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Phil
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. Welcome. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 416. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. We're ready to. To talk guitars. I need to move my chair. It's one of those things like, okay, all right, now. Now I'm situated. Let's. Let's do this. Let's move that. We got this going. We have a lot to talk about this week, A lot of questions, a lot of topics. And also. What else? Something else. Maybe Guitar of the Week. Kinda more of a interesting take on Guitar of the Week, I think, is what we'll call that. As always, I want to thank everybody who joins the show live. If you're joining live, there's no commercials during the live show. So if you hate commercials, you got to try to figure out how to watch it live. Or. Or you can listen to it on itunes, Spotify, you name it, and there's no commercials there. And one more time, just because it's important to me to say, I don't insert the commercials. YouTube inserts the commercials. And they do it by how well people engage with the show. And to give you a reference, they don't play every single commercial they slot in. But a couple weeks ago, somebody said, hey, there's a ton of commercials on this. Now, it used to be the YouTubers used to get to insert a little bit, you know, like, we pick and stuff. Now YouTube's kind of really taken that over. But more, more importantly, that episode had 42 slots. Now that before you freak out and go 42 commercials, that's not 42 commercials, it's 42 slots. So, yeah, they could have put 42 in there. I don't think they did. They put in as many as they can do. And that's just the YouTube game. So like I said, I have it for free. If you're a patron, $5 or more, you can listen to this podcast ad, free. If you watch it live, it's free. Or. Sorry, no ads. I should say no ads if you on Patron, no ads if you're live, no ads if you listen to it without video. And after that, I'm sorry, guys. That's all I can do for you guys. I gotta. You gotta pay some of the bills some of the time. All right, let's get into some topics, some subjects, and the first one that I'm going to hit is from Mr. Two Hats. Nice sign on Mr. Two Hats says, hey, Phil, that artist at 53 Telly video was super interesting. Henry's guitar is based in the Czech. Is that. Am I saying that right? I think so. I'm probably messing this up, but I'm gonna say the check, chin check. Have the exact same model and Henry's Space TL1, the comet, identical relic. Who's designing these? Nobody's designing these. That's why we all kind of chuckled when we saw designed in Australia, made in China. Now when I say designing, I mean. Yeah, you know, did they pick the. Maybe they designed the headstock. Maybe. Maybe they picked a few things. So I guess I shouldn't be so cavalier to say no one designed it. But what I wanna say is that, yeah, it's a knockoff. That's what it is. It's a knockoff. However, keep in mind, people, no matter how many times I've educated everybody about this, the Telecaster body is considered generic. It's public domain. Nobody owns the Telecaster or the Stratocaster body anymore. That's just the facts of it. That's just what it is. So when somebody says, oh, they're stealing a Fender Telecaster, they only can steal the headstock and of course the logos. The body, unfortun, or fortunately, depending on how your attitude is, is public domain. My whole point with videos like that, it came up on this podcast. You guys mentioned it. The company saw you guys mention it. They reached out to me and they really wanted to kind of go me to go through the guitar, which I thought was nice. That's not the first time that's happened. I've had a couple companies reach out and basically seem to be after the deep dive itself, which I thought was. It's always flattering. Right, I take it that. And what else? Oh, and also I like it. I like pressure. It's just a thing. Look, I've been self employed for 20 years. I feel pressure every day. If I don't figure out how to make money every month. If I don't figure something out as a self employed business, you know, if I don't figure out what I'm doing, you know, it doesn't happen. And so I understand. Look, there's a lot. There's a big part of me that wants to have a pension plan and a more, you know, in a union maybe job position. I'm not making fun of that or lie to that, by the way. I'm. I'm actually envious of it. But what I want to say is, is that competition grows you, makes you grow strong. And so I like it when companies make high end guitars like that with all those features and it puts pressures on companies like vendor to not be so lax and to maybe keep, keep the, you know, keep the quality up. I, I just like that. So that's why I highlight any guitars I can. As you guys know, the BC Rich guitar. You know, the funny thing about the BC Rich guitar that I did, you guys saw that was really depressing and I've actually, I still have it, the B series guitar here at the shop and I've done a bunch of stuff to improve the guitar and it's still kind of depressing. So I don't know. And like I said, I, you know, hopefully BC Rich will get the message that their competitors are really kind of, kind of pushing them out. Okay, on a more pressing topic, the hot topic last week for some reason was gravy. And my reaction to not eating gravy. This has come up many, many times since then. I've received emails from you. I, I had no idea there was such a passionate gravy community out there. I want to personally apologize to any offense I gave to the gravy community and what damages have emotionally caused you guys from me saying that I don't eat gravy or I don't like it. And I also like to point out when I say I don't like it, I really don't. I really probably haven't tried it in forever and I really don't have any passionate feelings about it really for or against. But it seemed to really strike people. So here's what I'm going to say. Enjoy your gravy. I, I, I, I hope you, in fact, you should eat more gravy and think of like the fact that Phil is not eating gravy. Maybe that's you're eating the gravy I as allocated to me on this planet. But anyways, I'm glad you guys are so passionate about it. But, but I will tell you this. I also mentioned that I don't drink Kool Aid because I and I made a joke by the way. It's all about a joke. I was joking when I said I don't eat gravy because it's, you know, it's not named after a food. And I don't drink Kool Aid because red I make light of things because the fact of just, you know, you just do that when you're. I make light of situations. Here's the situation. When I was a kid growing up, I was a latchkey kid. Like a lot of people my age, My mother, single mother, for most of my life was worked not till, you know, it's not like I got home from school. And then a couple hours later, my mom came home. Like, we came home from school and then we cleaned, we picked up the house because that's what we were supposed to do. And then we made dinner, then we ate dinner. And then after dinner, and sometimes before bed, my mom came home. So my sister and I, when I'm like 6, we would make dinners and we would make the same things over and over again. We would make Orville Redenbacher popcorn in a, you know, in the thing you put on the stove and it pops on the stove. We didn't have a microwave, so it was just. Was how we made popcorn. So we would eat popcorn. And at 6, 7 years old, the only thing I could cook. I know what you're going to say is eggs. No, we had a gas burner stove. And so what we would do is we would do the popcorn and cook hot dogs on forks like. Like Lord of the Flies and put it on bread. And that's how we'd have hot dogs. So we'd eat hot dogs and popcorn. And then we would make. I would make at 6, 7 years old. I mean, I mean, I made this a lot. Jello, because you would take the box of Jello and you would boil water and you'd throw it in the boiling water. I know a lot of you probably like, what about top ramen? Top ramen too. But we really just, you know, we kept the basics. So I ate a lot of Jell O as a kid because we made it a lot. I could come home and if there were, you know, we lived out of the pantry, not the refrigerator, is what I like to say. If you are grew up financially challenged as a kid, you'll understand that statement. Not a lot of food in the fridge. It's in the pantry. So everything's in a can or a box. And anyways, my point is why I don't like Kool Aid since I told you guys it was because it's named a color. And I feel bad since you guys reacted so negatively. I don't drink it because to me, it tastes like melted Jello. And I ate a lot of Jello. So to me, drinking Kool Aid, when would I drink Kool Aid? I'd be like, oh, this just tastes like the Jello, but melted. So whether it is or not. I don't care. It's just what I did. And then for my last point, because I don't want you to think my whole childhood was horrible. One of the best things that I had as a kid. What did I drink? What did I drink? Well, the three things we drink. We drink a lot of water because that was free. It was from the tap. I don't know if you guys, some of you guys are too young to remember when people drank out of the tap. But the other thing is we would get the big can of Hawaiian punch. That was the legit, man. That was like. That was ballin. So we would have that or because I could boil water, we would have hot cocoa. And that was our big things. Hot coke again, it came out of the pantry can or a box. I'm just, just telling you guys for it. So you guys have the insight of why I was banging on kool Aid. Okay? That's it. So I hope everybody's happy about gravy talk and gravy gate is over and people can move on with their gravy ness and graviness. Okay, all right. What else do we got? We got good guitar stuff to talk about. What else do we have? We have something. This is from hero glob says. Hey, isn't Dana Electro missing the opportunity by not having cheaper line of guitars? I think for most players, Dana Electros are their second or, or third guitar, not a main guitar. And they are pricey. So hero Glop, that's a good observation. But you know, let me explain what I think the business model of Dane Electro is and why it works the way it does. So the first thing to know about Dane Electro guitars, Dan Electro, however you want to say it, Dane Electro, Dane Electro is they own snark. Okay? And so snark tuners, as you know, everybody has a snark tuner or has had 20. And so I'm sure, I'm sure that a big part portion of their finances come from the snark business. That's a very lucrative business. And so I, I'm. What I'm saying is that a lot of times companies make decisions on pressure, financial pressure, like, oh no, we gotta move units, let's drop price. And oh no, we can't, you know, make any money on the drop price. Let's drop quality, you know, and so they're not racing to the bottom is so to speak with Dan. Dan Electro, the Dane Electro guitars. And I know I keep saying Dan and Dan Electro. Cause I, I can just Hear people correcting me all the time. I say, Dan Electro. You can say however you want, Dale. Dan Electro guitars back in the day, they weren't very good. They had high action, they had all kinds of issues. The ones that they make today are superior. Very few times can you say that about anything, that the new version is much better than the old version. And I think it's because Dana Electro understands this concept that is so foreign to so many companies in the guitar industry, which is instead of spending all their money on customer acquisition, they spend their money on customer support. And what I mean by that is so many times, you know, everybody understands paying the YouTuber to tell everybody about this guitar, putting the ad in the guitar world, paying the artist to play their guitars. In other words, acquiring customers, customer acquisition, putting ads on Instagram, putting ads on Facebook. Right? Companies understand acquiring a customer acquisition, acquiring the customer, but they don't understand customer support. How many times have you got this product and you're like, what a deal. What a great product for the price. But yet if you have any issues, it's a ghost town. They're under supporting their support. They there is not enough customer service. There is not enough of that. And they also have cut some of the quality of the guitar. So although it was appealing in that YouTube video, when you got it, it was not so appealing or there's issues. And I think Dana Electro really kind of focuses on the support side. In other words, their guitars, building a more quality guitar. They make those guitars in the World Factory. Let's make sure if I'm right. Yes, I'm right. I had to think because it's usually either mirror or world. They make it at the world factory. Now I'm doubting myself. It could be mirror. I can't remember. I want to say it's world. Anyways, they make the majority of those guitars in that Korean factory. And here's what's interesting. Although their guitars seem expensive comparatively, because we, you know, a couple years ago you'd buy them for 300 bucks. If you look what other companies are trying to sell guitars out of that Korean factory for it, they're much higher. So I mean, they are keeping the price kind of low. You know, comparatively speaking. I understand what you're saying. It's not really a mainstay guitar. Everybody has one as kind of like the side salad guitar. But I also think that I, I. There's different models and I can appreciate all of them. And this is one of the models where I appreciate Susan's like South Korean Factory. You know, it's funny, whenever I say Korean Factory and then people go South Korean. I understand, Susan, what you're saying. I'm like, it never occurs to me like there's no guitars coming out of North Korea. So I'm like, I understand what you're saying, but specifically the, you know, I think about the label. Very, very rarely does the label actually sell South Korea. But trust me, all guitars come from South Korea, not North. Anyways. But back to the guitars, I, I appreciate the business model as it sits where it's more focused on the quality aspect and making sure the guitars are really good. Even though I think it's a detriment to their sales. I agree with you. I think they don't sell as many guitars because they are priced higher and, But I, like I said, I think they can afford to do that. There's a lot of business models like that out there that are interesting that are, you know, support businesses where the business has a couple different entities of support, financial support, and they can make choices to say, hey, look, we're just going to make a quality product and if sales drop a little bit, we'll, you know, we'll be fine because we make other revenue somewhere else. It's, it's, it's a, it's a tough thing, but in this case, I'm happy about it. I really like quality. So anytime, anytime, you know, I, I think it's because as a, as a repair minded person, my, my brain isn't, oh, things are broken, therefore I make an income and that's good. It's more of like, I hate to see broken things. That's what drives me to fix things is like, I hate seeing broken things, so I want to fix them, but I don't necessarily. So that's a perfect. I'm saying it perfectly. I