Fender made in China. None of that deep down matters to me in the concept of the quality, right? Because Fender just dictates the quality. They set the standard and they accept the standard, and then we accept the standard from them by purchasing it. But when we say an American Fender has value, a USA made, Fender has value, the value proposition is there's a romance to the fact that that's where it started. It's not even like a think about this. If Fender's not only made in the usa, they're made in California, where they started. If Fender moved to Minnesota and started making Fenders in Minnesota, people would go, oh, they're not like, look at this. It wouldn't even matter. I guarantee it tomorrow if Fender said, hey, screw this, we're actually, let's make it easier because it's easier for the economics. The fitness said, tomorrow, like, we're done paying 13% tax, you know, or whatever tax in California. We're moving to Florida. We're move our facility Florida and start making guitars in Florida. I guarantee you, they move the same equipment over there. They train the people. People will be like, man, the main California Strats, that's the good ones, not the Florida ones, right? Or not the Minnesota ones or whatever, right? There's just something about, think about this. We put a premium on heritage because they're like, oh, they're made in the same factory as Gibson used to make them out of, with the same employees. I'm like, well, they're not all the same employees really anymore. And they're definitely not using all the same equipment anymore. That doesn't mean they're great guitar, they're not great guitars. They are. But you understand, like, that's what it is. There's this romance that we attach to this. And I, I, I didn't know how to qualify that for years. But luckily, you know, interacting with you guys for so long, doing so much content, having to think about it in that way, you start thinking like, yeah, why are we. Why do we think the way we do? And then you start realizing, like, yeah, it's not about, like, when somebody says, oh, USA guitars are always gonna be worth something. It's like, well, it's not so much. They're worse. They're always gonna be worth something. They just have a value because of the fact that that's where it started or that's where it originated. And there's a. I like the word romance. There's a romance to it. You know, there's something cool about owning a USA Strat. There's something cool about owning a USA Gibson. And I don't really attach the fact that it's like, oh, they make them the best. That was a time that was true. But now the machines are everywhere, the CNC machines, the skill is everywhere. And. And let's be very clear whether you believe it or not, which is up to you to decide. Okay, The US Manufacturers have all stated. I can find. Right now, anybody wants to do a little bit of investigative reporting, I can show you where Paul Reed Smith guitars, where Gibson guitars and Fender guitars have all publicly stated that they have went to the factories overseas and they have trained those employees and they have taught them to make the guitars. So they're using like, machines with similarly similar. Similarly trained employees. Right. And essentially a lot of the materials are the same. So the guitars are the same for the most part. Again, it's a broad stroke, and as you guys know, I hate these broad strokes. But it is a podcast and I. Time to deep dive into some silliness. But my point is that's where I think that comes from. And the reason I bring that up is because a lot of people ask that question a lot. Hey, I haven't made Mexico Strat, and I'm thinking about getting an American one. And is it a big upgrade? And I'm like, yeah, I mean, there are features that are higher on the USA one because Fender sets the features to be that way. But I don't really advocate that. That's why you should buy it. I think you buy it because, again, you. There's a romance to owning. You know, here's a proof in this for those Ibanez fans in the audience can tell you this. The thing that people react to Gibson, Fender, about me, made in usa, that's how Ibanez fans react about being made in Japan. Like, I like owning a main Japan Ibanez over main Korean Indonesia because of the same reason. It's like that's where they started. That's where they were made. You know, that's where I know them from. And those were the best because. And then somebody goes, they are the best. And I'm like, well, again, all that is great argument. I'm, I'm loving, I love to have it with you every day, but I'm not. But I'm not convinced. It's not that I'm not convinced that they're better. I'm not convinced that's why people think and pay more for them. That's my point, is that I is. Is that I'm not. I'm saying I'm not. I don't want to argue whether or not something's better. I'm just saying people will pay more for them. But I don't think it's actually on a tangible quality scale. It's on a romance scale. More so. Okay, so that's your answer. If you want to own an original Made in USA Fender, you should do it. And if not, you have a great guitar with your main Mexico Strat. Seth says, hey, Happy Friday. What are your most. What am I most excited about this week, music year or otherwise? Well, I mean, obviously the Herman Lee guitar was exciting music. I don't know. I don't know if I've. I don't remember any new music posting that I, that I saw what I was paying attention to or otherwise. What am I most excited about? I think, Seth, I appreciate the super chat and the question. The part of the problem is, is that I'm like trapped. Trapped. I'm trapped working. Like sometimes I'm just working all day and then I look up and it's like, oh, the day's over. I gotta stop. It's nighttime now. So I don't really get to see sometimes all this stuff if it's not directly fed to me. And this week especially because I. The Herman Lee guitar was so last minute in the way it had to be put together that it didn't. Didn't, you know, it messed up my workflow. Plus, I have a video that hasn't come out yet, but I told you