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Foreign. Welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast on April 10, 2026. I hope everybody had a fantastic week and is ready for some guitar talk stuff. Kevzilla says. Hey, Phil, it seems I can just barely afford the cheapest cs. I think it means custom SOP Strat in America. What would I look for? Is the lack of case or certificate? Certificate. The certificate a deal breaker. And shouldn't I just order a Delos for the same price? Well, I like my Delos. I'm biased. Of course. I do have a Fender custom shop Strat. I've owned three. I did not like two of them, so I sold them off. And the third one I, I use, I don't love it. I, you know, some people have had miracle custom shop Strats. My buddy Matt, he likes his and I actually like his. It's pretty good. I have not played personally a custom shop Fender Strat that I like the way it played as much as a SIR Classic or a Kiesel Delos. When I talk about playability, vibe, you know, look, Fender's got the vibe. Custom shop's got the vibe. It's Fendery. It's, you know, it's broken in. It's got the vibe. And the necks I like too. I just. There's always like a problem. Either the high E strings rolling off the edge, which is really common with custom shop stuff, especially the vinagery issues. If that's something that bothers you. It bothers me sometimes. You know, the fretwork's always okay, but it's never as amazing as some of these other guys can pull off. And by the way, I should also mention, like Tom Anderson like that too. But again, the thing with sir, even the classic Tom Anderson and the Delos, they all have a modern take on the Fender Strat. And so that's one thing that I think that if you really want the vintage Y vibe, that's where they're tough. The SIR Classic kind of semi relics get close. But even me, when I pick them up, I never feel like a Fender vibe. I always feel like a really high end modern take on it. But personally, I like my Fender Professional 2 Stratocaster as much as I like all my Strats. The only thing I could say I like better on my custom shop Strat than my Professional two is I like the slightly and it's ever so slightly chunkier neck that's on my custom shop Strat. But keep in mind, out of the three custom shop strats I owned that were 60s era. All the other two had really thin necks. So the professional two neck I liked more. So. And you know, and I'd say one of the best playing guitar, the best playing custom shop I ever had was a wildwood 10. And it's called Wildwood because it's what from Wildwood Guitars and it also is called 10 because it has a 10 inch radius instead of 9 and a half. That wasn't anything I was specifically looking for. The neck was a little too thin and it played great. It just didn't vibe. It didn't vibe the way I wanted. I wanted it to feel a little bit more, you know, a little bit more vintage vibed. But, but I, you know, look, you might have to get it out of your system too. I had to get it out of mine. I got out of Fender custom shop. I've owned a few. I've owned a few Gibson custom shops. I had a couple of private stocks from PRs. I've gone down that road and where did I end? I ended with. None of them has made me think that I have arrived at a level that just everything below it is just substandard in. I couldn't go back to my favorite Les Paul. So I have three. I have a custom shop. I have an R9. I have an RO, which is a very special RO, very limited edition one that's soup. It's, it's. I'm trying to say semi. I'm trying to say semi hollow and chambered at the same time. It's semi chambered. No, it's just weight relieved. But it's got chambering in it. But my favorite Les Paul I own is my Gibson Les Paul Classic, which is a classic. It's not even the standard, it's not even that, you know, that expensive. And it's by far the best. If I only kept one. That's the one I'm keeping for sure. I think I've mentioned this before, the R9, although it sounds amazing, probably the best sounding Les Paul I own. So give them credit there. You keep hearing that from people who have R9s. Like man, the tone is really good. It is. It just has a really good full sound. I would say none of the Les Pauls I have play or sound better than this heritage that I have over here. The only problem is, hard to say that to you guys is that this is the. Not the normal heritage that's 2600. This is their expensive model, their custom shop too. So it's almost apples to apples in price point. So you know I'm not going to tell you like get the heritage because the, the, I didn't pay for the heritage. They sent that so I don't have to feel the rapture if I ever sold it, you know, the resale value on the heritage would be pretty, pretty horrible compared to the Gibsons. But speaking of resale value, that's why I still have my R9. I got my R9 for a pretty good deal. Not a really good deal, but I got to pick it out, you know, and get the right one, you know, in a store, which is a very rare thing to happen. And I bought it a few years ago and I think I'd have to look at the market now what they're going for. But I would imagine if I sold it now, I'd probably lose 500 to $1,000, which isn't too brutal considering what you could lose on a Gibson custom shop. Bless Paul. But. So that's why I said, I've told you guys this many times with Gibson, if you don't want to lose money, you just wait it out and in a couple more years it'll be worth, you know, resale value will be worth what I paid for it. Remember, I bought it new. I didn't buy used the ro. I did buy used. The RO is worth what I paid for it. So for sure, the reason I know that is there's no way I would consider selling it for less than what I paid for it. I wouldn't even think about it because it's really cool. Unique Gibson custom shop. And so that's it. I did not keep any of the prs private stock era type guitars and ah, let's see. That's it. So I'm just telling you that's, that's on the custom shop vibe. Let's see, let's see. Hold on. Go this. Howdy. Okay. Kat's Music Journey says, how do you handle passionate negative comments? I like how you put that. I never thought about a negative comment being passionate. You know, let me just stew on that for a second because that might change the way I answer the question. Plus the way I think from now on. Usually when I see negative comments, they always seem shallow, you know, like there's not a lot of thought put in that comment, but I never thought about it being a passionate one. There are passionate ones, so I'll differentiate that. It says on videos I put disclaimers in, but people don't watch and take it personally. Yeah, I'm new and my skin is still thin. Yeah, my Skin's thin too. You know, when people go, you have to have thick skin. Look, you're. Some people have. Some people have thick skin. I find most people lie about that. The reality is there's some secrets I've learned about trolls and how they can get in your head and not get in your head. Over the years. I'm never going to give the exact thing that I, you know, I feel I learned because then I'd be giving it to the trolls. But what I can tell you is, is a couple things. So let me give you the advice I was once given. It does work. So this advice was not given to me by 1, 2, 3, but 4. And I'm not even rounding down. Rounding up. I'm rounding down, should say million subscriber or multi million subscriber. Guitar channels that I'm friends with. They all said the same thing, don't talk to each other. Well, two of them don't talk to each other. They don't talk to each other. But they all gave me the same advice over the years and I thought that was really interesting, which is they don't read their comments. In fact, two of them, I know for a fact they have people that do it. They don't read the comments, they don't see the comments, they don't look at anything. They just post their video and move on. I can tell you that if I post a video and I don't read the comments, I have a much better week every time. It's awesome. YouTube finally, finally, finally, finally, finally changed the app used to be to. Every time you went into your app to look at stats, you'd have to see the most recent comment. And it was always like, you know, something horrible because, you know, and, or. And now what YouTube does is, is they only filter like the best comments at the top. So when I open my app, let's. Oh, I can't. I don't have my phone. So if I have my phone right now, I check my phone. Usually the first three comments I see are all positive because it filters positive ones to me first. And then I have to go. I actually have to do two steps now to get to. You have to go into comments, then you have to click another button. Then you have to click another button. So it's three steps to get to comments that might get to negative comments. So I don't see the negative comments as much. So you guys know. But that being said, how do you handle it? You know, I don't know. You know, it's. It's funny. I would say as a. As a new content creator, my advice to you would be, don't read the comments. You know, there's this feeling that if you. You gotta read the, you know, for the community, you gotta read what they're saying. I can tell you that most communities are not very good. This community is, I would say 80%. I'm gonna say 90 to be nice, but I'm gonna say, yeah, 85 to 90. I'm pushing it now, guys. I'm trying to be as nice as I can. As nice as I can. 80% of you in the comment sections are just amazing people. And I mean, not just live, I mean in. Just on my channel. Now to the 20%, I would break them into two categories. 