don't like broken things, so I want to fix them. It's not that I like broken things, so I want people to make cheap stuff. So I like that they make a quality guitar and I like that their back end logic is more important. I wish more companies would care about the back end as so much as the getting the customer. And you guys are all just talking about food. Okay, we have so many topics. I say that and then I can't find the next topic. Here it is, this one. I don't have a name for this one. I apologize says, hey Phil, I love the podcast. Never miss it. Thank you. I noticed that you have a new X delay reverb pedal on your board. Is that Your favorite delay reverb setup. I'm looking for both. Yes, it is. So I've tried them all. That's the one I like. Somebody's going to say, yes, but this other one is better quality, or this one sounds better. You're probably right. I didn't pick it because I think it's the best sounding. I picked it for all of the reasons, which is I like that it's the size of the pedal, the new X pedal, and I like the fact that the reverb and delay are atmospheric. In other words, I don't want a lot of ambient reverb. I don't like in a lot of intense reverb. I don't like a big delay. I'm not putting on, like a Pink Floyd concert, you know, So I don't need a lot of those effects. I just need them kind of in the background and just to kind of make the. Spatially make the sound, you know, pleasing to me. And that pedal does all those things. It's relatively inexpensive. But that's not why I picked it, because, as you know, I've had other pedals that were much more expensive, and I just found myself coming to that one every time. And the. So that's it. That's why I like it. I've had it for many years now, and that's the one that's stuck, and it's the one I'm sticking with, and it's my favorite. So there you go. I'm looking at right now. You're gonna be hearing it today. In today's Guitar, Dennis says, phil love Friday afternoons. Do you and Shawna like ice cream? Every. Everyone likes ice cream. Is that a thing? Maybe lactose intolerant. People don't. You can't feel bad when you eat ice cream. Yeah. Ice cream is for us, is like a. It's really nice sometimes to get out of the house and go get an ice cream. That's kind of a thing that we do. It's really nice. Uh, it's. It's especially. We have reverse. We have reverse winter here in Arizona. So it gets really hot, like 110, 115. It's not there yet, but it gets really hot, and it stays that way for about three months. And so going outside is just really, you know, even at night, it's really hot. It's like 110, you know, 8:00 clock at night. Uh, so it's nice to go out, you know, and you're like, what are you gonna do? And you're like, oh, let's go and get an ice cream. And just to get out of the house, you feel like a little cabin fever from being in the house. So that's a nice way to do it. The heat has not started. It's in the. It's 100 degrees, but it's not the crazy hot yet. So. Because it's still gonna be cool enough at night to go for walks and stuff. My niece says they make ice cream without the cream. They do they? Oh, well, so, you know, that would be more accurate too. I'd say as much as we go for an ice cream, we'll go for a gelatin. Okay. Kyle says, hey, just don't expect the new X to assist you if it goes bad. Mine went down in just 60 days and they won't do anything. You know, you're the third person I've heard that says their unit. I've never had a problem with my unit. And I have two. And I have two units. I've never had a problem and I bought them both. So you. I know I've never worked with new X in a, in a, you know, a paid me kind of, kind of interaction. The. But both times, I guess resetting this, there's a. Their firmware in that thing, I guess is what they did. So I don't know. I don't know. Okay, hold on. Let's see. Sorry, I'm just looking around. Let's go to what else? Oh, by the way, we should talk about this. So no one's asked yet. We are giving. We gave away, I should say the American Fender Telecaster limited edition sandblasted ash body chambered guitar with case. We picked a winner. The Kingsumo thing randomizer picked a winner. I emailed that person and I told them I'd read their name out if they responded to me on the show today. So hopefully they get the email and respond. I'd like to tell you guys that the last couple contests we run, we ended up going like nine people deep on the last one before we finally got somebody to respond to us. So things I've learned from this, don't use your work emails because I'm pretty sure your work emails are blocking my email to you saying, hey, it's me. But also, just watch your emails. So well, hopefully they'll answer us. And right now, if you're watching, you should check your email and see if you got an email from me. I'm not going to read the email off. Of course. Yeah. Let's see. Let's model Burrow 6174 says, hey Phil, I love your content. The keys will number guitar behind you on the wall. Mr. Andre Flood has a similar one. Is that a story there? Yeah, it's the Jason Becker guitar, which is why Andre. Dr. Andre Flood has one is because he's obviously a Jason Becker fan. This is the Jason Becker signature model. I bought this one used was one of those deals. I just, you know, came across a deal and I had some gear to trade and so I got myself one. I think it's like six and a half pounds, super light. So that's what it is. It's just obviously, if you're not familiar with Jason Becker, I suggest you go check him out so. Because he's pretty freaking amazing. But yeah, that's when you see the number of fretboard guitars. It's most likely either a Jason Becker model or some kind of, you know, homage to Jason Becker, which is what Andre Flood's doing. He's putting the, the stuff there as a, you know, as a. As a, you know, it's like a homage to it. Let's see. Okay, let's go. Let's go to another subject. This subject is from Antique rocker says Casino Guitars has a video about Keith Urban playing a sick PRS hollow body with a bird shape f hole. Do you know anything about the guitar? I don't know anything about the guitar. That'd be interesting if they did a Keith Urban signature guitar with a bird f hole. It makes sense that they would do a bird heffle. I have two hollow body PRS guitars. Both have just f holes. I think the bird f hole could look cool. I haven't seen it, but I haven't heard anything about it. So, you know, like I said, I think they have some pretty big announcements. I don't know. I feel like they're going to have some big announcements towards the end of the year. I just kind of feel it. There's no sarcasm there. There's no insider talk. I have no idea what PRS is up to. Haven't talked to anybody at prs. Me personally, I haven't talked to anybody PRS this entire year. So Sean has talked to them back and forth about some things, but I'm not usually privy to that side of it. It's like not the. It's the back end, what we call the back end side of the business. It's not something that involves me and my YouTube content. So I'm not really talking to him about it. So I haven't heard anything but given that it was their 40th anniversary and they had the 40th anniversary party this year in January, and it's the 25th anniversary of se. I caught. Imagine something. Some big stuff, right? We'll see. George says, hey, I just bought a Thornbucker for my HSS Strat. Anything to watch like pot size or. Or just do a straight swap. Yeah, do a straight swap. I would imagine it's fine if it's already had a humbucker. Single. Single in there. And you're putting that you're just swapping the humbuckers. He says, thank you for nine years of wisdom and priceless info. Thank you for basically saying it's wisdom and priceless information. That's very kind of you, but yeah. Nope, I wouldn't do anything. Just swap out the pickup. The Thornbucker is a great pickup. Dr. My ball Z with a Z says new WSJ vid about a $35 guitar pick. Have you tried it? So, okay, let's back this up a little bit. So the Washington Journal, right? Is that what that is? Okay, so here's the deal. The patrons were talking about this. I don't know if you guys know, but if you're a $25 patron and above, there's a WhatsApp group, and I think there's a $10 patron tier four. If you're doing the clinics and stuff, there's a WhatsApp group. And they talk in those groups. And I get to kind of see what they're talking about. And they were talking about it. And funny enough, I have a couple. I have no idea why I have them, how I got them, did I buy them, did somebody give them to me? Did that company give them to me? Did a stranger give them to. I have no idea. I have a huge collect picks. In fact, I'm looking to see if there's actually within somewhere I can get them. But so yes. So the Washington Street Journal did a video article of a very expensive $35 pick that apparently John Mayer and other people use. It's supposed to be amazing. Here's what I can tell you about it. And no, no good or bad, it's just honest reaction. I definitely have one. I'm pretty sure I have two of their picks. And you know, I'm sure they're nice, but I've been using the same two picks. I say two because it's really a third pick sometimes. Been using the same two picks forever. And I keep trying picks and I just don't move, you know? I'm past the point of figuring that out. In other words, I've either, I'm either figured out what pick works for me at this point, which I think I have, or I'm never going to figure it out and I'm just sticking with the pick I have, which is, I can tell you right now, I do the Hurko nylon picks. These ones right here. Right. Let's do the side cam. Side cam. There you go. There's the Herco pick. A little clearer. This is it. The Flex 75. I've told the story why I use this pick. It's not a very exciting story, or maybe it is, but it's not important. And I use the Dava picks. So I'm holding this. This would be the Dava picks. Look at this. Got my stuff in my drawer. And then I also use these picks which are the three sided picks. Those are my three picks. The only other picks that I use, it's got this tray of picks is I don't use these, but I have Know youw Gear picks because I mean, and then I have a prime tone in there. I have no idea what this is. This has to be. I think Ralph came over, somebody came over and threw this in the tray. But those are the picks I use. So. Very unexciting. Very, very unexciting. But yeah, I, like I said I. So, you know, I'm probably gonna go through and find it this weekend because now I'm like, oh, you know, had no idea. I have a lot of pics that are really expensive. When I started doing YouTube, a lot of companies would send me pics and obviously I did a few videos of a few that I thought were interesting and cool. And I talked about those. But most of them I just didn't do it. And I have no problem with a $35 pick. It's funny, you saw those picks, you'd think, you'd think I'd be like, no, I can't spend that much money because I'd lose it. I don't lose picks. It's very rare. I, I, I just have tons of picks everywhere because I bought, I bought, I buy picks like I'm gonna lose them. But I don't seem to lose them. I seem to be very focused on not losing them. I don't know, I don't know why. And then where else do we got, what do we got? Oh, we have another one. Let me pull this one up. And it's a good time. Missouri. NP says are the Epiphone 57 CHG pickups by BHK. Comparable to Gibson 57 class classics. I have you compared them? I have not compared them. I found a used pair for $30. I'm not really. I would assume they're close. I don't know. See, the problem is, is that, you know, there's not. It's not really that simple when it comes to the import version of anything. Like PRS does it too. They make a pickup that's inspired by. There's terminology that gets really crazy. My favorite term, of course, is inspired by. This is an inspired by version. I'm like, what does that mean? It's not an exact clone. It's just an inspired by. Hey, we're trying to get it something like this. I don't know. 30 bucks sounds like a good. A good price for two pickups. 15 bucks each for a pickup. Even for an epiphone pickup, I think that sounds pretty good. The only thing you can really do is check the resistance and see if their resistance is lining up something to the 57 classic. And then if they're using the same kind of magnet, same Al Nynko magnetic, there's a good chance it's pretty close. Here's the interesting part. I can tell you this. You can absolutely take a pickup that's made in the United States and clone it exactly overseas for a fraction of the price. You could absolutely do it. It's done all the time. Two exact specs. But most people aren't going to do that. So that's why I said it's 50. 50. Some companies do it, some companies don't. I don't know if they did it or not. If anyone has one, let him know. Let him know your two cents. Ben wants to know. Hey, Phil. Your thoughts on the Clon Behringer copy lawsuit. Ah, man, the fight of all fights. If you guys didn't hear, Barringer Petals made a clone clone petal. Which is crazy because, you know, I. Well, first, let's start with this. I'm finally. I'm excited to hear that finally, after all these years, somebody finally decided to clone a clone. I thought that was pretty cool. I mean, you never see that, right? I mean, no one's ever done it before, but Behringer did it, so. Behringer Petal Centaur Overdrive. Here we go. This will tell us everything. It's still available on Sweetwater Kids. All right, let's take a look at this. So here's what we have. We have the Clon Centaur Overdrive. Dun dun dun I mean, obviously. Look, look. Oddly enough, I think that's not where the output jacks really go. I thought, is it? I thought they were space wider apart than that. Anyways, you can tell this is a pretty, pretty intense copy. Let's take a look at a real clan, right? I typed real clown pedal like that. Oh, yeah. For those that are interested in. Why I'm laughing is because when you type in real clown pedal, the Behringer overdrive came up first and then the Centaur. That's kind of. It's kind of funny. All right, let's take a look at this. 4,000. This one. Is this real at $4,000? I thought they were up to eight grand now. I thought everybody. Oh, this is that guitar center. Oh, we should buy this. Look. Vintage 1990s Clon Centaur pedal. The. This is a real one for $4,500. I say we buy it. I say you guys all super chat me $5,500 right now, by the way. Please. I don't. I couldn't imagine you guys do that. Please don't do that. Please don't. I would, I'll tell you right now, even if you. I got $5,000 right now in super chats, I would not buy this pedal. I would give probably 90% of it to charity because there's just no way. I can't do it. It's a too, too crazy for me. Even for me. For five grand. There's just real things in life I could buy that I care about. So anyways, like giving it charity, I guess. So here's the real deal. Oh, I guess the jacks are closer. I had one original one years and years ago. I sold mine for fifteen hundred dollars. I should be upset, but I bought it for 350. So I was like, I don't know. And I had a copy that I liked almost as much. I always felt like the clan was bigger. Sounding like fuller, right? Like I had a little bit more warmth in the mids, the upper mids and stuff. And I was like, oh, I