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Podcast. Hey everyone. Welcome to the know your gear podcast for May. What are we on the 15th? Is it the 15th? It's May 15th at a Friday at 3pm Pacific Daylight Time, I guess is what you call it. Pdt. I guess what they said. Anyways, welcome to the show. I hope you guys had a fantastic week. We have so much to cover. I don't even know if it's going to be possible. So we will move fun and quickly through the show. So let's talk about the first bit of news which is if you are a small builder and or even a retailer, you probably were served with a legal letter this week. So I want to talk about this and let me go to it so I have it. Because apparently Fender has decided to go nuclear on all small builders and just builders, period. So let's, let's get into this. Let me switch screens so you guys can see what I'm going to show you. Here we go, right here. So basically there's a couple things I want to do. I want to talk about what happened and I want to help some of the small builders. So if you are a small build, small builder that builds electric guitars and you were sent a letter this week from Bird and Bird, which is a law firm in Germany and that we're told basically you can never build any Fender Stratocaster shaped bodies ever again, I want you to know you weren't alone. From my understanding, they served pretty much everybody. Now I actually have a theory and I'm going to explain the theory. I'm pretty sure what they did is they went to Toman's website and they went to where it says S type guitars. They click that and they hit everyone who on Tolman. So I believe Toman was also served. It looks like the big guys were served too. See the PRS guys and maybe like, you know, maybe even Ibanez, we don't know yet. But I can definitely tell you that a lot of people were served with this legal notice. So what is this legal notice says? Well, I can go through it in detail. I will provide it to anyone who needs a copy of it. I do have a physical copy. I was given physical copies from different people. So, you know, so it's a cease and desist letter and it's to basically say that you are to stop selling any Strat style shaped body and recall all of the guitars you have sold immediately and destroy them. Now this is in the eu, but what's interesting about the letter is when it says you have to destroy them what's funny about it is, is that in the US the Strat body is public domain and has been since 2009. So what's funny is, is why couldn't you just send the guitars in theory that you have made that Fender is saying that you don't have the right to make anymore. Send them back to the U.S. they're legal here. Why do you have to destroy them? I mean, at least if you send it back here, they could obviously go to customers in a very legal way. And by the way, I'm not even arguing whether or not it's legal or not for them to argue this. We'll get into that too. Let's go back to this letter because it's. It's pretty crazy. So back to the letter. Whoops. It says that, let's see, that you are to destroy the property, destroy the product, so to speak. And you're also to pay them €250,000 plus what I think I understand is €3,500 to the legal, the law, the lawyers for sending this letter, the cost of sending a letter. By the way, the only thing that's funny, funny about this is if you destroy those guitars, maybe you should do it in the way Gibson did when they had a. Like a tractor just roll over them with, you know. Right. That would be. It seems like big companies love destroying guitars. I hate to bring Gibson as mess, but I always feel like big companies love destroying guitars. So anyways, back to the letter. So the good news is they can still make electric guitars, which is very nice of Fender, considering Fender didn't invent the electric guitar. It's very nice of them to say, hey, you can still make electric guitars. Which, you know. Anyways, we'll get back into it. Says the best part is that. Let's see. Best part is that they can continue to make electric guitars. By the way, failure to do so seems like it's going to result in. If you go through, obviously they also outline the guitar. We'll get to that too. And failure to do so will be 15. Looks like $15,000 per offense for each guitar. Let's go back to more of these screenshots. Whoops. Why did it do that? Let's do that one. There we go. What's interesting about this is Fender, Fender. So if you guys don't know you, if you watch this podcast you know about. In March we talked about that the Fender won a case and which is interesting because what happened was they argued that the Fender body shape is copyrighted. Right. And That a company that was selling on AliExpress was violating this because Fender ordered this guitar, had it shipped to Germany, which then violated it. And the person they sued or was trying to sue the company did not show up. So they won by default judgment. Again, not a lawyer. So this is just giving you the general idea, which is interesting because the way they're coming off here, it's almost like a prize fighter who's lost the majority of their fights, which Fender has. And so is Gibson coming out and saying, hey, the last fight I fought with the guy was a no show. I'm the champ, right? So it's kind of weird that they're so cocky for this. So not only are you to stop immediately marketing the guitars and selling the guitars, recall all the guitars and destroy them, you're also to pay them, it looks like a quarter million dollars and a quarter million euros and pay legal fees. Now what's interesting is they're not just serving these letters to the builders, they're serving them to certain retailers, retailers like probably like Tolman, who have Harley Benton stuff. Now what's interesting about this is this is an interesting tactic, different than what we've seen with Gibson doing. Gibson specifically would always go after one company and kind of pile drive on them to kind of win this, this idea. But what is crazy here is they're going to fight everyone. They're literally picking a fight with the entire industry. And there's a lot of craziness behind this, you know, and I have my opinions. They've been out there for many years. They are unchained. So I'm going to go with my opinions now. First of all, I really feel bad for people in Europe. This isn't going to improve anything for customers or guitar players in Europe. You know, I don't like monopolies and I understand and I can see both sides, by the way. I can see that Fender did design the Fender Strat. It is iconic. It's my favorite body shape. Most of my guitars are double cuts and I can see some of that. However, it has been decades and decades. And the sad thing is most of the guitars that I play that I love, that are Strat esque, aren't even Fenders anymore. I mean, granted, Fender arguably even bought a company, I think Charvel, to me, Charvel was, are some of the best Strats style guitars, whatever you want to call S style guitars ever. Fender bought them. Even Fender knew that Charvel made a better guitar than them. That's what they bought them. They don't buy a company that's worse than them. You don't buy something worse than what you have. You buy something better than what you have or something that's going to add value to what you have. So even Fenders acknowledged that there's companies out there that make a good Strat esque guitar like Jackson and Charvel because they bought them. I mean, right. And I would really hate it if, if, if it. Now think of this now, because Fender owns Charvel and Jackson, they'll continue to make these Strat esque guitars. But imagine a world where they didn't buy them. So then they would be done. I couldn't get a Charvel anymore. That's what this would mean. By the way, Charvel can't make a Strat style guitar anymore. I just, I don't. Basically what it is, is I love the idea of someone trying to protect their intellectual properties. I don't like when somebody basically is trying to monopolize a market. And there's a fine line between that and. I think people are going to argue this and people are going to get upset, both sides. And I understand that. But my whole point is that I don't think the world is better if there's only Fender Strats. And that's my real argument. And it's a really sad thing, especially since you gotta understand, and as you know, I've been served even recently. And I can tell you what it's like to get a lawsuit letter to you. First of all, it means you have to hire an attorney. And they ain't cheap. And I will tell you that in this case it's even worse. It could cost 5, $10,000 easy to hire an attorney to respond to this letter. And that's in the US which means then they have to pay probably equal that or more to another attorney in Germany. Because I'm sure you can't have an attorney here in the US Just answer this because it's in a different country. So it's going to double the cost of the legal fees. And that's what you want to see, right? Everybody paying a lot of legal fees. I think that's what we love when we talk about guitars. Every week is taught thinking about how much money is of our hard earned money when we buy the instrument that we love is going to legal fees either to defend or to fight. And it's a really, really sad thing, especially since it's so aggressive. Some people have talked about if you haven't, when you see the letter, if you look at the letter. There's a lot of talk about how the Strat is modeled like a woman, you know, and it's got the curves of a woman. And when Leo Fender designed it because he loved this sexiness of a woman. I'm paraphrasing, of course. And the funny part of that is. The funny part is that they're doing that because it's a copyright and not a trademark. And so they're trying to push that. It's an artistic thing. So the. The guitar is art. It's really, really sad. I. I want to say this publicly, so if any of these small builders or any retailers or anyone who's getting this lawsuit is. Can hear this, I would be totally happy to help connect any of you to each other. I know most of you. So, you know, I've talked to. This week alone, I've talked to. I've talked to. I've talked to half a dozen, maybe more. I'm trying to keep it vague, obviously, for reasons. Companies who have received this letter. And it's been a lot of stress, definitely. But I will tell you that if I can help you connect with each other, I think this is a good time for you guys to maybe reach out and talk to each other. I'd also be happy to help in any way I can. If you want to help, start a GoFundMe for legal fees to fight this. Because I don't think this is right. I don't think this is fair. And that's the word I want to use today is fair. Is it? Let me give you an argument. Let's say that Fender is successful and they stop all guitars going to Europe that are not a Fender logo. Stratocaster. The only way you're going to get a Strat is if you're going to Fender logo. You know, if you remember, for a few years, they didn't make striped Eddie Van Halen guitars. Eddie wasn't really with Charvel anymore, and he wasn't with Kramer anymore, and they weren't making them. And so if you know this, if you know anything about the history of Eddie Van Halen and these striped guitars, you know that thousands, if not tens of thousands of guitar players made their own. They just got good bodies and they. They painted them and they taped them up and they made their own replicas of these guitars because they wanted them. Because why? Because this is the thing. We're freaking passionate about music and artists, and we want to emulate our heroes. Their sounds, their techniques, their style. We want to have a piece of that in our soul. Because it's the thing that literally makes us make a whole workweek livable, right, Is so that we can listen to music and then rejoice in the people who made that music for us. And what's funny about this is you can't even do that because there's a weird, weird loophole problem with that right now in Europe. So imagine this. Fender lost in 2009, the lawsuit which made the Fender Stratocaster body shape public domain in the