guys last Friday, I have a video about a guitar that has a design defect. The video was supposed to come out, but I decided to run it through a couple people I trust that know way more than me to see what they thought. And, and I waited for their conclusions, which their conclusions were 99% or 95% what I said. And then a little bit more thought into, you know, that last 5% was like oh, and this. And I'm like oh, I didn't think about that. So. But also I gotta tell you some of the things, I guess the most exciting thing I'm excited about this week is unfortunately for you guys is the fact that I was able to sit down with the Patron members and figure out some really cool independent guitar deep dives and I'm really and I mean really excited about these. These are old guitars, they're not new guitars. They're not the new thing. They're not flashy. They're just really cool and interesting guitars that I'll be able to dissect dissect and do videos on. And I as you know like a dream world for me would be to do almost all independent content. It's just almost impossible to, to do that. It's just, it's. And I even was doing crunching numbers as we go on. Maybe I can do all independent content. It's not the, it's not the revenue. It's not even the revenue anymore from the sponsored content because I really don't need the revenue need it specifically. But the cost of doing independent videos is just, it just, it's. That's what chips away at. You know, you're watching what you make go go into your spit. I'm spending what I make to make more videos which makes almost no sense but excited about that. I don't want to tell you what videos that I'm doing because I want to be them a secret but I'm going to tell you they're all coming out really fast. Chris. Hey, what's up? Chris says hey my. I may soon be flying with my bases. Is it worth humidifying them in the case? No, I don't think so. I wouldn't worry about it. I, I don't necessarily. I don't humanify my guitars when I travel acoustic guitars. I don't travel acoustic guitars but if I did maybe if I was and even then it would be have to be expensive acoustics if I travel acoustic usually inexpensive guitars and I know your basses are very nice and high end but I don't necessarily, I wouldn't, I, I mean if you want to do it precautionary ways but I can't think of any reason to do it besides other than just a fear of like you know, just a fear of no real factual reason to do it other than just the fear of it. I'm going to say Mate, mate. Berkus says after all those keys horror stories like not non existent customer service Poor qc. Jeff being Jeff, I haven't heard as many complaints this year. Do you think that they have improved? So what I would say is this. It's the same kind of thing as I say about Gibson. It's about knowing what they're. What they do, what they do. Well, first of all, when you think of customer service with Kiesel, you have to understand, as far as I know, it's still cal. It's like one or two people. So customer service, one or two people. So keep it in mind. And I want to be very clear because I don't want you to confuse something I do. And then think that, you know, I gave Washburn a month. That was a month. I didn't. I started out. I'll. I already read it to you guys. But if you remember, my very first email to the store and to Washburn was, I'm not in a hurry. I just. I did not expect an answer in 24 hours, 48 hours or a week. I thought, look, I told you guys, realistically, Washburn didn't build my N4. There's a ghost builder, his name's Chris. He built the guitar that. If you watch the Nunobin Court factory tour, whatever that means, it's really not Washburn that's building it. They're contracted out, which is fine. That's very common in this industry. So I expected that I would. I expected the process to be. I talked to the dealer. The dealer talks their sales rep, the sales rep talks to somebody inside the company. Inside the company talks to. To the builder. The builder gets back to the company. The company then gets back to the sales rep. The sales rep gets back to the store and gets back to me. And I assume that would take at least a week to two weeks. I expected a two week response to my concerns. The fact that they took a month isn't what I'm complaining about. It's the fact that it's been a month and they never even told me anything. I think a month, at the very least, I would like to. We're working on it. Like I said, they're not even responding anymore. In fact, I have every reason to believe they're actually pissed at me because they stopped responding to my emails altogether. The Washburn side, I was like, hey, I just. Look at. I even said nicely, hey, I was just checking on the eta. Not in a hurry. Just. I wanna know that you're still thinking about me. You still thinking about me? Nothing. Okay, so take that back to Kiesel. You. You people confuse and I just want to make sure you have realistic expectations with these companies. When you call Fender, I've told you, Fender has a call center here in Scottsdale, Arizona. There's a call center, first of all. Start there. There's a call center. It's a room full of people in cubicles on phones to answer the phone and take care of your problems. Some of these companies, if the bathroom's dirty, no one's there to answer the phone. Phones. I mean, that's just how the reality is. If an employee takes a messy crap in the bathroom, somebody's cleaning it. And while they're cleaning it, somebody's not answering the phone. I'm not saying that's the case with keys, while I'm saying it's possible. So what I'm saying is when it comes to customer service. Horse. Or when it comes to time span, I would say you have to be realistic with small companies and know that you're not going to get that fast. Immediate customer service. That's my expectation. I would set. That's my first thought. If you're talking about poor customer service, like people not treating you nicely at Kiesel, I can tell you that Jeff Kiesel publicly said that they. I guess they let somebody go who they thought was not very good at