10% are just miserable, you know, miserable people. And I feel bad for them. They're just so miserable. And they're just, you know, trying to make everybody miserable, too. The other 10%, I don't know, they're either really not good at commenting. And try, like I said, I really feel like a lot of mean comments are trying to be funny, but they fail. But either way, it's just, you know, it's just how it works. I feel pretty lucky in those categories. The. The main, I think, I think that most times a new creator looks at comments for. Is you're looking for feedback. And what I can tell you is, see how I pause because I'm like, do I tell this? I'm gonna tell it. The feedback you need, okay? And I say this, and I very rarely say stuff like this, but, you know, is it. I got a ha. As someone who's like, you know, you get to wherever you want to get. I'm not there yet. But I'm sure if you're a new channel, you're looking at my channel and you're like, oh, is that almost at a half a million subs or whatever. Whatever it is you perceive the success of this channel is, I will tell you this, whatever you think it is, whether it's on this channel or my second channel, whatever. It's because the feedback I really search and seek out is in the stats. It's in your statistics. It tells you everything. YouTube is, I think, one of the best platforms for giving you honest and good feedback with stats. Numbers don't lie. So people will tell me all the time, hey, this video sucked. And I look at the stats and I don't mean how many views you got, that views are not what should drive you. Should you look at your other stats, how engaged the audience was, what did they, you know, did they, did you make something good? I think if you make good content, then you have. Well, at the very least, if you try to make good content, you'll have a catalog of content you're proud of. I have a catalog that I'm mostly proud of. I'd say I'm proud of about 90%, another 10%. I'm like, why did I ever make that? You know? And if you're lucky, luckier than me, you'll make 100% content you're proud of. Cause I sure wish I could make 100% of content I was proud of over the years. But I'm pretty close. But that's my advice. Don't read the comments, read the stats, you know, and that's it. And then hopefully you'll build a community of like minded people, which is what I've done here. And when I say like minded, I don't mean people who agree with you. Like I said, I don't think any stat, I don't think any comment that is saying they disagree with me as a negative comment. So negative comments to me are in the context trying to hurt someone. Whether it's me or someone else in the con or the per the the video is about or whatever, somebody's trying to lash out, you can tell. And so that I'm not real a big fan of. I think you could be more constructive. Okay, we, let's see. So. Oh, here's one. Dale says, Phil, you have me. I have ruined the selling guitars for the rest of us. Every time I list something, I get never ending questions about the weight. And people don't want anything over £7. What's with that? Well, generally speaking it's because you have choice. So you know, this was something that has come up more than once when it comes to weight. I'm not the first channel to weigh guitars. You know, obviously Sweetwater was weighing guitars. Our store used to weigh guitars too. We used to weigh guitars not because we're looking for specific weight, it's just because heavier guitars are less desirable. The reality of it is, is that if you have a heavy guitar, some people don't care. So that's what I've learned. You just list the weight. I find that whether you're a, you know, a seller, you're just selling your gear on the side or you're selling your gear that you don't want anymore, or you're a small store or you're whatever, you know, a big store. The more information you put in your listings, the better. You know, it's very expensive returns, super expensive. Especially if you're not a store because again, you know, you're, you know, you don't have a lot of account, you don't have an account with a mailing company, you know, and so return shipping is expensive. You know, to me, if a guitar or product's coming back, there's a chance that there's going to be fraud. It's just a lot of problems and you don't want to see product come back whether, no matter what. And so anything you can do to, to reduce that by giving more information I think is a good idea. I try to put as much information as possible. Even I sometimes don't put everything in the, in the thing. But I'll answer a question. If they send it, if it's specifically a piece of information that they need about the guitar or the amp or whatever, I definitely recommend trying to do it. It's tough. Like I said, some people message you at like three in the morning and I'm like, I don't even see it till the middle of next day. And then I'm like, do I, do I respond? Is it too late? But that being said, I think actually it doesn't ruin guitars selling. I think it makes it better. I think more information, I think in the context if you're trying to say that if you have a heavy guitar, everybody now is looking for a lighter guitar. Everybody's always been looking for a lighter guitar, that's all. That's how it's always worked. No one's really looked for, I mean, George lynch used like heavy guitars. That's about it. Some players do like heavy guitars, but majority of guitars have always like lighter guitars. That's always been that way. So I mean, it's just how it goes. And then of course, you know, a lot of us are getting older and stuff, so. And I don't think it has to do with anything like physicalness, you know, at all. You know, people talk about like, why don't you just lift more, bro? And I'm like, yeah, I guess. But if you don't, you know, I think my problem, I've said this before is, you know, if all my guitars weigh about seven, seven and a half pounds, eight pounds, I have a 12 pound guitar, I'm just not likely to pick it up. That's just. Why would you. It's not as exciting. So I don't know. So if I was, if I had a contribution to you having trouble selling heavier Guitars. I'm sorry, I understand. I've sold many heavy guitars recently, so they buy them. Let's see what else. Okay, let's see. Yeah, that's funny because I was late to this. I was late to the show. You guys are like talking about why I was late to the show. I was late to the show because last week OBS did an update and when it did the update, it took my streaming key and it deleted it and I had to put it back in. Yesterday OBS had another update to fix some kind of problem that was with last week's update. And so again, it deleted my streaming key. So I had to find the stream key to put it back into OBS and then double check to make sure all my settings don't get deleted or, you know. Well, it's mostly deleted. So. Okay, so deja, deja, deja YouTube, I think that's what I'm saying. It says, hey, do you think the, do you think the crazy cheap Squire Sonic series and Gretsch streamliner jet clubs are clawing back ground for FMIC from the super budget brands? Notice insane discount sales, I guess ATM down under. Yeah, that's what I think's going on. Sure. Of course, you know, the, the, the entry level guitar market is. It's always been a tough, easy market simultaneously. It's easy because there's always somebody looking to start guitar or looking for an entry level guitar. It's hard because. So they make so many of them. They make a lot, I mean, a lot, a lot. And, and you know, the real question is, is not so much is are people playing guitar anymore? Are people learning guitar? But the question really is who's really buying the majority of the guitars right now? Is it the, you know, these middle age people who are, you know, lining them with their walls? It's definitely a, definitely a thing that's happening. And. Or is it newcomers? And of course during COVID they go, hey, it's mostly newcomers. I still think it was the collectors buying up the guitars. Mostly the. Because I think the logic they were using, a lot of them were applying to the guitar boom sales during COVID was, you know, people were trapped in the house and they wanted to take up a hobby and a lot of cheap guitars. I think that was totally happening. But at the level that they were claiming, I think what was happening is they don't understand because in their brain they don't understand. And I mean this as guitar companies don't understand this person that exists that buys $100, $200 guitar and then buys another one and buys another one and has like ten $200 guitars. They don't understand that to them, you buy a $200 guitar, then you graduate to a 5, 6, $700 guitar, then you graduate, you know, and then they think you're all going to $3,000 guitars. It's really consistent when I talk to companies that they all seem to have thought this for decades now. That is the evolution of guitar players. They just buy more and more expensive guitars. What they're missing is. What they're missing, and they have been missing for years, is first of all, not the economy. That's the thing. But right now, and I'm just gonna go. When I say missing, I could go 40 years back, but let's go 10 years back in the last decade. What they're really missing is YouTube. YouTube has provided so much content on how to make inexpensive guitars great, whether it's from a Louvery channel repair channel, or just a guy going, hey, this weekend I bought a guitar and here's what I'm doing to it with my screen drivers. You know, they. The ability to fix and modify inexpensive guitars and make them great is so easy that people like buying guitars and kind of modding them up a little bit. And there's nothing wrong with that. But they think when they sell 10 inexpensive guitars, they thought 10 new players took up. And I'm like, no, that's not. I don't think that's what happened. I think when 10 every. For every 10 inexpensive guitars, I don't know the ratio. Let's throw a guess. Four of