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The know youw gear podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast for. What are we at? May 29th. May 29th. It feels like the year is so much deeper into the year than it was before. Just crazy. I'm gonna need some vodka for today, I think. So I thought I would take a moment and talk about the Fender situation. And because, you know, I know you guys have not heard about it and I'm sure it's fresh news. No, let's break it down. I want to point out a couple things. What's going to happen today is I'm going to give you guys some backfill, some information that I think would make a lot of you more sane or at least make you understand what. What it is said transpired here on this channel in. In this. This debacle or whatever you call it out there. Okay, So a couple things. If you noticed last week we didn't talk about it at all. That was on purpose. I didn't want to talk about it. And I'll explain why now. So if you guys don't know what is going on with Fender and suing tons, or sorry, cease and desisting, whatever you want to call it, a ton of companies with these letters, then you can watch the episode. I'll put a link in this timestamp to the clip where I talk about this. This was about two episodes ago when I discussed this, but I want to give you some backstory because I was actually waiting for something to happen. It happened. And. And I want to share with you. So if you guys saw it yesterday, the Wall Street Journal did an article on the Fender versus the guitar industry cease and desist letter thing. Now, you might have noticed my name mentioned it a couple times. So I want to talk about why I was talking to the Wall Street Journal, because it sure wasn't to talk about about the stock market and the price of eggs. So what had happened is when I initially talked about this thing, I don't know what to call this, right, this Fender thing, I had information at that time that I didn't want to give you guys. I had stated to you guys that multiple companies had been served a cease and desist letter, or better yet, a demand letter. And I didn't tell you who that was on purpose. In fact, I want to also let you know that I provided that information to other YouTubers who asked me for it. And to their credit, they all did exactly as I asked. And again, it wasn't a demand, it was a request. I requested. They do one thing which is not mention any company that had not come forward yet. And the reason being is that you have to understand that however Fender got, however Fender picked all these companies, which we believe was Thoman. And the reason, so you know, the reason why we think Tolman website is why the Fender guys decided to send letters to those companies is that when they went on their website, any guitar showing in stock would mean it'd be physically in Germany at the time. So it'd be easy to prove, hey, they sent guitars, you know, into Germany or EU and they're physically here because Thomann has them. It's. If you, if you paid attention to the original case that Fender did, they ordered a guitar and they brought it in the US they needed it or not in the US I'm sorry, in the eu they ordered the guitar and they brought it in the U. See, by going Thoman's website, they can physically see if a guitar was in stock. Therefore it's there. That's why we believe they did that. What had happened to me personally that week was a bunch of companies, like I stated, reached out to me. They were pretty stressed, as you can imagine. Now how we got here. I'm going to tell you what happened and why I was involved with the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal reached out to me because when they talked to a couple guitar companies, those companies all said, you should probably talk to Philip McKnight. When she called me, she was very nice, very smart woman. And she said, why am I talking to you now? I could have said, I don't know, I'm a YouTuber. But I told her that I think I can help her understand why this is a big deal. Okay? Now on the legal merits, I can't discuss any of it. I don't understand it on the legal merits because I'm not an attorney. But I can explain why the community was upset. So I'm going to explain it the way I explain it to her. When I was approached by some companies that week and said, hey, just so you know, Fenders sent us a cease and desist. I said, oh, that, that sucks. And they said, you may want to talk about this on your show. And I told them all, no, I'm sent that kind of information all the time. Small builders reach out to me on the regular. At least it feels like once a year, it feels like that way could be less. And saying, hey, Gibson's telling me I can't make V's anymore, or Gibson's telling me I can't do this. It's usually Gibson and you should let the community know. And I always say, well, you know, the community can't do anything for you. One and two, it doesn't really mean anything because the community isn't affected by it. Again, you are mostly guitar players watching this channel. There are builders and obviously retailers watching too. But this isn't usually affect you in that way. When, when they all brought it up to me, I said, look, my problem is I'll bring it up on the show but no one will pay attention and care. I was being harsh but honest with them. No one's going to care. I've mentioned it several times and what Fender did is no different than what Gibson has done. Many times they sent a cease and desist, which is essentially a stop or there will be action kind of letter. And you guys always go, what happened though was a very interesting thing. A huge mistake that Fender made. Massive mistake. When I say Fender, I mean Fender's lawyers in Fender. When they sent the cease and desist or the demand letter to LSL guitars who reached out to me. And I want to be very clear because again, upfront and honest is always the best path. I don't, I'm not friends with the LSL people. I don't really know them. They once asked me to do a video on a guitar and then I said okay, they were gonna loan it to me. And then I got an email one day saying we're not sending you the guitar. Okay, that's, that's, that's my interaction with LSL guitars. I feel like that was like a year ago. Okay, I got the impression they didn't like a video I made and they pulled the guitar. But I didn't know that for sure. So I'll just let you know. I don't know why. And to be honest with you, it's not like I was being paid or sponsored or anything. I'm not out anything. It was gonna be three days of my work essentially present a guitar to you guys that you might not even care about. That's the end of that. So why did they reach out to me? They reached out to me because they believed that I was not compromised. In other words, I don't get paid by the companies. They're absolutely right. As I tell you guys all the time, 95% of all my income, which is enough to almost 99% of my income comes from my self generated YouTube videos, my second channel, my Patreon. So yes, although I do work with companies and I take on Sponsors, essentially. If I lost all my sponsors tomorrow. Well, let me put it this way. In the month of May, we had no sponsored dollars come in the entire month. So that's. So it's not like we don't even do it every month. Have sponsored dollars come in. So what happened was they reached out to me. I told them what I'm telling you wasn't interesting. No one's gonna really care. I can mention it, but they sent me the letter. This is the important part. This is what I told the reporter at the Wall Street Journal. No one, no one in their right mind would send somebody like me the letter. Here's what happens. I have received cease and desist. I have received legal notifications. Hell, I did a video on about a demand letter. I got any attorney will tell you to shut up, not talk. The problem is, is that Fender did something very strange. They didn't send a cease and desist. A cease and desist is easy. It's pretty easy. It's like, hey, stop making these guitars. Stop shipping them into the EU and comply by this date. That's a normal demand letter, right? Just. That's the demand. Something of that nature. But Fender, to go to extremes to say, hey, you are to destroy your inventory. Recall your current inventory that's out there. Destroy that. Give us a list of your customers. Which, by the way, when they mean customers, they don't mean us. They mean the dealers pay us quarter million euros, pay our lawyer fees. I. I'm gonna guess. Let me give you some guesses. And this is what I told the reporter. So everything I'm telling you is what I told the reporter because I want you to understand that she wasn't really interviewing me. I was giving her understandings of this situation. So I told her, I said the company they were suing, LSL, probably does 2 million a year, if they're lucky, in California. Which means after taxes and costs, they're lucky if they make 200,000 a year as a company profit. You just told a company that makes maybe 200,000 a year profit. And right now, who knows? They could be watching this and laughing, going, we don't even get in close to that. I'm just giving you a guess. It's an educated guess. 200,000 a year. You just told them to pay you essentially a gamillion dollars. I just made up that word on purpose because that's what it's going to feel like when you get a letter like that. You're like, I don't have the money set Fire to my inventory, so to speak. You're going to lose, you know, fire your employees. I mean, keep in mind, to lsl, that's not even their main guitar. They have other guitars. It's not like all their inventory. But you gotta understand, it's not even just stop making that guitar. It's destroy those guitars. Recall those guitars. Which is embarrassing. You're gonna have to call your retailers and say you need to send us our guitars back so we can destroy them. And the retailer's gonna go, why? Why do you have to have your guitars back? Destroy them. Oh, because we're horrible criminals who. Who copy and do illegal things. I don't know. Right. How are you gonna pitch that to the company? The retailer's gonna be like. And then you gotta refund the retailer, then pay damages. So what LSL did is what anybody would do, in my opinion, in that situation. They gave up. They didn't. They can't hire an attorney. They can't fight Fender. And they sure as hell can't comply with those demands. Cause they're insane. They reached out to me. I was gonna be no help to them until I read the letter. When I read the letter, I realized, like I told the Wall Street Journal reporter, that this is actually does affect us. This is insanity. This makes no sense. Now, I gotta tell you, I knew that PRS was served already. In fact, I would argue that PRS was served before LSL because hell, they're in Maryland. So the letters probably came from Europe. They probably came to the East Coast. And then even if they were overnighted, I would imagine PRS received their letter even faster. Prs, like any company, isn't going to really disclose that because they have a lawyer, right? In fact, the only reason they told the Wall Street Journal is because Wall Street Journal asked for a statement, which they also asked Finder for. And Finder gave no statement to the Wall Street Journal. My guess, just a guess. Should I say allegedly? Allegedly. I'm guessing the reason Pinder gave their statement to Guitar World, who they pay advertising to, and probably one of the biggest advertisers for Guitar World gave it to them. And not the Wall street is for what I just implied. So then what happens next is I talked about on the show and of course it went crazy. And of course I think Tim Pierce's video was definitely the fire setter to the whole thing. Because Tim definitely does not like drama. I've never seen Tim engage in any kind of drama ever on YouTube. In fact, I think he actively seeks out not Doing it, but I think it upset him. And why did it upset him? Not because Fender is sending cease and desist letters. It's something that happens all the time. Hell, I have. I don't think there's a friend of mine in this industry who hasn't sent a cease and desist letter to somebody else. And vice versa. I'm not a hypocrite here. I'm not going to say Fender can't do something that other guitar companies do that I don't. Otherwise I'd actively. Almost every week the show would be, hey, you know who sent cease and desist letters this week? Let's get out the clipboard and tell you who's upset with who in this industry, because it's a long list. But what happened was Fender that let. That was crazy. Now, how I know it's crazy is because look at the drama it's created. The drama. The people felt, feel. We feel enraged, we feel upset, we feel saddened. Because it felt like a mafia read. Like a mafia letter. Right? Really bad. Then, of course, I would like to say things died down. But they didn't. But they calmed. And then Fender put out their PR letter. That's what I want to call that. Couple issues I have with the PR letter. This