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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. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode 444 on what are We Friday the what is today the 19th? Friday the 19th. Hope everybody had a fantastic week. My week was interesting and maybe we'll talk about it. I don't know. Probably not. So we'll probably talk about guitar stuff. I don't know if any guitar stuff happened to me this week that was special, but if I can think of anything, we'll talk about it. Jeremy wants to know. Hey Phil, what do you think about relict acoustics? The year end video had me checking out Bromo and they have a really nice all solid relic one. I actually love the idea of a relic acoustic. I kind of. I kind of find it strange that relict electrics became a thing. A much bigger thing than relict acoustics. One of my favorite relict acoustics is the Monty Montgomery acoustic. In fact, Ralph just recently bought one off my buddy Pat. And let's do that. Monty Montgomery, I believe they don't make it anymore. And we'll get some pictures of it. Here, go here. There's got to be a close up of it. Doesn't look very relic in that picture, but it is. Let's see if this one looks a little. Doesn't have a really relic look. Let's see if we can actually see Monty's because that's what theirs is a recreation of. And Monty's will look pretty. Pretty destroyed. There you go. Let's see if we can see this image. And here we go. Let's go to the web. Here we are on the web. And. And this is it. So you can see all distressed. And so when they make the reissue, when they did, it came all relic like this. It's one of my favorite acoustic guitars. It's a gigiri. So it's an Alvarez brand guitar. It's handmade in Japan. Fantastic instrument, kind of pricey, but you know, you know, what do you expect for handmade in Japan? And I don't know, like I said, I don't know why it's not a thing. I mean, you figure acoustics really lend themselves to it. One thing theory could be that most acoustics are mass produced import instruments and therefore they're really like, you know, polyurethaned out. And there's not a whole lot of relicing. You think about this when you think of Relicing. Relicing. I believe one of the reasons besides just, you know, it has a cool factor. I mean some people like they don't like relic. But I'm like, then you don't like old guitars, that's fine, right? But if you think old guitars look cool, then relicking is kind of a cool thing. But I think one of the things that have made reliking justify its price points is the fact that it's very hard to replicate inexpensively. And I don't know that to be 100% true, but it is apparent with the fact that so many companies don't do it and the ones that do, most of them, it doesn't look that great. There is going to be a few out there I've seen like SBS a guitars, Tesla relic obviously. Now Ola's solar guitars are doing relic. We vintage. I think they're still around or they're still around to the end of the year as a brand they have a relic. And of course, you know, you've seen Fender do it in Mexico, but not so much Fender like having it done in their Chinese or Indonesian factories. So you just don't see a whole lot of relict inexpensive guitars. And I think what happens because of that is when you see a relic instrument, you assume it's expensive. I think that's kind of like intuitive. And so, you know, when I say that I want you to understand I don't mean me personally. I just mean like I remember days at the store anytime we had a relic guitar, people would just kind of. Guitar players would kind of gravitate towards it as a, ooh, what's that expensive? Oh, you got to beat up. Fender Strat. Must be expensive. Custom shop, you know. So it's either vintage reel or it's, you know, it's a, it's a recreation. So I think a relic acoustic is cool. First of all, I think it would look cool. But also it could, that is where I think it actually could have some sound properties to it. You know, taking away some of the finish, you know, wearing it in a little bit. You know, I mean why not? They can age the tops. They, they, they torify tops on acoustics now to kind of give them more a longer dried sound like from years and years and years of dryness. And so you know, they also replicate with acoustics play wear. So not only wear on the fretboards but if you haven't seen speaking of Yiri acoustics, which is the Monty Montgomery one, Yay does this for sure. But other manufacturers does as well. You know, one of the final processes to making a really nice beautiful Yuri acoustic in Japan is they put them in a room with giant speakers and subwoofers. So the acoustics I think sit in like the racks where they sit sideways in rows. Okay. They don't hang from the walls, they just sit in rows and they play loud music, like orchestra music. I don't think they play death metal to them. Maybe some rip hop, some rap beats. I'm just kidding. It's mostly classical. They play loud music to the acoustic guitars. And it's absolutely true. If you want, you can Google or go on YouTube right now and type in Yiri or Alvarez Yuri or maybe even Alvarez Japan Factory Tour. It's an old video. It's on YouTube. It's you know, going to be low quality, you know, visually, but the information is still current and good. And in there you'll, you'll go, what? They're playing music to the guitars. They play the music to the guitars for days. They just like loud music to the guitars and it's so that this spirit of music gets into them. No, it's just kidding. I just made that up to be, be funny. No, it's because the vibrations cause the guitar to vibrate like they would if you're strumming the, the, the strings. And if anything's gonna crack like a glue joint's gonna crack or anything's gonna break loose or there's gonna be a problem. It simulates playing them for a long time, but also it's supposed to kind of break in the guitar a little bit. There's a company who sells vibrator for your acoustic. For those that just want to be 12 year old children right now and go and giggle. Look man, I got nothing to say. I can't stop it. It's basically, yes, it looks like an Amazon vibrator that you stick on your guitar. So I'm going to type in literally because I can't remember what it's called. Vibrator for acoustic guitar. And I bet you this thing comes up and I'm not making fun of the product, I'm just searching it because I couldn't remember what it's called. And here we have. It came up. 10% off. No thanks. It says no thanks. No thanks. 10% off. Stumac. It's the tone right? Not trying to coffee on you guys. I'm sorry. Tone right for guitar. The tone right has, has the guitar world buzzing. Buzzing. You guys are buzzing. We're all buzzing right now. It Says this revolutionary play in simulator is based on an observation that more that the more an acoustic instrument is played, the faster it reaches that sound potential. The play it in period. I'm being dramatic. Long story short, this thing sticks on your strings right there. And I think it's a vibrator. Let's take a look. It's a pretty shirt vibrator. I think it even has like look. After one week, the tone right on the guitar, the voice of my. Whatever opened up. Bob Benedetto. I mean, come on. Bob Benedetto said it's good. I mean that's. If you guys. That's. That's a pretty badass endorsement. So. Yep, tone right applies direct vibration, not indirect vibration. Like if you kind of buy one of those vibrating toys on Amazon, you could probably painters tape one of those to your acoustic too. But this is a family friendly show. It says anyways the guitar look. Direct vibration to the guitar controller frequencies simulate the effects of actual playing. Many players report increased volume, dynamic range. Regardless if you believe that or not, here is the deal. Like I said, I've seen manufacturers more than just the Yuri do something like this, like I said, playing loud music to it, vibrating essentially. So I would imagine relicing the guitar and then when I say relicking, not only like aesthetically relicing, chipping up the guitar finish and stuff, but then doing that, you know, giving it age. Torified wood and then using like a tone. Right. Why not put a. Put 10 toe rights on it. Let's go extra crazy and. And break in the guitar and. And give it like a vintage kind of thing. Sure makes sense. I'd like to see somebody like Martin do that. That'd be kind of cool. You know, maybe I think deep down I'm more interested in a relict worn in you know, road worn. I know that's trademarked by Fender, but road worn Martin than you know, a road worn Fender. Because one of the things that sucks about getting a real road worn Martin is sometimes they have more problems than you want. So. So yeah. Okay. All right. Now that we've went off the rails, Damon wants to know. Hey Phil, do you use a humidifier to keep your guitars humidity regulated? If so, which humidifier do you prefer? I normally do not. Except for now. There's just too many guitars here because of the channel. Like you know, you just can't this. There's. There's as many guitars coming in, in and out throughout the day week. It's just. There's too many guitars. And so just like when we Had a music store. We had humidifiers in the music store. Because at this point, you just can't, you know, there's just too many guitars, too much wood. So now I do. Did I when I would have just my personal guitars here all the time? No, I did not. What do I use? I use a. I don't know what. It's homedex thing. You can buy them at Costco. Let me show you what it looks like. Last time I showed this, lots of people got upset and told me they don't like this thing. I not only use it, I have three of them. So I don't. I don't run all three of them, but. All right. Actually, you know what, hold on a second. Yep, I'm right. It says home medics on it. There are probably way better ones. But keep in mind, humidity in the room right now is 53%. So I like the humidity in the rooms with this many guitars to be at about 50%. 60% is ideal, but I don't shoot for that. I just don't want it under 40%. So once I get about 42%, I kick on humidifiers. And to be honest with you, once I get back to about 50, I don't keep humidifying. I just leave it alone. It usually kind of. It's usually fine. So homedex humidifier. I don't want the manual. Oh, look at Costco. This is it. Okay, here it is right here. Okay, let's do this. Oh, look. Dude, is this annoying. Every time live better with 15% off. No. Okay, this is it. This is what I have. Why do I use this? No particular reason. Back in the store, we had these ones that took gallons of water, like five gallons of water. That's not exaggeration because I used to fill them. I think, I think it was four gallons actually. Cause I think it was two. Two gallon things. And that's. Cause you would just. The store was like 3,300 square feet. Just that's, you know, that much space. And essentially the store's not like a home where it has lots of rooms. There was less in rooms, but you know, you have big. You know, you have bigger rooms. So I would use more. This one. I don't know what made me do this. I decided I. I just like the way it looked. So I bought it and I tried it a couple years ago and I like it. So that's my. There you go. That's my endorsement for it. I've had no issues. Some people have told me every time I Bring just, like, anything. They go, oh, I had one, and it. Everything was horrible, and my guitars exploded. So I don't. I don't know what to tell you. So caution, your guitars might all explode if you buy anything that's recommended to you. All right, let's do this. Let's see. Yeah, it's nice. Okay, there. Let's go on to. Michael says. So it's not dry in Arizona. No, look, it's very dry here. You got to understand, I don't believe in humidifying electric guitars. So it's not something I normally would do. I don't own a ton of acoustics. I own. I mean, more than some people. But, you know, as. As far as. There's probably. I probably own five acoustics, give or take maybe six, which is a lot. But it's not like, you know, the amount of electric guitars here at any given time. And keep in mind, one of my electrics is, like, carbon fiber. So, you know, um, so acoustics are way like what. I'm more interested in humidifying. Although I don't really humidify my acoustics. I'm very clear about this. I humidify the rooms that all the guitars are in. And really, when I say humidify them, I'm not keeping the rooms. Like, right now, it happens to be at 53% humidity. I would really not. And like I said, this isn't advice, you guys. I'm just. You asked what I do, I'm telling you what I do. I just put on humidifiers anytime the room starts to break below 40 humidity. Here's why I get fret sprout. You start seeing fret sprout popping on the guitars. It's just really dry. And in the past, I never had a problem if the. If the room was 38% humidity, and I would never have a problem. But now with this many guitars I'm noticing, you know, over the years, you're noticing the problem because like I said, any one time, there can be a lot of guitars in this room. This room's not very big, so there's a lot of guitars. They're all sponges, man. They're just sucking up the moisture in the air. So it's a lot of. So if it's not very humid. So that's why, like I said, everybody to their own use, what makes sense. I live in one place. The problem with a channel like this, everybody can give you broad stroke advice, but. But, I mean, you know, keep in mind, we all live different places, different climates, different areas have different conditions. Different situations. So kind of, you know, figure out your own situation. I'm just telling you humidifiers I use and why I use them. Okay, let's go to this, the next subject. Let's go into the next subject. We have a subject that's pretty cool. This one last week, you guys, man, were you guys excited about reverb stats? Like what, what was that about? So we went over some reverb stats and you guys really liked them. When I say you like them, you like them on this channel. The second channel posts the pod clips, man, they all rocked. They were you guys at the second channel beat the first channel. I'm just, sorry, I just take a second to kind of acknowledge that