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- [00:03]
Phil
The know youw gear podcast. Hey everyone, welcome to the Know youw gear podcast for June the 20th. Almost said June the 13th. It's not Friday 13th, it's Friday the 12th. June the 12th. So I hope everybody had a fantastic week and is ready for some guitar talk. You guys, we have a lot to talk about. Well, we will have a this or that and and we will have a Gear of the week, which I'm excited about. I say we get into the business bummer stuff first, get that through and then we'll head to the fun stuff. I if I don't talk about this, I'm sure I'll get in a lot of trouble because you guys have been emailing me all week. So if you guys hadn't heard, Dean Guitars, which is Armadillo, the parent company, has filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And it's not a whole lot of exciting news. If you're not familiar with that, what that is, let me explain. Chapter 11 is a reorganization, so they're not dissolving the company and they're just basically reorganizing. Now there's been a lot of chatter about the fact that they have like $50 million of debt and the company's only worth a couple million dollars. But of guessing, let me tell you exactly what Dean is saying to the dealers and the vendors, which is very important. So here is the exactly what that this is from Dean Guitars. This is their letter. Dear Valued Partner, Today we are announcing that Armadillo Enterprises Enterprises Enterprise, not the rental car company, voluntary filed for reorganization. Reorganization under the chapter 11. We are reaching out to you directly so you hear it from us first. Okay, so here's the nitty gritty guys. The chapter 11 is a court supervised reorganization that lets us strengthen our financial position while continuing to operate normally. This is very important because sometimes you don't know how it's going to go. But basically we'll keep going. We are open, we are shipping, and it is business as usual. Your existing orders will be fulfilled, your dealer account continues unchanged, and your warranty support for Dean Luna and Dedrum products remains fully in place. In fact, on the first day of the case, the court entered a order authorizing us to operate our business as usual, which includes maintaining dealer relationships without interruption. The purpose of this step is to strengthen our financial foundation so we can focus on fully focus fully on growing the brands you carry. It does not change our commitment to you or to the players who walk into your store looking for our instruments. If you have any questions, you can let them know so business as usual for Dean, that is not uncommon in a chapter 11. If you guys recall, Gibson file chapter 11 and Guitar center file chapter 11. And a lot of companies have filed bankruptcy, just especially in the last, I'd say six, seven years. So basically what's happening is they are crushed by their debt, is basically it. And so the important part is, what we don't know is this. So it's good that the courts basically said they can operate business as usual, which is not unnormal in my experience. Whether or not that means the Dean as we know them gets to run Dean or gets sold to somebody else, it usually has to do with, with whether or not Dean guitars. And I know it's Armadillo, but you understand we're focused on the guitar part because with the guitar players, right? Whether or not Dean can show the court that they can continue improve, right? A lot of times when you have a reorganization like this, it's like, hey, look, we got in a bad way. This is what we did wrong. And we think this is our new plan. They present a new plan to the court, and if the court likes it, then I guess they move forward. Sometimes the court's like, nah, you guys are dumbasses. And I don't think this is much better. And so the only way they can move forward is if that somebody comes in with either some money, like an investor or a new company buys them. They have to put themselves up for sale. So we'll see what happens. But the important part is I look, this is a community channel, which means all I really want you guys to know is if you have a Dean product, a Dedrome product, or a Luna product, right now, Dean is fully supporting Warranty. Dean is fully supporting the services. So you are, you don't have to freak out and go, oh, no, I just bought one. You seem to be protected. They're not. They're not doing anything crazy is what I'm trying to say. Now, this is a discussion that I'm just going to keep talking about because I've been talking about it now for eight years, which is, you know, I don't have a lot of, of good things to say. I like Dean guitars as much as the next person. I think it's more, you know, important to the, to the metal community now than it was to, you know, to the, to the blues community or the rock community as much. But there's still a lot of old school rock and blues people who love Dean and all the Cadillacs and all those cool guitars. Obviously the Dimebag Daryl fans are huge fans of Dean. Not so much lately, since they've been fighting with the estate. And that's another problem that they keep fighting, which is pretty sad too. But as I told you last couple weeks, with all these companies like Fender and everybody, this is a very litigious industry. They just like to fight all the time. And I'm not saying they don't have a right to or they shouldn't. I'm just saying it happens a lot. It's not isolated to just a few. But, you know, I do. I do feel bad when companies are in distress. But I gotta tell you, I just. I'll never forget. And Dean wasn't one of these companies, so, you know, I'm not specifically talking about them, but I'll never forget doing what I do over Covid and every company basically telling me how amazing they're selling and how great it is and how. And I remember every company saying, and we're gonna raise the prices, and we're gonna take this away, and we're gonna make the dealers buy more, and we're gonna tell the customer, if you don't like it, then this is how it comes. And it was like it was. And I'd always say, you know, well, everyone's doing really good right now. They're like, we're killing it. And I go, everyone's killing it. It's a bull market. Literally. Even the idiots are cashing money left and right. And all these companies, they came out of that boom. And now we see G and L gone, and we see Hoffner is now been sold to Tolman. If you haven't seen that. Hoffner, you know, in bankruptcy as well. All these companies, and I'm not saying it could have been avoided, but, man, to see them all have record sales for two and three years straight seems so strange that they couldn't get that shit together. But that's where we're at. I thought I'd give you the update. But more importantly, since I had one of those letters, I thought I'd share with you. Since everybody keeps speculating what they're doing. I don't have to speculate. They told everybody. They told the dealers and the vendors. So, you know, that's how I got the letter. So. All right, what else. What else do we got to talk about? Now that that's done, let's see what you guys have to say.
- [07:24]
Jeff
Uh,
- [07:27]
Phil
Jeff wants to know, Phil, do you think Fender would have sent a cease and desist letter to GNL if they were still making guitars. Absolutely. I don't think they would have hesitated one second. So you know, Fender. So there. People don't like it when the Internet community refers to the term sued. They got sued or they were suing someone, especially the, the lawyer side of the guitar community, you know, the PRS fans. And I'm just kidding, just lawyer jokes because they're like, they're. They didn't get sued. They just got a cease and desist or they didn't get sued. It's just the demand letter. So, you know, Fender, I guess technically sent a cease and desist to GNL right after Leo Fender passed away. So if you guys don't know what happened when Leo Fender ran G L, they would put Leo Fender, his name on the guitars. It was like guitars by Leo Fender. They actually put Leo Fender and he did this for years. And there's speculation and the speculation came from the GNL people as well. But speculation industry that just. Fender either didn't care at the time. We're talking about fmic, we're talking about the company that owns Fender either didn't care or didn't have the guts to kind of have a headline, you know, Fender sues Leo Fender. Right. Which I know it's not sued, it means cease and desist. But this is actually true story. So when, when Leo passed away shortly thereafter, I was told sometimes a day later, I don't know, maybe it was a week later. I mean, you have to go in. I'm sure somebody knows the exact dates. But very shortly after Leo passed away, Fender served G and L guitars with a cease and desist to remove the Leo Fender name off the headstocks. And I think there was also some other litigation for something else. And, and his wife, Leo Fender's wife, she didn't have the capacity or the money. And when I say capacity, I mean she's dealing with a lot of stuff to, to fight Fender. That's why she sold G and L to the people who eventually own G and L until it's, you know, until they, they ran it into the ground. But that's one of the things they promised her. Now this is from the horse's mouth. They told me this. I have it in video format. They told me that basically that was the negotiation was they will sell them the company and they will take care of Fender. They told me. This is what they told me. They settled with Fender. They removed that from the headstocks. That's why post Leo Fender passing there, that's no longer on the Headstocks. And there was something else that they also negotiated. And I think they said they paid some kind of settlement or some. To Fender guitars. And I believe them for one, because they showed me a bunch of documentation. But two, she, Leo's wife, signed all the certificates until her passing on the GNL certificates, as you know. So, I mean, she had a relationship with them all the way until her passing. So I would imagine that they seem to have perceivably had a good relationship up until her passing. And their statement of fact was that that relationship was based on the fact that they helped her,
- [10:40]
Jeff
you know.
- [10:41]
Phil
You know, fight Fender. Then again, I don't want to use the incorrect language, you know, but. Yeah. So do I think Fender would have cease and desist GNL right now? Absolutely. There's no question in my mind they would have done it with everyone else. Speaking of which, let's go to the next thing. The CEO of Fender has officially. I guess officially, unofficially. How do you say this? He's responded to what's going on. There is a video on the Internet. It was presented by a dealer who was at a meeting and they filmed it. I don't know if they were authorized to film it. I don't know. It's 15 minutes long. I have a link already to it, so you guys can watch it. I've pulled some clips and fixed the audio. It's funny to me that Fender guitars can't get the audio right. Their audio is so horrible in that room. But. But I. But I did my best to fix it and I put captions. You can hear what he's saying. I wanted to discuss this and talk it. I know it's a subject that we're all kind of sick of hearing about, but I think this is a big enough next piece of the puzzle or next piece of the thing. He said some stuff. I'll discuss it with you. This is very short. I'm just going to pull the clip. Like I said, the whole thing entirety is 15 minutes. But I'll. I'll just give you a taste. This is the CEO, Mr. Bud Cole, just talking to the dealers and vendors of Fender.
- [12:02]
Jeff
First and foremost, Fender is not suing anybody. What we've done is to reach out thoughtfully and respectively to a handful of companies whose guitars come extremely close to replica Fender Stratogaster design.
- [12:22]
Phil
We are not going to let the
- [12:24]
Jeff
legacy erase, nor are we allowed to be deluded. Words matter, shapes matter, parentage matter and protecting it matters. This is not about every double colorway guitar on the market. It's not what we're talking about here. It's focused on products closer to coffee, the Stratocaster's distinctive look that they can create and create real confusion for players in the marketplace. And it's important to understand that this effort stems directly from the recent European Unions courtroom. So our current conversations are centered on the products being made, marketed or sold in the European Union. We are approaching it this way, the Fender way. With collaboration. Performance is practical. Reasonable solutions. Design modifications were needed. Generous transition periods to sell through existing inventory. No inventory destruction. Those comments were unfortunate. We are not asking anyone to destroy inventory. No immediate financial demands. This is a work in progress and
- [13:46]
Phil
we want to work together with everyone
- [13:48]
Jeff
because we believe that innovation is strongest when brands create their own distinctive voices rather than closely copied icons that define our industry for generations.
