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The know youw gear podcast. Everyone, welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast, episode 447. And, uh, I'd say welcome to 2026, but I think that was last week's right. It feels like the whole thing was a holiday and then now we're back. I don't know. But apparently we're not. All right, so I hope everybody had a fantastic week. We have a lot of stuff to cover. Okay, here was a question I got. And we didn't do it last week. So this was a question from last week about predictions. And it wasn't new gear predictions, because here's the problem. I seen a couple of the YouTube channels that I was watching this week, and they were in the same boat as I would be if I start doing gear predictions. So the gear predictions, half the stuff I know about, half the stuff I don't know about. So when you ask me about something, I know I'm just gonna sound like I'm really smart. Like, I definitely think this company's coming out with a product on Thursday next week at 3:00pm Pacific Standard Time. And it's going to be. So, I mean, predictions are no good. But here was a fun question I thought was great. It said, what are your predictions for the top. Top three guitar bands? Brands, not bands, which is Gibson, Fender and prs. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. So what's great is I don't know what they have. All three of those companies, I have no idea what they have coming out. So why I thought it was funny is I was actually making myself think about this really hard. And I came up with some ideas. Okay, so for Gibson, what do I think Gibson is going to do in 2026? I. I wish I was kidding. I'm not kidding. I think they're going to come out with a Jack Black School of Rock sg. I saw an interview recently on Guitar World where Jack back. Jack Black mentioned he still has the SG from that movie. And I thought, what a weird article for Guitar World to just plant right out of nowhere. Right? I understand Jack Black's got the Anaconda movie. So maybe they were just trying to find something to interview him about. And of course, School Rock is as. As I would say, if I was going to say top five movies, in my opinion. Movies, not documentaries. Top five movies that made people take up guitar. Oh, it's Crossroads. It's. It's Back to the Future. It's School of Rock for sure. I don't know the other Two do. Can we, can we think of the other two? Who do you think the other two is? Any suggestions? You guys throw one, Those three for sure. Because I think Crossroads is, for me, it's an age thing. So if you're my age, it's school, it's a crossroads. If you're younger, obviously, it's School of Rock. Back to the Future is about the same time. Thing was, Back to the Future came out in what, in 85, I think so I think Crossroads came out 85, 86. Tenacious D. Sure, I could see Tenacious D is. It definitely got people to, to take a guitar. Because you understand what those movies possess. They possess something that most things don't. Like a rock star. You go see a rock star, you're in for it. For music, you're watching, you know, somebody, maybe they're not your idol yet, but you're watching somebody play music. So the idea that you would be inspired to play music isn't a far fetch. It's. To me, it's like I think of everything. Like the movie. I was talking to somebody this week about this too. Like the movie Top Gun, okay? Top Gun made it almost impossible for anyone to become a naval aviator or a pilot for a decade because so many people want to be a pilot. So the wait lists were just impossible to get into, right? Like everybody wanted to be a pilot after Top Gun, okay? And so I think of movies like that. What movies did somebody watch? Walking in the theater, not knowing that when they walk out, you know, hey, I want to be a Jedi. Hey, I want to be a fighter pilot. Hey, I want to be a barbarian. Hey, I want to be a guitar player. Lottie, say a Spinal Tap. I would. I'll give it to you. Somebody said La Bamba. But see, here's the problem with La Bamba. See, although not a documentary, it's based on a. On a real person. So I don't want to say that it has to be total fiction because if you go into La Bamba, you totally understand that you're watching a movie about an artist, right? But I think of a movie like a made up movie, made up character. Jack Black's character is not real, obviously, Steve I. And Ralph Macchio's character is not real. And you know, and so on like that. So somebody says Spinal Tap. I'll give you Spinal Tap. It tells you how funny it is that we can't. Bill and Ted. We were talking about Bill and Ted this week. Wayne's World, for sure. These are movies that inspired people to play guitar. And, and then you think of the iconic guitars in those like you know, obviously like the back to the future Gibson. So I was thinking Gibson would is going to in 2026 just announce either, either it was already planned and that was a dropped article, just a drop to kind of get us thinking or they're going to get the idea from it like I did. And then I started laughing going okay, here's what I think they're going to do. They're going to make 20. I don't know why 20. I'm just going to say 20, 20, 20 Jack Black SGS that are like 10 grand each or 20 grand or 30 grand or 80 grand. It would be something crazy. Right? Okay. And then they'll make 666 epiphones. I just know it. That's just how it's going to happen. That's just how. Right. And that's, I think that's what they'll do. And then, so that's my prediction for Gibson. So what are they going to do in 26 that my prediction for Fender? I think Fender is going to come out with an expanded line of Indonesian instruments. I think that they'll expand the standard series in some way either by colors or by, by models because again it's a higher profit, high volume guitar and the market reacted to it positive. Look, the Internet, we all complained. That's what we do on the Internet. Everybody complains. No one wants to watch somebody just tell you everything's great. So, so you guys complain, I complain, we're all a bunch of kaji old complainers. But reality is the guitars sold well. So, so they sold well because they, they're good guitars. Look, I got a lot of negative things to say about Fender. But making a total of crap guitar is not something I would accuse Fender of. They have issues with some quality things here and there but I could, I could pick on every brand that's behind me right now. Fender of course is the biggest. So therefore they're one the easiest to poke at because they're the, the 10,000 pound gorilla. But also they're going to have the most issues because they're making the most volume. But I think Fender, I think they'll expand the standard series. And definitely after that reading that email from them, I definitely think they're going to be expanding the non tube amp market. My hat is loose today. Hold on a second, I gotta dial this in. I'm sorry guys, but it was like wobbling. So anyways, and then what's my prediction for PRS. PRS is going to come out with a more SEs. I have no idea. I was trying to think PRS was the hard one. I was like well what are they going to come out with? I mean they'll probably produce something at the NAMM show. Obviously they did a lot of SE launches. I think PRS is going to launch a couple new PRSs at an, a really high price and then in November put everything on for 20% off. So I think PRS is, I think PRSSE to me as the. Is the pinnacle of high quality obtainable guitars. Notice they say affordable. It's pretty tough. But I think of right now in the market when you think of like when we think back in the day of the, the companies that were giving you a lot of value for the dollar, you know, like we think of Ibanez or we think of, you know, those old Hondo guitars and you know, the Grecos and all this stuff. Just you know, guitars that you could go in a music store and you could maybe get more for your money than you know, the brand names like Aria Pro and stuff back in the day, right? Especially the old main Japan stuff where you'd walk in and you go wow, this is a pretty good guitar for the money. I think PRSSE right now has captured that. They're just giving you a lot of value for the price points. I have an interview, it's going on the Know youw Gear channel with Jack Higginbotham. And one of the things I talked about was the free gig bags or the included gig bags with SEs. And I was making a point that the $500 SE has a $100 gig bag and the $2,000 SE has a $100 gig bag. Every guitar has a hundred dollar gig bag. And my point to him was I've been to the factory now. I've seen how you do it. I've seen all the other buildings, I've seen how everyone else does it. I see how everybody else prices. I've seen it all. I've seen all. I've been in the kitchen, I've seen how they cook everything and no one else is giving away gig bags with their guitars at $500 and stuff like that as a consistent line. And I asked him why they did it and he said well it's just because every guitar should have a case or at least a gig bag. And I don't know if you guys know but people PRs upgraded the gig bag for 2026 so not only are the only ones offering, they upgraded it. And before I get it, you know, hammered by the viewers with the fanboy PRs. It's not that I'm fanboying PRs, it's that I want other companies to take notice. Hey, here's what your competition's doing. Take a note, man. This is a lot of value for the money. But that all being said, the prices are still going up. So I think the buy low, sell high, you know, buy high, low buy kind of thing is the only thing I don't like about the SEs, which is do I think SEs will go discount in November? I want to say no, because I think they got it dialed in now, and I think the last two years were just adjusting to the markets that they didn't anticipate, but this could be a typical thing. So in other words, what I'm trying to say is maybe wait till November to buy an se. I don't know. I wish I could tell you for sure. I wish I could get that out of them, but I don't think they know. So, you know, in fact, I. I'll tell you this, and then we'll move on to the next topic. I really believe a hundred percent that if I ask Jack, who's the guy who's gonna know? He's gonna. If anyone's gonna know is what. What the price of SEs are gonna be on if they're gonna be on discount this year. I bet you, honest to God, he doesn't know yet. Even. Even if they were or want not. He doesn't know because I don't think they're thinking like that. I think they're hoping not to. I think that'd be the plan. Not to. All right, so that's my predictions for the three brands, so. Oh, Luma says my only regret is not. Is that they don't know if Prsse is gonna release a hollow body and Sunburst. There will not be a hollow body in Sunburst that I know of. And the reason is. And I'll tell you why I know, first of all, I don't know or. Okay, for a hundred percent. Okay, so nothing's a hundred percent, but I'm giving you a 75%. Like, I. I feel like I'm. I'm guessing, but my guess has gotta be 75%, which is a good shot. You know, enough to throw some dice