customer service, and they got Cal. Cal's the nicest guy I've ever met. I don't know. I always say that, right? He's one of the nicest guys. I'd put him in my top 10 nice guys. So there's that and then QC. Poor QC that I don't know how to answer. Because here's my problem. I have seen people have issues with diesel guitars, and I totally. What I saw was like, yep, that's an issue, and it needs to be dealt with. And hopefully, however, I have never had a. I've had the opposite experience. I have. All my keys are great. And I know what you're thinking. Well, they make you guitars. They have. But I've also bought them. I just buy them. I buy them used, I buy them new. I. You know, I told you I have an addiction. And so I've had no experience with Kiesel any worse or better. And that's not really to say it's been amazing. I've had no experience worse or better than any other high end company I've ever dealt with. Me personally, so. So that. That is where I don't know what to tell you. Right. And then the last. The Jeff being Jeff, I don't know. I Like Jeff. But I gotta tell you, my wife Shawna really likes Jeff. She thinks he's awesome. And because he's super truthful. Notice I said that the way I said it. If Jeff is an easy person to have an issue with because he doesn't lie, he's not a salesman, you guys think. And I'm just. And again, I always sounds like I'm defending, but I'm answering the question. That's all I'm doing is I'm giving you insight into the company that you were asked about. No different than any other company that I talk about. Just because the Internet's here and now people demand that Paul Reed Smith now has to talk to the people on the Internet and Jeff Keisel has to talk to people on the Internet. And Josh Scott hasn't talked to people Internet because that's what if you want to survive as a company. You hear me telling you guys, these companies, if they don't get out there in social media, either they don't pay people social media or they don't get out there, they're not going to survive. It's not like it was before. This is Guitar World. This is how you advertise. There ain't no. You don't put ads on billboards in the guitar industry. You don't put ads on radio. You don't put TV commercials on tv. You don't put product placement or have impregnated videos into movies and TV shows. The guitar industry has essentially had. Had two avenues in which to advertise, which was guitar magazines and rock stars. And as we discussed now, the guitar magazines are not what they were. And the rock stars, it's not that the rock stars are gone, just the rock stars aren't. They don't showcase the amps in the back wall like they do. They don't showcase the guitars like they used to. There's not a lot of that showcasing. And then so you have the social media outlet and it's very, very tangible and it's very easy. So because of that, Jeff Keisel's out there and he's asking, answering questions. Like, if I was going to give advice to some of these companies, I would have said, maybe not have Jeff be the person answering the questions, maybe have somebody more fluffy. But he's out there and he's out there and he's got his opinions. I asked Jeff questions all the time and he gives me answers. And I am very, very thankful for his very honest and very direct answers. But they are very honest and they are Very direct. So I'm just letting you know. But back to that. You should buy who you want to buy from. So that's what I would say. Don't. And with a Kiesel guitar, you can always buy them used. I always tell people, you know, you can buy them, especially at Guitar center has used keys. And Guitar center has a great return policy on used gear, which is like 45 days, I think, on used gear. And so if you want to try a Keasel and save some money and be able to return it, that's a good way to try a Keezel. Think about that, if that's what you're doing. But I always say, I like Keyzel guitars, But also keep in mind, I like Fenders, I like Firefly, I like Nags, I like Squire, I like Epiphone. I mean, there's lots of choices. You have to pick what your choices are. And then I thought there was one last one. Do I think they have improved? Well, I know they've improved because. How do I say it? They asked. I don't want to say they asked me for help. That's not really fair to them because they did everything kind of on their own. I just was involved with some of it, which is. Now they have a survey card. Now they have a survey, I think an email. They ask you after the sale, how does it go? One of the things I said to them was, I think your guitars are amazing quality. And I think if you had quality customer service to go with that, you'd be, like, unstoppable. And I think they took that to heart, and. And I think that's, you know, what they've done. So does that guarantee. Here's what I'm saying. Does that guarantee you a great experience? No, nothing guarantees you a great experience. I'm about to show you guys this week a $4,000 guitar that has a serious design defect. I mean, there's just every. Everybody has a problem somewhere. It's not. It's not the end of the world. But the other thing I noticed is because you. You super chatted me in a foreign currency. I will tell you that mostly when I hear. When I say foreign, like overseas, obviously, outside the US When I do see issues with Kiesel, it is a lot of the overseas stuff. I don't know why so much. There's the disconnect there. So just be aware. But I don't know. I hope that was insightful. I'm trying to give you insight. I'm trying to give you a balance Some kind of a balance. Not non biased or biased response, a balanced response. Like I said, I don't want you to think Kiesel is great. They're not. I just think they're not horrible, if that makes any sense. Like a lot of companies, I think Gibson's got his issues. I think Fender's got his issues. They're just all different issues. TSI says, hey, Phil, what is your take on scallop fretboards? I like them. I played Yngwie Strat and I love the neck and it's so much I'm considering buying one. Does anyone besides Fender