- [14:03]
Phil
Okay, so that was a clip of it. And like I said, Its entirety is 15 minutes long. I have a link down below. You can check it out. The whole thing, obviously I have there. He makes some actually good points. I'll give him some credit. There was a couple points in there that throughout the 15 minutes where I was like, okay, I see your point. Unfortunately, I had to watch it three times because the first time it pissed me off and then the second time I kind of like reset because I try, you know, you got to be open minded. The reason it pissed me off was he starts out and it's like, I kind of feel like it's just a, it's just another lie. It's like he's like, hey, just for the record, we're not suing anyone. I'm like, yeah, I get the technical jargon, but you did send cease and desist. In other words, the cease and desist is, is to basically tell somebody to do something or there'll be more action. Obviously, that's the point. So you're like, okay, but the thing that I upset that he lied about was he said they did it thoughtfully and, and you know, courteously. And I'm like, look, we all read the letter, the legal letter that you guys sent. I wouldn't call that thoughtful at all. I wouldn't call that anything. Look, to say that it's business, correct? Or I've had attorneys post on these videos saying this is a normal type letter, Phil. You know, lawyers send this every day, by the way. I decided to do this for fun. I took the letter that Fender sent to the companies, right? To Schecter, to lsl, to, to PRS guitars. I took that letter and I ran it Through AI and I asked, AI gave me three reasons why this letter is good and three reasons why this letter is bad. I was curious what it would say. And this is what AI said, which I don't really. I think AI get the best, gives you a C plus answer if you're lucky. And this is what AI said. It said that it was good because it was technically correct and it was written well and it was a standard, like legal format in which it was delivered. So that was kind of like it said for the good things. It said that basically it was a letter and it was, it was, you know, accurate and seemed to be accurate. And it's legal. You know what it's referring to. And then the negatives, AI said this. What were the, what are the potential negatives? It said backlash from customers and social media putting the companies that it was served to in such a position that they might want to fight instead of negotiate. That was what AI figured out. These attorneys are supposed to be one of the biggest law firms in the world, supposed to be super smart. And AI was already going, hey, look, this letter might upset a lot of people, including getting all these companies riled up to fight instead of negotiate. And so I think that not acknowledging, and I said that last time when Fender put out their public PR thing to Guitar World. I think not acknowledging that the way this came across is what we were upset about. Everybody's going to argue for ages about whether or not Fender has the right to defend their IP or not. And I've heard all the arguments and that's still a separate discussion. I know we're just talking about what's happening now. And what's happening now is this felt aggressive. A lot of people felt that it was aggressive in the way it came down. And, and we thought not Fender would apologize or recant it, but maybe adjust the language. And, and, and they did. He does. He clearly says that they, if you listen to what a clip I gave you, he clearly says they are not asking them to destroy guitars anymore. They're actually giving them time to sell through their inventory and, and, and, and physically alter their instruments going forward. And, and again, like I said, I think this is a complicated subject and I think that it's not easy to, to just say this is the way it should be either way. But I just was a little disappointed that he then. So you guys, for those that don't want to listen, the next 15 minutes of it, he goes into a five minute tangent of about the company that owns Fender and how it's been with them since. Since Leo Fender had the company. And so it's not a new private equity company. It's a company that's been involved for many, many years. You know, I'm just giving you the. The idea on that. I really didn't hear anything in there that made me think anything different, good or bad. In fact, the whole thing, all I really heard was that it seems like they've walked back a little bit. They've calmed it down definitely a little bit, at least in a public speaking thing. But keep in mind, this wasn't a official statement to the public or to. To us by any means. This was filmed in a private meeting or a meeting with dealers and vendors. And then somebody posted the video, and that's how I saw it. So this is what they're telling vendors. The only thing I want to tell you is this is a. This is this meeting that seemed to be very impromptu and thrown together. In other words, they. They called out the dealers and everybody out there, the big dealers are out there. This is the second time I've seen something like this happen with Fender. The first time I remember them having the dealers come for an impromptu meeting where the CEO had to speak was when Fender decided to sell direct to consumer. And the dealers were furious. And they. I remember the conversation was exactly like this. The CEOs like, no, you misunderstand. We're not really going to sell direct. We're just kind of letting customers buy from us if they kind of want to. So it's. It's funny. So it tells me two things. One, they are walking it back, which means they did feel some kind of pressure. And that means. And the people in that room were probably the people giving the pressure, not us. In other words, we gave the pressure to the dealers because I'm sure we decided not to buy as much stuff. And then the dealers gave the pressure to them because like I told you before, the dealers are the ones that are going to get damaged from this really bad as well because of the fact that they have this inventory. And if you're a Fender dealer, I can tell you right now, it's not 10% of your inventory. Even if you're a major store, it's still going to be 20, 30, 40% of your inventory is FMIC Brands, which means, you know, Fender Groove Tubes, Charvel, Jackson, Gretsch, evh. Now, like I said, some of those they own and some of they distribute for. But still, it's a lot of brands encompassed into an umbrella. So it's A lot of products in the store, but. But I thought I'd share that and then give you my honest take on it. My honest take was at least it's some movement in a direction of here. Hearing him say he wants to work with companies. Another thing I didn't love was he basically. I forget how he words it, but you'd have to go back and listen again. But when he says that we're only talking about Europe and not the Americas, he basically alludes right now he does kind of say a caveat in there. And I, that's why I had the text put in there so you guys could see it. He doesn't say he, I forget what he says. He says currently. That's what he says. Currently. This is only for Europe. We're not talking about the Americas. And to me the caveat of saying currently is because if you watch it, he's obviously not very good at public speaking. And I mean that not to be rude to him. That's not a dig. A lot of people aren't. I'm barely good at it and I've been doing it for 10 years and I'm still stuttering and saying left and right. And the reason I say that is because he's reading off his, essentially his laptop the whole time he's reading it and then he's trying to engage and he's reading it. Just an old trick to basically read the thing and then say a thing so it feels like you're still talking to the audience. Like if I was reading off a script right now and I'd say, hey, he's reading off a script right now. Which you know, is sometimes pretty hard. And right. So there's a little bit of that going on. And so what I'm trying to say you is, tell you is he was not like me shooting off the hip. He was, it was pre written. And so when I see, when I see somebody reading off a script or a teleprompter and they say certain things like a caveat, like currently, that means someone who prepared this with him or for him, they put that in there for a reason. So I don't want you to hear it him go, oh, yeah, see you all. You guys are all wrong. He's like, he's not talking about America and the Americas, which he means obviously Latin America, the United States and Canada. He's just talking about Europe. And you're like, well, he's a currently. He did say currently before that. So he does put a caveat first. And if anything Like I said, maybe they're like, we'll put everything on a back burner right now and we'll just stick with what we're. Where we're, you know, for Europe. But it's an update. I thought I'd share it. I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't give him. Them the, the opportunity since the video's out there for you guys to see it and anyways, what do you guys think? If you're talking to me, put a question mark first. Let me know if that, did that mean anything to you? I know it's a clip of the 15 minutes, but trust me, there's not a whole lot. He spends a lot of talking about the history of Fender, the legacy of Fender. He mentions Leo Fender a lot. Keeping in mind that, you know, Fender and Leo, Fender and Fender don't have a, you know, when Leo sold Fender in 1965 to CBS, you know, he was a consultant for two years. They had him, they had him on a non compete for guitars and they had him stay for two years as a consultant. And this is again, this is from the G and L people's archives and information that they said that basically Leo was miserable at Fender for when he was consulting because he came up with a two point tremolo. He came up with a ton of ideas which were all implemented into GNL. Let's be very clear. GNL, Leo, Fender implemented the two point tremolo with GNL. And I think 82, I'm getting, I'm doing off memory and it was like 88 when Fender put it in production. So but he wanted Fender to do it. When he was consulting for Fender, he wanted the two point tremolo with Fender. This is in the paperwork that GNL has that I went through. As you know, I spent time there and, and he felt like CBS bought Fender and all they want to do is just make the stuff that was making money and they weren't looking at advancing and going forward. So when, when Bud's talking about all this history and how great Leo was, I'm like, well, you know, Leo's version of those stories aren't that great. So it's not always the same story is what I'm trying to say. And so that's a little, a little bit in there. And then he does go on what else he does? Oh, he does a tangent about how basically words matter, you know, as you heard that part and you know, describing things matter, which is only interesting because recently, you know, Fender did an update to their tone master amp, their processor. And a lot of people did notice that a lot of the other brand names like Marshall and, and Vox and Ibanez and, and Mesa Boogie were removed. And then now they're using generic descriptions. And, you know, and I loved it when he basically said, you know, it's a Stratocaster. It's not an S type guitar. Words matter. I'm like, well, it's a Marshall. It's not a gold plate face British sound amp. And it's not a green, you know, screamer pedal. It's a tube screamer. Like, it's like, you know, everybody plays the game. And I. That's why I said I don't really love the hypocrisy part of it. But again, Barry Rich said, maybe 60 Minutes will cover this. I'm gonna say no. I don't think anybody cares deep down but us. And I think we only care because of the fact that ultimately it's a fight between guitar companies. And fights between guitar companies are never. They never net a positive result for anyone. The companies are us as the guitar players. No one's beneficial. No one benefits from that. Look, you could argue that one of the things that really hurt Dean Armadillo over the years was just being sued over and over again by Gibson. Again, this isn't to say that Gibson has or doesn't have a right to do that or didn't have a strong case. Even though I believe, I think Gibson won the case. But then they only got like $4. But keep in mind, even though Gibson only was rewarded $4, Dean still had to pay for all the costs. They incurred the cost. So, you know, it's a mess. It's a mess. Okay. We should go on to something fun. Do we have something fun now? Can we do that for a minute? Take a break from this. Let's see. All right, let's do this. Joseph says hello. Is the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder P Bass pickup as mid scooped, as people say? I don't think of it. I think of as mid punchy. That's kind of weird. I don't think. I don't think of the Quarter Pounders as being mid scooped. I bet you it's not the pickup that's mid scooped. It's that the way a P Bass pickup works is it's very easy to manipulate with a three band EQ into a shape, into a sound. Does it make sense? It doesn't add a lot of things besides the general sound of it. It's not. It's not like a jazz based pickup set where you have two pickups and then you have a blend of. You know, when you have the two jazz bass pickups you have a spectrum of the. Where the, the magnets are basically getting the strings at the base by the bridge and then towards the neck. You know, the P bass is kind of like in the sweet spot. It's kind of centered out. It's a single coil pickup. Of course it's just cut in two. So it's not actually two pickups. It's one pickup just cut in two. Again, another design Leo Fender did and then wanted to add that to the Strat. This is also in GNL's archives that Leo wanted Fender to take the design of the P base, which was essentially a single coil noiseless cut in two and make it a in the Strat, which later we know GNL implemented that in some of the GNL guitars. And so no, I, I mean I really like the Quarter Pounder. I would put it in my top five bass pickups especially for a P bass that, you know. So I like Quarter Pounders. They're one of my favorite Seymour Duncan pickups. The scramble says. Hey, I have a question. Why does my hot rod deluxe buzz so much? How can I fix this issue? So I'm not an amtech, but I can throw you some basic stuff to check. First thing, you can take a wooden chopstick and tap all the tubes in the back. I have a video if you google it. It's just me tapping the tubes again showing you that you'll hear a microphonic ness or you hear in the tubes or you hear an issue. One thing you can also do when you have the guitar cable or when you go to plug into the input of the amp, tap around lightly around the rim of the input jack and see if you hear. You'll hear it like a high pitch pinging, like a reverberation. And you'll hear a sound, you'll know it. It's like ting, ting like almost like you're tapping a wine glass. Like picture that kind of sound. And that is because something's wrong with one of the tubes. So the tubes usually are a big problem with an amp like that. The other thing that can happen is obviously you could be getting some, some noise from your. If you're at home, you know, if you. I'm assuming that's what, I'm assuming what's going on here at home. You didn't say like on stage or at a gig. So maybe you need to power Condition the. Your electricity. One