in my head that's how it worked. Okay, so the second channel beat the first channel this week. So you guys like the other channel more. I'm not hurt by it. I'm not hurt. I'm getting over it. But overwhelming comments were, hey, why didn't you do the pedals? Why did you just do the amps and the guitars? And I could say, oh, I didn't think the pedals were as interesting. Or I didn't think you guys. But the truth is, no, the pedal bitches come out, man. They're so. I'm just gonna. I told you. Maybe I'm spiky today, but I just, I think it's because I knew this was coming up. I knew I was gonna be talking about this. I feel like every time I've talked about pedal pedals in the past, a bunch of crazy people come out. I don't know what it is about the pedal side of the music industry, but you are all nuts. You're just nuts. The hardcores. I'm talking about the hardcores. Which is probably inflaming them right now too. I love you dearly because you're. You love what I love. I'm a guitar fanatic. I'm a music fanatic. Pedal fanatic. I love it. I just don't understand. I get intensity. We're all intense about guitars and amps and everything else. The pedal guys are such something else. Okay, so that being said with on after the advice, after taking the advice of council, I've decided to ignore it and still do. Let's look at reverbs, artist petals and petals. We'll look at all the pedals. Let's look at artists. These are the best selling artist pedals in 2025. These are the best sellers. And why are they artist pedals when the first one is that an Artist pedal. Are these artist pedals bestsellers? Artist pedals, huh? Okay, for the sake of disclosure, I have not pre looked at this list, digested any of it just like last week. Cause I kind of wanted to have a, you know, a moment with you guys. Like I call it water cooler talk. Let's take a look. I'll react to it. The list above shows the top 20 selling pedals that newly entered the best sellers list this year. At least seven of the, if not eight of the 20 are artist signature releases. Okay, so these are not all artist pedals. They're just most of them. It says. Okay, I just want to make sure. Because I was confused because the first one is the MXR MX100 Rockman X100 and I didn't think there was an artist pedal. Okay, so the number one selling was the MXR MX100 Rockman. I interesting enough. See, this is where I already piss everyone off. I did not try the MXR Rockman 1x100. Let me tell you why I went to buy one. Absolutely had every intention. Oh my God, there's funny. This is funny. There is a something on my screen which thought. I thought, oh, what's on my face? So I had to wipe it off the screen. Okay, so anyways, that's kind of funny. MX Rockman 100. If you love it, I'm glad you love it. I'm happy you love it. Let me tell you my experience of it. I went online, as I do, I went to YouTube and I watched a video of somebody using it. I went, man, this needs to be in my life. And then I go, I need. Okay, I need to watch another video. I watch another video. This needs to be in my life. I'm definitely buying this. I'm about to buy it. I go on Sweetwater, they're out of stock. I go look somewhere else. Okay, there's a couple on reverb. Okay, I'm going to buy this. Let's watch one more video. And then I get that weird feeling. I the third video in, I was like, man, this thing is perfect. You know, I don't know about you guys, I get a little nervous like everybody always says, like, you know, shilling for YouTube. We all get it. I get it. Everybody gets it. However, there's nothing wrong with somebody giving somebody something. A shining review, like, it's amazing. Hey look, we have a honeymoon mode. Maybe they just really like it. I like stuff I find the most. People actually kind of accuse me of ever being the least truthful is when I'M probably the most passionate about the thing I'm talking about because I'm probably acting like a salesman more because I'm so excited about it, right? I always liken the story to. Sometimes a gear review is going to sound like, I just started dating this girl this week and she's amazing and let me tell you why. She farts rainbows and she's perfect. And then you're like, this is disgusting. This guy's delusional. And instead of thinking I'm delusional in a review, you guys go, always shilling. But really, it's just I'm being delusional because I'm still in the love mode, which is why I try to wait past love mode to give the review to put it out. But that all being said, sometimes I'm a little nervous when I see a bunch of channels all say it's amazing. Best pedal ever. So I went deep into the YouTubes and I found some guys, you know, some average Joes. They got a channel, maybe they got 300 subs, maybe they got 30. They got definitely 50 views. They're on the corner of their bed in the bedroom. You know who I'm talking about. They don't got the fancy wall of crap yet because that happens later. You start fixing up your room. Everybody who starts making YouTube's in like a basic room. And then over time, they start cleaning it and situating it. Everybody thinks it's because, like, something else. It's because everybody's just an ass about things. So over time, you just start trying to make your room more presentable so that people. Less comments about your room, I guess. I don't know. Back to the pedal. Every single video I watched of an independent, someone who bought it, did not like it and it sounded like did not sound great. So I did not buy it. Does that mean the pedal did not sound great? No, no, no, no, no. But. But we're reviewing the top list and I'm explaining why I didn't buy one. That's why I didn't buy one. Somebody mentioned it is an artist pedal. I think it's because the. It's based off the original Rockman, which is an artist thing. Right, But I just didn't know if the original. This reissue was still the thing. So if it is an artist thing, I apologize. Let's. Let's go back. Number two, MXR MB301 bass synth. Strange, right? But again, this is all new launches. I'll tell you the first shock I have. Let's just get to the shock and all out. The fact that JHS not a Dumble wasn't number one is crazy to me. That, to me, I think, is number one. They sold a gazillion of those things, right? Way more than, you know. And they're really good, so really interesting to see. I would say. My gut would say, hey, what was the hottest pedal this year? What was the. What, to me was the hottest, craziest pedal, I'll tell you. Do you know why I think it's the JHS not a Dumble? Because I tried to buy one, and I couldn't. I couldn't get my hands on one. A couple of you reached out, thank you for this, and said, hey, Phil, I got one I can send you, but you already put it together and stuff, and that's fine. And I kind of wanted to put it together, too, and I. And have the full experience, you know, put some goop on it. And reason is, is because I wasn't. I'll be honest. The Not a Dumble for a hundred dollars by JHS I think is a great idea. The building it like LEGO style seemed cheesy, and it wasn't really my thing. So I was hoping maybe I'd, you know, get one and then do it and then have that moment like, oh, I get this. I did something for them this afternoon, and it was nice, and I showed it to, you know, my kids or something. So that's what I was hoping to have, that experience. If I just get the pedal, I had no doubts that it sounded good because I don't think they would make a crappy pedal. But. But I hear. Which is why I try to buy one. I hear it's the most amazing dumbbell pedal ever in history. I watched a video, somebody actually comparing all these dumbbells, and I think they had the original, and they were like, the. The Not a Dumbbell was the best one. So shocking. Shocking. It was number one because, let me tell you, couldn't find one for myself, so I was too late to the game. Then we have. Oh, wow. Number seven, Tone King Imperial preamp. Absolutely freaking lutely. Is that thing amazing? I have the Tone King Imperial preamp. It is fantastic. If you guys want to. Here, do I. Can I show you my. Hold on a second. How does this work? Let's go here. All right, let's go. Switch to canvas. There you go. Look at the Tone King. There's my Burnley pedal, but not plugged in. Look at the Tone King Imperial pedal. I keep this thing plugged in. At all times. This is my absolute favorite thing. You know, I had my. All of my situations over the years, you know? Right. You know, I have my camper, which I love still, but, you know, I have all these things where I keep into this rig. What I'm in here, right? This is what I love. It's hooked up all the time. Look, it's literally hooked up right now. Okay. I got my guitar right here. I'll give you a little taste. I hit the. There's my. Turn my mute off. You'll hear the guitar now. You're still hearing my mic. I'll probably hit the mic mute for a second so you can hear it. Here's the Clean channel. I know we talked about this before, but let's cover it because I'm absolutely in love with this. And it's been a few weeks. Not quite months, but weeks. So still in love. I mean, we're talking daily, right? Everything's good. Still in love with it. Okay, here's the clean, and I'll show you the overdrive. Here's the clean. That reverb. I wanted to wait for it to end. That reverb is just awesome. Overdrive. Hit the overdrive. Now, this was last time I talked about this. Somebody asked, well, what are you plugging into? Aren't you plugging an amp? This is not plugged in an amp. What's happening here is I'm plugged into the Burnley pedal, which I don't have on into the. I actually, no, the Burnley is not on. It's not even plugged in. I'm struck. I'm just directing the tone king pedal. So I'm in the tone king pedal. The tone king pedal is not hooked up to any amplifiers. It has an XLR out that's plugged into the Rode Caster podcast interface that I have here that you're hearing me on, and that's going into my speakers. And to you guys, that's it. It's all tube. Sounds amazing. It's expensive, but it's amazing. In fact, it's one of the products that. That I would actually say that when you look at it and you see the price, you go, ooh. And then you get it. And then you look at the price after you bought it, and you go, okay, it's a lot worth it. And there's a game you can play. Here's a game I played with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago. We were talking about gear and expensive. And what I said, you know what you do with gear when you think it's expensive is go the other way too. This is something a little. Little fun fact or trick for you guys. For YouTube reviewer, I'll call myself Semi Professional Film Ignite YouTuber Reviewer. You know, sometimes when you're trying to give an honest assessment of something, but also not sound like, you know, like you're shilling, you try to go, okay, look, this is, you know, $700. Not the Imperial, but let's say a product $700. And you go, okay, that's a lot. And then you say that, and you realize that's not really a fair statement to say that without any reference of. Okay, well, what isn't a lot? And so here's a good example. This Imperial pedal. Let's talk about it for a second. It's $600, $590. You could literally buy a decent tube amp, small tube amp for $600. Okay. You could buy two katanas for $600. So look, it being a pedal, even if it's a preamp pedal and it has some preamp tubes, $600, a lot of money. But what is the. So if you think $600 is ridiculous, I have no qualms or issues with that. Right. My question would be, well, then let's go the other way. Where does it get silly? The other way. Okay, so it was $500. Like, no, it's still kind of pricey. Preamp pedal, $400. Yeah. 399 for a, you know, the Tone King Imperial preempt, two channels with Reverb, IRS and tremolo. Good, good, right? $300. Yeah. $300. Really good deal. $200, that'd be stupid. Like, 200 bucks. Like, you know, for. For all of that hundred dollars, that's like giving it away. So like I said, you kind of want to go the both ways and then kind of figure out, like, then if. If 700 or 600 sounds unrealistic and. And 200 is. Sounds unrealistic. Where's the sweet spot? And you go, for me, I came to the conclusion it was like 450 to 500 was like, okay, that's probably where. If it was, you know, you know, a good price. Keep in mind, though, you have to have a use for this. So I have a use for it. Cause like, this I can. If I had to demonstrate a guitar right now to you guys, I can literally do it and have great sound and not have to worry about mic placement, anything. So. All right, we're. We're off. We're off course. Let's go back to this list. Back to this list. We have. Oh, the Boss RT2 Rodeo Rotary Ensemble. I bought that this year. So I'm part of that list. I get. I'll give you that. The Stryman EC1 single head tape echo. You know, that's one on my list of things. I want the Keely Manus Overdrive. I have not tried it. The way Huge Deep State Joe Bonamassa have not tried that. You know what's funny is part. I can tell you I must not be buying pedals anymore because I don't have any of these. I didn't buy the Wampler Cryptic Fuzz. I didn't buy. I didn't buy the Alex Lifeson. I didn't buy the Randy Rhodes. I didn't want the Jail Guitars. Jail Guitar Doors Overdrive. I didn't buy. I bought. So this year I bought two. I got the. The Tone King Imperial and I got the boss RT2. And I tried to buy the Not a Dumble and I tried to buy the MXR100. What's shocking about this list is to see a bass synth in the top. That is pretty crazy. It almost makes me wonder if, if. Because this, because again, this is just on Reverb. So we're not talking about Sweetwater Guitar center, the rest of the world, ebay, mom and pop stores. It makes me wonder if there was an online seller that just was, you know, killing with these. One thing that's not in here, and I've looked at some of the information is, you know, if some of these were on discount, you know, if they blew them out, that would help too. You know, that helped their sales. Let's go to best used pedals. Best selling used pedals. This is where I think I'm curious. You guys are curious. I'm sorry if I'm blocking stuff here. Let's go here, let me, let me move myself. I'll move up here. Look at me, I'm up. I'm up here. Everybody. Now. Okay, I