US if you were to buy a warm off neck right now, a Fender shaped headstock, war moth neck, it will be licensed by Fender, which means they pay Fender or royalty for the use of the headstock. It's not approved by Fender. It just means it's licensed. In other words, they have the rights to use the headstock. You can buy that here in the US but there is no such thing as a licensed Fender body because it's public domain, which means there's no way to ship that body to Europe because there isn't a licensing deal in place and you don't need one. So they can't even make their own Fender parts of casters that aren't Fenders. And I think that's wrong. Again, I like Fender. Who doesn't like a Fender? They're. They're iconic because like I said, I'm a bass player. So Fender's always been a big part of my life. But, and I'm not saying they shouldn't try to defend some of their rights. I just think attacking the entire industry and trying to throw them in financial and actually, there's a creepy idea here. This could be a motive because the market is definitely shrinking and Fender is definitely feeling the burn right now of a shrinking market. Every company I've talked to. Hell, you guys know I just came back from two factory tours. Both companies basically alluded that market's a little soft and it's a little tough right now, but they're figuring it out. So you can imagine great timing for Fender to go. You know what would help us sell more Fenders? If we stopped everybody who made anything like it. And that's not fair. Again, back to the word fair. What is fair? In my opinion, if Fender was to say maybe you have to pay some kind of fee, maybe some kind of deal has to be made, fine. And maybe, hopefully that's what this aggressive technique is. Maybe they're being aggressive and they're attacking everybody, thinking that if they scare the living out of everyone and with financial destruction because that's what they're threatening with financial destruction. I mean, if you guys have ever. If you guys don't need to own a business to know this. If you work for a company and you're. The owner comes out of his office or her office and says, hey, we have to stop everything we're doing, destroy all this product and throw it and show proof of it. And then, by the way, recall all our current product and destroy it. You would probably be looking for a job tomorrow if you had half a brain, right? Because that company's over. It's over. This is a game over nuclear option, right? This isn't. We want to work with you and figure it out. This is, you're done. You're done. And they don't, in my opinion, have any real reason to do this because like I said, just because you got a nobody, no show. Default to judgment is silliness. And I wanted to talk about it, but so, you know, not for the, hey, let's. Let's talk about the drama. And then therefore, people watch the show because, as you know, the show is funded by patrons. I don't really. I'm already paid to do the show. I don't even need the show to be public. Just on a side note, just to remind everybody, because how nice the patrons are. I just want to let you know, I've offered to them now three times out three years to just do this show privately for patrons every week and not have it public. And because they say, no, let's do it public. So thank you for them for that. But that being said, the real reason I wanted to talk about this is I did stay on the phone this week with quite a few friends who were covering up the fear and the anger and the chaos of this. And this is real. This is some real shit. This is some heavy, heavy, you know, shit. When the biggest guitar company in the world starts pounding on your door, that's not playing around anymore. And when they're using aggressive language like this, this isn't like, hey, you know, we want you to stop what you're doing. And if you don't, this is no, pay us a lot of money right now. Stop what you're doing, destroy everything and pull all your inventory back. So it'll be interesting. Be interesting to see if Tolman also picks up the. The fight. Obviously, I think they should. I think everybody should fight this. I think, again, I don't think this is going to benefit the consumers. Again, like I said the first episode. We talked about this in March I'm going to reiterate that Europe, in my opinion, has always been place where I feel like they always put customers first. They have a lot of consumer protection laws that I like. And this is one of those things. I don't think they're protecting the consumer. I don't think the customer is better for it. And if I seem passionate, let me just tell you a quick. I'm not going to tell you the whole story because it's my personal life and no one needs to know. But I will tell you that I was once in a horrible legal battle once. And it was over a manufacturer who killed someone that we love dearly and, and pretty much changed our lives for the worse forever. And it was because of essentially a monopoly. This company was able to do things that they would have never got away with if they hadn't lobbied the US Government in a way to stop competitors from competing in a certain way. And so I know this isn't. Fender is not the safety concern thing that that was. It's not, it's not the same game, but it is the same play. In other words, I'm going to make it to where all you, all you have is my choice. And then let me ask you this. And for anyone who wants to again defend Fender for doing this, because you maybe feel passionate about the fact that you're like, maybe you create stuff. I create things as well. And people, people, people who create, understand what it's like to have your ideas stolen from you immediately or, or people, you know, take from you and they will get, they will internalize that. And I understand that. Cause I also do that too. So I understand that pain. But what I will tell you is this, the question I want to ask you is if Fender was able to stop everybody from making anything like let's say Music Man. No more Music man shaped Fenders, no more Ibanez shaped Fenders. No more Charvel. Well, Charvel don't count, right? No more Kramers, no more, you know, you name it. I don't want to keep naming brands. My point is, do you think Fender would then give you a better quality product? Maybe lower the price if they increase their market share? Is anything that Fender has done in the last six years or 10 years show you that they would be very motivated to, you know, you know, if we didn't have so much competition, we would make our guitars a little bit more affordable. We'd actually put stainless steel frets on some of the higher end guitars. We'd actually make some better product. We'd actually do some better things. You think that's the decision they're going to make with this? Or is it going to be, hey, you know what, maybe Indonesian Fenders need to be $3,000 and that's why it, it's crazy. It's a crazy thing. And I, I want to talk about it. But again, reiterate one more time if you. And by the way everybody feel free to give your opinions on the comments against me, whatever I said, if you disagree. Because like I said, I could argue the other side a little bit too. I mean, I understand it's not a clear and cut dry. I'm not trying to say evil big corporation. Isn't it that easy? It's not that easy, but it is kinda a little bit like that and it's really crazy. Like I said, I will present the letters to anyone who wants to read it. I will tell you it's pretty crazy how the verbiage is written and how aggressive it is. It is a very aggressively written legal action or legal letter. Again, I don't want to use wrong terminology and, and nuts. And I wish, by the way, if I have one wish, it will be that one day when we do the Friday show we will not have to mention Gibson and Fender and the word lawsuit because it seems like those two companies love that word and it comes up to too many times. Okay, if anyone has anything specific to say that you want to talk about and I can put that up about this subject, you could just put a question mark first so I know you want to about talk about this and if I see it, I'll talk about it. Otherwise we're going to move on to the next topic. And also like I said, the email address is the asknoyourgear gmail.com if you are specifically a builder who has been affected by this or a retailer who's being affected by this and you want to reach out to us and like I said, feel free to do so. And also if you, if anyone's interested in maybe helping with a GoFundMe campaign, I think that would be really a cool idea for the builders to come together. I don't know how to officiate that and figure that out. That's why I said I'm happy to help. I'm sure there's 1200 people live here. This the episodes this podcast is is fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, one of the largest guitar podcasts in the world. And I'm happy to help. And I'm actually happy to also put my money where my mouth is. I will actually donate to the legal funds or I will even donate some of my time, which to me is way more valuable to me than my money. So it's whatever is more valuable to you. Okay, so I think we covered that. And, and yeah. Music gear channel. So YouTube channel says Fender waited after the 75th anniversary telly show. Yeah, it's. It's kind of a weird, right? Mighty might be. Kevin basically says, phil, aren't you excited for the new fresh ideas to come for this? You know what's funny is. And, and this is the crazy part. I believe that the reason Charvel exists, that Jackson exists, that Ibanez, you know, kind of exists now. The, you know, so many guitars exist, you know, famously said John CER said, and I'm going to mess up the quote. But he said, you know, if Offender had it was doing it right, I wouldn't have a business. This something like that. Again, please don't. You know, I didn't get. I'm not getting the quote 100% right. But it's something to that line. Like he wouldn't feel the need to fulfill the customer's need if vendor was taking care of the customer in the way they should have or wanted to. My point is exactly that, you know, Eddie Van Halen, you know, people forget when the. When these iconic rock stars that we talk about, you know, famously I saw was it. And again, I think I read once Jimmy Page thinned down the neck on his Les Paul and then he told Gibson, like, make me a neck like this. And they told him, no. Eddie Van Halen shoved a humbucker in a Strat body. Basically. Right. Because it didn't exist and nobody wanted to make it for him. Essentially. Right. You see what I'm saying? It's so funny. What I'm arguing is that a lot of these brands. Oh, there is knockoff vendors. Don't get me wrong. I get it. Some people just take Offender and just knocked it off and maybe they just made it cheaper and maybe, you know, I don't know how to argue that point fully, but I can argue this. I can argue that in most cases, when there's a guitar that's inspired by a Fender design, it's because they were fulfilling a need that Fender didn't want to fulfill. That's essentially how easy that was. Fender wasn't doing it and the customer wanted it. And so why should the customer pay the price? Because the company doesn't want to do something And I know you're like, what's their design? But here's the problem with the Fender design. Regardless of what that letter says, that Leo designed it because he thought of beautiful women in there. I think the reality is this, you know, in the last. The Strat's been around since, what, 54, right? So think about that. Right? So what is that? What is that? 70 years. I don't even know the math on that. Okay, so, yeah, 70 years. So Fender's been around 70 years. The strat been around 70 years. Let me tell you what has not changed in 70 years. Obviously, technology's changed in 70 years. That's totally different. Okay? The world has changed in 70 years. The environment has changed in 70 years. A lot of things have changed. You know what hasn't changed? The human body. I would argue that the reason why I love the Fender Stratocaster and the Stratocaster body and all of the Charvels and all the guitars that