like that. And I was like, but do I like it? You know, fifteen hundred dollars? No, no, no. There's no way. Okay, so back to this. So here's. I get it, man. Looking at this thing, it's pretty, pretty nuts. They. They really ripped it off. Okay, so obviously this one's missing the. The dude, let's go back this guy, the Centaur. So Centaur overdrive. What I'm doing so you guys know is I'm looking at them not as A quote unquote, you know, expert of gear. But as a consumer going, okay, am I confused? Because that's what this all matters to. I've told you guys before, I'll go on my tirade as I always do about this. Looking at this. This is the real one. This is the fake. Oh, it's funny. The fake. They used a different knob. Usually when they go for the, you know, the claw and the real one, they usually use the real knobs. So Behringer did the fake knobs. Obviously the gold is a little different. I mean, it's tough. Here's why I own a. I own a clown clone. I own this one. I own the Raya. Right? Hold on a second. Which model do I have? No, I have. That's the right one, I think. Ryra. Ryra. Ruh. Roh. Come on. I'm right. That's the model. So does Sweetwater not carry this model? Come on, Sweetwater. Nope, they don't. All right, let's find one on the. So here is the Clon clone I have right here. It's at the Chicago Music Exchange. I mean. Okay, so things I noticed, I'm going back and forth. Is that the real one? Sorry? The real one has that shape. It's a very distinguishable shape. Right. This little. Where these bumps come out here. I always thought that was a pretty unique shape, you know, having these. These pop outs right here. I guess that's what I would call them. Right. So it looks like this is like a formed mold where the Ryra Clone Overdrive. Clone Overdrive is just the standard box that we're used to seeing. Obviously uses the gold. Those are definitely looks like the knobs are almost identical to the. To the Clon. And it's tough for me. And this is a really interesting thing. I thought about it briefly this week. I gave it a few minutes thought when somebody was talking about on the patron side, you know, trying to get back to the main thing, you know, what do I think about the, you know, them suing Behringer for copying it? I mean, it looks pretty blatantly copied, but. And I could see where if you're not informed, you could be confused. Hold on a second. I want to look at one last thing, and I'll show it to you guys. I'll tell you what I don't like. I'm gonna tell you the thing that I don't like. Okay, this is what I don't like about this Behringer Centaur Overdrive. I don't like that it doesn't say Behringer in big letters on it. Right. This is the part I don't like. So obviously this old pedal that we're looking at, all the lettering pretty much got worn off. I get that. Right. You know, Clon, Centaur. See to me, I see Clon, I see Centaur. I come back to the. To the Behringer. I see Centaur. I don't see Clan, but I see Centaur, I believe. And I always. And I remember not an attorney, not even close. Okay, But I've said this before, and I'll say it to. And I'm not. I haven't changed yet. I don't think. I don't know if I'm ever going to change. I believe trademarks are to protect consumers. I really don't care about companies. I want to lock down on other companies. Or do I think I've had. Listen, I've got a lot of flack for this. I've had small companies reach out to me and say, you know, I spent years developing a product and somebody knocks me off and you don't care. I'm like, I care, but I care more about the consumer. And you should too, because at the end of the day, I can tell you right now, if you got a lot of product and it's great, but no customers, you go bankrupt. And if you got a lot of customers, no product, you'll be fine. You'll find product. Customers are the most expensive thing. And everybody says no until they can't find a customer. Okay? And so my point to this is you want to take care of the customers, right? The. And you want to protect the customers. That's what it's supposed to happen. So the trademark is supposed to say to, you know, it's supposed to protect customers. So a customer doesn't buy this Behringer pedal believing they bought the real thing. And I know some of you are laughing like, oh, you can get the real thing for 70 bucks. Look, people, you know, sometimes you get a deal you don't know. But the point is, is, does the consumer. Is the consumer confused? And as crazy as this sounds, and it's probably going to be controversial because what isn't in this day and age, Even though I have the Ryra pedal, I think the Ryra pedal doesn't confuse me. I look at that pedal and I don't think that's a clone. I don't think I would think that's a clone. Like if somebody came up to me and said, I have this pedal and I plugged into it. So here's what I mean by this. Let me give you a scenario, okay? Just a scenario. I go to jam with some friends, I plug into a pedal, and it's a clown pedal, real one. And I go, wow, this sounds amazing. And I leave the jam and I go, I gotta have that pedal. And I go online. Do I look at this pedal and think, oh, that's the pedal, right? I mean, you could, but I mean, I don't really think it's exactly the same. I mean, maybe if I'm not really detail oriented, maybe I think generically it's like this, you know, kind of like it. And somebody's making up a point right now. I'll get to it in one second. My point is where I think the Behringer one, it's a little. It's a little. Like that is just a little too much. Now, somebody mentioned the warm petal ones, so let's take a look. And. Oh, hold on. I have a second part that's going to kind of tie into this. Because before any of you get too nuts about this, because I have a caveat that I have to get to. Okay, so here's. Here's the. Come on. What is going on here? Why is Sweetwater. Okay, so here's the warm, warm audio pedal. Same thing, but it says WA right there. I know I'm kind of nitpicking here. Plus, this looks a little different to me, but it still has the pop outs. I would say this is dangerously close. I mean, obviously, look, that one's even funnier because it looks like the. The ktr. But anyways, so, I mean, I would. I would put them in the same area too. I would say this is too close in my opinion, right? As I'm not an attorney. Like, I'm just saying, like, I can't be an attorney, right? So. But I can be a juror. That's how I look at this. Like, if you. If I got jury duty and I was in a court case, and this is the court case that's being presented to me, and they said, sir, do you play guitar? And I said, yeah, you think you know a thing about two. About guitar? Yeah, I think I know a thing or two. Okay, so you think you could honestly give an opinion about these two products and see if they. If one infringe on the other trademark? Sure, I think I could. Right. Okay, cool. So, like, looking at it as a. As a person, I'd be like, yeah, I think they look a lot alike. And I think they look Too close alike. And I can see where a new player or a younger player, somebody's not really super into clans and knows all the details of all the years and all the things, but confused. And maybe that's too much. However. However, I would imagine then one of the attorneys probably for Behringer would say, but did you know that Klon really doesn't even make petals really anymore? And I'd be like. And so. And there's a lot of people knocking him off. I'd be like, oh, so do you think he, you know, what do you think now? So I can give you two answers and be honest on those two answers, which is, I think the Barringer and the worm looking at them, audio pedals are too close. I think they're too closely, too close looking. They went too far, right. It's kind of like when I say, look, copy the Les Paul, but not the headstock, right? Something's got to identify, especially the brand logo. The brand should be on there the most. I've said this before. I've used this analogy many times. I walked up to a, you know. You know, if you don't know anything about pickup trucks, you walk up to a Dodge and. And a Chevy, and they both look like big trucks. But the big distinguishable thing is the Chevy logo and the Dodge logo. That helps you, like, oh, that's Dodge. Because it's got a Dodge logo. That helps me distinguish it. So the logos do help distinguish the differences. Where I think the Behringer guys didn't. It should say Behringer on there. That would just not. To me being a person who can read almost, I would go, oh, Behringer, right. And anyways, but if somebody said, yeah, but, you know, clown's not really using, you know, not really building pedals, Is that very fair? I don't know if that's very fair. I can say. I would probably say yes to both. In other words, I think if they're not making the pedals, I think other people should be able to, and they shouldn't be able to stop them. And I think that if they. But if they are making pedals and they're saying they're too close, I think that's too close. That's my opinions on that. So I don't know. Would there be anything that makes me not want to buy the Behringer or the warm pedal? No, I'd buy them. Fine. Because again, I don't see them as I told you guys, I'm very, very, very specific on this. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care if, if a company knocks off another company's product as long as they're not trying to. To what are they? What's the term? Not fake. There's another term, counterfeit. Counterfeit to me is different. Like, give an example. If somebody makes Monopoly money to make a game, that's Monopoly money, okay? But if somebody counterfeits a hundred dollar bill and tries to hand it to me as real money and then I give them my pedal in a parking lot at Craigslist and I have now a fake hundred dollar bill, that is fraud. They tricked me. That's a totally different thing than, right, than if, than if, you know, if it was Monopoly money. And I'm like, well, obviously this isn't real. This is very. Okay, why I think this is a crazy person handing me Monopoly money. So this is my point. The same thing with products. If I can distinguish the difference of the products, I really don't care how close they get as long as I can or I think the average person can. I think that's very fair. But again, I know it's very nuanced and there's more to it. And you can really get intense in this. And the only way you could really do this on YouTube is if you get five different personalities and we just fight it out for two hours while you guys all watch. And of course we would accomplish nothing and everybody would just see a good debate. But ultimately that's how I feel. So that's why I say like, you know, when I show a company and they make a copy of a Gibson, but it has a different headstock and it says Firefly on it, I'm like, I don't care. Let them do it. I don't care. But if I see a Chinese, I'm just picking that Chinese knockoff guitar that says Gibson on it. I'm not happy about that because that Gibson logo, that makes it counterfeit to me. That makes it to where you're not just trying to be. You're not inspired by the product. You're not making something like the product. You're not improving the product. And by improving meaning, you can also make the product cheaper, more obtainable, you can make it more quality. You're just trying to trick someone. And I don't like that. So that's because, again, I always think of it from the consumer. I want the consumer protected. Deja. Deja says chip clones. Yeah. Interesting. I'm really, really curious to see how this. Not how the court Case goes just how the Internet, you know, fights us out. And I'm also interested to see what particularly the Behringer did. What is it that triggered the. I, I wonder if it was simple as Behringer made this and because they're going to make so many, obviously at that price point there's going to be thousands, tens of thousands of them. Maybe that was the wake up call for Clon to go, hey, we gotta, we gotta cease and desist this. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know. And I'm conflicted. Clon made the original one and he made something quality. And Behringer's is knocking stuff off. It's hard to, it's hard to root for one of these people. You see what I'm saying? Because I don't really like that there's a pedal out there that's $5,000 for almost no freaking reason. And that is another argument, right? Somebody's gonna go, oh no, there's a reason, Phil. They sound great. A lot of things sound great. They don't have to be 4,000, $5,000, right? They're $5,000 because they're hard to get. That's why they're $5,000. A Klon is, make no mistake. And this I could argue anyone with anyone. Anyone. Just come on, we'll fight it out. This paddle that I'm pointing at right now, this original Klon pedal is not $5,000 because it sounds great. It's $5,000 because you can't get one. That's different. That's different. So the Rhett Shaw did a video that I thought was amazing and I would put it in my top 10 videos of all time. When it comes to a comment that he made, he said, and again, I'm going to paraphrase the quote so it'll be slightly off. He was talking about dumble lamps and he said, imagine if Jim Marshall. So I want you to imagine I'm going to kind of say it in my own words, if you don't mind. But I want you to know it was inspired by Rushell. Imagine Jim Marshall makes the Plexi, okay? And think about that, right? Think about the Plexi and Jimi Hendrix plays the Plexi. And you know, and you know, insert your favorite iconic rock bands like Led Zeppelin plays the Marshall Plexi. But he instead of making lots of them and then JC1 hundreds are, you know, and then Jason nine hundreds and 2000s instead he just tweaks each Marshall a little bit so you Know, if you're. If you rate, if you got the money and the credibility, you're. Slash, you get a JC100. But it's really just modded up for you. Imagine if he. If Jim Marshall took the Dumble business model, how much Marshalls would be worth right now? How. How. How crazy? So a Marshall could be literally a Plexi. In no stretch of any imagination, a Plexi head could be easily worth $100,000 right now if only select rich musicians could afford them because Jim Marshall only made a few, right? It's a hard argument, right? I'm not even arguing whether or not they're good or not. Obviously, I like dumbbells. I got a dumbbell clone myself. But I'm just saying that's what's interesting about those arguments. It's like, is a Dumble $100,000 because it's the greatest sounding amp? And everybody's like, I don't know, it doesn't sound that great. And I'm like, I don't think it's because it's $100,000 because it's the greatest sounding amp. It's $100,000 because you can find a Plexi in five seconds. Right now you try to find a Dumble, it's very hard. You'll find one or two, and they'll be $100,000 or $50,000. So again, I'm not super interested in stuff that's expensive just for the sake of the fact that they didn't make a lot of it. And by the way, and I don't have a problem with anyone who can afford to buy that. Enjoy your life. It's your money I'm a very big proponent for. Spend the money, like I said, however you see fit. You earned it. Let's go on to another subject we'll talk about. Chris. Chris. What's up, buddy? He says, I believe I've seen a knee single cut on the wall in a few videos. Am I wrong or