on because the model just got revamped that I'm pointing out right now in the three colors. And I know the difficulty they had to get it done and get it out in time. And I know that changes happen as Jack goes back to the factory. And Jack has not been back because he's been doing something else. Like, in other words, now his job is to do the marketing. So that's why he's been doing the clinics in Korea and India and stuff like that. I can't imagine, considering he showed me. And I'll just be honest with you guys. He did show me with a lot of trust, by the way, a lot of models that are coming out for the next year or two years, and I'm not gonna say just because I didn't see it doesn't exist. They can be doing other things too, but. But I just can't see them. They're trying to just get these going right now. The new higher end Hollow Body 2. So I'm going to tell you the three colors they have, which they do have one that's kind of sunburst, right? I mean, that. It's a. It's a brown color, right? What's the. What's the brown one? That one's like a sunburst. Let's take a look at it. PRS Hollow Body 2. It's. I went with this color and the video is coming soon. I went with this color only because in the factory I, I did a lot of videos and content with one that was exactly like this. And I thought it was cool to have the one that, you know, I was showing at the factory. So here is the. Here's the three. So this one's, you know, the orange tiger is gonna look a little sunburst. I understand it doesn't have the yellow in the center, but this is gonna get you close. But these are the three colors. I can't imagine new color unless, of course, they do a limited run for a dealer or do something special that I don't know about. But I don't know. I just don't know. But my 75% guess. In other words, if you made me bet a hundred bucks, I'm betting 100 bucks that they're not more than I'm button. 100 bucks, you know, 25% chance that they. I would take the 75% bet. So let's go into. We got a question from. From Susan. Susan says ivanez Alpha guitars 7, 8 thoughts. Well, guess what that means. Nope. And now it's time for gear of the week. Gear of the week. Look at this. I only have six buttons. I can't. It's funny two, four. I have eight buttons and I can't pick the right one. You know, it's funny. Should show you guys a picture. The button I have to push is the only button that doesn't have a label. That's cuz my wife's watching right now and I'm like, hey, I don't have a label for that one button. Wouldn't that be cool if we had a label for that? Okay, so anyways, so now it's gear of the week. Okay, so actually I just messed up. Yeah, that's right. I'm right. Okay, so let's do gear of the week. So a couple things with gear of the week. A lot of new announcements. The first one was. Did you see that? It was like, chase, let's look at the Dr. Z pedal. And this was interesting because let's see what's new. Okay, I want to go to sharing with you guys. Come on. I don't want to do the guitars. I want to do this pedal first. Here's this pedal. Okay, so let's talk about this first. So the first thing up is this earthquaker devices ZQD preamp pedal. This is a Dr. Z preamp pedal. And I believe looking at it, does it show you it's kind of weird. Yeah, there's a tube right there. It's got a little tube in there. And I think this is a definitely going to be a trend. I'd be okay to tell you this. I talked to two AMP companies in the last 30 days and both had mentioned in passing they got one of these pedals coming too. So this one's a little different because unlike what, you know, obviously what Tone King did amps, and they made a preamp pedal in Freeman where they're making their own pedals. This is where Dr. Z's like, hey, and I wonder if this was inspired by the fact that Dr. Z is doing the Synergy amps and maybe they saw success from that, like a licensing deal. Like, hey, we help you design it, you make it, you ship it, you sell it, you deal with it. Right? You try to get some guy on the YouTube to talk about it on a Friday show. Right. By the way, they're not sponsoring this. I don't have sponsors. So anyways. But that's the point, right? Like they had to do the marketing. And so I think this is an interesting idea and I actually love this idea in concept. In other words, I've always loved it. Like to me, one of the coolest things Boss did and then never did it again was the jhs, you know, Angry Charlie, you know, blues, Blues, petal combo. I thought that was cool. I thought, what a cool idea. I've always loved this idea. I believe. And again, I'm just going off of a memory here. I thought. I remember, like, Budweiser, one of the beer. Big beer companies, you know, picking some small breweries and doing, like, limited runs with them. Like, hey, you cook up the recipe and we'll mass produce it. Right? Right. And I love that idea. And I love this idea. This idea is like, you know, this is when you're. You know, this is like Freddy versus Jason. This is when two things come together. You love, right? So you have a pedal company that's well respected that makes good pedals, like Earthquake or Devices. And then you have Dr. Z, who makes great amps. And. And now they're partnered up. And so you get a product, and it works great for them because, like I said, Dr. Z doesn't have to worry about this. They don't have to worry about it cutting in. I kind of wish Paul Reed Smith would have thought of this idea. I think that was, you know, versus their idea, which is. So you understand what Paul Reed Smith did with the pedals was they just found a source. In other words, they found somebody to make them ghost build them. And I think the ghost building thing's done. I'm sick of it. So I think ghost building, I think now when we think of, you know, like, Cortech, because now that I've kind of exposed the factory is how that works, I think a lot of people are like, okay, I know how ghost building works. And. And now I think I'm hoping from that video that, like, what PRS did with putting Cortek makes these guitars. I think I'm done with the whole. Who makes this for real? Who makes this? You know, it's got a brand on it, but who freaking makes this? It's so much funner when it's like, okay, like this. There's no questions who designed it? Well, Dr. Z and earthquaker. Who built it? Earthquaker. Now imagine they could have made this pedal. Earthquake. Ghost built it. In other words, built it for Dr. Z, shipped it to Dr. Z. Dr. Z's got, you know, the same accounts with Sweetwater. He could sell it to his dealers, and then we'd be like, oh, it's a Dr. Z pedal. But to me, I like the idea knowing. No, they worked with somebody they trust. They work with something they believe in, and we get a good product and I think this is a win, and I haven't tried it yet, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna definitely try to get. Try one. I love my Tone King Imperial. And in that case, in the idea of synergy and Friedman and synergy and Tone King, the difference there is they do make pedals. So obviously, you know, like, for instance, though, they have Wampler. So even though it was a Tone King product, it might have been cool if it was a Tone King Imperial done by Wampler. It makes it fun. I love this idea. I don't know what you guys think. Let me go back to the main screen and see if you guys are talking about that, too. But I. You guys are making up funny names like Girth, Quaker. That's funny. But what do you guys think? Yes or no? Do you like the idea that instead of a company having another company build their product and not tell you who does it, just partner for this. Hey, we came together. This is us together. This is what we. We, you know, we get. Somebody says, $4 is a lot of cash. Well, of course it's a lot of cash, but it's a tube preamp. There's a physical tube preamp pedal in there. And by the way, that's not me saying it's worth $400. I'm just saying if you're mathing it out, you're going to go, okay, well, what is a. You know, what does a pedal go for? 250. $300. Okay, well, as soon as you put a tube in there, that's 100 bucks. Right? So what's the reasonable price on it? In fact, this is the game I started playing recently on reviews, which is when I say, oh, I think it's overpriced or it's priced high. What's the price? Too low. Right? Let's play the game. If $400 is too high, that's what I want you guys to do. Put in the comments. Well, I want to agree on this. $400. I think 400 is. Is high. It's like, so, you know, I think at 401, they lose customers dramatically. So obviously, 4 is the highest you can go. 350, I think, is where it should be. Reasonably speaking, 350. Now, again, you know, I'm not telling them their business. So in case any of them watch this and go. And Phil, you have no idea what it costs to make this. And how can you say 350? I'm not telling you what I think. It's what you should build it for and sell it for. I'm telling you what it's worth to me at 350, I'm more of an impulse buyer on it than four. But the question is, what's so cheap that you're like, that's ridiculous, Sean, saying 250. 250. Somebody says two is too, too low. So, yeah, 275 to 99. So, okay, so see, I think that's. That's always a realistic thing to kind of, I think, look at things like, okay, a 400 too high and 250 is too low, then what's the right price? And maybe it's 350, maybe it's three, something like that. But. But anyways, Alex said, I just like the idea that they're giving credit where credit's due instead of pretending that it's, you know. And speaking of which, let's go to the next category. Okay, this one was what Susan actually wanted to talk about. So we probably should talk about that since that's the actual question. And before gear of the week. Okay, so Ibanez released all their products. I love that Ibanez releases all their stuff in January and lets us know before the NAMM Show. I hate the whole waiting for the NAMM Show. I'm not going to the NAMM Show. You guys don't care about the NAMM show anymore. No one cares about the NAMM Show. And yes, they should still do a NAMM show and the NAMM show should do its thing. But I'm appreciative that companies understand that. Just put it out now. Okay? Call it a day. Okay, so what was released? Well, the biggest release was Iban has released all their products. But of course, the thing that's got everybody talking is this. And why is this the big talking? Well, because obviously it looks a lot like the Toast and Abbasi guitar. A lot of people are saying, like the. The Kaizen, the one that I just did a video where I was talking about how I had defects and. And they fix the defects based on some feedback that I may or may not have given to them. And others also. Others too, they said others gave it to. So we'll see, you know. Okay, so let me give you my harsh opinion first, my first reactive opinion. And then I'm going to go into a little bit because, remember I told you I'm kind of like negative at first. I think that's a normal default for humans. First thought is, I don't want to do it. I don't want to Go, I don't want to be there. And then when you get there, like, why