make a scallop fretboard? So T size. I did a video, so I hated scallop fretboards. Let's start with here. So long time ago, I used to buy Ingvalam Scene Strats for the store. I did it because no one stocked them like, you know, so no one, no, none of the Fender dealers would stock Ingvay Strat. They're not hot sellers, you know, they're a very unique item. And so I would store. I always buy one in the store and then it would sit on the store, get played so much that eventually we discount it to cost and sell it. And then once I sold it, we'd get another one and people would come in and go, oh, I've never seen anything Bay. And it was. And it's a great way to get people excited because here's the thing about Music Store, which is why we were talking about the appointment stores earlier. Sometimes people buy things for the not the way you think. They don't come in and go, oh, you have a swirl. Blah, blah, blah, guitar. They come in and they go, what's that wacky thing? And they pick it up and they go, oh, that's weird. I'd never buy that. But now they're excited and they're having a good time and now they're in the mood, you know, Right. You get, you know, and now they'll buy something from you. So it was a great guitar for that and I didn't love it. So I thought I'd do a video a few years ago called I I, you know, because I knew. I was like, oh, it's got a great clickbait title. It's like, I bought a guitar I used to hate, you know. Right. Something like that. The problem is I like the guitar, so I like the yngve, but I didn't love it. I just like the. Actually, let's back up. I like the Ingve Guitar because the guitar is nice, the pickups are nice, But I have a Strat I didn't want as a Strat, so I asked Keisel to make me a scallop neck. And they took a year because they wanted to get it right. And I guess we're going all day. We're just gonna go to the wall, huh? Going to the wall. So this guitar is a Keisel, A two. I'll give you a sec. Side camera. Look and describe it for those that listen later. Whoops. So this guitar, the entire neck is scalloped. Look at that. Oh, there you go. For those that don't know what scalloped is, it just means the fretboard has been kind of scooped out. Right now, this guitar is entirely scalloped. And that is a feature that you can do on Kiesel guitars. I don't know if it's all models, but most of them, they'll do it. I don't know what it costs. I did not pay for this. This guitar. This guitar was. When the A2s came out, I threw a big wrench in their. Their plan. They said, hey, Phil, would you want to check out an A2 for a deep dive? I said, sure. And they go, well, we'll build it for you so you can have it. And they said, what do you want? I said, I want a scallop fretboard, and I want fluorescent orange pickups on this crazy blue metallic to black mist thing with a Godo bridge, reverse headstock, and one knob. And what I picked was too a little radical for them. They couldn't get it in time, so they. They sent me another guitar. But then they made this for me. Roasted neck. I did a guitar of the week on it. And a deep dive on this. There's a deep dive on this guitar, by the way, for the person asked the question, look up this guitar video. You'll see. And everybody, including Larry Mitchell, all my friends who have played it, have all said the same thing. They go, wow, I don't really like Scout. Next. But that is great. I agree. It's probably the best scallop job ever seen. It's. Somebody asked me, what's the big difference between a scallop fretboard and just really jumbo frets? I don't know how to explain it. It does feel different, but it's not super different. So, yeah, if you had really, really tall frets. But I think the problem is, is that if you're going to use that logic of the. What's the difference Between a scalloped fretboard and really tall frets. Just think the scallop for is really tall frets and so it really changes the way you're playing. But yeah, so. So answer your question. Yeah, I think warm off the scalloped necks all the way up and Keezel will do a scallop neck all the way up and down. But it's. I think that's a non returnable thing. So be aware of that crap. So. And the Inkvey Strat is great. I mean it's like I said, if I didn't get this made, I would have done the Inkbase. Drat. Drew says, hey, looking for a 24 and 3 quarter soup inch super Strat. Have you ever played any? And why were they so many in the 90s? Kramer, Jackson, Charvel and almost done now. So yeah, the no Ho. I believe the no Ho from Friedman is a 24¾ Super Strat. So if we go to. I'll go to Reverb, go to the Noho and it's thinking and nothing comes up. So let's try Friedman guitar. The Friedman no Ho none are coming up. Solid body. Yeah, that's pulling everything else besides what I want. So. So yeah, if you make them. My Alvarez scoop is 24 and 3/4 and it's a shredder type guitar with a Floyd. They're not as popular. Why they're not as popular? I don't know. I. I don't know why. What specifically changed in the market? You know, you gotta understand for a long time all the shredder guitars were dead and then they slowly came back and then for some reason a lot of people didn't play the. The 24 and 3/4. There are some 24 3/4 guitars out there that are shredders. I'm trying to think of any brands. I'm sure some people are putting in the comments right now of anyone besides the Friedman and I don't even know. And that's a good question. I don't know if Kiesel offers that as an option is a 24¾ on any of their shredder style guitars, but they might. But yeah, like I said, they're out there. I just can't think of any besides like I said, the Noho is the first one I think of. And then that guitar plays a great. It's just really expensive, but it's really nice. Okay. It's all phonetically one thing. So I'm gonna call it Pedro Dowd. I'm saying it wrong. I just don't know where the word stops and ends, says, hey, Phil, always look forward to the show. Great stuff. Have you. You have a brilliant skill in telling engaging stories. I wouldn't say that. I would say. Yeah, but okay, I appreciate