know that was cheesy. I apologize in advance. Let's take a look at this list. All right, so these are the top selling best pedals used. Now, used is important because like we talked about, guitar churn becomes a factor in this. In other words, because we're not looking at individual, serial numbered items. When they sell, you could sell the same product on Reverb over a course of a year, multiple times. So somebody could buy a like line six Stomp, get it, you know, new, sell it used. Somebody Buys it used, counts as one sell. They sell it used sell it counts as two sales. Sell to somebody else, they sell it again, three sales. So I mean it's. Yeah, when you hold four fingers, when it's like this, that's how you know I'm AI because if AI was supposed to hold three fingers and I hold up four anyways, three, three sales. So that's what I'm saying. So we factor churn in this one is what you would do. So number one, line six HX Stomp, I would imagine one of the driving forces that is. I think it's become the go to for everyone that needs a mobile rig. I think if you want a mobile rig in 2025 and now 2026 coming, I would absolutely 100% tell you if you need a mobile rig, the HX Stomp is definitely the top two. Okay, so top two. Okay. Notice I didn't say top one. I'm going to give you the other one. The, The Tonex is 2. Okay. So between the Tonix line 6 stomp, here's why. First of all, line 6 HX stomp has more features than Tonx. So it has more features, it's more money, more features. The other thing is, in my personal opinion, a little easier Interface in the line 6 because Tonx, I know you hook it in your computer and stuff but ajaxtomp, you can actually use the screen and kind of menu drive through it, which is pretty good things that you need to realize that I don't have here. Oh right here is if you want to be mobile, truly mobile. One of the things that makes the hxomp fantastic and the tonics, they can be powered by a battery. So it gets a little dicey with the Kemper player. It gets really dicey. I use a battery to power my Kemper player, but it is not this one. You have to use a more powerful battery. But anyways so you can battery power these things. One of the things about being mobile is you can take a battery power like this. This will power 10 pedals for 8 to 10 hours straight. So that's fantastic. This is the Sanyo, but there's tons of them. This one I bought. Think of this. This one is almost 10 years old. That's how long I've had this. And it's still working. It said when I bought it it had like 2,000 charges and then it would be tossed. So obviously I haven't recharged it 2,000 times. But I do have the new Daddario, you know, battery powered unit. And I'm using that too. But I'm just saying, so truly mobile man, get, you know, know not even wall warts, not even plugged in the wall. You know, just. You can literally go throw down a rig, plug your guitar into it, give me a line out to something pa, an amp, whatever. So I can see the HX Stomp and the Tonx. What's already scary is the Tonx isn't in this list when the HX Stomp is because it's obviously more money. But MXR M169 carbon copy analog delay. I absolutely love this delay. It's one of my top 10 favorite delay pedals. So to see it being sold used, average price, $89 is a fantastic price. You know, same thing with the atrex stomp at 490. This is where it gets a little tricky. With the 490 line, six raised the price to 599. Then the 649, then they brought it down. It's the companies that are using their products. Like the stock market is driving me nuts. Like, hey, our products now is 599 cool. Now it's 649 because of reasons. Now it's back to 549. So 490. The boss blues driver. $78. I mean, that's an iconic one forever. So it's interesting. The Stryon Iridium. That's nice. That's a great pedal as well. Do I have that one out? Nope, I don't have that one out. I have my dig and I have the sunset out from Stryman. Boss DS1 because it's never going away. The boss DS1 is forever. It will be forever and ever and ever. $46 is an average price. That's interesting. 46 bucks. That's good. 50 bucks. You know, it's funny is I think I told you guys story story. When I was a boss dealer, you had to buy in so many pedals to get the price rate down. And one of the tricks that you do is you could buy bricks of 10. So you'd buy like 20 or 30 or 40 or 50Ds ones because they would count as as units. So if you're buying was like 100 units to get the price down a step or another 50 units to get the price down again. You could throw on a case, essentially two, three cases of the boss DS1s. And what was great about that was you could then blow them out. And we would blow them out for $36. Brand new so 46 bucks used now, huh? Keely Compressor. Plus, that's a great pedal as well. The boss Tu3. I bought one of those this year, but I bought it new for 79 bucks when they were blowing them out at the end of the year. So 64 bucks used on average. So explains these. Some of these things that we're seeing here explain why some of the end of the year, Black Friday pricing for new pedals was so low. So why would Boss drop its typical new price of 109 to 79? Probably because there was too much competition in the used market, so they wanted to move them. It's not necessarily like BOSS is going, oh, we need to screw the used market. They're just like, we're not selling new product and we need to move this through. So, Strymon Big sky reverb for $354 on average. That's really good too, Dunlop. Yeah, the wall pedal. I mean, come on. Crybaby Strymon Time Lane delay. Let's look at the second page. Boss equalizer pedal. A lot of these are just tried and true pedals, you expect? I would expect. I. I would bet 20, 26, 2027, 2028, just like the last couple years. Probably looks like a lot of these pedals because these are the die hards, right? A boss G7. I highly recommend this. I would say this is if you only have one Boss pedal. This is the Boss pedal to have. Tube screamer. Look, some people love the tube screamer, Some people hate the tube screamer. I can tell you, as a content creator, you have to have a tube screamer because at some point you're demoing something that's just designed to have a tube screamer with it. A Marshall, a PV 6505. Or, you know, you're like, oh, I need a tube screamer to use with it, you know, because people get upset if you don't demonstrate it with the tube screamer. BOSS noise suppressor. It's a tried and true noise suppressor. The CS3 compressor sustainer. One of my favorite compressor pedals. The Digitech Drop. I love the Digitech Drop. I got one, but I got rid of it for the new boss. Whatever it's called. The blue one that I bought. I showed you guys a couple podcasts ago. I forget that. You know what? I'll look up today? Hold on a second. All right. Boss Drop. What is it? It's not a harmonizer pedal, right? Yeah. It's the XS1 poly shifter. So I bought a Poly Shifter and a drop pedal. And then I decided I like the Poly Shifter. Some people ask me about that. I gotta tell you, if you have a drop pedal, you know, do you need to sell it and get the Drop Shifter? No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that. But, but if I can pick one, I'm picking the boss. And there's some reasons to it. There's some things I don't like about the boss. I explained when I showed it in the video. It's on the second channel if you want to watch it on the know your channel that I have a video drop versus Poly Shifter. If you watch that video, all you got to know is at the end I end up keeping the Poly Shifter. So whatever I'm talking about, you'll understand my logic of what I didn't like about the Poly Shifter, but why it ultimately won. Okay, then we have the SD1 overdrive. I know. Draw. I sorry. Proko RAT 2. Oh, the EQD plume small signal shredder. Never even heard of this. Is it Earthquaker Devices? That's probably why I don't think I've ever played a single Earthquaker Devices pedal. And the only exception, I would say is the Chase Bliss and Earthquaker Devices. And I'm just saying this apologizing up front. I might have played one of their pedals once, either one or both. Because I received a section of the largest guitar pedal board in the world when Sweetwater and who was that with Sweetwater and Rob Scallen did the biggest guitar pedal board in the world. And they sent me a section of it. They sent certain channels sections of it. And I think I recall one, or if not both, those pedals being on it. But that was my only experience with their pedals. So I'm just telling you I've never experienced your pedals. And sometimes people like some of my friends are like, oh, you should definitely. And some of my friends tell me I'm not missing anything. I don't, I don't know, I just, you know what it is. I don't come across them in the wild. Okay. That's basically what it is from some stuff. Almost every pedal I like, it's cuz I found it one day. The Universal Audio Dream 65. This is a pedal that I wanted really, really bad. I've talked about this for the last two years. This is a pedal I kept trying to pull the trigger on. And then to be honest, at the last minute I, I, I, I, I decided even though I loved it, I Tried it, loved it. I decided to get the Kemper player because it just had more going on. And now I'm. I'm really happy with the Tone King Imperial. But I would say the Tone King Imperial is amazing. I would say the Universal Audio Dream is not as good, in my opinion, to me, for my uses and what I like, but it's not as expensive. So factor that in. Okay, let's. Before we go any further, let's jump screens back to you guys and see what you guys are talking about, which ones you guys like. Okay, let's see. He says, luma. Luma says. Lumator says, hey, I'm a big fan of the Chase Bliss, but they are heavy. Heavy list. Okay, all right, so they're heavy. What else? Where else are you guys gonna say, oh, so a lot of people are suggesting the plumes to try it at some point. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. All right. Okay, that's good. See, suggestions like that are. Now some people are saying they never heard of the plumes. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, Michael said, okay, you did a video. Video on the speaker cranker. So, yeah, that would be a few years ago. And so that would be Chase Bliss. Right? So that's probably where I remember the Chase Bliss. So let's. Speaker cranker. The. I'll tell you a funny story since we're. We're Chase Bliss. Why, look at that. Yep, that's Chase Bliss speaker. No earthquaker devices. My apologies. So that was earthquake your devices. You. Right now you're like, well, if you did a video, Phil, how do you not know? Well, let me tell you a funny story. So a few weeks ago, I was buying guitars for the channel as I do for videos. And I. I'm giving this away right now, but I just thought that would be funny. I. I decided to buy the new or the newest version of the Joe Satcherani guitar. And the reason being not because I want to do a video of the Joe Satirani guitar. I thought, you know what? A lot of guitar players I like are really using sustainiacs. Sustainiacs have come up on the channel a lot in the podcast. Let's get another sustainiac. Let's do a deep dive. I've never done a official geeky stuff of a sustainiac. Let's get into it. Let's do it. So I. I find a guitar. I gotta tell you, it also was an opportunity to work with Ax palace. So I. Guys, Axe palace had one, so I just bought one off their website. X PAL shipped it in a Very fast. Meaning time. Got the guitar, I'm playing it, I'm in love with it. Not the guitar, just the sustainiac. The guitar. You'll have to find out what I think of that in the video. But the Sustainiac, I'm like, I'm loving this. Why don't I own a sustainiac? What is wrong with me? I need a Sustainiac in my life. And so I go, I need to learn more about the Sustainiac. So I type into Google Sustainiac. And I go, how does it work? And guess what? What does Google say? Google says that the most watched video about the Sustainiac is this guy named Phil McKnight. So four years ago on March 28th of 2021, I did a Sustainiac video. And then I watched my video and I went, oh, this is really good information. And I'm like, that's so funny. So the reason I'm telling you that is no, I'm not suffering from any memory loss. I just think what happens is people don't realize after a while you do so much content. You know, the ever ending grinding engine of YouTube that's just constantly makes you do content every week. It's after a while you gotta understand what happens to everyone. Everyone is that you spend. So what people think is you're spending so much time on the product you are, but you're spending so much time editing and doing all this stuff. And then when you get it done, as soon as it launches, you gotta understand as soon as your video goes live, it's done. The Internet doesn't care anymore. YouTube doesn't care anymore. You gotta make another one. So you go to the next one. So it's kind of funny. So. Yeah, so. So that's good. Good to know that I have tried a chase bliss. I did like that pedal. And what's funny is I. I'd have to almost watch that video again to find out what I really, really think. But I remember liking it. I can remember what I don't like. Isn't that funny? I definitely remember when I don't like something. Uh, I just have trouble when it's. In fact, to be honest, if I super love it, I kind of remember it. If I like it, I could, I couldn't tell you five months later if what I thought of it and if I really didn't like it, I could definitely tell you. What for. For years probably. So. Okay. And then they have it broke down by brands. What is this? Why? Oh, okay, they're talking about pedal brands. Hey, let's let's finish this up. So now this section is talking about the best selling pedal brands in 2025 versus 2015. So what has a decade done for us? Well, number one's boss and it used to be boss. Number two, electroharmonics. Number 10 years ago, electro harmonics. Number three, MXR used to be TC electronics. You know what's great about hearing this? Okay, let me just tell you a little bit of this. So TC Electronics drops the spot. This is probably due to two things. One, they haven't been producing a lot of new products. And 10 years ago, 2015, you