Phil McKnight (0:00)

The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members. Thank you for making this possible, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast. We have so much to get into. I'm going to jump around, but the first thing I want to hit and go into was a super chat. I saw Antique rocker says, hey, did you see Fender Bot Reverb? Not a deluxe Reverb, but the actual platform. Reverb, the sales platform that was previously or soon to be previously owned by Etsy. So originally was owned by Chicago Music Exchange, sold to Etsy. Now Etsy is going to be moving it on and we'll, we'll, we'll talk about it. This is what changes do you expect to see happen? Free fees pretty much every. I mean. No, no, I'm just kidding. Okay, seriously, let's, let's talk about this. So let's talk about the first thing is when we say Fender. Just to be clear, Fender did not buy it. FMIC did not physically buy or is in the process of trying to buy Reverb. It's the two major investors in fmic, which is creative partners, and servco. Servco, which is. We talked about Servco before on this channel. Servco is essentially a bunch of Hawaiian. Well, I don't wanna say it like that, Cavalier, but it's a Hawaiian co. Car dealerships that own a couple things like Harley Davidson. But fmic, Fender is the only musical, I think investment they have. And then you have this, you know, this creator partners thing. So the two of them, who both own a piece of Fender now want to own Reverb. And so let's talk about a couple things why that's happening. Now Again, we're all going to be guessing. This is water cooler talk. Why are they buying Reverb? And I think the conspiracy theories will pop no matter what we do. So let me just kind of give you some insight of why I think they would buy Reverb. And I can think of many, many reasons, believe it or not. So let's start with the first one. Let me just look and see what you guys are talking about. Okay. Sometimes I get distracted with your comments. The first one is in the first thing that came to my mind when I heard that Reverb is being purchased by essentially the ownership of, of Fender is that it could solve a huge problem they had back in 2000. I want to say 12. It was a while back. So if you guys remember one of these Episodes I was talking about the fact that Fender was trying to go, you know, get, get, be going, get an IPO and go to the stock market. And one of the things that happened, amongst a bunch of things, one of the things happened was a major, a major news outlet, the New York Post basically did an article explaining why Fender is. And I'm paraphrasing because again anytime you talk about news I don't need a cease and desist letter because I said it incorrectly. I'm paraphrasing what I remember them saying which was that Fender's biggest competitor was their used product line. That you know, why would you want to invest or buy stock in a company like could you. They said look, Apple sells a phone. Like it's not every, you know, 10 years ago that 10 year old phones aren't competing with new phones but 10 year old guitars are competing with new current guitars. And then the New York Post actually had a section where it said even their biggest endorsers like Eric Clapton do articles where they claim that the old vintage guitars are even better. And then they even went as far to say that the iPad is more a more relevant musical instrument to kids, to younger generation than the Fender, the Fender guitars. So think about this. That was a main obstacle for them. Now I'm not saying that article single handedly killed their ipo but it was a main obstacle for them to combat for trying to go public. Now if you, if you're told, if the, if we're told that their biggest competitor, Fender's biggest competitor is their own self, the used Fender, right? I used to make a joke when I was a Fender dealer for years. I go, you know what the number one selling guitar in the world is? A Fender Strat. You know what the number two is? A used Fender Strat. That was before I ever read that article. That was a joke we used to say in the story all the time. So imagine if they bought an entity, one of the, let's say the largest entity. Keep in mind Reverb's more than just in the US like it's in hundreds, I don't know hundreds. It's in, it's in almost every major country. So Reverb they would get a piece of essentially of that business. And that would be interesting because now when a used Fender sells it benefits them as well. At least the people who would own, share and Fender. So that could be a reason why they do that. That that solves a problem for them. Another reason, by the way, I have a bunch another reason they could be interested in owning Reverb is what I talked about, about the decreasing network of stores for them to sell. And I already said that, you know, Fender going direct has little to do with. They want more margin. You know, if they sell direct to customer, they get to keep this 30, 40% margin has more to do. The fact that this is the problem is that their network of sales, which is the stores, is shrinking. There's less music stores and less and less. So the biggest problem is that this could solve that, because they could. I mean, I already told you guys that Sweetwater has a store on Reverb called Gear Nuts. Guitar center has a store on Reverb. A musician's friend has a store on Reverb. I mean, it's a big platform. So essentially, Fender could open a big store. Gibson has a store on Reverb. So maybe this is a big deal, and especially with those fees on Reverb. And it maybe gives them another opportunity to cinch up some of the sales they're losing from a decreasing store network. But also, keep in mind, one of the things you would do, I would do. I would do. So I'm assuming they would do if I had. If I had a product like Fender and I'm selling it to a retailer to sell to a consumer, but they're just going on the largest platform and just selling there. Well, I can do that. I don't need to give 30, 40% of the margin so that you can just ship it on Reverb. I'll just ship on Reverb too. So imagine that could be another reason. And so, you know, I believe it could be all of these reasons. It could be one of these reasons. Another reason is to expand their certified used program. So you remember we talked about that on this podcast that Fender was saying that they were doing a certified used program, but it was really confusing because it eluded, or at least a lot of people confused it with they were certifying used instruments, used Fenders and reselling them. But really it was the returned Fender instruments, and they were selling them off as certified used. But like BMW was certified used. They JB2 says KDH said it's a good breakdown how they will control used guitar prices. I don't think they can control used guitar prices. I don't see how that would be possible. Even if you had the biggest platform he used, it wouldn't be possible. The market controls the prices. The not the seller. That's never been an experience I've seen before. So they'd have to have a huge monopoly and they just don't. But anyways, back to this with a certified program, they could expand the certified program because if you've seen Reverb was testing a program and I think they're still doing it where they're allowing some people to sell their items direct to retail wholesalers. So basically I go to list a petal on Reverb. Reverb says it's worth $120 to $140. But like I don't remember what retailers were participating, but a bunch of them were. Joe's Music store will buy it for 95 and you can ship it straight to them and just be done with it. And then just like selling it to guitars or anybody else, they'll flip it later. So the, the thing about that is, is that they could sell to, you know, Fender certified dealers or Fender itself and then do more, expand their certified use program. I don't think that the biggest thing I think, I think all these collectively number four, probably something like this probably wasn't created so soon as just a few months ago. So this is probably just a benefit of it, which is they could, they could diversify and protect themselves from tariffs. So a perfect example is there's no tariff on used gear, at least not yet. So there's no state to state tariffs, anything like that in the United States. And again, we're just thinking about the United States. There's the world too. But again, used gear isn't going to have tariffs on it. So having a piece of the used market is again a diversification of their portfolio. So, so if used sales go down a little bit, right, the, the main hub, the, the core company. This also helps them for when they're getting loans and they're dealing with, when they're dealing with, you know, capital issues. You know, it's like, hey, sales are down. Like yeah, but in this division. But it also, we're, we're really killing it in the use section right now. So it's a way to diversify and protect themselves from a tariff. And then I think this could be probably one of the best reasons they just had a. I mean. So let's talk about coincidences. It's a coincidence maybe that the CEO of Fender just two years ago, maybe three, but I'll say two years ago put out an article saying they had their record year in sales of guitars in the history of Fender ever. We just had a boom. And as much as the new market looks bleak, they still made a crap ton of money and for those of you that work in large corporations know money sitting around is not a good investment. So let's say Fender does have a lot of money from essentially a really nice run of sales, right? They had some obstacles towards the end, but, you know, you know, I don't think that really hurt them. And they could have a ton of money stockpiled and they need to invest. And here's the thing, sorry, scratch my nose. Who could they buy? Like I told, we talked about Gibson buying Mesa Boogie is not really even a thing, right? Like they bought Mesa Boogie, but it's too small for it to be an asset, a large asset to Gibson. It's more of, you know, just having an amp division because they want one. It's maybe marketing because they don't have to, you know, to put other brands of amplifiers with their guitars. But essentially Fender, who could Fender buy? And a lot of you are going to. And just put whatever answers you want, but I'm going to tell you right now, I'm probably going to shoot down 99% of them because just when you think of the scale and the size of Fender FMIC and you think of even their sub brands, who could they buy that they'd want? If you said, oh, they could buy Ibanez, well, they have Jackson Charvel, they have that. They have evh. They have a good catalog of those type of guitars. You know, they're not going to buy sir, they're not going to buy anything like Kiesel. They're not going to buy anything that's super small. I mean, when you're talking about, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in guitar sales, and then you're like, okay, we'll buy a company that, you know, has a market cap of 10 million, 15 million a year. It's just. There's just not a lot of companies for them to buy in the guitar arena. And so what could they buy they could buy? Goodbye Reverb, right. And diversify. So I think I'm going to say that's four or five reasons right there why they would buy Reverb. So. And there could be more reasons that I'm not even thinking of. But those are the first ones that come to mind. And those are some. That's a pretty diverse amount of reasons right there where if you were part of that entity of the company, those would. A lot of those would make sense. It's not a coincidence, I don't think so that you have Gibson and Fender. Gibson, of course, is out there suing everybody into the Ground to protect their IPs, right? Their intellectual properties are everything to them. They want to protect this because it's not hard to see a company like Marshall that has now been sold to a Chinese investment company for a billion dollars and then them say in that transaction that Marshall was like, Marshall amps are like $300 million of that billion. So it means 700 million of the value of Marshall was not actually the amplifiers. It was the Bluetooth speakers, the glasses, the refrigerators. So if you were in those companies, I hate to say it. Look, this is where the boring, this is all boring. But it's Fender and we're guitar players, we're going to talk about it. But to me, the Gibson, Fender, Marshall, all the big companies now they're just boring corporate and doing boring corporate things, acquiring each other, you know, essentially being bought up by venture capital companies of essentially trying to cash the IP over the product itself. In other words, the Fender logo is more valuable than the Fender guitar. The Marshall logo is more valuable. You know, like I told you guys once, you know the joke I made once about Gibson is how does Gibson become, you know, a multibillion dollar company? It becomes a bourbon company. It's Gibson bourbon. And they, they make them in, you know, bourbon barrels, you know, oak barrels or sorry, mahogany barrels with lacquer on the outside to make the bourbon taste better. And they could, you know, essentially, you know, you'll be