the compliment. How about that? I'll start with that. I say I'm looking for good sources for chord progressions and voicing tutorials, if you have any. Well, that's a good. That's a good. That's a good question. I'm trying to think of chord progressions. I don't know. I mean, of any. I usually. I just go on YouTube and source. Look, if I'm looking for something like that. I mean, I use a Tim Pierce thing, but I'm trying to think. I don't know if he has specifically, like a. I've never looked specifically in there for that. It's not something I normally look for. Like, usually I. I gotta tell you, I used to have books and I used to have all this stuff, and I can usually sell you, like back, you know, probably 10 years ago, it'd be like this video or, hey, go on here. Now everything's just a Google search on my. On my phone. I mean, I'm constantly just like on my phone. All the materials I have, they ended up in a shelf and then in a lower shelf and then in a. In a cabinet and then in a box and then like. And same with online. I source online everything, right? To just. I can Google search what. Exactly what I need and go right to it. So I don't have a specific, but I want. Anyone else have any specifics? I'm looking real quick so I can say it. I'd give it a shout out while it's thinking. I don't know why, but I lost the screen with you guys. I've lost you guys. You're gone. That's not good. All right, well, then I'll have to go on this screen, which moves way too fast. This is the worst. What I'll do is this here's a way I can cheat. Go here. Oh, it came back. Okay, so hopefully you guys have put something in something really good. Anyone put anything cool. Oh, okay. Thank you. Fish lore says I use youtuber named Mike George for progression stuff. All right. Oh, and Rick Beato's got a bunch of stuff too, so that's. You know, I would think that would be a good place to go. Huh. So there's something. At least we gave you. Gave you that. Okay, we have. Christian did a huge super Chat. Is that. That's insane. Oh, that's funny. To help ease the burden of some of those deep dive guitars. Dude, that is really, really kind of you guys. Yeah, it's. It's funny. I don't like the whole, you know, woe is me thing on YouTube because it's like, trust me. And we do fine. We do great. It's really about just making sure that we continue to do great. Right? And one of the things. And so. So you did a super chat. You didn't ask a question, Christian, but let me just tell you, because you did a super, huge super chat. Let me tell you why I'm always thankful. I'm definitely thankful for this and all the super chats and all the patrons and all the views and all this stuff. The problem is, is that a channel like me, I can get a guitar, like a Parker guitar. Like that Parker. I buy that Parker guitar, or I get that T15 PV guitar, or what we're doing now, we're actually going back to a little bit more retro, little crazier, deep in history on guitars. And you do the guitar and you get a couple hundred thousand views and it's great. And then you do the math in your. And we're net positive, like 2, 300 bucks and sometimes 4 or $500. And it's not that I. I'm not complaining about that. You know, we should be so lucky to do something we like and make some money. But there is a part of me, and it's probably the business side of my brain that goes, dude, a company would have paid you three times that just to shell their stuff. And you're like, well, I don't want to do that. But you're also like, yeah, I don't want to do that. But I also. I mean, come on, really? Like, oh, you know, what are you doing? And so I try to find the balance, you know? Right. And so I don't want to. I want things to be good. And I appreciate you guys supporting the channel. It's definitely making it. It's been making it possible for years, which is great. It's. I couldn't be any more thankful, especially because I think ultimately if you don't come up with interesting things for us to watch and do right now in the guitar communities, I don't know. You know, I keep hearing it all the time. People are like, I'm burned out. I'm sick of the same old, same old. And I'm like, I agree. I'm burned out and sick of the same Old, same old. I'm sick of the same things coming up on all the feeds. So I'm trying to give you guys a variety one to stay relevant, stay on so I can keep doing what I love, but also because I enjoy that. So thank you. Sam says, hey, I got a made in Korea PRS SE24. It's amazing. Found my. I found my PRS. Yeah, the SEs are fantastic. And I'll say. I say it now. I don't know if I'm not supposed to say it. Am I not supposed to say it? I'll say it. I'll say it briefly so, you know, it's confirmed, it's done. My tickets are purchased. I'll be going to. I'll be going to the PRS SE factory in Indonesia. And by that definition, I'm going to all the factories in Indonesia, so all the brands, I'll be doing that. So I'll have content. So I'll let you know. I'm very excited about that. That took two years, over two years to figure out how to work that out, to do that. As you guys know, I've been to a lot of factories and I've shared a lot of factories with you and the Cortex factory. Just, you know, I won't be able to film everything and show everything, but I'll be able to see everything. And as you guys know, having the podcast, just having the knowledge of it is nice. I think it's helpful when you guys ask questions instead of like, hey, I think this is what happened. It's nicer when I'm like, oh, no, this is how it works. This is why they do that. This is what this is to do. So it's going to be brutal. So, you know, I looked at the flight itinerary. I'm up for it. I'm appreciative. Look, I'm super appreciative. This took a lot of work. I'll probably talk about it on another show once. The amazing amount of work everybody did to make this. So you guys understand why this was so hard is that you understand that these, so many companies are made in one place. Not all companies are going to want you to share their guitars, their agenda. And Cortex, in a situation where