know, that's when the tone print stuff was kicking. Right after that, you know, I don't remember if it was 2015 but it was definitely within a few years after that. You know, TC was definitely pumping a lot of stuff. But it's funny to me, I kind of feel as a, as a guitar fanatic, TC has not been the TC I love since Behringer bought them. It's not that they make junk. I'm not saying oh the old TC was great and the TC is junk. I just have lost excitement has nothing to do with Behringer. I know it makes sense because I have, you know, opinions of Behringer too. But it's not that. It's just. I just feel like nothing has happened except for Behringer comes out with more stuff. That's kind of how I feel. If I'm missing something, I apologize, but it's just not, you know, nothing, nothing I've seen. Okay, let's go back. So MXR goes to 3, TC loses a spot. TC goes to 4. MXR had gained a spot. Makes sense. Number 5, JHS. JHS. What's weird to me to think of is that JHS was in the top five 10 years ago. I guess if you ask me 10 years ago about JHS, I'd almost say like didn't they just start? I know they've been out for a lot longer than that, but I just think of them as like a really new new product. When I think of 10 years ago pedal companies, you know, obviously I think the mainstays boss Electroharmonics, mxr, tc, Keely, full tone, Digitech, dod but I don't really. And Wampler, but because I kind of think of Wampler earlier on way huge, which is, you know, offshoot, you know of basically MXR at that point. But I think of jhs, I think of some of the other ones like that chase bliss like Earthquake or you know, audio, you know, all that stuff. I think of that as later, but maybe, you know, I'm obviously remembering it wrong. Number six is Stryman. And then it was Digitech. And again Digitech. Well, think of this. Since this digitech is closed and then since come back. So that makes sense that they lose us, lose the list altogether because they were number six. They're not even on the top 10 now. And that makes sense. But they're coming back. They're coming back. You guys don't know. Cortek basically owns Digitech. So that's. If you haven't figured out Cortek does everything, so. Which is why I wanted to learn all I could about cortex, since most likely everything we're buying will probably be Cortec in 10 years. I'm being a little sarcastic, but not a lot sarcastic. Okay, number seven, earthquake or devices. And now earthquaker devices maintain number seven. That's awesome to hear because like I said, I know. I don't think of earthquaker devices or death by audio. I don't know why I associate those two brands. For some reason, I always associate those two brands. I confuse them. So I don't know why. Number eight is Walrus. Walrus with a hard L. Come on, man. Audio. Was Strymon interesting? It's interesting. And Stryman's moved up, so, you know, Strymon was a slow burn for me because the fact I didn't want to buy Strymon for a long time because I was traumatized by Strymon. Since we're telling stories. What? What? Why was I traumatized by Strymon? I cannot remember what the old brand is. What was Strymon before what it was? It was. Watch. What? Hold on a second. All right, let's try that. And if you need damage control. All right, let's talk about damage control. All right. How. Why? It's Strymon, by the way. Don't take this personal. I love you guys. Now I have all. I have your petals. Look, has so many Strymon pedals now. Look, already here, hooked up, plugged in. Lots of Strymon. Lots of Strymon love. Strymon. Look. Lots of Strymon love. Okay? Buy all my Strymon pedals. Okay? However, Strymon pedals before was company called Damage Control. I don't know how connected that is. I don't know the history of it. I'm not. I don't even know if it's just ownership. I don't know what it was, but I just know the damage control pedals was Strymon. And why is that traumatic to me? Well, when I had a store, okay, And I became a Peavey dealer. Peavey, I guess, was the distributor of Damage Control. And Peavey told me that I could not have Peavey unless I bought Damage Control. And Damage Control were giant petals. They were huge. And they had two tubes. They were huge. They look. All of them look like different colors, but they all look like basically the line 6 kidney bean size. Like, they're huge. And this thing is 119 used. They were all at that thing with this back then. We're talking 2,000, whatever. 10, 20. 10. 15 years ago, right? 15 years ago. They were like, 350 bucks then, which was insane. I bought them all. I couldn't sell one to anyone for anything. I couldn't sell them for cost. I couldn't sell them for less than cost. I couldn't include them with a guitar. Like, hey, man, instead of a discounted guitar, how would I give you this $300 pedal? Nah, I'd rather take my 50. I had a guy take a $50 discount instead of the pedal. I was like, okay. So then what happened was Strymon Pops, and I'm like, what's Strymon? And then my friend, who. Who's obviously into worship music and plays in a worship band is like, strymon's the greatest thing ever, man. You need a Strymon. And I'm like, okay. And I look and then I'm like, I go. I talk to a friend, as I do in this industry, and I go, hey, have you heard anything about Strymon? And they go, oh, yes, the guys from Damage Control have turned into Strymon. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. I fell for that once. No, no. Lost thousands of dollars. No more. No mas. No. Right. I know no mas means no more, but I just like the joke. Okay, so uno. Okay, uno mas. So anyways, what am I trying to say? So it took me a while to finally try Strymon, and then I tried a Stryman, and I was like, oh, yeah, this is not Damage Control. And by the way, the damage control pedals were good. I. I plugged into them. I liked them. I just know I couldn't get anybody else to buy one. So Moto plus says repackaging. Save the company. Absolutely. There's no way. No way damage Control survives. No way. No way. Aesthetically, they looked horrible. Sound wise? I thought a lot of them sounded good. They just weren't there. Right? So, okay, so I don't know why. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just had a traumatic moment with you guys. But it was reliving that. Reliving that. Okay, so back to. Back to Strymon. Okay, so strymon6, then earthquaker devices, then we talk about that. Keely. Keely's number nine. Where was Keely before? Has Keely Keely? This is so weird to me. This is why I don't understand the pedal market. I think Keely. I think Keely. I think Keely's, you know, okay, I would put Keely, but okay, screw this market. I put Keely above TC Electronics in a second. I put Keely above ghs. Jhs. Look, when it comes to jhs, when it comes to Josh Scott, is he. Is he smart? Absolutely. Is he great at marketing and building stuff? Sure. Is he the dominant force of probably pedal influencerism? Sure. Pedals, sure. Great. Everything's great. Keely, I think Akili is being higher. I bet you Josh Scott would agree with that, that Keely is higher up in stature. But what's crazy is I don't know what best pedal brands is, is this sales. Because I would imagine Keely sales more too. So it's kind of weird. So just my thoughts, I'm just saying. Anyways, number 10 was DigiTech, used to be Ibanez. Yeah. I would imagine Ibanez can only sell so many tube screamers and then, you know, it's everything chips at you. You know, you can get caught. You know, they say, what is it? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Yeah, but imitation also puts you out of business. So I think Ibanez has been copied so much on the pedal front that, you know, there's so many versions of a. Of a tube screamer. And really Ibanez never really had anything really bigger than that. All its other pedals were accoutrements. In other words, they did okay. You know, as a, you know, you go in and you go, maybe I'll get another Ibanez pedal. Cause I have this one. But ultimately you kind of stick with the tube screamers. Number 11, Dunlop used to be line six. I see that number 12 is line six. I don't even think a line six is a pedal company. I don't even know why. I don't even know. I think of the HX1. I love the HX, I guess the, the Helix HX Stomp. But I think it's a modeler. But I guess it's a pedal. But then isn't a modeler Peddler you see how wacky this is? I bet you. I bet you right now somebody's screaming at a screen at me because that's how the pedal guys get. They get really intense going. Phil, you don't understand the difference between a modeler and a pedal. It's a box that does a sound on the floor. Why isn't a model or a pedal? Isn't. Isn't an axe effects like a big pedal? Isn't the Helix Stadium? Isn't that just. Isn't that just a big paddle like. So I think of the HX HX Stomp. It's a pedal. It's just a big pedal. I don't. So why is the HX Stomp a pedal? But yet the other, bigger FX pedal isn't a pedal. That's a modeler. I don't really understand some of the logic here, but that being said, I don't really consider line 6 a a pedal company for the most part because they only have a few pedals. But maybe they sell those pedals. Really? What? As you know, HX1 is probably one of my favorite pedals. So maybe that's the point. They replaced Dunlop. Ibanez goes to 13. Exotic. I'm a huge Exotic fan, of course, but Exotic has got a couple of things that I just love. Couple pedals. I Love Wampa's number 14. Keely used to be number 14. Well, that makes sense that Keely moved up because Keely should have never been 14. Keely should have been way higher. So Universal Audio. Okay, I can see. I would say UA used to be 15 or is 15. And it used to be Catlin Bread. Catlin Bread's another one. See, this is another brand that like throws me off. It's Catlin brand Earthquaker devices. Chaseless. No, nothing wrong. I, I like, you know, I like. I like pedals, man. It's not that. It's not that hard. But I could sometimes for some reason I get confused with the brandings and I don't know why that is. Anyways, so Catelyn bread is now 15. No, used to be 15. Now they're 17. So they lost some, some, Some there whoppers come up. That makes sense. He's producing a lot of different products. Behringer's 18 more used to be 18. So more is no longer on this list. Interesting. So that would be more is when 2015 is what I would say the big cheap pedals hit the market. Right. I think we're taking too long on this list. I would Definitely say the big pedals. The big cheap pedals hit. In other words, like, all of a sudden you could get $99, $69, $25 pedals like crazy. Fender number is now 25. I would again shocked to see that Fender is now on the list. Um, they have some good pedals. I've reviewed some of them. I really like them. But I would think they would have fallen back, not gained up. But that's okay. Jo yo used to be. Jo yo is another pedal. Same thing. Joy, look at this. This is, to me is this. This Moore and Joyo being on the list in 2015, but not in 2025. I think the main reason, even though I think More and Joyo make fantastic Moore More. That's how you say it. More. Moore is, by the way, if you don't know, it's really interesting. Fun fact. More is Chinese for magical ear. Anyways, JoJo, I really like Joe yo too, but Jo yo and More, I think were the. When they popped in 2015, around that time, 14, 13, they were the king of, like, how, oh, how could they do this so cheap. Now everybody has something so cheap. It just doesn't matter. Exotic is now number 20. So they were 13. Exotics fell back. Okay, and then Z Vex, dude, Zvex. That makes total sense that they were a hot thing in 2015. Again, this is how I piss off everybody. So to say it, I love zvex. I have a zvex pedal. Zvex was definitely, like, one of the first boutique pedals I ever remember getting or seeing. Like, hand painted, like, whoa, what is this? It's a boutique pedal. What's a boutique pedal? Why I'm gonna piss everybody off is like, I couldn't tell you if ZFX is still in business. I assume they are. And I'm sure they're doing great. I'm sure, like, they're a hot thing, but as I'm a fan of their product, but I haven't actually bought one in a decade, so. Or seen them. Yeah, Zvex says fell off hard. Yeah, I just don't see them. In fact, I was looking at pedals all Black Friday, not only to show you gear of the week, but also to look at stuff for me. And I bought a bunch of pedals, but I didn't see a Zvex anywhere. I looked. So again, if you told me they're not around, I'd be like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And if you told me they're doing great, I'd be like, well, that makes sense too, because I don't. I'm not up to date with the pedal market daily, so that's my. My thing, so. Interesting. Not exactly. Not exactly what I would picture if I would think I saw. So. So, you know, pedals companies are doing great. I didn't think. Some of them, I thought, okay. I didn't really see it coming. So it's fun. I'm sure I'll get blasted into the universe for talking about this because they, like, said they get mad every time you talk about them and you don't. They're really intense dudes. Okay, let's. Let's do this. Let's see what you guys want to talk about, and then we'll go to the next subject. Let's look at some questions. We'll kind of change it up a little bit. This one was grabbed from Amanda. Says. Says, I'm not gonna give that one. It's an advice. It's. It's not something I specialize in, so I'm not gonna talk about it. Let's see. Okay. All right, here's a guitar question, Phil. How are. How different are PRs semi hollow bodies from something like a Gibson semi hollow? They're not even the same. They're totally different construction. ES 385 versus the PRS Hollow body. So, first of all, totally different construction in the concept. Okay, so we're talking about PRs core hollow bodies, not the SEs. Unless you're talking about the brand new SE that just came out this year. Otherwise, we're not comparing SES PRSSE hollow bodies. They would be constructed exactly like how Ibanez or Washburn or Epiphone or Gibson or anybody who's doing a laminate constructed instrument is being made. A PRS hollow body is a carved top and back. And what that means, they take a solid piece of wood and they carve out the top like a bowl, Right? So it's like carved