a bigger company selling bourbon than you will ever be guitars. And Gibson could do something like that. Essentially how Marshall did it, they started selling things that aren't the Bluetooth speaker. I mean, because when I think of vintage tube amplifiers, I think of Bluetooth speakers. Now again, we know that there's a marketing side of that, but my point is I could see all the reasons why Fender does it. So now then comes the fun part, which is, what do you think's going to happen? So here's what's good. There's good news. So although the, the investment in Fender is, well, let's put it this way, they're a private company, unlike Etsy, who is a public company. So public companies in my experience tend to always push more profit. More profit, more growth, more growth, no matter what. And we saw that in the time Etsy had bought reverb fees, I mean, they feel like they doubled. I look at the fees now sometimes and I look when I sell something, a reverb and I look at the fees and I go, wow, I'm almost better off just consigning at, you know, Music store at this point. Now, granted, it's about double still to consign a music store. But I don't have to ship it. I don't have to deal with the customer, you know, so there's some benefits there, especially for somebody like me and you guys. Most you guys who are. I'm like, I, you know, I've been in the guitar sale business. I don't want to be in it anymore. That's why I left it, you know, whatever, eight years ago. And I'm not really interested in doing that anymore. But I just have stuff that I have to get rid of like everybody else. So I think there's a lot of decisions that Reaver made that were very, you know, predictable when Etsy bought them. Will they reverse with a company like FMIC or Fender or the parent companies or whatever you want to call it? I think so. It's possible. One thing that's nice is it's possible that because the companies that are investing into Fender, this is their only musical instrument endeavors is the FMIC and now Reverb. Look, I've seen this. It's really rampant in this industry. I mean, hugely rampant. Where rich people outside this industry get into this industry because they love it. So they, you know, perfect example. I mean, there's. I mean, there's so many examples of this, of rich people coming in and going, hey, I have all this money, but what I do for a living is boring. And now that I have money, I want to do something fun. And I'm going to buy a guitar company or I'm going to invest in a guitar company or I'm going to buy a music store or I'm going to, you know, right. And do something fun. And there's not so much emphasis on everything is an accounting, profitable thing. I don't really get that vibe from Fender, but. But it's possible that they could. I mean, come here. Remember, we're comparing to, let's. Let's just say two evils. The evil of Etsy versus the evil of the. Of the corporate. The corporate. I'll say the empire that owns Fender. If I was gonna bet with no information, I'm gonna bet towards the Fender guys more so the Etsy guys. I'm just gonna be like, you know, that's, that's my thought process again. That's just me and my thoughts to put it out there because people are asking and they. I'm sorry, just looking at comments to see if you guys have a comment directed to me, you can. At me so you. So it sees my name. Or you can put two question marks at the beginning. This one came from Tele driver says, hey, would it be in Gretch's best interest to leave the arrangement Fm fmic. Should. Should they? I wouldn't. I mean, you know, what would be the thing? The. I, you know, you never could say bulletproof, but I'd almost say Fender is bulletproof at this point. So is Gibson. I mean, think about this. When I think of ultimate horrible headlines of a guitar manufacturer in the last 10 years, Gibson's like 50% of them. And Gibson's not hurt by that. You know, how many, how many times with a quick search, how many times can you go out there and find, you know, like, small builder who makes 12 guitars a year, basically sued by Gibson? You know, right now, I'm not saying Gibson doesn't have the right to do that. I'm just saying, like, that's, you know, I just believe that, you know, Gibson makes great guitars. So people buy them and they really can't. They make their brand, as I dare say, bulletproof. I feel the same way about Fender. I have a lot of critiques of Fender, but I still buy Fenders. I still love Fenders. You know, I try, like you guys, I try to support the smaller guitar builders and amp builders as much as I can, but I'm still a victim of my addiction. And my addiction is I love Gibsons, right? And I love Fenders. For those listening later, I'm pointing at Gibsons and Fenders, and there's just. There's just never. It's never gonna leave. I just. It's just that. It's just that hard for me. Well, barring they do horrible, horrible stuff. But I guess, I don't know, because sometimes I feel like they have. But, yeah, I don't think the Fred Gretsch and those guys are wrong for doing that arrangement. And let's be very clear. As someone who sold a lot of gretches, I will tell you that Gretsch went through a lot of transitions over the years. And in my opinion, for what it's worth, the Fender arrangement is the best situation they've been in probably since the inception of Gretsch when it comes to the quality, getting it out there, the pricing. I mean, you know, there's, there's a lot of Gretsch horror stories before Fender fmoc enter and integrate, integrated with them and started selling and supporting that brand. So it's, it's, like I said, it's not always doom and Gloom, you know, now we can look back. It's like what, four years. Four years ago. Four years ago, Ish, a private equity company bought the controlling interest or the main interest in Sweetwater. And I said, then everybody said, oh, this is just like Guitar Center. And I said, no, this is not like Guitar Center. When Bain bought Guitar center, they shoved a ton of debt into it because Guitar center was doing great. And the recession came and they, they didn't see that coming. And that created a big problem. I'm not saying they weren't part of the problem. They were a huge part of the problem, but that was. It was two problems happening at the same time. Right? Let's, hey, let's shove a lot of debt into a business that's doing well. And then the recession came and that's what they do, and that's horrible. But in the Sweetwater case, Sweetwater is doing better now and it's growing more, it's improved more. You know, maybe some of you will say the candy's not as good. Maybe you'll say your service is not as good. It's possible, but that isn't the story that was painted by a lot of people when that company was essentially acquired by private equity, or the majority interest was when Chuck sold it out. Everybody said it was the end of Sweetwater and it was like doom and gloom. And like I said, now it's four years later and I don't see. I see Sweetwater is still dominating the retail market in the US for guitars. So who knows? David Kornblatt says Amazon buys Sweetwater, question mark. I, I will never be shocked ever. Not even a nothing. I will not be shocked if one day Amazon buys Sweetwater at all. It makes total sense to me. Same reason Amazon bought Whole Foods. Sweetwater owns a piece of the online retail that Amazon does not. And it wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked if one day we hear Amazon buy Sweetwater, keep Sweetwater independent, just like Whole Foods, to grab a different market, a more appropriate premium market that they don't have that. I mean, I wouldn't be shocked by that. So unless anyone has any other questions about the Fender acquisition thing, and we'll see. Like I said, what's great about the show is, is like I always say, it's water cooler talk. We're just having fun. But I always like to put out some ideas of what I think there. You know, why it's, why something's happening. Just to see. Right. You know, at the end of this all, none of us really know. So I do know this. I'm. I have heard rumors. The rumors are pretty big. They're grumbling. They're rumors that Fender plans to furlough some employees this year. Periodically throughout the year, or at least once or twice the year. I've heard it from at least five different sources at this point, which doesn't make it true. So, you know, if you decide to, you know, talk about this like I am, please, please do the ethical thing and say no one knows. But a couple of the rumors came from employees. So, I mean, that's part of it. But they were saying that basically, like, Fender is going to shut down for a week, like probably in the middle of summer. And. And what they're. So you guys understand what that means? It means that basically sales are low. So what you do is you let your employees have a week off. I'm kind of making it sound nicer than it is, but I assume they can take vacation time if they have it or something like that. And then that way you don't have to. Usually it means you don't want to lay somebody off. That's usually what that implies, you know, you just want to keep your staff employed. So. But I had heard Fender had planned to do that. So what's funny is that I heard that multiple times for about a period of a month and a half. And then I heard that they were requiring reverb. I was like, that sounds about right. That's about right. With what things are happening in the world now. So tele driver says PRS is hiring. Maybe PRS should be always hiring. So tele driver, if you want to know how it works with most of the factories that I've worked for, like, I'm pretty sure right now, like PRs, if I was guessing PRs, is hiring. If I'm guessing Fender's hiring right now. Even then, I just said they're gonna furlough. Music Man's always hiring. Usually it's because the entry level position to most those jobs are going to be a sander slash buffer, usually sander before buffer. If you've ever done that work, it's extremely tedious. It's hard on your body, your hands. It's not a pleasant, enjoyable job, especially when you're doing it for eight hours straight. And so that's how they. That's kind of how they start all inexperienced employees into the world of building guitars. And some people just take the job because it was a job, you know, and it's better than what they had or it's just a job and we all just need a job and, you know, they find a better job and they go. That causes a turnover rate. A lot of times it's also because people want to get in the guitar business. Like, hey, I want to start building guitars. And, you know, you start sanding guitars all day or blocks of WOOD all day, eight hours a day, you know, 48 plus hours a week. After a couple of weeks, you're like, this isn't the dream I hoped it to be. And even though eventually a lot of them upgrade and go to better positions so that those companies are always hiring because that turnover rate's the highest in that first part of that is. So if you ever want to get into the guitar biz manufacturing, I can tell you right now you can pretty much apply a couple times a year to a couple of different factories and you'll eventually get hired at some point, I'm sure, in the. In that. In that department, because that's where they have the highest turnover. Shadow. Shadow. I don't know. It's weird. Shadow Net. Shadow Net says. I was like, looking at Shadow Net says, what if you have lots of experience with, like, soldering, could you possibly make it to electronics department where they do that stuff? It's possible. Again, you know, I've just given you some insight. In my experience that unless you had that experience directly, like with one of their competitors doing it for a while, like, I'm in this department and they need somebody in that department. That could happen. But most of the time, they level everybody up. You know, you guys saw the C O O of PRS Guitars is Jack Higginbotham. He had done two podcasts with me, and clearly, if you guys saw, he started in 1985, he started sanding guitars. So he's a CEO of a 70 or $80 million guitar company, and he started as a sander. So they do promote within especially PRs, but a lot of other companies do it as well because that's part of the reason. That's how. That's how they get you through those high turnover rates. Some people are fine just sticking with the, you know, buffing and sanding, but some people, like, they don't see this as the dream job. So the whole idea is to get promoted out of it and up and up and up the ladder of different positions. So, yes, the answer to your question is yes, you can get hired straight into a department by a lot of companies. But in my experience, a lot of them ones in the United States they promote within first or, you know, if they can. Because again, not only is it good, you have a good work history with the employee, you also are sending a message down the line that opportunities ahead and sometimes that helps. But, but if they need somebody really qualified and they need somebody now because like. And they have a lot of demand. Yeah. If you have the experience, I'm sure they'll hire you directly that position. Okay. All right. I think we, I think we, I think we hit all that. We covered it. We covered it. Okay, let's go. I also grabbed another question and I copy paste was the. Oh, first question. This is the first early riser question I saw. Was the, the one I liked the most. This one came from S. Riley, who said, hey Phil, now that the Ibanez AZ Standard exists, if you guys didn't see, I did a review of the AZ Standard. That's a main China Ibanez AZ with a roasted maple neck and stainless steel frets in the 500 range. 