them. I'll just be safe. Four of them were new guitar players and six of them were rebuyers. In other words, they were buying guitars. They already, they already have those guitars. And the reason I have that philosophy is this reason and this reason only when somebody says, who buys $10,000 guitars? I've always, I've always said this. I'll say this forever and ever and ever, which is the person who buys 10,000 guitars is just like the person who buys $100 guitars. They buy lots of them. Everybody just picks a comfort zone and then they just buy that. And that's what I learned. And because what's funny is because owning a store, when I would actually do one on one sales, everybody, I always thought, you know, everybody would just graduate. Like the industry keeps saying, oh, you'll, you know, somebody bought a Squire off me, and then they bought another Squire, it was a little nicer. And now they'll Buy a made Mexico Strat and then they'll buy an American Strat and then they'll buy a custom shop Strat, you know, and then they'll get a Nash and then that's just how this will evolve. And then one day you realize a couple years gone by and you're like, man, Kenny owns like 26, seven squires now. He could trade all those Squires in and get one custom shop easily, you know, and he doesn't want to do it. And I'm like, what is that? And I see it all the time, you know, I see. I heard a term the other day and it was bougie, blue collar. And it made me laugh my ass off. It was basically talking about that, the back to middle aged men, mostly middle aged men, it was picking on them. Middle aged, blue collar men with expensive hobbies pretending that they don't have expensive hobbies. Like they're like, yeah, I don't buy expensive things. I just got my truck that cost, you know, 80,000 and I just, you know, and they got their little trailer that only cost like 25,000, right? And they only got 162, 400 guitars, right? Like I don't buy any guitars over 500. But you have 400 of them, right? And you're like, if you add that up, you have, you know, right? You have a lot of money invested into guitars. And so what I've learned is, is that yeah, if you buy a, on average, I'm not talking about all of you, I'm not pigeonholing everybody here, but if you buy a $200 guitar, you're gonna buy 10ish, you know, right? Or two or whatever, just pick your number. And then when you upgrade one of those guys to a $500 guitar, what's gonna happen is you slowly just upgraded all the other ones. And then you got ten $500 guitars. And then when you buy a thousand dollar guitar, you're gonna have ten $1,000 guitars. Now they'll be the anomalies. Everybody's like, not me, Phil, I got 18 or Gibson, Les Paul's, but I still got three squires. Like, I understand there's gonna be outliers in the, in the collection, but, but honestly, I'm telling you. And so when you see someone, you meet somebody and they, they tell you they got a $5,000 guitar, trust me, all their guitars are probably $5,000 guitars. It's, it's, it's very rare to see someone who buys a couple high end guitars and does not Expand their collection into that level. That's how it works. So for the most, again, I'm just talking generally speaking. So. So back to Fender and what they're doing. Yeah, they're definitely competing with the Amazon stuff for sure. You know, those inexpensive, low cost guitars. Which is why I like doing videos about them like everybody else, man, they're. They're fun. They're the funnest videos. Look, when I did the Novo, just picking on the Novo video. When I did the Novo video, it's. It's not fun. It's exciting that I get to try things and take them apart and share it with you guys, but it's fun, no? Is it as fun as a Firefly video? No way. You know why? Because in a Firefly video, I'm the whole time trying to understand what it is that I'm doing here. Like with this, I'm like, this guitar is $300. If it just can stay in tune. It's already a win, right? Novo at $4,000. I'm like, it better be amazing. See? You see what I'm saying? Like it's, it's. It's almost like. It's almost like you want to pick on the expensive guitars, but the inexpensive guitars, you just want to make sure they have a couple basics. And when they have those things and they're even better, sometimes you're like, wow, this is crazy. And then you get to wonder why you buy what you buy. Which is what I'm constantly, always doing. Why do I own what I own? Except for I've told you guys, and I'll tell you guys again, I collect too. So when I have a nice guitar, it's usually because I'm collecting them too. I enjoy this industry a lot. I love guitar. I love music and I collect it. So. By the way, when I see comments, everybody's saying, you know, first time on the live show or a fan. I appreciate that guys, so much. I. I almost wish I could. I. Sometimes I go, I want to read a bunch of those. But I just know for flow purposes it won't, it won't do well on the rebroadcast. You gotta understand you're trying to keep it to subjects. Yeah. Michael says us old guys are used to cheap guitar being terrible guitar. Sure. I mean, I've. You know, I spent a long time working on cheap guitars, making them playable. So it's crazy to me when I take cheap guitars out of the boxes now and they're actually playable. It's crazy. Let's see. Okay. Hold on a second. So let's do this. This one came from Amanda, this came from Alex, says, hey Phil, can accurate intonation be done with a Peterson clip on tuner? When playing the 12th fret, the tuner doesn't even register. I played a note. Do you think the Fender tune app is okay? You can intonate anything with, I mean obviously you know, the tune has to be accurate within so many sense, but you can intonate anything with anything that will work to get you generally close there. Okay. So there's the reason I say that. Notice that because there's different levels of players. First of all, and I'll say this again, most players can't hear intonation at all. It's. Anytime I see somebody comment in the comments, you know, you know they'll say, oh, the guitar was out of tune. You probably can't tell. You know, it's hard to tell what's making a guitar out of tune when somebody's playing it. First of all, some players just pull guitars out of tune in their playing and their style. You know, I, George lynch once told me, which I'm not name dropping, I'm just saying was kind of funny thing to say. He said, he said, I said what's your biggest regret? And he said not using a tuner in the studio. He said because when they would go to do retrack, when they would do tracks, he, it was tuning by ear and he'd have to retune, they'd have to retune off the la. The track by ear. So I mean, you know, there's tons of instances like this. There's, there's also famous recordings where the guitar was not integrated correctly. So with all kinds of artists. So that is not always the case. And in fact think about this. One of the things that's interesting about singing and playing is now that with auto tune and all the ways to correct things, sometimes when some sounds so good, you kind of think it sounds fake because you're used to hearing some kind of flaw in that. So the reason I tell you this Alex, is that intonate with whatever you got with clip on tuners, sometimes they are tricky because again the vibrations are not very sensitive. I can tell you with clip on tuners a couple things experiences I have and especially even if you have high end tuners like the Peterson, they get less accurate when the battery gets weaker. So first thing right, I mean that's just their sensitivity. The second thing is, and this is a theory, there's no proof in this, but I have a Theory that you can only drop a clip on tuner so many times. And the reason I say that is because when we would have clip on tuners in the store, we would go through them like crazy and we would do. And we use all the brands, Korg, Snark, you name it. D'. Addario. We would always have different brands because we'd always get a deal and I'd buy like a 10 of them on a deal for the store and we'd open them out of the packages and just have them around the store, have them in the lesson rooms and here's what we would notice over time. You drop them, customers would drop them and then all of a sudden they just didn't work as well as you remembered. And you're like, this is really strange. And I think it's because obviously if it's sensing vibration, this is just my theory. Okay, I need to probably take a tuner apart. One of these clip on tuners. You can probably tell. But I'm imagining that in that technology is some kind of, I'm going to call it a filament, right? Something that obviously something that vibrates, it has to, has to be able to. Something physically in there has to be tracking the vibration. That's how it's, this how the sensor would have to work some way of that. And I would imagine that if you drop it and jar it so many times it may get damaged or become less accurate. And that's just a theory I have. So something to think about. And so just be, be, just be aware of that. But back to your situation. Look, if it's not reading the note, then it's not reading note. I will intonate using the boss app on my phone. There's a boss tuner app on my phone and it works fine. And again, if you put it on my nice strobe tuner, would it be slightly off? Yeah, of course. But slightly off of perfect. Not off of what some human ear could detect. You know, I've been around and here's how I know so many people are full of shit about being, you know, like doing tenacious off. I've met, I can't tell you the number. I don't know, I could just make up number 12 or 20 or I don't know, 10, whatever. People who have that kind of hearing, they hear it, it's crazy. Perfect pitch hearing. You know, professional musicians, studio musicians, just