out. And then they take another solid piece of wood and they carve that out like a bowl. And then they. They take another solid piece of wood and they carve out the center out of it. And then they glue it all together and it's a. And that's why it's more expensive. First of all, it's a lot lighter. Collings does that. I think Eastman does that as well. There are a few brands who do that as well. Do a full hollow body carved top and back. Is there superiority to that? I couldn't tell you for sure. I couldn't say like, oh, the tone wise is superior or wow, I don't think like that in that regard. Here's a PRS hollow body. This is a carved top and back instrument. And then this is the new SE that's also now new carved back and top and back for 2025. So that they're just differently constructed. So. So the answer is they are very different in that construction process. The process is done when we talk about bent top back guitars. Kind of like I'm now pointing at this Hagstrom body, which is constructed like a Gibson ES335 or you know, an Ibanez or whatever. They take, they take sheets of, of essentially like maple. They can use their woods, but a lot of times it can be maple. They glue them together like plywood and they essentially bend them. They wet them and bend them, sometimes steam them, different ways of bending them, constructing them. I'm not obviously I've never built a hollow body. I've built a lot of things not a hollow body. And they form them and that's how they get the shape. And so like I said, a carved hollow body is. Like I said, it's all carved out. So it's totally different. I've been told, which makes sense, that it's more expensive to do it carved. My guess is because one, it probably takes a little bit more time, two, time being time, not in time to construct it, but in man hours to do it also probably throws away more wood. And then of course, you have to use better quality of wood. In other words, you're using solid pieces and not ply. If you want to pay for that, that's fine, but I can't tell you like, wow, you haven't experienced life until you've gone full, you know, carved hollow guitar, you know, it's just not. So that's, that's the thing this call, this One is from Quetzal996, says, hey, what's that PRS looking thing next to your Nuno? Well, ironically, that is a prs, but that's probably not what you're talking about because you probably know that's prs. That's a PRS hollow body two single cut. They no longer make that. I know that's what you're not asking, but I'm giving you more than what you're asking. Let me move my mic stand a little bit. So right here, what I'm pointing at, everybody is up here as hollow body, two single cut. They don't make those anymore. Does it make it collectible? No, but you can't get one anymore. There's the Nunu he's talking about next. That is a nags. So that is a NAGS Sovereign. Sovereign. I'm hoping I'm saying it correctly. What is a nag? Sovereign nags. Joe Nags was the main builder at PRS who did the. The private stock stuff. And then eventually him and Peter Wolf broke off and become Nags. And so Nags is a PRS esque offshoot of PRS from 2x PRS employees that make essentially more expensive guitars than PRS, if you can imagine such a thing. That's what they do. So if you think PRS's are pricey, you should go look at a nags because it's more pricey. You'll be like, wow, it's more pricey. Now, I'm not saying PRS doesn't have guitars that are expensive as navs. Nags, but NAGS are pricey. If you want to watch the full interview of me interviewing Joe Nags and Peter Wolf, it's on the Know youw Gear channel. And you can watch the interview. We talk about that, even see Peter Wolf rile up some feathers in the industry for sure, with some comments. I still like, look back and think about how people. I got screamed at by that interview by people in this industry. How could you publish what he said? How could you do that? I don't know, because he said it. Anyways. Okay, what are we gonna do now? I know what we're gonna do. Not that one, this one. And now it's time for Gear of the week. Okay, now it's time for gear of the week. Gear of the week. Yay. We need clapping. Okay, so this week there. It's a week, essentially the week before, the week before Christmas. Nobody's putting out no new gear. Are you kidding? What for? You can't get it in time for Christmas. People aren't gonna buying. There's not a whole lot of releases this week. And if there was, they weren't super exciting. Oh, there was one. There was one. It might have gotten on somebody's radar. It was the new John Mayer Neural dsp. Let me just go up. Pull it up. John Mayer. I'm sure, I'm sure You've already watched 50 Hot Takes on this. And now you're gonna watch my hot take on it because I have a different one. And that's with, oh, look, it got dark. And that's with the fact that I don't think I heard anybody talk about this. And I thought it was strange and I'm just. This is my observation. Okay, so first thing. So this is it. Neural enter the chance to win the plugin. Always a pop up. So John Mayer did the archetype X John Mayer X John Mayer iconic tone. So what it is, is. I don't want to watch the full video. Let's look at the overview. What it is, is you can get all of John Mayer's most important, famous, exciting, amazing amplifiers in a plugin. For those of you that don't know what plugins are, essentially they are like a multiprocessor, but for your computer you can. Not yet, I guess not yet. But you'll event can load these. You can purchase them and load them into like a quad cortex or something like that. Right? But essentially right now, this for the computer. Now what is this? This is. They capture John Mayer's most iconic amps. His. His amazing sound. They capture it, his effects, and then you buy it for $169 unless you get them on sale. There's sometimes you can get deals on these. My understanding is they don't give deals for the first 90 days. You buy it, you put it on your computer, you can use it, you plug, you play just like what you heard me doing with the Tone King Imperial through my monitors. You get John Mayer's amazing tone through the monitors. And of course, I watched the video like a lot of you, and it was amazing because obviously, God, what is weird here, Go here. Okay. What is. What is most likely, of course, is. I'm sure it sounds fantastic. They're really good. The technology is really good at capturing the sound. And of course, John Mirror's fantastic. What do you get? Let me go back. You're gonna get his. His. Here, let's pull this. What do you get? Let's tell you exactly instead of pictures. Cause I don't want to read the ad copy. I want to look. Okay, so what is this? This is John Mayer's 1964 Fender vibro verb. It's a vintage American amp with a warm, cleans, dynamic response. We know what it is. What's the next amp you get in this pack? You're gonna get his Dumble. You're gonna get the still string Singer dumble, which is interesting because the steel String Singer is a really loud, clean amp. Doesn't really overdrive at all, but very clean. So it's really good for pedals. Really good on stage. Why I'm saying this really strange thing is someone who's played either steelstrings Singer copies really good ones, four or $5,000 copies and played an original one. My take on them is they're really loud, clean headrooms, like a Fender twin, but on, but bigger. So really good for on stage. I don't know why you would specifically want that in a. In a plugin, you know, for a clean tone. But. But may. I don't know. He's John Mary. He's smarter than me for tone wise. Next, you get a copy of his signature T Rock that I believe they don't make anymore. As far as I know, they don't make this T Rock anymore. And it wasn't even his. And I think he was with two Rock when T Rock was not the two Rock that it is now. But again, I'm just kind of glazing over this. It's a two rock. Two rock prototype, signature number 83. So even a special one. It's a special number 83 because it was the. They made 82 prototypes. And they also. They weren't as good as number 83. Do you guys think? Yeah, like, could you imagine if they made them 82 prototypes? I'm just like, they're not. They didn't do it. Okay, so it's custom two Rock model tailored. Here's what's interesting about this. So that's the rig. You can play each one. You can play them all together in a combined rig like he has and sound amazing. And then add effects. There's ton effects that comes with it too. It's great. Look at this. All this stuff. 170 bucks. That's a. That's a euro. I don't know what that is. Us, let's say $150. Maybe you can get it on a discount and you can get it for a little bit less. And look, it's the price of a pedal. You get the effects. So you guys are now. It's really bright. Some of you guys are probably like, I don't want to pay 150 bucks for a software. I get it. You know, some of us are still old enough to think that software is not tangible. It's like it's not real. But of course, you could record an album with it. So it's real, in my opinion. So what's my take on this? Was this a big fu to PRS amps? Like, it's a weird take. I have. Okay, weird. So I got to. I've. I got to see John Mayer. I've seen him live three times, but I got to see him. In fact, that's how I met Mary Spender was. I went to a private PRS event. Okay, why? I remember it. It was right at the beginning of my YouTube career. It was the first time anyone had invited me to anything right on YouTube. Somebody's like, hey, Phil, come to this private event. I'm like, private event? Why? And they go, because you're a YouTuber. And I'm like, I am. And they said, you're an influencer. I'm like, that's me. And I got to see John Mayer. And Mary Spinner was there and she asked the first question at the event. We were in this room. Everybody was dying to get in the room. We were in the room packed. And John Muir speaks. And John Muir tells us that he's done looking searching for unicorns. He just wants, you know, an amp that he can get anywhere. And it's amazing. It's a very common speech we hear. I just want to be able to walk into any guitar center and get the guitar or the amp or the pedal that I play. Like you guys walk in. I wish musicians would stop using that. It's a thing. It's. It's. Look, I'm. I'm a huge John Mirror fan. My amp that I have here, my Amplified Nation amp, this is literally because I. It's the recreation of like a John Mirror tone, you know, it's a dumbbell sound. This is how I get my John Mirror sound. I'm a huge John Mirror fan. Like, massive. Like I said, seen it three times, have every album, like every middle aged dude. I love John Mayer. So anyways, why this is funny is he got the new PRS amp. They made him the PRS amp. It was the greatest amp ever. It wasn't like six grand. I was like, wow, he got the great amp. Six grand, and now he could walk into. He didn't say this, by the way. He might walk in a guitar center and get it. It's just he was saying he wanted something obtainable, you know, instead of the Unobtainium. And then so I saw the architect thing and I'm like, oh, they sampled all of his rigs and I'm like, oh, well, they must have grabbed the most. The best amp he's ever played, which is the prs. And so I watched it like you guys did, and I go, of course. It's amazing. And he's charismatic. Okay, so first of all, he's just. He's just really good. He's first of all, not a great play. Not only a great player, but very charismatic. Right so you just. You're kind of like, ah, he's got. I know I'm gonna need whatever he says, right? And then I was like, where's the. Where's the John Mayer PRS amp? Why don't I get a Nero? Why don't I get a model of that? Why don't I get the. The plugin of that? I'm like, it didn't rate. What happened to the. Was the. He said I was there. He said it was going to be. It's the. He doesn't have to chase unicorns anymore. Literally. He's given us unicorns, but not the PRS amp. So is the PRSM not that good? Did it not rate? By the way, I'm giving. I'm. I'm getting. Making a little light of this. But I. I'm telling you 100. This is what I thought the whole time I was watching the video. I thought. I'm like. I was literally like. I thought. I guess he. I guess the PRS thing's over. In fact, for a second I was like, is he back with two Rock? Am I And is he. Look at this. There's a smart part of me is like, are they gonna about to announce he's back with two Rock? Now don't get me wrong. I don't think he doesn't not love his PRS guitar. I think he's in love with that guitar. And I think that relationships is bought is bound for a long time, if not forever. But the amp thing, which I always felt was. Here's why it's problematic for me. I've always felt like in my opinion, and this is my opinion, and I lose the friends I lose when I say this stuff. It's whatever. I really feel that the John Mayor PRS guitar relationship is. Is genuine, honest. I believe he is congruent. He. He walks the walk, he talks to talk. He. He loves the. The Silver sky guitar. I feel that comes across. I think John Muir seems to like certain things and he uses them. And I believe him. I've never really believed he liked the pier as am. I don't know why. I just never thought he did. I thought, oh yeah, he likes. I think he likes Paul. I think he likes the company. Here's why I'm saying this. I'm in that same situation sometimes. I know I'm not John Mayer. That's not the point. My point is sometimes I love the owner of a company, but I don't love the product. Sometimes I love the product. I don't love the owner of the company or the employees. And I'm just a guy in my bedroom on YouTube. So you can imagine, if you're an artist, I'm sure you amplify that problem. Right? But what I'm saying is I always. I don't know why. I have no inside knowledge. There's no secret that has been whispered in my ear. Like, John Mayer secretly doesn't like those amps. Nothing like that. I just always felt like, oh, I don't think he really loves those amps as much as he says. And it's not like I think he's lying to sell out for money. I just kind of like, maybe he's trying to talk himself into it and. Because here's what happens. Maybe my gut said he liked Fender, but he didn't like the Fender arrangement for a lot of reasons. And then, so