is my issue with it. First issue is when Guitar World released this article with the first thing I didn't like was it says, last week it was revealed that Fender had sent cease and desist letters. Allegedly. Allegedly meaning not confirmed. They don't know. But just a couple paragraphs later, it says, Fender has confirmed. It's already in settlement discussions with another firms. How could you allegedly sent multiple letters because you didn't really know if you did or didn't. But you're also talking to multiple people. That was the first thing I saw in that. In that I thought, huh, that's really strange. Almost like you want to say allegedly, like implying you didn't really serve a lot of companies, although we know you did. Multiple companies have been served. And again, that's. We know that now. It's starting to come out. So anyways, uh, let's. Let's go on. The next thing that was upsetting with the letter was it implied that a lot of people on social media were going to speculations. And that's because you guys left parts of that letter vague as to what was even a Strat. You said, hey, it's an artistic piece of art that Leo crafted over a beautiful women. A woman. And what the hell does that mean? Like, which one of these guitars isn't a beautiful woman. I'd like to know, first of all, Fender, how do you know? How do I tell? Look, I'm not a veterinarian, and apparently I'm not a guitar builder like Fender. I can't tell which of my guitars are boys or girls. So if anyone would tell me, is a whammy bar a boy? But then a Strat has a whammy bar. Is that a boy? I don't know. Anyways, my point is, again, I don't know how to define that. That would allude when you guys did the. The recant PR letter to Guitar World where you said you're really only going after the exact copies, which most people took that as. Okay, so not the silver sky. But we already knew you served prs. At least I did. You guys didn't. And that you were going after the silver sky. I believe now I'm going to talk about. Those are all things that happened. I want to give you all that information so you have the backstory for two reasons. One, I want you to know what I know, because why not? Two, I want you to know why I didn't tell you guys all of it up front. In fact, I never even told you just now what I asked all the youtubers to do or not to that asked me for the information I gave them. I sent anyone who asked. Some of the channels, like kdh, were really diligent about giving you the best information. They said, hey, can I get a copy of that letter or any of the information you have? I was absolutely open to do that. I did that to everyone with one request. And again, it was just a request, not a demand. I said, don't mention any companies that haven't come public yet, because all you're going to do is put the companies who haven't been served on the radar of vendor. And the companies that have been served, I'm sure they're trying to work out their own situation because like I said, if they have an attorney, that attorney is probably telling them to shut up. You're going to find you're going to notice. Now, you're probably going to see a lot of companies shutting up because a lot of companies allegedly have a lawyer. Now, maybe a lawyer, maybe. Maybe they're all combining under one big lawyer. And maybe that's happening. I don't know. But my point is. What's my point? My point is, I wanted you to know that's where we're at with this. Now let's talk about why I Think Fender is doing this. First of all, like I said, Fender sending a cease and desist. I don't think that's crazy. And I'm not here to argue the merits of whether or not they have the right to or not to. Again, that's a different argument. It's important to understand you can have multiple arguments, you don't have one argument is not all arguments. So if somebody says, I think Fender has every right to do this, that's another argument I'm arguing. The way they conducted themselves, I thought was deplorable. You know, I have a friend who's in this industry who said, if I've sent a dozen cease and desists, I've sent 100. And that was a demand letter of epic proportion and really bad. In other words, he was saying how aggressive it was. In fact, I would say if vendor wants to move forward, they should probably fire their law firm. I think that would make me, as a customer offender, very happy to know that at least they understood that maybe that was the wrong move and they should have been making adjustments. What I want to show you now is why I think, and this is, again, allegedly, that means anything, why I think this is all about PRs in the first place. I'm going to show you, as you guys know, and two things I want to be clear about. There's a lot of people in this industry I don't agree with. Most of them I will drive or fly hours and hours to go meet and talk to so they can personally tell me what it is that I'm getting wrong about what they think or say. That's just my personality. I don't have any enemies in this industry that I'm like, I don't like that person. I don't listen to that person. I'm always interested in somebody's an idea or opinion. That being said, that's why I think that's why some of the companies really reached out and also told the Wall Street Journal, talk to me, because they all kind of knew that I'm somewhat indifferent to all of them. In other words, I've either get along with them or upset them equally in some way. But my point is, I've also spent a lot of time traveling the world checking out factories and learning stuff so I could be more informed when I'm talking to you. And there was something that happened to me last year and it really kind of struck me. And I'm going to show you it now. It's a little clip, if you don't mind. This this is a clip of prs. Prs@cortec. And I want to, I want you to see if you see what I see, which is if what why Fender might not like what they see. So you got China, Korea, the uk, this massive wall to your right of guitars, that's for the usa. Korea, Korea. What is C E K O Hero guitar is going to Chile and Singapore, got some Japan, Hong Kong. So about half the guitars go to the US. That's kind of our average, I'd say. Then about 25% go to the UK and to Europe. Right. About 8% go to Japan. And then the rest is split amongst the rest of the world. Right. So if you saw what I saw, you're seeing lots of quality pure SSE guitars shipping around the world. And you see he clearly says the US is half their market, like most of the guitar manufacturers. But what he's not saying is the growth markets which are like Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, India, China, where there's not a lot of used vendors. So who are your competitors? I mean here in the U.S. look, if somebody said I'll never buy offender again, well, the good news for you is you can buy used vendors for the next 30 years and never have to give Fender the corporation a penny. You'd just be helping local dealers, your, your, your retail, you know, chains, you'd be helping everybody but Fender buying you spenders if that's something you actively want to do. But my point is in a market like us, there's tons of use Fender. In fact, if you recall when the New York Times did an article about Fender trying to get their IPO and go public, they hit them with a couple hit pretty hard comments. One being that the iPad is as much an instrument as a Fender guitar. And two, even their own signature artists play vintage Fenders over the current Fender line. And then the third one is, is that the guitars don't obsolete themselves. And unlike Apple where it's always about buying, the newest iteration of the product vendor has to compete with its old inventory. Well, guess where its old inventory isn't. It's not in China, India, Singapore, Korea, their used markets not like ours. It doesn't have 70 years of used vendors can be with. So in those markets, my guess, and this is my guess, their biggest competitors are their guitars that look like theirs or compete with theirs. But even if you would say, well, Ibanez, okay, great, great guitars, fantastic guitars, Yama, as you know, I've reviewed them all, they're great. But there's something about PRs that always sticks out different. To me it's an iconic American instrument and like Fender, it sells a lifestyle. I know people hate the word lifestyle brands but that's what it is. Essentially music is a lifestyle. It's my lifestyle. Look, I'm wearing a toto shirt today. I literally live and breathe this lifestyle. I only buy stuff that is about music. I buy music, I buy concert tickets, I buy guitars, I buy guitar strings, I buy ornaments on my tree that look like guitars. This is my lifestyle to everyone. That may be extreme to some people. I may be extreme to some of you. You're totally understanding what I'm saying right now. Lifestyle, brand. I would say that there are that if you are in Singapore and you're looking at a really cool iconic American good old rock and roll guitar, you're Gibson, your Fender, you're Paul Reed Smith. And if you're Gibson, well you're not really competing with Fender if you're right. Because if you're in the market for an SG or Gibson, a Les Paul, it's not a Fender. But the Silver sky is definitely a problem for Fender. So I would imagine a lot of people probably think that this has a lot to do with PRs. I agree with those comments. I thought I'd give you a little insight why I think that that's what I showed you that for was to see why I think it is because as something I can tell you as making all these videos, thousands of deep dive tear apart guitar videos I can tell you that the smallest amount of you are interested in three thousand dollar guitars. The the majority of you watching will like to watch $200 and hundred guitars because they're fun to watch but the majority of you are not interested in that. That's a beginner's market for most part. The three thousand dollar market, the two thousand dollar market, those are high end markets. The sweet spot really is this $300 to I'll say $1,500 market now with inflation, that's the sweet market. And when I ask you this question, and I'm just asking rhetorically almost when you think of Fender style guitars in that price range that are good, it's not as big of a market now or big of a group of companies. So the one thing I do want to clarify is that there was some confusion because the Wall Street Journal article came out on Thursday but Fenders PR piece came out on Wednesday. It implied or felt like that they had served PRs after and it was not true. It's just like I said, the the reporter spent a week fact checking the information. I don't remember when I talked to her, but I can tell you it was at least a minimum a week or longer from when the article posted. And then so, you know, she reached out to me at least I think two other times for fact checking because she was fact checking some information other places and I'm. And she was even fact checking me things I told her, I'm sure, because as a reporter does. So I thought I would give this clarification. I also want to talk about one other thing, if we can. And this is an argument. I've watched a lot of videos and I really love that everybody has an opinion. There's two things I want to talk about that are important to me. One, don't let corporations or large guitar companies or any guitar company politicize the thing you love. This isn't religion and this year isn't politics. What I mean by that is if you're a never Fender person now or a never peer s person now or whatever, you, you know, do whatever you have to do. But I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm begging the majority of you watching to not go down that road. We all love this stuff. It matters to us. You know, notice she really got the vibe of us. If you think I'm even a representative of the vibe of a guitar community, she got it. She put in the article. She's like, Phil's first guitar. Was this his current guitar? Is this. Because that's what I couldn't help but talk about. I should have just talked about like, here's why the market is on this and the market share. And by the way, Reverb has this data and this is why I could have said all that. I said, look, this is the thing we love. We're passionate about it. It matters to us. It's important to us. And Fender's important to us. They're probably one of the most important guitar companies in the world to most musicians. Leo Fender just didn't invent electric guitars. He didn't invent them at all. He came up with the process of making them mass produced. He invented the Rhodes piano, the keyboard. He invented the electric bass. I'm a bass player. He literally invented the thing I play on. He's not only massively powerful as the company Fender, but as music man, as gnl. He is iconic. He is someone who is revered. The product is revered. We care about this. I hope Fender understands this. By the way. I don't hate Fender like I said, I don't hate anybody. I disagree with Fender on this. Not with their. Not with the. Whether