did I never not come? My first opinion, Teemu version of an Abasi guitar. I was just like, looking at, going, yeah, I mean, almost reeks of like, here's how we're not getting sued making an Abasi guitar. They even have one that has white pickups. And here, click it. And I was like, well, maybe they're not white. Maybe they're silver. I thought they have one with the white pickups only. Hold on. No, I guess they're all silver. And maybe in the lighting it looked white. But again, you know, it had. Has the Abbasi look to it. $2,000, this is probably my guess, is made in Indonesia in the cortex factory. Let's take a look. Indonesia, Cortek factory. I know. Look at this. It didn't take long, did it, folks? You went from November going, how could. How could Herman Lee's guitar in Indonesia be $2,000? To look at all the guitars that are made In Indonesia, the $2,000, it's almost like I was there last summer and saw it all coming. It was like yesterday. Anyways, yeah, I told you guys, the amount of $2,000 guitars coming that are made in Indonesia and China are going to be a little shocking to most. Again, I'd like to point out, don't kill the master. I don't want to hear any crap. I didn't make these prices. I'm not involved with these companies. I'm just reporting the. What I see. Do I think it's worth $2,000? I don't know. I. I don't. I like my money. I don't want to give it away either. So, I mean, I understand if you. I don't know, maybe you want this thing. It's different. It's interesting. I don't know. So funny, funny thing. My. My wife. I know right now my wife's chuckling. Here's why I'm gonna. Luckily, my in laws don't watch this show. My in laws like to say, that's interesting when I'm pretty sure they hate something. So, like, if I, if, if, if my wife's like, hey, try this healthy dip. It's always something healthy. So I tried this healthy dip. And then they're like, oh, that's interesting. Or they'll watch. We'll watch a movie. And I go, what do you think of the movie? They go, it was interesting. That's their nice way of saying that was shit. So anyway, so when I was making Myself laugh going, this is interesting. I'm not a huge fan of it especially. Here's the deal. There's a couple reasons. First, I'm a little bit of a Kiesel fanboy. So of course, when I see $2,000, I'm thinking, I can get a Kiesel guitar guitar. So to me, getting a USA made guitar in a color that I absolutely want for around $2,000 really makes this a little bit of a harder choice, especially when it's a modern guitar. Look, there are a lot of guitars that I can argue that are way better, I'll say better than Kiesel, but mostly different, you know, vintagey style guitars, right? Like this jazz master right here, this green one that I just did a video of. And this one is a vintage reissue. It's. It's so different from anything Kiesel makes. But to me, the Ibanez guitars, as the Indonesian Ibanez guitars get to Kiesel pricing, it's a little tough, especially being an American going like, ah, really? I mean, the whole point, I thought, you know, this how they sold it to us, right? When I was like, hey, we're gonna go overseas. We're save you some money. And you're like, okay, you know, I'm gonna save some money. You know, there were some things you didn't like, like, we're gonna lose some jobs and, you know, they may not treat everybody the best, but. But we're gonna save some money. And you're like, okay, well, you know, Walmart told me that's good to save some money. They said, every penny I save is money in my pocket. So who can you not trust? Walmart, right? By the way, I hope you guys understand, a lot of sarcasm comes out. I find more and more my sarcasm people are like, how could you say such a thing? I'm like, I'm going for the joke. It's an entertaining show, I hope. Anyways, my point is, when I see prices on things that I thought were used to be a more obtainable, affordable category, I go, well, you're pushing me right into the things I can just buy out, right? So the Timo Abbasi. Oh, my goodness, that is funny, Timo. It's gonna be stuck in my head now. Like the Ikea caster. It. It's the Teemu Abbasi. And so, you know, there's. This is the dumbest thing I can do. I hope you guys know I love you guys. And I say that because I've been talking to Ivan is about. About doing videos for Them again. And this is pretty much sensing that ain't gonna happen. They're probably gonna watch this and go, screw this guy. But seriously, Ivan is. I like that you're trying this. You know, one thing on a side note that made me sad was I once helped put together the Abbasi booth. I was just volunteered. I was walking by, and they were trying to build their booth, and it was late into the day of the first day of the NAMM show, and I helped them build it. And the next day, they introduced me to Tosin. They said, hey, by the way, Phil and his friend, which is Nathan, by the way, me and Nathan did it. And by the way, shout out to Nathan for doing that, because when we were walking by, I go, hey, you want to help him build the booth? And he's like, I'd like to get dinner. And I'm like. And I forget that he's really thin, and he's probably, like, exhausted because he doesn't have the calorie deposits that I have. So I was like, let's do it. But anyways, I did. I noticed was a bad idea to do with Nathan because we went to dinner afterwards, and I think Nathan ate his body weight and food. And I go, oh, yeah, so you got to have those camel reserves like I got. But anyways, Tosin, the next day, I asked him a question. I'll never forget this. It was 2019. I believe it could have been 2018, but I'm pretty sure it was January of 2019. I asked Tosin Abbasi, I said, hey, Tosin, you left Ibanez. You started your own company. What was that about? He said that this was his dream guitar. And he had, you know, obviously, he. He designed it, he drew it, and then Ibanez made him a prototype, and he played it, and he kept saying everybody wanted it and he wanted it. And he goes in. Two years went by, and Ibanez was still dragging their feet. And so he's like. At some point, I had to realize, like, if I want this to get done, I got to do it myself. So that's the official story from Toast and that he told me. The important part of this is this pretty much proves what he was saying, because it looks like it took Ibanez an additional five more years. So, Tosin, if you're watching this, which I doubt you are, it took Ibanez seven years, not two, to finally gives you something that you kind of wanted. But anyways, let's. Let's look at the rest of the Ibanez line go to the what's new. There was a couple other Ibanezes. So since we picked on a lot of the stuff, you know, just interesting. This one, this one was a strange one for me. I don't know what I think about this. You know, I was a Ibanez dealer and Ibanez acoustics were always so cool because they selled sold so easy visually. Sound wise, they were never the best. They would get lucky here and there. But usually all this like this maple laminate and the heavy polish polyurethane. All stuff the acoustics we use to get a little thinner, a little bit more like this. A lot of cool and interesting cups that make the guitar look cool but usually don't sound great. But was great was for. For first time customers you would see an Ibanez and you would see this and go wow, this looks so much more exciting than just the tan brown boring acoustic. And I thought okay, that's you know, that's a good point. But so a lot of cool colors. This one, the blue, the purple. Purple, purple. We got blue. Oh look, I can just hover over these. I have to change screens. Look at that. And I don't know. I'm not. This is kind of like a modern kind of vibe to it. I dig it. 379. Can't beat that. This is interesting. This is a color I keep seeing put out there by a lot of brands. So we have an Iceman for 9.99. You know one of the things I like is look how they did the. The back and the. See it's like the cherry, cherry stain on the mahogany and then the front. That's pretty cool. For those that you like the Iceman, I thought that was a cool new piece of gear this week. A couple other things they had some. Some I saw. Oh they brought this back. This guitar was funny. This is a Zyphos for those that don't know how to zyphos with an X. The Zyphos, when they came in this. This is a chameleon paint job. So it looks purple pink but it also flips to this color. Right. It's a really crazy cool guitar in person. We couldn't give this guitar away. When we had in our shop we had a seven string version two and this and we just couldn't. I think we had a blow amount of burnout. And then what's interesting about that was I was just thinking about this the other day that. So they were going for allow about 1100 bucks used. So people were getting about A thousand bucks used. So I was like, oh. So they reissued it. This is also. Where is this made? This is made in Indonesia, right? Yep, Indonesia. So, yep, there's the I right there. That's what the serial number means. By the way, when you see I sees Indonesia, there's no C here. So that's interesting because sometimes C means cortex. So this could be a non Cortec guitar. It's not likely, but it's possible that it's Indonesia and not Cortek. Okay, so the xipho, some of you guys may hate that. There was somebody asked me about specifically about an Ibanez bass that came out and this is it. The Ibanez custom shop vision space. And what I noticed right away was the different headstock shape. That was cool. This looks cool. Oh, my goodness. Whoo. $6,000. That's made in Japan, right? It's not gonna let me see closer. Oh, there it is. I can't see, but I'm pretty sure cra. Oh, crafted in Japan. Six, six thousand. That's big boy. Prices $6,000. So interesting. I think this is an interesting move. A $6,000 base that you've never made before. That looks like a lot of the other high end bases. You know, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not in love with it for sure, but I don't, I don't hate it. It's interesting. Okay, next. The next thing I want to talk about new gear is the. They made a big article about Fender, is now in the Fender audio business. Like, like, like Marshall. So let's give credit. So let's give it to Guitar World. Guitar World did an article. I, I read it and saw it. And so Fender is getting into the. Let's make Bluetooth speakers like Marshall. And obviously, if you haven't seen Vox, did it too. And this, this was an interesting thing. I gotta give Marshall credit. Marshall knows how to make a Bluetooth speaker. And the way it looks, which is, it gives it the iconic Marshall look so that people who don't know guitar see that Marshall and go, oh, yeah, that's a thing that's behind the thing on stage. Like, even if you're like, I went and saw Mariah Carey and the guitar player had a Marshall. Like they can see its iconic look. When I think of Fender, I think of them making it a Bluetooth. All they had to do, in my opinion, was copy exactly what Marshall did, which is make their iconic thing. These two speakers. I thought this, this could say JBL right there. As far as I'm