those are their customers. So Cortex has no reason to show you the audience or me anything that they do. There's no advantage to them. I even kind of pitched the idea of, what about just court guitars? And the problem is they're like, yeah, but there's no way to show you those guitars. And not show you all the other brands, which are very many. And so through a discussion, Cortech and PRS agreed that I could see the PRS side and film that. So I'll be in the PRS building. It's a separate building. And then I'll be able to film the PRS factory tour. And I know what you guys thinking. PRS did a factory tour a couple years ago of their Indonesian factory. But PRS told me since then it's almost an entirely different place. So. So there's going to be sharing a lot with. So we're sharing all that with you. So it's pretty cool and I'm happy to do it. I, I'm, I'm excited. I'm definitely not excited about the travel. It's, it's essentially almost two days travel there, two days there, and then two days travel back. That's my flip with a huge dramatic time zone switch. I was looking at my flight attendant. I was like, this is, this is pretty brutal. But again, it was the fact that it even done is great. And I'm, I'm, I don't want to. And I'm, I'm super, super stoked. Okay, so let's do unplayed video games. Says, hey, what do you think of the Helix Stadium announcement we talked about a couple weeks ago? I think it's pretty cool. I had heard from the people that I think know things. The thing I care about because I'm not really a big Helix fan when I say that it's not the sound quality, it's not anything. I had the Helix and I had the Helix. Lt, they were too big for me, you know, I just, I didn't, I don't use that. That's not a world, you know. You guys seen my videos? You seen what I'm always looking for. Three sounds max, max, like high gain, low gain, clean. That's me. I'm not looking for 10 different amps. If you notice, over the years at some point, like I was collecting up a bunch of amps, if you notice, like my collection amps is really narrow down to just the, the smattering of amps I really, really love. And I keep a few of those amps around because I love them, but I'm not, I don't need 50 different amps. I'm not a studio musician and it's not something I'm trying to collect. And so I'm more of an HX Stomp person. So what I was going to tell you is I heard the HX Stomp is a year to two years out from being revised. So I'll be more excited on that for sure. But yes, I'm excited about the Helix Stadium and the announcement. It looks cool for sure. But yeah, okay. Mr. S says, hey, perhaps a Northern Lights neck and snake bite bridge for Keith Retcher's guitar. Or. Or. Thanks. Yes. The answer is yes. If you want to buy it, you should. That's what you should get. I don't know if the. The super chat got incompleted, but Phil also did a super chat for no reason. Thank you. Appreciate that. And so did Tony. I appreciate that. And so did John. I appreciate that. And since so many of you guys did super chats and didn't ask a question and it's pretty much the end of the show and the diehards hang out to the end. Let me tell you. What. What should I tell you? Anything cool. Besides the trip is coming, what else? Secret stuff. I have secret. Do I have secrets that I can tell? I don't think I do. See, I want to give you something. I'm like, I can't. I'm now so, you know, I'm just scrolling through all the stuff that I know in my head or stuff I have here and all of it is serious lockdown. Like don't talk about it yet stuff. Okay, let's do. Let's try and do a last question or two. And oh, Earl says, okay, that's question. He says, any news on last week's Guitar of the Week? Yes. So if you guys saw last week's Guitar of the Week, I thought. And maybe some of you thought was very emotional. It was emotional because of the history of the guitar and all the things that happened. And I had mentioned to you guys that I. I was really not sure when I showed it, you know, should I show it? What do I do with it? And you know, and it was just. It was. It was a lot. It was like, okay, do I wanted to share with you guys. And so I did. And so I guess the way to put it is. How do I put it? Gene reached out. So Gene reached out who sent the guitar to me. And he sent any. A message which I want to thank him dearly for, and said that he's seen the guitar the week and he thought, you know, basically he. He liked what I did and had to say. And so that's what I told you guys. I was really scared to talk about it, but also scared not to talk about it. Just fine. 77 says, what guitar are you Talking about if you go to last week's guitar of the week, it'll explain it. It's kind of one of those things. You have to see it, see it. But to answer your question. So any news on that? That's what I, you know, that's an update. Any news on whether or not it should find, you know, is it gonna find a new person yet? No, I. I told you guys I would just like the new in for guitar. This isn't something that I'll let fade out. You know, sometimes, you know, we talk about stuff and then you never get an update. And it just goes in the, you know, into the. The galaxy, out in the world. This I can tell you right now, if that guitar ever leaves this house, I'll tell you guys who, why, and who and what it'll for sure. Because almost like you understand, I'll be also giving Gene an update on what I do with it. So that's. That's the end of that. Let's. Let's grab one of Amanda's questions because she's always grabbing stuff for you guys, for me, and then I don't grab as many of them. See. Okay, I'll do two, because this one's not okay. So Chad says, hey, Phil, question. How do you sell a big collection of guitars here in Arizona? Any help would be great. Thanks. So whether you're in Arizona or not, it doesn't matter. Everybody's having the same problem. Selling a big collection of guitars is very, very difficult. I currently have 33 guitars that I have to sell. And before anybody gives me any like, what is wrong with you, Kima? I do have a YouTube channel, and I did