or not they own the shapes. All those arguments, that's for somebody else. That's a different argument for a different day. I disagree with the way they came across or came out out on this. I disagree with the aggressiveness of this. And I really think they don't understand how much. They basically fireballed this community for probably, hopefully not that long. But it could be. This could be the tone would debate for the next two years. I make content. You know how. You know how I look by the way I was talking. I know this is going to be a bummer video, but I'll change subject soon enough. You know, I was talking to a couple content creators this week, and we all were so depressed. I couldn't put out. I put out one video. I put out this Yamaha video. I. Dude, I can't even tell you guys how hard it was to push that video out because I was just so. I'm so depressed because all I think about is every time I make a guitar video of something I love, the comment sections are gonna be like, oh, I like that, Phil. I'm never gonna buy Fender. If I do a Fender video because you guys want one, then somebody's gonna be mad about that. They're gonna be mad at me for doing the thing I've been doing for years, sharing joy of guitar. And so, again, I hope as a community, we can all understand that we're all really on the same page, which is we love what we love, we're passionate about it, and I think there's room for everything. And I hope these companies figure it out, and I hope they adjust. Well, it looks like Fender did back off a little bit. Although, again, some of the things that make me sad is when Fender implies in their PR letter that, you know, hey, we never said destroy stuff. Well, you kind of. You did. You didn't kind of did you. Did you know, you were very aggressive. The. In fact, the. The. The verbiage on the first letter was very to the point. No one misunderstood what you said. No one understood it. Did you not mean it to be that aggressive? I hope now you've recanted a little bit of that. The other thing I want to talk about is another argument that I hear on the. On the. On the Internet about I hope the offender wins this lawsuit because it'll bring innovation. And it's always the same argument, which is like, every guitar is either a telly or a strat. Or Les Paul. Well, first of all, I like Strats, Tellies and Les Paul's, so. So there you go. But let me give you where I'm uniquely different than some. I have an addiction to what I call dead innovative guitars. This Dana scoop, was it a considered. It was guitar of the year in 92 at the NAMM show for the most innovative guitar. It's dead. The Parker Fly innovative guitar. It's dead. The Ibanez Maxis was Ibanez's first. Actually this is the very first guitar that Ivan has ever designed. That's a fact, by the way. Every guitar up until this guitar was a copy. This is the very first guitar Ivan has ever designed. They were so scared to design something new that they called it Maxis by Ivanez. They didn't want to put Ivan his name on it. By the way, this is their take on what they think a 335 is. This is a hollow body guitar. Believe it or not. These guitars died a miserable death. Why? Because as guitar players, we like Strats, we like Tellies, we like Les Pauls. But my point about innovation is just because you draw a different shape on a napkin, you ain't innovating. Innovation happened outside of the guitar builders. See, we have and we have in this industry a mod culture, a hot rod culture, if you will. I don't know cars, but I understand, I understand the car culture that mods are hot rods cars. Okay? We did the same thing in the guitar culture. Musicians took Fender Strats and they hot rodded them. They put Floyd Roses on them, they. They put humbuckers in them. They modified them. I talked about it a week ago that it was modifications to the three way switch. It wasn't. They didn't design a five way switch. People started cutting with like a knife, a little notch in the three way switches to mark where to get the switch to stop in the in between positions. Right. Musicians mod did modifications. We did so much modifications that some people became very good at it. Like Wayne Charvel Schecter Guitars. A lot of the guitar brands that Fender either owns now or is targeting because they don't own them. They were the people that modified guitars. That is innovation. That just because it's not a different shape, just because it's. Again, like I said, a shape is not innovation. Otherwise the Warlock is way more innovative than a Strat that has a better truss rod system or, or better tuning keys or a better stability of intonation or stability of tremolo or vibrato, whatever. You want to call it use. So my point is, is that we do have a mod culture here. We did celebrate that mod culture, and we did. A lot of brands did come from that mod culture, and it came the same way. If you read the story between. About Schachter guitars or like Wayne Charles, they were essentially. They're doing modifications or they were making parts, and then so many people were buying the same parts that they just started to go ahead and. And put the guitars together themselves. Again, this is not my argument that they have the right to do so. I'm not saying that everybody should be able to just do whatever they want. I will end on this, at least before I ask you guys some feedback questions. The last thing I told the reporter at the Wall Street Journal, which she said, give me a reason why Fenders should not be able to defend their ip. And I said, that's a lawyer thing. I don't know that. I don't even care. That's what I told her. I don't care about their ip. That's their problem. I care about this. As musicians, we all understand copyrights, whether you think you do or not. Copyright's the easiest one, I think, for most musicians to understand. Trademarks are a little tricky. Patents are definitely tricky, but copyright's easy. You write a song, you're right. Copyrights for art. Most of you write songs not professionally, but you write songs. You understand the concept. I wrote the song. When you write a song and then somebody copies your song or takes parts of that song, we understand what happens next. You're going to go to court, and what's going to happen is you're going to be then given either a writing credit or paid some kind of amount towards you. For instance, if Madonna says that Britney Spears took her song, they're going to go to court and Madonna's going to get credit for that song in some kind of payment. Madonna would never say. I don't. I don't want to say Madonna. Just. I just need the analogy. Okay, guys. We would all think it was crazy if a musician sent another musician a letter that said it read like this. I noticed your song sounds like my song. I want you to destroy all your albums. Recall all your albums from the record stores. Destroy them. Give me a list of all the record stores you sold your records to, and then pay me restitution and never play that song again. We would react the same way we did defender, like, what the hell just happened? So maybe I'm wrong, but I, at least I wanted to give you all the information I had. I have little highlights here. So I made sure I copy or copy covered all the things. Let's see. That's it. Okay. Feedback. If you're talking to me, put a question mark first and I'll be happy to go over any of the things I just discussed. Michael says, metallic. What's in that? Maybe. But then, you know, oh, Mike Jones says, not me, Phil. My music is open source. You're free to iterate on it. So. And again, that's a decision. You can make that decision. I think that's fair. I've talked about this many, many times. My know, your gear, logos and shirts and stuff. I have always said this. If anyone wants to make any of that personally for themselves, I'll. I'll never have a problem. Obviously, if you make it and sell it, I'd hope that you have the, the decency to call me and cut me in and give me a little bit, since it's mine. But I, I, like I said, I would rather I, I, I just don't. I want to be able to make my. What I want to do, and I don't want anybody to stop me from doing it. And that's why I trademark certain things. And I'm smart enough to understand. My attorney even told me, you lose your trademark when you talk like that. Like, fine. Again, this wasn't about stopping anybody. I was just trying to prevent anyone from trying to stop me. I was protecting myself. And, and that's all I wanted. So I understand that. Oh, T Bone says at this point, I think T Bone said that at this point there's no new music. You know, every once in a while there's something new. Just like with guitar, there's something new. I mean, it's gonna be hard to come up with new innovations when so much has been done, but it still gets done. So Jerry says you can't copyright a shape as opposed to writing a song. You know, that's the argument, by the way. Those are the arguments that I just, I don't know how, I don't know how I feel about that. What I mean by that is I don't have strong opinions either way. I think everything is case by case. So what I mean by that is so on the record, I feel like when I see a silver sky, I don't see a Fender. That's how I feel. I know technically because of being a guitar tech and whatever you want to call it, a silver sky, I don't see a Strat. When I see certain guitars Like, I'll use a good example. When I see certain guitars that look just like the strap body, same pickups and stuff, do I see a Strat? Sure, until I see the headstock's different or certain other features are different. And if the argument is if you just look at the one thing, then what would you think? My brain doesn't work that way. I don't look at a puzzle. I don't look at one piece of a puzzle and go, this is definitely a giraffe. I can tell because look, I can see its hoof, right? Like, I need the whole picture. That's just how I would do it. If I was in court and somebody tried to sell me a silhouette like a black cardboard cutout and say, hey, what is this? I'd be like, I don't know. And I wouldn't want to guess. Not if it meant something to someone. In other words, if there was going to be a repercussion to somebody, I would want more information. I mean, I want more information just because I'm in. What? Hello? Hold on. Okay, so they're saying the audio is good. Now we'll see if. If the audio is off, then I guess the audio is off. I don't know why. Nothing in our system shows that the audio is bad. Okay, so. Oh, somebody says, refresh your screens. Okay. Yeah, there was, for a second there was an Internet hiccup that I saw because I have a little. So you guys know I have a little screen here and it tells me how good the Internet strength is and what's going on. And it did tell me that it getting bogged down. So when it got bogged down, you probably got a delay out of it. Okay. I don't know what we were talking about. So I guess it's night time for a new subject because I'm definitely off track now. Let's see any other last minute things on the this subject offender. Did we solve the Internet's problems yet? Is it over? Can we all be nice to each other and play nicely? It'll be really interesting to see how this pans out. The bad news for you guys is I think what's going to happen over the next few weeks and months is you're going to hear absolutely nothing. And just lots of people on YouTube are going to be giving their guesses. You know, that's fine if they want to do that. I'm just like last week when I didn't talk about anything because there was nothing I could update you on. I'm not going to talk about this unless there's an update. So if that makes Just. You guys be aware of that. If I talk about this, it's because I have new information other than what I just gave you. The. Yeah, that's. That's that. Okay, are we ready for another subject? Somebody said the silver sky. So. Kyle wants to know, do you think it's because Fender doesn't want to improve? I don't think that's the case. You know, I know people bag on Fender. I do too. For. You know, their guitar is the same guitar. They don't innovate. There is. There are truths. Let me give you a truth for me, which is there are guitars that I own that are Fender. Like, I wouldn't own them if Fender made a version of them. When I say version, I don't mean a color. I mean like feature set, like Standstill frets. Right? I like. I, I don't need. Like I told you guys before, I don't need to have stainless steel frets, but I do prefer them. And I do prefer them on a vintage style guitar. So there are cool guitars where it's like, like the SIR classic to me. The idea of making a Strat look beat up and old, but having modern features like a modern truss rod that I don't have to take the neck off of and stainless the frets, it makes sense that it works. It. What doesn't make sense is. Well, it doesn't make sense. It's sad that Fender doesn't recognize that there's a customer base. Let me, Let me explain why I believe Fender doesn't do the thing that you're. That you. A lot