he leaves Fender, and then he likes Paul, and he likes the purest guys because they're very likable. They care. They're passionate about guitars, and they made him a great guitar, and that's easy. And then I think he was happy or somewhat happy. Seems like he liked his two rock sound, but he's kind of realized he's just going to play his Dumbles. And so, I don't know, I think he gave it a try with, with PRs, and I don't think the amp took. Now, there's also another part of this which is simple. He's also a marketing genius and he's a smart businessman. And he's probably like, no one's going to buy $160 plugin of a PRS amp. Like, nobody, right? He's like. He's like, look, Paul, you can make a fake Dumble all you want, but no one's buying a plugin of it. So let's. Let's clone the real thing, the real dumble. And that could be that too. But that's my take on it. It's not a negative take. I think, first of all, I love plugins. I love this idea. There are so many of us that will eventually evolve to playing music on a computer. That's where I think a lot of us go. As you age, you're not, you know, you're not. You're not hitting the club every week, playing gigs. You know, you're. You're playing at home more. If you're a hobbyist, you're a hobbyist. It makes sense, you know, that you don't need. You don't need an expensive amp in a bedroom. It's almost borderline silly. If you can afford to do it and you so choose to do that with the money that you've made, working hard for yourself, do it. It's your money. Enjoy it. However, we're not talking about joy. We're talking about need. Joy, do whatever you think. What but need wise, do you need an amp that you barely can turn on the volume past one in your room? No. So the fact that you could have that plus unobtainium. I mean, John Mayer's rigs on Obtainium. Think about this. How many of us could even claim that we even heard it in the same room or heard it at all? Now, there's, of course, a recreation of it on the computer that's it's good enough to where John Mayer is saying it's good enough. And I would assume whatever he's making on this, which I'm sure is very lucrative, because we already know this is the future for income. Everyone wants a plugin or a lesson course or a digital product. A digital product. Everybody needs and wants a digital product. If there's one thing that I'm sick of hearing from companies that I have to talk to behind the scenes when I talk to them is digital products. So many companies are like, oh, we're looking into digital product. Oh, we're gonna make a digital product. Oh, we're getting a digital product. Because digital products don't get tariffs. Digital products are easy to ship. They're easy to deal with customer service issues because you're like, what is it wrong with it? You didn't download it, right? It's probably user error. It's your fault. Go away. No, I'm just saying you don't have to take returns on it as much. And if you do, it's, it's easy to do. It's a higher margin of profit for, for, for what you're doing, obviously has a lot of upfront costs, but then those upfront design costs slowly go away over time. So digital product is definitely. Yeah, somebody says dirt Razor, access. Mailbox money, dude. Mailbox money. That's what I see everyone focused on, for sure. Obviously, we talked, we, you know, I talked smack about the, the, the new boss pedal because again, it's kind of trying to take a physical product and make it a digital product again, everybody trying to turn something into a digital product. Think about how many companies are just trying to attach an app that doesn't need to be there so they could charge you for the app. I mean, it's the same kind of concept. However, in this case, I think it's cool. Why? Because I think that if I didn't have the opportunity to own certain products like this. Look, this Imperial is amazing. I told you about the pedal. $600. I mean, and it's essentially, think about what I'm doing. I'm plugging in this two preamp pedal, which is 600 that's going into this interface that I have to have. So you have to have the interface for this pedal to work, to go into the computer. I have to have the computer. You could argue why even have this pedal. Why not just have, you know, John Mears plugin and just having the. I could plug in right now and perform it for you, you know, the same way. It would just be in my software. So for a fraction of the price. Yeah. I don't get to resell it, but I also don't get to lose my ass on it too, because I saw a lot of people complaining about the price point of it. Like, oh, for 150 bucks, I could buy this. Yeah, I get it. However, like, this pedal is $600. If you sell it used, you're getting 300. You. You. You essentially pay 300 to. To use this for a time where his unit. You could pay 150 bucks and essentially have it forever. That's just some thoughts. So basically, that's my way of arguing both sides of that coin is what I'm trying to say is. Because there's some things that I like and don't like about it, but the main thing I talk about is, like, I thought it was a weird choice to not have any of the. Have his signature PRS on his signature plugin. And what's funny is, as much as I said, you know, he's got the, you know, the exotic 2 rock that he had in this, you know, his real dumble and stuff in this vintage Fender. You know, you can't even. They don't even make his signature amp from PRS anymore. Well, I don't know what they go for. Can we look. Does anyone. Can anyone look that up while I'm looking up John Mayer? Are they worth anything? Mayor? PRS amp. Okay, Come on. Reverb. Is there one on reverb? No listings on Reverb. What about sold? Any sold ones on Reverb? New result? No sold ones on. What show more pickup. Pickup options. Years buying options. I don't see completed sales. Is anyone seeing this? Okay. PRSjmod 100 signature amp. Let's try a different search. Yeah, none for Sale filter it, show more. I can't find a. I can't find any, any for sale or that had recently sold. So, so basically that's my way of saying it was $6,000 new and you can't find one. Now they could have done a. That would be a good plugin because yeah, Mac 57 Music has one sold for 6K, right? It's a $6,000. It's, that's, that's a very expensive amp. And again, very few people have played one or heard one. So it's. We like said I thought it was weird. Now, of course, could they do another plugin with him and maybe they just wanted to wow it. Pow it. Like I said again, you know, I'm being a little sarcastic and all this, but ultimately I'm just telling you the takeaway. I thought. I just, I just remember when I, I, I was really impressed with his speech that day about how, yeah, I'm done chasing unicorns. I just want an amp that it's obtainable and I can get. I'm like, okay, that's cool, man. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. So it's funny. Okay, let's, let's go on to what you guys want to talk about next. Okay, so this is from Amanda. Grab this question. This one is I got into guitar again this year and I have my Ibanez Geo GSA 60. It's a 2005. Do you think it's worth trying to upgrade or buying a new, new or used something around $500? If so, what. Okay, so first of all, two, two ways to approach. This is super easy. One, absolutely. You can buy an amazing guitar for $500 now. So there's just. And there's no Ibanez Geo GSA 60 that's ever going to be in the league of anything you can buy right now. If you do some smart shopping, that's $500. I mean guitars for $500. You could buy a guitar that's a lifetime perfect professional grade instrument. $500 now probably used. But even new, you can find some really, really interesting instruments. The, the, the math, the way I would. The math, the way I would think of maybe keeping the Geo GSA is if you want to get the experience or knowledge from upgrading it. Absolutely. Would not take it to your local tech and pay them a rate and put all the new parts in it and try to turn, you know, there's a sort of like polishing a turd. I would not fix it up that way. But if you want to put some time into it. You will get an education out of what you learn from doing that. And that's really interesting. Or if you want to learn or if you enjoy working on things, that's the, that's the benefit. However, if you just want to play guitar because you're back to guitar again and you don't want to deal with all this crap because, you know, look, not everyone's wanting, not everybody wants to be the roadie. They just want to be the rock star. Right? If you don't want to be the roadie, you want to be the rock star. I would say tread that in 500 bucks, get yourself something really good. Pick what you like. There is definitely $500 used. You could find something that is out there, perfect instrument, no problems, and I would move on. But again, if you want to be more of the roadie, then maybe work on it and learn something too. Next, what do we have? It says, hey, is there a safe way to remove finish from a quilted top? Okay. I believe the top is very thin. Okay, so you're talking about a laminate top. That's a different thing. Because a quilted top, like a solid top, would be a quarter of an inch to an eighth of inch thick, most likely a quarter inch thick. Unless it's a PRS because it's going to be a half inch thick to quarter inch thick. Because they kind of, they. I don't know if you guys know this. PRs takes their tops as a half inch and then they cut them at an angle and flip them like this, like a butterfly out. And so they're, they're half inch in the center and quarter inch on the side. It's a little fun fact for a prs, but most other companies can be a quarter inch if it's not an actual top. Quarter inch top. And you have a veneer which is going to be super thin. I mean, as thin as a piece of paper. Yes. You could tear through, burn through that easy. Most likely though, if you have a, if you have a laminate top, you most also have a, most likely have a polyurethane coated finish which is going to be thick and hard. So you're going to sand it through that like crazy. A lot of plastic smell. It's going to smell like the pool section at Walmart, like pool toys. You're going to be standing through that stuff and then, yeah, you can accidentally burn through the top because it's so thin, you have to be wary of it. So you don't want to Make a mistake. Well, then what you have to do is, is just pay attention. You'll know, you'll. I mean, look, there are people at the factories. There's people who do this for a living, like Nathan, like my buddy Nathan. And even he doesn't want to do stuff like that because of what you're talking about, because he can easily burn through something and ruin it. Because once you sand through that top, then you're going to have a spot and you're going to be looking at the wood that's underneath, which, you know, like a mahogany or something. So it's not the, not the best thing to do. You know, somebody says wear a mask. I absolutely wear a mask. Make sure it's a ventilated area and wear a mask and eye protection, everything. Keep all that stuff away from you. But you can look at chemicals that help you remove the finish and try to remove the finish chemically. So you might want to look into that. I would suggest that maybe over again use protective equipment. You know, find some, some people on YouTube don't necessarily. When you. Here's what happens when people ask me a lot of finish questions and I always think it's funny because they connect finishes to guitars. And you have to understand, most finish workers I know in the guitar industry can't build a guitar to save their ass. They do finish work. They could do finish work on cabinets or furniture or guitars. They just know finishes and wood. I don't know finishes in wood. I can fix guitars. So this is what I'm saying. When you go out there looking, don't necessarily look for a guitar authority of repair or manufacturing or building, like a luthier, you know, don't go to their websites or their YouTube channel as much. Try to find finish experts, people who do woodworking finish. And, and then they're, they're gonna, they're gonna be more helpful for sure for getting that insight. It's where I would go if I had, if I had the, a project like yours and I'm like, oh, I gotta remove this finish off. The first thing I'm doing is searching online for somebody who does finish work or somebody who refinishes, more importantly, refinishes wood to give me some insights on how to remove. The best way to remove the polyurethane finish off a, off a piece. At that point, we're not even talking about a guitar anymore. It's not a guitar, it's just wood. We just need to get the finish off the wood. So. Crazy blade 15 because there was 14 other crazy blades before him. Says, hey, Phil, what's the humidity at the guitar factory? I think it should be much lower. It depends. So I. I think, like, Taylor runs 60 humidity in their factory. Different factories run different humidity levels, for sure. Some factories don't do anything. Most factories, though, are climate controlled. Interestingly enough, the. The Cortech factory doesn't really have climate control because it's in a tropical climate. So it's just humid and hot and the bays are open, which is a very weird experience because if you've been in the United States, the OSHA guys, they kind of make these factories, like, seal up. You, you know, like, everything's sealed tight, Everything gets filtered. Some of the air that goes in the Fender factory in California has to come out cleaner than it went in. So. So that's how that works. Where Obviously I. Indonesia didn't have like a. An OSHA obviously like that, because we would walk right in. If you saw the. If look, if you see the footage, it's out there. No one was hiding it from you. If you watch me walk in, I'm just walking into a giant bay. Doors are open, and you just walk in the factory. If you see my other factory tours and every one of them is like, see me go inside the factories because they're climate controlled in every way. Even so, you know, the Sweetwater warehouse is totally climate controlled where they control the humidity and the temperature. Most guitar factories are climate controlled for sure, with not only moisture, but temperature. They have a consistent temperature. They keep things at. I think I'm doing off memory. And if I'm wrong, I apologize. I'm pretty sure Sweetwaters is like 50 or 60% humidity and 72 degrees. And then what Sweetwater decided to do as a choice, even though the building is 500,000 square feet, that is exact. And that only a portion of that warehouse is guitars. So I want to say 25, 35%. So it's not the majority of that fact of the warehouse. The entire factory is climate controlled with humidity and temperature. And the reason being is in case, like, busy season, like Christmas, they have to take in even more guitar inventory. They can put it anywhere in the factory they want. Or if they have to have an overflow of employees working in areas they don't have to worry about it. Plus, they said it's better for the employees because that way all the employees work in the same environment, which is a pretty nice environment. 