anticipate this, but didn't think about this, which is we built the new rig to increase the amount of deep dives. I've increased the amount of deep dives. The. You know, by far, we have not doubled them, which was the goal, but we are on the rate of about to double them, but we have increased them by 30, 40%. So close to double. Okay. The problem is if you double the amount of guitars that I take apart and go through, then I've double amount of guitars that are here. And if you're not paying attention, it's very easy for this stuff to just stockpile up. And I know what you're thinking, like, you know, but also keep in mind that there's all. There's a lot of scenarios that happen with these guitars. Some of the guitars were sent to us by a company, and we don't know if they're going back or if they're staying. And sometimes that's decided later and we're like, oh, well, now I have this guitar and if we can sell it, then again we can drive that money back into the channel, which is great. Some guitars I bought, like the Parker guitar and I obviously I can sell it fast, but if I sell it fast, we're going to lose a lot of money. And that really chips in too. So you go a little bit longer. So how do you sell a big collection? I mean, really, stores are who buy the big collections. That's where you sell them to. That's. I mean, so, you know, I guess this is the bad news. Let me give you bad news, Chad. I want to be the guy that's like, I'm gonna save you with the best answer ever right now. You're about the fifth person in the last three weeks to not on this channel, but just in friends, in person to ask me how do I sell a crap ton of guitars? Which means a lot of people are trying to sell a ton of guitars. What I would give you the advice. Here's the advice. So I'm going to give you advice, go through your guitars, okay? And I don't care how you do it. Maybe painters tape. This is advice for all of you that want to get rid of a collection of guitars. Painter's tape is how I do it. So painter tape is a good way to do it. Take a piece of painter's tape and Sharpie, okay? You put a painter's tape on the case, on the, on the gig bag, or on the physical guitar. And I want you to grade the instruments and how valuable and how much you love them. So like for instance, let's say you got a Harley Benton and then you got a made in Mexico Strat. I'm just giving you scenarios. And you have a made in USA satin finish Gibson sg, like the, you know, the least expensive Gibson sg. Okay, I want you to think about this. You, it's going to be tougher to sell the Harley Benton than it is the made Mexico Strat than the sg. So what happens to everyone? It happens to everybody. It happens to all of you is that you, you sell the valuable guitars and you're like, oh, I'm moving guitars. I sold three in my collection. Let's say you got 10 guitars you want to get rid of. You'll sell three real fast. You'll sell that Gibson, you'll sell that Fender, you'll sell that, you know, whatever the reverend right? And then you'll be stuck with the seven boat anchors. And then you'll work hard to sell two of those guitars and then you're gonna be with five, and then you're gonna get down to the last three. And the last three are just, they're impossible to sell. And if you can't sell the whole collection outright and feel good about it, like, sell it to a store or to a collector, I would say focus on selling the worst guitars first because sitting on good guitars is always a good idea. So, and, and like Richard said, Phil sells one a week. I do. That's kind of how I focus on it. That's one way to chip out the problem. I throw one on reverb every week and when I one sells, we put another one up. And that helps, you know, getting out there. But the problem is, is that when you take collections and sell, what happens is you, you think they're gonna buy them all, but they, they'll cherry pick your best ones out. Everybody cherry picks the best ones. Everybody wants everybody. Look, it's not hard to sell the good stuff. It's hard to sell some of the weirdric stuff of your collection. And so I say focus on that. That's my best advice. And, and then a lot of people right now want to sell a lot of collections of guitars because, look, it feels like hoarding. You just have a lot of crap, a lot of stuff. You're like, why do I have all this stuff? A lot of us have it because we were old and we've been collecting a long time. A lot of us have it because it got suit. Like I said. I just told you earlier in the show, everybody was selling five times as much stuff during COVID Well, that means you all have five times. We all have five times more stuff here. And so it's, it's tough. Silver Mustang says trade two for one is really, really good idea. I'll tell you right now. I will, I will. I constantly get guitars I don't want on purpose. That is my go to trick without a doubt. If I have, I'll take three oddball guitars, some pedals and a couple amps I just don't care about. I just don't want them anymore. Like, there's stuff where I go to sell it and I go, should I sell this? I kind of like it. And you're like, well, I'm not using it, but you kind of like it. There's stuff. I'm like, I just don't, I don't want this, this anymore. I take Stuff all the time. And I'll go and trade it for, like, a Gibson sg. Use the Gibsons as Gibsons as much as I can. But usually anything that's valuable, that's valuable, that goes up. So. Because. Because here's why. Four guitars in a closet takes up a lot of room, but one guitar in a closet that goes up in value takes up less room. And I can sit on it because. God. I don't want to leak this to you, but one of the deep dives I have coming has a really, really crazy. I don't want to say message in it, but you're going to learn something crazy. Yeah, I can't leak it, but it's basically talking about the fact that if. If you would have bought this guitar when it came out, this very inexpensive guitar, when it came out with inflate, it outpaced inflation. Like, how crazy is that? So that's what I'm saying. Some of these guitars will outpace