concerned, I have no interest in this at all. The fact that it has a handle is kind of portable. The wood block on the top. And if you guys remember what's funny about this is Fender had a Bluetooth amp that kind of looked like their amp, but it was kind of amp esque and then that went away. And this is the new approach. So here, here's what I'm gonna try to say. I'm not in love with this one two guitar world. Really? You didn't even do any follow up. Like, this is not really Fenders four into the Bluetooth. They've already been doing Bluetooth speakers and if anything, they were more like the Marshall brand before. So it's. Yes. Scott says it looks like a car battery. Yeah, yeah, it's got that lifeless, designless, came with your Volkswagen car look to it. Like, I feel like, I don't know. I, you know, I don't want to pick on brands, but I'm gonna. So, like it looks like it comes with a Rivian. Like you push a button and it ejects out of the dash and this is your new speaker. And then they stab them to stick Fender on it. So. And I just thought this funny and I hope it fails in. I hope that Fender learns to do something better. And all I, in all transparency, I own a Marshall Bluetooth speaker. It does sound pretty good. And I did get it because it looks like a marsh lamp. I wanted something. It was my birthday last year and I was trying to figure out something to get and just so happened I got a guitar, but it wasn't for my birthday. So I was like, well, I'm not buying a guitar for my birthday. When I got one just recently and I go, I want something. And I decided to get a Marshall Bluetooth speaker. And I actually like it. And I love the way it looks. It sits on. It sits in my front room family room. And I think it looks cool. So for those that are going to say it's stupid, I agree with you. I was dumb enough to buy one, but I'm not dumb enough to buy the Fender one because it doesn't look like a cool Fender amp to me. This one Amanda grabbed it says, hey, Philip, greetings from Chile says, I have a very short question. I see you have an Ibanez JS. Would you trade a JS 1000 and an RG 1570 Prestige for a black PIA? Would I do it? No, but I don't have a. I don't have a gem. I Like the Pia I played. I've played two. One with Steve eyes. They let me play a Pia. It's a great guitar. To me, it's aesthetically different, but physically remind me of the gym. I don't remember playing it. The thinking anything was different. You know, I don't remember the neck carve being dramatically different than the gym. So everything was like the gem. Just the aesthetic change. I have a gem. Would I trade my GS and a Prestige for the gem? Yeah, I would. I bought the js, so you guys know I bought the JS to make a video. That's why I got it. So if you guys have seen a white jazz here, it's like the Novo. It's here for a video. There's a bunch of guitars that are here for videos. As we've been plotting out the how we're gonna come in 2026. 2026. 2026. Freudian slip of some sort. 2026 with a fresh approach on the deep dives. You know, something a little. A little new. Not for you guys. So you guys. Unfortunately, not like I'm trying to wow, you guys just trying to keep me fresh. You know what happens when, you know, you make the same things? It's, you know, it's like being a tour guide. It's hard to do a tour guide of the same tour every day and all of a sudden, you know, feel like you're, you know, it's my first time in fresh there. So. But anyways, what am I trying to say? If you want to do that trade, I guess you could do that trade financially. The PIAs go for good money, so I don't see anything wrong with your. Your choices. But so. And I'm also a big fan of trading multiple guitars for one guitar. I always find that that's a good rule of trading, which is if you get less than you probably won. Now, keep in mind, there's exceptions that rule, but generally speaking, if you took three guitars and you get one, you're probably came out ahead. That's usually the way trading works. You're trying to upgrade, so you're upgrading. Everything I have here today in some form or fashion, came from the fact that I had a lot of cheaper versions of it. And then that's how I did it. You know, I didn't just go write checks for all these guitars. One day I bought guitars I could afford. And then over time, I would trade them up and trade. Trade them up and trade them up. And then when I would accumulate a bigger collection, I would Trade up. And then. And everybody's gonna have a different opinion about this. This is just mine. I've been pretty consistent about this over the years. And at some point, I traded up to a very high level. And then that's where I realized that was the point of. What do they call it? The sun? Not sunken phallus. No, it's the. What do you call it? Square. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Basically trying to say you stop getting stuff. What. What is this term for that? Law of diminishing returns. See, it took me a second. At some point, I hit the law of diminishing returns. In other words, I bought guitars that are expensive and that are good or great, but not better than what I had. So. And I find that number has nothing to do with real reality. It has to do with you as a person. You know, what do you feel like is good? And where do you know? And that's what happened with me. There was a point where I go, oh, this guitar is expensive, and I like it. This guitar is expensive, and it makes me nervous or I don't enjoy it. And there's a price point that if I buy a guitar, it will become a closet classic. It'll just rot in the closet because I won't damage it. I'm too afraid to touch it myself. And if I'm too afraid to play a guitar, I shouldn't have it. Okay. And that's just my take on it. Everybody has to come up their own conclusions. But I. I will tell you, don't worry about missing out on guitars just because they're more expensive. Very rarely is it the case. Only worry when you don't like what you have. You physically, mentally, just not enjoying it. If you're not enjoying it, then do something about that. But if you are enjoying it and you're like, I'm loving this, but maybe there's better. That's the mistake we all make. Okay. This is from Stouffer 900. Can you run the Tone King Imperial through a boss katana preamp or. Or effects loop instead of buying expensive PAs? Absolutely. Or FRFR? Absolutely. Absolutely. The Tone King Imperial will give you. This preamp pedal will give you two options. You have two options. You can send it out to the. The power amp in of the katana. Use the power. The katana is just slave power. So it's just the power amp and the speaker and all the tone is coming from this preamp. Absolutely can do that. You can run it like a pedal into the front of the katana and then run the katana as flat as you can. I, I don't recommend that. But you can do that. But also you can do is a four cable method with the katana and essentially make the katana like a third channel on this preamp and then use the reverb and some of the love for this pedal in the katana and vice versa. Michael Nielsen has an amazing video on the 4 cable method. I'm. I'm a little concerned what I'm saying because I, I know you can do the four cable method. You know what, you're going to have to check me on the katana because I kind of remember the katana doesn't have an actual effects loop. You need an effects, an actual effects loop to do the four cable method on the katana. I think. Well at least the one I have, the 50 watt. I think it's only a power amp in. Right. It's not an actual effects loop but I think the 100 has an effects loop. So if your katana has an effects loop, I would do the four cable method like Michael Nielsen shows you in his video. You'll be the happiest and go that route. I also want to tell you that the NAMM show is only a few weeks away and I can't tell you because I can't predict the future that there's another preamp pedal and some other stuff coming that may be something you'd want to consider. So I'm saying if you, you buy an Imperial, buy it from like Sweetwater Guitar center where you have a, a guaranteed 30 day return. So if something comes out better in two weeks you can exchange it. Just saying. Just saying. I love the Imperial and so you know, the only on a side note, I have not physically tried any petal pramp petal better than the, than the Tone King Imperial. I have not. But I've, I've heard things coming that might be as good or better or different. Differently better. So just keep that in mind because. So in case you get impulse in buying this weekend, be prepared. All right. Jeff wants to know. He says, hey, there's a lot of online hate regarding the 490R and the 498T pickups. People just hate pickups says yet studios and custom shop offerings seem to keep having them. Yep, the Gibson tone. Is Gibson tone deaf or is the Internet hate just trolls? Look people, guitar players, let me give you some insight as a guitar tech again. So let me switch hats. Right. So to speak. Right. YouTuber hat look at my bald head. Anyways, YouTuber hat, guitar tech hat, whatever hat you know, I got to put on that day right now, it's a guitar tech hat. As a guitar tech, a lot of guitar players throw a lot of hate at something they perceive to be the problem of something and not a lot of factualness to it. And, and it's not always their fault. Let me give you example. You know, some guitar players will buy a used guitar like a PRS and then they'll say, hey, this guitar prses don't stay in tune. And I've explained to you guys that PRS is whether you buy an SE or a core, they use a six screw system and each screw is sitting on a knife edge. The bridge is sitting on a knife edge of the screw, like a two point terminal. But there's six of them a little bit more complicated. It looks vintage, but it's actually modern and complicated. If somebody adjusts a PRS tremolo that doesn't know what they're doing, they it up. I don't have a beep, do I? I thought I had a beep button. They beeped it up. So anyways then you get it and you're like this sucks. Why does everybody love this? I always remember that until you actually have like a guitar that you know it's been set up correctly and you know that it's not tainted or problematic. Which is why sometimes I have trouble grabbing used guitars for deep dives. Somebody's like when I talk about, you know, buying a guitar and then having to flip it and you'll lose money doing the deep dive. Sometimes somebody's like, well despite used I'm like yeah, but if somebody messed something up, I'm going to be attributing that to the manufacturer. And that's not always fair. So I do. Do you, I do, do. I do use, use guitars sometimes, but I prefer not to, to have more of a clean slate of what we're analyzing. Because in the deep dive we're analyzing construction and theory of construction more so than the physical, just how, you know, set up and stuff. But back to the pickups. Somebody might get a guitar and not like it, you know. Let me give you an exact, exact analogy. No, not an exact analogy. Let me give you an exact story of something that happened. Imagine