thing that I always tell people to do. One thing you do at home if you want to test an amp and you're trying to figure out how much of the noise or problem is coming from the electricity in your wall is to try a different breaker in your. You know, so you want to go to a different room. One thing I like to do is especially sometimes is I don't. You don't know if your refrigerator, especially if you're in a smaller home or an apartment, you know, the refrigerator can be right in there and that refriger is like bars and blenders are problems. If you've ever been in a bar playing a gig and the bartenders hit the blenders and it's like, oh, that stuff's coming right through. My refrigerators are bad too. So one of the things I like to do is plug into the outlet in the bathroom because usually there's a. It's obviously on a different breaker and then there's a. What do you call it? A G. Why can't I think what's called. I'm not an electrician but I should know this. It means it has a little breaker, little fuse. But more importantly it just means you're on a different. You're on a breaker. Different breaker. So that's something I would say too keep in mind also with the modern invention of LED lights, like I have LED lights in here. They are a nightmare for amplifiers. Tube amplifiers and LED lights are. LED lights are very noisy. Your phone is also very noisy. I just. I. Thank you gfi. Thank you, Susan. I don't know why I can't think of that. My father in law is a superintendent for electrical company. He's been an electrician since. Since I've known him since I was like 13. I can't. I can't believe I forgot that. I'm sure I'll have to get hear some crap for about next week. But. But anyways. Yeah. And phones are a nightmare. So keep them away from the unit. Also another thing that's going to cause you problems is that amplifier. Because it's a kind of a beefy amplifier. Beefy meaning it's got a pretty good sized transformer. Especially if you're using at home. You can't face that thing in any way shape or form. You need to spin yourself around and face away from it. So I always run my amps as back line. So I have an amp either always, always tough to my side or in behind me when I play guitar because again, you know Putting that guitar right in front of there. The other thing you could have is low quality guitar cables. And the reason I tell you all these things, and normally I would say, hey, you need to talk to somebody who actually repairs amps, But I would say do all those things before you talk to somebody who repairs amps. Right? Those are all things that are very easy fixes, very economical, and you don't have to take it to an amp tech so that they can find a problem that may necessarily not be there, you know? You know, because it's, you know, because again, the one thing that sucks about when you take an amp to an amp tech, unlike when you take a guitar to a guitar tech, it's hard to. To replicate the problem. So when you take a guitar and it's buzzing, you bring it to me. You know, I look at it and I play it and it's going to buzz because whether it was in your bedroom or in my shop, it buzzes. However, an amp, if the problem is in your house or your situation that you created in the room or adjacent things and you take it to them, they're not going to plug it in and go, oh, I don't hear anything. You're fine. Take it back home. They're going to go, let me look into it. And they're going to keep chasing until they find a problem. And look, amps are problematic, so they'll probably find something whether it's legitimate or not. So depending on the quality of your amp tech. Scott wants to know. These are all from Amanda, by the way. Scott wants to know. Hey, Phil, what do you think about wiring a tele with no tone control on the neck pickup, just tone control on the bridge pickup. Thinking about trying this on my Player 2 Telecaster? Sure, you can do that. The idea would be that because it's in the circuit, it does change the sound. In other words, it dampens a little, the high frequency a little bit because it's getting more. More stuff in the circuit kills more highs. That's the best. I'm generically a way to say that. So in your theory, you're thinking your wire. You'll put a tone control on the neck, but not on the bridge. And so that's real common. Sometimes they'll put a true bypass switch. So, you know when I say true bypass, there are no load tone controls that you can get, and you feel them click at the end and essentially they kind of come out of the circuit. And so you can do it, you can do that without actually having to remove the entire tone control. I don't think it's a problem at all, you know, especially if you're not using the tone control on. On a guitar on the bridge. I'm conflicted about this all the time. I always, like. Sometimes I just think I like one tone control and one volume knob for both pickups or three pickups. And then sometimes I really love having two volumes, two tones. I find that for the majority of time, I like having two volumes, two tones. I like having control, each. Each pickup having their own controls. But there's just something fun about not having to think about it. So Haley says, hey, I can't join the coffee club tomorrow. Is there a wait list to do? Or is there a wait list? Or do you just have to get lucky when someone leaves? Oh, is it so let me look. You know, because you think. I know if it's full. Is it full? Because like I said, we open spaces. I'll tell you why in a second. I've talked about this in the past. Oh, that's right. They merged it now. So I can't see. So I can't see whether. Oh, I can. If I go here, give me one second. And yeah, it's sold out. So I will. I will add some spaces. I'll do it right now, and I'll tell you why in a second, and I'll tell you exactly how many spaces I'm going to add and why. Okay. I've talked about this before about the upper tiers of the patron level, because Patreon is more about me interacting with you guys, like, through the coffee. Hang on, Zoom. Or the mid tier, which is about the clinics, or the $5 tier, the base tier, which is about the bonus podcast where it's live, which is with them, because it's about my time giving it to you and other resources which aren't super important. I do limit a lot of the patron spots because, again, I want to make sure that I can handle and do all the things that I'm supposed to do with them. We did a limited release for the mid tier and above patrons. It was not specifically. We never do that because we're like, oh, because you guys pay a little bit more, we're going to do something great for you. It's because there's less of them and so we can. We can try something new. So the reason why we actually had the top tier capped off was because we had a limited amount of things we could send for this bonus thing that we were doing, this opportunity, I guess I call it opportunity. And so I just opened up five spots because we actually. Because here's what I don't want. I don't want anybody who pays for that membership to go and see a recent post I just posted last week and go, oh, can I get one of those too? And I'll be like, no. So we, we actually have five. So if we, we open up five spots, I won't have to tell anybody. No, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want you to pay money and then me go, oh yeah, I'm sorry, you're five minutes too late to get a cool stuff if you want it. But yeah, it's a Hayley. So it's opened up. But anyways, you can always come the next time too. A lot of people have fun. I have fun tomorrow. I'm excited about tomorrow specifically for a ton of reasons. Oh, and I see, I see Brian was already asking me to do that.
- [36:04]
Jeff
So I already.
- [36:05]
Phil
Okay, okay, this is just want to shred. That's great. Great time. Great name says I'm looking, I'm looking at a keisel in a 20 inch radius. Is it too flat? I played a Holcomb PRS and I loved it. But not sure for a long, for long term I'm look, 20 inch radius is fantastic if you're a player. If you know, look, you just want to shred. You just want to shred. This is, this is you. I'm not a shredder, I'm a chord player. If it wasn't. Look, I can tell right now if I didn't have to fake some kind of lead crap sometimes on YouTube just to give people a taste of something that feels more complete. I just strum chords because that's what I would do if I was on stage. I like just playing chords. I like rhythm playing. That's where I'm most comfortable. That's what I enjoy to do. I enjoy rhythm guitar playing. It's my favorite type of playing in all genres of music. So I like for flattest, I like 12 inch radius. I don't really get on with anything flatter than that. So ten, nine and a half. I'm like, I'm loving those seven a quarter. If it's the right thing. I'm not usually a fan, but if it's the right thing, I can kind of dig it a little bit. So if you like it. Yeah, I mean I can tell you right now there, I've played them all. The Kira, the keisels, the 20 inch, the 14 inch, and the 12. And I gotta tell you, I thought I didn't notice a huge difference between the 20 from the 14. So, you know, I would say if you are. What's great about those guys, the Kiesel guys, is it's not just a nine and a half or 10 and then go right to 20, there's 14. I would say if you're a little skeptical. I don't think if you got 14, you'd be really upset. I think you've got 12. It would feel more like a Les Paul's radius. And you'd kind of like, wish it was a little flatter. But I think if you got 14, I think you would be like, this isn't 20, but it's so close. Let me put it this way. If you handed me a 20 inch radius keys. All right now. And a 14, I don't know if I could detect the difference, but I could definitely detect the difference between a 12 and a 20. I would be able to play them and go, oh, yeah, I like the. You know, I like the. The 12 a little bit more. So but it. So just something to think about. Okay. Mike says, hey, when I turn on my pedal board, some boss pedals automatically power on. Some don't. All mine power on. I've never seen anybody that don't. I wonder if it has to do so is a way to have them power up. I don't know if there's any particular things you can do. I've never really researched or look into it. If anyone knows in the comments that there's a mystery. Just a thought is, is that maybe they are affected by whether or not they have a battery in them or not. So that would be my. My pro. My thought process. In fact, let me check something right now. I'll keep talking to you guys. Give me a second. Hold on. I'm going to test it. I'm going to test my theory. Okay. Ready, set. Give me a second. Nope. So mine always comes on when I power on every time. And it had a battery in it. I took the battery out. I just unplugged it and plugged it in and it came right on. So I'm gonna say, I don't know why they do that. Anyone knows Dewey saying, Boss tuner pedals don't automatically turn on. So maybe that's what it is. That would make sense, I think, because that is a kind of. Doesn't. Doesn't the boss mute? It mutes when it's on. So that's probably why it's designed that way. So that would probably be a. Probably a good theory. If any of the boss pedals mute something with. When engaged, like a tuner does, then maybe that's their default is to come off. But the rest would be always come on. All the boss pedals I have come on as soon as I. As soon as I turn on my power and all my. This whole room, the entire room is hooked to one switch. Same with my shop. When you see me in the shop, I have that entire room is hooked to one switch too. Many nights when I had the shop, I'd wake up at like, two in the morning going, did I turn off this? Did I turn off the soldering iron? Did I turn off the sander? Did I turn off something a little like, did I turn off the compressor? Like, you know, I was always a little weary. And then I'd get in the car in the middle night, I drive all the way to the shop, which is a pain in the ass because you got to go get through the, you know, the security system, turn it off, go in there, check. And. And then when we got the better camera system in the store, I would then go online on my app or, you know, on my app, on my phone and go, oh, I can see. Can I see if it's on? It looks like, you know, because everything was turned off. And so one day, it just dawned on me that everything should be on one switch. And so if the lights are out, everything's out. So that's how it works in here. And how I do it, for those that are curious, is. Let me go. This is how I do it. Yep. Hold on a second. There's a bunch. This is the one I use, or this is. Looks like one I use. I think actually, mine's a little nicer than this, but it's the same. Same. All right, so this is a. This is an outdoor wireless remote control. Outlook plug. Weatherproof, heavy duty with remote. So what I do is. I know what you guys are thinking. Well, don't you have light switches? I do, but light switches only go to certain outlets. So what I do is, is I have it set up so that this everything powers off of this unit, except for, I think there's, like, two things that don't for a specific reason. Like, I think it's my computer's one, because I don't care if that's running all the time. And then. And then this is right at the end of the room. So I hit that, and I hit that, and literally it kills the whole room. So I absolutely love that. So in the shop I don't have that. I have a master power strip that it's like a really good high end one because I have a bunch of them, they're chained up. I don't know if I love the idea everything being chained together like it is, but I just love the idea that when I leave a room it's powered off. I don't have to worry. Leave a tube amp on, you know, and it's in or in the shop I don't have to worry if I left the soldering iron on. Even though I always make the attempts to turn off everything individually, it's one of those things when I leave, if I forgot something for some reason. That power switch, it kills everything. So. So yeah, that's what I suggest. Okay. All right. This one's from Tatman. Tatman 49, this is. Hey Phil. I recently purchased the 2011 Fender Players Road Worn Telecaster. And it. And I would like to know your thoughts on how I could modify it for playing 80s hard rock neck humbucker bridge, single coil. Sure. You could put a mini humbucker in the bridge or you could, I think the way I think it's routed in underneath the bridge, unfortunately for the tele shaped pickup. So you'd have to route to get a humbucker in there at least off of doing off memory. And so you would have to obviously change the bridge out to something that holds a humbucker. Me personally, I mean, you know, I, I, you could put a mini humbucker in there and I think it'd sound pretty good. Put a mini humbucker in the neck and call it a day. DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan both make quality stuff like that. So that's something I think about and doesn't involve new bridges and routing and all kinds of craziness. You can just put it in there and I've done a video and you can watch it. I have a video where I compare all the mini humbuckers to the full size humbuckers and the end result is the mini humbucker never sounds the same as a full humbucker. It gets you, it's close, but it's not there. But you know, it also doesn't involve you having to buy a new bridge and route things and do stuff like that.