dudes I know that teach guitar lessons. You know, I told you once my wife decided for fun to test all the teachers there Was I think at that time like 17 teachers, she tested them for perfect pitch. And one had perfect pitch. His name's Mario. He was our bass teacher. He's from Chile. And he was amazing, actually. Amazing bass player, but a bass player. I thought it was funny. He had perfect pitch. He was the closest. I think Chris got second. Right. And believe it or not, two of the best guitar players we have that I would say are just on, you know, that the highest level of playing, you know, they. They didn't have perfect pitch or anything close, relatively close to it to detect whatever this test was. I took it. I didn't get perfect pitch either. So. So my point is, is that when people tell you they hear stuff, sometimes they don't. So. Yes. Will your tuner be less accurate than a more professional grade tuner? For sure. But will it get you get the job done? Pretty sure. Right? I told you, being in Arizona, most of my guitar customers were going to be hobbyists. Right? It's not Arizona, especially the Phoenix area. It's not really a professional grade area. It's not like I'm in Hollywood or Nashville or anywhere places where there's a lot of. There's a scene of some sort. But there is. There was when I was doing it, there was a small group of players that, that were Nashville type players. And I told, I've said this before on the show many times. I used to get highly stressed when I would do the work on their guitars. They could detect everything. Like I said, you knew it was serious when they came in and they would always have their tuning. Not, not they wanted their tuning and how many cents off each. Each note or each string. You know, they knew exactly how they wanted this, this one guitar. And so I don't want to be clear. I want to be very clear. I don't mean like they wrote it on a list and like do all my guitars, like each different guitar. They knew exactly where that guitar needed to be tuned or intonated slightly differently for that guitar and that string and that, you know, thing and those kind of players were. Were tough, you know, he, you know, they could hear the mess ups that you made. So you had to do a good job. Okay, so next. Hold on. Okay. Oh yeah, this is Joey. Joey, Jojo says, hey Phil, what speaker do you think works best for the Fender Princeton 65 reissue? The stock Gentian sounds a little brittle to me. And thin. Yeah, I'd say it's on the brighter brittle sound. Maybe a celestian G10 gold. I'm not a Huge fan of that speaker, if that's the problem you're trying to solve for me. I actually like the cheap celestion speaker that they put in the Princeton 68. What is that? Let's look real quick. And also I like the cream back 10 inch speaker and even maybe the green back. But I would probably prefer the cream back over the green back. They're going to darken up the amp a lot in my opinion. But the Princeton 68, one of the reasons I like that amp is, is it's got some mods, but one of the mods is it's got the Princeton 68. Did I. Hold on a second. There we go. There we go. Sorry about that. I don't know why I did that. The speaker that's in that, I'm going to show it to you. Speaker just says slash and speaker, are we serious? That's all I was going to say. The 10:30 selection. 10:30. And I'm pretty sure they sell it and I'm pretty sure it's inexpensive and I like that speaker because here we go. Oh, I don't even see it. So maybe they don't sell that one. Maybe it's too cheap. Celestion 10 inch. We'll do this and then I'll share with you guys. All right, ready? Okay, let's take a look. So this is like the gold you're talking about. I thought this was on the brighter side. I think this would warm it up a lot. This will warm it up a little. This is the green back. The cream. Cream back with a C will warm it up more. I like the 45 watt one and then they don't sell it anymore. But the cheap one that they put in the 68 I liked. So if I couldn't get the access to this cheap one, I'd probably get this, the cream back for this. If you're talking about warming it up, I think that will warm up the sound, give you more mids and more. More warmth in the notes and more punch. I mean, you know, it sucks. I hate giving advice like that because you know, you get it and be miserable. And speakers suck because you buy it and you're stuck with it. There's no real returning on speakers but you can go with the gold. But I've tried the golds and you know, I think it's great. You know what, here's how I can help you. I think the gold, if you, when you watch players go, oh, go with the gold. El Nico gold or even El Nico blue. Especially when they're talking about 12 inch speaker. I found that they're really talking about distortion. They want the amp to break up, you know. And the green back would also be a little bit for overdrive too. The cream back is going to hold the amp cleaner. So I'm assuming because you're saying it's bright, I'm thinking you want to run pedals through it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're running distortion is too brittle and too bright. So if you're cranking the amp to distort, maybe go with the gold. If you're trying to keep the amp clean or you're holding the clean line to run your pedals through, I would go with the cream back. That would be my suggestions. And I feel pretty strong that I somewhat close to Somewhat. Somewhat. Hopefully, you know, get you in the ballpark. So I wanted to play a game. And so we're gonna play a game. This is like a game show today. We're gonna play the game. It's called this or that. Okay, so let's start. Okay. Okay. Okay. Give me a second. I hope this works. I have no idea. Okay, ready? Start at the poll. Okay, so we could do something live. We have a community here. There's 1200 of you, 1298 people here. And I thought, what can we do with this group of people that we can't do with a prerequisite recorded video? And I was telling a friend of mine the other day about how I don't like it on YouTube videos when they go, hey, the A, B, something, but they don't tell you what it is. And then they go wait to the end of the video to find out what it is. Or they go see next week. And I'll tell you what it was. I'm like, I don't want to. I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound fun. And so what's fun is I thought, let's try this game. Okay, so we have the guitar. I have it plugged up, plugged in. We're going to do. Turn this off. There we go. We're going to go to camera two. What? And I told you I hit the camera earlier. This or that. We have no, no theme music. This is totally. Look, dry erase board, a guitar pick. Here's what we're going to do. No tricks, okay? Okay. I'm not tricking you guys. I'm not like that. This isn't like. I'm going to show you a cheap pedal and an expensive pedal and you got to Figure out which one sounds good. These are two pedals that are comparably priced, okay? They are comparable in a lot of ways. In other words, by again, first of all, there's about the same price. They sound similar, but different. And I'm going to play them each one and then you guys in real time are going to vote which one you like better. But wait, there's more. In this purple marker I am going to write on the back of the board. And I told everybody next week or next time, if we do this again, I'm gonna write it on the board and then put it behind me so you know, I can't change it. So. But just trust me, I'm not changing it. Okay, So I got the board. Okay. Alright. I'm right on the back which one I like. Cause I've been playing them all day. Okay, so here's the question. Wait, did I just. Did you guys just see it? You didn't see it? Okay, so anyways, if he did, maybe I'm tricking you. Okay, so anyways, my point is, the question is what you guys will you vote for and will you vote the same as me? Will we all think together? Can we discuss it at the end? So let's start. I'm going to play a little drum. I got a beat, buddy, two drum machine thing here. We're going to turn that on. I'm going to switch cameras to the camera. You can still see me. Here you go. Watch this. There you go. That angle. We're going to start with this pedal. It's going to be a high gain pedal. So if you don't like high gain, you know, vote however you got to vote. But you heard the clean channel that I'm playing through. So you know what it sounded like earlier. Here we go. Ready, Ram? Okay, so. All right, look. All right, so we played this or that. Let's take a look at the poll. I click it. Can I click it? Can I see it? No, I don't want to end the poll. I want to see it. All right. Why is it that I cannot see the poll? Okay, here it is. All right, ready? I'm going to end the poll right now. How many people voted? 255 votes. Any 262, 63. Throw them in. Whatever vote you guys got last. Last in. Let's see. I'll end it at. Let's see if we get the 300 votes. 300 votes. 2772-792852-89291. I'm gonna end it at 300, get that vote in 200. 93, 95, 97, 303. I'm ending the poll. All right, now, where did it go? Okay, here's the final results. Ready? Which. Let me copy this so I have it. Which do you guys like more? You like this at 64% that, and that was at 27%. 