you get a guitar and I don't know why guitar players think like this. They just can't help it. We're happen to be a, we have a lot of problems as guitar players. Like it's like Music draws broken people. I'm broken. That's how I got drawn to music. And broken people have broken thoughts. So one broken thought is, I buy a guitar new, and it has strings on it from five years ago because it's been sitting in a music store, because heaven forbid, especially back then, Muse store sat on guitars forever until somebody found it, right? And they get this guitar and they go, this guitar is dull and lifeless. And they go in there and they hand me a guitar, especially another guitar tech, but even me, and they say, I want to put new pickups in it. And I'm like, okay, I want to pay my bills. So yes to your answer of, yes, I will do work for you. And then I take their crappy strings on, off, and I clean their frets in their fretboard and I put in new pickups and I put on brand new strings, and they go, man, these are way brighter than before. I love them. I'm like, huh, Wonder how much of that was the strings. A lot of things happen when a guitar. So what am I trying to say? A lot of people like the hate those pickups. Well, one, the Internet loves to regurgitate a thing it learned. I have a saying. I've been saying it forever. Just because you know a thing doesn't mean you know everything. I say it all the time. My wife, actually. It's one of the few sayings I say daily that Shauna doesn't hate me for saying because she always laughs a little bit because she knows what I mean by it. Somebody learns a thing, and all of a sudden they're a genius. Somebody sees somebody like me or somebody else on YouTube, we say a thing, and then they regurgitate that like they've lived it. And it's not just a piece of information that was forwarded to them. And that's how you should really filter everything through. Through a little bit of your own life. But my point is, to you, Jeff, is that a lot of people are attributing a lot of things to those pickups that are not necessarily bad. Now, that all being said, is there things about those pickups that a lot of players don't like? Of course. See, because people generally sometimes don't like Alexa, if you don't like pickups, if you have a Fender, Fender, Princeton like me, you don't want a high output pickup pushing that amp and just giving you a little crackle at the end. That crackle isn't pleasing. It's not a pleasing overdrive sound. It's just the amp Being overdriven in a really bad way. The front end is being overloaded, which is why there's a second input on the Princeton and a lot of Fender amps. You put your hot pickup into the second input, but then people go, I don't want that because it's not as bright. Well, it will be with the hotter output pickup. That's why they did that. They had the foresight to go, hey, you know, there's different kinds of pickups. And it's almost like. It's almost like fast lane, slow lane, slow lane. It's like first input, single coil, second input, humbuckers. That's where it goes, right? And so players get a little angry. Some opposite way. Some players are like, this pickup is. Doesn't have enough output. And so they hate this kind of pickup. Generally speaking, in pickup land, what really happened was more so than everything, more than any factual base, somewhere, somehow there are certain products that just got holy Grail status. Like a clawn pedal and. And a dumble and a PAF pickup. They're just holy Grails and you cannot. And everything. That's not them. You're just an idiot for not liking the Holy Grail. There is no pickup better than a paf. So all other pickups are crap. Gibson only made one good thing, and that's the end of the story. And the reality is there's all kinds of people with four 90s and 498s that don't even know it. Don't even know it. So, so, you know, it's. That's why the hate. That's my. And, and, and. And doing this for a Decade, basically on YouTube. What I can tell you is I already know when I'm making a video or the show. Oh, man, there's a hot button that's gonna piss off, you know, 30 people and they're gonna. You get upset because how. You know, because I'm not. I'm not doing the tropes. I'm not. I'm not saying the thing that everybody wants to hear, which is these are the agreed upon community loves. These things are all loved, and these things are not. And no. So that's my answer. So if you like the 490R and the 498T, I hope you like them. I hope you enjoy them. I have some. One of my. I can tell you for a fact, here's. I can tell you somewhere here in this house is a Gibson with 490 and 498. And I have no problems with it. In fact, I. I couldn't even tell you which guitar is it. And it might be one of my custom shops. Actually, it might be that one or it might be the other one. I don't know. But I don't really care. I really don't care. How I look at it is I plug in a guitar and if it sounds good and I'm. And I can get what I need out of it, then I'm done. It's when I'm feeling something's lacking, I want to start changing things. But you know, and I know I still, to this day, I understand the desire. And I have friends that just feel the need they got to upgrade stuff. Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. And I always tell everybody, please know your gear. The whole point of this, the slogan, know your gear came from the concept of spend time with stuff, which is why I spend time with product before I do the video. I really didn't enjoy unboxing videos. Like I said, I don't want a tour guide from someone who just. It's a George Carlin joke, right? How can a stewardess welcome me to a city she hasn't even got to yet? I don't understand. I don't want to watch a video of somebody unbox something and go, look, it's red. And I'm like, well, I can fucking see it's red. That's the thing I can figure out on my own. I have eyes. What I don't have through the Internet is hands. I can't touch it. Tell me what you're feeling. Tell me what it's doing. Show me the thing that you figured out that it does well or does badly over time. Where is it deficit? What do you like about it? What do you. Why do you use it? And that's why I am. And if I seem opinionated right now, it's because, like everybody, I'm struggling to make great content for everybody, but also trying to adhere to this rule of everybody needs a video when everything comes out the same week and everybody needs stuff all the time. And I. What I enjoyed about YouTube when I started watching YouTube, which made me best guess make YouTube, was, I love watching someone say, look, I've had this for five years and this is how I use it. And I'm like, wow, I never thought of using it that way. Or, oh, wow, I use it the same way. We could almost be friends and talk at a bar. And now everybody's doing a reaction to things, and I'm like, in fact, the reaction. Things are getting so bad now they don't even do reactions. I watched a dozen videos this week. People are just, they like, they're just like 30 second videos are like, hey, I got this. Can you believe it? Wow, I just got it. And then that's the video. And I'm like, does people think that I actually want to see some asshole get a thing? I don't really care if they bought it or it was sent to them by company. I don't want to see that. I want to see what people think and feel about something. I'm done with my tirade. All right. That was good, by the way. So you know why, Jeff? You know why people hate 490R and 498T's? Because apparently it draws a lot of emotions out of people and gets them upset. Got me fired up for something. Let's, let's, let's keep on track. And I'll drink some water, I'll calm down. Hopefully there's vodka in this. I didn't put the water in this. So there's, there's a small chance it could be vodka, but I doubt it. All right, Brian wants to know, hey, have you seen the PRS sprayers? Sprayers, choice guitars, models that have been popping up? Is this just pure as way of unloading B stock or start of something new? I'm not very aware with the inner policies at the exact moment. I can tell you, in the past, sprayer choices were in the past because they didn't have enough orders. So imagine how PRs and companies like them work in the US. Okay, so we're not talking about SEs. That's why there's no such thing as a sprayer's choice se. Okay? Prsses, like a lot of import guitars are made with the concept that we're going to buy them, warehouse them, and then they're going to go somewhere when we get orders. Okay? Made in USA guitars are what they call just in time manufacturing, which is a fancy way of saying we ain't building anything until you give us some freaking money. Right? That's a nice way of saying it. It's, that's why, that's what, you know, it's like, it's like, it's like when you have some white work done in your house, they're like, yeah, I need some money, I need a half up. So, so what happens to a factory sometimes, especially in the US is they get, let's say get a thousand orders a month, okay? Thousand orders a month from the dealers and they, or they build they order a thousand. You know, they. They cons have the employees build a thousand guitars, and then when things slow down, all of a sudden they have employees twiddling thumbs and they let them go home a little early. Who wants to go early on a shift? A couple people will. But since, you know, everybody's been there. Sometimes you're in a position at life where like, what, leave early today? Hell, yeah, I'm going to go do something fun or spend some time with my kids. Sometimes leave early today scares the hell out of you because you're like, I need to make rent, and I cannot have a short check this week. So you need people working. So in the past, PRs for a fact, I can tell you this for a fact. Sprayer's Choice was a way to keep workers working because they didn't have an order for the guitar. That's the problem. They can't build. Build it if they don't have an order and they don't have any orders. So PRs would do this during the recession. They would let the employees just make up crap, I guess. And I'm sure it's the. The supervisors, but basically employees, right? They were like, just make. Make the guitars, and then that's the sales department's job to figure out where they're gonna go. And then you can do some excitement. Like, you can contact a dealer and say, hey, we have a dozen Sprayers choice guitars here. They're a little different. They're a little exciting. Let's, you know, you want to buy them, and then they can sell them even though they weren't ordered. So my guess is it is that. And the proof. And what I'm saying is, or the proof could be notice there was none of that stuff during COVID right? So. Because there was probably no time to do that stuff. So my guess is Sprayer's choice is they are just having the employees dream up some paint jobs or do some stuff and essentially have a little fun, but also keep them working because again, you don't want to do any more layoffs. They obviously, they did some layoffs last year that, you know, they. They want to. Right. Size their crew. Right. They