- [44:14]
Jeff
So
- [44:17]
Phil
this is from Chocolate. Chocolate something. Chocolate Thunder. I'm gonna say Thunder. It's because it's not. All the letters are there. Chocolate thunder says hey Phil, long time lurker do you have any experience with the new Charvel Pro Mod plus series or thoughts on the brand in general? I have a Charvel. I've owned Charmel Pro Mods in the past. The current Charvel I own now is the Charvel DK24, which I absolutely love. I've. I've. I've liked every Charvel I've ever got, whether they are the Pro mods or, you know, the, the, you know, made MexicoS or the USAs. And I can almost say I regret every Charveil I've ever gotten rid of in the idea that, you know, I always love Charvels. I don't know what it is. You know, Charvels are a weird guitar for me because I. When I started playing guitar, Charvel was kind of out of favor already. You know, to me, it's like when I started playing guitar, I think about this. I started playing guitar in 89. In 89. You know, Ibanez is like, it's the thing, right? And Jackson's still there because it's still, you know, at this point, no one's doing Super Strats. Everybody's doing like the new modern, you know, carves like this. I'm pointing to a guitar with a modern carve and which is harder lines. And so it's like, it's. The Kramers were kind of out of favor. BC Rich is kind of starting to fall out of favor because it's like, it's a little bit, you know, now it's going into the 90s era of metal, which is more dream theater and skid row, you know, kind of thing, right. For that. And then of course, you know, then month later grunge games and it doesn't matter anyways. But my point is, I didn't get a Charvel until much, much, much later. And it was one of those things where I was just. I just wasn't falling in love with Strats, you know, I. I finally got a Strat when I was like 30 and I just didn't love it. And I didn't know what I was missing about it. And then I. It hit me one day, like, what about a Charvel? And then I played a Charvel and I'm like, this is amazing. This is like everything I don't love about Strats. So. So it's a flatter radius on the fretboard. It's, you know, humbuckers. It's. The neck's a little thinner. It plays great. So, yeah, Easy Possum says, hey, is it okay to leave a pedal board on or should you unplug it after use? So I have a power switch on mine, which is nice. I put power switches on mine and then of course it's ultimately to the kill switch. Here's what I can tell you. Just a thought for you. Basically, heat and friction are the things that destroy everything. Everything is like engineering 101, heat and friction. And ironically, friction causes heat. Either one of those things, right? But not all friction is heat because obviously water. We see the Grand Canyon carved out by water. Friction. So the thing. The philosophy I follow for all gear is anything that's causing heat or friction is wearing it down. So to me, if you leave a pedal on, even if it's just a little bit of heat running through it, which may be like just the LED light or whatever, the components are going to wear down. Especially PC board stuff. Because the trails on PC boards are notoriously known for. When they get heated, they expand and then when they cool, they shrink and they get micro cracks in them, especially when they're not really good quality. They're all thin. And the thing I've learned is the longer you leave them on, they don't get hotter and hotter and hotter, obviously, because then eventually they catch a fire. But that prolonged heat, keeping that trail really hot. And then when you turn it off, I think it's just too much. So it's one of those things. I don't think it's gonna destroy your pedals. I don't think you'll like, oh, what did I do? I think you're basically taken away from their longev. Whether that means they would last 50 years and now they're gonna last 30 or 40. The I just. I would turn it off is what it's going to try to say. I'd get one of those things. 14 bucks, right? Put a little remote. It's great. They're there. Look, I'll even. Here, I'll do this. Go back. Ah, did I already hop out of it? Oh, go back to it. I'll put a link. In fact, I'll so that you know, if you buy it for 14 bucks, I get. I get like 1% of that. So what is that? 14 cents. I'll get 14 cents. I'm not exaggerating. That's what the Amazon kick is. In fact, for 14 cents, just buy it, but don't worry about using my link. But I'm saying one of those would be great for a pedal board. I'd highly recommend it. So let's see Before I go to another question, I'm just gonna, I like to pop into the. I'm looking at the chat to see. Oh, oh, random, random name says Phil. I need you to move that Warwick somewhere where I can see it. Yeah, it's right there. I should, I should have put it where there's a light on it too. I kind of, I feel like it, it's in the shame spot. Sean Eric Brooks says Charville is a tainted brand. Now that's offender associated. Yeah, I get it. You know, I feel that way. I think, I think it's for me. Again, never tell anybody what to think or say. I just kind of. This is all about sharing, you know. You know, look, I'm not totally over play authentic, you know, it's a, it's what I mean by that is like I'm not like, I'm angry about it, it's just, it's just a reminder that Gibson and Fender are essentially big corporations. And that's true about a lot of them, you know, a lot of companies. It's why I got upset so much when boss decided to do the pedal where you had to buy or you know, buy the downloads in it. And some people agree with me and some people are like, you know, why are you making such a big deal out of it? And it's because, look, the best joke I ever heard about Fender is Fender is a guitar brand trying to sell you T shirts, right? And when I heard that, it's that reminder. And I've told this story many, many years ago. But so obviously before I just, I gave totally up and I hired a trainer. By the way, I'm coming up on the one year mark being with the trainer. But anyways, I gave up and I hired a trainer and, and you know, because I'm trying to get, you know, I like everybody just trying to get healthier, right? You know, trying to, you know, trying to live as best you can, the best life you can. I decided I was gonna ride bikes and I hadn't rode bikes in forever and ever. And for those that are bike riders, you'll understand this bicyclist, you'll understand this. The rest of you will probably be like me in a second. So I decided, hey look, I'm a middle aged man with some means and I'm going to go and buy a bicycle and get healthy and I'm going to, I'm going to go and do this, you know. And I went into a bike shop, a local bike shop. I walked in there and I wasn't Thinking, you know, I wasn't thinking, like, walk in there and ask questions. I went in there and I was like, almost like a lot of customers. Like, I think I know a thing when I don't, right? My favorite thing to say is, just because, you know. Just because you know a thing doesn't mean you know everything. So I walked in, and I'll never forget this. The two sales guys are there, and I said, hey, I'm looking for a bike. I want to buy a Schwinn. And they said, you should go to Walmart. And I go, no, I want a nice bike. I want to Schwinn. They go, yeah, dude, you should go to Walmart. Like, they were like. Like, it was, like, so funny to me. I was like, what? They're like, schwinn's a Walmart brand. I go, no, Schwinn's. Like, it's like, that's the bike. Like, when I was a Kid, we had BMX's, diamonds, right? And, you know, I had a Huffy. So I'd like to point out I didn't have a BMX or diamond. I had a Huffy, but my friends had BMX and diamonds. But I was like, yeah, those. If you want a dirt bike or, you know, not. Yeah, dirt bike, you get a BMX or a Huff or a Diamond. And if you want a. Like, a street bike, you get a Schwinn, right? And they were like, no. And so basically what happened is I'm walking around the store and I decided they were full of crap. I was like, ah, these guys, what do they know? Remember? Because I know a thing. I know everything. And so I get in my car and I drive to the next bicycle shop, and I go in there, and the same thing. They tell me the same thing. All the brands I know are just junk brands sold at the Walmart. And by the way, they're like a hundred dollars. You can get a Schwinn for a hundred bucks. And I was like, whoa. And so now, keep in mind, old Schwinn still have some kind of value. Yeah, Mongoose, that was another one, too. And so here's what's funny. All the brands in these stores, I never heard of them Specialized. I'm like, what's Specialized? I thought it was. I was walking in, I thought they were giving me the. This is their little, you know, like, court guitars, you know. Right. I was thinking like, oh, this is. This. I guess this store doesn't rate and they can't get the good Brands and they have these off brands. And, and in the bicycle world, what had happened is exactly what I think will ultimately happen in our world, which is the big brands become so big they just become. They basically start cannibalizing their brand, right? They realize one day, like Fender and Gibson does, that their logo is the most important thing financially. Because when everything becomes transactional, right? When everything is not. And that's, and this is my look and I'm not here to give you a big corporate speech, you know, kind of anti corporate speech, but like I said, technically everybody's corporations because they're all LLCs. But, but what I mean by big corporations is corporations are where we see the line cross, where they start doing business in a different way. They stop using the value proposition to transact business. In other words, in business you give value, okay? And then you make money for that, okay? So in other words, if you make something quality and you make, you give a customer some value, okay? And the customer gives you money. And big corporations get to a point where they stop doing that. They, in other words, we transact with them, but they don't actually give us any value. They slap logos on cheap garbage, which really doesn't give us value, especially for what we pay. Because which to me is at that mind, it's stealing. To me, it's like stealing from us. But then we finally like everybody, you get hip to it over time. And I'm not saying Fender and Gibson are there yet. What I'm saying is that's the road they're going down. In my opinion. They're going down the road of they're just gonna keep doing stuff until we stop buying. And it won't matter because by the time we stop buying, they'll just figure out like, like the joke. They can sell more T shirts than guitars. Marshall will sell more Bluetooth speakers and refrigerators and sunglasses and headphones than amps. Because here's the old. Here's the thing I notice with companies, they realize at some point they get so big like Fender and Gibson and all these companies that they realize where their market cap is and they're never going to get out of it. And you know, Marshall figured out one day as a whole, I don't think it was actually set out like this, but I think Marshall will figure out one day, you know, the Marshall logo is so valuable that if you put it on any amp, look, if you put a Marshall logo on a, you know, on a Harley Benton amp, all of a sudden that amps worth a lot more Money, you know, in theory, right? And they realized, well, they could put it on more amps and they could make cheaper amps and put on more amps. But then one day somebody realized, well, we could put it on Bluetooth speakers. Where's your market cap there? Your market cap for guitar amps is guitar players who need tube amps or solid stamps. The market cap for Bluetooth speakers and headphones. I make this joke, I tell every friend this. I'm going to tell you guys right now. There's 1400, almost 1500 of you. Let me tell you this. Next time you're in an airport, try to find an airport that doesn't sell a Marshall Bluetooth speaker or headphone in. Somewhere in that airport, in one of those stores, it's everyone. So basically what happens is that's. I think that's the road they all go down. I think eventually they become one day. Not us, we're too old. Our kids for sure. For the younger. The younger viewers, there's younger viewers. There's like three of you. Just kidding. So you younger people, here's what's gonna happen. One day, you're gonna walk in a music store and you're gonna ask for a Fender and Gibson. They're gonna go, those are at Walmart. Because that's. They're not gonna be the stuff you see guitar players buy anymore. And I think that's why we get bummed out about this. I think it's, for me, that's what the lawsuit represented. It's not so much that it was. It's like, oh, no, they're suing people. It was all like, oh, no. This is another step down that road that leads to eventually. They're not really a brand. Actually, guitar players play. They were the brand that guitar players used to play. And then again, old Fenders will be worth a fortune, just like old Schwinn bikes. But new Fenders will all be Costco, Walmart, Target fodder and. And selling stuff. So, yeah, the. I told this story. It was kind of funny. I told this to Jack Higginbotham is the COO of PRS when I was hanging out with him in Indonesia and I was telling him the story that, you know, Marshall figured out. They're out. They're out was to make Bluetooth speakers. By the way, still Marshall fan, but you guys know what we're talking about. And I said, and then one day Gibson and Fender will make their out. And he goes, what do you think they're out will be? And I go, I think Gibson, they'll sell barrels of whiskey. They'll sell whiskey. They'll figure out that bourbon, the Gibson bourbon, is worth more than Gibson guitars. And he goes, are you serious? I go, I don't know. Why not, right? My joke was. I told him. I said, here's my joke. I said, I. I always have a Swiss army knife. It's just something I always have. Hey, this one actually has my name on it. So anyways, I always have a Swiss army knife on me at all times. And it's just something I always have. Either that or a Leatherman. And so I just always have a, like, super tools, right? The other day, I had to put a license plate on my daughter's car, and we were at her apartment, and there's no tools there. And I'm like, don't worry. Here I am. And I'm like, corkscrew fixing this. Luckily, I used the screwdriver on it, but it was much different than using the corkscrew. But I said, you know, I love Swiss army knives. They make great knives. Great utility tools, I should say. And I said, I bought a Swiss army backpack at the. At the Target, and It was like, 120 bucks. And I bought it because it was good. And he's. And I told him. I said. And then I got home, and I realized, how the hell did I know it was good? I just assumed it was because the Swiss Army. It's good. I go, what does Swiss army knives know about making a backpack? Nothing. And I go, why did I think