of you are asking when, when people say that SIR makes a better guitar than Fender, okay, that's accurate. But they also don't make a guitar as affordable as Fender. So again, arguments are fun because they can be pointed in different directions and all of a sudden make more sense. Depending what you're saying to me, arguably, Fender makes a much better overall quality instrument for price than SIR does. Without a doubt, there is no SIR guitar that per dollar to dollar makes total economic sense. In other words, the idea that you need $3,000 to get a good guitar is kind of silly. You can find good Fenders that are as good for hundreds of dollars. It's. I mean, I, I told you guys, I've taken these guitars apart. I hear the arguments all the time. I just unfortunately can't agree with them all. When somebody says, hey, these knockoff Chinese guitars for 200 are garbage, I Don't believe they're garbage. Some are. Some are garbage. Some are way better than they should be at that price. Point to the scary. But then when we talk about high end guitars, high end guitars to me are always been about being cool, being unique, or being specific. In other words, what's nice about a guitar, like a, you know, a cool custom shop guitar is no one has it. So you feel unique on stage. To me. To me, I'm. If I get on stage, I like to know that my nose. I don't have snot running down my nose. I want to make sure my hair is right. Just kidding. Basically what I'm saying is I like to walk upstage confident. And if confidence comes from a guitar that I believe is really good and it's not going to go out of tune and it feels good, that's. That's a helper for me. So I could argue that that guitar is important to me that way. Could I go on stage with a guitar that's not as good? Absolutely. Could I pull off a thing? Absolutely. I do content all the time. Sometimes on a, you know, on a rubber band and a camera stuck to a wall. I mean, I've pulled off content and all the ways you can pull it off. But is it much better when you have a nice camera mount and you know that it's not going to, you know, shake? Like when I'm shaking this desk? Yeah. There's things in that. Does that give me more confidence? Just now when everybody's saying the system's off, I have a little bit more confidence now. Back when that used to happen, I'd be like, oh, no, tell me when the audio is back on. I have so much monitoring right now that I could tell immediately, like, nope, we have audio. I can see it in three different points. It's actually telling. I see the audio that you receive. I see the audio on my computer and I see the audio being sent and I have a meter on each one. That gives me more confidence. Do you need that stuff? No. Can you pull off a show like this with literally an iPhone? Absolutely. Absolutely. Back to surguitars and this argument. Do you need a surguitar? Do you need a circuitar? No. Is it better than Fender? It is better than most Fenders because it's made to be. So why if SIR makes a better guitar than Fender? This is the argument that's I see presented sometimes. If you take a SIR classic, because that's a Fender guitar for sure. Fender esque. If you say, hey, how come this sir guitar good is not magic. John sir does not have a magic wand. He's not Harry Potter of guitar, okay? He's a very smart person. He's very good at what he does. But he's not a magician. Right? So what I mean by that, or a wizard, I guess I should say, since I said Harry Potter. What I mean by that is how he makes a surguitar great is he puts quality materials on it, like stainless steel frets. He has the team member or the employee spend extra time polishing and leveling those frets. He uses better quality pieces of wood. In other words, he sources a better piece of wood. He treats the wood better. In other words, he rami roasts it or whatever his process. He's picking better componentry. He's assembling the guitar and he's putting more time into it. Vendor could do that too. They just can't. They can because of volume. They could get the price down a little bit. But the problem with that is the volume will never come because there's 1900. Wow, there's 1900 people there. 1900 of you here today. The amount of you in the market for $3,000 guitars is probably 3, 400 people maybe, right? So it doesn't matter if Fender makes a great $3,000 guitar. There's not a big market for it. What Fender has mastered over the years and why I've always loved Fender is Fender has mastered the working person's guitar musicians around the world, which is why it's horrible when they're messing with this. Because you know what's not fair is a musician trying to stand on a stage in France or Brazil or Kentucky and somebody yelling Fender sucks. Cease and desist. You know, who needs that shit in their life? They're just trying to perform for you and they just bought a product that works. Most musicians that I've interviewed focus on things that work the right. It's like, that's. They're like, this guitar works and it performs and it does its job. And Fender is I consider one of the masters of making a lot of guitars really good for an obtainable price point. That's what they do. That's great. Can they make a guitar as good as some of these high end boutique companies? They can, but there's no, there's no reason to because they can't expand the market and it's not something you're interested in. So that's, that's the point. Do, does my Fender custom shop have issues? Yes. Do people complain about that? Yes. Why does it have issues? Because they don't, in my opinion. They don't use the same kind of components and they don't spend the same kind of time as sir. So I always kind of upfront about everything. Jeff Keys a lot once asked me, he said, he said, phil, he said, people tell me, sir necks are better than mine. What do you think? And I said, well, it's definitely true. It's definitely, sir neck is better than yours. I go, you want to know why? And he did. He wanted to know why. He's like, why? And I go, how long do you spend on your neck? Work on your fretwork? He says, about 35 minutes. I go, they spent an hour. So apparently magic is 25 more minutes. And his face was great. Was like, not like, why didn't I think of that? He was like, wow, that would be a lot less guitars out a day. Yep. Well, that's why they get four grand and that's why you get 2500. Right. Because you can sell more. And if their frets are need extra love, I guess somebody can finish themselves and pocket the thousand dollars they, they saved going your route. So yeah, so that's, that's the whole point is where I'm trying to make sure. Okay, anything else before we go on? Somebody said, no math. Cassie said, hey, Phil. Did a shout out to my home state. Kentucky. Yeah. Got bourbon, man. Kentucky bourbon. Kevin says pure has fairy dust. No, come on, man. It's not fairy dust in their pickups. It's unicorn dust. Unicorn dust is what everybody uses and it's unicorn. Okay, let's see. Okay. And then again I'm reading some comments and some of you guys are talking to each other and I'll get confused. So again, if you're talking to me, put the question mark at the beginning. So I know it was like either the subject or, okay, this is from Jersey. Jersey something. Jersey settle. Okay. He says, phil, do you feel like the long term impact defender will be minimal PR damage, especially with Gibson lawsuits and no PR damage, or does modern social media a create impact? I believe that social media is small. It's a, it's a micro universe. First of all, if you, you know, I, I would tell you like, like if I was the CEO of Fender and I wouldn't go on Reddit, right? Like if I knew him, right? Like if like say Gabe or Michael, the CEOs of Sweetwater Guitar center was in this situation and, and I, because I know them, I would probably as a friend to them and a YouTube person, another person who understands social media. I would reach out and say, hey, I would stay off your phone for about two weeks. I wouldn't even look at it. Like, just go get a burner, flip phone and just stay off social media as long as you're not on it. It's not even real. It's like nothing on Reddit, nothing on YouTube, no video. None of that's real. So stay off it. And it's not as big as it seems. It seems big because you see numbers that seem big, you know, thousands of. But remember, we live in a world of millions of people, you know, tens and hundreds of millions of people, you know, thousands aren't enough. So what do I think social media? I think social media is an indicator, sometimes a barometer of what the collective, the whole community thinks. But in Fender's case, I believe that most guitar players aren't that die hard like us. You guys are hanging out on Friday talking about this stuff with me. So, you know we're all nuts, right? Majority guitar players, I would say 9 out of 10 are not this crazy. The reason I believe that is because if you look at any content that I create or people like me create, we can't ever break a certain size channel. Like, if you do guitar lessons, you can get a million subs. If you analyze music, you get a million subs. A gear channel. I don't even know. Is there a gear review channel with a million subs? I don't even think it exists. I think there's some that got close. These enchantment. Like 700,000. Daryl Bronze. Like 700,000. They're, I think Old England. Did he break a million? Like, it's really hard because there's just not that many geeks out there like this. There's just. We're. We're the minority of the guitar collective community, right? Most of them. Most guitar players. And I know that the reason I believe this is because I used to repair guitars and most people didn't give a crap to know anything what I did. So you guys are like, phil, how do you adjust that? Why did you do this? How do you do this? The majority of customers that came in and would say, hey, my action sucks and I like to play better. And then I would hand them their guitar and they go, great. And I go, here's what I did. And they go, whatevs, here you go. And they throw the cash on the camera and leave, like, so most people are walking into music stores right now, Guitar centers, ordering on Sweetwater. They don't even know about the Fender debacle and they don't care. And even if they heard it, they'd be like, what's happening? I'm like, well, they were mean to a small builder. And then everybody's gonna, they're gonna go, okay, whatevers, right? So I believe that in the grand scheme, scheme of things, it's not a, it's not a big burn for Fender. Now in the small community, us, the other. The problem that Fender has is that although the small community is small, small meaning hundreds of thousands if not a couple million guitar players, we're die hard, dedicated, fanatical, and we don't seem to let go. The, the tone would debate was dead before I started my channel. This is FYI, little fun fact for you. It was already over. People already died off of that subject. When I made my very first video ever in 2014, like, I know this because when I started making videos, I made a tone with video. No one cared because it was already over. Think about this. It's been over for 22 years. But yet in this community, somebody said, we'll bring it up, but no one's in a music store this today. Well, you know what I mean, majority wise, no one's in a muse store going, what's with tone with debate. Where are we at? So I think, I think as the whole, it'll be fine in the collective of us, it's going to be a Thorn and Fender side for a while. I think a lot of people are not going to care. Why that's another problem is, is fanatical guitar players tend to be fanatical guitar buyers. Which is what I was telling some friends who own guitar companies about this because I got calls, I got a lot of calls. As I said, I was getting stressed out. I got a lot of calls from a lot of small guitar builders to say that it was, it was absolutely horrific. I'm trying not to actually tear up now. I'm serious. It was bad. Small builders who have will never be on Fender's radar. Okay? I mean never Fender will ever know they exist, who really don't even make like a Fender Strat copy. Were calling me like, you think I, you think you're gonna serve me? Because all they, they know is if you get that letter, you got to get an attorney. And I'm talking about builders that make, I don't know, 20 grand a year, 50 grand a year if they're lucky. They see a letter like that and they go, what do I do? I get. They and if you don't understand the law, this is what they think. They're like, vendor sends me a letter, then I don't respond, then I owe them a quarter million dollars. And then I work for the. I go get what a job? I doordash for the next 20 years, paying Fender because I made a Strat that's kind of like theirs of guitar. That's kind of thing. And they were sending me pictures. What do you think this. Is this too close? I'm like, I don't know. And how horrible is that? Because. Because I'm a guitar instructor and at this point, I instruct people about how guitars