inflation. So they're not the worst things to have sitting around your house. So what I'm basically saying is, sometimes I'm like, oh, I want to get rid of this one Gibson or this vendor. And I go. And I go to do it. And then I go, no, I should get rid of the stuff that I don't think will go up in value and, you know, and focus on getting rid of that first. So that's something I would suggest. That's something I definitely focus on. Trading is always a good idea because trading is really a good way to. To interact with stores. And that's. Those are some suggestions. But it's tough. I mean, I get it. It's tough right now because a lot of people want to get rid of stuff, and then you're competing with all that and also don't just because you have the compulsion to thin down the herd, so to speak. Don't get rid of the stuff that has value. You will regret it later. You will definitely regret it. Sometimes you regret it because you look back and go, I wish I kept it. But sometimes you regret it because you're like, man, in 10 years, this stuff's gonna be worth a lot more than it was. Certain things. Run riots as a hello Kitty Strat. No, the stupid hello Kitty Strats. Things, I. I know they're all worth a fortune. Okay, I don't think I missed any super chats. If I did, we'll scoop them up next week. I want to thank everybody for the topics next week. I want to give you guys a heads up. I put a link in the description to this website. This is the. Know your gear shop on. On the gear exchange. This is the gear exchange, not Reverb. Okay, look, I've been a sweet Sweetwater customer since 2011. I have a schecter on there. Speaking of selling gear, I'm going to be selling gear through the month of July. Now I know why I want you to know that is, is then I. We're selling it through Sweetwater's gear exchange because I talked to Sweetwater and Sweetwater is sponsoring the sales. So they're paying. Shawna bought all the boxes and the bubble wrap and all this stuff. More importantly, I'm passing that to you guys. Now, granted, what I get out of it, I get to thin my collection. Okay? But I'm just saying, like. So what I'm saying is all the stuff I'm selling, it's going to be very reasonably priced and I'm not charging you shipping, so. Because I figured, hey, you know. Right. And. And again, I'll be. I'll have boxes and bubble wrap stuff. So we'll be listing a couple guitars each week. And so starting next week, and I want you to have the thing so you can see if it posts up for those that are interested stuff. And I'll. I'll be all over the place with pedals and guitars and stuff for anybody's interested. And keep in mind, I'd say 90% of the stuff is from the videos. So a lot of you, I think will be interested in it because it was, you know, in the video and you. Maybe something you thought about back in the day. So. And anyone who buys my stuff kind of knows I kind of always get aggressive with giving a good deal because I just want to, you know, I want to move it on. All right. Rebel. Rebel says, did you sell the Fire John Fire Fire Strat. I did not. It's. Well, I did and I did not. I have no idea. Rebel. Rebel. It's at Zim's Guitars. So unfortunately, guitars like that, I have no. I. It just mathematically makes no sense. The Firefly guitar, I thought, okay, if I put it on reverb, what do I put it for? And I'm like, well, I could put it for 220. And I'm like, that's what they go for new. And I'm like, well, you know, I did get it and I didn't, you know, I did do the deep dive and it's. I go, okay, 220. And then I go, well, if I sell it for 220, after shipping and fees, I get like 130 bucks. And I was like 130 bucks even seem like the worst. So I go, somebody's going to pay the new price. And I only get 130 bucks. So I took it to Zim. So I figured, okay, it'd be easier there. So I. I consigned a bunch of stuff at Zims. So Zim's guitars down in Mesa, Arizona. I can tell you what's there if real quick, I'll tell you. The artist guitar is there that I did. That deep dive of the Firefly guitar is there that I did have. The BC Rich that I upgraded is there. So, remember, I did the BC Rich video, and it was a disaster. And I did a guitar of the week of it a couple weeks ago, and I. I left it as I showed you guys. It has the upgraded. In fact, it has. Has the upgraded to Marzio tone zone in it. It has. I've leveled all the frets, and I've done all the fret ends. I did the setup, and I put the trim block on the back and all the stuff. I did it there, and I think I listed it. I think it's there in the shop for 500 bucks. Because again, you know, that's almost. That's half of what it goes for new. That's good. And then I took them a bunch of amps because just, you know, as you guys know, amps is just a disaster to ship. So I took some stuff there. So there's stuff there if you guys want to check it out. And it's on consignment, so there it is. All right. That is. Casey says, I love zims, but I'm 1750 miles away. Yep. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Well, that's why we'll be doing some online stuff, too. All right, guys, I'm gonna let you go. You guys have a fantastic week. Look for the new deep dive that will be out probably tomorrow or Sunday. I haven't shared when Leash releases. It's a very interesting video. That's the one where I Talk about the $4,000 guitar with a design defect. This is it. I want you to understand what I'm talking about is it actually has a design defect. Not a. Like. Not like a. Oh, they dinged it in shipping or something. Okay. So. And then we have a bunch of new deep dives that are retro deep dives. More retro. Going back. We're going back. In fact, we're going back some as far as now as the 60s and pulling up guitars. All right, guys, have an amazing weekend. Play guitar and I'll see you next Friday. Make sure to tip your waiters and waitresses, okay? If you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget you can subscribe for free and help this channel. Or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patreon for live clinics where you can ask questions every single.