550. How would you rank that compared to the premium and the prestige in your video? You prefer the premium for the money. Does that still stand? You know, what's funny is so I bought that guitar, that AZ Standard, I bought that from Guitar center and I bought it from Guitar center because I have affiliate links. When you click them, you know, it gives the channel some, some financial support. And I've told you guys this many times, although a lot of you, including, you know, a lot of us, prefer to buy from Sweetwater. If I use my affiliate link with Guitar Center, I make twice as much. In this case, I get discounted twice as much because that's what I'm doing. I'm buying it from the entity. And, and, and by the way, I only say this publicly because one, it's the truth, but also I've told Sweetwater for years they should just make it to where if you're an influencer of some sort or you do content of any kind of level, they should make it to where I could just buy stuff at a discount, but they don't do that. And so, and the discount I asked them to do, Guitar center doesn't do it either. Except for the affiliate link covers that much. So that's, I'm just telling you why I bought it from Guitar center because usually I like to buy it from Sweetwater because they'll weigh them and I like to know the weight. But anyways, I bought it from Guitar Center. So the reason I tell you that is not only was it totally independent review the guitar wasn't cherry pick for sure because it just came right from a warehouse and straight to me. And, and so anyways, that guitar was fantastic. Absolutely, disgustingly fantastic. You know, when I, when I do a deep dive, I try to hold back as much of the, you know, the, the things that create the fomo, right? The fear of missing out. That, you know, that's, that's, it's the part of the Internet that I just don't enjoy. You know, I don't enjoy it when I'm on my Instagram feed and there's like an, some Instagram person and they're like, look what I got there was ripping open a box and they're like, this is amazing. And when I started doing YouTube, I would do that stuff too because I was like, look what I got. Because it was, it was new to me and it was exciting over time. You're like, you know, who the hell wants to watch somebody just. It's like watching somebody get their Christmas gift, I guess. I don't know. So I try to kind of downplay that. So in that video I did what I. A fair assessment of the guitar. I stand by that review to this day. Great, great assessment. But now that I can hindsight look back at it, the guitar was so good. Like it was so good, it played good, it looked good. I just remember thinking like the, the number one comment on that video I 101% agree with. Which is the weakest part. Not because it was a quality problem, just by just the idea of it was the bridge. Using a six screw bridge instead of a two point tremolo didn't make sense to that guitar. In fact, I kind of think here's where I don't understand. Ibanez could have really killed it with a hardtail bridge. To me, I didn't keep that guitar. And the reason is, is because this year, specifically this year, I don't know if you guys catching this, but as soon as I do a review, we're selling that gear, okay? So if a company gives us the gear, we sell it. If a company wants it back, but they'll sell it at a discount, we're gonna sell it. We're using that money to fund more videos. As you guys know, I built a more in depth camera rig in January. It's not so much that I'm trying to pay myself back for that rig, I just am making more content. And because I'm making more content, I need more stuff to make the content. And also I got sick of bitching all the time on this show about companies not wanting to send us stuff because we don't get nearly as much stuff as most of the channels for sponsorship, you know, as companies sending it to us. So I was like, well, I can whine about that or we could just do something about it. So that's why I'm explaining why I sold the guitar. If that guitar had a hardtail, I would have definitely kept it. Because I could have sold something in my collection. Because that's how I do it. I go, if I don't sell the gear that we get, I sell a piece of gear I already have. Because I like that piece of gear more. That guitar. If that had a hardtail, that'd be fantastic. Fantastic for the money. Because what's great is if you want the tremolo, you could upgrade to the premium if you want. No, the neck on it, it was great. It's just really good guitar. So do I like it? I cannot, I could not conceivably tell you a major difference between that and the premium. The, the real. The. The things that are different about the AZ standard and the premium to me, are not tangible. They're just the things that you just know, which is the standard is made in China and the premiums made Indonesia. If that's a valuable thing to you, because some people have a value to that, you know, like, hey, I like Indonesia over China or whatever. Just like I like Japan over Indonesia. There's a hierarchy, as we all know. If that matters to you, then that's a, That's a play to me. If they were both made in China or they were both made in Indonesia, I don't even know what's different about them. The necks feel almost identical in the way they feel. The frets feel identical. Tuning keys. Nothing was really pinging me as being like substandard in the guitar. Not, um, pickups wise were different, of course, but that's something that you know when you're talking about a really good set of pickups is $200 a set. And that's really rounding up because you can. I. I've demoed pickups that are good at 50 bucks a piece. But. But a really good pickup pickup is, you know, a hundred dollars, you know, for $100 pickup. So 200. 2. 200 to 100 pickups in that guitar, which would bring that guitar to 750. Still puts it pretty competitive against the premium. In other words, money saved enough to make sense. But that bridge was the weak point. It wasn't bad. I Didn't have any issues with it as a staying in tune. I didn't like the screw in Tremolo arm as much. It's not my favorite, but again. But yeah, I think the. The standard is good. Do I think it was better than premium? No. I know I said that I like premium more than the main Japan as a whole. I just don't notice enough to be different. But I didn't like it more than premium, if that makes any sense. But it's. It's really hard, you know, to me, it's like it's hard to weigh those two things. But I would say I like premium the most still just because of all the things. The better pickups, the better bridge. It's made in Indonesia, which is out of Cortech, which I just think is, you know, a more premium type factory in the long term. But again, the. Where the manufacturer part isn't so much as a tangible as anything else. Somebody just asked about the pedal board giveaway. Let's take a look. So I, I went to King Sumo before we started the show. I sent an email to the winner and I have not got a response yet. So. And I know this time I said it was going to tell me your name. I guess it doesn't tell me the name, it just tells me an email address. So I will tell you this. The email address is M. I want to say cross, mkr, A, U, S. So if that seems like that could be your email address, you could email me back. That was me that emailed you. And then as soon as we do that, we will confirm firm and do the giveaway. And it's for those that everybody who entered, I just want to say thank you. Who entered to win the pedal board that I built in the live show and all the pedals and all the cables and all the goodies. And I want to thank all those sponsors again. I enjoyed that video so much. I had so much fun. And, and I just want to thank you guys for that. It was really cool. It's really cool when we get to do something fun and somebody's gonna get a pedal board out of it, which is cool. So that's funny. Earl says you spelled Earl wrong. Yes. So like I said, if they don't respond by Monday, I didn't really. I gotta refine this process. See, I thought what was gonna happen was this time because it said the King Simone thing said enter your first name, I thought I'd be able to say their name on the show. And then that's it. So I don't have that. But anyways, as soon as they respond back to me, I will do the giveaway. I will post something on Instagram and Facebook as we usually do, to do the giveaway. And if they don't respond to me by Monday, we'll pick another name and then I'll put that out there. So, so, and I'll, I'll keep you guys up to date on the social media platforms. And if you don't do social media platforms, you can click on the link down below to Patreon, become a free member. Not the free. There's a free trial where you can, you know, sign up for $5 and get like, I don't know, some time period for free. There's just a free membership. And the best thing about that is I post social media stuff also there. So some of you guys, like, I don't like Instagram or I don't like TikTok and all that stuff and I just, whatever, I'll post there. I just post it right over on the, on the Patron. So that way if you're interested in seeing when I post, you can get right to it. Okay, let's go to, to another question I'm going to do. Amanda sent me a couple. Let's do this one came from Rob Allen. Amanda sent this says, hey, Phil, is it okay to store a Gibson SG in its case with the strings at full tension if it's only out once or twice a month? Yeah, it's totally fine. Nothing wrong with storing guitars with the strings at tension. Some people don't like to. They want you to downtune your guitar when you're shipping. I did a video on that. What I can tell you is that's generally true for acoustics. When I talk to. And this is the important part, you know, everybody's like, you know, they do some kind of bro science thing where they, hey, I put a guitar in a case and I took it across the country and whatever. But here's what I can tell you. I just went and I did this. When I did that video, which is it's like a Myths that the Guitar Players Believe video, which I think I got like a million views or close enough to it. What I did in that video, which I thought was kind of smart, is I reached out to all the guitar companies and I said, can you tell me what your procedure is for shipping guitars? All of the electric guitar companies, which I was like, Fender, as Gibson and prs, and you name it, they all said, we ship the guitars. Not only in tune, they ship them into with tension in tune. Now, the acoustic manufacturers said they don't ship them in tune. They do decrease the tension when shipping. Okay, So I know that's not what you asked because you talk about destroying in your closet or destroying it. So obviously, if it's okay to ship it that way, it's okay to store it that way. So I don't think you're having any problem. The only issues I can tell you about guitars, and specifically, even more so Gibsons or nitrocellular lacquer guitars. So just think of this as a problem for all guitars. But if you have a Gibson, it's more likely to get to be a problem, is you don't want to keep a guitar in a case for, I would say, more than two months without opening the case. Because sometimes, especially if your guitar is binding, any kind of. Any kind of binding or anything where you can think of where glues were used, because the glues gas off, and they are known to become acidic and eat the guitars. So, you know, there's tons of stories. I had one. The first one ever happened to me was horrific. A customer brought in an ES335 that they had left in the case for a couple of years, and they opened the case, and the binding just fell off because the. And it ate into the finish. It was, like, really crazy. And I had heard a rumor that that happens, but I saw it. And then, of course, I was like, well, was something else in the case, you know, because, you know, you never know. And. But I actually talked to a bunch of people, and they were like, yeah, I've seen the same thing. Bunch of other luthiers, bunch of other guitar manufacturers. So just make sure you open the case every. About two months, once or twice a month. I don't think it has to be long. Maybe five minutes. Just. I've never seen a problem, and that's what I do with mine. The other thing, though, is I can tell you that you want to watch that you make sure you store nothing on the guitar like the strap. This has happened twice where a friend of mine did it, and I told him not to do it, and then he did it again, which is he stored his guitars in a case with the strap and he used the strap. And I see a lot of guitar players do this. They'll take the strap and they. They don't take it off the strap buttons. They lay it on top of the guitar. Some of you guys have seen this. You pull it up, and when it lays