Swiss army knives would know anything about making a backpack? And I'm like, it's just because I was like, oh, quality. This is quality. So therefore, that's quality. And I go. And that's what I talk about. That's when they realize there's a different. There's a different market cap for them. They don't have to just stick to people who put a pocket knife in their pocket. And I said. And I said, gibson will figure that out, too. And he goes. And that's why I told him. I said, gibson will figure out, like, everybody will pile. They'll buy barrels. They'll buy Gibson bourbon that's literally soaked in mahogany. Barrels, the same mahogany. And they'll. I go, that would be their marketing. The same mahogany that makes those beautiful guitars for the artists you love now has houses. The best bourbon in the world. And he said, well, what do you think Fender will sell? And I go, lights. And he goes, lights. And I go, yeah, you'll go into Target and There'll be Fender lamps and lights and flashlights. And he goes, he goes, I don't understand your logic at all. And I said, I said, yeah, because people, non guitar players will go, well, Fender, of course, no knows lights because musicians use Fender and musicians have lights on stage. So they know lights, they know quality. So therefore, it transitions. This is a true story, I swear. He says, oh, yeah, I don't think I want to know. He goes, what would Pierre us sell? I go, wine. I go, purest wine. It's going to be pure us wine. He laughed, for the record. He laughed, found it amusing, took it on the chin. And I said, I said, but I don't know. But, but we've seen. This is the, you know, this can be the case, right? It can be. They figure out their brand is bigger than our market, our economy for you. So, you know, I think, watch this. Let's do this just to show, you know, I'm not crazy. Hold on a second. All right, ready? Let's see what the Internet says. Okay, let me just show you this so you guys don't think I'm crazy. Marshall Amplifiers, the group, right, the company that owns Marshall amps. Marshall Group, which includes Marshall amplification, was acquired by the Chinese private equity firm Hong Kong Shang Capital Group in a deal valuing the parent company at $1.15 billion. I want you to think for a second, okay? I want all you guys to think whether you guys know this industry or not. There is no amplifier company worth a billion dollars. No guitar amplifier company worth a billion dollars. None. There's. There's no way. There's no way that you can tell me and I can. I don't, you know, I don't even have to tell me. There's no way that Marshall amps can sell a billion dollars with an amps. It's just not. Think about this. Fender's not a billion dollar company. Gibson's not a billion dollar company. Fender is arguably the biggest amp maker in the world. They're not a billion dollar company. They're up there. They're private. So no one knows where they're at. But they're not a billion dollar company. My point is. So Gibson's worth a billion dollars because of. What I'm trying to tell you is that once they figure out they can get outside of us, these companies outside of us guitar players, and actually sell to all the people who buy lots of stuff. It's why Rick. Look, Rick Beato. It's why Rick Beato does 48 million views a month. Just so you guys know, just so you can comprehend that scale. If you took all the gear channels that have at least a hundred thousand subs combined, which is a lot, they don't do 48 million views a month, not combined. There's no way Rick Beato is single handedly bigger than the guitar gear communities as channels. And why when he did his video about Fender, he actually presented it to a much bigger audience, not only by size, but just outside of the guitar community. So a lot of them were probably like, I had this argument with a YouTuber and they were like, you know, Rick, yeah, Rick Beato. He didn't really, he just kind of said all this stuff and he really didn't get into it. And I go, look, his audience isn't really guitar players. They're, they're, they're fans of music and they're not really get. They don't give a crap what Fender's suing or doing. So he presented it in a way I think he thought his audience would understand it. I know because I see normal people that I know their eyes gloss over when we talk on Friday shows like this because they're like, what the hell are you guys talking about? Because we're so into it. So my point is, market cap is what I'm trying to say is that so to find music fans is a much bigger audience than finding guitar players. So Rick Beato knows that. That's why his channel is huge. And Marshall figured it out and Gibson will figure it out and Fender is figuring it out and that's how it works. And, and they'll leave us all. And then like I said. All right, on that note, we got to do. What do we do? We do Gear of the week. Let's do that. Okay, ready? And now it's time for Gear of the Week. Okay, so this makes a little different. It's a piece of gear I want to share with you. I'm actually going to do probably a standalone video of this as well. I want to share this with you. It's something that it's. I've been toying with, trying to figure out how to present it or talk about it. It's a piece of gear. And so let me give you the story behind it because the gear of the week is not a guitar, it's an amp. I'm going to talk about the same. And Gear of the week has always been about, you know, a little backstory or something interesting. So here's the story with this. I've been, I Worked with this company for a few years. When I say work with. They reached out to me once, very small company. Sent me a small amplifier. I did a video. Did. Well, we sent. They sent another one. Then what happens? They try to level up, or they're trying to level up, and they sent another amp. That's a little bit more. More. More involved than what they did before. And what happened was they're a small builder, and I got the amp and I was gonna do a video, and they were gonna pay me to do the video as it was a sponsored video. And I was like, great. And then what happened is, as, you know, I interact with you guys so much that a couple people in the community were telling me that they had ordered amps from this company, but they weren't getting them. And it's because this company is literally a guy and his wife and his dog. Okay, I'm not exaggerating. Like, it's like. Hold on. I think it's like a guy. I think his son helps, too. His stepson. Okay. So literally, this amplifier is David, his wife, Brenda, and his stepson John, and their dogs. I knew there was dogs. Okay. They have a lot of dogs.
- [65:38]
Jeff
Wow.
- [65:38]
Phil
And some cats. They have a lot of dogs and cats. I don't think the dogs and cats are soldering, just so you know, but it's a very small company. When I first met him, you got. He worked at a Home Depot, and he started making amplifiers on the side, and he became very good at it. And so anyways, I held back on the video because the fact that I told him, I said, look, I have. I have viewers that are still waiting for some of the product. I don't think we should be pushing a product. And he agreed, and he made sure that, you know, he's like, yep, I'll. I'm. I'm getting those cinched up. I'll have them in a month or two. He did. So, you know, he fulfilled what he said, and I didn't have to put any pressure. He just. It was the conversation. And anyways, so the reason I tell you that is because he. He can't do a lot of these amps. They're done by hand. So what I'm trying to tell you is if you're first to order one, if you decide to order one, you're. You know, he'll build one, and if you're last to order one, you're gonna be waiting a long time. And if you don't go into this knowing that I. That's where I conflict about stuff like this because I like to promote stuff. A lot of people always go, why don't you just promote smaller stuff? And I'm like, well, because there's 1500 of you live. I mean most, most channels that are promoting small stuff, they get 1500 views. So I get 50,000 views. I can really choke down a company. And that's great because the company's like, oh, I sell a lot of stuff, but it ain't great if they can't deliver a lot of stuff. So let me show you the amp I'll talk about in a second. So this amp is really cool. So the amp is D, Kowalski amps. And a lot of you even have one of his little half watt amps. But what he did now that's really cool is he came out with a clone of a Dumbo clone. And this is called the enigma. It's a 10 watt amp. Now what's interesting is he. It comes in two versions, okay. And originally he sent me the first version, which is this. So it's just the chassis. I'll show you mine in a second. And I was not a big fan of that. That was another thing I gave him pushback on. I'm like, I just don't like this idea. It is sealed on the bottom, it has rubber feet. But I go, you know, I guess if you're an audio file head you might think this looks cool. But I really like having a box. So he ended up having. He doesn't do boxes, he does amplifiers. So he has Mojo Tone make this, which by the way, Mojo Tone makes like most the amp builders boxes. And. But he does give you an opportunity. So the amp is a thousand dollars hand wired, made in the USA or if you get the cab upgrade, it's $12.99 and you can buy, you can buy the cabinet separate later or at the same time. I'm just letting you know you have opportunities. Like the head only is 299. And for those that say 299 for its pine and it's vinyl, it's because he's buying it from Mojo Tone. And then there's no, there's no huge margin in it from this. In other words, this is just to accommodate the amp. I'm pretty sure without some of the pressure for me to say, hey, it looks like it needs to look like a complete amplifier. I don't know if he would actually have focus on that so much, but who knows? But anyways, what's great about the amp is a Couple things. It is fully loaded so it is 10 watts, totally playable at bedroom volume. And hold on, there's more. It has an effects loop and in the effects loop there's a switch that lets you bypass the effects loop because the effects loop actually changes the sound like it does on all amps. So for those that want the purest amp tone, you can take the effects loop out. I actually currently have my Atlantic delay and reverb in the effects loop. For this demonstration it runs 8 ohms or 4. But if you have a 16 ohm cab, you just run the 8 ohm into that. That's totally fine. It comes with a foot switch because it is a two channel amp. I believe they cascade on each other. So you have a clean channel. The clean will have a mid range, a volume, a treble and a bass. And then there's a mid switch and then a three way top end switch that he goes into. And then the second channel when you switch to has essentially what I think dual gains and a volume. And I don't know if that's accurate because he's got all this stuff that he reads here. But when I, when I would read his stuff and then I would mess with it, I always felt myself a little confused by it. Not anything wrong with his reaction, his, his material, but just how I interact with the amp. So let me grab a guitar. I'm using my Paul Reed Smith S2. This is an S2 semi hollow that I've had forever. That looks like it's black, but it's actually trans black. It's got flames. Nathan told me that this is. He said, I remember I've had this forever and I love it. But I, he's. I remember Nathan looking at going I can't believe Purs let that out. He goes, I'm surprised I didn't just paint it black. I got. Because it's so. Look, as soon as you get anywhere, it doesn't. You can't see the wood anymore. But it just plays so good and it sounds so good and I like it. So let's go ahead and do that. I have a camera. What do I have a camera? There's the amp cam. This is the actual amp. This is my amp right now. So you can see my settings with the switch on. I'm like I said, I'm running the clean channel, but I am running it with the Atlantic. I'm going to turn the delay off and just leave it as reverb. And then we'll come back, back here, we'll Switch cameras over here so you can see me cross my legs. Move my, my glass over. Okay. We'll do some clean tones. Let me go back to you guys so I can see your comments. Please feel free to ask any questions. Amp wise, size wise, it's a pretty small head. Like I said, 10 watts. But this is the crazy part. I'm not gonna do it right now. But if you want to go back to this camera so you see me, if you want me to do this or that, I will with it. Because what I'm about to say, this is why I know you guys are gonna give me a lot of grief. I absolutely love this way more than the two rock. The two rock the studio underneath it. That's 35 watts, which is 22 or $2,300 more than this amp. I actually like the Enigma better. First of all, the Enigma has two channels where the two Rock has one and the. But the two Rock does have reverb. They're both made in the USA and they're both hand wired. But there's something about the Enigma, I like it better. So let me go here. Let's do clean. I'll give you a little taste of the neck pickup on the clean. Here we go. Now what I like is it's clean, but it's got a lot of sustain. It feels really good. It's a really good amp. I think considering that it's handmade by a person and their wife and their dogs and hand wired point to point, $1300 I think is a pretty reasonable price. And like I said, you could actually, if you guys know, if you want, you could buy it for a thousand and then build your own head box. Because the way he does it so you know, is there's a metal plate on the bottom of the amp. When you put it in the head box, you don't have to take that off. So let's go back to the clean. I'm going to coil split. So the question was, somebody just asked, what speaker am I running through? I'm running through a 112 Friedman cabinet with a cream back selection in it. So that's what you're hearing. Let's go ahead and I'm going to show you the overdrive. Now for the overdrive, I'm going to leave the reverb on. I'm going to turn on the delay. Like I said, it's going through the effects loop. I'm going to hit the switch and stick on the neck pickup. And here we go. Sam, I'm going to go to the bridge and we'll hit a drum track. Here we go. So question I got just now was, am I running the pedals in front of it? Nope, no pedals whatsoever. This is just the amp. All you're hearing is the. I can pick it up, I guess. Let me see this Atlantic. If I get in here. There it is. Here it is. I'm running off a power battery power block. So this is the Atlantic. Hold on. Going to lose my power. Okay, I'm running the Atlantic, Just running reverb and delay. So that's all you're hearing in the effects loop of the amp. And there you go. All right, so go back to clean. So we're back on clean. Here we go. Now, if I want to run a little bit of overdrive, I will run a pedal through it real quick. Let's. Why not? And let me hit a pedal right here.