are like the Stratocaster is because I like the way it fits on my body. It's very comfortable to me. Les Pauls, I love them, but they're not as comfortable. I love the contours and feels of the Stratocaster because it fits the. The carbs of my body, which makes it very utility like. Which, by the way, this argument they're arguing is the opposite because they have less protections if it's a utility product. See, because you can't copyright, you know, a shovel. Right. You can't argue that shovel was an artistic choice. No, shovel is a tool. And obviously, once somebody makes a shovel, it's not like nobody can make a shovel anymore. That's just really dumb. It has a purpose. And so it's a really crazy thing. Yeah, the belly cut, which I really need sometimes a little less now, but still a lot. Lot. Okay. Some of you guys make me laugh, but sometimes I read the comments when you guys talk about things have changed. Okay, let's. Let's go on to something else. Where do I want to take you guys? Where do we want to talk to the next subject? You know what we're going to do for the next subject? I want to talk about something very positive. Can I talk about something positive? First of all, let me share this with you. I wanted to share with you guys last week, and it didn't happen. And so I want to share it now. Let me. Go ahead. I did send this. I wasn't. Whoops. How come I. There we go. Why can't I not share I can't. Okay, So I want to tell you a story. So if you guys recall, about a year ago, I did a guitar of the week of a very special guitar. This guitar was a Kiesel Vader seven string. Let me recap the story so you guys know what happened was a viewer contact me one day and said that his son has passed away and his son played a seven string guitar. He does not play a seven string guitar. He doesn't know how to play the seven string guitar. And he doesn't know what to do with this guitar. He offered to give me the guitar. I explained to him that I get guitars all the time. I have lots of guitars. That. That's really not something, you know, he needs to do. But his point, which I understood was he doesn't really know a lot of people. And there was. It's not like you can donate a seven spring guitar to a school. Okay. School's not really gonna. What are they gonna do with it? Okay. So, you know, I thought about saying, like, why don't we sell it for charity or something like that and put a charity something. But essentially, as someone who's lost both their parents and had to deal with their personal belongings, I understand intimately what it's like to have someone you care about belongings and not wanting to hock them off or sell them or what to do with them. And you're just trying to do an honorable thing with a thing that they cared about. So he sent me the seventh string. Keisel. I record. I'm recording an ep just so I have copyrighted tracks my. From my channel. And I record, used it. I used that guitar in one of the recordings. I then did a guitar of the week with it. And I told you guys that I would give it away one day. Please don't call me or ask me, and I will know when to do it. So what happened after about, oh, four months or five months? I don't know. It was a while. It was just sitting here in my closet too. Just like it was sitting in his closet. And I was like, I don't know what to do with this guitar. So I took it to Zim's Guitars in Mesa and I walked in and I. His son was there, Bryant. And I said, hey, I want you to put this guitar in the back of the store. And he's like, why? And I go, I don't know why. I said, I don't know what to do with this guitar. I just know that it's probably gonna make sense if it's outside of my house than inside of my house. Because again, no one's coming. No one's coming to my house to visit me. I'm working all the time. And when I did the Keisel Clinic, Zims Dane reached out to me, text me like, 40, goes, hey, do you want me to bring the Kiesel guitar to the Kiesel Clinic? And I was like, yeah, no, you know, I mean, I understand. There'll be Kiesel fans there, and maybe I'll find some kid or some person to get give this guitar to. I go, I. I just don't. I don't know. I just, you know, it's too much going on in my head right now. You know, obviously I'm going to be on stage talking and doing stuff. I just. Let's not think about it. So about two weeks ago, I was at Zim's store buying a pedal or something, trading something, and this couple guys came up to me and they were like, hey, we like your show, you know, and they're talking to me, and I'm like, cool, I appreciate that. And was talking to him, and there was a gentleman there, and he's waiting, and I could see him in the, you know, on the peripheral. On my peripheral. And he came up to me and he goes, hey, I just want to. Wait a minute. I didn't want to interrupt you when you're talking to those guys because I want to let you know that I'm a fan of your show. I just recently subscribed. I've been watching for years, but I didn't subscribe until recently. And I said, oh, cool. And he goes, you want to know why I subscribed? And I'm like, I thought so. You know, he's gonna go, because I. Because I never say subscribe and click the like button. And I finally did or something. And I was like, did I say. Did I do that in a video? I never do it. So you guys know, if you're a patron, it's funny, every time you guys see a preview video, I'm always like, like and subscribe. And then when you watch the final cut, I've cut it out. Because every time I go, I can't. I just can't do it. It's just too YouTube hokey for me. I can't do it. So anyways, I thought he was gonna say. And he goes, no, he goes, because I figured out you have good taste in guitars. And I go, oh, oh, okay, that's cool. And he goes, yeah, you like seven strings he goes, I love seven strings. I go, oh, I love seven strings. So we're talking about seven string guitars, and he's wearing a Deftone shirt. And if you guys don't know, the guitar player of Deftones plays a Keisel Vader guitar. I'm not really thinking about that. But obviously I mentioned the Deftones to him. I said, oh, I'm a fan of the Deftones and Korn. And, you know, and we're talking about the bands and the music and the guitars. And he said, I saw your Hills 7 string video. You did. He goes, if you ever sell that, I'd like to buy it. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Right? Okay, Maybe never know. Right? Okay, let's figure that out. And we're talking, and again, I get back to, you know, doing something in the store. He's doing something in the store. And then he comes up to me, or we interact again. And this time, again, we're talking guitar, seven strings, seven string music. How we both don't play eight strings. And then he tells me. He's like, well, it was great talking to you. I actually have to go. My son got his first job today at. He's working for the city, for the. I think working at the pool. The city pool. And he goes, I'm gonna take him to dinner. Cause his first day on the job. Everybody remembers your first day on your job. Actually, I was thinking in my head right then, you know, because I didn't have a good relationship with my father, how cool it would be if, like, my dad would have took me to dinner the first day I got a real job. Like, you're a man now, son. Like, what a great feeling, you know, here's dinner, you know. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. And then he goes, and as he's turning, by the way, he. He bought a guitar from Zims. You know, he's buying a little guitar. A little, but you know what I mean, guitar. And then as he's going to walk away, he says, and don't forget me if you ever want to get rid of that seven String Hills guitar. And I said, you know what? Don't go anywhere. And I look at Bryant and I go, go grab that guitar in the back. And while Bryant's going in there, I go, how do you feel about Kiesel guitars? Because as you guys know, a lot of people love to tell you how they don't like Kiesel guitars. So I thought, this is his opportunity. He goes, I Love kizzle guitar guitars, they're just expensive. And I'm like, yeah, they sure are. So the gig bag comes out, I put it on the case, I unzip in it, I open the guitar, and he goes, wow, that's beautiful. I go, that's yours. And I'm gonna, obviously, because, you know, for purposes you can imagine, I'm gonna show you the picture of him. This is. If you're thinking his head looks really big. This is because obviously I covering up his face. That's his deftone shirt. Funny enough, he asked to take a picture with me to show his wife that he did not buy this guitar. One thing I told him was I said I wouldn't post it on social media, but obviously I'm not posting his face on social media. I will tell you that part of the cool thing now is that his wife can now watch this and know the truth. That he was telling the truth. That, yes, some crazy YouTuber handed him a beautiful seven string Kiesel guitar. And I wanted to show the story. One, because I promised you guys I would give you the follow up to how it works. Two, look, I don't know what you all believe. There's 1300 of you. I don't know what you guys believe in. I don't even know what I believe in sometimes. But I can tell you this. When the universe puts two people together in a room and one has a guitar to give away, and one person's wearing the band, who's synonymous with not only that brand of guitarist, Kiesel, and that model and seven string, and telling you over and again how he likes seven string, and he tell you, like, how he wants to buy one of the inexpensive seven strings you've reviewed on your channel that also happens to be satin black, just like this one. And he's a father, and the person who gave you the guitar is a father. And I'm like. And I just. The universe told me to give this guy the guitar, so he gets the guitar. And I just. I didn't know what to think of what happened. In fact, I think it was. The store was just the three of us at that point. So when he left, me and Bryant Dane's son sat there and we went, wow. Well, that just happened, right? We're like, what is that? It was so crazy. And so I was super excited because it was. It was a welcomed burden to have that guitar. And I say that the way I hope I'm saying it correctly or it's conveying correctly. I'm so happy that this viewer imparted this, you know, hey, can you help me let this guitar live on? And I was concerned because the last thing I wanted was, you know, is to give it to somebody who's like, hey, yeah, I'll take that and flip it on Craigslist in five minutes and take the money. Because who doesn't want a free guitar? Who's on free money? That's free money. You know, I didn't want it to be that, and I didn't want it to sit here and not get played. And the reality of my life is even the guitars that I've pined after for years and I finally get to own, I, I, I don't get to play. So I, I, like I said, I, I, like I said I appreciate you guys indulging me and letting you tell the story, because again, I, it was, was cool. It was a very cool moment for me and positive, and I liked something positive. It was nice. Okay, so let's, let's move on to some of your questions and topics, because you guys have some too. I'm sure this one ties in, so we'll keep going with the flow because this ties in. This came from Michael says, hey, get Offset, which is Emily from the channel. Get Offset. If you don't know that channel, you should check it out. And the 60 cycle hum, which is Ryan from 6 cycle hum. Now both have Keezels. What, I'm the only one supposed to have easels? No, I'm just kidding. Says, who's next? Who's the next YouTuber to join the Keezel family? So, funny enough, I am a really. I'm, I'm responsible for half of that problem. So the reason Emily has a Keisel is because when I was talking to the guys at Kiesel when we did the Kiesel event, and they had me come and work the event, I suggested some YouTube channels to come out. I said, hey, why don't you invite some channels then come out? And. And in classy form, they did. And even I believe they, they compensated them or at least paid for hotels or did something