on there. Sometimes that will eat into the finish, and that's an issue, Right? So just make sure that you don't leave the strap on physically on the guitar when you're storing it for good amounts of time. Now, again, so know there's no exaggeration of freaking out here. I'm not talking about keeping a case for a week. I'm not talking about leaving the guitar strap on the guitar for a couple weeks. It takes time and. But I would say the reason why I said a month to two months is because I have never seen anything that short of term. So I think you're fine. Could you go a year? Possibly. But at two months, I don't expect anybody to say that they had a different experience than that. Now, Bright Brad Guitar Manlin, Texas I think says nitro poly finishes both. Here's why the straps can damage the nitro finishes because they kind of. They burn them. They will burn the finishes because they will deprive the finish of oxygen. That's what causes lacquer burns. That's why when you see music stores putting a little rag on a hook, that's because when they put the headstock on the hooks, the rubber, it basically blocks all the oxygen from touching the nitro and it becomes hot. It actually physically burns. So straps can do that too. Whether they're leather, whether they're nylon, whatever. Poly finishes, they don't cause that reaction. But what happens over time is just laying on the finish, it imprints into it. You'll see it from time to time. The first time I ever saw it, I didn't know what I was looking at. I saw a guitar, and right on the front of the guitar was what I thought was somebody must have put, like, duct tape on it and then peeled off the duct tape. But for some reason, the shape of the duct tape was imprinted in the guitar. And I was like, that's so weird. What is that? And then what happened was one day a customer traded in a guitar to us, and it was in the case. And he said the same thing. He'd been in there for years. We opened out the case, and it had that same kind of like a. Like. Like almost like somebody took duct tape and pressed it into your finish. A little. Little strip. And then the strap was still attached. And I look at the strap, and the pattern on the strap was identical to the imprint. And I'm like, oh, it. It imprinted into the finish. There is ways to fix it. I'm not a refinish person, but I'm Just saying, why not just avoid the whole problem? So those are my pieces of advice. If you leave a guitar in a case, especially if it's lacquer, make sure you open it once to twice, once a month, to once every two months. And don't store your guitar in a case for any length of period with the strap still on the guitar where it can lay on the guitar, be around the guitar. This is so you know, I follow this so much. Just so you guys know, because I always tell you guys, look, when I give advice, I'm just telling you what I do. You can choose to live your life however you want. If you found opposite results of me, like I said, your mileage may vary. You don't have to listen to me, but I don't give you hypotheticals. I just tell you what I do. So my universe that I love, I. Because I love it so much, I store it in a case, okay. And. And then I pull it out. It's been in a case for the last. You haven't seen it for the last two months because it's been in a case. So watch this. You guys know I love DiMarzio strap locks. Look, no straps. I take it off this guitar when I store it in the case for a month or two, I take the straps off. I'll put them right back on. Now I'm playing again. So just because I've seen it and that's. I just would hate to finish, you know, hurt the finish on something like that. So that's. That's the answer to that. Create a lot of sound. Says, does that Ibanez swirl paint job have Stevie's blood in it? No. So this doesn't. There's a guitar that Stevie has called the DNA guitar, you know? Right. Like our DNA. And they put Steve I's blood in the swirl. And for those right now going, what gross? Yeah. Yep. That take I'd have on it. I think those things go for like 20 grand now. It's crazy, but yeah, this is so gross, I couldn't do it. I don't think of myself as super uptight, but nope, I don't. I don't care who it is. If somebody's blood was in the paint job of my guitar, I'd be like, nah, I'm not good. But, you know, whatever makes you happy, I guess. Let me go to another. I'll grab another one from Amanda. This one is Amanda sent, says step van. Joe says, hey, Phil, I just did a five way switch mod on. On my telly and It's a game changer tone wise. My question is, is this mod basically what the Baja Tele wiring is? So the Baja wiring tele by fender has a four way switch but an S1 switch added. So I would. My guess is I don't know specifically what how you wired your five way switch, but I'm guessing you followed that same concept which is the four way and the one. Yeah. Why there's this four way and a one and not a five, I don't know. I don't know specifically because I don't know. But yeah, I could imagine it could be the same if you haven't ever tried, if any of you guys never tried a four way mod on a, on a Telecaster is a pretty cool mod to do to a Telecaster to give you in series and a parallel option which is cool and, and really cool for getting that kind of, like I said, those nasal kind of country sounds out of it. So. Yeah. But my guess is without looking at what you how you wired it, I would say it's pretty got to be pretty similar given that the same same options, same five options. Amanda also sent Easy Possum says. Hey Phil, looking for a good EQ boost pedal? What do you recommend? EQ boot. I mean obviously the boss G7 I like. That's the one I use for a Boost EQ pedal because it has the Boost eq. I've been told by all of my cool friends, you know, the cool guys like Tim Pierce and all the guys who can really play like there's no tomorrow. The they all have the modified Boss EQ pedals. Is it. I don't know if it's analog, man. I don't know who does the mod. Somebody probably knows in the comment section. Put in the comment section. But all I know is every time I find one, it's $300 or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, you know, you know, I'm good with what I got, but I haven't tried it. So that's, that's the great thing, you know, is sometimes when there's this expensive thing out there, you won't have value of it until you try it. So sometimes I don't want to try it because it's gonna put me, it's gonna make me buy it. Otherwise, what else do I use? You know what EQ boost? I'd say that, I mean I don't really. I use a lot of boost pedals, but not anything specifically that has a graphic EQ or a band eq. Some boost do have kind of like a tone control or maybe now like a tone or bass or treble control. But I don't use anything like that. So it's not specifically. Now the Enhancifier has a little bit of an EQ to it and Taurus pedals has a little bit EQ to it. And that's where I kind of found myself and you know, as. As being happy. And then Vox guitars Rock says I ran. I run an MXREQ pedal all the time. Yeah, MXR is cool. The MXR EQ pedal is. There's two. Right. MXR Q pedals. And I thought. Yeah. So let me show. So there's the two. So there's this one. And I thought this one doesn't actually have. Yeah, this just has the eq. But you. So you can't boost. You can set the EQ but you can't boost the volume where the larger one. Why is it doing that? Stop it. This larger one can. This one looks pretty cool. Well, don't forget to win over $10,000 in gear from Gibson. All right. 10 banning Q. So this has a gain control and a volume. So that's. This is more like how Bosses is. And. And then of course this has 10 band. So this might be better than the boss one. I don't. I don't know specifically. I just know that the reason I had the Boss one over the MXR for years was I wanted the volume and the gain control as well. And so that had it on that option. But not the. But I never did. I never had the 10 band. So there you go. But those are some couple of things to check into. Let's go to Tobias. Tobias says hey Phil, what is the best way to compare pickups other than DC resistance? I've tried finding a pickup like a 498T reacts the same. Reacts. Reacts the way I like with my amps. I've tried many that are too flubby. Any recommendations? So you know, Gibson pickups and it's pretty much all their pickups in my experience do this. I'd say the 498T. I wouldn't say more so. But. But yes. What they all do this does more obviously they hit the amp hard. Let me give you example. If I was to take a. Again, if I was taking any of the Gibson pickups, whether that the 57 classic or the 498T or maybe the Burst Bucker, the Burstbucker Pro and set them in a guitar, which obviously you guys know I have a guitar where I can just load in pickups and I can do this. I've already experienced this, so I already know what happens. Setting the height at the exact same height, finding a, like, component type of pickup. In other words, a pickup that has the same kind of resistance, DZ resistance and inductance, you know, they're all looking the same. The Gibson pickup is always louder than the amp. When I plug, When I hit the plug in the amp, you know, the amp is always noticeably louder, not bigger, not fatter, louder. Like, I feel like the volume just got pushed up a little bit so it's hitting the amp a little harder is my experience, which is why I'm a big fan of Gibson pickups. They just do something that's really cool. Now there's other clones of Gibsons that do it, and then there's other clones that don't. Resistance is the, the most, I want to say the most generic way to test a pickup. But it is going to tell you more than anything else. A lot of people look at the inductance, you know, resonant peak. There's a lot of things, you know, DiMargio goes into great lengths to tell you about the milliamps, you know, that's in it and in the more, you know, more kind of specific EQ patterns. Resistance is generic. But it is such an easy thing to just see right away and get you. It's going to be, it's going to be. I don't know, I can make. I can't make up a percentage. I don't know how to do that for something like this. I'm just going to say it's going to get you closest to the guess than anything else. Because here's why. Although it's not the main determining factor of the sound, although it's not the end all, be all, which is why I said it's generic. It is the most accurate when predicting things. Okay, so what I mean by that is never have I ever put a pickup and tested the resistance and said, oh, wow, the resistance is really low. And then plugged into an amp and went, wow, it's really pushing the amp really hard and breaking up the clean channel. Like it's not likely to happen that way. Again, the amount of wire. Because here's the problem. The DC resistance is going to tell you how much wires on there. But also it kind of gonna. But it, it also tells you how thick the wire is. For instance, like, you know, if you have a 43 gauge or a 44 gauge wire versus 42, obviously you're gonna more of it. And again, there's different types of wire. All these things factor in. And the problem is is this. We're trying to take a thing that's not so much overly complicated, but there's so many factors. Cause like I said, it's not just resistance and inductance. It's type of magnet. It's not just type of magnets type of wire, it's thickness of wire, right? It's whether or not the wire is wrapped so much vertically or is just horizontally, just stacked outward like this in huge amount of wraps. Or if it's the pickups made longer. Gibson is famously known for. There's different. Their bar magnets were different lengths. And there's a theory that I've heard many times that, you know, some of them are shorter because they were just trying to be cheaper. Makes sense. Fender was notorious for that in the day. So it's why when I give that information in a video, it's just to give you a. In fact, I'm not the. I think what everybody always confuses. And maybe this will help you. People think that when I give the information of inductance and resistance in the video, it's to tell you something about the pickup. It's not, it's to. When I play the guitar, it's. And you hear the pickup, it's now to take what you heard and see how that connected to that information. And if it even connected at all. And if you're paying, if you're like got a scorecard, you're scoring the videos, you'll see that a lot of times it's not correct. In other words, here I am going, wow, the resistance is, you know, 14K, right? Inductance is 3.94 and well, 4.95. And I plug in the amp and it's like, wow, it sounds smooth and quiet and it's not right. So it's. It's again to show. It's to show that it's not the end all, be all. But it is a really nice thing to have because it kind of tells you. The other thing that I'm really doing, which I've talked about many times, is when I do cheap guitars, inexpensive, really low price guitars, especially from, you know, these, these up and coming manufacturers that are constantly popping up with a new brand. I also want that information because I want to see when I hear the pickup. Because here's what's funny is a crappy pickup, this is my experience, just thousands of pickup