9% none. So ready? What was it? That's right. It was the boss waza craft metal zone versus the EVH5150. I. The reason I came with this game idea was I bought this pedal, this one. And my wife Shawna goes, did you buy a Metal Zone? And I'm like, yeah. She's like, why? And I go, it's the WAZA crap one. She goes, it's gonna sound horrible. I'm like, and I got it. And I played it. And I go, it sounds great. And my. And I'm pretty sure she's like, he's just saying that to justify his purchase. And I'm like, no, it does. It sounds great. Now, for fun, I want to do something fun. Okay, which is. This is in the WAZA is in the custom mode. This is the new modded mode. This is the vintage Metal Zone. Okay, so we're going to do again, we're going to go back to this or that. Okay, let's start another poll. Hold on, let me do this one. And we don't know. I won't do this, but I think this is fair. Okay, ready? Hope you guys are having fun. Start a poll. This or that. This time we won't do it as long. This or that. Okay, we're going to do this. I would really, really cool if YouTube would a let the moderators do the poll or be. Let me preload them. Okay, but it doesn't. All right, we started this time. Okay, we're doing it again. But this time. Now you're going to be. Now you know what they are. Well, does it matter? Yeah, you need to see what they are. We're going to. Now you know what they are, but you're also going to be listening to the vintage Metal Zone. I would say this is cheating, except for I think you're going to hear what I hear, so let's just go with it. Sam. Okay, so a couple things to note. Let's go back here. Hi, it's me. And then back to this camera. Camera. There's a lot of stuff going on now. I feel like I made it technology nightmare with the cameras and the microphones. Okay, so this or that. Let's go to this poll. Let's see if I can open the poll this time. 60% pick this. Still this. Okay. I'm not crazy, right? I'm gonna end it at 200. It's 207. We're gonna end it. So. Okay, ready? Now here comes. What did I vote? Ready, set. So you know, it's this. This. I. We agree. We agree. This is totally funny because I was even telling my friend, another YouTube buddy, it was, it was Michael Nielsen. I was like. I was like, wouldn't it be funny if they vote totally different than the person playing the stuff? Because you hear it differently. You're hearing it because I hear this all the time. It's all compressed on YouTube and it doesn't sound the same and I'm like, it doesn't. But it's ish. It's kind of like it. So obviously you guys look. You guys absolutely look that I end the poll. It's like not ending. Okay, absolutely. I would say we all agreed. I would say majority of us voted that the Metal Zone. Let's go to this one right here. The metal zone one over the 5150. Let's see. Let's see if I. If I'm correct with my assessment. Okay. The Metal Zone, which I'll share with you guys right now when you go to the web. The. This one was 1:57. That's what I paid. Guitar center has them on sale for like $7 less like 149. So you know, I didn't buy it on sale and I haven't decided if I need to contact the Guitar Center. Go. Hey, you guys dropped at seven bucks. We price match. And then 5150 pedal. It's 229. Whoa. Okay. So I was off. I didn't know. Look, my, my 5150 pedals from. I bought it in 2000 when it came out. I think it was like 2016 or 14 or. I don't know when it came out, but it was, it was before 2017. I know that. You know how I know? Because I bought it for myself. I bought it at my store. So. And I stopped going to the store in January of 2017. So it's been since then. And I thought I paid 150 for it. I can't believe it's all 230 now. So yeah, So I would say the Metal Zone one and not only sound wise, I preferred. So you guys know, just for your record, I Preferred the modded metal zone by far, and I've been having fun with it all week. I will tell you one thing. The amp I'm running through is a super clean, high headroom amp amp. And. And so some amps, the fizziness in the metal zone just. And same with the 50, 50, 51, 50. But the metal zone just gets a little fizzy, so you definitely got to match it to the correct amp. So I thought this was fun. And I thought, like, I have all kinds of pedals that we could do this with, everything from chorus pedals to, you know, iconically, you know, those pedals that, you know, no one can afford to get because they're super expensive. But then I have the emblem, the, you know, the affordable version, too. So if you guys like this idea is doing this, a segment from time to time on the podcast, this or that segment like this, and then getting real time discussion of it. And I. I'm up to do it. But real quick, we got to do this real fast. We got to do the thumbnail for Guitar of the week. This one's gonna hurt everyone's eyes. Look at that. Yep, that's a good one, that guitar. So this was guitar of the week. This is my Nags in neon yellow. So my very first real guitar was an Aria Pro in neon yellow. So that's why I have a thing for neon yellow guitars. Because, I don't know, it wasn't my first guitar. My first guitar was a black JB player knockoff Strat. But my first guitar that I picked, you know, that I wanted was a neon yellow Aria Pro. Funny enough, the reason why I was. I wanted this was I, like, you know, your guitar collection can't get too big. It's too crazy. But sometimes if you can have a guitar like a Nags in your collection and play it, that's great. But also, I have a neon yellow Ibanez that I don't play, that I have just strictly because it's neon yellow. And I thought, well, then I could get this and get rid of the, you know, the Ibanez. Like I said, something comes in, something's got to go. But maybe next week we'll do the other guitar I got, which I think will be the guitar that will be more interesting and crazier. So. So. Oh, Challenger. Challengers. Challengers. Cat Pack 50 says I voted that, but then changed my mind to this. Yeah, it's. It's a. It was really shocking. I think it was fun. I hope you guys had fun. I wanted to do It. Because I think it's fun. We can try different stuff. Keep. Okay, so let's get back to stuff you want to do since I've gone on my little tirade. Okay. Okay. Oh, Arthur. Arthur says, hey, Phil. Morning from sunny Queenscliff, Australia. Do you still recommend the Inionovo Nova for a value couch travel guitar? Absolutely. Now I know. I think there's a newer version. Somebody told me it's even better. I have not tried that. But that Novo guitar, and like I said, I had two. They sent one, and then it was so good I bought one. And this is the important part of the story. So they sent me one and I smelt a ringer. I know you guys are like, they sent you. They. They sent you a. They cherry picked you one. Look, I've been around long enough to know what people, you know, you get. Okay. So sometimes when you're like, yeah. I go, it's good. And they're like, well, that's because they picked you. Good one. I'm like, no, this company generally makes good stuff. So I'm not really nervous about that. Or I know something that you guys don't know, which is I know that, you know, they shipped me a B stock or they don't even care because a lot of times the companies don't even care. But in the Nova's case, that guitar was so good, I was convinced it was a ringer. So I bought one. And the one I bought was very good, but not as good as the first one. It was really good, though. And that's the one you see in the video is the one I bought. So. And the reason I say that is, I think if you go back, I don't know, I think it says it's sponsored, you know, because technically it was because he sent the guitar. But technically I bought it, so I, I just left it as sponsored. But I want you to know that that's so I still love that guitar for practice around the house. Sounds amazing. Take it on the go. Take it in your rv, taking the, you know, put in the trunk of your car. That's how good it is. Just abuse it. So the price is great and it's a. It takes abuse. Arnis says, hey, Phil, I'm going between prs or Megami guitar cables. Any recommendations? I've owned both. Essentially, they're the same. They pretty much are using like the same kind of cable and then they use the same cable ends. I'd probably go with Megami if you're going to spend the kind of money I don't know. So Arnis, I'm not. I don't know if I want to pull up prices for all that stuff. I can tell you what I'm using because I just bought these and I think they're Pro Co. And I bought them from Sweetwater. So. Hold on a second. All right, what do I got? I got silent. These are neutric in. So I use. So you guys know I use all noiseless neutric ends. These are the ones where you push it in. It works and it doesn't work when you pull it out. And then I hoping it says on the cable it says Proko. That's what I did. That's what I went with Made in USA cable. I don't know what that means, but. And why did I do that? As you guys know, I've been using the Clotch clocks, Klotz. Klotz cables. They sent me a bunch and I've been using those. But I need some shorter cables and I bought some. And then funny enough, this nice gentleman sent me cables. Share that with you guys. Sent me a nice ladder. But unfortunately he sent them and it's not his fault by any means. I mean, it's a nice gift. I appreciate it. I will get to them. It just. I had bought all new cables about a month or two prior. So his name is Ken Hicks and he. He just said he wanted to send me some cables. He makes cables. And does he say where cables? I believe 12, 16, etc. I'm looking for the. Huh. It doesn't say where Ken Hicks. I thought I had it. I thought he worked at a store. But anyways, these are the cables. And again, it's the cable ends I use. I don't know what wire he's using, but it looks. I mean this is very comparable to what I just got. At least it feels like it. Except he's got these cool leather ends. He put the Know youw Gear logos on them, which was really cool. So he sent me a cable and then he sent me these short cables right like this. And is there information on here? Nope. It just says made exclusively for filming Knight. So Ken, I appreciate the cables. I just don't know. I thought I. I thought it said on the letter that he works at a store and he makes these cables. So if I get. If I find that out to be true, I will share with you guys. So you can support him if you