like that. That's my understanding. Again, I didn't know the personal business. Wasn't my personal business to know, but I kind of understood it from the channels. But anyways, I was able to introduce Emily to Kiesel and, and then, of course, Emily and Giesel obviously worked out something where she had got the new Mark 66 guitar, which totally lines up with her surf rock style of, of play. Um, so I'm responsible for that. So that's what happens. So there and then six, that's on him because, I mean, they probably found him after they found Emily, I would guess, and then reached out to him. So that's the update on that. So, yeah, let's see. What are we doing on time? We're doing good on time. Let's do this then. Here's a topic. This one was came in. This one's hot. So this one was actually a disgruntled dealer who is wanted to let me know that they do not like when I talk about discounts on the podcast and teaching or invoking or amplifying, whatever you want to call it, promoting you viewers asking for a deal. And here is the thing that I'm going to respond with, okay, so I understand that. I mean, who does it? Who wants to give up money? None of you guys want to take a pay cut, right? Asking for a deal. I want to be very clear because I have been very clear on how I've done it over the years, okay. And how I've explained how I do it and when I do it and why I do it. But I didn't dumb it down. So let me just dumb it down even more not to. I'm not insulting this person and their question. I'm just saying let me just dumb it down to you. I'm an informed consumer, okay? And most of you, regardless of what you do for a living, are informed consumers. Because as I always say, hobbyists are informed consumers. They obsess over the thing they care about, in this case, music, guitars, you know, and guitar like stuff. So it's not like you walk in and some of you guys do this and if you do, you should stop because it's an asshole move. But when somebody goes and into a business, let's say we'll use car dealerships, you go into a car dealership and you see this car and it's $50,000, you go, hey, sell it to me for 30 grand. Pulling a number from your ass that you would like to pay is not negotiating. It's not asking for a deal. That's not what I do. I don't go. Two things I don't do. I. One, I do not assess their vulnerabilities. Why? Because I've been on that side of the fence and I didn't like it when people did it to me. What I mean by that is I don't go, wow, they look like they really need to pay their rent this month. Let me see how desperate they Are okay, I don't work desperate people. It's just an ethic thing. If you do that, it's on you. But I don't do it. So first of all, let's already out of the equation. The second thing I don't do is pull numbers from my ass on things I'd like to buy. Like for instance, if the guitar is $1,000 and I'm going, would you take 200 bucks? Because I obviously pay $200 for a thousand dollar guitar when I make an offer. And this is the point that I'm trying to make to this dealer when, when most of us make an offer, it's an informed offer. In other words, I've done my research. A good for instance is like I go on out on online, Craigslist, Reverb, you name it, guitar center, used.com everywhere and I look at the products and I go, there's a lot of them out for sale. And the last few have sold for this price. I'm willing to buy one, but not, I'm not going to pay more than I have to. That's dumb too. Just like you don't want to sell less than you have to. But there's an informed decision. This guitar is generally selling for about $800. Or in my equation, let's say it's a thousand, it's selling for 800 bucks. That's worth selling. And I'm asking them if they want the opportunity. Cause that's what it is at this point to sell it. Do you know that in most of the cases where I send an offer to someone on reverb, most of the time when they decline it later, they come back and accept it. They come back a week later, they come back a day later, a month later, they send me an email and they go, hey, we'll take your offer. I'm like, right. Cause my offer was correct, I knew what it's gonna sell for. I've done both sides. I've sold all this stuff for years. I've bought all this stuff for years. I generally can tell what the market's doing at any given time and I can see where it's all selling at, right? And I'm not trying to steal from anybody and I'm not trying to give anything away either on my end on both sides. I'm trying to find something that's reasonable so that I can either buy something and make motivate myself to purchase something, or I can sell something and recoup as much as the price I want back. That I. That I'm doing because I obviously bought it, and now I'm trying to recoup. My point is when. So talking about discounts is not a way about talking about a way to steal from dealers. Talking about discounts is about figuring out how to make things that are unobtainable to you a little bit more unobtainable. Because here's the thing. There are things that I would never buy at a certain price point ever, Ever, ever. That's fine. And if it's a market where they're not selling, maybe it is a time for me to see if there's an opportunity for me. It's a perfect example. Plus, I always look for win win opportunities. You know, a good example is. I don't know if I talked about this, but when I bought my Universe, which is a very expensive guitar, and my wife and I and Shawna's like, you should buy that guitar. And for our anniversary, and we're like, let's do this. The person selling it wasn't a small dealer. I reached out to him and I said. I didn't say, hey, man, the market's a little soft right now. You should give me a deal. I said, hey, I'm willing to pay this, but I'm willing to do a couple things. Like, I know that you're in a different state, but I have a friend that can drive to you and bring you cash, if that could help. Right? No credit card fees. Let's cut some credit card fees. Let's see if. Look, I'll save you the fees. That saves me the fees. Right? Okay. Maybe we can do something. And whatever it takes, we'll figure it out. Right. I'm also willing to let you ship it a little slower. I'm also willing to, you know, whatever, let's work it out. And what we ended up doing so, you know, is he came to me and he goes, would you write the check to my wife? Right. And he sold it outside of his store. Now, that's. He didn't have to charge sales tax because he's out of state. So there was no sales tax and there was no credit card fees. And he. I don't know, maybe he's keeping off his business books. I don't know what he was doing. I don't know. Maybe he owed his wife, maybe his ex wife and he owed her alimony. And he's like, pay my wife alimony, Right? Right. I don't know. But the point is, we found a mutual win, and I got the guitar at A good price and it kind of worked out. So that's what I'm trying to say is that when you're out there negotiating, that's you should make sure that you're an informed consumer, that you have a reasonable price that you're. You're coming out with. And, and I think the dealer wins in that scenario. Because the reality is, most of the time when a dealer has cut me a deal, like this week, I bought something this week and the dealer cut me a deal, by the way, I didn't ask the deal. The dealer cut the deal. Let me give you an example. I was out looking at a particular amplifier in the last two weeks online and I noticed there's a lot of them. I mean, a lot of them. I had already decided to buy it. In fact, I was like, I'm buying this amp. I know I want it, I'm buying it. So I went to buy it and I was out looking and I was like, wow, there's a lot for sale. Like a lot. And then I was like, wow, there's a lot of used ones. Like, okay. And you could save a lot of money for. For going used, but you know, used tube amplifier shipped. It's a little dodgy sometimes, especially when they're expensive, you know, Right. If it's a right deal, maybe go that. Right. I'm open both ways. And imagine after about a week, it took, you know, didn't take a lot of time. I found a dealer who's been making deals on them. Of course they were, because they were sitting on them like everybody else and they decided it's time to turn that money back into something else. So they gave me a deal. I didn't ask for the deal, they gave the deal. The point is, that's what you do when you're an informed consumer. That's when you do. When you actually know what you're talking about or know you've got your research and you figure it out. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about asking for a discount or a deal. Informed requests that, that are reasonable. So. And like I told you guys in my store, I never gave a discount. I never, I never gave a discount in 13 years. I didn't have to give. So anytime anyone got a deal for me, which is a lot of times because I did have a store through four years of horrible recession time of that section of it, if I give you a deal, yeah, it's. Cause I had to. And I can tell you that because there Was a lot of times when people were like, I'll buy this off you for that price. And I'm like, or this price? And I'm like, nope. And I wouldn't sell it. And I got the right price. So it works both. So with that being said, since we're talking about deals, let's segue again. You know what it's time for? Now it's time for Guitar of the Week. Now it's time for Guitar of the Week. This week's Guitar of the Week is fun. It's a fun Guitar of the Week because it's a lot of things. So interesting enough. Yeah. Do I show you the guitar first? Let me show you the guitar first. So let me go here. Do I have it up? I do. Okay. So this week's guitar is a Keisel. No, it's a Fender. Because every guitar now is a Fender. In fact, that's new. The new joke. Screw the whole it's a Keisel joke. Now every, every, every video, every guitar of the week is a Fender. Because all guitars are a Fender. Now. This is a Fender. Look at it. It's a Fender. According to Fender, this is a Fender. What is this? This is an Ibanez AZ Prestige. That's a made in Japan AZ. AZ means that it's like. Like a Fender 2204 NW electric guitar. This is dark Tide blue. I'm reading that right now. Dark type blue. Looks black, but it's kind of blue now. What's cool about this guitar is I learned something, two things back to back, over a period of a couple months. And I thought I'd share it with you. I thought it'd be cool. So. So let's talk about this guitar. The Super Strat, if you will. This guitar is a roasted maple neck. Look at that. We talked about roasted maple necks last week. Look at that chocolatey goodness. This is Godo tuning keys. We have a rosewood fretboard. We have 24 jumbo frets. These are stainless steel. I believe it should be stainless steel. Stainless steel frets it is. The neck has a tongue oil finish. It's a standard truss rod. It is a oval C. Oval C. It feels like a thick U shape. It says oval C, but I'm going to say the Q shape. Seymour Duncan single coils and Seymour Duncan humbucker. Really weird how vague they are about that. But anyways. Seymour Duncan single coin humbucker. Look, the cable fell out. It's got the output jack in the back. Like the Steve I guitars, but not as deep. Let Me get this cable. There we go. Put this back in like that. We have a five way pickup selector with a coil split switch which obviously works on the humbucker because why would it work on the single wheels? It's got a tremolo system. I thought it was Godot, but it doesn't say specifically. But I'm pretty sure it's a Godo bridge. I could be wrong and says the tuning keys are locking. They are locking tuning keys and it came with a hard shell case. And what's interesting about this particular guitar. Go back to the main screen so I can see what you guys are saying. Somebody says yeah, it's 22 frets, but it says 20. Look, I don't want you to think I'm crazy. I know I look 24 frets, but it's 22 frets. So 22 frets. I was reading their specs. This is why, you know, you know, this is just again to prove over and over again when I do deep dives why I don't read any of the stuff they publish and I only do my only investigation. See here I am like an innocent bystander just reading the specs to a guitar and they're wrong. So see, can't trust nobody. What's interesting about this guitar is and we'll play it is that I guess I learned two things. Guitar center and Musician's Friend are up to some shenanigans. And it's a pretty cool shenanigans. So let me tell you what they're doing. So if you go to. I put links by the way because I'm going to, I'm going to tell you, I do have an agenda here. I get a commission if you buy any of the stuff. When I say commission, it's a affiliate links. I have an affiliate link with Guitar Center, Sweetwater, Musicians Friend, you name it. Every reverb, I have an affiliate with everybody. So you know, just like all the other YouTubers click the link. It doesn't cost you anything. That's the spill, right? But this is more important. Here's why. So this guitar is normally 2, 300. But what musicians Friend is doing and Guitar center is doing is they're using Musicians Friend as like an outlet. It's like a Nordstrom, Nordstrom rack. So see 16.99. So it's 23 off. That's almost dealer cost by the way actually. So you. So you know, I'll tell you what basic dealer cost is. So you guys know. So I'm gonna give you two there's two dealer costs for this guitar. There's a, like a. There would be like a big retailer and then a regular retailer. So regular retailer would expect to pay about 1540 for this guitar. So you can see at 16.99 it's only $160. Is that right? 