is there a video coming? I have no idea. I'm not being sarcastic at all. Like, what is? What is. Okay, so Chris. Chris. Chris is a patron. So, Chris, are you confusing the Patreon talks with these talks? Because I tend to. Okay, so funny story. I tend to put the guitars that I'm working on, like working content on on the wall. Like, I come in, I hang it on the wall. It's almost like this is a staging system for me. Like, I'll put a guitar there. And I go, okay, these are the two videos I gotta do this week. And then sometimes I don't get the video done. It just happens. And then I go, oh no, it's Friday. And I run and I start swapping guitars. But when I do, the Patron hangs. I don't care. I just leave them up on the wall. So I'm trying to think. I'm really trying to see if there's a single cut sitting around here. I don't think there's a single cut that I know of. Looking at what my workload is for the next. Oh, I know exactly, I know exactly what Chris is talking about. Chris, There is a single cut in the Patron video. So not in this video. So. And it's not a new guitar, new like a new product coming out. It's a. It's in the vein of the Pvt 15 and the. It's a. It's a. I don't call vintage, but it's a used deep dive video. It's a product. What's the title of the video? We have a title for it. Something like, I don't know, like, you know, I tell you, but my phone is literally turned off so it doesn't interfere with the. The thing. But it's a. That's a new video, but it's not a new pro. It's not a new product. It's a used product. I bought, I bought to use guitars recently to make videos with because I really like doing the deep dives on stuff that is just isn't the new cachet thing that's going on. Okay, all right, a little early, but let's do Guitar of the week. So let's do that. Now it's time for Guitar of the week. Okay, so Guitar of the week is an interesting one for me because I told you guys I would give you guys an update on my nuno bitten court n4 paduk right there and what happened with it. I'm gonna tell you about it. Tell you what happened. There's no real update other than. But. But interesting, I think a life lesson for all of you and me. So I'm going to show you a couple things. I had a couple people react to my Nuno Infor and give me some feedback and even send me some nice emails. Again, thank you for the time to take the emails and I appreciate that and I'm gonna respond now. Okay, so what's going on? So if you guys remember, last week I bought this Nuno N4. Let me go grab it. All right. Okay, so this is a brand new Nuno bitten court N4 in Padauk, which is a red colored wood with an ebony fretboard. And I was showing you guys that I just got it and that the nut which is very visibly sticking out on both sides. Okay, there you go. Okay. See, See the issue? And I said that's not right. So obviously I said to you guys I would reach out to the retailer that sold to me and message them. I'm going to read you the message I sent them. Okay. What they responded where we are in the status and then respond to a couple comments and emails that I think are me very clarifying to a lot of you and new guitar of the week. Okay, so let me go to my messages on Reverb maybe. Why is. Where do you find messages? Why am I missing? Oh, messages. Okay. All right. I'm. Like I said, I'm not gonna tell you the name of the store yet because. Because again, they've been a great store and I'll tell you about it when they're all done. Okay. But I thought I'd read you the. What I sent them. I sent them detailed pictures of the guitar. So just for the record, let me show you guys that. So stuff like that, you get the idea. You can see here the part sticking out way too far. A little bit sticking out there. See that? But way too far. I believe they sanded it down. I'll get into that, I promise. Let's go back. Let me. Let me read you verbatim what I. As I close out of it the wrong way, verbatim what I sent the store about the issue and. And then where we are with it. So the message I sent them was. Hi. Hi. I got the guitar and you guys did a great job packing it. The shipping company hit the box so hard that the string broke. By the way, I sent them pictures of that as well. I can do that and get. Okay, let me show you. So like here's the string broken. No big deal. But also I think I told you the pickup fell into the body. So let me go here and let me X close out of that. Okay. So I just wanted to let you know I sent them very detailed pictures. Okay. Here's what I sent them. I said, hi, you did a thank you for the guitar. You did a great job packing it. The shipping company hit the box so hard that the string broke and the pickup fell. Fell inside the cavity. C picks. The only real issue is Washburn used the wrong screws on the neck pickup. It has long legs because it's a 59 by Seymour Duncan. I'm just adding that too. I didn't tell them that. I just said it has long legs. It has long legs on the pickup. And they use short pickup adjustment screws, which is why it fell into the cavity. I replaced them with longer adjustment screws. But the bigger issue is that no one noticed that they sanded the neck by the headstock so much that the Floyd nut is sticking out on the treble side and a little on the bass side. See pictures. It looks bad, but it is playing well. You gave me a deal and I like the guitar. And I want to. I want to ask you to reach out to Washburn, show them and let them know I would like a 10% discount for it. I would like to keep the guitar because as you know, they do not have any out there. And I would rather not return it and take a chance, take my chance on the next one and see that it's bad. Let me know your thoughts. I'm not in a hurry. I just think Washburn should not get full price for subpar guitar. I plan to message, you know, Washburn as well, which I didn't. Okay. So they responded to me relatively quickly. The store did. Within a day, 40, 24. Within 24 hours with it. Well, within says hello there. Sorry to hear about the guitar's condition. I will reach out to Washburn and make sure this gets taken care of you. They are closed for the weekend, so I'll reach out to them on Monday. Okay. And then that's the last I heard. But I did respond right away with even more detailed pictures. Okay, so where. Why I'm. I'm sharing with this. I told you guys I would share. First of all, let me get back to the right screen. I told you guys I would share the story instead of making a video. In the. In the hindsight of it, you're going to experience this experience with me Now. I have not heard from the store yet. My guess is, is that. So I sent that to them basically, I think Friday night after the show or Saturday. They obviously said Washburn's closed for the weekend and I haven't heard from them. This is because I don't know if you know this. Washburn doesn't actually make this guitar. So my guess, and I'm just guessing is that the store reached out to Washburn. Washburn then has to reach out to the builder, Chris. Chris probably has to respond back to Washburn and then Washburn back to the store. So I did not think that it would get resolved in a week. But I was hopeful. Wisconsin Jet said. So nothing resolved yet? Nothing resolved yet. But this is also, I think, a way to explain you guys that I was a Washburn dealer. So I'm very aware of. Washburn is not a big company, but they run like a big company. It's very compartmentalized. There was lots of people I just remember never got. Nothing ever got done quickly. But more importantly, like I said, I would imagine because Washburn didn't build this guitar, it's basically. It's ghost built by another builder. I would imagine. Washburn's got to confirm with him what they're seeing. The part I thought I'd share. Well, first I told you guys I'd give an update. That's the update. And then I thought, let's make this guitar of the week and fun. So a lot of the feedback I got way more than I thought I would ever get back on this was. But Phil, that's. That's. They use the wrong size nut. They did not. It is. The neck is too narrow, so it's not the nut width on the Floyd nut. They also said. And I got this like six or seven emails saying, phil, I went on the Internet and I looked, and it looks like they're all like that. That's how they're supposed to come. So you may not know this, but you're about to find out today that I am not a Nuno Bittencourt fan. I am a massive Nuno Bittencourt fan. Like, massive. Okay. I listened to Pornographiti when it came out. Probably one. It's. It's literally the only cassette tape I ever bought in my life that I wore out the tape and I had to buy the album again. Okay. That actually happened. Me and my friend would. Would literally drive around in his pickup truck, his Toyota pickup truck, and just listen to the pornographiti album for hours and hours, driving forever. So I have owned. Now I've owned 11 Nuno Bitten Court in 4s in my life. Not at one time. I'm not crazy. That would be insane. But I have owned 11. I currently own three. So I have this Nuno, which I guys have shown you. This is my swirl Nuno that I had dipped. This one is a obviously made in USA Nuno. No. Out of 11 Nuno Bentcourt guitars, I have never, ever played two of them. That the necks were the identical in any way. They're always a little wider or thinner. They're always different, which is why I've owned so many. It's like, I love the guitar so much, but I was always trying to find, like, I was just like, oh, I hate this neck. And then I tried another one, and it was better. So if you look at this one, we'll share you on the side cam. This nut right here, you can see nothing is sticking out. You can see the carve on the neck. It's fine. No issues. Now, I know what you're thinking, but the other one's like a baduk one. Well, I've owned a paduk. This is my second bedouke guitar. I got rid of my first padauk because it was £12. And I was just like. I thought it was just so heavy. This one's eight pounds, which is why I don't want to send it back, because if you look, most are gonna be 9, 10 pounds. This is a other unobtain chord, N4 that I hope this one's also a USA one. This is a 2004, I believe. And this one's just the alder body with the German Floyd that says Washburn on it. This one's got a little bit of buckle rash because it gets played. And I'd like to show you on this one again, no nut poking out. The neck is carved perfectly. No issues. Ironically, out of the three, the paduk neck's the best one. The carve on it feels great. It feels really nice. This one's the chunkiest one. That one's the. The green one's the thinnest one. This guitar. This one is easily. Easily seven pounds or lighter. The green one's probably seven pounds, seven and a half. And then the Baduk one is eight pounds, one ounce. So you can imagine eight pounds, one ounce on a guitar that's hard to find. Under 10 is nice. So I thought I'll share my other Nuno info with you. Why? Because. Why not? You've already seen the green one. So you've seen the green one. Whoops. Okay, and back the chair up. So guitar of the week again is a Nuno Bin court in four. And we'll. We'll talk about it. Let me play it. See here at first, and then we'll go from there. Sam. Okay, here's a deck pickup. No copyright strikes. Okay, so. So these guitars, just like the other ones, have the Stevens cutaway, which gives it the ultimate handshake. Maybe that's where the handshake came from. I don't know if you guys saw the big homage. Charvel guitars came out with a new guitar called the Handshake. What do they call it? Something the handshake guitar. Because of the neck carve. I go, oh, that's cool. It's a nice, nice little compliment. So obviously Alder body. This is a two piece. This is a maple two piece neck. There's a scarf joint right here. Because of the extreme angle, somebody said on the video last week that they're like, hey, there's no string tree. There's no tree behind the nut. That's because you don't need the tree. That, that bar behind the Floyd Rose nut. If the angle is extreme like this pun intended. So the reason why you have that there is to put down pressure on the nut so that the strings settle into the lower part of the nut. The nut is higher here than it is there. And so you need that down pressure to push down. But of course, if the headstocks had extremely. I don't know the angle on here, I want to say it's the same as like a Gibson. I'm pretty sure it's an 18 degree, 18 degrees angle. Right. That's what I think. It's pretty. I know I keep saying extreme, but you get the idea. I mean, look at that. That's pretty, pretty nuts. So it's got Grover 181 mini tuners. It's got the Buzz Phaeton or Fatten system, whatever you want to call it. And this is a German Floyd, but it does say Washburn on it, but it's made in Germany. And then this is the Bill Lawrence and the 59 Seymour Duncan pickup. 22 nickel silver frets, and that's it. And just like the other ones, the others are the same as well. So let's do that. Mute that Wisconsin Jet says, how often do you have to tweak the rows on those? Not. I don't. I just. They're always in tune. Once, once you set up a Floyd Rose, it's pretty much in tune for forever until you break a string or you try to change the tuning on it. So, so, so that's why I thought I would, I would share that with you guys with the whole. Hey, you know, some of you guys were like, it's supposed to be like that. This is the important part. It is like that. In other words, the nut. Okay, so when somebody's. So a lot of you said. And again, don't take any offense to this. When you. Thank you guys for looking out for me. You're like, hey, they're. They, they're supposed to come like that. The, the word, the supposed apart is the wrong part. They're not Supposed to come like this. They just are. So again, like I said, it's not affecting the performance of the neck for me. It's not something that's really make or break for me, aesthetically, it's not a great look. I'm not sure they're doing this on purpose or not. They could be. I don't know why they would do it. But more importantly, they didn't do it before on free. For most the build of these guitars. So maybe something dramatic. And like I said, just to be clear, I have owned a Padauk one and that Padauk one is exactly was like those where the nut did not extend out past the neck. So. And then somebody says how to fix it? I don't need to fix it because aesthetically it's. It's only aesthetic thing. It doesn't affect the. The neck plays fine, everything feels fine. It's just, you know, like I said, you just notice that it's sticking on the sides. It would bug some people. To me, life is a balance of things, you know, Especially if you do a thousand deep diver videos, you know that there's no such thing as a perfect guitar. It's like, you know, how do you make something out of wood by hand? Even if it's mostly machine, it's still got hand work on it. How do you make that perfect? You can't. It's silly to even think so. Every guitar comes with a flaw. Think about this. I love it when people are like, companies send you ringers to do deep dives. I'm like, yeah, and I still find flaws. What does that teach you? It teaches you that guitars have flaws. The problem is you have to decide what those. What the value of those flaws are to you. To me, having the. Like I said, the store gave me 10 off on the guitar. I thought that was really cool. The guitar is light. They put the weight out so I could get it at £8. It's the lightest one I could find. And like I said, I mean, in a perfect world, if Washmer was like, we can get you another one just like it without that £8 or less, I would probably chance it. But there's a small part of me that knows as a musician that I like this neck. And what if I get the other one? It looks right, but the neck is chunky or feels weird. My main concern is, like I said, that's not supposed to be how it's supposed to go. So I thought I'd offer them the 10% discount. I told you guys I already screwed it up last week by telling you guys. If they come back and say they're not going to do anything for me, I'm just going to go, okay, fine. And then I'll just share the experience and you guys see it and you're aware and you guys can agree or disagree with my decision. My decision is I'm going to take it, you know, and that's it. But it would be nice because 10% is almost $200 or $200 and nice to have $200 back in my pocket. And I'll. You know, it makes it when you look at that and go, so if somebody, like, if my buddy looks at and goes, hey, this is poking out. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know. But I got a few hundred bucks off for it because it's a B stock, which I don't care about. So this is my insights. It's about sharing that with you guys. You guys obviously can disagree or agree with me all you want. It's not gonna. Not gonna hurt my feelings. Okay, So I got a question. It says, phil, what are your thoughts on the Bill Lawrence L500XL pickup? I absolutely do not love it. So if you notice, there's a little bit of a look. I grew up with these idols, Steve. I, you know, New Bencourt. I don't know what it is. I don't know why it has to be my age. You know, not age now, Mole, now me, youth, age. Why I idolize, because I don't. I don't listen to their music anymore. I mean, I love Nuno and I love Extreme and I stuff, but I don't. I'm not catching myself listening to Steve. I. Or Nuno or Dream Theater. I don't listen that stuff anymore on the. On the regular. But I idolize those guitar players. What's funny is, I can honestly say is whatever it means to you guys, you can make fun of me. I. I listen to John Moore, John Mayer way, way more than any of those guys. But I have no desire to really own the John Mayer Strat. Not for any reason. Then I'm like, yeah, I like my own Strat. These guitars, it's about, you know, I want to play their music that I like from them. And I like owning the guitar and looking at it. It's really pretty. This one, I did the guitar of the week. You have to look for this one if you want to remember why it got dipped and what happened. But this one, if you notice, this one has a JB and a Jazz in it. It did have. Before that it had a JB and a jb. And then before that it had. No, I'm sorry, it had a Tone Zone and an Air Norton. Then it had a JB and a jb. Now it has a JB and a Jazz. I like the Seymour Duncan JB jazz combination the best on this guitar. And that's what's great about this guitar because I had to get, you know, had. I had to get, I had to fix it. This one is the one I play this out of all the Nunos, this is the one I play even though the next. My least favorite out of the not least favorite three. But you get the idea. My favorite's a Padauk. It's just, you know, this. I like this. So your question about the Bill Lawrence. I don't know how Nuno gets that great sound out of that pickup. That pickup is very ice picky to me. It's very bright. It's hard to contain this second. Now when I was playing, I thought the distortion was very fizzy. To get the sustain out of the pickup, I feel like I have to run a lot of gain on it. But also keep in mind one of the things that you, you know, you have to take out the equations. Obviously Nuno's got Nuno's hands and Nuno's talent, and that's a difference. But more importantly, Nuno plays differently. Not technique wise, obviously, far differently technique noise than me. He plays differently. I play quiet, so he plays loud. Maybe that. That pickup opens up differently and loud volumes. This is why I told you, you have to buy the gear or find the gear that fits your needs. Who cares if a. You know, it's like people, it's like, look, I love the Fender Twin. Somebody's like, oh, I can only. Fender Twin is the best clean amp I've ever heard. Yeah, but I can't play it at home. It's too loud. I play at Princeton. But if I was on stage all the time, I'd probably play the Twin, right? If I needed. If I needed a clean tone to get 25ft to my ears, maybe I would do the Twin. So. And again, that's just my needs. So you always have to buy your needs when it comes to gear. If you're smart, you want to buy your needs. Even if you have heroes and their gear, their gear fits their situation, not your situation. That's why I said, so I'll. I buy my hero's gear to play it, look at it, have it, you know, you know, but not Necessarily. It's not my daily stuff. So Green Meanie says, teach keisel swirl like that. I Keezle did some swirls. I had a swirl, but I have too many swirls now. So I. I have the universe swirl. In fact, I don't know if it's gonna happen, but me and Shawna keep talking about maybe sanding the swirl one down to back to wood again just because I don't need the swirl anymore. Brian says, can you compare Kiesel pickups to their closest sounding name brand pickup? We would know DiMargio, Duncan, etc. The. The answer is not no. I. I mean, I could pro. I could get Kiesel to send me pretty much all their pickups for the most part for a video comparison. Let me think on that one, Brian. It's really. It's. That one's just a time thing. Do I have the time to do all that? You know, that's a. So maybe. Maybe figure that out. Michael's like, no, like, no, don't sand the guitar down. We probably won't. So. All right, we got. So that was guitar of the week and an update on the story and some fun. I hope it was fun for you guys. It was fun for me. Let's go over to the next topic. Question. You know what? We haven't done anything that Amanda sent. Let's pull one from Amanda. This one came from Randy, who says, hey, why do bass amp manufacturers put. Oh, we did that. Amanda, did you send this to me last week? Let me pull this up. It says today. Huh? All right, let me try this one. Oh, she said this from Aaron says, hey, what household stuff can you use to clean condition fretboards? Can you condition frets with beeswax? I don't suggest you use beeswax. I'll use beeswax on bubinga, natural bubinga bodies, or really, really dense woods like Wingay, but very rarely, because that stuff will build up. And household stuff, I don't use any household stuff. So there might be some people out there. The. I, you know, when it comes to. When it comes to wood conditioning, I mean, you can use linseed oil. You can use, you know, that works. You can use gunstock oil. That works pretty good to condition non treated, non finished wood. Those work fine for me. And they're pretty relatively easy to get to and inexpensive. So, I mean, I have a friend uses Windex to clean his guitar bodies. I don't know if I recommend it, but he's been doing it forever, so I don't know, I guess you could use anything. I hear every time I do any of these videos about using conditioners and, and cleaners, everybody's always got these home ones that work. My, my fortunate thing is I've always, you know, I've been buying this stuff mostly for doing people's guitars. So I just buy the, the companies I trust and just call it all a day. Guitar. WTV says can you please share any less known preferences that most guitarists have in terms of guitar design, pickup, switch placement, tune ups. Can I share any less known preferences that guitars have? I think I understand what you mean. Like, where do they put stuff? Like Nuno's stuff is pretty nuts. I. You know what's funny about this is this switch. I always wondered about this switch being down here. So Nuno switches at the bottom, not the top up here. And let me go to side cam. And sometimes when you're in your, when you're on your lap, it's something you're kind of like playing and it, I guess this way. Yeah, sometimes you're playing, you do that, right? You lean it forward and it pops. Put my coffee cup so you can see here. See, it does that and goes your middle. And that's pretty, you know, exaggerated, but I'll do that sometimes. And then I don't know what. I do a shuffle and I always click it. And I thought that was weird. I was like, oh, that's weird that I do that. And then I caught him doing it in a video once. He was sitting down and I saw him playing the guitar and I saw him, his leg bumped the switch forward and he clicked it back real fast. And I go, oh, so it makes sense. So I mean, that's a, that's a weird preference to where you put a switch or a pickup. You're talking about pickup placement. There's all kinds of weird funky guitars designs that put pickups in weird places that are especially artists pick. I think a lot of that doesn't actually have to do with their ear. I think it has to do with their. A lot of artists sometimes are just trying to find a guitar that looks different or has a reason to exist. Given an example I'll use, I'll make fun of myself. So Kiesel makes a Delos that's just a Strat copy. And then I have a signature Delos or whatever you call it, right? I have a Delos that's, you know, that I have. And mine is just the Delos in my favorite color with my pickup wiring. Right. So it's not even my special pickups. They're just. They're pickups. I just have a different wiring than them. I think that, you know, trust me, there was a moment when they reached out to me and they, hey, can we make this, you know, put your name on this guitar and make it askew? And I was like, you know, and we. I've told that story before, and eventually the story was, yes, there was a part of me that was like, phil, you need to make it unique. Maybe. Maybe I should move the pickup cockeyed. Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do, you know, change it somehow to make it signature. And I kind of thought about it going, you know, I think a lot of artists make that mistake. I think a lot of artists have made signature guitars, and they were just trying to make it unique. And the uniqueness is what made it really not likable or usable to a lot of other players. I think sometimes, you know, the reality is you. You do it on necessity. Necessity. That's the. That Delos is the one I play, and it's just a Delos. There's nothing. Like I said, it's just my color, my favorite color, and my favorite wiring setup. So you can do it to any. Any Strat or Delos if you so wanted to. But the Richard Clark says, hey, Phil, I'm wanting to buy a new upphone. Alex Folsom, Les Paul Excess Lefty edition. But I hear different things regarding The Floyd rose 1000 tremolo. I have been looking for a good lefty guitar, so funny enough, you should mention that. Here's a good example. Good question. Good day. So looking at this Nuno Bentcourt guitar, I told you, this is a German Floyd Rose. This is the Schaller real deal Floyd Rose made in Germany by Scholler. They stamped at Washburn, but that's okay. This is the real deal. The other one, which is not as old as the other one, the one I just held up, this one also has a German Schaller Floyd Rose stamped Washburn, but it's a German Schaller Floyd Rose, the real deal. This one, which is the most expensive one I ever had to pay out of pocket for the new one, Paduk. This has the Floyd 1000. So what do I think? Well, I'm really particular about how loose the tremolo arm is. So what I did is I took you this Floyd ro. Floyd assembly side cam here. There's a. Unfortunately, I have the back plate on there. But this assembly, this piece right here, this is an assembly this threaded piece, I took this out and I bought the German one because I still could get those online and got the, it comes, it comes complete as a kit. It's the trim alarm and I installed that. So it threads better. It just threads better than the 1000 does. And a lot of people tell you that the, the, you know, the 1000, the, you know, the, the blades aren't as good and it doesn't stay as in tune. And I, I don't know, I, I feel, I can absolutely feel the quality of the German ones way more than the 1000. I can feel when I'm turning the screws, when I'm touching it, when I flutter it, when I use it. They are, they are much better. But I not, I'm not saying the 1000 bad. So I guess what matters to you and your desire for this guitar is this high end, American made custom shop guitar, this Padauk. I'm not changing the bridge out. It's good enough for rock and roll. I'm, I'm, I'm happy with it. I'm working, you know, it seems, it seems fine to me. So that, that's, you know, so if you get the epiphone, I would say, should you swap it out? I don't know. Then you'll be fine. Wisconsin. Jess says I have a fluid and it won't stay in tune. There's just. You need to know. Well, here's. It could say something so cavalier, right? You just need to know how to set it up, man. That's not really the case. I mean the quality has to be the, you know, again, all Floyds aren't created equal. All situations with Floyd's aren't created equal. All guitars aren't created equal. But I can tell you, as someone who's worked on Floyd's for a long time and, and I can tell you that it's very rarely that any Floyd, even these really inexpensive, you know, ones that you get on these really inexpensive, you know, Ibanezes and stuff. These really, you know, $200 guitars. Very rarely you can't find a spot where that bridge works fine. There's a difference. Look, there's a difference saying, would I trust this to go on tour around the world and never fail on stage in front of 70,000 people? No, no, no. Let's set the bar. We need to set the bar, you know, but is it. Can it stay in tune for the average player to play a lot of music on even local bars or at home without it failing? Absolutely. You can dial most of them in to be more than fine. Just it's really about figuring out what the limitations is and then go from there. A lot of them, if they're not doing. If they're not. The big issue is about returning to the. We got to return to the original positions. A lot of them have trouble. Like a lot of people are. Like the blades aren't. They've been worn out, there's all kinds of issues. They're not staying on the points anymore. You can fix that. And not only can you fix that, you can make it put a block behind the bridge. That's going to solve a lot of the problems and you'll still get a Floyd forward. You just won't get the flutter in the backward. And that's up to you guys. I personally don't like the Floyd's to float. All three of the guitars I played for you today or showed you today, the Nuno's are all floating because even though Nuno doesn't float his, he actually has a block behind his. But that's how they showed up and I just haven't had the desire to change them. But my personal guitars usually will have a block, some sort behind them. So. And then also if you want to learn how to set up your Floyd, we have this, check this out little, little ad we made for you. 