don't want to keep laying off because here's the bigger problem. Not only is that horrible because people lose jobs, and that's. That's a horrible. But from the business side of it, it's going to be very expensive to bring people back in if all of a sudden you get orders again. So they kind of just kind of try to keep everything Moving. And so that's a better way of doing things. So that's my guess of what a sprayer's choice is. That's my guess. What they're doing right now. I could probably reach out to them. They'd probably tell me if I asked. But I feel like even if I'm slightly wrong or wrong on that answer, it's definitely not a gimmick. It could be just, you know, trying to get excitement up for the, the models too. And they could have pre planned it as a sprayer choice. Like in other words, like, let's get some excitement. But in my experience, it's very rare for a company to do anything like that. If they don't, if they're backlogged too hard, you know what I mean? And, and, and keep in mind, this all could be still backlog because they, they run a backlog no matter what. But there's a difference between an eight month, a one year, a two year and a six month backlog to them, if that makes any sense. Because they remember not everything. It's not a, it's not an even machine like area. Certain areas, you know, can be twiddling their thumbs while other areas are working. So that's my, that's my, my theory on that. I don't know how to say this name. Tonis. I'm gonna mess up your name, man. All right. I'm doing my best. It starts with a T. It's a lot, a lot of ends in there. Says, hey Phil, I broke the pole off the low pro edge tremolo on my Ibanez. I am not able to unscrew it out and replace it because the whole head broke. Any recommendations? The pull of the low pro edge. So I'm, I'm from this description sounds to me like the, the you're talking about the pole pieces for. You're saying pole. I'm thinking post. We're talking about the two tremolo posts. This is where it can get confusing because if we're talking about something else, you know, that's what's tough about this particular thing. This is a good time to mention. I'm gonna try to say your name again. Tonis. I'm sorry if I'm saying it wrong that we do have a live clinic every month on the Patreon. It's $10. You can pay for the year if you want. If. Since you've paid me $10 here. If you go to the patron and sign up for patron for next month for February, because the next one the date on next month in February, I'll tell you when it is because we've scheduled them out now a month in advance. So you know exactly what day. If you want to be there live, you don't have to be there live. And I know this is going to kind of. Okay, hold on a second. The next one, the next event. Let me go into the chats is so funny. I don't know why I'm having trouble. Okay, February, February 7th. So it's February 7th. It's $10. I'll tell you what I'll do. If you sign up for Patreon for February for $10, I. Once you sign up and I will refund you your $10. So I'll transfer your $10. And just so you know, and, and, and just so no one else gets a crazy idea, I won't get 10. Remember, I'm not getting my. I only get half the $10 from YouTube. But I'll, I'll get more of it from Patron. But this is a great question for the. This is what we do. It's like this. We do it on there on the Patron, the live QA for. It's a, it's called clinic. It's a clinic. It's $10 a month. It's just like this, except for I'm in the shop, I got nine cameras. I got all the things to recreate whatever the problem is, and we can try to have at it. But anyways, back to your problem. I'm assuming also you can send me pictures ahead of time or during. And, and I can see the pictures and I can actually see what you're doing. So you just take a picture with your phone and send it to me. And whether it's real time or ahead of time, you get to all see it. But back to this sounds like your post. I don't know what part of the post broke off my. I have tools that will grab and, and I can get that post out of there, but without seeing it, it's really hard to see what exactly you're doing. And just so you know, that's the reason why we've disabled Super Chats. But Super Chats are not disabled today. For some reason, I disable them and then I don't know how, I don't know why if I have to disable it every time we do a live show. That's why we started disabling Super Chats because a lot of Super Chats were questions like this. And I'm like, there's just no Physical way to do that detailed of a question. And then also I'm just doing a hypothetical. So I'm trying to keep to the questions that I can use my hand gestures and stuff. We talked about doing a Clinic on the YouTube channel. The problem is there's 1353 of you. And so, you know, a clinic on average is 40 people. And even if it was 400 people, it'd still be manageable. It's just no way to. There's no way to do it at this scale that I know of. But maybe we'll try. I don't know. Maybe we'll try one. Anyways, let's. Let's go to the next. Next. I was gonna say next question. Okay. I don't know. This is a. Okay, this is. Amanda sent this. I'm trusting you, Amanda. This person's name is. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. So they want you to vote. Okay. Says when you go from having gas, gear acquisition syndrome to having no gas. Okay, already. I can't answer your question. I don't even. I don't relate to that. I've had. I've probably the question. I'll answer your question. Don't get me wrong. But I'm gonna say, how long have I gone without wanting anything? Gear wise days. I think it's weeks and months. It's days every time. I'm like, I don't need anything. I don't. But then I'm like, I go down into the rabbit hole. I did a rabbit hole this week. Week ago. I was buying all the tools or I'll say gimmicks now. Things that I saw other YouTube channels going, Here's a way to fix this, you know, using a cheap tool. I thought, oh, why don't I review this? I review this. I. Maybe I'll do it for you guys. I don't know. I know I'm gonna get some pushback on this, but I'm. I'm a little concerned about it. Here's what I can tell you. So basically, I watched a half a dozen YouTubers, if not more, show you a trick. Here's how you fix this with only some, you know, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And I bought the thing that they claimed not one works, not one thing works. They're all full of crap. And all of their videos, by the way, every single one of them. That's why I don't want to talk about this, because I'm like, I'm just going to be setting fire and fighting the people on the Internet other Channels, they don't actually, really, actually show you how they do it too. They just kind of suggest it to you and then they kind of mimic it. And then I'm like, right, but when you put into practice, it doesn't work. So I was like, I was a little. So if I sound a little irritated by that, it's because I. I was. There was one. I was really. I might show you guys this one because I thought for sure this one was a. Not even a YouTuber is a Tik tok Tik tok Instagrammer. And I saw it, I go, ingenious. Why didn't I think about this? And I bought this thing. It was like $54, and I did it and I go, that doesn't work, does it? And then it doesn't even make sense. That in fact. So, you know, he's knowingly lying about it. How about that? So maybe I will show you. Because it's kind of a fraud thing. Like, obviously he. He edited and fixed the video for it to even make sense. Because it doesn't even make sense. I'll. I'll. So I'll do that one, but we'll see about the others. Anyways, back to no gas that I'm currently not going to have. It says, what sparked you back into gas again? Everything. Another somebody's YouTube video, a guitar magazine, some artists, a new music song. I bought an album. I was listening to, you know, YouTube music. I listen to YouTube music, which is like their version of Pandora. I'm listening to something in the. In the car and I go, oh, here this song. And I go, I need that. It says, for me, it was a used guitar model I had once longed along for that has upgrades already done. Yeah, I've tried to use the logic, never go back. Every time I bought the thing that I thought I missed when I got rid of it, what I remember is, you know, I did a video called Gear I Regret Getting Rid of. And then what was funny was I learned a lesson from that video. I didn't think about this when I made the video. I thought, oh, that's an interesting video, right? We get rid of gear and then we miss it. And of course, I bought some gear back. You know, I bought a thing that I, you know, got rid of and never seems to work out for the most part. But I thought, oh, that'd be a great video. I made the video. And then I didn't think about the fact because I have this YouTube presence. A lot of people, especially the people I sold Those guitars to over the years, they all reach out to me. Not all, but a lot of them. And they're like, hey, Phil, man, I still got that thing. You want to buy it? And I was like, no. But I didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't want to buy it until they offered it to me. And I was like. And keep in mind, like, buy it for what I sold to them for like a buyback, you know, kind of thing. And I was like, no, I don't think I do. And then. Because every time I seem to go back and try to buy something I missed, there's a reason why I was gone in the first place. There is a couple exceptions. And what I mean by that is this. There's a couple things that I've bought back because at the time I didn't know how to properly use it. And then now I've kind of like, oh, with my skill now or with my knowledge now, maybe it's got a shot. But for the most part, I was telling people, don't go back. You can't go back is what I'm trying to say. But anyways, so back to your. You have gas, then you don't have gas. And for you, you got gas again because you wanted a guitar that you long for. I mean, it's true for me, um, you know, I go through sections of life, you know, where I'm. Things I'm focused on differently. Last year was a lot of hell because I was obviously fixing the studio. So I spent a lot of time and money on cameras, cables and so on, right? So, you know, I spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Eve day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. I spent the entire. Those two days running cable in the studio and redoing the studio because we knew we're going to have more efficient, better content for 20, 26. And I can tell you, I spend a lot more time now with anything that makes my life easier when it comes to gear, music wise, too. So anything that can make the guitar sound a little better or sound easier to record, easier to play, I'm focused on that because it just makes my life easier. And that's where all the focus is. Sounds better, plays better. Okay. I'm not old. And Bench says Spicy Phil once told me to sell my guitar. Yeah, I will. You know, like when somebody says, should I buy a guitar? The answer is always yes on this channel. Sometimes when you sell a guitar, sometimes