16. Yeah. $160 more than cost. Now this is a big retailer. So a big retailer would actually pay. You'd have to do 1540 and then an additional 10. So that means their cost, their true cost drops down to like 1386, 1400 dollars somewhere on there. Right. So now they're actually making a couple hundred bucks. But you can imagine it's a big cut. So it's a legitimate discount. Now why am I showing this to you? Well, for a couple reasons. First of all they're doing this to lots of guitars. And so I highlighted some guitars so as you can imagine you can get the PRS SE studio. That's normal. A 50 down for 599. And there was. Let me go here because actually when I go there's a funny one I want to show you. Let me go here where I put all my links. Where it says links. Links. Click here. Okay. Oh man. Why did it make it so why do they have to have all these pop ups? Don't Forget to get $5 off. But hold on, there's more because I'm going to take something cool. Alright. So anyways they have the Gibson Victory guitar. So the victory guitar was normally $2,000 is $500 off. So these are legit discounts. As you can see. One of my favorites that I want to share with you is this guitar. Because I know a lot of you are going to be interested in this guitar is this one. And I thought about getting myself. But I'm hold out for about another couple hundred bucks. This one is the Johnny Cash SJ200. It's normally 15,000. You can pick it up for just nine grand. But I mean think about that. That's. That's six grand off. I mean think about this. With the money you save you could get yourself like a Sir or a Novo or a Gibson Les Paul Studio or Standard. Get a standard Les Paul and take your kids to Disneyland. But anyways, back to this. So $9,000. I did pick that one as a kind of to be funny. The other thing I want to show you is this is the important part is this. They also have. Here's a good. Another deal. I found the Kirk Hammock Greeny Epiphone. Normally $1,500. That's $500. That's 33% off. Like I told you guys when I was giving you math before, that's basically cost, right? I mean it's, it's close enough to where it's going to be tough to beat that. Now here's what's interesting. If you look at some of these deals I can tell you right now, including the AZA that I'm holding, you can find them used for more money than they're selling them new. The other thing that they're doing that's exciting, interesting is they also have pedals. So this is where they're clearancing pedals. You do have to pay attention because they're co mingling with Guitar center which means like this pedal is not a clearance pedal. This is just on the used website for, for Guitar Center. Now the reason I'm showing you this is one because you guys are guitar addicts like me and I want to show you the deals and, and we'll also do the, you know, finish demoing the guitar because that's important. Hold on, I'm trying to get back to your screen, but I want to tell you something that a lot of people don't know. If you decide especially use my link, you don't have to use my link. Use my link. Anything you buy, I'm gonna get 5%. I'm just telling you right now. So if you spend a thousand dollars, I'm gonna make like 50 bucks, which by the way, it's pretty, pretty cool. So for me. So. But here's the thing that's cool for you. If you buy anything, regardless of what link you use or don't use a link, I don't care at Musicians Friend and you don't like it, you get to return it to Guitar center in their stores. So if you get one of the guitars, you don't have to box it back up and ship back. You can run it to Guitar Center. Now I don't mean the discount deals. Anything A musician's friend. This is why I want to share this with you. Something I've learned and I thought I would share with you guys. The thing that you can't do is exchange. So if you get something on Musicians Friend, you walk into Guitar center, you cannot say, hey, I want to return this and use in store credit. You can't do that. It works like when you buy something on Amazon, you got to take it to Kohl's or the UPS store. What you get to do is walk in and they will return the funds to whatever source you paid with. And then they just process the return for you. In other words, you walk into the guitar center, you say, you bought this music friend. You want to return it. They'll take the return, they'll process your return, they'll put it back on whatever form of credit card or whatever, however you paid. And it will take a day or two or whatever it takes. And then they probably ship the guitar back to musician friend, I think. I don't know that part. I just know that they. It doesn't stay in the store and they don't. That's why they can't do in store. So what's great is, is I think it's cool that you're getting a smoking deal or we can get smoking deals on things and try things. Because this guitar is a guitar. I had a red one of these and I loved it. But my wife and everybody hated the color was like tomato soup red. And they just didn't dig it. So I let it go and I regret it ever since. So now I have one again. So what's cool is like I said now if you want to save a little scratch but not have to take a little bit of, you know, a little fear of like, ah, what if it's, you know, what if it's crappy, Right? That's pretty cool. So back to this guitar. Let's go here. We're right here. I have it set up work. Let's turn on the guitar. We'll keep it fast and clean. We're going to start with the neck pickups. It's unclean maybe. Oh, there it is. Here we go. Man. It's got a very not fendery, not even close to a Fender don't, don't call it Fender sound. And as you guys know, one of my favorite setups is the hss. So humbucker, let's go ahead, turn on the overdrive and a little delay because we deserve that. Here's the humbucker with some overdrive, Sam. Okay, I'm getting carried away. It's kind of funny, my plane going for a second I forgot. I'm like, oh, yeah, I have a show. I have to talk to you guys. Oh, it has never happened before. I am usually trying to play for a few seconds, then get back to talking. This is the first time I was playing and going, oh crap, I forgot you guys are still here. Anyways, weight wise, it's not light. This is about eight pounds two ounces. So not heavy, you know, Anything under eight and a half is to me is legit legitimate for me. I prefer under 8 if I can get it because it's super light. Feels good. But this was pretty cool. This color, not so great. Like I said, dark blue. They have a gray one that looks really cool as well. Brass block on the back. Look at that. Came with daddario strings. Pretty cool guitar. Somebody mentioned earlier in the comments. I grabbed your comment early because I knew this was the guitar of the week. And it said, hey, Phil, this is from Reckoning Fire. Raining Fire, dude, what's wrong with me Anyways, Raining Fire says Phil. Why does the. Why do Golden Air Ibanez feel so much nicer and see and seemingly have so much more soul than modern day Japanese Ibanez guitars? I don't know about the soul thing because like I said, I always. My joke is if a guitar had a soul, it was killed. It was done when we killed it because it was. The soul was in the tree, right? This is a dead. This is a dead tree, man. There's no soul in this. It's Dover. So. But why do the Golden Era. Why do I think Golden Era Ibanezes are better than the current ones? Well, this guitar is a perfect example. This guitar is built beautifully, but it needed to set up really, really bad. The bridge was cranked down. It felt like somebody built a nice guitar, but then they kind of slapped the setup together and shipped it in, threw in a case and throw it out the door. So it's just. Ibanezes just need a little bit of tweaking, which is something we used to not see with Ibanez. But if you watch the deep dives, you know that you have a bigger chance of needing to do a setup on a guitar no matter what it costs, regardless, you know, compared to not doing it. But I'll tell you what makes doing a setup on a $2,200 guitar feel a little better. Paying $1,600 for it. Because I can tell you right now, if you gave me a choice, $2,200. And I bet you I'd like to hear. We should do a poll right now if you guys could have this guitar for $2200. I know some of you guys, like, I don't want the guitar, but I'm just. It's a this or that argument. If you could have this guitar for $2,200 and it needed. And it. And it was set up perfectly, or you could have it for sixteen hundred dollars, but you had to set it Up. What would you take? I'm taking the discount. I'll do my own setup. And if you watch enough of my. My channel, you can do your own setups, too. All right, so let's do the thumbnail. This will be a good one for the Fender Suing the World. Okay, here we go. Thumbnail. We should probably put the boom out of the way. Okay. There you go. I don't know why I'm having trouble with this. Okay, so that's our thumbnail. That's the guitar of the week. The Ibanez Az. God. You know, I know we talk about roasted maple necks, but they do smell good. So any questions about the guitar or any questions about. Let me turn off my overdrive. Any questions about that return policy or anything like that? So, yeah, the Candyman says no setup is worth 600. Absolutely. So I love this idea, by the way. So unofficially. Unofficially, Musicians Friend is becoming like the Nordstrom's rack where they're going to give you deals, so you're going to. So I would recommend. Because I'm doing it checking out Musicians Friends Clearance center often, because, like I said, you'll save a ton of money. You can see some interesting things. And the return policy of obviously, Mr. Friends return policy, same as Guitar Center. So it's really, really good. But then the added idea that you can just walk it back to a guitar center and not have to, you know, because I know some of this. I know the feeling of defeat, of boxing up the crap that you don't love that you got to send back. This sucks. So being able to turn is nice. So that was really fun. Hey, Telly. Driving says, save your money and learn how to build guitars, man. I'm gonna tell you right now, as someone who's built a lot of them, there ain't no saving your money building guitars. I don't know what you're doing. You might need to teach me a thing or two. Because building guitars cost more than buying guitars. Absolutely. There's no way to build a guitar that I know of cheaper than you can buy guitars for the most part, unless you're just buying, like, callings or, you know, guitars. So I understand what you're saying. Building guitars, I think it gives you more internally. I