60% humidity is 72 degrees. It's pretty nice. So. But yes, most guitar Factories that I've been to are. Are keeping a climate and climate control. In other words, temperature and humidity. A factory like Warwick was off the charts. They're using like Mr. Systems throughout the. Throughout the building. And you'd be walking and all of a sudden it's like mist would come down on you. Like, what is going on? And that's how they keep mist. They keep misting in the air. You know, there's all kinds of stuff. Because. Because at. At Warwick, the problem in Germany was it gets so cold in the winter that the air is so dry in the facility. That's why they have it that way. So Morton Guitar says, hey, Phil, does Court make Harley Benton? Did you see any in the. There was no Harley Bitten that I saw at the Cortex factory. So if I looked at a Harley Bitten serial number, I could tell you if it was Court at all anyways. But no, I don't believe so. Keep in mind, Court's not the only factory in Indonesia. There's a bunch. So they're just the biggest. Okay, let's see. Okay, let's go to the. Oh, next one. Let's do this one. Just gonna keep jumping screens. Perfect. Time to drink some water. All right. Hunter wants to know. Hey, Phil, can you speak on expensive custom shop value, an investment? They're not investments, man. They're horrible money dumps. Looking at an Ariel, I must say. Pawson guitar. I don't know. P O S a N. I don't know. Strat 6. It's $6,000. It's crazy. He goes, do you think. Think the value will hold over time? No, absolutely not. You buy it because you love it. You buy it because you have money, because what else are you going to do with your money? You buy a custom shop because what else are you going to do with your money? You buy. Was it. You buy a sports car. Look, I'm not. I'm not rich by any means, so I can tell you, but I have rich friends. And I know some of my rich friends, they buy Ferraris. And literally I always thought it was like a big money dump. And they're like, no, these are. They make money on their Ferraris. I was like, what? I'm like, yeah, they buy a. Like it's a waiting list and they get a Ferrari and then I guess they drive it for like a year and then they sell it for more money than they paid. And they were telling me this. I was like, what? This is crazy. I just thought, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong. I Guess they're a monster to upkeep and stuff. I, again I'm not versed but what I can tell you is custom shop instruments, you know, private stock, PRSS custom shop, Fenders, high end Luthery guitars, you know, Luther guitars, Gibson Custom shop. All this stuff is going to be high price and it's going to, it's, it's not going to hold money as well as a production instrument by a, by a powerful brand. The point is not about, you know, making money on your guitar or break even. The point is, is when you approach a custom instrument, whether that be, you know, the brand, you're talking about another brand. You know, there's a, there's a lot of like Nick, Nick, Nick Uber Huber. Nick Huber nags, right? And those are known ones and there's unknown ones, right? When you approach a custom builder, when you approach a custom guitar, maybe having a custom keys all made, if you don't approach it with the idea that this could lose a lot of money. If you're not okay with that, you probably should stay away from it. You, you know, you, you don't know if you're gonna get, you know what you want when you do custom. You don't know how it's gonna feel. You don't, just don't know. Okay? They can be the best builder in the world, but guitars are so personal that it can be the strangest thing that makes you love or not love a guitar. And, and so that's why I caution you. Same with the Fender Custom shop. Gibson Custom Shop prs Private stock. You buy that stuff because you have the money to do it. And to you it's probably no different than buying, you know, whatever it is that the majority of us are comfortable buying. I, I bought those guitars. I do everything as kind of like look, I got, I got in this weird gig where I am on Friday nights and I'm. And you guys are talking to me and I'm talking back and you know, I've worked really hard for these years to not just pull stuff from my ass to throw at you guys, you know. Oh yeah, why don't you do that? I try to be versed in it. I'm not smart enough to give you smart advice, but I can live and give you experience advice like hey, this is what happened to me. I bought, I bought them all. I bought a custom shop Fender. I bought a custom shop Kiss Gibson. I bought, you know, the Nags's. I bought all these guitars, okay, for this, for the sake of education for the channel. Look, I know it's a benefit to me sometimes, but every single one of them, you're never getting anything close to what you paid for it. They're great guitars, and if it's what you want, you should do it. But I'm telling you, you better go into it going. So if you're buying a guitar for $6,000, most likely you're going to lose a big chunk of that if you decide to get rid of it. If you don't love it so you just. And if you. That scares you, you don't need to buy it. There's no. There is no guitar that I have played that is 4, 5, 6, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000. And I'm. I'm telling you this very reason, because some of you are like, what about 1, $2,000? No, listen to me. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, $12,000. No guitar I've played that. I was like, man, all these peasants out there, what are they missing? They're missing out. No one's missing out. The. I had a theory when I started this podcast. I used to tell you my theory. That was a theory. I'm telling you now. It's my experience. My theory was custom guitars are about being able to tell people, you're the only one with it. It's more of a status than it is a physical need of perfection of the instrument. You can get a perfect instrument at a fraction of those prices. Perfect. First of all, if you watch all the deep dives, you know that perfect is almost impossible. I have a guitar. I have a guitar video that comes out next month. The guitar is $8200. It's an iconic instrument everybody loves. I could not keep it in tune for the first week. Is it a great guitar now? Yeah. After a couple adjustments, I already knew when I was making the video, you guys are going to go $8,000 and it won't stay in tune. Yeah, because it's a guitar. Some guitars are perfect out of the box. Some guitars are not. More, most likely cheaper guitars will. You'll discover more defects with cheaper guitars than expensive guitars. But to say that expensive guitars won't have defects or that they're perfect is an impossible situation and an impossible mindset. So back to your question. My answer to you is, if you have the money and you want to buy it, enjoy it. If you are concerned about the money, I would caution you to stay away from it. You will not. You know, I'm not saying you won't get it and go, phil was wrong. This is the greatest guitar ever. I'm saying that there is a likelihood that it won't be the greatest guitar ever. There's no guarantee in it. So I don't know. There you go. I don't know. Somebody's asked me a question. I don't know the answer. Okay. Yeah. Alex says, hey, about a Gibson R9 used from Chicago Music Exchange. Practically new. Yeah, used is a great way to pick up a high end instrument because of the fact that you can save a little money. But most more importantly if you decide it's not for you, you know, the, the, the pain is reduced when you don't get all your money back. So something to think about there. The doctor says, what is this? Okay, so I think, I think I'm. I'm reading this. Okay, so a bean recipe. Okay, I'm trying to read it correctly. So he's saying a bean recipe video. So a recipe on like beans, like maybe like bean soup or just whatever beans from a food magazine on YouTube said had comments saying that's a recession indicator. In other words, people buying a lot of beans and making bean soup is a recession indicator. The comments saying recession indicator. Anything similar with guitars to look for. In other words, are there keys in the guitar? Is there cues? Cues? Are there things that indicate recession in the guitar market? I'm sure there's recession indicators anywhere, you know, everywhere and anywhere. What I will tell you is if I. If you're asking me, and this is probably the most important part, the status of the guitar industry right now, from my, my perspective, what am I seeing? It was a record year for everybody. It was dodgy. There was a lot. When I say everybody, majority more companies were up this year than down some companies. It's almost like. And I told you again, I can't talk to the recession part, but I can tell you this part. I think we talked about this a year ago, two years ago, when the COVID thing cycled out and then the market started slowing down. There will be some losers and there'll be a lot of winners or a lot of losers and a little bit of winners. But that's how it works. You know, GNL closes, but another guitar company I talked to was up 300%. So it's crazy, right? So I mean it's just, it's just how it goes. I think the, I think the takeaway on this is if you make a good product and even if the market slows, people are gonna as there's less customers There are still customers and the customers still go to the best product. So that's just how that goes. And they buy less. So the people who don't make as good products feel that when they're not buying. I don't know if anything I've seen, you know, that's like, made me go, oh, man, people are now buying cheap stuff. I will tell you this. This Christmas, affiliate numbers for the channel across all the platforms was the first time I've seen those numbers since the absolute boom of COVID I have never seen that many purchases. And since then, I never thought I would see those numbers again. I don't think I'm gonna see them next year. And I. And. But I was shocked to see them. And it started in November. People just buying like crazy. It's all of a sudden you would just. So how it works is I have affiliate links, like all the channels. And I've told you guys this before, but I just want to clarify for the new people on the channel. I don't make money if you click the product. I talk about. I make money if they capture your cookies. Okay, so I'll give you example. Hey, everybody, check out that Imperial that I talked about. I'll put a link to it. Some of you might click it and buy it. Very few of you. But some, some will click on it because they maybe are curious about some information I didn't cover. And some will click on it because they're just curious about it. They click on it, you don't buy it. But barring some things that happen, there's a lot of reasons where this won't count. But let's just stick in a perfect world. In a perfect world. Barring that, nothing else. External forces don't imply for the next. Whatever I've negotiated with the company, let's say 14 days, whatever you buy from the company, I get a piece of. So the most famous way to explain this is Amazon. Hey, check out this battery on Amazon, you click the battery, you don't buy the battery or you buy the battery. Let's say you buy it, I get a piece of that. And then Saturday night your wife's like, hey, we need dog food. And you're like, dog food? And I get a piece of dog food. I get different percentages for different product skus, but I get all the things, right? Okay, then what happens? As all these companies pay these little pencils to channels for having these links everywhere, we can look at the analytics and see what you guys are buying right now. I could go One by one. That's horrible. But we actually copy pasted into a report and then we actually just something I want to know, I want to know what you guys are buying in the price point you're buying. Now some companies are a little bit more difficult. They don't tell me exactly the product you bought, they just tell me the price points because obviously they have to tell me what you spent because that's how they're explaining what piece I'm going to get of it. Some companies actually give me the SKUs and so I get to see that too. And so two things I will tell you, everyone was buying. Like I said, it's the first time I've seen these numbers since COVID the COVID boom. And I would say it was in the most extreme categories, meaning that you were buying lots of stuff for 20, 30 bucks. Like cables, picks, accessories, a lot of accessories, a lot of inexpensive things, which is. You're like oh haha Phil, see people buying cheaper stuff, but then lots of $4,000 things, lots of high end stuff. It's like literally people are buying high end stuff and inexpensive stuff. The middle is seem to be where I noticed the biggest dips consistently. And there's a. This is where again, kind of like with Reverb's reports, this is where this, this information could be very hard to interpret because we could say oh well, rich people are buying expensive stuff and poor people buying cheap stuff. This is true. There's always some kind of analogy or assessment like that shouldn't say analogy, I'm sorry, assessment. However, there is something that could be in play which is where things were discounted the most. That could be the driving force. So whoever was giving sales