work, obviously, how guitars are built, how guitars are fixed. And when I can't answer a question like that. That's how confusing and messed up this is. It was really. It was really. It's been a brutal couple weeks. So I think Fender has definitely put a scar on the guitar community. And how long does that scar take to heal? I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know. Stuff like this unfortunately lingers for years and. But will that hurt a behemoth company of that size? I don't know. I don't know. If they lose a couple million, do they really care? I don't know. I just don't know. So, you know, all I can do is this. You know, I've watched a lot of companies step in shit, so to speak, excuse my language. And I've seen some of them redeem it, like champs, you know, come back. And some of it takes a while, you know, but you never know. What I will tell you is this. In my opinion, the. The press release that Fender gave to Guitar World was seriously lacking the apology that I think we all wanted, which was not that they don't have a right to defend their intellectual property. Again, I'm not going off the. And I can hear somebody right now, but you feel you don't understand. They lost in 2009. I'm like, look, I don't care. I'm just telling you, like, I'm not here to argue what they are able to do or not do. They. They live a life just like I live a life like you live a life. Like, I really felt like they really should have acknowledged what we were upset about. We were upset that they would go so crazy, so extreme and not be reasonable. And then they came back and they go, no, you guys misunderstand. We're being reasonable. We didn't misunderstand. Why don't you just apologize? It's not a big deal. You could just say, look, we went a little crazy, you know, and second read of the letter, we could see why you guys all reacted this way. Let me be very clear, right? And then be clear. But I guess my, my gut says we'll never get that. What we'll get is they'll do some back end deals. Somebody asked in the early part of the comments there was early rise of question. Somebody says that the, the press release says. Let's go back to it said that the bird and bird response. Many, many of the address of the initial communication have reached out to us and have entered into reasonable settlement discussions on the premises that they will discontinue making. Okay, I don't know who that is. I don't know who that is that has done that. And, and sadly if I did, I wouldn't tell you. But I. But I would, but I would at least tell you. I couldn't say, right? But I, I just don't know. I do know that a. A company told me that they sent a request for an extension to give more time to, to do it. So I was like, okay, there's that. But I don't know. I don't know who would have worked with them already. And, but here's the, here's what I got to tell you. I wouldn't be upset if anyone worked with Fender because again, I wouldn't be upset with them. If you're upset with Fender, that's fine. But I'm saying I wouldn't be upset for a company wanting to adjust because here's why. You definitely don't want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting a thing that you don't even make any money on, right? I can't tell you that. Who, but one person who, who got served told me they, they had like three guitars. They're like, they made like, I made like three guitars. So it's like, like, you know, I mean, it's, it's kind of funny when you think of it that way, right? You're like, I mean, if you, you know, be honest, guys, you know, it's not even, you know, it's not. It may not be a big deal to them, but we'll see. But so anyways, I think we've killed it. Did we beat the death this topic to death? This is the longest I've ever been on one topic. This is pretty crazy. All right, let's jump topics and go to something hopefully fun. Amanda is always awesome at grabbing something fun and she grabbed me Phil Why does Fender. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Okay, the Stav staff cases. Hey, this is Kimber Amanda Marshall SV20H or the Friat PS2 or Twink Tone King Royalist, low volume bedroom player. But yearn for that plexi dimed explosive kind of sound. I. I don't know the fry at PS2. So first of all, I gotta eliminate that because I've never even heard one. So I don't know, can't give you any feedback. And sorry, it's hardly enough. Out of the Marshall SV20 versus the Tone King Royalist. Out of those two, I'd pick the Tone King Royalist, but keep in mind it's 2x the price. But just personally, that's what I preferred. Out of the two, however, the option that. I mean, I'm just going to tell you what I did. In those options, I have the synergy with the Plexi module and I would even argue maybe get the 800 module better. But even if you get the Plexi. Just something to think about. Just because. So it's a. It's a good option. But I can tell you this. I don't know the Fry, but the other two amps, both of them are good. So if money's no object, go royalist. And if money. If you're trying to be money conscious there that Marshall, you'll never be unhappy with the Marshall. So it's just there's. I think there's things that are slightly better in some ways. Your pal says. Hey, Phil, what are your top 10 synergy modules? I have one top. Okay, so here's my favorite. I don't have 10. So out of the Synergy modules, my absolute favorite is the JCMA 100 by far. It's. I don't know what it is other than I know it's new tech and it's got a third preamp tube and stuff. It's just absolutely just amazing. And I personally, for me, that and the clean channel and the Synergy 20, I could use that for anything. And I'm. I'm fine. It's literally what killed my kemper. For me, it's like, oh, I don't need the kemper powered kemper anymore because I have three tones out of that. Out of that amp, I can get a bluesy rock tone. I can get a harder aggressive metal. Excuse me, am I hiccupping metal tone? As long as I use a boost pedal. And then of course as a clean tone, then next one would be the Saldano, the Slo I really like that module. I like the Freedman Deluxe module. And I'm trying to think, I mean there's a bunch of modules, but I'm just telling you my faves and, and I can't give you 10. I don't know if there's 10. I have the, the 6505. I like it. I have the, the two fender modules, the basement and the Tweed Deluxe kind of thing. Those are nice too as well. They're all good. I don't know if I played a bad module, but I'm just. How about this? Why don't I just see if I can give you my top five. And the top five in order would be the JCMA 800. Then I would say the Freeman Deluxe, then I'd say the Saldano, then I would say the Plexi, the Marshall Plexi. And the fourth one I'm gonna say for me, Oh, I don't know, I mean I feel like I have to have. I had those four. I'm covered because I know some of you gonna say, what about the Tone King? What about, oh, you know what, the Dr. Z. That's my five for sure. And the reason is some of you guys are gonna say, what about these? I've already said I really like the clean channel on the Synergy 20 head. So I don't really need a clean module. So that's why like to me, I really like the Dr. Z. So those are the five modules I like. So let's see, double steps this came from. Man who says, hey, are PCB amps worth buying as a lifetime purchase or save up for hand wired? You look, the argument is that hand wired can be repaired easily. I think it totally makes sense. Here's my thing. I'll give you the advice I was given in my life that failed for me is the advice I'm going to give you. Not that same advice I'm going to give you. Why that advice? Basically every time I bought a car when I was younger to now, I have friends that are always like, don't get power windows. Just one more thing to break. Don't get power seats. Just one more thing to break. Don't get powered this. Don't. Don't get automatic transmission. Just one more thing to break. What I learned for myself is I don't keep a car long enough. I just don't run them down. I look, if you're the kind of personality buys a car and runs it into 200,000 miles, good for you. Then maybe those Those, those, that piece of advice is very good for you. For me, owning a car for three or four years, five years tops, usually I'm done with it. You know, that's what I tend to do. I tend to, I'm trying to think the longest I've owned a car ever in my life, maybe five years, maybe once. And I don't, I couldn't even tell you my wife's own car is much longer than that. But I'm, you know, once I'm kind of bored with it, I'm done. So my point is that advice never really did any good for me because I don't keep a car long enough to know when that thing's going to break, is going to break. So. Same thing with amplifiers. If you think you're buying an amp and you need it to last forever, keep in mind that eventually at some point the, the, the caps gonna have to be replaced or whatever. Certain parts are gonna be replaced on the amp anyways. But if it's hand wire, it's gonna be easier. That's fine. Me personally, I mean, I can tell you this. What's the. How about this? The oldest amp I own. Let's talk about that. The oldest amp I own is a Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb that I bought used in 2000, probably 14. Right. So because it's. Before I had my YouTube channel around that time. So I bought it used from a customer and it has to be, because it's ragged. It had to be at least 5 years old. So it's 20 years old. Ish and fine. Is that right? Did I just be wrong? Did I just take 20 out of the math? What's my math? 12 years plus five. So, okay, sorry, 17 years old. So it's like 17 years old. It's fine. So, I mean, I don't know, I don't specifically buy hand wired amps for their durability feature or anything like that. I don't buy anything for any of that because I don't gig with an amp on a regular. Like, I'm not beating an amp to death on the regular if I was. And to be honest with you, unless I was, I was trying to recreate a sound on a hit song that I wrote, you know, where it's really important to me that they audience hears the same amp that I played on the record. That stuff doesn't apply to me. So to me, if you told me, phil, you're gonna go on the road and you're gonna pick an amp, I'd probably Pick a hot rod deluxe and a good pedal. I pick something that really that every time I use it it works and then when it breaks I just get another one. So. Because I wouldn't have the time for it to be down being repaired even if it could be fixed. So that'd be my logic. So that's some 2 cents on that. I've played and own amps that are hand wired. I've played amps that are not hand wired and I've found this to be the only consistent in my life. Good components are better but that those good components can be put into anything. So but behind me today I have a hand wired magnetone amp and I have a PC board based Marshall JTM 45. So you know, you can see and I think same price, I think these are about the same price I think for these amps. So it's not like I was, I was picking this one, you know, was more expensive than this one. I just, these are the two amps I liked. So I didn't specifically seek out things like that. So it's, it's up to you. I don't, I guess I want to say is I don't live in fear of things breaking. What I usually think about is this. When I buy something that's super expensive like an amp or guitar and all I think about is it's going to get chipped or broken. I don't end up keeping it anyways because here's why I don't, I don't want to worry about that stuff. I just want to be like broke. Okay, I'll move on with my life, you know. You know, because here's what I can tell you. Pretty much anything that's ever broke, which is not very many things for me, if it broke, I always pay to have it fixed and then I sell it off because I don't want to deal with it again. So I'm just like, nah, I don't want that. No repeat of that experience. So I'm not a real big fan. As someone who repair guitars for 20 years, I'm not a big fan of Amtex because by the way, when I say not a fan, I mean they're great and they do great work. I'm saying their turnaround times, guitar techs, turnaround times are horrible. Amp techs are like you give an amp, you know. You know, let me put it this way. You could give someone an amp and your wife could have a baby before you get the amp back sometimes. So it's not something I want to do if I can avoid it. So whether it's hand wired or not. Okay, here's a good question. So it says, I have an acoustic left handed guitar that I bought for, for the family that I want to make right handed. What can I do to eliminate the dots on the other side of the neck? Your bigger problem is the bridge. So you understand that acoustic guitars, a classical guitar, you can flip it. It's great because usually the bridge is flat, in other words, you know, it's perpendicular, whatever, flat to the, to the, to the nut. It's just not, it's not an angle. The bridge saddle on your acoustic is at an angle. So it's so