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 week. So last week we did how to set up a PRS tremolo system and I disassemble it. I'd like to let you know when I do these clinics, they are live and you can be there personally and ask questions or you can drop the questions before the clinic. But more importantly, I disassemble everything down to the components and put it back together again just so you guys can see from ground up and then walk you through the whole thing. And this is every week we do these. We have a Floyd run, Floyd Rose one scheduled. And it's not this Sunday, I think it's the following Sunday, I believe. So just let you guys know. So if you're interested in that, you can join. It's $10. What I'm trying to do is try to put up the schedule for three months at a time. So you guys can see that if you pay for the year, it's a hundred bucks for the year. And then you don't have to worry about it. But if you want to pay for a month, just let you know. These are clinics. And what is. Before anyone says anything, just so you know, these clinics on average have about 12 to 16 people live. And when somebody goes, are you gonna. Somebody's asked, hey, are you gonna do these for your regular, you know, YouTube channel? I. I can't. There's 12, 78 people here. Right here. If I was doing a live clinic right now, nothing would get done. The amount of questions there would just be a mess of questions. So unfortunately, I decided to do the clinics because it's the best way to do one on one and. Or, you know, whatever. A smaller group control and give information and not so much just a produced video, which I have on YouTube. There is. There will be all produced videos for YouTube, but the clinics are definitely. The weekly clinics are just for the. For patrons. If you want to join, you can try them out. It costs you 10 bucks. You try it. If you don't like it, you just don't come back. Well, you know what I mean? You don't have to pay another $10. You stop. So. All right, that's. That's it. That's my spiel. Okay, hold on. No, I thought, oh, did we get the winner of the guitar? Send me an email. Because I just got an email. It wasn't him. All right, okay, so back to next topic. What are we gonna talk about next? We're gonna talk about. I have no idea. Thomas says, what are your thoughts on single. Single pickup, namely bridge, junior style guitars and special tone achieved by only having one pickup. I noticed you don't feature them very often. I love the show. Yeah, it's because there's not a whole lot. Like I just did the BC Rich that has a one pickup humbucker. The. The SG Junior. I've been trying to buy an SG Junior. There's one local and the guy's got a good price on it. And I messaged him and I didn't get a message back. And I think he sent me a message. But by the time I got a message, like a week or two later, even apologized saying, I'm sorry, I never saw it. And then I couldn't respond to him because I was too busy. I would like to do a video on that. I do have a video. So, you know, Thomas, on. On where I actually take a guitar and I show you with two humbuckers and then just the bridge pickup to show how it changes. And it does absolutely change the tone. To not have a neck pickup. I don't think there's a magic there. So, you know, it's like, it's. I mean, where do you, where do you draw a line? You know, if you. Look, I'm a nerd. So if you tell me like, hey, let's test, you know, a 10 foot cable versus 20 foot cable, see if there's a sound difference, and I go, wow, there is. The ten foot cable's brighter. Okay, but is it significant? No. Do you need a b it to hear it? Yeah. You need some reference point to know it's doing it. You know, that's just it. That's just where I'm at with that. So. Same thing with the removing the neck pickup. If you remove the neck pickup, is there a difference? Yeah, I did a test and it did absolutely change the sound. I saw it and we ran it and we. You could see, you could see the sustain went up when we removed the neck pickup. I. I don't know if that matters to you. It matters to you. To me, what I took away from it was, hey, there is a difference. Which was nice to know, but also I don't really care because it wasn't significant difference. I need a major difference. I need like, you know, to me, like if you said, hey, I want a high gain amp like a Saldano and you plug into a Fender hot rod deluxe and you go, it's just not getting enough gain. That's to me is a difference. The difference between the Saldano high gain and a Fender amp gain is massively different. That's something we can definitely sink our teeth in and go, hey, look, if you need more gain, you got to do something to me. Arguing, you know, the Princeton breakup over the, the 65 deluxe breakup is so, it's, it's definitely different, but it's so at that point where really it's a nuance. It's just a little different difference. I don't know. Okay, next question came from Mr. G. Says, Are American Tales generally routed for humbucker? Oh, I think telly's. I said. He said tellies and I said tails. Are American tellies generally routed for a humbucker in the next position. Position. What do you think about Fender Yosemite pickups? I've tried now the Yosemite pickups, they sounded fine to me. I didn't really particularly think anything super awesome or super negative. And that's pretty. That's the best, best recommendation you can get, really. Pickups are not supposed to be amazing. They're just not supposed to be bad. You're supposed to be able to hear them and they're not, they're not supposed to restrict you or take away from what you're trying to do, which. So I would say try them. In my experience, the majority of the American tellies do not have a humbucker routed underneath the bridge. It's just a slightly wider version of the off shape of the single coil tele pickup. That, that's what I've seen when I mostly take apart the guitars. TSI says, hey Phil, your opinion on the top three best HSS Strats, Super Strats. I looked at the sir pt. Okay. That's the Pete Thorne. But you said hss. Oh yeah, that's right. Because he's got an HSS now. The new Ernie Ball Musicman Luke. But the price is a little steep. Okay. For what I'm looking at, the Keisel is a better option. Well, the Keezel is the least expensive option. V neck is preferred. But Kiesel doesn't make one. No. Kiesel definitely sticks to a more modern shape neck, which is one of the critiques Kiesel gets, I think is legit. But he does do some thicker necks. It's just not very common. Of those three guitars, Kiesel is the least expensive option. And in the same vein of quality. Look, I always upset when people want to say this. The three men you just mentioned, Ernie Ball Music, which is Music Music man, sir and Keisel, when you're talking about difference of quality, we're. We're talking small amounts. Somebody's freaking out. I can hear it already because they always do. They're like, what? My sir is amazing. Whatever. They're fine. They're all fine. But Kiesel is the least expensive option. So that's its benefit to you is that it's a lower priced option. Even though it's made in the USA and it's. And it's semi customal. So it means you can have something a little bit more unique or more like you want. Where Sir Music man are going to make you stick to the color choices they have and some of the options have. The main thing that I will tell you about those three guitars is the, the Music Man's got the smallest neck. That's the thing you got to really focus on. Almost all music mans have small necks. So if you like a smaller neck, I would go with the Music Man. If you want something more unique and you want to spend a less little money, a little less little Less money. Go Kiesel. All the Pete Thorne guitars I played would have been amazing. In fact, my biggest gripe, if I could even have such a thing with sir, is I. Every time I play the Pete Thorne guitars, I'm like, wow, these are amazing. But I don't want Pete's name on it because I know Pete. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know, right? I'm like. It's not like I'm not afraid of looking like a poser, because Pete's amazing enough to be a poser for, I guess. But I'm like, ah, you know, it's the same thing. I'd like a different color. I'd like something a little different than what he has. And. And then when I try all the other series guitars, I go, man, these aren't as nice as the P thorns. I don't know what it is. So, okay, let's see. Let's see. Okay, next. Next we have Alex, who wants to know. He says thank you for the work and the passion. Question. Fender heavy metal. The Strat. Oh, yeah. Any insight on this brilliantly named guitar from the 80s and 90s? No, I really don't know a whole lot about them other than, you know, Fender was, like, everybody trying to compete with the fact that they were getting their butts handed to them by the 80s. Metals got, you know, companies, you know, Kramer, let's share it with you right here. So, Kramer, you have Kramer, you had, you know, Charvel, you had Jackson, you have Beast, Rich. All these guys are. They're making something like this. And this was Fender's attempt at this. The guitars are great. Generally speaking, they're made in Japan. This one. Is this the reissue or new? I can tell they can give us a. Looks like this is the reissue. That's what it looks like to me because it's got the. The Floyd 1000 instead of the. That's what it looks like to me. But I could be wrong. I. I can't remember. I can't. I thought they were. I thought they had a different bridge back in the day. Oh, here's. What is this one? $2,800. That's crazy. Here's another one. Cool guitars, for sure. Part of me is like, this is great. And part of me is like, I could just get a Charvel. But made in Japan. They were a thousand dollars new, so 900 bucks used. They're holding value. This one's cool. I always loved this logo. The Strat with the brush that is so 90s right? That's so like, you know. But, yeah, great guitars. The reissues are nice. The reissues are what my complaints with the reissue is they. They made them Japan, which is great. And they. But then they, you know, they didn't put the right bridge in it, and they didn't do a couple things. You're like, you know, just make the right. Make it right. And if you have charged more, people will pay for it because it's a nostalgia purchase. The whole point, you know, if you're trying to hit a price point, then don't make them in Japan. Make them in China, and make them 4.99. And then everybody will add their own components and do their own thing. But the whole point of making it, you know, making it a nice one is to. To deck it out, go the right way. That's just kind of my thoughts on that. Christian says. Hey, Phil, a newbie. As a newbie on guitar, can you explain how Filtertron pickups sit differently in the mix? Is it due to the winding difference of the. Or is it just fundamentally. Fundamentally, I'm gonna say fundamentally different. Well, it's a culmination of a couple things to say. Filtertrons are the only thing. For instance, and we took a Telecaster with. Because I have a Telecaster that does this right. I put Filtertrons in it. I put humbuckers in it. I put the Telecaster pickups in it. Yeah, each set's gonna sound different, but they're gonna be. They're gonna be slightly different than each other. Where. If I put Filtertrons in a totally different guitar, like a Gretsch, it's gonna be massively different because the Gretches now has a sound and the Filtertrons have a sound. I don't personally seek Filtertrons in any specific way. Like, oh, I want these pickups in a guitar specifically for their sound. As so much as I like guitars that have Filtertrons in them. Does that make sense? And there's a little bit. There's a little backstory to that. I did some experimenting recently with having some Filter Trons put into a guitar as a. As a. It's a prototype, and I learned a lot about that guitar. I really like the way it sound, but it wasn't. It didn't do the. The filter sound great, but they don't sound super Filter Tronny because of the fact that the guitar I'm having put. I had put in them is not a Super. You know, doesn't have that. Super doesn't Lean into that sound is what I'm trying to say. So, and how do they sound in the mix? Well, they're brighter pickups, they're going to pop. I mean, anything with upper highs or upper mids cuts for the most, for the most part. But again, it's so everything. There's so many differences. Robert says, hey, does Floyd Rose make it more cumbersome to change strings because of having to stretch the strings? The Floyd Rose system is not a system that you think of as like, why, why did they do that? You know why, you know why? You know, is changing strings easy? Why isn't it? The whole point of Floyd Rose system is they needed to make a tremolo that doesn't go out of tune, right? You had a guitar player, I think I read somewhere when Eddie Van Halen did Eruption at the end where he dive bombs the guitar in the studio, which was not a Floyd Rose, I believe. And again, there's Eddie Van Halen experts out there. I'm just telling you an article I read once and it was basically something to the effect of, you know, he took the guitar without the Floyd and you know, he hits the chord, you know, and he bottoms out, right? And then apparently when he rises, you know, raises the, the arm back up, the guitar is out of tune. Which is fine in the studio, but on the stage that was going to be a problem. And that's why he was like, oh, I got to try Floyd's and put Floyd's and things and do stuff like that. That's what I heard. So the Floyd Rose was like, how do I solve this problem? And to me that's not how I use a tremolo. How I use tremolo or vibrato, whatever you want to call it, Tremolo system is like this. And for those movements, those subtle movements that I'm doing that I use a lot modern tremolos or vintage tremolos now made more modern work. Fine, Absolutely fine. I, I don't, I don't need a Floyd. I, I don't own. Okay, kinda. I own one Ibanez, which is my RG565. But it really isn't more of a, like a, you know, hey. Oh, you know, kind of my, hey. Going back to my childhood, every Floyd I own is because of an artist that I love has a Floyd Rose. So I have their guitar and they have a Floyd Rose. But if you look at my personal guitars, they're their stock, you know, Goto Tremolos, Strat Tremolos, you know, The Paul Reesmith tremolo, you know, like a Duesenberg was like a Bigsby type tremolo. The Bigsby Tremolo. That's the Tremolos. I. I'm fine, right? I just need a little bit of. Of vibrato, and that's. That's all I really need. So I don't really. I don't pull up and I don't dive bomb. There's nothing I do that does that. So again, you got to find your need. What is your need? And the Floyd Rose is a big task for someone like me that's not going to use it for what it's intended for. Chris says, hey, Phil, great to catch it live. Hey, I'm glad you're here. Said I had a question about fret polishing. Can you tell me the difference between Music Nomads Frine and the Tracer? Okay, let's. What is the tracer? So the frine is a fret polish. I did a video for Music Nomad and American Music Supply where they sent me all of the. And I'm gonna try. So the fret tracer. Okay, hold on. I'm opening it up. More details, more details. Is this what I think it is? Are they just selling you micro mesh? Okay, I hate this so much. Okay, so let's. Let's back up a second. I'll share with you guys. Look, I