think it's. There's something accomplished about that. Something mass massively feels good about whenever you build or create anything. I. I understand your argument. I like it. I'm just. The tweak on it is I don't want to allude that building guitar somehow is cheaper. Now if you're buying parts and assembling them, sure, you can put together something pretty interesting way cheaper than what a manufacturer, a high end boutique builder is going to give you, comparatively speaking. But if you're talking about actually physically building guitars, keep in mind like I built, I've never built guitars. I built basses. When I used to build a bass, they were like four grand. Like I didn't build nobody base for a thousand bucks. There was no, there was no such thing as that. That's why I did import bases and that went really so great, actually. It's funny, I've told the story about how my import bases went, but I always kind of come with this negative connotation about it. But I also have to remind myself when I say that the money we made from those bases was what paid for our store. It's why we had the money to start a store, is I sold enough bases that I made enough money. I said, hey, let's open a store with this. So, all right, that's where it came from. Okay. Ah, happy good thing says building cigar box guitars would be cheaper. And you know what, you know what? That's a great, happy good, good thing. A cigar box guitar I think is, you know, if you were going to do one thing, if you were going to say, hey, I want, I want to know the experience of building guitar, I would say building a cigar box guitar would be one of the coolest things to do. I don't know if you guys remember, I have a, a person I know very well. His name is William Wiggins. He makes Wiggins pickups in Tucson, Arizona. And let's go to the website and he builds some of the best, if not the best cigar box pickups in the world and Wiggins brand pickups. We'll go to his reverb store. Let's see what the reverb store shows. Okay, we got electric guitar pickups, cigar box pickups. Here you go. They're not cheap, but look at that. So if you ever need like custom made, I mean again, I know I, you know making a cigar box guitar is about making something inexpensive. But these are literally. Look at that. Like, how cool is this, right? Laser carved. My friend Renee, his wife does all, she's an artist and she does the artwork and, and the laser cutting and stuff. See, look at this. Five cent cigars, you know, right? So you can get really cool custom made out of different woods, right? Walnut mesquite. Mesquite is, is here in Arizona. So he's getting that Local, which is nice. So that's what I would recommend because you get a little taste. Arizona, it says Texas on the back. But I'm. Did he move? No, he's still in Tucson, Arizona. I was like, did he move? No. So, but, so check out Wiggins pickups. Also look for electric guitars too. And he makes electric guitar pickups. Very beautiful carved wood pickups. And they sound great. But also cigar box. But yeah, cigar box guitar there it's, it's not even how affordable it is. Happy, good thing. Made a good point about the fact that it's, it's an affordable project, but it's also a very easy thing to accomplish as a, as a new. Trying to build something. So that would be really cool. Yeah, so that, that would be cool to start, I think if I, you know, I never got really thought of it before, but if I got, you know, the question is like, hey Phil, I want to build, start building guitars. What should I get into? Yeah, cigar box guitar, you know. Right, that's, that's probably a great first way to approach it because you know why, you could probably sell them too. You know what I mean? Like, you know, if you build a couple electric guitars even out of parts or whatever you're doing, you know, the, the market is, is, is very finicky in the idea that, you know, no one's really looking for you to put together a, an inexpensive guitar, a parts guitar, or, you know, you're a new builder. There's no name brand on it. The very name brand conscious consumers the guitar players are. Whereas much as the, as, as much as we love music, we're also a fashion industry type business where it's like brand names really hold the, the weight of it. But I think a cigar box guitar, it's about how cool it is, you know, like the vibe, you know, what box did you use that, you know, a Wiggins pickup in there would be really cool and different. You could wind your own pickup very easily. I would say it'd probably be one of the easiest pickups to wind because it's not going to be much different than a single coil pickup in the concept. I've never made a cigar box pickup, so, you know, but I would imagine construction wise is the same thing as a single coil, which means it's just, you're got a start point, end point and you're gonna wrap and you know, and you know, other than breaking the wire, there's really nothing you can do to mess it up. Because I would imagine usually with winding the big Issue is the tension. You know, the tension can also really change how the. How the pickup's gonna sound. Where. I don't know if that's so dramatic on a cigar box guitar. I don't know if necessarily go, man, this pickup should be a little bright or a little dark. I think it'd be fine. So that's really cool. Really cool idea that I never thought about. Okay, what are we gonna do now? Now we're gonna do something totally different for a second. I've never done this before, but I wanted to react to a video, and I don't know why. This video just got me. I just watched it. I wanted to let you know this is a channel, a YouTube channel. I don't even know if he has a couple hundred subscribers. Subscribers. The video. I think the initial video had 40 views. So why it came in my feed or why I saw it, I don't know, but I really, really. It really spoke to me. So let me tell you what happened. I was watching a video, and. And I didn't. I watched them back to back. Let me go here. Do I have. Okay, hold on a second. See, I have it here. File open. I have. Do I have the screenshots? Okay, so let me go to it. Let me play the video. So let me tell you what happened. So essentially, this. You. This guy on YouTube. I don't want to call him YouTuber. He's just a guy who made some YouTube videos. So let's. Let's watch the vid, and then I will talk about it. And this one, I mean, if I depress the bar, then it. Hear the clink. It has been that way for every nut I've had on this thing. And I. And you might say, well, you must not be seeing a very good person, are you? This has been to. This has now been the fifth person I'm taking it to. They installed this. This bone nut in definitely the most expensive place I've been to. Okay, so, as you know, this nice gentleman named Patrick has made this video, and he's talking about how he has this partsicaster. It's essentially a strat body. A strat neck put together, had scalloped frets. And he's having issues. He. The nut is obviously. It's tinking, right? Pink. Pink, right. Because it's sticking in the nut. And so he had four different shops cut him a nut. I'm watching this, and I'm like, oh, this is funny. I have a theory. Just watching it, I had a theory. The theory was that the String trees were the issues. First of all, I've dealt with scallop guitars many times. I've owned the Engvay Strat. I currently own a scalp guitar. I've worked on a lot of scalp guitars. And scallop guitars add a different problem to the. To the mix. And one of the problems is the way the tension is applied to the nut. It's a little bit of. A Little bit of a finicky mistress. And there's a reason why I think, like, Yngwie puts a brass nut on there, not only for sound, but also because of that reason. It really does change how it works the string, and that was how the string tension works. Because the fact that when you play on the scallop, you. You have a different attack, a different touch. So I was looking at that, and the first thing I thought if you watched is it had two nuts and they were tusk, the brand Tusk or Graph Tech. And I was like, yeah, I think he needs to. So my first initial thought was he needs to do one of two things, which is going to sound funny in a second. Remove the nuts and just play the guitar. And I think that would fix it. At the very least, you need to remove the nut. Sorry, what I say nut. The string tree. He needs to remove the string trees. And at the very least the string tree that's on the G and the D string. So definitely remove the. The string tree. That would be my. If you. If he brought the guitar to me, that's. That's how I was watching the video. Like, what would I do if this is my customer? He would bring it to me and I would say. I would take the guitar and I would take both the string trees off and see if that fixed the problem. If it did fix the problem, great, then I would. If it did fix the problem, I'd probably put the one for the E and the B back to see if that. That's fine. And if that worked, fine, great. But if not, I would leave them both off if that didn't fix it. The other likely problem is that the string trees need to be lower. They need more downward pressure. If you look at the ones the string trees he's using look like this. Let me show you one. Here's one right here. This is the same string tree he was using. You see how tall it is? So I was like, okay, so either remove it, which could be the pro. The fix, or lower it. So either. Here's why I'm saying this in that particular guitar, because guitars Are they are more. They're. They're more than just mechanical pieces. There's a little bit of finesse that has to be done. So the irony is it needs either more tension past the nut or less. Right. And generally speaking, I'd probably say more if I was going to guess more. But I've had it work both ways. So in other words, I might, I might take the, the string tree for the E and the B and lower it. And on this one, it's super easy to lower because it's a material like a nut material. So you sand the bottom. So I would take this, I'd put a sheet of sandpaper and I would just sand this. As you can see, it's in my hand trying to let you guys see it. I would sand it like this. On a flat surface. I'd sand this down and lower it. Right. No reason to get a new string tree. These work great. And just lower this. I would lower the one for the E and the B string and then I might even remove the one for the G and the D. It might even not need that. That's how I would fix that problem. Now why am I talking about this today? Well, he made another video. Let's go to his other video. I'm not going to play the other video. I'm just going to go and pull up the thumbnail which I thought I had captured, but apparently I didn't because you know what do you guys want a professional YouTube channel? Okay, let's go to the history. Let's find his video. Here he is. Okay, so let me share this with you. So he made a follow up video. This was a month later. But in my world they were back to back, as you know, because I didn't, I didn't see the video a month ago. I saw it recently. Recently. Here it is. Oh, cool. I do have what I need. Okay, so he makes the second video. And the second video is move this. He got cursed out by the guitar store. So he took this guitar to another guitar store. So it's not like he's taking the guitar back. He's taking it to another guitar store. And he takes. I'm just gonna paraphrase the story. He goes in there and this is what they do. They cut a new nut. They do a full setup. So they charge him for a full set setup. And then they replace those two string trees with new string trees. You look here, these are the Fender style ones that are the bent metal right here. And you can see these are actually taller. This is actually making the situation worse, in my opinion. These are higher than what the other ones were. So what he doesn't say in the video. I watched it. He doesn't really say if this actually fixed the problem because. Because he's really kind of focused on the fact that he was told to F off and get out of their store. And. And for the record, just so you guys know