would like. But. And I will use these cables soon. I'm actually putting together a bigger pedal board. So maybe that will. Where I'll use them. Trust me. So, you know, Ken, when I got him, was like, that's awesome. And I was like, I just bought cables, which is. Everybody hates buying cables. So I'll definitely be using them. Okay, let's. Okay. Nope, I didn't see the new dod morley pedal. Hmm. Somebody's asking me about pedal. I don't see. Is it new pedal. So Mr. Austin Music says, I only use HOSA audio cables. I've used HOSA a lot too. In fact, a lot of my cables are a hosa. I don't necessarily have a brand. Over the years, I told you, I really like the d' Addario cables. What it is, is there's a cable I like, and then the price goes up, and it goes up, and then eventually boils me out and go, okay, I'm gonna find the next tier down in cable. And again, I buy the same quality of cable every time. I just don't buy the same brand because again, I'm just. I'm kind of comfortable in a price range. And I've told you guys many times for. Because I had the store for years, no one, you know, I never had to buy cables. They would just give them to you. Sales reps would bring in cables, you know, samples. And then on YouTube, I've had a couple companies send Kaya cables, but not very many. So I've. So you guys know, early on, I try to get some going with cables to be like the official cable of Know youw Gear. And I would just use all their cables, and then that would, you know, fill my studio with cables. And, you know, I'd get from. They'd get promotion out of the deal, and I'd just go, hey, guys, it's the only cables I use. But I like to say, you know, that no one good enough sent me cables, but the reality is just no one really sent me cables. It's basically Ken and Clotch clutch cables. I mean, cables. So. So maybe Ken. Maybe Ken's cables will be the official cables of know your gear. I don't know. Okay. Brian says I like Lava cables. I used to be a Lava cable dealer. I like Lava. So I used to use George L. Then I got Lava and ended up stopped using both. And it's not their fault. They get a lot of crap for no reason. Everybody will tell you. Not everybody. I don't want to say everybody. A lot of players will tell you that the cables, you know, when you pull on them, they, you know, they disconnect. They don't work. It's true. But that's because you're an idiot and you're just pulling on them. When I say that, I'm an idiot and I pull on them, too. I've said this before. I never realized my whole life, okay, My whole life until I got a. I bought an expensive. First it was Georgia, then I switched to Lava. I never understood until I spent hundreds of dollars in cables building a pedal board and then finding out they don't work because I was pulling on the cable and not the end. So you gotta. Literally, when you unplug a Lava or a George L, you gotta pull it from the jack, right? You pull it out like this, okay. Not like this. Okay? So you don't pull it out like this. Okay? Now, the reason I say it's an interesting thing is for my whole life, my mom would yell at me for yanking the cable to the power cable from the vacuum out of the wall. I'd just pull it out of the wall like this. And every time, she's like, don't do that. You're gonna ruin it. And I'm like, whatever. I didn't say that to my mom. You think I'm kidding? You're smacked in the head. But I. I thought it in my head and be like, whatevers. And then when I broke my cables, I go, ah. My mom was telling me the whole time not to do that, and I did it. So, you know, see, you know. So basically what I'm saying is, if you want to get Lava or George El's, listen to your mom. Or listen to my mom, listen to somebody's mom. Whoever's telling you not to pull cables by the cable, but by the actual end, that's the way to do it. But. And then for those of you who are going to say, well, Phil, do it the right way. Yeah. If my mother couldn't get me to do it, you guys got no shot. None. So. So there. I'm just. That's my answer. And I know you're thinking, what about Shauna? Shawna doesn't let me touch the vacuum. Maybe she talked to my mom. I never asked her. Maybe. Maybe there was a. I never thought about this. Now I'm curious. You think your wife gets a debriefing from your mother before you get married? A lot of things would make sense right now if that's true. Like, if there was a debriefing, a lot of things that Shauna, like some of the guidelines or rules in the house would all of a Sudden make sense? Like. Yeah, yeah, like a management transfer. Now I'm curious. Okay, okay, this one's from Jose, who says, hey, Phil. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not Jose, it's Joseph. I didn't see the ph at the end. I just saw. Okay, Joseph says, hey, Phil. Thoughts on Vox amps and boss pedals being sold through Costco over the Christmas season. Tried asking before since then, but comment always got deleted. That's because somebody doesn't like you. I don't know. I'm just kidding. I don't. I don't know why I would get deleted. Thanks for driving the dump truck. Hey, you're welcome. Somebody's got to drive the dump truck. That being said, you know, I didn't know that they were selling that stuff at Costco, but I'm not shocked. Last season there was a lot of panic. So I'll be really curious to see what happens this season because there was a lot of last season, the deals were pretty aggressive. There was a lot of overage of stock. You know, there was a lot of chaos that the manufacturers weren't ready for. So I think a lot of them just did whatever they can. Anyone who will buy this stuff, you know. So I don't think a lot of times manufacturers have rules, you know, obviously to be a dealer and what kind of dealers they want to see, obviously they have a brand image to uphold. And they don't need Walmart or Costco or, you know, chain stores or whatever. And they don't certain, like mom and pop shops, they don't want certain little mom and pop shops carrying their brand because again, it might devalue their brand. You know, I told you guys this music, man, I think I had. They told me how to be in business 10 years before I could be a dealer. When I reached out to them and I was like, really? That's crazy. And so anyways, my point is that what I've learned is all of those rules are immediately invalid and don't matter once the economy slows a little bit or there's a little bit of over just dock. So I remember when I opened the store in 2004, and I remember 2004, 5, 6, 7, you know, the boom years. I remember everybody was like, oh, man, the buy in is this. And maybe if we approve you, and maybe if you do this and if you carry this. And there was all these rules. It was like I was joining fraternities. It was like, oh, I want to carry your product. Here's my money. And they'd go, oh, no, we have rules for how your money comes. And we're like, what? And they would. They would tell us rules. And then by 2009, it was like, hey, if you just want to buy one. Or if you just, you know, hey, if you just want to put. But this is actually a true story. You know, the recession got so bad that, you know, brands would tell you that you could just put them, you were a dealer for them on your website, and if anyone just casually ordered a product, they would just sell you a product. That was so terrifying as a dealer, because at first you're like, that's cool. But then you go, what a minute. Wait, what does that mean? Because that really tells you how bad the market was. I told you guys. Maybe I never told you this, but I'll tell you this now. During the recession, we sold so many PRS guitars because PRS was repossessing the rep. The reps, plural. But our REP was repossessing more PRS guitars from dealers than anything else. That's what was his main job. He was actually not even selling guitars anymore. He was just going from store to store trying to get the guitars back the dealers hadn't paid for because their accounts were past due. And then because we were a cash dealer, he would just bring the guitars to us. So it was a crazy time. So. So basically what I'm trying to say, buddy, is I think last year felt a little desperate, especially towards the end. And, yeah, I could see a lot of companies doing something. We'll see if it's a permanent thing. It might be, but I don't know. Bob says, hey, Phil, what's your thoughts on the opinion? What's your thought? What's your opinion? Okay, what's my opinion on a Gibson Custom Pro Les Paul that was a Guitar center exclusive. I think they were released in 2014. Thanks. I like anything that's exclusive. Guitar center, musicians, friends, Sweetwater, you know, Wildwood. I don't care what it is. I don't care what the excuse is. Limited edition. What I've learned, in almost every case, a limited edition, a small run, a whatever it is, essentially is custom shop. And that's what it will be perceived as later. Will someone care that you have a limited edition? Anything. Will someone care that you had an exclusive Guitar Center Guitar? No, but you will have something unique and different. And unique and different is sometimes cool. So in the grand scheme of things, you have to understand if you're looking for fast and easy sale. Okay, so in other words, if you're buying a guitar and your brain says, for some reason I want to buy this guitar, but I want to be able to get rid of it fast, then you need to stick to basics. Buy Offenders and Gibsons in the basic, boring, you know, sunburst, black, white colors. Don't get too, too crazy. Maybe cherry burst for Les Paul's, you know, just keep it basic. And there's always a customer, there's always somebody looking for that guitar. You'll be able to unload your stuff. However, however, if you want to, if you want to have something unique but not pay the crazy money that people have