reviews a crappy pickup And a good pickup almost meter out. Correctly the same. I shouldn't say correctly the same. So in other words, I've said this before. You can take a really powerful ceramic magnet, shove it on a. On a pickup with a little bit of wire. In other words, they don't put that much winds on it. Right? They underwind it, but they put a big magnet or a ceramic on there because ceramic's cheaper. That's all. It's not that it's not as good, it's just cheaper. Just physically cost less and on. And if I put my multimeter on it and I check inductance and resistance, it's gonna, like, it's gonna read something. And then I take a nice pickup that maybe has an El Nico 5 and it has more wire on it. And the magnet, you know, gausses in is powerful. You almost see on the meter, they almost look the same. And so the reason why we want to know that number is that when we hear it, when I hear it and I go, it doesn't sound pleasing to me. Then from that information, I go, well, there's no way it should sound this harsh if it wasn't for the fact that they underwound it and put a bigger magnet in it. So. So it's just more of the investigation of doing the deep dive. It's just to give you the information. Which is why I now do the sheets. And I don't know if you notice on the sheets, some people like it, some people don't. You know, over time, if there's one thing on this channel, I've worked my ass off and spent a fortune just improving it throughout the years. And I'm always going to do that just because I can't, you know, like you guys. There's no end to what I want to achieve with this stuff. But if you look on the Know youw Gear podcast website, when you look at the. This is it. When you look at the scorecards, they. You just go here. And when you page through. I'm just. I just want you to see the paging. Click here. Now you go here to page through. There's the name of the guitar. So Fender standard. And there's the 1977 vintage Ibanez. And then there's the Yamaha Pacifica. And then there's the Ibanez standard that we were talking about earlier. So. So they're in chronological order so you can go through. And some people said, hey, could you make a tab to where I can just select from a drop, you know, drop down menu or something and not see it. And I'm like, no, because here's why. Although maybe I'll change my mind in the future because I want things to improve and maybe this is not the best way, but I want you to actually see. I want you to page through these guitars and see how many things are alike and see how many things are different. Because one thing I've learned from doing all these videos is so many things are alike, it's almost laughable. It's hilarious to me. So. So that's my answer to your question. Here's the good news. If you like Gibson pickups, stick with Gibson pickups. I love Gibson pickups. Very rarely have I ever changed out a Gibson pickup. In fact, you know, you can't say never, never say never. Because I already know one where I've done it. But I'm trying to think of any other time I've done it. Now, I'm not saying I haven't owned a Gibson with different pickups and Gibsons. I'm talking about physically. I bought a Gibson that had Gibson pickups and did I swap it for another brand? So I have swapped, as you guys know, I have bought Gibsons that had a type of Gibson, maybe like 57 classic. And I, maybe I put a Pro Burst bucket Pro or vice versa or. But almost every Gibson you see behind me, like my SG here, here, has the 61 Gibson 61S. I think the only Gibson that I've ever physically bought with Gibson pickups. And again, I, I mean, if, if, if I'm wrong, it's maybe one other Gibson ever. It's this gold top I'm pointing out right now that has the throwbacks in it. That's the only one. So to, to tell you that is to say, look, those throwbacks are fantastic. We're, you know, right. I have a video of them. I gave it to the patrons. I just haven't put it out yet. But that just means to me, it's like, hey, you gotta make a pickup that's three times to four times more expensive Gibson to be as good or better than a Gibson, because that's the only way. Now a lot of you are going to tell me, you know, you had wolf tones, which are fantastic, and Lindy Frails. Absolutely, I have those pickups. I love those pickups. But have I yanked physical Gibson pickups out to do it? No, just something about Gibson pickups I like. I just like them. So just my personal experience, Susan says swapped out Les Paul pickups for DiMargio. Distortion back in the 70s. Well, you know, funny, Susan, you're gonna get me in trouble. I'm gonna get in trouble for this. I'm gonna say it anyways, because you know why? Because I. When I say get in trouble, look, I have my. My friends. Sometimes I feel like sometimes the show is like the Howard. I heard Howard Stern once say once on his show, like his family and doesn't like to talk to him anymore. This is years and years. And you're. Because he talks about his family. He talks about everything that happens to him on the show. Sometimes I have friends in this industry, and they're like, you're not going to talk about this on the show, are you? Like, no. So, Susan, funny story. I was talking to Larry DiMargio, and as you guys know, I did the interview with John from Throwback, and I've said this before, before I ever did the interview with John, I said this. That to me, John at Throwback is an amazing pickup winder. And there's a lot of them out there. Dylan talks, Tone's great. I mean, I've met so many great pickup makers out there. But I always kind of chuckle because John at throwback and Larry DiMargio, specifically, to me are just polar opposites of thought process. You know, just everything that when they say, the other one is saying something different. And again, not disagreeing with each other, because that's not the point. They're not. Not either. One is saying, no, that's Their other one's wrong. It's just they. They both think differently. Like, almost think of it like two chefs who. Who literally create two different meals that just happen to be the same genre, like Italian or, you know, or, you know, Mexican or whatever. So, anyways, so here's why the story's funny. So I said to Larry, I said, hey, did you see my podcast with John Throwback? I know Larry doesn't watch a lot of the content. And he's like, no. And I'm like, oh. Because he didn't. He's working. He's got to run a company. And so I said, oh. And I said, this is why the story's funny, Susan. I said, oh, did you see. Well, let me explain it, too. So I gave him the synopsis that said, you know, he's using the same four vintage machines that Gibson uses. He uses the same, you know, the same material, same magnets. He's going in detail. It's like. It's like almost watching a story and recreate, you know, this thing from the past. And I said, it's pretty cool. And then Larry goes, oh, that's, you know, it's cool. He's like, that's really cool. He says, but, but Phil, he's like, I think that's cool. He goes, but Phil, remember I thought gifts and pickups sucked. That's why I made an aftermarket pickup to replace them. He's like, so I understand what he's going for, but like my whole career is, you know, yanking those things out and putting in these aftermarket pickups, like the super distortion stuff, something a little bit more aggressive for, you know, 70s and 80s. So Susan, when you said you did that in the 70s, I'm like, so did everybody. Which is, is why there's so many Gibsons from the era with dimargios. So I just thought the story was funny. So he. So I think it's too funny too philosophy. So, yes, Superstortions, I have almost decided to put a super Distortions in one of my Les Paul's. I just never done it. I have super distortions, something else. So that was funny. But what I love about that story is it's literally two people thinking like it's two great ideas. It's one person saying, hey look, I want to recreate something they did magical back in the day and somebody saying, hey, you know, that's not my sound. So I'm going to make something totally different too. And I love it because here's why. Both of them, I think, have gone really great lengths to do exactly what they set out to do. So fantastic, I should say I feel really lucky that I've been able to talk to either one of them and learn something. Which is why I want to do some more, maybe podcasts with some more builders and learn some more stuff. Okay. All right, what else do we got? All right. Amanda sent this one from Maxerator. Sure. Says Phil McKnight. Why don't boutique tube amp makers make more bedroom amps? How many people can crank a 50 watt amp in their house? So, Maximator, this is a great question and I've asked tons of boutique builders this exact question. And I mean lots of them to say half a dozen, which maybe that's not a lot. 6. 6 High End amp builders that I truly respect that make some of the most iconic amps in the world. I say, how come you don't make. Like here was the best question I ever asked. How come you don't make a 1 watt tube amp? Like, I don't need more than 1 watt, you know, just make a really nice 1 watt boot. Like 1 watt boot 2 camp, right? 5 watt. The answer I got from all of them was essentially the same answer, which is where I always find a little bit of truth is, you know, all of them will. I don't, none of them expect a lie to me, but they'll always push their agenda, of course, right? Everybody has an agenda. I have an agenda, people, all kinds of agenda. You have a thought thing you want to see happen. And they all said the same thing. So that I thought was funny. They all basically said that the cost to make an amp, a small amp, doesn't really change for them. That essentially the price of a transformer that creates 1 watt versus 5 watts versus 20 versus 50 is really not a big, huge cost difference. The time it takes a laborer to make a wood box and wrap vinyl on it, whether that box is 12 inches long or 24 inches long, it's really not a huge difference. I'm pouring water, by the way, guys. Okay, sorry. Okay, so essentially, same thing, they go plastic knobs, right? You know, if you make a small amp, but you make it really good, it's going to need 6, 7 knobs, 10 knobs, same with it. So they're, they were like, they all did the same, same thing. They all mathematically ran down going. And then ultimately what we need is a consumer who's willing to pay the same price for a much smaller amp. Now, some of you are going to say you're going to highlight a lot of small amps that are out there, but what we're talking about is like boutique. So we're talking about hand wired, handmade, $3000, you know, $2500, $2000, $5000 expense amps. Why don't they make small ones? They literally say it's because the customers just won't pay what it is. And I actually thought this was funny because I go, huh? You know, it's funny because I. When I bought my furniture in my family room a couple years ago, I remember I was like, the couch. And they gave us the price on the couch. And I go, oh, what about the loveseat? And they gave us the price of the loveseat, it was like $50 less. And I go, what? And they're like. And they go, yeah, it's the same basic couch, man. It's just a little shorter, like. And then it hit me, same thing, like, yeah, same, right. The cost savings and materials is not very much. The labor is almost non existent because time wise, it takes about the same, so, same thing with these guys. It's just, it's. It's just, it's just too, too expensive for them to do it. I can't say the name. Ereckinsilly67 says my Ignator dials down to 1 watt. The Ignator dials down to 1 Watt. Yeah, there's tons of amps that do all kinds of stuff. But he specifically. So you guys know, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. He said a boutique amp. When I think a boutique amp, I'm thinking again, artisan made, hand wired. Expensive, right? I'm not saying good. Don't confuse the two things. I'm not saying like a Black Star isn't a good amp and a Friedman's a good amp. I'm not saying anything like that. What I'm saying is, is we're talking about expensive for those that. So, for instance, like, you know, like this Amplified Nation Dumble clone behind me, you know, it's crazy money for these amps. I don't. If I was asked Taylor Cox like, hey, I want one that I want this, but I want it 5 watts, he'd be like, yeah, it's gonna be like a hundred dollars less. And so then you're gonna be like, oh, well, do I really. I don't want to pay that much for a 5 watt amp. I guess, I don't know, maybe I would. I don't know. I just don't know. But that's the answer. And also now I don't think it's gonna matter anymore. First of all, you can use attenuators that are fantastic. There's so many great attenuators for your tube amps that I don't know if it physically mat audibly doesn't matter for sound. Maybe only matters for size. Like, if you like a lighter amplifier, you don't need a big, huge, you know, 50 pound amp or 80 pound amp. But at this point, like I said, if you're playing quiet, I get. I might. I mean, I can just tell you that if you're playing quiet, unless you just need that, you know, tube interaction for the spiritual part of your joy, which I totally get. You just use some kind of modeler or, you