the whole story, the store owner, or I don't know if it's the owner, store employees basically told him to get the F out of the store, take his crappy guitar, and I'm paraphrasing again. And his. His weirdness, and get the hell out of the store. And of course, as you can imagine, as a customer, you probably. He's more fixated on that than he is on whether or not they solved or didn't solve his problem. They didn't charge him because, you know, he paid with emotional trauma. So. Emotional trauma. I'm sure it's like, it's pretty hard to ring somebody up and emotionally traumatize them at the same time by saying, hey, you're a piece of crap. And also, it's a. It's a 139.95. So anyways, I thought it was interesting because I wanted him. I don't know if he'll ever see this. I. Maybe I'll take this clip and message him with it, you know, and send it to him. You know, I want him to know because I. I got the sense that he was a little upset from being basically told to get the f out of somebody store and basically your crappy guitar. And I want you to know that regardless, I don't know the story he's talking about. I don't know them. He mentioned they were close to him. And if you did some research, you could probably figure out. I didn't try to figure it out. What I will tell you is this. I was. I was obviously a guitar tech for a very long time. If you brought me the guitar, I would have never stuck new string trees on it, no matter what. I would have. First of all, the ones that they put on, even if. Even if for some reason I was totally wrong and these didn't need to be lowered or removed and go the other way. Let's say that the tech that did the work knew he was right and I'm wrong. And these need to be taller. There's a spacer for this. There's a way to raise this. In fact, all you have to do is either sand it down and Then use a shorter screw and lower it. Or there's a spacer that you can absolutely should have. I mean, I have a thousand of them and I'm not even doing daily repairs anymore. And he could extend to this. They did not need to charge you for new parts. So you're correct in feeling like they were taking advantage. And the reason they're upset is because you caught them taking advantage of you. I listened to the story. I'm not saying. Look, I didn't hear the other side of the story. There's always two sides. And maybe he's. Maybe there was a. He did. Maybe he did bring some more drama to the situation. But I will tell you that when you were explaining, when. When Patrick was explaining what they did, as someone who does what they do, I was like, no, that's not the course of action I would have took. First of all, I wouldn't have added more problems and I wouldn't add in more cost than I needed to. To. To your situation. So. And there was more to the story about how they broke a string and then they had to order string and take a month and all this other stuff. Or maybe that was one of the other stores. He's having a lot of experiences. He did say he can do setups. What I will tell you also is obviously, look, my videos are free, okay? So I'm just telling you the videos are free, okay? Patrick, if you see this video, if you can do setups, I promise you, you could do everything they did for you, you can do. In fact, I have videos where you could do your own nut slots with just a guitar string and some sandpaper. And here's what I'm going to tell you. He told me, and this is. This is why I really want to talk about this. He told me or he told me. He didn't tell me anything. He told us he told the video. He said that they were trying to charge him 150. Patrick, that's a $10 nut. You could have bought 10 of them up nine, you still ahead 50 bucks. And I can't imagine that if you got. If you worked on eight of those pre slotted nuts by the eighth one, if you don't have it down a little bit, I would imagine, and based on their work of the. Of what you're showing us, they couldn't do much better than you. So I'm just saying, I think sometimes when I see stuff like that, I used to just watch that, internalize it and go on my day. And then I thought, you know, What? I have a channel. I have a platform. Why don't we talk about this? Why don't we share this? So that's why I'm sharing with you guys. I think it's a cool story. Interesting story. Not cool like, you know, that way, but to talk about. And also, I think it's not right. It's not right how they treated you. And I know you're probably full of a little doubt about, you know, whether or not you deserved it or not, because you kind of said that. I'm gonna say, nope. They could have easily used what you had and they didn't have to put new parts on. That was definitely. They were just taking advantage of when you didn't. When you caught them or when you were upset about it. They didn't like being questioned, and they didn't like being caught. That's my take. Maybe it's a hot take. It's a spicy field take, so it's a spicy field take. So where are we at now? You know what? We're gonna answer a question Amanda picked because I haven't done one yet. Let's go into that. We have Farmer Dan says question. Have you played the fender jazz master confee pickups? I'm pretty sure that's how I say it. Comfy pickup. C U N F I configups. I don't know. I've heard it said different ways. I have not thoughts on the V mod pickups. I don't really hold. You know what? I've played some of the. The confi pickups and I've never really found myself needing or wanting them. No. No desire. Nothing draws me to them. There's not a bad or thing or good or bad thing about it. There's nothing about it. So yeah, maybe. Maybe it would be a cool video, do a deep dive. I can learn about them a little bit more detailed. I don't know very much about them. Them. You know, I know the basic construction of them. You know, as I've done research on everything and I've had so many pickups through the years here. I don't know if I've actually had a set of those. So Kevin wants to know, hey, Phil, what's the downside of buying an all wood acoustic? All acoustics are all wood, buddy. They're all made of wood. Unless they're carbon fiber. I know what you mean. He. I think he means solid wood. I'm messing with you because it's. That's actually not me. That's an in store joke. We used to do in our store when somebody's like, hey, do you have guitars that are made all wood? All our guitars are made all wood. So solid wood. So yes. What's the downfall of buying a solid wood acoustic? It is when you use laminate for acoustics, whether it's back and sides or top, you're taking sheets of wood and whether they go grain on grain like this, or cross grain like this, either way, the glue in between the sheets, which usually they're gonna be some kind of cross grain. When you do it with the. As you. As you layer the wood with sheets of sheets and glue in between sheets, you're making it stronger, more stable. Like plywood. Essentially, it's a plywood. Think about this. Laminated wood, acoustic. What does that mean? Plywood. Your guitar is made of plywood. Plywood is very strong. So that is what's great about it. The problem is acoustic guitar sound isn't made from strength, it's made from vibration. The more the guitar vibrates, especially vibrates in a very specific and pleasant way that amplifies the notes that the string is creating, because that's really important. What people don't realize is that when you play a note on your fretboard on acoustic, you want the body to resonate and amplify that note in a very positive and pleasant way. And not just make it regurgitate the sound. You want it to actually do it in a very pot, you know, make a pleasant sound out of it. Plywood isn't very good for that. But what ply good is, plywood is good for is two things. One, you can drop the cost because obviously, just like plywood at the store versus solid wood, it's a lot cheaper. The other thing is, is that it's because the sheets of glue in between it, and usually because of the cross graining, it's more stable. Moisture doesn't affect it. Lack of moisture doesn't affect it. So in other words, it's very hard for it to dry out and it takes more abuse. So let me give you a good example of why you would not want a solid wood acoustic guitar. You would want all ply, ply top, ply sides, ply back. Maybe you live in an rv, you're going to take this acoustic around the world or across the country. Different climates, different moistures, humidity, you know, levels. It's going to be more stable. It's going to take a lot more abuse than a solid guitar. So you don't have to babe it as much, maybe not have to keep it in a case and keep it at like 50% humidity all the time. So that's. That's a big reason for that. The other thing is, is that they are less susceptible to getting damaged. Because obviously, if you bump your acoustic on the corner of your desk or the corner of your amplifier or the corner of, you know, the railing on the stage, the. Obviously, to make a guitar sound good and so solid wood, it has to be thin. And because it's thin, you can puncture it easily. Again, the plywood would be harder to puncture. So a durability factor. So what plywood or laminate wood acoustics give you is more durability and less cost. So the solid wood acoustics will give you a higher expense, but usually a better sound. Now, he's asking a secondary part of this question, which is he doesn't have 30 years to break in the acoustic. You know, there is these theories that if you put your acoustic in a room and you play loud music to it, there's a company that sells a thing that attaches. It's basically a vibrator that attaches your guitar and it vibrates your guitar. You know, I mean, that's up to you. I've never done that, nor have I ever cared to do that. I have. I've played old acoustics, and to say that they're broken in sounds better could be a thing. I played new acoustics to me. Acoustics to me. I pick up a guitar and it just sounds great and plays great, or it doesn't. And I've never really put into thought of, like, where it's going to sound in 30 years or three years or three months, three days. I just start playing it. So I wouldn't worry about that. So. And if anything, I find that the more acoustics break in, the softer they sound. There's a less harshness to them. And if that's something that's bothering you, you can find guitars that are new that don't have as harsh, high end, top end. And also you could change strings, and strings will absolutely change that. So, like, if somebody said this acoustics really soft sounding, I know it's not very bright, I would say, cool. I could make my strings. I just wait for the strings to break in and get old, and they would kind of soften a little bit too. And let's be less bright and harsh. So, yeah, let me do this. Let me go here. Why can't I find. I did right there. I like how I'm talking a lot. You guys have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just. I'm talking out loud about what screens I'm going into. Hmm. Okay. I thought it was missing. Let's see if I can refresh it and I can. I got this question from Damien who says, hey, did the Epiphone Futera have hemispherical fret ends? No. Generally speaking, semi hemispherical fret ends. So if you guys don't know what we're talking about. Semi hemispherical fret ends are. Think of a hemisphere, like a circle. It means the fret end is rounded so nicely that it's. It's like we. Sometimes we refer to it as a bb. It looks like a BB from a BB gun. Right. It's really nice and smooth. They rounded out. There's no edges. Especially sometimes you will see like a U shape to the, to the upside down, uh, like an arch to the fret and hemisphere. Semi hemispherical frets have been rounded so that, like I said, they're almost like a bead, you know, like a ball, a ball bearing, like a bb, and really, really nice. A lot of times they also will take and remove part of the blade, about a eighth inch of the blade on each end, and then they set the fret end and you won't see the end of the blade either. Did that Epiphone have that? No, they did not have that. There are not a whole lot of manufacturers that do that. One, it's very