- [75:43]
Jeff
Here we go.
- [75:43]
Phil
Go to the neck pickup, Sam. This will be a little fun. I'm gonna show you guys. So this is just my mic, okay, the one I'm talking into right now, this mic. And you can hear how loud the amp is compared to my voice. So I've turned off the mic that's actually on the speaker, So that's how loud the amp is. So I would say for volume purposes, I wouldn't say it's bedroom quiet by any means, but it does turn down very easy. It's not bedroom quiet, but definitely can be bedroom quiet, by the way, whether it's overdrive or clean, that's the main thing. And so here's what's interesting about this. I mentioned that it was a paid sponsored video, but I changed the video. What I mean by that is I told him not to pay me. So I'm not being paid for this video. And I'm still going to do an independent video. I just. I just, you know, it is. I really love it. And I think he deserved to not, you know, to be. I wanted it to be the truth, which is I've had it now for months and months and months and months. Been torturing it. And, you know, I like it. I like it enough. I told him, I said, you know what? Let's not do a sponsored video that way. And. And I. I really like it. So that's just. I'm letting you know, that's what we decided to do. I. But I decided to give you guys a heads up, and I thought it'd be fun to talk about it because in the video, it'll be about the amp. Obviously it'll be a demonstration of the amp, but not the story behind it. So I'm giving you guys the story behind it and how, why it took so long. I've had this amp, I think when I looked on the way. I think I've had it since middle of last year. So almost a year. That's how long I had it. But that's. Like I said, I'm giving you all the reasons why I got pushed back and pushed back. Okay. Any questions about the amp or anything? Just about anything in life. Like Richard says, it sounds pretty good. I think it sounds great. I think the clean look, it's not as big sounding as a 50 watt or 30 watt amp wise. It's just not because it's 10 watts, but it sounds full. It sounds really detailed and clean. So, you know, when we do the this or that later, I'm going to be using that. This. The rig's all set up, so this or that. You're going to hear the pedals running through the samps clean again. So you'll hear those pedals through it. Through it too as well. Let's see. Mr. Rowe says, listening to the bow to my Bose surround system. As always, I love the sound of this, but I'm thinking it's proud of those low, low round pickups on the guitar. You mean low wound. So the pickups in the guitar are not stock. I, I should have mentioned that. I'm sorry. These aren't the stock pickups on the, the guitar. So Richard says, not a spot. No, no spot. Sponsor. But I bet the amp was free. Well, actually, it depends on how you argue that. See, the, the amp was supposed to be. See, I was supposed to get the amp and the payment, and I decided I didn't want the payment and I'll just keep the amp. But I might actually just pay from the amp as well. I don't know yet. We'll see. I'll talk to him. Because again, it's, it's not. I. When I originally took on this, this, this video, the idea was like a lot of videos just to make a video for the channel. I wasn't really looking for an amp. I already have all the amps I want. But the more I played it, the more I thought it's a really cool amp. But I don't know yet. But like I said, I'm just sharing the story with you. Let's see. I try to understand this question. What, what is the. Oh, what is the dope? Wait. Amplified Nation. I don't Understand the question. What is the dupe for Amplified Nation? So what tubes? It has one EL34 in it.
- [80:43]
Jeff
So.
- [80:45]
Phil
So it has one power tube and two preamp tubes. Mr. Roses, what pickups on the guitar? They are DiMarzio Northern Lights. That's what's in almost all my guitars. So Northern Lights are in the majority of my guitars. And then DiMargio Northern Lights are what's. You know, because I can only make so many of my own pickups because. So now I have more DiMargio Northern Lights in all the guitars. So that's what you. It's a Northern Lights and Northern Lights plus in the bridge and neck position. The. The question was duplicate. Is that a duplicate Amplified Nation? It's the same Amplified Nation I've had for years. Like two years now. If you guys know, I rotate that amp and the Marshall, and that's because usually that's just what I have over there in the room. I usually always have about three or four amps in the room to mess with. So I usually have an amp over there. When somebody comes over and jams, they kind of sit on that chair over there and then jam through that amp or I jam to that amp and then jam over an amp over here. So Farmer Dan says, sounds like I like a nicer version of the Fender Blues Junior. I can see that the overdrive on this amp is really nice. That's what he really nailed, which is really cool because it's really tough. As, you know, sometimes the. The overdrives on amps are. If they're too high gain, they sound metal. If they're too low gain, they sound farty. So he did a really good job job. So it's really cool. Okay, Somebody wants to know what state is the emperor. He makes them in Texas. So he. And he hand wires them in Texas. And like I said, and his wife and his stepson and dogs and cats. I just like it because if you go to his About Me page, so you guys know, just so you know about Me page, it's right here. It's right here. And it says, and they have their dogs and their cats. If, like I said, these kind of companies, when you reach out to companies like this, you can always let them know I sent you. That's always nice because it lets him know that, you know, it was the promotion he wanted worked. But like I said, you need to go into this with realistic expectations. And this is the reason why, like, sometimes I like to have a video like this because I find, like, every time I highlight A small builder. It works out great. Except for eventually somebody tells me like, oh, I'm waiting forever for mine. And I'm like, yeah, it's because they, they. A channel this size can give them capacity real fast. In other words, if you can only make, you know, four or five amps a month tops, if you can even do that many, and he gets 10 orders, you know, it starts pushing things back. Okay, any other questions before we move on? Yobert says, in my experience, what Marshall, what pedal replicates the Marshall Plexi the best? So this is the, in my, in my, in my experience with Plett Marshall plexi pedals, it has to do with what you run them through. So you understand like a Fender amp is kind of mid scooped. So some Marshall plexi amp pedals have more mid range to them. So funny enough, like, one of my favorite Marshall plexi sounds is the Plexi Tone by Karl Martin. I have both versions of it, the big and the small, and I love them both. It's one of my favorite plexi tone pedals on the market. However, it is very particular about the amp it goes into. So if you go into an amp that's like a, like a Morgan, which is going to be a Fender type clone for the PR12, you know, some Morgans are like Vox clones. If you go into the Magnetone or if you go into a Fender amp, I find that the, you can get the Marshall sound out of it. However, if you were to plug it into I think a Vox amplifier, I would imagine that it would sound a lot more mid present and you wouldn't love it as much and you might want to go for like a pedal pal kind of pedal. The pedal pal ones will do really good well for both a Fender style amp and more of a British voiced amp. But it is part of how, you know pedals and pedals are not just great. They work with stuff just like amps. So you got to find the right marriage of it. So I tend to like a lot of the Marshall sounding pedals that do really well with Fender style amps because then I get the best of both because really what I want is I want the amp to be really good, clean and then run a Marshall overdrive through it. So like here's a good example. The, a lot of the Marshall Plexi style pedals in my opinion don't sound that great to my ears in any of the EVH 5150amps on their clean channel. There's just something about those Clean channels on the 5150amps. When you run Plexi style amps pedals through them, I just don't like it. It gets too harsh and too fizzy just, just to my ears. Now you can always massage them and use other pedals like EQ pedals and all that stuff. And it also has to do with. And this is the important part too, Everything I'm giving you advice on is also keep in mind, it's also about the volume you're playing at. I play at lower volumes. I do not play very loud. Like I always say, my. My family thinks I play loud. You guys would all think I not, you know, you guys would all probably agree that I'm not very loud if, if you saw me playing. Let's see. Kate wants to know what is that orange guitar with the black P90s? That is a Heritage Hollow body with P90s. And there's a wrap on the string. So to stop them from ringing, that'll probably be a video. I have a Collings hollow body and a heritage hollow body video that I'm working on right now. So because of the fact I think it's cool. As you guys know, I like to put some guitars on the channel that you don't see a lot on YouTube channels. And also I like compare contrast. So I like, you know, to have as many different brands on the channel as possible.
- [86:45]
Jeff
Okay.