like, I'm a big proponent for musicnomad. I'm a big proponent for Stumac and all these companies. But of course, even them, all these companies, they do something and look, I'm not supposed to agree with every product and they're going to make things the way they make things. What I see here with the fret tracers from using Nomad when I go here, what I'm seeing here is it looks to me they're taking micro mesh pads and they put them on a thing because that's their whole marketing logic right now is to make everything. They're trying to make everything dummy proof. And like I said, I understand that and I appreciate it and I share it. That's why I did the safe file. But stuff like this, I prefer micro mesh to the frying solution and to this. If you trust Music Nomad, because that's a big thing. It's a. You know, they're a good brand and you should trust them. If you like them and you had good experiences, maybe buy this product. It's $35. Me personally, this is what I use. I'm going to share with you right Here. And for full disclosure, if you buy this product, I receive 70,000. No, I get absolutely nothing. But wouldn't that. Okay, come on, just go do it. Do as I. Okay, let's do micro mesh pads. Because hold on, I could be wrong when I say wrong. Maybe micro pash pods shot. I haven't bought them in a couple months. So yeah, I would buy micro mesh pads. So here's two options that you can look at. So here's a micro mesh kit. It's $20 1975. This is all the polishing pads you would need to do. I mean this guy's polishing glass. You can polish. You know, they use micro mesh to polish the windows of airplanes. These are the small pads. If you want to go that. This is not actually what I use the most of. I use the sheets. And the reason is, is because the. Generally speaking, I can get more out of the sheets and let me share those with you. This is the micro mesh 9 sanding sheet for woodworkers. Whatever. This is it. This is. And it comes with a little foam block. This is 2965. So it's about the same price now as the. As this music Nomad. So I mean, I really can argue, you know, if you say five bucks to get this, but it is five bucks. Hey, it's proudly made in usa. Look at that. This is what I use. Have used. Highly, highly recommend. Oh, look at that. It's funny. Remember I told you why I didn't know if the price changed. Watch this. You got to love this. The last time I purchased it was January 20th of 2020. January 3rd, 2020. That's the last time I purchased this. That's funny. So it's been a while. So it's been five years since I've had to buy sheets. I don't think so. I think that's. Can I view that order? That's. I wonder if I buy different ones. Oh, it says they're only 1675, so the 2 inch sheets. But anyways. But that's, that's what I recommend and that's what I use. And that's what you see me using in videos, but that's what they look like they're using in my eyes. Is there whatever this music tracer. Right, Tracers Fret finishing kit. It looks like they're just using micro mesh sheets with their own little block attached to it. So purchase what you feel is best for you. But I prefer macro mesh sheets. And I say that same thing with the Stumac too. I don't I noticed Stumac sells the micro mesh sheets, but they sell them. They're too expensive. I can get them from Amazon cheaper. And it's the same, it's literally the same sheets. It's micro mesh. So there, that's it. And you can see you don't go through them very often. I mean I, you know, you'll polish a lot of frets with a set. Okay. Like I'm clicking around and not getting the right screen. That's what happens when I open up a ton of screens. All of a sudden I go to go to a screen and I can't find. Okay, let's button up this show. Here we go. We have Alex. He says, oh we did Alex. We gotta do Mr. S. Mr. S says hey via Robert Skinner. Oh, thanks. So he super chatted me because Robert Skinner put a comment a topic. He says, is there a company that is known for wider string spacing and could you add to the deep dives? I also have thick fingers, so I'd like to know 2. Thanks. Yeah, Godin does have some guitars with wider spacing. I'm trying to think there's a few out there I can take a look and, and do that. The, the irony is, you know, if you have big, you know, big hands, you know, big meaty hands with, you know, fingers and stuff, which is very common, it's hard to get the wider spacing. The probably one of the best places to go. So the best, the best results I ever got was I had this customer. His hands were just huge, right? I mean and I say that because I don't have small hands but man, they were just big. And his same thing like you. He was like, I can't, you know, find a neck that works. And he just like Fenders. So what we ended up doing is we ordered him a wider spacing neck from Warmoth and then we put it onto a strap body and built him a Strat. And he loved it. That's what he mostly used. So that's a good way to do. So there's War Moth, there's Godin has a wider spacing. I don't think he's all does a wider spacing thing, but they might, I don't think I'm not that I saw but I'll look into it. For D type Aaron says, hey, love your fixed vids. Since I've been doing this for myself and friends, I have tons of parts, pick guard screws, etc. How do you organize your stuff? Your studio is so clean. Well, my studio is clean. For three reasons. One, you. You never want to damage your guitar because you have, you know, your tools laying around. So you want to keep things as organized as possible. There's something fundamentally. What's funny was, is that what is underneath my bench, into my side, is tons of organization. Tons of, like, toolbox organization. I have tons of everything organized. So that's. You can do it. The easiest way to do it, you can get those plastic organizers, you know, just get those cheap starlight things and just start sticking all that stuff in there. I have tons of those. And then over the years, I've gotten nicer ones and nicer ones, but I still have the cheap ones too, because you just need lots of them. There's no. There's no excess of storage. There's no. There's never too much storage. If you look in the. In the. The shop now, you know, I have the shelf underneath, so I have the pegboards, and I keep tools there and stuff. And then I have the shelf and. And then on the shelf I have stuff, and then underneath the shelf I have more storage. So storage containers work great. You have to do it especially for parts. I have tons of parts. And then I organize parts into categories so I have new parts that are bagged or in packaging. I have new parts that are unbagged because I either bought them in bulk or I had to pull them out to use them. And then we ended up not using them. And I open the package now and I still have a drawer for those. And then I have a part. I have a drawers for used parts because I used them or I took them out of a guitar. And, you know, they're still usable, they're still good, but they are used. And. And just the way I keep that organized now, the main reason I kept it organized like that, I don't know if I would ever done it for me personally, but I did it because as a repair shop, you know, you didn't want to grab, you know, hey, make the customer pay for a new part, and then you grab the used part or a part that's already been open. You want to make. You make sure you're using the right part for what they paid for. But also sometimes it'd be nice to tell them, like, hey, I got this for $15.99, but I have a used part I pull from a customer's guitar. We can use it still working great, and you can have for like five bucks. And you know, that's usually what you want to go to. That's usually your Go to when somebody says hey, I'm on a budget. And you're like, instead of budgeting your labor, you try to go, hey, I can budget some of the parts. It's nice to do that versus take it out of your labor to hit somebody's budget. But yeah, tons of organization. And it's funny is some people will say, oh, your shop's really clean. And I go, yeah, it's very important. It's because it's not an OCD thing. Trust me. There's nothing in my brain that says everything has to be clean. Clean and neat. It's just you do not want to damage someone's guitar at all. So you know, not. You don't want to damage your guitar, you don't damage somebody else's. So you just keep it, you keep it very organized and you make a habit out of everything going back to where it comes from. Okay, Kristen says when thinking of reviewing an indie brand, what's the most constant red flags you use when I don't know what this means. Verting besides flakiness. Okay, so let's go on this. When, when thinking of reviewing an indie brand, an independent brand, what's the most. Okay, most constraint. What's the consistent. Sorry, consistent red flag you see when. Okay, and maybe he's being vetting. There's a TR there. So. Independent brands are the hardest things to make videos for. At this point the channel has grown to so, you know, celebration. We hit 430000 subscribers and the, the second channel filming night two is at over 20000 subscribers which is crazy. Thank you guys for supporting the second channel which has all the pod clips and bonus materials and stuff like that. But the channel gets to a certain size and I, I get it. There is a little bit of like a hey, I can really make your day, you know, as a company. I mean, you know, look, I, I tell you guys all the time I, I, I disclose if there's a, as a, if there's an affiliate motivation behind what I do. Most of my affiliates. This is all part of the. We'll end on this whole story because this is probably the best enlightening thing for you to understand as people consume YouTube gear tube. I should say gear YouTube. The majority of my affiliate work, in other words affiliate means if you click a link and you, you buy something I get a piece of that is through it's dominated between three entities. They really make up the big three which is Sweetwater Guitar center and Stumac. Okay. And they all pay Me, if you just buy from them, you don't have to buy any of the things I'm talking about. In fact, there's no benefit to me if you do or do not buy the thing I'm talking about as long as you buy from them and not even that day. As long as you buy from them. In the next, like week or two, I should receive some kind of, you know, of affiliate. Like click. In other words, some kind of. Now keep in mind, if you click another YouTuber's link, then my link cookies are gone and there's all kinds of thousands of ways you can lose the cookies, right? And there's all kinds of stuff. I don't have a moral issue with that. There's no moral dilemma for me because I. I have, without a doubt. Okay? This is honestly God truth. Okay? I've spent more at Stumac, at Guitar center and Sweetwater in the last. Just the last 12 months, because, I mean, I could go back years if you want to know. In the last 12 months, I've spent more at their businesses with my own personal money than they paid me in affiliate dollars. And I know some of you are like, well, yeah, you're going to spend your affiliate dollars. Yeah. But what I'm saying is I actually shop at those three places, obviously, because I'm spending more than they actually can kick me back. And I'm very specific. I buy most my new gear from Sweetwater. Buy almost all my used gear from Guitar Center. I was at Guitar Center. So you guys, if you were in Guitar center in Mesa, Arizona, yesterday. I was in there yesterday. I bought a set of Seymour Duncan pickups and I picked. It was. And I bought them and it said pick up at the store. And I went, picked up at the store. So. So, and same thing, I shop at Stumax. So those are the three main affiliate links. A lot of companies offer affiliate links and sometimes I'll make exceptions. And we do those. And it is like a direct thing where if you buy from their website. The reason I tell you that is other than those minority things that I do that way, there's not. The majority of the time, it's minority of time. And I do kind of. I do kind of. I do tell you guys about that. I don't receive any benefit from what you buy from a company. Okay. If I'm compensated, it's compensated for making the content, not for the back end. Okay. And the reason that's important, it's very important to me is, is because I don't want to. I Don't want to. Want to be motivated to help you make the purchase, because if you make more purchases, I make more money. That's not where I want to be with this. I don't make money. So when somebody says, and I'm gonna give you the exact thing, and this really is interesting about the independent thing I just told you and I, and I'm very, very clear this. The three biggest affiliates are me are the Guitar center of Sweetwater and Stumac. I've told you guys this before on the channel, on the podcast. Without a doubt, Guitar center pays the highest amount, percentage wise. Just period. Not even any close. Obviously, recently in the last week, you've seen me, I reviewed a guitar, Guitar center, sent the BC Rich. It basically flopped. It was a disaster. I think the video title is something like this went really badly. And then I basically showed you how the guitar was a flop. Guess how many things were sold off of that video. If you guessed the number was zero, you were right. I would have received benefit. Right. I mean, if you would have bought anything, but if you just bought that guitar or anything, I would have got a benefit. But the Firefly praise the next video. I receive nothing if you buy a Firefly. So you can see I'm very. It's very important to me that I align my interests with you guys because you are my. You're my. You who pay me. Right? So, so basically, like, okay, I don't really worry about that. So that being said, when it comes to companies, I don't really care if you buy from any of the particular companies. Right. Okay. So same with Kiesel. Keezel isn't paying me if you buy a guitar. Vendor isn't paying me if you buy a guitar. So I present all guitars. I try to be as independent as I can be and as honest and transparent as I can be. And even to go almost like the, hey, I don't want to talk politics. I don't really want to talk business politics with you guys. In other words, I don't really want you to know which companies I really value more than others and vice versa. Although sometimes you're not going to be able to hide that. The point of this is when a new company approaches me and it doesn't matter if it's a big company or a small company, I have to vet them. At this point, the process has gotten so out of control. To then do some research, I have to do my diligence. Even though, like I said, I'm not connected to them. What I have not been able to do is establish to anyone that I am not connected because I've done it. I've made the decision. Okay? It's a personal decision. I made the decision. It's mine and mine alone. If a company sent me a guitar four years ago and I buy a guitar now, that's at that same brand and I make a video, you'll see it says in the description in the video, it says product provided alluding that the company gave me the guitar. They didn't. I'm not saying that. Not in every case, but in a lot of cases. I'm just telling you that because I thought about it going well. Even though I bought this guitar now, they did sponsor a video a long time