your right handed guitar and left hand guitar like they're absolutely in, you know, their opposite direction you need to go. It's going to be almost impossible to get that intonation right. Especially once you start going up, you know, especially past like the third to fifth fret, you know, even as soon as you start passing that stuff. But even chords are going to be pretty messy. So usually when somebody came in with a right handed or left handed acoustic guitar and said hey, we need to split, the first thing I tell them is like I gotta, there are options. I can pull the bridge off, steam it off, pull off the bridge, glue a new bridge on with a new saddle in the right direction and then cut a new nut. And that's the first problem. You know, we'll get past that. But. And usually it doesn't make sense to do that financially speaking. If it was me. If you have the option, you're better off putting that guitar on Craigslist or Offerup or somewhere local, you know, and if it's an expensive guitar, put it on reverb or you know, gear exchange, wherever you want to sell stuff and sell it off and just get the right guitar. It's just not worth the effort to do, to flip it and stuff because again, you need a new nut, you need a new bridge and saddle or at least they need the saddle cut and put the other way and you're gonna have a mark in your bridge. And then. Then what? I didn't even read the rest of your problem. The problem with the, the inlays. What was that with apparently want to make right hand emulate the dots. That's not even. Yeah, that's, that's. You have those problems before you get to that problem. So that's just my two cents on that. The Sublime Ibanez says. Phil, what's the basic wire you use for guitar Wires. Every place I look, it seems to have cloth. Vintage. When I just want basic, I think black wire. Okay. I use vintage cloth. I've talked about this before. It's just out of habit. I don't necessarily attribute any special qualities to the cloth. Braided wire, the cloth wire. I switched cloth wire because I could buy it in bulk. Wheels, spools, I don't know. I say wheels, spools. And I found that customers, when they came in and had me do wire work, they would request cloth, but they never request the other way around. They never said, hey, I want the, you know, plastic wire or whatever you want to call it. And so I was like, oh, okay. So it just made my life easier because no one seemed to care. And although it's slightly more expensive, I felt like it was just easier to have the better quality wire or whatever. The wire that people would ask for and not ask for. It just made my life easier. So that's why I do it that way. But buying wire, I mean, you know, you can go online and find whatever wire works best for you. I don't specifically. There's no specific wire that I'm. That I use. That's. That I think is more important than others. Again, it's. It's up to you. Right? Okay. So Gibson 7289 says now for some completely different. Okay, cool. Can I still get my Les Paul? I think it's refretted with late 70s fret wire they used. They used to use the size. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to get the exact wire because they won't have it anymore. They'll have a version of it. So you just have to. Yeah, you absolutely can do that. If you take it in to have done. What will happen is the person who's going to refret your guitar is going to pull a fret. Generally speaking, they usually have the same calipers you see me use from Stu Mac. It has a little notch cut in them, and that way we can measure the fret wire. What gets tricky though, is you have to do a little investigating when you do this because you've. Obviously the guitar is a little older, so the fret wire has been leveled a couple times and it's gonna be a lot lower. But usually I can figure it out. You know, you can just take a look at it, do a little online research and usually go, okay, this is the fret wire they're using and you can get it as close as possible. So yes, it absolutely can be done it from an Actual spool from that wire from those years. I don't know if that's possible, but you can definitely get the same size or the. The original spec specification wire. Absolutely can do that. So Dallas SK says, hey, I'm new to guitar and I'm in my early 50s. He says, I've really gotten into clean with delay chorus, dreamy sounds. Would a night. Would a 1988 Princeton chorus be a fit sound wise? Yeah, I mean, it's got that sound, but if you have a chorus pedal, you don't really need to that amp. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you like those. You know, to me, when I think of like the. You said dreamy sounds delay chorus, you know, Right. I'm like, yeah, I'd say a 1988 Princeton chorus would work wise. It's gonna be that amp. Right? That amp is a solid state. Right. Problem is, they use the Princeton name for so many amplifiers and over the years. So there's ones that have reverb, there's some that have tremolo and reverb. Some. Some have just tremolo. Some have no tremolo, no reverb. Some are solid state. She like, okay, so looking at it right now, what I'm seeing is. And this I'm gonna show you so that you see what I see. This is what I'm seeing. This is the Fender Princeton Chorus guitar combo for 199. A guitar center in good condition. And it's got. So it's stereo course because I got two speakers. It is solid state. It's gotta be old enough. It's gotta be made in the usa, right? Can you see? Oh, it's made in Mexico. No, not as old as I thought. So. But yeah, that would be a good amp. Sure. Okay, let's see what else Robbie Trash says. Fun topic. How many petals are too many pedals? When combining your preamp effect and your effects loop on your board. I know that when you really get into pedals and you get those giant monstrous boards, then they start doing those. Those like the gig rig kind of things where it's all loopers and changers and all that stuff because they're. You know, it just degrades the signal having so many, you know, the signal going through so many pedals, even if some are buffered and some are not buffered. So my issue is I'm just not that of pedal fanatic that waste. The biggest pedal board I've ever owned in my life is currently what I have right now. And how many pedals are there 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 petals as by far the most pedals I've ever had on a board. And I don't know why I got a pedal board and made it that big right now, but that's the most I've ever used. And I'm not using anything special. So, you know, I'm just running everything through it. If it's. It's darkening the sound of the amp, I just brighten the amp up a little bit. It's fine. I, I do have a boss pedal on there, so that's my buffered pedal. I don't specifically have a buffered pedal, but the boss pedals are generally buffered. So I, I like boss pedals, and there's usually rare for me not to have one on the board. So I have one on the board right now. Something. No, little fun fact, in case you're curious. Boss pedals are buffered, which helps kind of push the, you know, push the signal. So obviously it doesn't get. You don't lose all those high frequencies, but it doesn't. Your pedal, your boss pedal doesn't need to. If it's just plugged in and on the board, that's enough. Just as long as it's there. So let's see. Pop stop says you get rid of a car because you're bored of it. Yeah, I mean, it's more than that, but, yeah, generally speaking, that's the way I am. Yeah. Like I said, my wife is different. My wife buys a car and then she drives it and, you know, and for a long, long time I'm, well, let's back up. Let's back up here. So we're good. I don't even need a car. So I went like three years without a car during COVID Because I don't, I don't. Obviously, I work from home, and my wife and I pretty much do everything together, so I don't need a second car. So I usually have a pickup truck. And it's because, like I said, I, I had one. Every couple years I get a different one. And then during COVID I was like, well, we're not. Definitely not going anywhere. So I, I, we got rid of it, and then I didn't have anything, and then I decided to get another one again. So. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't have a. Need one. So that's why I say bored of it. I don't really have a need for them. Generally, when I get to a certain amount of Miles, everybody's different, but just say, I know how to do it. I, I usually buy my car, I trade in my old one for my new one and then I buy it new and then I put a certain amount of miles on it. And then when it's a certain amount of miles, that's when I say I'm bored of it. I'm like, no, it's time for it to trade. Because I, I'll get the most amount for my trade value and move on. So I know that always if you're like half my friends, you're gonna have opinions about that. They always have to be Phil. No, you have to buy used. All about value. This. I'm, that's what I'm trying to explain to you. I'm not buying cars. And just so you know, my current truck is probably my favorite car I've owned in years and years and years. And I've had it now for the next week will be two years. And this is the most miles I've ever put on a car in my life. I'm not exaggerating when I. Yeah, in my life. Well, besides maybe when I was a teenager, which, it will have 15,000 miles on it. So seven and a half, 7,500 miles each year. That's a lot. That's double my normal. So my last truck I traded in, I don't even think I did 4,000 miles a year. So Shadow Smirk said just lease. Yes, I see. I told you guys. Everybody's going to have a thing now. Like my friends. What? This is what you got to do. This is what you do. It's fine. I, I got to tell you, everybody's different. I don't have car payments. I just take my truck when I'm done, like I said. And it's low on the mileage and I just trade it in and get the different. I pay the difference and I leave. There's usually not a big difference in payment or payment. There's not a difference in thing. What do you call it? The balance. I usually don't pay a whole lot of difference in balance. Okay. YOLO says anyways, I just want to know if I should replace the nut on my SG with bone or tusk. You know, I prefer bone but not for any tonal reasons or specific quality reasons. I just like working with it. It's something I material I like better quality wise. I think they're both good quality. I own both and I would never flip one for the other ones. If I had a guitar with a bone Nut, I don't ever put a tusk on it. And if I have a tusk nut, I don't ever put bone. So nothing on that sparks me. I will tell you that for most people tusk is going to be far easier. So I used to do tusk nuts and graphite. I like graphite too, by the way, which tusk is essentially made by the same company that the graphite company makes it. They use the company slotted, which is nice, and they're easy to manipulate and, and sand and move around and again it's easy. And so I used to do that for years and years and years. And then one day when I met Neil Moser, he gave me a cow femur. He takes cow femurs and he dries them out and then he makes bone nuts out of them. And he gave me some of this material and it was a good amount of piece that it would create a bunch of guitar nuts. And so I, I go, oh, I got to make a bunch of guitar nuts out of this because Neil Moser just gave me a cow femur. You're like, you know, that's cool, it's cool thing. It's like in the geeky world in my brain that's like, I don't know, that's like as big as it gets, you know? Right. So, so I started making a lot of nuts with it. And then I go, you know what? This is actually easier to where I found it was easier to start with a blank, a piece of bone and just craft it that way. It was just fast. I got faster and easier than doing a pretty pre made nut. But I would say most people would be you. Most people would be better off using the tusk for efficiency and ease. But just, just my two cents. Let's see, let's do this one. You know. Oh, this is a great question because I did it and I know. Okay, so step Van Joe says, hey Phil, have you ever disassembled a Grover tuner to clean it and add grease? And was it worth the effort? As my Les Paul had one tuner that feels kind of choppy. I did twice. I have disassembled a Grover tuner and it was a nightmare. And both were, I don't want to say vintage, but you understand, very old Les Paul's and the customer wanted me to do that and it was a nightmare. And I don't remember. I'm going to try and think of it. There was a video even back then where I found online and there was a guy walking through A process to do it a little easier. And I did it, and it worked, but I haven't done it now. One thing, I know you probably checked this, but just want to be on the same page. One thing you want to check when you're. When your tuners are getting loose or sloppy or messy, is that, yes, the gear can be wearing out. Yes, the gear can lose grease. But when they're sealed, it's really hard for that grease to dry up