- [86:50]
Phil
Michael wants to know he heard that if it's too loud, you're too old. It's probably true. Yes. But so, you know, I just. And I just got to a point where I realized I, you know what it is? I never really wanted to ever be loud. I was telling my wife this because again, she's known me since high school years, right? Since junior high. But I mean high school. And I was always loud. I was always in a rock band and I was always playing with loud amps and half stacks and stuff. And I told her and I said, you know, it's not. I didn't get to an age. And then all of a sudden I turned down the equipment got better quiet because it was. And she used to. I would always, you know, she would always tell me like, oh, it's really loud. Can you just turn it down a little bit? You know, she's coming and she's always, she's always. My wife's got a timer in her head. I know it. She doesn't say it, but it's true. Like I could play like if I was crank these amps to play Right now I could probably go for hours, but at some point she's gonna come in and go, okay, you know, can you turn it down a little bit? It's been like four hours, right? Because I'll play for hours and hours a day, so. And I told her, I said, you know, I used to tell her like I turned down and she's like. And I go, yeah, it doesn't sound good. And I always tell her that. And one day I told her when I was playing quieter. Now she's like, well, you're playing not as loud as you used to. And I said, yeah, this is years ago. And I said, yeah, it's because I can, through the technology, through finessing, I can get better sounds quieter because sometimes like the amps, you know, you guys know all of a sudden the amp just hits that spot where it sounds great and you turn it down and then all of a sudden it sounds like thinner again. And so now I feel like through attenuators, through pedals. The main reason I play pedals is to play quieter because I can get, I can get better sounds much lower volumes with the pedals than I can the amps. There was a question and I, I grabbed it and it's from last week because I. So you guys know we now I, I peruse the post weeks shows and peruse and grab comments. This was from Adam last week, says Phil. I only play very low volumes and with headphones using a Spark 2. But is it worth for me to get a tube amp with an attenuator? I feel like I'm missing out. Is it worth it? I think it's a better overall sound even with an attenuator than digital product. But it depends on what, how low we are at some volume there's just no way you're going to get the tube to actually have any good sound. And that's just the reality of it. You know, it depends. Kennedy put petals mask the tone. You know what's funny is we'll probably do this that soon and you'll probably find your will be interesting to see what you guys all find. I find that I've said this before. I'll say it. It's a broken record. Gear is for the musician, not the audience. You guys can't tell. I know I've, I've, I've done enough content over a decade to tell what people can actually tell and not tell listening to. And the reality is, regardless of what you're going to say is YouTube compression or whatever. Nope. The reality is when somebody says only tube amps sound good, they're not right? That's just an opinion you have. And that if you feel you need a tube amp because it does something for you, you know, mentally, physically through the sound, again, it's important that you, you. It's important that the musician gets the sound they need to make the music they want to make. But the argument that somehow only one thing sounds good, that's really you, right? So a perfect example is if some musician like Ty Tabor says I can do Orange Crushes and just make it sound good, he can. That's just the truth of it. So if somebody told me that you could take a spark amp and plug it in and play an arena, you, you can. It's absolutely. All things can be accomplished because again, keep in mind it's your job to make it sound good. But I still come back to why the debate is important is it's important to understand that everything can sound good and generally does when you, when you do it right. But, but it's important that you get what you need as the musician because it's an artistic form. You need inspiration. I need inspiration and I'm a hack. So you know, you need that, you need to feel whatever you need to feel. And if that means, you know, it's like the guitar is behind right now, if the lime green, you know, 80s looking metal guitar does it for you, great. And if this hollow body P90 dog hair guitar does it for you, great. You know, and the argue that one is better than the other is just a. It's a, it's not only a bad argument, it's in bad faith because it doesn't really matter. It just. What matters is is that you feel something when you play. So whatever amp makes you do that, whatever guitar makes you do that, today's this or that. We'll go to it next. Not right now, but we're gonna do one more question. We'll go to this that I think this or that is gonna really be an eye opening experience. No matter how it goes. Like so no matter how what you guys think. I think the experience will be a great point because I think it's not gonna be whether or not you guys like something or don't like something. It's going to be how I voted and why and how it compares to what you guys think. Let's, let's grab a couple more little quick topics questions and then we'll go to this or that. This is from Nathaniel says. Hey, YouTube question is it Helpful to like old videos or does it mainly affect the way new videos are recommended? You know, it's always nice to like a video and put a comment if you like the video. At this point in my, you know, doing this for a decade, what I will tell you is this. I would have quit YouTube 2, three years ago for sure. Like, for sure, for sure. And no questions asked. Not even. Like, I don't, I don't want to say, maybe I would have quit if it wasn't for Patreon members. And I know a lot of you are like, oh, it's because they give you money. No, it's because when you create content on a free platform, meaning that people don't pay to watch it and you're paid by ads, and therefore that creates a different. Creates a different problem, which is content that gets views, makes you money. That doesn't necessarily build community. Okay, so a perfect example is like this Fender lawsuit thing. When I talked about the Fender lawsuit, saying, you understand this is not the focus of the channel is to talk about lawsuits. So what happens is you talk about it. Yeah, People click on it. People see the title, they click on the video, and then you get a couple ad clicks. But then they don't. Really not in the mood. You guys are not in the mood to buy anything. So I don't get an affiliate link or you don't subscribe because you're like, I don't want to see more of this. So there's. There's goods and bads to everything. But I will tell you that if you really give a crap in any way, if you're actually asking because you care. Liking a video and putting a comment, a positive thing, letting a creator know that you like something of theirs, whether they have 500 subscribers or 5,000 or 500,000 or a million, is always a nice thing. Because keep in mind if. With the patrons, what happened with me was I would hang out with the patrons every month and I. And I would tell myself, well, no one even cares. I should just stop making this stuff. And, and when I say no one cares, I mean, you know, the, you know, the Fender lawsuit thing will get more clicks than if I spend four days building a building, making. I shouldn't say building, making a really nice deep dive video that I care about and I hope you care about. And then you get defeated. And then sometimes when you see the patrons, you go, oh, well, it's people supporting the channel. They support the channel. Maybe there's a reason to be here. And, and so what I'm saying is, even though the patrons are the main driver, for me, mentally, that kept me going. It is also the likes, it is also not so much the subscribes. Subscribes are nice, but the likes, the positive comments, those are great. Especially since you, you need. I. Look all content creators, gonna tell you something different. I don't, I don't care about them and what they say in their world. Let me just tell you this. I need at least. I feel like emotionally, I need at least 10 positive comments for everyone. Negative, because the negatives are so heavy. I read the negative ones. I'm like, oh, it's so bad. Oh, my God, it's horrible. So, you know, it's like, it's, it's. It's never ending. One week you get a, like a death threat. One week you get like somebody's. So if you want to like a video, it's great. If you want to like a video because you think it's going to get more views and somehow that monetizes everything. I'm going to tell you right now. The, the monetized thing either happens or doesn't happen, and I don't think there's any. Anything you or I can do about that. But I definitely, like, I definitely like that you asked the question and the idea that, you know, it's a good idea and especially smaller creators even give them even more love. Because at some point, I was very lucky. My channel blew up very quickly, especially in even today's standards, very quickly. And what I mean by blew up, I mean, there was money coming in from YouTube. So at some point, like, I'll just tell you this, and it's because it's on the back half. I'll just say one of the things that ever happened to me was I was in the pasture. I was in the passenger side of my wife's car, and we were driving, I don't know where we were driving. We were driving somewhere, right? Nowhere important. And somebody put a comment. And I started laughing. I just laughed and I kept laughing, right? And Shauna was like, what? What? What? Because she thought, like, maybe I saw an Instagram, like, as a cat video. Is it funny? Cat? I'm like, it's. And I said, this guy's lighting me up on this comment. And he said, you really suck at this. Don't quit your day job. And I was laughing. And she goes. And I tell her. And she goes, why are you laughing? And I said, because two years ago I would hear that. And I said, I told her this is what I told her. I said, when I started making YouTube videos, everybody said, you suck. You should quit. And I didn't. And then the channel got bigger. And then somebody said, you should suck and you should quit. And I didn't. And then the channel got bigger, and I go, and here's the thing. At some point, when somebody says, hey, you suck. You don't quit your day job. I'm like, this is my day job. And I told her. I go, I don't think they understand this is the day job. And I go. And I'm laughing because this is my day job. Like, I told her. I go, if they really knew that, they'd probably even be more mad than they are now, right? And so the reason I tell you that is a lot of small channels when you're like me when I'm starting, when you're starting, and there's no monetary value on the back end, and it's just all work and all the comments are negative, man. It's really defeating. So I'm sorry I went down the tirade, but it's always. It's always. It's always good to talk about. So. So anyways, and then Yarber says, I'm glad you didn't quit. I'm glad I don't quit either. Like I said, I really like doing this. At this point, I can. The nicest thing I can say at this point is, I'll quit YouTube before YouTube quits me. In other words, this has lasted way longer than it was supposed to do. I was supposed to be doing. Done at least five years ago. We had never intended. Me and my wife never intended me to do YouTube this long. I had no. So at this point, no matter what happens next, my wife will tell you the same thing. She's like, whatever happens now, it's already happened way longer than was supposed to. The funny thing is, I don't remember. I don't remember when it happened, okay? I don't remember. And I wish I could, but at some point, somebody, my friends and family and everyone who knew me stopped saying 15 minutes of fame. When I started my YouTube channel and it started, people started watching. Everybody would say, hey, enjoy your 15 minutes of fame. It's not gonna last. It's not gonna last. Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame. And I'd always agree. I'm like, I know it's probably gonna be over tomorrow. It's probably over tomorrow. No one's gonna watch anymore. It's over tomorrow. And now I'm like, a decade in I'm like. And no one's. And then I. One day I just woke up and realized, wow, no one said it to me in a long time. So I'm like. So I'm like, well then whenever it ends, it ends. Super lead, Super Lead 2112 says, hey, Phil, is there anything happening with DiMarzio and the Gibson regarding the Double Cream pickups? They're in a lawsuit against each other. So that's what's happening. If you guys don't know. What's happening is DiMarzio Pickups owns two trademarks. They own a trademark on the name PAF, 36th Anniversary or PAF as my joke goes. PAF because it's not P A F, it's PAF. And they own a trademark on Double Cream Bobbins in the concept of an aesthetic. Right, okay. And so Gibson filed to have the trademarks dissolved. And that's this. They've been fighting this out for a while. So is anything happening? Nothing's happening. They're still fighting out. Now keep this in mind. This is the important thing to understand. If Gibson is successful in dissolving the trademarks, nothing happens. What I mean BY that is DeMarcus still gets to make Double Cream pickups and call their pick up the P the path. It just, it just won't be trademark protected. Just Gibson wants it in the. In the. In. In the. Gibson wants the same thing to happen to Fender where offender got its, its shapes put into public domain. This would essentially be put into public domain. There's a little bit more to it, but I'm not really privy to that. You would think I would know because I'm, I'm. And I know the DiMaggio people and I'm friends with them. But I think very you'd understand. You guys don't understand sometimes. Like that's not a lot of what we talk about. What I mean by that? Not we meaning DiMargio. I mean like Kiesel guys, when I talk to Jeff Keisel, we're not talking about stuff like this. We're talking about. We talk about guitars. So the last conversation I had with Larry DiMarzio, we were talking about. We were talking about guitars from the 80s and, and you know what? We, you know, sometimes we spend a lot of time talking about ads, ad campaigns in Guitar world from the 80s and 90s and how iconic they were. So TMR guitar work says Phil, if you were to send a Gibson Les Paul, R9, historic R9 to historic makeovers, would you have them refrain with stainless Steel or try to keep it period. Correct. I know you, I know how you feel about stainless steel frets. I, I have a Gibson R9 I would not refread with stainless frets unless I had to refrat it myself because like I said, I only refrat with stainless steel frets now just because it's easier. A cost wise and timeline time wise for me because I just bought stainless steel frets in bulk and you know, and I guess my, my answer to this question is, like I said, I prefer a guitar with stainless steel frets for quality, for longevity. But it's not a mandatory thing for me. Obviously I don't really care that much. I don't refret all these guitars. But like behind me, let's see. One, two, two guitars behind me have stainless steel frets. That's it. So think about that. So there's two acoustics. Those are nickel silvers. The GNL is nickel silver. Defenders nickel silver. The Heritage, both heritage is nickel silver. The Framis, the, the Warwick behind me is church bell brass. It's basically Evo gold, basically. So the. I will tell you this. If given a choice for frets, like, which is a lot of times I'm given the choice when I'm doing a project with somebody. Jeskar fret wire is my favorite fret wire. So whether it's nickel silver or stainless steel, just like quality fret wire, my favorite thing for me personally is by the way, Dunlop makes good fret wire too. I have no problem with Dunlop fret wire, but I like Jess Car the best quality wise. But I enjoy when a company