the answer Is always. Yes. I'm bad at that though. So you know the, I just offloaded an insane amount of guitars. So this is on the back half of the show. We'll talk about the back half. So I just took a bunch of gear to Zims and to the Guitar center in Phoenix. Now this is not the Guitar center in Avondale or the guitar starts in Scottsdale. The manager of that store's name is Frank. He goes by Frank the Tank. It's, it's, it's. He doesn't actually, he won't respond to you if you don't call him Frank the Tank. If you call him Frank Tank, he gets actually madder. You got to call him Frank the Tank. And I'm just kidding. Frank is a very good friend. I told you. He, he has a, he has a master's in educate music education from Berkeley. And he ran our. Less our teacher side of the lessons and, and did lessons for us for, I don't know, probably a decade. And now he's the manager at Guitar center in Phoenix. So I went up there and I took him a ton of gear too as well. So I took some of the Zims. I took it appropriately so it means is all the four more affordable type stuff went to Zims because that's what Zim specializes in. If you know his store in Mesa, he specializes in more, definitely more affordable product. Amps, guitars, pedals. And then the Guitar center can handle some of the heavy hitter stuff that was really expensive stuff. So it took them a ton of stuff. When I say a ton of stuff, I mean it was a truckload. So one of my friends goes, a literally literal truckload. I go, yeah, it was a literal truckload. I loaded up the, like packed up the truck and took it. Still have another truckload to go. So I took it there. So sometimes it's, you know, it's nice relief to get rid of the stuff. This is all stuff from the channel, you know, that you acquired over time. Sometimes companies want to leave stuff behind. It's like a payment. And so that's great except for it's not really a payment until we convert it into cash. And then really, to be honest with you, a lot of is just space. I don't have space for stuff. There's just no space. And Kevin says, not a dump truck. Not a dump truck. So, so that would be crazy if it was a literal dump truck of stuff. But, but anyways, if you, if you go there, you'll see some really choice pieces. I took him really good stuff and he was very fair to me. And you don't have to ask for Frank because he's the manager. He probably pain the ass because he's probably. He's not really like handling customer day to day stuff. But. So if you're curious, you can go up there and check it out. I'm sure you'll figure out what's up there. So. Hero Glop says, hey Phil, what amp or other solution do you use to play practice or play or practice bass at home? For bass, which I play quite a bit, I play here. I'm using. Let me unplug this so I can physically show you one of two things are usually being used. I'm using my Phil Jones amp that I'm holding upside down. This is a Phil Jones amp. If you guys don't know what. This has got two little five inch speaker piranha speakers, all the controls there. It's actually relatively heavy for how small it is. I mean it's not, you know, like heavy heavy obviously, but not super light. So I use this. This is my practice amp. It's a really nice practice amp. If I'm not using that, I'll use a preamp pedal. And I actually have two of these. I just got another one. Just got. So I have two of these Eden Print pedals and then I'll run it out just like the. So here's what's funny. I can do both because I have a mixer, but I'll usually run either or. So if. So if I wanted to play bass, I'm debating if I should show. Anyways, I. I can unplug the. The cable from the Tone King Imperial and plug it right into this and use the same CH and just start playing bass. So that's how. That's my practice solutions for bass at home. I. I think if you're not a bass player, which is. And you want a good bass solution for a bass amp, I think the Rumble stuff by Fender, you know, the 110 is probably good enough. 112. You really want to make it a little loud in the house. The 110 Combo 112, relatively inexpensive. Sounds really good if you want something a little bit more refined. If you have nice speakers, like I have nice studio monitors, I'll run a preamp pedal because I can run everything right through the mix and then it's instant recording for me. So yeah. Steven says Fender Rumble 40. Masterful. I absolutely agree. I think that their stuff is way. It's one of those things like Just because it's so inexpensive, you're just like, oh, it must not be good. It must be beginner grade. It's just really good. So I will tell you, I think The Fender Rumble 40 is as. Almost as good. As good. Almost as good as this Phil Jones. The Phil Jones is probably 7, 800 bucks new. And the rumble's what, probably. What's a rumble 40 go for? Let's look. Rumble 40, I want to say 200 bucks. Look at that. 239. Look at the top controls. I don't use overdrive, so the gain thing's not, you know, the overdrive level is not a big deal. But the bright contour, you got the low mid, high mid treble master. I don't believe this has. Oh, yeah, it has a line out. So you can run line out. You got a foot switch that's to turn it off, on and off the overdrive. Me personally, I wish they ditched the overdrive and put a compressor in it. That would be more useful for me. I'm sure some of the rock guys are like, what are you talking about? I need that kind of ampeg SVT kind of overdrive. But to me, I'm like, I'd rather have compression because then I can slap bass on it a little bit and do some stuff. And then I, you know. But it's a auxiliary in 8th inch, I believe an 8th inch for the headphone jack. Pretty straightforward. I mean, you're not gonna, in my opinion, you're not gonna buy anything better than this. This for $239. 240 bucks, it says. And I've recommended many times. Nothing really changes for as a recommendation. I really, really like it. Okay, let me refresh this. Okay, so we have Hunter says, hey, hello from Alaska. Hello, Alaska. It's cold here too. Now it's 50 degrees and we're freezing. I have a heater on a space. I have the heater on before the show started. It's 50 degrees. So. Okay, he goes. It gets dry inside. So I get fret sprout. Yes. Extreme heat, extreme cold. Yeah. Dryness is a problem. Can't find your video on fixing not rounded ends. Also was wondering if you think once fixed, it is less likely to happen again. This is a great question that's come up recently when it comes to correcting fret sprout. And I want to explain fret sprout to you in a way that I don't think a lot of people are explaining. And obviously me too. So to Your question? I have a fret sprout. You just want to type in film ignite fret sprout as a video. So if you go to YouTube, they'll come up. That's how it finds it. I. I know because I get to see, you know, comments and stuff. And that video is. Does well as a daily video, so there's always comments on it daily. So I. I tell you, usually what you want to do is if you're trying to find a video, a specific video, for me, the best way to do it is type in my name, full McName, full name, Philip McKnight, and type in what you want, like the product name or the video. And yeah, so this is how it comes up. So. So hold on. Here you go. And resting dirt face. Okay, ready? No matter what I pick, man, it's just gonna be always that stupid face. But, yeah, how to fix sharp front ends. That one will come up if that's the one you've seen. I think there's another one, but you get it. Just kind of search through the. Search through the things that being said. Fret sprout. The question that you didn't ask, but you're implying and somebody's actually asked is, should you not address fret sprout? So fret sprouts, obviously, when the neck shrinks a little bit and the. The ends of the frets poke out a little bit, and if they're not rounded perfectly, you can fill the barbs. This is a very important thing to. To. To think about the way I explained it to the quartet guys when I was at the factory and we were talking about this because they were showing me how they made some tools to kind of pass the fret and my fret sock test. Right. That's not a joke. That's so serious. They were literally talking about how they want to. How they are trying to pass the sock test, which I thought was great. That's funny, right? Anyways, I made the analogy. I said, look, if I glued. If I took hot glue and I glued marbles, every one inch on a. On a broomstick, and you ran a nylon sock over it, nothing would happen. They're sticking out, but there's no barbs. The socks are detecting barbs. This was something that was a little confusing at the beginning of the fret sprout test. People thought I was like, oh, the neck shrank, and therefore, this is catching the sock. And that's what we're detecting. No, what I'm using the sock for is to grade how well, they polish the ends. I can show you. I can physically show you a fret that is sticking out dramatically more than another fret. But no, no. Fail, fail, failure on the sock test, because there's no Barbara. The sock will not catch on something perfectly spherical and smooth. So when you do those semi, semi hemispherical front ends, the socks won't catch anything because there's just nothing for this. There's nothing to catch into that weave, which is why I pick nylon socks. I've seen a lot of dudes look, I get it. It's my shtick. And some people feel weary about using it and stuff. And I see them. I've seen everything. I've seen it all. And I can tell you this funny thing, everyone I've seen use something like it, like a balloon or tape or paper or tissue or cotton or what. I used all that, too. First look, women's lingerie was not my first choice. I don't know what you guys think of me, but that was not the first thing I thought. Like, I need to check Freddins. I wonder if my wife's pantyhose work. That wasn't like a thought that entered my head. What entered. What happened was I had tried everything and everything showed something, but not exactly what I was trying to illustrate, which is not having a barb. And then what hit me was, oh, my wife, when we went to the shoe store a couple years ago, I just remember this randomly. We went to buy shoes, and she says, oh, I didn't wear socks today. And I thought, as a man, I don't know what that means. I'll wear socks and my sandals because I'm classy like that. So anyways, my point is, I was like, what do you mean you're not wearing socks? And then at the store, they were like, oh, we have footies. And I'm like, what's a footy? And then they hand my wife these nylon feet socks. And I was like, oh, I bet you I can buy that on Amazon. I bought a box from an Amazon. That's how that that transpired. And I go, let's give a try now. So, you know, actually, that's not entirely true because I actually went to Target and actually had to buy some women's pantyhose because my wife wouldn't do it for me, which I don't know why, but I went and did it. So I had to buy women's pantyhose. And I'm going to admit this to you right now. I also Bought like a pack of gum and. And like four other things just because I was so