ago. I'm just going to stick with the. That we're somehow. We're connected that way. Just to help you guys make your best informed decision. I'm just trying to help you guys make the best informed decision. Right? That's. That's it. If I can only. That's one thing I can do for anybody. That's the only thing I want to really focus on. So independent companies, indie companies, they're the hardest to deal with because they come at you, you know that at this level I can really. So whereas I tell you that is I did a video of Fire. The Firefly video, was it a week ago. They sold out of guitars in like the first two hours of the video. To give you a reference, Firefly sold out of guitars and I didn't even hit 9,000 views. That video eventually hit 90,000 views. So 81,000 views on that video. There was no guitars to sell you. Right. So obviously if I got a back end deal, I would have made sure they were in stock. There's no way I would have let that happen. I would have been like, hey man, what's up with that? We kind of made a lot of money together. But like I said, I have no backing deal. So anytime a company reaches out, and I tell you this because you're asking the question, but also because I know companies reach out to us and they just don't seem to understand the channel and I don't know how to communicate it better. So I keep trying. If you're a new brand and you want to be on this channel, you need to understand that it's going to cost me a lot of time and money to vet you out. I am not going to take somebody on face value. You know, I get every story. Look, I could be a harsh. I'll be harsh Screw it. You know how many people daily like, Phil, my brand is amazing and everyone loves me and we sell 30,000 blah blah, blah a month. And you, and you need to have us on the channel. They, everybody is a hype machine for their product. And then the reality is I've been burned too many times. I've been, I've, I, you know, I'm too tenured now at this point. I've done a product review and they didn't have any product for you guys. They didn't have any back end support. I talked about it earlier about companies, you know, spending money to acquire customers, but not spending money to take care of them customers. I am sick and tired. Sick and tired is not enough of a word. I feel like you can see my face get red already. Just pissed off and want to say F words now. I'm sick and tired of. I do a video for a company and yeah, they had, they had enough to, you know, they had enough foresight to know to spend, to put their product out in front of people, but they didn't spend any money to take care of the customer. Like, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear like, hey, I bought one of these and they don't respond to my emails or they don't call me back. It's very, very frustrating. I forward all those to you guys. I tell you guys all the time, if you send me and it's, this is a horrible thing because it's a welcome wagon to more problems. But you guys will send me emails every weekend. You'll go, hey, Phil, I bought a blah, blah, blah for so and so. And they don't send me back anything. And I forward what you say to them. And sometimes that maybe sparks them to contact you back because I've seen it, you know, and they're like, oh, they don't want to piss off Phil. Maybe if they even care about that. But my point is, yeah, it's very hard to vet new companies. You know, the, I just did the, the artist guitars and they were like, yeah, we don't even have distribution in the U.S. i'm like, okay, this is odd. So I've looked at the situation, I looked at guitars, you know, and again, trying to figure out the best thing to do. But also, you know, I like you guys. I want to check out new gear and I want to share new gear with you guys. So I'm just trying to find the balance of it. And I've learned and for those that have great suggestions Because a lot of you guys had them in the past, too. You're like, hey, what about disclaimers? And those don't work. None of the disclaimers work. If I said, hey, I'm gonna do a review of this product, but I'm not connected to this brand anyway. I'm not endorsing this brand anyway. People don't see it that way. They see it as. And I think it's because. And the biggest confusion has been and will always be. And no one's. In my opinion, it's no one's fault. But there is. A ton of YouTube channels are like, I only review stuff I like. I only talk about stuff I like. Not me. I talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. There are brands I absolutely hate, people I might physically punch if I saw them in the room. And I've done videos, as we said, in the last 12 months, and got them quarter million views and sold a lot of guitars to them because you guys were interested in them. And I'm not gonna let my biases come in and affect that. Cause the product to me is a different category now. That's extreme. You don't understand. I'm not gonna punch anybody in the face, but I'm just trying to give you an idea. Like, there are products that I'm not interested in. They're just not. They're not interesting to me, but they're interesting to you. And that's not so much the most important part. The most important part is I could just say, this is my playground. And you could watch, you know, and you're only gonna see the products that I'm interested in. But as you've. If you watch this podcast, you would probably realize that that video, that channel that I would have created would have been pretty boring. It'd be like every week, like, hey, guys, you like Strats? I love Strats. Here's a Strat through a clean amp. When I play, I play mostly a Strat through a clean amp. That's my thing. So that's where I would spend a lot of time. Or, hell, I just play bass. So. So, yeah, so that is the process. It's a really tough one to do, is to vet companies. What I've been doing more and more is trying to just actually purchase from smaller companies, not purchase from them, but purchase smaller products and put them out there so you guys can see, you know, products from smaller companies without having that. That way at least again, distancing myself, like, hey, I bought this. And you know, if you buy this, you know, you can't say, hey, look, Phil, you know, this company sent you product or are paid for the video. And now, you know, I'm having a horrible experience. And, you know, so it's. It's tough. It's a tough thing to. To. To balance on this platform. But I believe, honestly, it is the most important thing to balance on this platform. Look, I can make fun of companies. I'll make fun of Guitar World for a second. You know, Guitar World for me was the. It was the day I realized that every single guitar review in every single Guitar World magazine was three stars as the lowest. People talk about how the fact that they, you know, Guitar World magazine used to give. I don't want to. I'm not trying to, you know, throw shade on them. Is that what they say? Throw shade on Guitar World? But I remember somebody said, hey, man, you ever notice all the reviews are good? I go, no. You know what I noticed? You cannot find a Guitar World review on the 1 to 5 stars where anyone ever got less than 3 stars. So screw the bad part. I mean, the good part. So. So what if they said a product was all five stars? Okay, that sounds like this. When products were horrible, they got all three stars. No one got two stars. No one got one star. Right? And I was like. And I think that's where they lost their credibility. And we know they did because that's where the YouTube system came in place. And the YouTube system places. It's at the verge of constantly losing its credibility. And some, in some cases has. And it's very important that we try to keep it as credible as we can. And, you know, that's my take on that. So, yes, so that's my way of telling you guys. But also telling the companies that reach out to me, because companies reach out to me and they. They're very cavalier. They think that I'll, like, you know, because. And they get really upset because, like, they were like, well, you reviewed a Defender guitar last week. I'm like, yeah, that's because I don't have to worry about whether or not Fender's actually going to ship these guitars to customers. I have to take a little time and I have to actually call your customers. I have to research things. So, you know, and then. Well, in this whole topic, on this point, do you realize I have a guitar from an independent builder right now? Right now, and I have a video made right now, which is really tough for guys like me because that means I've done all the work the Content's made, and so it's all I have to do is push a button. It's on the Internet for you guys. And in the vetting process, I have two viewers who are having horrible experiences with them personally. And I can't promote the brand. It has nothing to do with it. I like the brand. The guitars are not, like I said, you know, if I like them or not. It's not really that important to me. The deep dives are the deep dives, you know, Right. They pass or fail. They pass or fail. But I can't promote a brand that's literally not taking care of its customers. So until we get that figured out, a lot of you guys mentioned tease guitars. So you guys know, I've seen somebody sent to me. I get so much stuff, you guys, and there's just no way we can have it back and forth. Which is why I always tell you guys, look, if you can't, I understand. If you don't want to or you can't do patron, which I totally understand. We have free Patron. Okay? It's not, there's. There is a trial free thing where you can, you know, pay or whatever. You. You can try Patreon for a few days without paying for it. I'm not talking about that. We have actually a free Patreon. That's the best way if you're trying to get information to me, just this best way, because it really just limits the. The amount of information that's coming on me. Tease guitars is something came up on the patron side a couple times. The patrons, when they talk to each other the most, is what I noticed. And they were talking about tease guitars. Tease guitars. When the tariffs came, the owner did a discussion about how he was handling the tariffs and stuff. They asked me to watch the video. I watched that video. I watched a couple of videos. Same thing as everything else. It's, it's, it's, you know, I. To work with a new company, I have to like, like, you know, figure them out, figure out what they're doing, you know. But yeah, I hear nothing but good things, which is always great. I mean, that's was really awesome. It's nice. And that, that prompts me to want to do a video. So you. So, you know, it's like the great thing about inexpensive guitars is everybody wants to watch videos about inexpensive guitars. It's the most easy. It's the most easy. It's the easiest video to create and actually get paid revenue from YouTube. For me, I like to back up and make sure we're not talking about all YouTube channels. I don't want you to think all YouTube channels are making tons of money off these videos. Most youtubes I don't. I can't speak for all you gear channels, but I can tell you out of the channels that you know I'm friends with, which you've seen me interact with, I would say 99 of them cannot make a living off of YouTube. And that is not the case with this channel. I make a. I make a living off YouTube. And then obviously with the patrons, that helps the support, the cost of the thing. And then I do sponsorships, but that's also why I do so little sponsorships. But that is a very hard thing to make a Living on YouTube. You got to be in the hundred million views club minimum to make any kind of money here. But yeah, I will look into tease some more again, I should say. And then I thought there was one other thing I saw, and if I missed, Hawket says free Patreon. You get to talk to AI Phil. Fair enough. That's fair. So, you know, there is AI Phil not on Patreon, but there is AI Phil on YouTube. If you guys don't know. I don't know if I could show you AI YouTube. When I say I show you, I mean, obviously I don't want you to see personal data and stuff from my channel. Hey, so look at Phil's bank account routing numbers. Let's. Yeah, here's AI Fill. I'll show you. I don't use AI Fill. Okay. Oh, my goodness. Okay, give me a second. Trying to make this a little bigger. That might work. Okay, that's too big. Oh, you know, I can do. Here, look at that. All right, I'm gonna show you AI Phil. If you don't know, if you don't know, there's AI everywhere. And YouTube has AI too. And it actually is. Is. It's kind of funny in a quirky way. And we don't. I don't use it. But if you're curious to see what it looks like, I'll show you what AI looks like AI Phil looks like. Okay, ready? So this is. Oh, where are we at? Why is it having so much trouble thinking? Okay, it's the AI. So this is AI Phil right here. So when you guys put a comment, he says, hey, well, that's interesting. Have fun in New Zealand. This is what it says. I can click these. Sometimes there's four or five of them. I can say, hey, sorry to hear you had a bad experience with that's. Too bad. Maybe these are different things I can respond to you with. So I can respond to people with AI. I don't respond with AI. What I can tell you though, so you understand, is that if you're getting responses from me and they don't sound like me, it's because it's Shauna or Sean. They are. We don't use AI, but we do use Shauna. And Shaun, It's. But Shauna, especially on Patreon, she's monitoring Patron daily for. For us. So. Yeah. And. But here's what I can tell you. If you are dealing with them, I am seeing it because they're bringing it to me. It's just usually while I'm working. All right, so that's that. That's it. We ended the show. We did it. Run Ride says, I kind of hate how it's everywhere now. The AI. Yeah, it's. It's weird. Yeah, it's a weird thing. But, you know, I get why they do it. I. I just. Yeah, not my thing. I look at it this way. I have a Friday show every week where I interact with you guys and that's why I'll do it that way. All right, guys, I. I hope you guys had a good time on today's show. I did not. I'm doing one last check. Just doing it real quick. I'm checking my email right now to see if the person emailed me back and nope. So somebody won this pedal or not pedal. Sorry. Somebody won this amazing Fender guitar. Let me do this. I'm going to do this and make life somewhat easier for some people. The email that I sent the email winner to starts with the letter R. Okay. It's an AT Gmail address. It starts with the letter R, ends with the letter E. So if you have an email that starts with the letter R and ends with the letter E and it's Gmail, you should probably go check your stuff because you got a two thousand dollar limited edition Fender Telecaster in case that just wants to get shipped to you by Guitar Center. And I want to thank Guitar center for doing that. That's pretty badass. Thank you guys. Thank them for that. We'll do some more giveaways, obviously. And I want to thank you guys for hanging out and I hope to see you on the clinics on Sundays and look for the videos next week. And until then, next Friday. I'll see you guys next Friday. All right, guys. Know youw Gear. 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. 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.