know, our profiler. I mean, that's what I do. As soon as the amps are too quiet, I can't get any amp to sound as good as a modeler or profiler. At low volumes. For example, I was playing a role the other day. There's my Yamaha THR30. That thing on the floor. I set it on the floor. Set on the floor. Quiet. Oh my God, it just blows everything away. I'm like, think about this. This is a perfect example. I didn't even plan it. There's a Yamaha THR solid state. I assume it's solid state amplifier sitting on top of a hand wired Fender Princeton. Because I'm playing the Yamaha, right? Because for the volume I want to play at earlier, which is really quiet. And the reason why was because I was, I was doing some stuff today and this is obviously my computer I'm sitting at. I was playing something in the background. I was listening to somebody talk and they were so I wanted to listen to somebody talk, but I wanted to play guitar because what they were talking about was boring. So I wanted to get through this like hour thing that they were talking about. But I also was bored. So I went over and played and I wanted to be quiet, so I put it on top there and started playing. So I mean, that's one thing to consider. I have not found in most cases, even the most amazing tube amp is going to sound as good as digital stuff. Super quiet. Just my experience. Damien says, hey Phil, can I play my acoustic electric through offender reverb or should I look into getting acoustic camp? The biggest issue you're going to have is twofold. One, it's not gonna sound as good as acoustic amp. First of all, electric acoustics don't sound good. They just don't. And so acoustic amps are there not only to amplify them, but to fix how horrible they usually sound, right? So that's one thing you want to think about. The other thing is, is that the other problem is if you're playing it like at a gig or anywhere where there's some volume, you might have some huge problems where you get feedback and that feedback can actually damage the speaker in that amp. I mean, not. I, I wouldn't worry so much about it, but I wouldn't, you know, I would. I, I'd feel bad if I didn't mention you're putting that at risk. So a good acoustic amp is worth. It's. Especially now. They're so good and they're so cheap. The loud boxes, I love them and they're relatively inexpensive for what they are. And of course the Fender stuff is pretty good too. Very, very good. Especially on the used market. I mean, you couldn't get, you can get a fantastic acoustic amp for a couple hundred bucks. So it's not, it's not worth, not not having one. If you, if you're going to use one, it's just going to sound better and it's going to be easier to mess with and so something to think about. Okay, next, let's go over to this one. This is from Jeff. Jeff says. Hey Phil, been to three guitar centers lately. No lefties at all. Can't see what you. What you never have. This how this how they improve Business question mark. No choice but to buy online thoughts? Well, I was at a guitar center this week and I noticed that they had maybe two or three left handed guitars and they might have been all used or at least they were on a rack of shame. And it was a. It's a premium store they have in guitar centers speak. They have like three layers of stores, A, B and C, something like that. Just think of it like this is like that one store that has like pro gear and all the other stuff and then there's a mid tier. So this is a pro store and it didn't have really any lefties. You know, I don't know what to tell you Jeff. There, there's like one in every. These aren't factual but it just, just give you an idea. One in every five. One in every five guitar players is a bass player. I guess, let me put it that way. For every guitar player. For every five guitar players are one bass player. Let's just start there. Say that I don't think that's true. It's probably every 10 guitar players. For every 10 guitar players there's one bass player and you go in the store and there's What? There'll be 500 guitars in a guitar center and 30 basses, 40 bases. So the lefty market is always left out. No pun intended. I, I understand that. Guitar center, should they do better? Sure, of course. But you know, it's a tough market to chase. I've said this before, I've done tons of videos about this in the past about lefties. My son's a lefty, he plays righty. Ralph's a lefty, he plays righty. I didn't make them play righty. Right. Ralph played right handed on his own. He was playing instruments before I knew him. And keep in mind we're like 19 when we met each other and my son, I didn't say, oh son, you're a left handed, you better play right or you're not going to get any choice instruments. He just, he just picked up an instrument because he picked up a bass and he's like, that's how that's how people were holding it and just start playing it that way. And I didn't stop him. But my point is, Jeff, is that part of the problem? And I really do believe this is. Not only is there less left handed players, obviously the right, by far, there's also a section or a segment of the left handed players that play right hand instruments. So that decreases the number two. It's something that you definitely improve on. Although here's where I would say to you. First of all, just remember, you can try anything left handed online from any repto place including Guitar center, have it shipped to your house and have time at home. That still, I don't care what anybody says when people go, oh, I have to play the instrument first before I know, I'm like, I understand if you don't have room on a credit card. I totally get that. You know, if you don't have some, some space, you know, I guess I don't know. To me I'm like, if you, if you don't have the money to buy it and have it shipped your house and try it, I get that. And so going in a store and trying a bunch of instruments without having to invest is a definitely I see the benefit of that. But to me, I've never played anything in a store and thought, well not never, but I've never picked up stuff in the store and go, oh wow, thank God I played this first. And it's usually, if anything it's usually like I pick it up and if I don't like it, I'll know right away. But basically what I'm trying to say is you can still buy online and return it. The Guitar center, you can buy online and then play it and then return it back to the store. And then somebody, when they walk in that store, they'll have a lefty to see next time. But the reason I'm saying it this way is that although I agree with you, your, your assessment of Guitar center and their lack of left handed guitars, to me, Guitar Center's problems, that's like number 11 of their problems. I mean seriously, like if I was critiquing Guitar center and I and you wanted me to give 10 problems, I see a guitar center, there are 10 worse ones than they don't have enough left handed guitars. So I think they need to improve that. But I think they got so many other things they gotta improve if they want to survive in the next couple years. We'll see. But yeah, and then also keep in mind this is the other thing Too. You know, the one thing, the one, one interesting critique of Guitar center that I have, and I have a bunch. I mean, obviously I met with Gabe and we talked about, because you understand what that was, was I act actively. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I publicly shamed him. I don't know what you call it. I said bunch of crap about Guitar center on a platform like this. And they said, hey, you want to come to the, Come see the president and talk to him about what he said. And of course I'm like, well, yeah, I'm not going to not do that. You know, I'm not going to call somebody out and then not give them the opportunity to rebuke it or talk to me about it. So we went and talked. I had one hour with them. We talked about mostly the things I critiqued, but I don't want anyone to think like I didn't have more critiques than just on that episode. Those were the critiques I made. So those are the critiques we talked about. But first of all, I have a ton of things that I see a guitar scenario as a problem. First of all, half the guitars I review just easily. And keep in mind, sometimes I stop because I'm trying to, you know, before I say something, I want to make sure it's factual. And I'm talking, talking in real time. I'm not, I'm not pre recording stuff and editing it. Half of the guitars I've reviewed on this channel under $300 are better than half of the guitars I pick up at the Guitar center that are $600. And so guitar center isn't interested in carrying a lot of the brands that I'm like, look, there are really amazing guitars I took in. I took in a guitar this week for, for a video review and it's not until the end of the May. And I'm gonna just tell you, I told my wife, I go, I don't understand this guitar. It's $180. It's, it's better than five, eight to $600 guitars. It's way better than what Fender offered at $600. It's way, way better. Not in a unarguable way of like, oh, I like the tone better, or it says genre fits my genre better physically. As someone who repaired a thousand guitars, I'm like, this guitar is built better. It's physically built better. It has more expensive options, is made better. And so to me, like, when I look at Guitar Center, I'm like, I See, they're really hyper focused on the main brands, which is fine and I think there's some value there. But I'm like, man, you know, you're going to lose to the lower price point stuff. So that's my way of saying, if you want to look at some good lefty guitars, you might want to check out some of these more off brands that are building high quality stuff. And you can get them on Amazon with a great return policy so you can try them and see if you like them. It's just really crazy, just really crazy how good they're making some of these inexpensive brands. And it's weird to me. I get why, I get why Sweetwater doesn't want to carry a lot of these off brands that are building really quality stuff right now. And because online, you know, you go to them and you're not looking for that. You're not looking for an affordable, you know, 200 really good guitar. But I sit there and I think if I walked in the guitar center, I, I don't know why I did this. The other day when I was a guitar center, I had a very great experience. The employee, the manager came up to me. They recognized me from the interview. They're very polite and very kind. We had a good conversation. But what's funny is I decided when I was walking around the store, I was looking at everything that was like entry level, student grade. And nothing in that store was as nice as what I've reviewed in the last, let's say two years on this channel that are in the same two to $300 price range. Not even comparable, not even close. In fact, think about this. One of the nicest squires I reviewed. This is absolute truth. One of the nicest squires I've reviewed in the last year is only available on Amazon, is not available to, to its dealers, which is weird to me. So. But I don't know, I don't know how, how did that get from that to lefty guitars? I don't know. So I'm basically trying to say I think there's a lot of things I need to focus on too, as well as just say and I would so. But hopefully they'll give you more lefties as well. Grumpy Guitar mike. Grumpy Mike guitar. Always proving that I have some kind of dyslexia. Grumpy Mike guitar says, what do you think about the no Trust Rod prs? I saw Temp here showing it on off. Oh, you know what's funny? Yeah. Hey, it's great so if you guys didn't see Rick Beato did an interview with Tim Pierce and, and it was like an hour long and they were talking about the end of the all, you know, guitar, what do you call it, session work in studios and stuff. Always more, you know, apocalyptic view of the, of the way that the world has worked. But as always, I'd like to point out Tim Pierce always with his like good demeanor and attitude said this to me. The best things in that whole interview which was this is the best gear he's ever owned. It's the best time to be a guitar player ever. And I'm like, yeah man, there's so many ways to make great music. And you know, because it's again, everybody's going to have a different perspective. Look as someone like Tim Pierce who's made an amazing living playing on iconic albums. Same with Rigby Auto. I mean just huge resumes these guys have, right? You know, playing and writing songs and recording, that's the resume. And I understand why they have a little bit of like the good old days. Like I wish it was like it was. But as like an average dude like me, I look back at those times and I go, I couldn't afford to go in the studio. Me and my band, we scrapped up all this money. You would go into a half assed studio, you'd pay them a fortune that you didn't have to make a three song cassette that you could hand out for free. I remember my dear mother bought for my band a Vestex 6 track cassette recorder. That's right. I can probably look it up. I gotta look it up. It literally made everything in my life awesome. So Vestex six track recorder. I was the envy of everyone. Everyone. Like just no, no questions about this. Let's go to images. There it is right there. Pull it up. This is it. I had this. It was rack mount, vest x6 tracks. You can read them. Look at that. We would do one, my guitar, the other guitar player, the bass player, the singer, and then two for the drums. It was like a miracle. And then it had a patch bay right there. And we could plug in the patch bay, we could run in the effects loops, we would, would run the mics in, we would borrow mics. Of course one of the drum mics had to be a realistic Radio Shack mic. And I understand this is like I said, I live in a different world than those guys, right? We would record, we would record we. When we got this. If I want to, I, I think, God, I wish I knew what my mom paid. I want to say she paid $1,300 for it. Or maybe it was. Maybe I. I don't know. Maybe it felt like $1300. It was a lot. It was like a lot of money. And what happened was my band played at Battle of Bands and we made it to the finals. No money. You don't get no money for that. Bo. Bo. Hey. Finals. And my mom went because every vote mattered. So my mom came and brought two of her friends to vote. And my mom watched us play and she's like. She said, what mom say? She's like, you guys are really good. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, you should. You should make an album. And we're like, well, we recorded two songs at a studio, but it cost a fortune and now we don't sound like that anymore. Does anyone remember any stories like this? Did anyone have these stories? Like you'd go, yeah, we have a cassette. Like somebody like you go, you just needed a cassette to take it to the bar. Because they'd be like, what does your band sound like? You give them the cassette and then you'd have to say something stupid. Like I'd say, like, you'd hand the cassette and go. Just so you know, we don't sound like that anymore. We were way more metal than Right. Or something like that. Right. Because it was just too expensive to go back. And so she got that we actually recorded it. And so to have six tracks over four tracks because we could borrow a cassette four track recorder, Fostex. But it didn't have any of this stuff. So basically what I'm trying to say is I totally understand them guys missing the good old days because they had some great old days that we all wish we had. And I. But I love the fact that Tim said. And I think Rick be out of backed him up on this. So you know, but Tim said like, this is the best time. I'm like, dude, this is the best time, dude. You record every. I mean you can literally take a Firefly $160 guitar and you could plug it into your inexpensive used laptop now and download some. A plugin for guitar tone and free recording software and you can make something happen. And that's pretty impre. Impressive. It's pretty amazing. So. So back to. Back to Grumpy Mike's question, which I don't even remember anymore. I got. So. Okay. Oh yeah. So he wanted to know about the truss Rod and the PRs more so than the story. But I check out the link I'll link their video, check it out. It's, it's. It was just great, as always. So in this video, so, you know, Tim has Alpal Reed Smith guitar, which looked like a custom 24, something like that, but it had the two narrow field pickups. And in there he said that Paul made it with no truss rod because it's a solid rosewood neck and it resonates more and it sounds better and. Yeah, you know, what do I think of it? Never in my world would I buy one. But, you know, it's something, it's some. It's somebody trying something. I, I don't know. I was waiting for some information like that it had carbon fiber rods in it or anything. I, I just don't know. I, I know this originally, some of the first Parkers, I guess, didn't have truss rods. And you know, the problem was, you know, even though they weren't supposed to move, there was problems. I'm not a big. I, I believe, I believe that if you make a. Especially a pattern regular neck thickness that Paul Ray Smith does, that thickness, if you did a pattern regular neck of solid rosewood, a good piece that's dried out, I think the guitar would be stable forever. I can't imagine. But would I want to take that on like traveling on a tour? No, but I mean, in a, in a session work that Tim does is great. And with a thousand backup guitars that Tim has that he could go to if there's any problems, I'd say he's totally safe. It's cool. So, yeah, in other words, I like the idea, but no, it wouldn't be for me. I would never, would never own a guitar if. Whatever the issues or whatever the gains are, this is where practicality always wins for me in a lot of stuff. This is the, you know, the argument of, of the ages. It's like, like a spindle spoke wheel trust rod. To me, it's like D. I love the idea of that way more than, you know, if you tell me, like I, I tell everybody this is a 60s journeyman strat right here. I'm pointing at. That guitar is great except for the fact that it's so stupid that I have to take the neck off and adjust the truss rod like they used to have to do to me. It's like just put a spoke, little truss rod on it, make it look like this. Do the same specs, give it some aged wear if that's what you got to do. But you know, I, I want some of the. Like I said, some of the practicality of it. So. Same thing with the guitar. I don't. Not only do I want one, if one sounds better without a truss rod, that's great that it sounds better. But I'd rather have a practical instrument that's easy to adjust and I don't have to stress or worry about because, like. Like, as. As you guys know, I've said it a million times. My Prs Mira is one of my favorite guitars of all time. I've had it forever. And that neck moves all the time, but it's a pattern thin. It moves, but it moves all the time. And I. I've gotten used to it. I just know that, like, you know, when the winter comes, as soon as it gets a little colder in the house, I'll pick it up and just. I know it's going to be. It's going to be, you know, bonkers to play. It's not going to play great. But. Brian says Tim looks like he's always having a blast. I actually think he is. I know this when. When I've had the good fortune to talk to him, He. He puts you in a good mood fast. He is. He is a. He is the. He is very aware of his success in the idea of the appreciation aspect. The humility is there. To me, what a great trait to have is humility. Humility. Humility. Wow. Said humility. Can't say Yamaha. Can't say humility. Just happens to all of us, I guess. Anyways, with Tim, he does not suffer from a lack of humility. The. You know, I used to say people that. I don't like people who start with their resume. I just don't know what it is. I think it's because it kind of feels pretentious to me. So I never like anybody who starts with a resume. When I say, you know what I mean? I don't want to say I don't. I don't like it. I don't want to say I don't like anyone. I got lots of friends that start with a resume all the time, but I don't like it when somebody starts with a resume. To me, I'll learn how smart you are. I'll learn how good you are. I'll learn all that probably very quickly, right? And Tim is one of those guys where, you know, perfect example, you talk to him. And so, you know, Rick Beato's that way, too. Whether, you know, some people think Rick Mioto's got the ego. I've only met Rick once, but that's not the point. The point is, is his channel. I watched his channel for, you know, a while before I figured out he had a pretty impressive resume. He wasn't really, you know, so I, I, I like that. Same with Tim. Tim was one of those days. Like, I. You know how I actually found out Tim Pierce's resume? This is funny. I. He reached out to me and said, hey, you want to do a video together? You want to do a collaboration together? We had met, obviously, we had met a couple times. And I'm like, sure. And he's like, what do you think you want to do? And I said, oh. I said, well, you're a studio guy. Let's do a video where we talk about the coolest pedals you can use in studio, like the EQ pedal and the 5150. Just the stuff we love. And he's like, I love that idea. And he's like, and I'll do a video for your channel. What do you want to do? And I go, well, you're Tim Pierce. You want to. I said, hey, I have a riff I play at the beginning of my videos. If I send you the riff, why don't you turn it into a song? By the way, such an amazing video. If you guys. I'll link that video. Please watch. Watch it. It's just so freaking good. Anyways, so I said, hey, I'll send you my Lick my guitar riff, and then you can turn it into a song. And he's like, cool. And he did it and then. And that's why I have my riff as a song now. And then when I did the video to explain Tim Pierce, I had to pull up his resume. And then halfway through his resume, I literally took my two hands and I put them right here on the desk, which was a different desk that time, but still. And I put my head like this, and I went, wow, this guy's got a career. Holy crap. I'm already tired from reading how amazing it is, and I'm only halfway through the Wikipedia page. So, yeah, he's just. That he uses that. So that's a. That's a. That's my assessment of Tim Beers. Okay. But trust rodless guitar. Cool for Tim, not so much for me. Okay. Julio's got something to say too. He says. Julio says, so Tim Pierce is playing purest guitar without a truss rod. I guess you guys are really excited about this. This is not the first time they did that. I don't. I don't know. He says, not. Not versed in the principles behind Such a stable neck, I think. Look, in theory. Let's just start with the theory of it. In theory. If you did, if you made a neck out of a really hard wood like rosewood or Wingay. Right. I mean, Wingay would be. Another one is really hard. I mean, at that point it's almost like beechwood. You did a quarter sawn, you dried it out correctly for the period of time and again it's the proper thickness because again, that's sometimes, you know, keep in mind, making next really thin is where they start moving a lot. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, classical guitars for the most part don't have truss rods, but they're a lot shorter. That's, you know, again, the length, you know, I'd be less inclined to believe that you could make a truss rodless bass guitar even out of something like Wingay. But yeah, so making a really dense wood, a proper thickness, that's properly dried out. Can it be done? Sure, of course. Yep. The question is why? I mean, Tim explained it best, the upper harmonics and, and there's one thing I, I believe is between Tim and Rick Beato, they got the ears to hear what they're talking about. So they, they're hearing it and they're like, it's, you know, this, it's got the sparkle, it's got the magic. But again, in my world, you know, their world is great. I love watching their world. But my world is more practical. And to me it's like, especially of Paul Reesmith core guitar. Let's just put this in perspective. If you gave me the opportunity to buy that guitar, that because it was beautiful, if you haven't seen, it was a gorgeous guitar, let's say, appears because I own some core pr. So it's like, it's not, not like it's unfathomable. But you said, hey, Phil, this seven thousand Dollar Trust rodless guitar, we'll sell it to you for three grand, I wouldn't go, yeah, that's a great deal. I'd be like, nah, I'm good. Because I, I just, again, practical sense, I just wouldn't want to, I, I wouldn't want to worry about it. And although I think in theory it can work forever, it's just not something I'm going to make myself stressed over again there. You know, the saying is like, you know, don't let your stuff own you. Right. You know, kind of thing. I don't need anything music related that will stress me out. I don't need to worry about anything if I'm worrying about it, then, you know, it's, it's either a think about this. It's not even just a hobby versus job. For my hobby of this, if I worry about it, it's, it's not making sense for the, for what I'm trying to do in my life, which is improve my mental stability and my happiness. If it's stressing me out for the work side of the YouTube world and all this stuff I do, then again, it's just, I don't need that. I don't need that. On top of what else I'm worrying about, I want to, I want to feel pretty. You know, it's like to me, it's no, it's much different than, I guess from a safety concern. But it's like, I can imagine if you had a job where you need a safety harness, you wouldn't want to be thinking about whether or not they use some new material and it should work. You'd want to know, like, it works 100% of the time. So to me, can you make a truss rod less guitar? Absolutely. Do I think it will work 100% of the time in every scenario. I don't feel that faithful about it, so I wouldn't really engage with it, but I'm, I'm pretty sure it's fine. I, I, I would imagine Paul Reed Smith himself would not send Tim Pierce a guitar that could be defective because Tim would definitely tell you one day there will be a video. And he's like, we got to talk about my guitar. I'm. Tim's very upfront about everything, so he would just tell you up front if it didn't go well. Okay, let's button up this show. All right? We have