more so than when a company uses. So if you gave me a choice right now, right now, a company, let's say a new guitar company because there's always a new one every week. Let's say a new company comes out and they say they have stainless steel frets and they, and the other company says they use Jess Car nickel silver. I would prefer the Jesscar nickel silver. Here's why I like it when companies tell me where the fret wire comes from more so than what it's made out of. Because I trust certain makers of things more so than the actual materials. So when a company tells you that, you know, Al Ninco A5, you know, oh, it's an A5 Al Nico magnet, that doesn't mean anything to me. Knowing the actual manufacturer who's making it would be actually more beneficial to me. So it's just no different than when a company says these have Seymour Duncan pickups in the Guitar and has gotot tuning keys. I trust in certain brands more so than the materials. Does that make sense? Because the materials aren't the whole story. And the brands I trust, like I said, Jess Car is a brand I absolutely trust. So I guess that was my answer. And yes. So that's just a thought on that. When I did the. My Heritage guitar that the one I'm pointing behind there where they refreaded it for me, they use Jessica fret wire. I don't know. Somebody probably knows in the comments. I don't know if Heritage uses Jess Car fret wire on everything, but they used it on mine because I requested it. So David says, Doesn't PRs use Jess Carr for their USA guitars? They do. So does Taylor guitars? Look Perfect example. Okay, this happened with a builder. I had a builder and I did a video. Not a sponsored video. I did did a video and the. The builder reached out to me. When I say the company, I'm gonna say the company. The company reached out to me. And in the video, you'll probably figure out what video it is if you're. If you're a really good fan of the channel. In the video, I said the strings were crusty, and I said the neck carve was the incorrect carve and it was chunky. And the company reached out and said that neck carve was copied after the. The CEO's personal guitar and that they said after watching my video, they went and pulled some guitars and they said, no, you're right. The neck is the wrong neck carve. And they don't know why the factory did that. The factory was overseas and obviously not cortex because not a level like that. And the strings being crusty. They were a little upset with me because they were like, I don't know why you're saying the strings are crusty. We use d' Addario nyxls. And so when they told me that, I said, no, you don't. These strings are not d' Addario nyxls. These strings are crusty. The nyxls would not get crusty even if they were coming across the ocean. And. And so they reached out the manufacturer, the company reached out to daddario and d' Addario confirmed. Oh, wait. First they actually talked to the factory, and the factory said, no, we're using d' Addario inwexl. That's what you guys requested. We put it on. There's a little hang tag. It says d' Addario nyxl. They contacted d' Addario and d' Addario Said they hadn't sold strings to that manufacturer, that factory, in five years. So my point is, is that there's a reason why the premium brands use premium components like Jess Car or Godot. Because there are companies known in the industry like Jess Car and Coto for not pulling any crap. They're not pulling any shenanigans. So sometimes there's. There's a reason why they want to go with brand names, too. Let's go ahead. Let's finish up the show. I went a little late. That's okay. Let's go ahead and do this or that. Do I have a thing? I do hold. And now it's time for this or that. There you go. I feel like it was more official if I push the button. Okay, so today's this or that. Let me turn on the light. It's a little fun. Maybe. You guys. I think you'll enjoy this one. So it's going to be a pedal. We're going to still use the D. Kowalski Enigma amp on clean. I'm going to use the reverb, not to delay in the effects loop. Go the neck pickup. Switch the camera angles to this one. Okay. Actually, we're gonna go to this camera angle. Look at that. We'll start with this. This will be fun. Let me turn on the mics for the guitar amp. And if you're not familiar new to this, this, or that, how it works is we're gonna try two pedals. You're gonna tell me which one you like. We're gonna have you guys vote for, and then I'll tell you which one I like. I put a sticker now on the one I like, so when I reveal it, you'll see which one I picked. Because a lot of you said when I was drawing on the race board, you were like, I could see he put an eye on this, which I'm like, good for you guys for paying attention. So, okay, so your choices are this, that, or the other. No, that or none. Okay, we'll see which ones you guys pick. Today's a little fun. Here we go. Start the pole. Start with this. Turn on the pedal. These are the. Oh, real quick. Just. You guys know the amp is clean. Will be. If I turn off, the amp is clean. Okay, let's turn on the pedal. Here we go. Okay, we're gonna go to that. Here we. Okay, now we're gonna go back to this. And I'm going add delay just because I want delay. All right, here we go. This is this. And last, we're gonna Go back to that. Here's that with delay. All right, so let's see. Switch my camera over there. Look at that. Let's go ahead and open this up. I want to see it. There it is. We have 128 votes. I kind of predicted, so. Fun thing I predicted not a lot of votes. And the reason is, is because a lot of you said, I can't hear a difference. I would say it's very close. And I. I'm curious. I'll tell you why. Look, I'll give you my vote after I see your votes. We'll stop this at 170 votes. We're at 168. 179. Oh, well, 180. Let's do 180, then. 180. 180. 1 84. Well, here we go. We're close. Okay, let's go ahead and end it. We ended at 190. All right. What were the stats? The stats were we had 198 votes. 59% pick that, 29% pick this, 12% pick none. What did I pick? Swing the arm out. I picked that. So here is what you have. You have the Maxon OD808 pedal and the infamous Ibanez TS10 tube screamer. Now, for the record, let's just look at this so you understand why this is important. First of all, if a lot of you said they sounded exactly the same, I actually think they sound almost exactly the same. There was very few differences. Now, I ran all the knobs at noon, but. But. And I know you can finesse them a little bit, but I actually like both those settings, and I thought it worked, and it kept it, as, I want to say, fair, but a little bit fair. So let's look at something that's kind of funny. So I bought this Ibanez TS10 because the. The Internet told me that it's the greatest thing ever. And how could I not know? It's so amazing. So let's take a look at one. So an Ibanez TS10 tube screamer, which they don't make anymore. Here's one for $373. Here's one for $889. Here's one for $432. Here's one for 403. Here's one for 399. 422, 399. Here's another one for 814. $622. We got 425. I'm gonna say the average one's about 400 and in fact, if you. If I was just taking a poke, even though some people have six and 650, 487, 900. I'll say average price point seems to be in the fours, but it looks like a lot of people trying to get more than that. And I'm sure there's different versions like the 86 to 90 versus the 90 to 93. Whatever. But we're going to say this pedal sales for about $400. Okay, let's look at what a Maxon. And what's important is let's look at the Maxon. Right, Maxon. Yeah, Maxon OD808. And I can't imagine it's much different than what I paid for one. Let's see what they're going for. Ready? Here we go. It looks like a Maxon OD8 used. I'm going to go off used prices because both the other pedals used. Looks like here's one for 120, one for 150 used. Oh, I think I pot. I think I paid 100 or 108 for mine. 120. 150. So 150. So it looks like I would say you can find one pretty easily for 150. Maybe even a little bit less if you go to Guitar center used. So the Maxon OD808. I I. Like I said, I remember paying just a little over a hundred dollars for it. Like 108. I bought it at Zim's Guitars and I did trades with pedals and stuff. This is months and months ago. So 100 bucks versus $400. And if you guys don't know the story that the Ibanez TS9. Let's go back to the Ibanez TS10. Sorry. This one I'm pointing at right here. This is the pedal that John Mayer made famous that he's like, it's got, it's got the magic. It's got the mojo. It's the mojo. And I can tell you right now, I bought it because of that. You know, like I always. I want to try things and experiment. I actually got this from Guitar Center. Used this TS10. It has some marks on and scratches. I believe I paid a two something for it. 280. 270. Something like that. 260 somewhere on there. I have to go look. But it was, I remember it was not quite half as much as what they were going for at the time, which is about 4 to 450, but it was close to half. So. So I I let's give it a try is basically what it said. It's guitar center used. I can get it. If it's defective or a problem, I can return it. So I got it and it worked great. And it's. It looked great. But basically here's what I can tell you. I go let's, let's play now. I didn't actually ab these like to see which one was better. I just said this would be a good this or that. So I put them on the board and a beat them and I was. And I put them at noon to see as a starting point. And then I was like, I can't even hear a difference. To my ears in the room, the TS10 sounds a little teeny warmer. Like it's just a little, little smoother on the top end. It wasn't as bright as the OD 808, which is probably something that got lost. When it goes through, you know, it gets through the amp to the microphone to the mixer, into you guys through YouTube, you probably the, the top end, the high end of the 800, 808 is probably missing. So to you guys it really started. And that's my point earlier about musicians and what matters to them versus the audience. To the audience, very few could tell the difference. And whatever slight difference you could tell. It's funny that you guys picked the 808. I actually predicted that you would all pick the TS10 because I thought it slightly sounded a little better to me. But I picked that not because I when I say that I picked the, the Maxon. I didn't pick the Maxon because I thought it sounded better. Like I said, they were pretty darn close. I picked it because it was half the price of the other one. I thought, well, for half the price I would rather have the 808. So the question is like would I keep the TS10? No, I'm not going to keep it. Like I always say about pedals that are worth a lot of money, you know, I very rarely find that they are that special. You can find something. And for the record, as much as I like both these pedals and I have some other tube screamers, I actually still prefer the Blue Note by J. Rocket Audio that you guys picked over the. Whatever we had it comparing. It's king of don't know what do we have a comparison. Whatever it is, you guys pick that actually out of these three pedals, I would pick that one pedal and that's what's on my board. So the blue Note So I prefer the blue note, even though it's a Blues Breaker style pedal. So the 11 said the Maxon sound a little bit more dirty. Sure. A little bit. A little bit more gain. For sure. And again, I'm sure if we finesse the knobs, you could kind of get them to sound a little bit more alike. They never sound exactly, but they're pretty darn close. And that's why I hope you guys enjoy the this or that segment. That's the whole point of it. It's not, you know, obviously it's not a polished produced video. It's just live and it's just about to see what you guys hear. And the real, I think the real takeaway from all these is always what do you guys hear versus what do I hear? I'm in the room, I'm playing all this stuff, what did I decide and what did I say? And so it's funny that we, we seem to align a lot. You disagree with me. I think once for sure and I think twice total where you guys pick the opposite of what I picked. But for the most part, we. And so, you know, I think I'm try, you know, I secretly. Not secretly, but internally secretly, I'm trying to, to get you guys to vote the way I. I want. So I'm actively trying to make it be slanted towards what I, what I think I picked because. And that's what's funny when it doesn't work, that's funny what it does. Like today, technically it didn't work, even though I agreed and I picked that with you guys. I picked that for a totally different reason than you guys did. You picked it based on sound and I picked it based on price because unfortunately, I can't have the option you have, which is. You didn't know which one was which. So I went in with the. I went in, not only visually, but I went in with my pocketbook in my pocketbook. I paid double for one. And so I like a lot of you guys, if you paid double for something and you thought they sounded almost identical, you would probably say, okay, the cheaper was better. So. So it was a little fun. So I'm glad, glad it worked out as always. Guys, I wanna, I wanna thank you guys for hanging out with me on Fridays on the Friday show. If again, if you're a patron member on the top and the coffee tier, their coffee hang is tomorrow. And then for the little treat at the guys at. For all you. At the end, we did a soft launch of the new Dimarzio Northern Lights pickups for the mid tier and above patrons. That was only because of the volume of units. We actually didn't intend for it to work that way. We, my concern was the, in the, in the patron thing. We wanted to release to all the patrons, but we wanted to release it to the mid tier. So the mid tier, the clinic tier and above first and then whatever didn't sell, we would then open it up to the, the lower tier and they basically sold out. So that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. Not because it sold out, but just because the next batch is coming and you guys got a little taste of the Northern Lights tonight. And, and like I said, we will be announcing them to this, the, the five dollar patrons and the channel members and then we will come to the public. And it has nothing to do with anything other than just availability of units. If I mention it to the, if we only get 100 or 200 units and we sell, you know, 300 units, we'll just be in backlog. We don't want to be in that. Pedra. I'm gonna say Pedra. Pedra says saw them on Zim's guitars. Yeah. You know it's funny is I brought a set to show Dane at Zim's Guitars because I'm super excited. This is probably the biggest highlight of my. Whatever, I don't know one, if you could call it a career. But it's to me this, this is like the biggest thing to happen to me. And I showed him a set.
- [119:54]
Jeff
I was like hoping.
- [119:55]
Phil
I said I don't. And he, he, he understood it the way I, I think a lot of my friends have understood it. Like, it's really cool. And so he's like, I'd like to buy a set. And I said okay. And then it just so happened that I bought a bunch of pedals and an amp from him and I said okay, well why don't we do this? And. And I said he had an amp. So I'll just tell you what happened. He had an amp and he said I can make you a deal on. I said I have a better idea. And he's like yeah. I go, you want the pickups? And he's like yeah. And I go, you pay me full price the pickups and I'll pay you full price for all your stuff. And that way we don't have to, you know, worry about discounting with this face for face. So he gave me face value for the pickups in trade with some other stuff. I traded into him, and I left with some an amp and two pedals, so. So pretty cool. So that was kind of fun, and I'm excited. And he. So that kind of worked out. So. And. And that's the. The set he has was my private stash. I have two sets that I got to hold back. So now I have one set for me, and I was going to have two sets, and now I have one, so. All right, on that note, guys, I will talk to you guys soon, and. And I'll see you guys next Friday. And until then, thank you for your time and Know your gear. The Know youw Gear podcast.