and get out of there. But there is usually a nylon washer. So the way your tuner would work is there's going to be the tuner, the head, and then there's going to be a nylon washer on that. So you want to make sure sometimes that gets worn down, right? Or it gets friction. So sometimes just taking the screwdriver, taking the screw out, pulling the tuner, the tuning head off, and putting a little grease on the nylon washer or just replacing that nylon washer is a big difference. And also sometimes just adjusting that screw. And again, you probably already did that. I just want to, you know, make sure that we're all on the same page. Let's see. Muddled Burrow says, is the bad cat pure path worth it, since there's no speaker color behind it. So I believe the cat, the bad cat pure path, that is their attenuator. Right? And analog speaker simulator. Right. What's funny about that is. John, the owner, was telling me about it once, and he was really excited about it. He was like. He spent a lot of time. I believe Bruce Egnator worked with him on this. I thought that's what I remember. Bruce Egnator helped develop it or developed some of it, or all of it. I don't know. He was part of it. This is it. Let's just show. And he was super excited. I have not tried it. I have a friend, ironically enough, who got one. I don't know how he got one, but he had one. And he goes, you want it? You can have it. And at the time was like, no, I'm good. But it didn't occur to me. I'm like, oh, I could have done a video with it. At the time, I was like, I don't need it. I use the ox. So. But I have not tried it. So I don't know. Let me just tell you, I have two things to say about it, considering I haven't tried one. So take it for whatever that's worth. One, I think John at Badcat is a great guy, and he's super Smart. And obviously Bruce Igniter is awesome too. So if somebody's gonna pull it off, I think they're. They're the guys. That being said, I've tried so many versions of these, you know, non powered attenuators that also are, you know, speaker similar things. They've all been pretty not great. So my gut is like, it's probably gonna not be great. But I'm like, but also with those two guys, how could it not be great? So I. It's my. My two cents. So with no experience with it, I can't tell you. I can't recommend it, but I can tell you, I mean, Guitar center has. Oh, you know what? Guitar center has one used. So look at that. Guitar center used. $395. Not a huge savings from new. But obviously they have a great return policy so you can always get it and check it out. So pretty cool. But. And it says open box. Bad cat. So I don't even know if it's used. It's just open box. Oh, open box. Like new. Oh, dude, it's not even, it's not even used. So it's got a warranty. So that's the way to go. Yeah. So if you want to try it, it's a pretty low risk if you're. If you. Because you don't even have to go to a guitar center, you can have it shipped to your house and if you have an issue, you can return it in the mail or take it back to your local guitar center. Let's go back to the chat. Brian wants to know any update on the production. Northern Lights Pickups. We'll be doing a soft launch next month. That's what we believe is happening. What does soft launch mean? It means the patron members get first. First to see them. So what will happen is, is. And this isn't like a ploy to get you to run out and become a patron member. Okay. Because here's why. It's not like it's limited edition. You're not gonna get any. What will happen is we'll. Because obviously they support the channel. It's a way to say thank you. Channel members and patrons will let them know, here they're in, we have them and we can, you know, so they'll let them buy them. I believe the first order, the first amount of them is enough that they can't buy them all up. And then we'll go right to you guys and we'll announce it right here on the podcast and everything will go on easy peasy. However, if for some reason, they are crazy and ravenous and buy them all up, which I can't imagine that then I can tell you before. Before they even land. We already have more orders, so. So. And it's not a limited edition. It's just. Look, I will. I have. This is a passion project all the way through. So when I'm telling you guys, there is no, like, as long as it makes money, I'm gonna do it. I'm like, nope, I will. If, in fact, the restriction right now is what they. They won't let me buy, I would buy way, way more. I. I almost gave my wife. I didn't think women can have heart attacks. I didn't know it was a thing. But my wife, like, thought. She went. She went pale, man. When I was like, I want to buy, I. I'm not gonna say the number. I go, I'm gonna buy them. And then if I. And then when I get here, I'll just keep them. So. So, yeah, that's the update on that. So we'll know something next month. Let's see. Oh, and I think we have a perfect segue right here. Look at this. All right, ready? Gage? I want to say, Gage Gibson says, dumb, dumb question. It's a dumb, dumb question. My favorite questions, because you dumb questions are usually the most honest. It says, how do you know if a dirty guitar tone is good? I'm comfortable with getting nice, clean tone, but edge of breakup and distorted tones escape me. You know what? That's a great question. Here's why. How do you know it's good? First of all, distortion is unpleasing sound. So let's start there. So that's why when it sounds good, why we get so excited about that, right? Think about this. Distortion and amp is bad, right? If you have. If you had a stereo and your power amp and your stereo starts distorting, that's bad. It's really bad, right? So distortion in the guitar amp, and of course, what a pedal is recreating. When it's great or good, it is very pleasing to your ear. Now, there are players that I. That I've met over the years that when they hear distortion or overdrive, they just. Just. This is. No, no, Moss. It's. No right now, that being said, that's okay. Not everybody's, you know, not every flavor is everyone's, you know, favorite. So you might not like distortion or overdrive. And if that's the case, that's fine. That's fine, Right? What I will tell you though, is that Guitar players, including myself, we tend to over distort and over overdrive everything because perceptionally speaking, that's what we think we hear in albums. Because when we hear, when we hear guitar tone, most of the time it's in music with the bass and drums and singing and other instruments and production. And so when we hear it, it's so full and there's so much interface and it's all happening and we think what we hear and then we try to create it. And what we do is we give it too much. And we don't realize that most guitar players, because they don't want to get, get lost in the mix, they want to be separated. They kind of dial in the distortion not to the, the best guitar tone, but to the best sound that support supports the song. It's in, you know, in service of the song. So one of my favorite, favorite things I ever learned was I got to go backstage with a band called Korn. And the reason that's important is because a lot of some of you guys are like, well, I love corn. Some of you guys gonna be like, who's corn? Corn is a band that plays seven strings and they like, it's, oh, are you ready? They're heavy, right? It's a heavy band. They do not run tons of gain. It is crazy how under distorted their amp tone is for what you think you perceive. Because once you add the low end percussion, the intensity and the layers, the two guitar players plus the bass player who's in the same kind of frequency range, which is very mid range sound, it just sounds like a lot, but it's not. And so what I found is most, most guitar tones are not as distorted as we perceive them to be. And that is a great way to segue to. I don't know, what do I have? Oh yeah, this. Okay, so this is funny. I gotta, I gotta, I get reviews on my podcast, the audio podcast somebody reviewed. Why every time when you say like the this or that or the guitar of the week and you play the, the audio, then you repeat it, they said it's a good critique. It's like, hey, why are you repeating this? I don't know why I repeat it. Think of this. I could just tell you it's this or that, but I like hearing my wife's voice, so I just like push the button. I made my wife record this and I get to use it, but I don't know why I'm still shocked she did this stuff when I said, hey, will you record yourself saying guitar of the week. Sometimes I'm in up here in my office and she's downstairs and I'm all like, now it's time for Guitar of the Week, the Know youw Gear podcast. And now it's time for this or that. The Know youw Gear podcast. See, I'm having all kinds of fun. All right, so it's funny. I don't know how many of you can say, have a little button so you can push in your. And your wife says things. It's kind of fun. Makes it makes fun for me. All right, so this or that. First of all, let's turn on the light here. Here we go. This or that is a fun one this week. Funner than last week. Last week, if you didn't see this or that, it was the boss katana against the two Rock, which was very enlightening. So this week's this or that is my favorite Marshall style pedal. Okay. And so, you know, I'm not saying the only one I like. I'm just saying this is my favorite and my least favorite Marshall pedal style. Okay? So this is two Marshall style pedals. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why do you have a pedal you don't like? I didn't say that. I want to be very clear. It's my least favorite and my favorite. So in other words, if you take all these, all my Marshall pedals, which I have many, and you put them in a row from. From favorite to least favorite. I went down the list. Okay. By the way. And. And then I. I said, let's put them on the board and see what happens. And we're gonna do this or that with a little bit of twist. Okay. And we're gonna see how this works. We're gonna do this or that rhythm and then this or that lead. Okay. And so we're gonna start the poll. Okay, so this is going to be this or that. Okay. Right. Rhythm. Okay. And. And we're going to give the add options for none. Okay. And for the guitar, we're going to be using a Fender. That's a Keisel. Remember now the new jokes. Everything's offenders. So it's a Fender. This is a Fender. No, this is the Keisel Arrow guitar. So pretty cool. We'll run in there. I'm actually running my Morgan PR12, which is essentially a Princeton style amp, but it's a head. So I'm running ahead and in a cabinet because it's easier for to mic a cabinet. And so I have that set up. Let's go ahead and Turn the guitar on. Mics on. Okay. So that's the clean sound with a little reverb. The reverb. So you know, the app has reverb, but I'm running the Strymon Flint, so that's the reverb I'm using. So what we'll do is we'll go to the board cam. Board cam. All right, we're gonna start with this. And then I've already put my vote. Now, I know I normally write it on a little board and I put it on over there, but guess what? My wife made me these cool little tags. And so I've already tagged the pedal that I picked. So when I reveal, you'll see the tag next to the pedal. Okay, so this is the rhythm first. We'll start with this or that, and then we'll do some votes. And let's switch to the guitar playing cam. Whoops. Okay, here we go. And. Okay, everything's in. Everything's good. We're gonna start with this. Here we go. Save sam. Okay, we'll go back to this. Okay, here we go. All right, this is this. Okay, now back to that. Here we go. Okay, so that is those two sounds. Let's go to the poll, and what we'll do is we have 156 votes. Let's see if we can get to at least 180. Right. And so far, this is winning 69 to 25%. What I find is that you guys vote more when it's not so extreme. So you could vote. Okay, 200 votes. I'm going to end the poll. So we are going to say that you guys picked this, Right? So it looks like. Hold on, I need a screenshot. Give me one second. 69% of you pick this. 24% of you pick that. 7% pick none. I want to do another one and this or that lead. Now, this is the important part. I'm not going to be changing the knobs on the pedals. So there's no. We're still sticking to the phase value on this. Okay. All right, we'll start with this again. Okay. And we'll do some lead sound now. And we'll do our best. Here's the. Start the poll. And here we go. This is this. Okay, let's go to that. Okay, Here you go. Okay, now what I want to do is go back to this and we'll do the neck pickup. This is the neck pickup, which is a single coil. And then we'll do the comparison again. Okay, now we're gonna Go to that. Okay, so we have done this or that. So let's go ahead and do the second poll and let's see if anything changed. And there's a reason why we're doing a second poll. The second one is, I'm going to say at 187, 208 votes. Let's go in the poll. And it was this again. So this one. 217 votes. Okay, here was the votes. 