to pay to get a custom shop instrument made. You know what's funny is I have a theory. I have a theory. Okay, you want to hear my theory? I'm giving this NAGS neon yellow guitar. You know why I think it exists? Because I think I have no reason, I have no proof. I have lots of reasons to believe this. No proof. Let me go here, okay? I'm gonna find it. There it is. Okay, so I don't think it's a coincidence, okay, that nags. What year is this, man? If it's. Oh, look at that. I mean, how. Okay, so coincidence maybe, right? Tell me. So nags in 2024, you know, the time when my guitar was made, they did a very limited run of the Steve Stevens guitars in this fluorescent yellow, pink and orange. Okay. And I know this is weird. It's a weird, weird guitar. Okay, look at that. Wee. For those that you all need that. Look at that. It's got the little phaser pistol that he uses. So why I'm showing you this is. I don't think it's a coincidence that they did that and then they had a couple yellows. I didn't see the orange ones, but maybe there's orange ones and a couple pink ones. Because what happens is they probably did that limited run and then they probably had the paint. So they probably shot a couple extra guitars with the paint because the paint, neon paint's not cheap. So. And you know, manufacturing is all about getting your cost down. So they, they basically probably shot a bunch of guitars in those colors and then let them go, you know, sold them, right? And to same thing, told the dealer like, hey, this is a very unique guitar. The problem is, is that it's so unique, only one dude on the Internet wanted one and he wasn't going to pay for it. I don't know. So anyways, my point is to, to your. To. To. To Bob is it's A cool guitar. It's unique, and it's a way to get. Think about this. This is why I told you the moral of the story of the Guitar of the week was patience, right? You know, it sold. I didn't pay the full price. I didn't want it that bad. Now do I like it? Absolutely not. Because it's cheap. Because it's at a price point now that I feel like it's in my comfort zone. You know, I can play this guitar. I can play it. I can love it. It can get dinged. You know, I don't want it to get dinged, but it can, okay? And, you know, I. I have a couple guitars and I've, you know, I told you, gu. I have a couple guitars that I just paid too much for, and they're just staying in their cases right now, and they're eventually going to go away because, again, I just can't pull them out and love them because I'm too nervous. And for those of you who are going to have opinions about that, when you have a family and you think, wow, if I nick this guitar, it's worth $2,000 less, I think, wow. Or I could not nick it and give my daughter $2,000 and change her life. You know what I mean? So I'm not gonna do that. You see what I'm saying? So that's. It's, it's, it's. It's. That's just how it goes. I don't know how it goes. Just practical. I'm being practical is what I'm trying to say. Practicality. So guitar for me is a romance, but then my upbringing makes me practical. So practicality is part of my thing, too. Oh, yeah. Zarli says 67, says, hey, Phil, my middle pickup on my deluxe Strat doesn't work in the middle position, but it does work in the in between positions. Is it likely? Switch. It's. It's definitely the switch. My guess is maybe a cold solder joint broke Fenders and kind of known for those on those switches, because, you know those. What happens. What happens sometimes is they run the wire through, they solder it, and then when they are putting it all together, those tabs, I guess is what you call them, the Tangs, what you want to call. They get bent. And look, it looks like I got a red bruise right there just from pushing down so hard on my desk. Anyways, so. So basically, that's what I'm trying to say is, yeah, it's possible I would not replace the switch here's. What I would do is I would desolder it, re solder it. Make sure it looks clean. Look for anything that's, you know, just touching. It's not supposed to touch. Just, you know, kind of just. And you. You don't even have to know what you're looking for. Just if it looks wrong, it's probably wrong. And then I would do that first. And then I. And then replace the switch. And so, you know, somebody's probably going to say, hey, you could. Somebody says wiggle switches, you can do that too. Sure. You can see if that. That helps it if it's bent. Me personally, I. If it. If it's not noticeable damage, always replace the switch. Because even if you fix it, it just means it's going to go out when you don't want it to. Right. Intermittent is, I think, the worst. At least when something's broken. Like if I know the middle pickup doesn't work, then I just don't use it on stage. The worst is you flip on. I think it's. I think a lot of you don't play out, and so maybe this doesn't matter to you when I'm talking like this. But people who play out know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, people think like when you're playing and you switch to a pickup and it goes out, you think like, oh, no, you're stressed out. No, sometimes you just don't know. You don't have sound because it's loud. Things are happening. Sometimes you're just like, oh. And then you're like, am I not hearing me in the monitor? And now your paranoia kicks in. At least mine does. Is it the monitor that's out? Is it me that's not making sound? Is it my pedal? I kicked, right? What happened? And so, yeah, you don't want. I don't like to anything that I think is going to be a possible issue. Just replace it and fix it and move on. Especially when it's a $25 switch and 30 minutes of your time and an hour if you're a novice at it. So just do it for 30 bucks in an hour. It's worth it to be. To always be able to rely on it. Okay. Oh, Matt says, hey, Phil, what do you think has the bigger impact on the guitar industry in the last past 10 years? The Helix or the Katana? The Katana. I think the Katana. I think the Katana is a bigger thing than we all probably started with. And here's. Here's why. I think it's it's a good sounding amp. It's trusted by. I mean, Dave Freeman's got a katana. Like I remember he was talking about this once. He's like, yeah, I have a katana that he uses to test stuff or whatever. And I'm like, they were using to test pedals and I have a katana and I know I have a katana, you know, to do on the video. So I have something that relates to people when they want an amp that's in the 2, 300 range. But I have a Katana because again, it's just a tried and true amp. It's not amazing. It's a Toyota Camry. It's not amazing. You just know it's gonna start, you know it's gonna run for a long time because it's boss and you just trust boss and it's relatively inexpensive. And look, there's been a lot of great practice amps and the katana, in fact, in fact, my best advice to somebody is to not even get $99amps anymore. Just go right to katana, you know, and just because a katana gets used, katana, just a katana is an amp. I mean, you know, it's funny, they keep coming out with new katanas. I could care less. I just, you know, to me, I'm just using it for basic sounds. I think the katana was a bigger impact. The Helix, I think of the Helix because I used a Helix, you know, HX Stomp and I had a helix before and I think line six makes great stuff. As I've said this before, I like distortion. The line 6 distortions, I prefer them to, my ear prefers them to the boss distortions overall. But preference is not like I don't like boss and I like line 6. It's just if you ab them. I'm generally picking the line 6 because there's something about it just sounds more, more mid rangy, more natural. I don't know what it is, but something about it. But also the katana is now the industry standard for this better be better than this. And what I mean by that is every youtuber I know that does quality demo work will tell you they're like the amount of comments every video, like if I did a video of this magnetone right now, okay, this beautiful amp, this thing is amazing, right? This is a, this is the panoramic stereo and I plugged it. Now it's, it's, you know, whatever plugged into it, there's going to be four comments going, that's Great. But my katana could do that. And they're not wrong because, like, when they say their katana can do that, here's how I perceive that. I perceive that it's like, if I got. You know, and I'm not a car guy, so just give me. Give me some. I'll like. Let's say I got a beautiful, whatever, exotic car. And I go, look at this car. Look how nice it drives. Look at the leather. And somebody goes, my camera can get me. My camera can get me to work, too. I'd be like, yeah, it's true. Like, somebody goes, yeah, I can. I can gig with a katana. I'm like, you can gig with a katana? It's pretty. So I think katana, but it just. Yeah, like I said. But I like both products. But katana, Eric says, Eric the bull. That's nice. Name. I like it. I like. I like. Also, I like how you picked your capital letters and then. And then the lower case letters. I don't know why. I find there's an artistic quality to that. He's Eric big E, R, small I, big C, small TH. Maybe because my name's McKnight. And then it's. It's always capital M, small C, capital K. Right. So maybe that's why I like it because it's just in my name too. Anyways, he says, phil, from when you owned your private stock was, in your opinion, how do they compare to the core line? You know what ruined it for me with the private stock was when my friend said, it's just furniture. At this point, it's just fancy furniture. He's like, it looks like. He goes, it plays your core, but it's just fancy. And I'm like, yeah, that ruined it for me. So not digging on private stocks. Okay. By the way, if you got the money for them and