the best, you guys bought in the sales. So maybe high end was selling the most and accessories were selling, giving sales discounts the most. Maybe that's what did it. But the point is shocking to see those numbers. I had a bunch of conversations with friends throughout the industry. Pedal builders, amp builders, pickup makers, you know, you name it. And everyone reported a uptick in their Black Fridays, an uptick in their sales. And also all of them eluded lower profit margins. So they made less, they sold more, they made less. And that's because costs went up and they haven't. Not all of them passed on the cost to us, which is why a lot of us are kind of thinking maybe there's gonna be some price increases next year. That's gonna suck because. But that's where I'm at. So aside from that, I don't know and it's the holidays and I don't know what that means either. But I'm just giving you the information I have. And another reason why we capture all that information is because sometimes when I'm talking to a friend in the industry and they're going, hey, what do you think's going on? I go, well, when we talk about on the show, this is what came up. And by the way, this is what the numbers are indicating. So. Interesting. Speaking of which, let's, let's do this. Let me give me this refresh. And. So this question is about signature guitars like an LTD guitar holding. Holding its. Its value better. A lot of value talk. The one I was talking about only has 100 made. Okay so this is a follow up to the, to the high end $6,000 guitar. So what about instead of the $6,000 guitar going to an LTD where they only made 100 of them, this is where we're going to. So Hunter, this is where it's going to get a little tricky. The whole, you know. Yeah, I guess limited edition is always more probable of holding value than a production instrument. That's not limited. However. You just have to accept that some things are going to, you know, if you just want. Let me put it this way. If you just want to make sure that your money is best served buying an instrument that is going to hold value, like if you're trying to find an heirloom type instrument or an instrument that maybe is a. Is a hedge against inflation, you can't. You one. You know, if you can do it, teach it to me. That's great. I'd love to know. And then I'll teach it to everybody. But the second thing that's more important is most of the instruments that will. Will do the best in that category still aren't guarantees and they're most likely not the instruments you'd want to own because that's just how that works. So just find the guitar you. You love that you are happy with the amount you spent. And, and if you. The only thing I caution you is if you're on the fence, like I said, take a second because like I always tell everybody, your money will run out before the deal is ever due. There always will be another guitar and they'll always be the thing you want. Will always come. That's how. That's what I've learned. There's no reason to ever panic buy. I'm not saying you are. I'm just saying there's no reason ever just buy something you, you can wait. You just wait. There's always something better around the horizon. There's a lot of guitars out there and there's always a better one. Let me, let me switch gears and we'll finish this up. I want to tell you a funny story. I promised my wife to tell you the story and some of you may like it. Not, I don't know, there will be some cursing maybe, I don't know. So just let you know. So I had some interesting things happen this week that were kind of funny and they're not guitar related, but I thought they were interesting. So. So I go to a trainer now, like twice a week, and so, and so does my wife. So sometimes our trainer appointments are aligned and we go together, and then sometimes they're not. Doesn't matter. It's like once a week they are, and once a week they're not. So I'm going to train her. And as you know, if you're going to, you're going to pay all this money for a trainer, you got to eat better. So I, I, Monday, Monday I'm busy. I'm doing stuff and I don't have any time. And I, and I. Sean is with me and I said, hey, let's. You want to grab some lunch? She's like, sure. I said, you want to get chicken salad and share it? Right? Grilled chicken salad. You know, it's supposed to be good. Let's go. Okay. So the chick fil a by our house, it's close. It's being, it's being expanded, making it bigger. So. Okay, I can't go there. Okay, cool. So we go, there's a habit. Habit burger. They actually have a chicken salad. It's grilled. It's pretty good. We've had it before. So I pull into the drive thru and the, the signage in the drive thru looks a little strange. I go, that's really weird. Weird. I don't see the menu, but it's kind of weird. Pull up a little further. Person comes on the intercom. They're like, can I take your order? I'm like, no, that's not what they said. See, I set you all up. See, this is why she wants me to tell you story. That's not what they said. They said, do you have the app? And I'm like, no, I don't have the app. I just want to get a chicken salad. We're only taking orders on the app. I'm like, what? Yeah, we're only taking orders on the app. I go, so I Can't order anything, not unless you have the app. I'm like, okay. They go, we could take your order, but it takes a minimum of 30 minutes. I'm like, okay. Now the funny part is I'm trapped in the drive thru because there's no way to get out. It's not one of those ones you can just pull away from. I'm trapped. Like I'm in the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland. I'm just stuck in this thing, riding this thing out just like, what the hell is going on? Right? My problem isn't that they have to have the app. My problem isn't their, their policies. My problem was the, the fact that the employees pretend like this is normal, that they don't take orders. I'm like, you don't take orders? Like, no, they don't take orders inside either. I couldn't park my car and go inside. They're like, no, you have to have the app. So I'm like, all right. The reason I tell you a story, that's not the story, that's the precursor to this problem or this funny story. I don't know if it's funny. So now it's Thursday. Yesterday. I have an appointment. I have to go. And so, you know, I go to the doctor to get my. They took my blood work and all this stuff because I'm doing this stuff, right? So make sure I'm good, I'm healthy. And for the record, if anyone cares, I'm 100% healthy. Which is strange. I think it's strange. I thought for sure they'd be like, ah, work on this. No, they're like, everything's great. So I leave now, I only have 30 minutes to get to our joint appointment with the trainers. And I go, okay. I go, hey, you want me to grab something on the way so we can eat? Because we haven't eaten. Yes. You want a chicken salad? Yes. I'll get it from a Cafe Rio. Cafe Rio. If you guys don't have a Cafe Rio, it's like Chipotle, same concept. So Mexican food, but they do the salad bowl burrito. I said, I'll get us a chicken salad. Okay, great. I pull up to the drive thru and the person says, by the way, this is the important part of the story. I'm on the speaker in the truck. Shawna's on the other end. She's talking to me. The guy comes through and he says, can I take your order? That's what he said. Not like the last time, not. Do you have an app? He's like, order. I'm like, I'm already winning. This guy's willing to take my money. This is good. I said, yes, I would like the salad with grilled chicken, because you can get shredded or grilled. I go, grilled chicken. I said, I don't want beans and rice. Okay. I don't want the tortilla strips that they put in it. I said, I just want the pico, the guacamole and the cilantro. He's like, cool. Like, okay, that's what I want on there. I don't. That's the stuff I want. He's okay. So he tells me the price. I pull forward. Person comes to the window, they hand me the salad. I put it on the passenger seat. I get my drink, put the drink in the cup holder, and I give my, you know, give them the card. Actually, you know, it's a. I don't know if you've seen. Now the drive thru is like a hostage negotiation now. They never want to give you anything until you give them some money or a card. First. They was like holding the drink. This is how. I don't know about you guys, but in Phoenix, this is how it works. Now. They hold the drink and they're like, here, here's your drink. And they're like, like this. They're like. And they get your card and they go, oh, here you go. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah. Once we got your money, you can have some stuff. So they give me my drink and my thing. I give him the card and I get the card and I'm talking to Sean and I go, okay, cool. I'll be there in five minutes. We'll eat, we'll go. She's like, great. I'm pulling forward. There's nobody behind me pulling forward. And I go, wait a minute. I look at, I look down. There's no lettuce. It's just a big foil bowl with some chicken, some cheese on it. Guac, pico, cilantro. That's it. I put the truck in reverse, back up, go to the window. The lady comes to the window. I go, hey, there's no salad in this. And she's like, hold on, because, you know, we need a manager. Now. The. The guy comes, the guy took my order. The kid, I don't know, he's like his 20s. And he's like, can I help you? And I said, yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no lettuce in this, in this, in this salad. He's like, you didn't ask for lettuce. I go, no, I wanted the salad. He's like, yeah, but you didn't ask for lettuce. I go, oh, I just thought the salad came with lettuce. He's like, I only put in what people say. Exactly. And I'm like, can I get lettuce? And he goes, well, I already. I already rang you up for what you have. I'm like, can I buy some lettuce? I go, I'll buy lettuce, right? I'm cool with that. He's like, I'll get you lettuce this time. I go, okay, cool. So he gets. He comes back, by the way, I asked. I got dressing too. So he gave me dressing earlier, so I got the dressing. So he gives me the. Another bowl. Like, another thing. Foil thing, and it's full lettuce. And I go, cool. Think of that. I go, shauna's laughing. She's laughing in the speaker, right? The kid's looking at me. I'm looking at the kid. I'm pulling away. She's like, what was that? I go, I. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I said. I said, here's the irony, though. I said, again, this is like the app. We're just gonna pretend that this is all normal. Like, this is how. Like, I haven't ordered 300 chicken salads in my life that all came with lettuce from multiple restaurants, including that one, by the way. And this is the first time anyone said that to me. But I'm not going down that road. Cause here's why. My favorite part about this is you can get a salad. And by the way, I'm also very aware of the fact that the word salad does not always mean lettuce. You can get potato salad or macaroni salad or fruit salad. Not just. I'm not implying salad means lett. I am implying, though, that if you get a salad, a bowl, or a burrito at Cafe Rio, they all three come with lettuce. That's interesting. But we'll go ahead and assume that because I didn't say lettuce, I don't get lettuce. I get to the house. Shawna's like, what was that about? I go, I don't know. And she goes, that's crazy. You weren't upset? I go, no. She's like, why aren't you upset? I go, here's why. When the kid said, I don't put anything in there. That you don't say. Okay, I took that as somebody once went to Cafe Rio. See, your first inkling. This is why. The story. She wants me to tell the story. Your first thought is, f this kid. Right? Right. This effing moron can't make a salad. Who can make a salad? Chicken salad, right? Grilled chicken salad. It's the easiest thing to make. This moron can't do it. That's your first thought? Here's my. Here's my thought. Who the. Chewed this kid out for giving him lettuce once on a salad. You know, that's what happened. The kid's like, here's your. And then this is what happened. The kid handed somebody a chicken salad once, and they went, what the. With this lettuce, buddy? I didn't say put lettuce in it. And then they ripped him sideways, and he's never doing that again. He's like. He went home that day. He told his girlfriend. He's like, honey. She's like, how was work? He's like, tomorrow. From now on, if they don't say what they want in their salad, even if it's lettuce, I'm not putting it in. I'm never putting anything in the salads again. I don't need this crap. And he cried for a while. At least in my theory, he cried for a while. They worked it out emotionally. The next day, went to work, and he's been amazing ever since. My problem is, instead of being mad at him, I'm just like, who traumatized this kid? And the only thing is, I'm very aware of the fact that in a couple weeks, if I go back to Cafe Rio and I order a salad and that kid's not there, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get lettuce. And I know what's going to happen to me, and I will keep guys updated when it happens. I told Sean, I go, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go there. And I go, yeah, I'd like the salad with lettuce. And they're like, sir, it comes with lettuce. I'm like, you would think. You would think so. That's my. That's my grilled chicken story. That's. It's been a tough week to get grilled chicken. By the way, for the record, Shawna just made me grilled chicken. So that's how we're dealing now. All right, on that note, I want to thank you guys all hanging out for me with me hanging out for me, hanging out with me, talking guitars. I hope everybody's ready to have a happy holiday. There'll be some videos this week, same bat time, same bat channel for the next week's podcast. I don't plan to take breaks between the end of the year for the podcast and then we'll talk next week. We'll talk about some of the cool things are happening in 2026, because there's a lot of announcements that coming in 2026, and we'll talk about those. I think it'll be fun guitar talk as well. And on that note, I want to thank you all for your time. Until the next time, know your gear. 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.