67%. I don't know why I can't capture that. 67% picked this, 28% picked that, 5% none. Numbers were pretty close. In other words, overall, everyone picked this. So what did I pick? What are they and what did I pick? Well, here's what they are. Let me mute all my microphones. Okay, here's what it is. Let's do the reveal. I'm pulling the table away and it's the Karl Martin plexitone versus the way huge supa lead. I picked this, as you can see, a little cool, little tag right here. Now here's why I thought this would be fun. So as you guys know, I'm a real big fan of Lawrence Petros Marshall pedal and of course the pedal pal pedals. And I don't know what it is. I've just had this plexi tone. Probably the longest I bought this plexi tone, I think before I even started YouTube or around the beginning when Pete Thorne did a video of it through a Fender Basement 59. I was like, I gotta have that. And I've fallen in and out of love with it over the years, but ultimately come back to it every time. And I don't know what it is. Like I said, I like, I'd say my three favorite Marshall in a box pedals are definitely this plexi tone. The Plexi tone, the full size one. And then I'd say the LPD 87 and then the pedal pal. I'm not giving them order, I'm just telling you those are my favorite ones. So anyways, this pedal was a funny story. So I bought this pedal, I want to say, two or three years ago and I thought I didn't love it. And so I traded into a music store. And then funny enough, I was in that music store a week or so ago and they still had it from when I traded in from like two years ago. So I, I go, I'll buy it again. So I was doing some trading, I go, I'll trade something, I'll take it back. And they, they actually said, I don't think you like that one. I go, yeah, but I really like Way Huge. And I have a lot of way huge pedals. Maybe I was doing it wrong. So I went. I got it it. And I plugged into it. I didn't love it. And then I adjusted the gain. It sounds much better if you put the gain down for sure. Okay. But then it doesn't give you any kind of. To me. Doesn't give you any of that Marshall grit. But what's funny was I was watching a bunch of videos and almost all the reviewers said it's really good for leads. It sounds horrible for rhythm. It's all about the leads. Now. I'm. Granted, I'm not a lead player, so that part of that. That sucking lead tone is me. But I did. I didn't find that to be the case. I thought it was pretty not awesome. In fact, one person described it to. To me, to my way my ears hear it, it sounds like a blown speaker or an amp getting blown. Like, yeah, it sounds blown. So didn't love that. And of course, part of this, the this or that game is to see do I, you know, do I hear what you hear? Do you hear what I hear? You know? You know? And it's all good fun. So I'd like to also tell you just so there's no butt hurtness with way huge people. I love way Huge. I have so many pedals. My favorite fuzz pedal is a way huge pedal. We'll do one of those. And then one of my favorite delays is a way huge pedal. This pedal. For some reason, I'm just. I don't know. And if somebody has it and they love it, I can fou. I found some ways. Let me show you this. I have found a way to like it. Okay? And let's go back and I'm going to show you here. Switch to this so you guys can see. Move this board out of the way. I'm gonna do what I said, which is you put the gain all the way down right there and actually darken it, which doesn't make sense. I'm gonna go to the neck pickup, and then what I want to do. Hold on a second. Go this way. I'm going to actually add delay because that's going to help me. I need all the help I can get, guys. Okay, Move this board. Okay. Move the board there. Okay. And here. I kind of dig it. This sound. You see now it. It's kind of. If I give it a little bit more, maybe you can get a. This way A little bit more. Try that. This eq, by the way, this EQ control goes crazy. Listen. So it's like you got to find that right spot. And here it is. And there, there. I like it. But then I feel like. So it's good. It does. It does have sweet spots. You know, that's the whole point of this, right? Is that everything's got a purpose, right? You can find something good out of anything. But I would say as overall, that's a great sound, but I could find that sound in a ton of other pedals. I don't necessarily have to have a Marshall style pedal for that, but that's one of the sounds I like out of it. And it's really nice. It founds. It sounds really good to me. But so I wanted to do that as a redeeming thing so you guys could see because otherwise you're like, why would anybody have that pedal? So it's fun. All right. I think we did it. We finished the show. Again, I want to thank you guys for making it to the end. I do want to share something with you guys. Since the Die Hard Stay to the End, we. Although it's been a crazy month of. In the industry of just horrible negativity, we had a huge, massive milestone on this channel. And I want to share the milestone with you, but I also wanted to share the result of that milestone. So I didn't tell anybody this. This was top secret. First of all, it can't tell somebody that I don't know what's going to happen. But the. We created a second channel called Know youw Gear. This was a big deal for us. The idea was to do two things. A lot of people say when they watch the show, like, you guys don't count because you made it to the end. End. They can't make it to the end. It's just two hours. It's too long. And. And so we discussed. I really don't like YouTube shorts. I don't like these 30 second videos. I find that you. Everything's out of context and all you get is clickbait out of it. And it's just not. It's not something that interests me. So we sat on a mission to create the second channel and do clips. Now, we're not the first one to do that. Tons of podcasts do this, but we want to create sections that we think are important subjects that are great. And then instead of just clip them, you know, me chop them and throw it on a channel. There's a person that works a Full time job and they edit those clips and they come back to me and they and Shauna and they say, hey look, this is what we're working on. This is what I got. What do you think of this clip? What do you think of this idea? What about adding this context from an older show? What about adding this context from these clips? And they started doing this. And this month, the month of May, which is the 29th, with two days ago, that channel has hit in this month 1,120,000 views. It is now a million view channel. In other words, like the, this, this, this channel does about 1.7 million. So you understand it's doing almost as many views as the main channel now. Thank you for that. It's got 43000 subscribers, which is crazy. Which is great. It's just doing so great. And the important part is why did we do this? I really didn't like, and, and I gotta tell you, Amanda was really good at giving me feedback on this and I didn't like the Super Chat stats. I, I love that you guys love the channel so much that you're willing to toss five bucks and, and two bucks and 20 bucks at us. And I felt like, you know, we should really just be searching for the best kind of content, the best subject matter. You know, write me if I could catch it. Amanda's out there trying to find you guys, you know, find good comments and stuff. Good comments, good questions, good topics that, that benefit the, the majority of the people that watch. And other thing is I wanted to say thank you and I wanted to create an environment where people wanted to come and watch the show live. And so to do that we had to turn off the ads for life and we had to turn off Super Chats. The problem though, and again, I'm always very upfront about this. That's $9,000 a year that I lost. That's gone, just gone. That's how much I make if I just, if I just hit the add button back on and I turn. Well, it's Super Chats. I don't even know if that counts. Super Chats, let's just say it's, it's about $9,000 a year removing those two features. But the second channel now is making that, it's making the difference which was the goal. The goal was how do you make it a better experience for everybody. You give people who don't want to watch the longer form content something they can watch that's maybe interesting to them. You give the people who do want to sit through the long form content. A bonus of not letting them sit through ads and disrupt the live show. Right. And how do you help foster more diversity in the questions that you get, in other words? Because obviously, look, I love all the people who have super chatted me over the years. They literally paid for this, you know, like the patrons and everybody else and you guys watching and stuff. But I'm just like, you know, how do you give as many voices to as many people as possible to talk about the things they want to talk about? And so, like, one thing Amanda does is she's looking for anybody who's new that hasn't asked a question yet. Something that's just interesting. I mean, she's got to scan through this. I'm scanning through this in real time too. So you guys know. And. And then also just, you know, I got a little. Well, Shauna is too. So, you know, Shauna, I just gonna say, I might as well say Shawna's sending me stuff too. So between that we feel like we made this show a better quality show and added value on a second channel and closed the gap of the what we would lose. And I didn't know it was gonna work. And so, you know, the reason why I want to celebrate this is because I was ready for it to not work. In other words, we were gonna do this regardless of what happened. But the fact that the second channel is making the difference of what we lost is just. If you want to rest, I restores my face sometimes in the universe a little bit of like, okay, so we did what I thought was the right thing, money be damned. And money came back. So good. Good for everybody. I hope. I hope you guys enjoy this. And Mick 400 cricket says, where is the second channel? I will put a link. There's a link right now. Second channel. It's know your gear. So this is what's really great is sometimes people are watching the second channel, they don't even know it because the. Because it's. This channel is filming night, but I say, know your gear. The other channel says, know your gear, but I'm filming night on both channels. So it's the know your gear channel as well. But it's always. And anyone who watches this, you know, the. The second channel is always linked on this. It's not. Well, it'll be right now. It will be. You'll see a link in the description. It'll take you a second channel. So. So that's how you go to it. So thank you guys for supporting that. If you want to be a subscriber of both channels, great. If you don't, that's great. Either way, like I said, I appreciate all the support you've been giving us. I hope you guys had a. Oh, you know what? Because it's really great. Steve o' Neill says the Know youw Gear channel is great. You know, let's give credit to the. To the editor. I. I gotta tell you, the. The best compliment the editor gets on the second channel is from my actual. My friends who tell me they like the vibe of that channel sometimes better than this. Because he. He. I have to filter everything. I filter everything through my eyes. In other words, I'm like, yeah, this is the thing I think is cool, or this is what's important. And he comes at it with. He doesn't really care if I'm making a dumb face or if I said something dumb or, you know, if he thinks it's funny, he's putting it on there. If he thinks it's interesting or if it's educational, he puts it on there. And so, you know, Shauna is also. I want to say she's like a producer of that channel, because Shauna also helps each week with the thumbnails, titles, content suggestions, edits, all that stuff. I have the least amount to do with the second channel. Channel. So, you know, I'm. Literally, the only time they tell me anything is if something is questionable. And so, you know, and even then, like, they. They do what they want anyways. It's not always true, but most time I'm like, yeah, I don't think that's a good idea. You shouldn't put me saying that. And they're like, man, we already did. So anyways, I want to thank everybody for that and to celebrate that milestone. That's pretty big milestone because I remember the first time this channel. Channel hit a million views in a month. And I was like, wow, that's a lot of views in one month. Month. So Robert Baker says, let's see a blooper reel. You know what? That's a great idea. Obviously, he watches this because he edits it. So I think that's a great idea. If you want to put together a blooper reel and just take the piss out of me, go ahead and do that. I'll be fine with it. So I said it out loud here. So I guess I can't say anything when I don't like it when it comes out. All right, guys, thank you so much for your time. As always, till next week. Know your gear the Know youw Gear podcast.