Bill, Phil. We have a Phil like me one else. Except I have to but says Phil says hello, Phil. Just got an ePiphone. Dave Grohl 335 today. How would you compare it to the Sire 87 I got a month ago? You know, I don't know. A couple buddies of mine got the Dave Grohl didn't love it. So Feedback two. I got two feet, two friends bought Gabe. Dave Grohl's two feedbacks were not great for whatever reason, just weren't vibing with the guitars. Quality, whatever. I have not had any issues with any of the Sire stuff, so. And the other thing too is this is where it's tough when you're comparing the Dave Grohl is expensive. I think that's where everything always falls apart. So, you know, you know, as someone who critiques things for a living. Although I hate saying it that way because it just seems so douchey, but it's true, you know, that's what I do for a living. I critique stuff. There is a little bit of the price affects how I feel, right? So like, if I look at a guitar, it's $150 and I go, oh, glue smudge. I go, eh, glue smudge. Fifteen hundred dollar glue smudge. I'm like, glue smudge. What's with that three thousand dollars? I'm like, this is ridiculous, right? Because it is, it is, it is. The value is what changes your perception of how good or bad something can or should be. So I would say the S7 in my experience is a better value for price. And so, I mean, I kind of like. I mean, I played the. This is where it's tough. You're asking what I think. But I've only played the S7, not the Dave Grohl. I would do a video of the Dave Grohl. I mean, I would do it. Maybe I try to borrow one instead of buy one for the channel. It's because, again, it's a little tough, man. This is the math on those things. It's really hard. You know, the guitar is like $1,500. I'm sure the resale on it's probably a thousand. I would imagine something like that. So it's A$500 is what I would. I would be in the hole for. And if the. The video would have to do a hundred thousand views to. To beat that number in this time of year. So that's a tough. That's a tough number. And then think about this. And then that just means I work for free. That's just to do the video. But I'm curious and sometimes dumb enough to do it that way. Lock Sustainer says. Hey, I love your podcast. Thank you so much. Finally, somebody does. I'm just kidding. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. What are your impressions of the Orville guitars you've worked on over the years? I've always liked the Orville guitars. You know, it's funny. I remember. Funny story. It's kind of funny. We'll end the story in on the story. The first guitar I ever worked. First Orville guitar ever worked on. I had no idea what they were. I just. Somebody brought one in. And I remember you ever get a. A vibes from somebody and they're pinging your, you know, your spider senses, right? And here, let me share with you guys. So let me do Orville guitar. Because here's why. So the. I'm gonna show you one. This is the first one I clicked on. So just whatever it is. So here's what it is. This is an Orville Les Paul. And Orville by Gibson, you know, is what it's listed at. It's $1,500. So funny story, guy comes in to shop. I'd never seen Orville before. I don't know why. Just, you know, this is probably 2000, maybe 5 or 6. 2005. Probably never seen Orville. Wants me to work on it. Fine. I look at it. I do the typical thing you do when you look at something. I value it and figure it out in my head based on experiences. And I think, oh, Orville, Orville. Oh, okay. It's like a. Like a Lotus or like a, you know, a Greco. I'm just looking at it. I'm just seeing like fake, cheapy Gibson, right? Because, you know, not because it looked bad, just because some of the details on it were good and look like Gibson, which then pings fake because it's not Gibson on it. And then some of it pinged like, you know, cool Japanese guitar. But remember, go back to 2005. Two, 2005. You could buy a Greco Les Paul for like 150 bucks. It's no exaggeration. $300 was like you were killing right there. So. So anyways, this is the funny part of the story. So I get the Orville and he is pinging my spider senses with how much he loves his guitar. He's like, oh, as you know, this is Orville. I'm like, yeah, sure is. I didn't say anything because I remember these. I work for these people. These are my customers. So I just, you know, do what everybody does. I smile and I go, you know, I'll do the work and you'll get good service. And that's the end of this relationship for me, right? Like, I don't, you know, I don't need to, you know, buy into your craziness, right? So he's just like. He goes, you know, Orville. Yeah. He goes, better than Gibson. I'm like, oh, yeah. You know, and in my head I'm hearing Hondo better than Gibson. You know, something like that. Again, not, not, not trying to disparage any of those brands, but I'm just not being. But the way he's acting at some point makes me think, okay, wait, this has to be more than what I think it is because not more money, just more than what I Think. So I play it off, you know, I fake through the conversation, everything's good. He leaves the guitar. And then it just so happens, couple, I don't know, maybe a couple hours later, customer comes to store that I know really well is totally into vintage guitars. Totally into stuff really. Like, like now I'm old enough to where it could have been me, it's old timer me. Like I, you know, somebody who's been tenured now for 20, 30 years. So I was, you know, you know, I'm, you know, I'm in my 30s. Early maybe. No, not in my 20s, in my 30s. And so, you know, he's. Here's a 50, 60 year old guy coming in, he's tenured. He's just me with the years of experience. Experience, I guess. And, and I said, I just know he might know something. I said, hey, I got this Orville to work on. You know anything about him? And he goes, oh, you got an Orville, that's cool. He's like, oh, these are great. And I go, oh, they're great. You know. And he's like, yeah. He comes over and we open the case and he starts telling me all about it. And I was like, oh, this is great. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. And I said, I go, the guy seemed really like happy he found one and he got a good deal on it. And he was like, this is. He almost acted like it was a lifelong dream guitar to get. He's like, oh yeah. He goes, dude, these are. Guitars are amazing. And I'm like, oh, so it's funny, so now when you said Orville, that's all I can think of is the time I didn't know what an Orville was. And a guy had me work on it. By the way, the guitar was great. So he's like, what are your impressions? And my impressions were they're very good guitars, you know, that, that, that's it. Do I think they are. Look, look at this. 25, 23, 24. Man, I don't know. I mean, they were good. I, I remember it. I probably worked on maybe two or three total in my life. Total and, or even seen total two or three. It's just not something you see a ton of. And you know, they were a lot more interesting to me when they were a lot less smooth money. But I, I think now what it is, is, you know, people, you know, the value goes up because more people know about them. They used to be the thing that no one knew about, including me. Just no one knew. So so you. So to me, I'm always, I'm always looking for that new no one knows about it thing. Like, oh, no one knows how good these are. These are secret. But. But yeah, a lot of you guys are like, you know, you guys know these were just great guitars. So I. My experience with the ones I've touched great guitars and now they have great resale values and stuff because everybody knows what they are. So John says, well, they're sold at Walmart. Not this one, I don't think. But yes. So yes, Gibson has used the brand in other ways. Just like a lot of these brands. They'll use some of these brand names in some of the inexpensive stuff. It's kind of like I always liken this to like how Fender makes the Starcaster reissue, which is great, but. But then they used Starcaster as a exclusive like Costco line of Strats that were like $99 with the amp and cable and strap and stuff. So they all do that kind of stuff. What was the other one that Gibson used besides Orville? You know, it's funny was. It's. So we're buttoning up the show. So it's funny. Speaking of Orville and the cheap line of it, I had a customer buy a guitar at Best Buy. Now this is before Best Buy had music stores. I know they don't anymore, but they were dead for a while. And they came in the store and they said, hey, I have a Gibson. I'm like, okay. And they go, we want to trade it in. And I said, oh well, of course you take them on trade. Of course we take a Gibson on trade. Absolutely. They're like, right, Maestro. Yeah, the Maestro Mastro. And what's funny was the Mastro line was funny because the guitar said Mastro. But the box, because they sold it at Best Buy in a box. And the box said Gibson. But the guitar didn't say Gibson because it was an entry level, you know, like student grade instrument. And so they were like, it's a Gibson. So they come in with the box and I remember thinking when I saw it like I didn't know Gibson made like cheesy boxes like this because it was like a blister package looking silly box, you know, color, you know, colorful and had clear plastic on the front. And I was like, oh. And we pulled it up and it was a Mastro. And I was like, this isn't a Gibson. They're like, no, it's a Gibson. It's not a Gibson. It's totally a Gibson. I'm like, it's totally not a Gibson. I don't know what to say. So. And then Brian says, isn't that false advertising? You know what's funny? I bet you I wonder if we could find that packaging, because it was probably close. Close enough. Let's see. Gibson, Mastro guitar package. Let's see if we can find the actual package, not the guitar, because the guitar. Oh, look at that. So the first one comes up. Oh, so this one, if you see this one, it does say mastro. Gibson. But see the Gibson, this is what threw everybody off. So it did say mastro, but it says Mastro. And then, like, how they make the Gibson logo small right there. Gibson. Oh, my God. They get 285. There's no way somebody's asking 300 plus $50 shipping for this guitar with the amp. All right, good. Good for you, I guess. But yeah, that's cool that it has the packaging. Hey, here's another one, too. Let's see if this one's on ebay. Let's see. Yeah, and this is what. So I was wrong. I was wrong that it didn't say master on the box, but it does. Like, you can see. See Mastro by Gibson. Oh, this is help. There you go. So the. Can I make this bigger? There can't. There we go. Well, that's annoying. So, yeah, Mastro by Gibson. And so it's. It's. That's where the person's like, no, it's a Gibson. Like, actually, if I recall, they may not have bought it at a best Buy. It might have been sold by the Best Buy, and they bought it at a yard sale. I just remember they thought they had a lot. So they had something they thought we were going to be giving them lots of money. Let's just put it that way. They thought they were going to bring it in and get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars from us, you know, for. On trade for this guitar. And instead, I had to tell them, we don't even. We don't want to take it on trade because it's an entry level. You know, I said nice things that you say to people. So with. When turning down people's trades, you always want to use the. It's me, it's not you. It's like, oh, we just don't have any room for any guitars like this right now. But you don't want to say, like, no, we don't. We don't want your cheap guitar. So. All right, on that note, guys, I hope you guys had a good time. I had a good time. We all had a good time. Some probably more than others. But that's all right. I hope you guys go play guitar this weekend, and I will see you guys next Friday. I will be putting out videos, of course, during the week, so you guys can check out those as well. And if not, you can. You can just check out the podcast next Friday. And thank you to all the sponsors, thank you to the moderators who made this show flow and everybody who supports the channel with either subbing or clicking a like button or sharing with a friend or, you know, sponsoring it with, you know, whatever, or the. The super chats, all that stuff. Just. Thank you guys so much. Everything matters. It's. It's. If you're not supporting me financially, trust me, you're supporting me mentally. And sometimes that's just as good when you're in social media, because every day can be a downer, you know, when you look at the comment sections of any video of anything. And so it's nice when people are supporting you. So I appreciate the emotional support, if not as much as the financial support. My wife might have a different opinion on that. She might like one more than the other, but I don't know. All right, guys, on that note, thank you for your time and Know youw Gear. The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members. Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making. Thank you guys for your time. Till the next time, Know youw Gear. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members. Thank you for making this possible.