expensive, and two, a lot of players don't like it. So some players love it, some players don't love it. So, you know, that's tough, right? That's tough when it's not loved by all. It's a tough thing to implement as a, as a, as a, you know, as an improvement. Right. So that's answer your question. Okay, let's do. Nope. Let's see. Oh, do I. Okay, Hold on. Okay. I was looking at. Just previewing questions to see if there's anything topics. And let me go over this because I want to look at the. Okay, so you know what? I think we hit a perfect point. So you know what it is? You know what it is? It's time for. And now it's time for this or that. Now it's time for this or that. So this or that is a segment where we try two petals, which we could probably try other things, but right now we're trying two petals. I'm going to ab them. We're going to come together as a group and decide which one did we prefer? The best through a live poll. And the whole point is to see what you guys think. So let me go ahead and do this. And I actually had this set up so I could quick copy paste it. Look at that. Look at me thinking ahead. Okay. This, that, the other. No, none. Okay. And. All right, I'm gonna start. Oh, I'm not gonna start the poll yet because you guys will vote. All right, let me put which one I think it is. And today I'm using blue ink, not that that really matters. Okay. All right, let's go ahead and put my vote on the expensive tabletop. Okay, There we go. We'll get out the trusty Ibanez AZ guitar of the week. That is not a Fender, but is now a Fender, because everything's a Fender. That's a shirt I want because everything's a Fender. It's like, remember Demolition Man? Everything is Taco Bell. And then. Great. Everything will be a Fender. All right, this or that. Let's go to the side cam. Here we go. We got this or that. I'm gonna start with this. So we're gonna compare two pedals. We're running through a two rock. This is a two rock studio signature head. We have it through a 112 cabinet, and we have it mic'd up. I'm running. I'm gonna run some. I'm not gonna run any delay. I'm running a little reverb. Okay, turn on the. Here you go. So you can hear the guitar. Okay, so I'm going to try and play something. I don't know what, but I'm going to start with this pedal, and then we'll go to that pedal, and I'll say it verbally because you guys on the audio podcast like it when I say tell you what we're actually playing. So let's switch to the guitar cam, and we'll start with this. And this is the first pedal we're listening to. Let's start the poll. Here we go. And now that. Okay, now what I want to do is go back to this, make sure. Yep. And if I can add some delay, because it'll just make my life easier. Okay, so this is this with delay. Here we go. And now that with delay. Okay, so this is fun. I'm having fun. Hope you guys are having fun. So this is this or that. Let's take a look at the poll, shall we? On the poll, we have 119 votes, and it looks like that it's got 71% of the vote. So it's pretty strong. I'm gonna go to 200 votes. We usually try to go a little bit more. Let's go to 200 votes because it's a pretty aggressive voting. I don't know if this has a shot. If you think this was the better sounding pedal, then maybe you want to vote because you're about to lose. So that's 72%. We're at 209 votes. I think I can call it, but I'm gonna let it run for just a couple of seconds and. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and end it at 235. Let's just keep going. 240. It's not really changing. Isn't it funny? Still 72%. 22%. 200 and I'll do 250. Here we go. We ended the poll. Okay, let me screenshot this wee. All right. And let me get rid of this. Not literally the pedal. This. Okay, so what are the votes? Here are the votes. They are in. The votes are in. And the votes say, let me put this guitar away. That's what they say. The votes say the winner is. That was 72% of the votes. Out of 253 guitar players, drummers and maybe bass players, 72% said that. 22% said this. 6% said none. What did I say? Obviously, I'm gonna disagree with you guys. Okay, here's my vote. I said that. Look at, look at that. It's that. It's gonna be my joke from now on. So go to the board cam. What did you guys vote for? This week's pedal choices were the boss DS1 versus the Vox Joe Saturni Saturator, which is a modified DS1. I did not use the more button. So, you know, on the Vox. And if for anybody is curious, all it did was just give you more gain. So I didn't use that. I could have. Maybe that's not a fair choice, but I actually thought this. The. The. The. I don't know. I just like the DS one more. How about that? So very shocking. This was inspired by my good friend Michael Nielsen, who this week decided when I was super busy to send me a text that made me laugh, which is he was traumatized because he didn't decided he needs a DS1 on his pedal board and he was thinking about getting a modded one. And then I was laughing in my head going, I just bought the Joe Saturani saturator pedal. If you guys watch the video I made when I was in California, I went into A mom and pop store, small store. And I bought that pedal and another pedal and a guitar. And that pedal is a modified DS1. And when I ab them, I thought it'd be a clear winner that the, the modified one would be better. Which the modification, according to my research says that the modification is that it has more gain. That's why I did not want to add the more button gain because that's not the mod. The mod is it already has more gain. Let's see. Yeah, I thought I had it. Let's pull it up here. Hold on. I probably do. I do. Okay, let me go here and library. Oh, wrong one. Okay. Yeah, It's a modified DS1 to have more gain. And what does it say? Hot rod at DS1. Smoother Marshall style distortion. And Saturn is old clean amp plus a pedal rig. So saying that he like runs this through a pedal rig. So Joe Satrani thinks that the Vox is better than the DS one. But we all disagreed. Or at least through my hands and my crappy playing, we all thought the DS one was better. The best. I love this because one, you agree with me and I agree with you, which is fun because it's always curious to see if what I hear in the room is going to be what you hear after compressed through a live feed through a Rodecaster, you know, platform and all this stuff. But also, you know, this is a funny thing because you know, the DS1, I think, I think you all deserve a funny DS1 story. I don't know how it works now, okay, Because I don't own a store anymore. But when I did have a store, I was a boss dealer. And when you're a boss dealer, boss had a minimum requirement to buy boss pedals. So you had to buy a certain amount. If you did not buy a certain amount, you had to get your boss pedals for what they call a jobber or sometime a middleman or a third party. So in other words, like you would go to a like Cayman or was what they call it kmc, which is Cayman KMC or you know, whatever. There would be a company and you would buy them and you would buy them literally for like 5% less than musicians Friend Guitar center and Sweetwater sold them for. So it was really depressing, right? So that's why if you're walking a dealer and they got like five new Boss pedals and they're putting them for like retail, it's because they're, they're basically not making any money. So it's like, I don't I shouldn't be buying. They shouldn't be buying them. But anyways, to buy boss pedals. Hold on. To buy boss pedals, you had to buy a certain amount and it was like 70. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you think about this, when you're a dealer and you know boss pedals are not going to be slamming out the door. They sell well, but they're not like, wow, we can't keep them in stock. You figure the average boss pedal is going to sell for 100. You're paying $70 as a dealer and you're got to buy 70 of them. You're talking about $4,900. It's like a $5,000 buy in to buy pedals. And you got to do that on a semi regular basis because you got to keep an inventory coming in. And so that's a lot of money. Especially since not all boss pedals fly off the shelves. But one of the things that BOSS would let you do is you could buy as many DS1s as you want. And DS1s were funny because at the time they were $39. I don't know what they are now. We'll look. And you would buy them for 35. I'm not at making this up. Every dealer can tell you the same story. They would buy DS1s for $35. Even though the map street price for $39. Now I know what you're thinking. Why would you buy a pedal that has like a $4 margin? Well, because like I told you, most Boss pedals were 70 to $90. Because if they were 120 or if they were 100, you understand the, the 30% margin. That's how it work. So you could buy 10 of them and 10 of them would cut down your overall expenditure, right? So like if we were talking about 70 pedals times 60, right now we're talking about $4200. And then you would do $350, right? So now you're saving a few hundred dollars. And especially if you bought 20 or sometimes 30 DS1s. That's why a lot of stores you'd walk in and even Guitar center, you see lots of DS1 stacked up and blowing them out. Guitar center used to give them away with stuff like, hey, you buy this, you get a, you know, buy a microphone and get a, get a free DS1. And this is why the story's funny. It was a tried and true business model. And that's how you would pad up your inventory and Then the crazy part was when the line six amps came out, specifically them, they were the most important. When line 6amps came out, the DS1 pedal sales dried up. Because what happened was how you would sell a DS one, there was a way you'd say, here's how you sold a DS1 to customer. Customer would come in and they would buy the, the crate, you know, G10 or G15 or G25. They'd buy some, you know, CMC amp or Gorilla amp. They'd buy some crappy amplifier and you would go, oh, you should get a DS1 distortion pedal. You know, oh, you want distortion? Or a kid would come in and go, I want distortion ramp. You're like, here's the cheapest one, kid, $35. Well, it's 40. $40. That's how you would sell them. The problem is, is once the line six amps came out, they sounded so good comparatively, you didn't need the DS1s. Because I'm curious, I'm looking up what a DS1 goes for now and boop, do boop. 69.99. Welcome to inflation, kids. That's great. It's awesome. Let's. Here we go. That 69.99. Look at that, 70 bucks. So they've doubled, well, not quite doubled in price in a very. In a. In a decade. So there you go. That's the this or that. The DS1 wins, and I had a good time. Let me go back to the main screen. Let's button up the show. I want to thank all of you for hanging out. Like I said, I want to give my heartfelt. I don't know, I don't want to say thanks. What I want to say, I want to say that I really feel for all the builders out there that have been having a horrible week and are. Are dealing with what we talked about with the thunder and the lawsuit. And hopefully we will hope for this all to. To work out and do well. Maybe one of the things we could do is maybe we could try to promote some of the smaller dealers. I don't know how that would work. I'd also like to recap one more time that, that all that is for Europe not involving us. But there's an argument that this is. They want to come to the US and make their. The lawsuit a thing here and then kind of change the way it works here too. So like I said on, on that we covered everything. I want to thank you guys so, so much. If you are a patron member and you are on the top tier. Just understand the coffee hang is tomorrow, so go ahead and look that up if you are in the regular tier. The bonus podcast is next week, so again, can look that up on the schedule on Patron. If you're not a Patron member, you can look that up if you would like and maybe become one. And as always, I want to thank all of you for your time, for making the show worth doing every week, because that's a huge part. And I will. I'll leave you with that. All right. Thank you for your time and Know your gear. The Know your Gear podcast, Sam.