embarrassed, right? Which is funny because I'm a husband and a father, so it's my. I have a daughter, so it's not like I haven't had by, you know, inappropriate things or weird women things as a man. But I was just a little weird out by buying just a woman's pantyhose, especially because I also need some rope and some chain. Anyways, my point is, is that I was like, I threw a bunch of other things on there. Like, I need a Diet coke, a pack of gum, one yogurt, and these pantyhose. So anyways, and all the cash in your register and these Huggies. So a little joke there. Anyways, so I tried it and what I figured out was it worked. Except for at. Because I at like 20 bucks. That wasn't gonna work. And that's why I went to footies. Okay? So all of that to explain fret end dressing, which is important to understand. When you have a neck that shrinks, okay, it can expand out again. It can. It's wood. It's a sponge. Wood is a sponge, okay? It's very dense, hard sponge, okay? It is not likely that it's going to expand out again. It can. It's not likely. Wood is not only a sponge, though. It is something that is dying it. We killed it and now it's rotting, okay? That's what it's doing essentially how I want you to think of it. So it's more likely to keep shrinking than it is to ever expand. Usually to expand it back out, you're going to use so much moisture by even like putting water on it, that that's not likely. But assuming you could it or not only you could, or it will expand because you went to, like, Argentina, you went from Arizona to a tropical climate. It's possible. That's a lot of moisture, right? Inconsistency of moisture. What I think people don't understand is that when you see the file that I use, like a fret end dress file or some micro mesh, we're removing material at such a small level that it's almost immeasurable, Right? That's what I want you to understand. So when you see me run a pass, when you see a guitar tech and they're running passes on the fret ends and they're rounding them, remember, we're mostly rounding them more than we are trying to cut them back. We kind of like hit them at an angle just to kind of Keep the. You need the taper to come correctly, the angle to come, and then we're rounding. A lot of rounding. That's why I like the fret end dress file. Get the barbs off. The barbs are the bigger problem than the physical fret sticking out, right? You can kind of feel the fret sticking out. But if you watch your hand when you play guitar, I don't care what position you are, there's different positions. There's people who put their thumb exactly. What do you call it? Perpendicular? Is that it? Correct? Is that a term? I don't know exactly. With your thumb, that's technically correct. This is how you should have it, right? Something like that. Some put it flat inside, some put it up here. All these. All these positions. But no matter what, there's always a gap between. See here, there's a gap between your hand and the fretboard. Your hand's not actually sliding up and down on this, so it's not going to fill the bumpy frets. It's not likely. You might catch a little bit of them. But really what you're catching is the barbs because they just happen to catch you just that, right? Because they just. It's a little, teeny little, little barb, right? It's just like a rose bush. It's really. But it's super tiny. So we're really rounding off those barbs. And once you round off those barbs, if the neck expands out or shrinks, it shouldn't matter anymore if you've done it right. But also keep in mind, if you did take some material off the end, if you're doing it the way I've shown you in videos, not only should it be not even measurable, I always tell people, like when you're filing a nut slot, okay, one little trick that we do, nut slots. When we're doing frat end materials, when we're sanding on necks, pay attention to how much dust you're creating. Obviously metal dust, graphite dust or bone dust, because there should be almost none. We're taking some. Everything is small micro. Keep in mind the tools that a repair person, guitar player uses are more in line with a jeweler's tools than they are with a carpenter's tools. That's why I cringe when I watch some youtuber take some Home Depot thing and just start doing horrible Home Depot things to their guitar. And I'm like, that is not the tool to use. We. Because it's, It's. It's your hand. I've Said this before, and this is how we're in the show today. Your hand, your fingers, your tongue, your ears, your nose, they're sensitive. They're sensitive parts of the body. They're there for a reason. That's why you detect all the silliness on your neck. You ever felt a small dent in your neck and think, oh, my goodness, that's got to be, what, 2 inches deep? And you look and you can barely see it. You're squinting and you're like, I know it's there. I can feel this mark. That's because your hands are sensitive. So that's. So basically my answer to your question about fret and dress is if you do fret and dress the right way, you should never have a problem. I once watched a guy put a comment, a video, because he's a moron. He goes, well, when your fretboard springs out, the frets won't be on the end anymore. I'm like, what cartoon world do you think you live in? Right? If I had a hair to pluck out of my head, I'd be like, it's a hair's thickness as material is what we're taking out. So I don't have a hair. So you have to pretend. Because I'm not pulling an eyebrow hair. That hurts. So my point is, that's how much material you take off the front ends. Remember, you're more about polishing than you are about removing the actual metal material. Okay. If fret sprout is sticking out that bad, it does. It's going to be a lot. But trust me, if it's figging, if it's sticking out that far, that fretboard could never expand out that far. It's very, very unlikely. So that's the way I want you to think of it when you watch those videos. And. And keep in mind, we're all learning together. I remember I had. I had to learn this stuff, and then I had to learn to teach it to you. And then when I learned to teach it to you in videos from you guys, I learned how to refine what I'm teaching and then refine again. And not because some people got it and some people don't. It's also because sometimes I don't put a hundred percent of the instruction in the video because I'm just not thinking that way. And then when questions come up like this, I go, you know, that's a great way we can talk about this. And maybe that's what's cool about having a podcast. Is this A discussion. Okay. We're gonna finish the entire show on this one. It's called the real one. That's the name. They're not the fake one. They're the real one says, no question. That's what it says. It's awesome. It says, have quarter of a beer on me. Semper fortis. Okay, I know. Okay, that's Latin. And I'm dumb, so I. But luckily for me, Google will tell me what semper fortis means. Okay, I know what semper fi means. What? Semper fortis means Latin for always courageous or always strong. Look at that. Oh. And it serves as the unofficial model of the United States Navy. Well, thank you for your service. My friends that all join the Navy are always strange friends to me because I live in a desert. And it's weird for my friends that when I knew in high school, went into the Navy, and now they've retired from the Navy because they're old enough and they've come back to the desert, and I'm like. And they tell me stories of Navy life, and I'm like, it just sounds like they went to Mars. Like, I feel like every time, every story, they could be like, and then we landed on Mars, and I'm like, oh, and then what happened? And they tell me stories. That's how all the Navy stories on. They sound like they're just from another universe. But anyways, thank you for your service. I won't be having a beer. I'm not doing beer right now because I'm being good. It's not a New Year's resolution. I've been good for months. I. I will probably. I don't have a shot of bourbon. That's 200 calories. Have a bourbon. I'll throw it in a. In a Coke. And then for those of you that hang out to the end, even though I said it was the end, I'm going to share something fun with you this week. I got this funny thing to happen. So I had this. I have this tray, this wooden tray that looks like a guitar, right? And you put your stuff in it. Right? Now I have SD cards and things, and I put my picks in there. And so it's cool, right? It's kind of cool. And I don't know what possessed me, but I found these. I actively went out looking for these. And I decided one night my wife thought I was crazy at first. She's. She thinks everything I'm doing is crazy, which is. But she likes it. So, you know, I say that she Says it's crazy. I don't want you to think, like, she's like, this is crazy. She says, she'll say, like, of course I found these vintage diner ashtrays, right? These are, these are real. They're supposed to be. I paid for real ones. These are vintage. To put my picks in, and I got them to put on top of my amps, and I put my picks now in vintage glass. I'm pretty sure this is technically depression glass, I would imagine, I would imagine, you know, for those that remember depression glass, but I don't know, maybe it's just amber glass. And when I found these and I bought them, she goes, why did you buy those? And I go, because when I was a kid, all of us put our picks in our parents. This is what I use my mom's ashtray. And I go, and my friend had an ashtray and I thought, I don't know, I just thought it'd be fun, funny to put my picks in an ashtray. So I put my picks in an ashtray and I go, here, why? Here's what, hold on. Because, because I want to put my, the ashtray on top of my amp. I, I, so, you guys, I don't smoke. I've never smoked. You know, I know that those of you smoke. It's really tough, man. I get it. My wife quit smoking 30 years ago, so it was tough. And she'll tell you it's 30 years later and she says it's still tough. So I, I feel for you, but I was just like, I don't know why. I just want to put my picks in an ashtray. So that's my shenanigans this week. I thought I'd share that at the end of the show. On that note, I'm gonna let you guys go. I want to thank the moderators and I want to thank all the channel members and the Patreon members, please, if you're interested, check out the Tim Pierce lesson course. Like I said, at least do the 30 day trial thing. Like I said, as long as you, Obviously, if you forget, you get billed. But if, as long as you remember to cancel, if you want to cancel, but also check it out, it's worth it. And on that note, I'll let you go. Also, check out Keel Connect if you want to come hang out with me and check out Keel. And if you don't want to check out Keel's, you can hang out with me. And if you don't want to hang out with me, you can check out Keel, see how this all works. And if not the worst case, you're in the. You're in. You're in an amazing part of California where the weather's amazing. Okay, on that note, thank you guys for your time. Till the next time, know your Gear. The Know youw Gear podcast.