you love them. The other problem for me is, as you know, I'm not overly into wood. I mean, look at the guitars behind me, what I choose and pick. It's. I mean, I have a plain mahogany mirror, you know. You know, that top was picked for me by. By heritage, you know, so no really fanciness in the woods or inlays. So a lot of private stock goes over my head in the idea of what. What I'm buying. I'm buying some. Something that's, you know, it's exotic and beautiful, but not necessarily, you know, It's. It doesn't fit the thing I need, which is. Stays in tune perfectly intonates. Well, sounds good. To me, the core does that. So I don't really need a private stock, but that's all. And that's basically all I'm trying to say about custom shops. I'm not trying to say that they're no good, they're overpriced. I'm just saying for me, and I've said this before, as you go up the rungs of prices of gear with amps or guitars, what I can tell you is, is I've said this. I say this a lot. You know, it's hard to go backwards. You know, if you go up, it's hard to go back. It's. To me, it's easier on guitars than it is amps. Once you get a couple nice amps, it's hard to go down to a lower quality amp or a lower whatever and go, oh, yeah, this is a good sounding amp. You go, I kind of miss how that amp sounded. Guitars, you know, as long as they play great and they sound fine, they're functional in that way. I don't really, really need them to be fancy. So let's see. Tony says, hey, any favorites in the Blues Driver world? Was looking at the WAZA and the Analog man mods, but curious if you have any personal picks. I played both. I liked both. I'd pick whatever's cheaper because I. I wouldn't. I didn't pick a better. I didn't pick a better one. I will tell you though, I think for a pedal that I'm absolutely in love with for that tone, it's not. It doesn't have as much distortion as the Blues Driver, but. But absolutely. Ah, it's 230 bucks. Oh, well, you can find them for 174. Here's one for 99 bucks. Use the guitar center. This pedal right here, the jrocket Audio Blue Note. This pedal, there's a ton of versions. Okay, I have one right here. This is the one I actually have. I paid. Oh, Yeah, I paid 90. I paid 109. I thought for mine. 99 bucks. I absolutely love this. So. So, you know, comparing it the other day with a friend to a King of Tone pedal, which is like a Holy Grail pedal. We both like this better, which was saying a lot because the King of Tones are pretty pricey. I mean, you can buy seven of these, at least six for the price of a King of Tone petal, a real one. So unless you're on the waiting list, then. Then you can buy three of these. So that's one I would highly recommend. I'm you guys let me know if you're interested. I told you guys I'm back into petals again. And I have. I've talked about this again. I've been. And I think, you know, I was into pedals and then I got out of pedals and then I was into pedals a little bit and then I'm never really into them. Into them now. This probably. This is the most I've ever been into them. And the collection has gotten pretty crazy. And so if you guys think that would be an interesting video to do, I would do it and put it on the second channel on the Know youw Gear channel for sure. Cause I don't have to edit it. Like I said, I can just film it and then have, have it edited and put on there. If you guys would be interested in that. Let me know in the comments if you think it's interesting and just go through them and why I own certain ones because every, every pedal I have has a purpose for. At least for my thought process of why this pedal needs to exist and how I use it. Okay, so this is. Mr. Austin Music says I buy guitars, get sent some from people and companies often do a video or two on the instrument, but then they take up space. I try to gift them to students but I don't have a lot local. What do you do? So inexpensive guitars like student anything that's good. So. So Mr. Austin music just again you're asking me so I got to give it to you from my, from my angle. Okay. If the guitar is amazing, I gift it away. Like I gave a Bruno guitar to my father in law. I gave, you know, a couple friends guitars that wanted to get a guitar. We gave guitars to students at schools. I'll try to give them to, to charities but not like to raise money because, because again if you're looking entry level guitars, but only if they're really, really good. And the reason is, is because I don't, I don't want. I don't want a good deed to turn into a problem, you know. You know, the last thing I need is a email or a text, you know, a month later, two months later going, hey, the guitar you gave us, we're having an issue with it. And you're like, oh crap. So when I feel pretty good about it, we'll, we'll move them that way. Schools is where a lot of them have been going. We've been just giving them to schools and that's what we do at the entry level ones. And the logic behind that Is especially guitars. And so, you know, I have a sweet spot that I'm looking for like the like guitars that are like, okay, this guitar sells for 500 new and used. We'd be lucky to get two for it. So might as well gift it to somebody because at that point, you know, it's like you're only going to get 200 bucks and that's not really going to move the channel, our channel, very much when it comes to. And then mid price guitars, we tend to sell those all the time. Because again, and upper tier is definitely very, very. Because again, that moves the needle the most. Because like you're saying I'm funding my goal, which I've been working to for years. There's no absolute goal to be no sponsors. I think about it and then it just never seems to work out. I'd like to get to 25% sponsors. Right now we're running about 50%. When I say sponsor, just keep in mind exactly what you said. Some companies are sending us a guitar, some companies are gifting us guitar, some companies are paying us, some companies are just loaning us a guitar, some people are loaning the guitars. But ultimately I just. This is a bad idea. But I'm saying anyways, I'm disgusted with myself doing 50%. I don't. I think it's horrible. I think we should do a lot less. However, it's tough. And if you're doing it too, you know, everybody knows how tough this is, especially if you're trying to, you know, do something like, look, I knew that if I did a Novo, I'd get views. So you're like, okay, I know this is a video that people would be interested in. Why? Because it's a substantial sized channel and there's so many Novos that were sent to so many influencers that if you, you know, it, it's, it would be, it's. That video was like the, the quintessential kind of to me, like, like my buddy said, influencers won't take a crap unless they get sponsored, right? And you're like, yeah. So it's nice, it's nice to see a video. I know, because I want to see it too. Like you guys, it's nice to see a video of a Novo where I bought it and now here's the opinion, you know, it's not affected by Novo or somebody else. Okay. But that's a hard video to make. As you guys know, it's a lot of money to do that. So, you know, it's this, it's you take some sponsored videos and you try to move on that way. And so, like I said, we try to keep the sponsorships limited. And ideally, we try to keep them, but, you know, to. To. To the smallest number. But like I said, ultimately it. I think it ends up to be about 50% is what I see when I look at my own channel, looking at the stats. And part of that. So, you know, and just because I got to give myself some credit, some of it is I can't control it. Because here's why we consider anything sponsored. If we follow. We follow the actual guidelines, which is if it was given to us, if it was. If it was gifted to us, it was loaned to us, if we got a discount on it, if we know somebody at the company, if we're friends with anyone in the company, you know, saving. So, like, you know, at this point, I know so many people that I'm like, it's tough, but. But it's tough, so. And then Pick Me Chew. I think that Pick My Chew says the pedal show is the one that remains unpaid. Well, they're doing pedals, so I appreciate that because I know those guys, and they're great guys. Yes. Like. Like my son said, if I was doing. He said it best. If you were doing, like, he goes, too bad you're not doing, like, blenders and appliances. You know, it's a little different. Different when, you know, the average guitar is about a 700 to $800 investment. And it's. It's tough that way. It's a tough. It's a tough thing to pay for. So. Plus, they're selling product. And that's the other thing we talked about, too, is if we sell product, that's the other thing, too. It's like. It's like. Like, Rupiato doesn't do sponsors for the most part, but he's also selling his product, so that's his sponsors himself. And that's where it gets tricky. He's like, okay, do you guys want. And I'm just asking you, you guys can tell me. Do you want me to get companies to send products sometimes, or do you want me to constantly be telling you, you got to download my new thing or buy my thing or buy this thing, or this video is sponsored by this? Which really means that every video's. And by the way, before you go down that road, I just want you to know that secretly what's going to happen is conversion happens at a much higher rate at a smaller amount of views, which means I'm Just giving you the insight. So you guys know. Because you guys deserve the truth, which is if you notice a lot of channels when they're making lots of views and then they start selling a product, whether it's a downloadable product or a physical product. Like all of a sudden they don't make these great videos anymore. And they're getting a lot less views. And you're like, oh, they're not doing as great. That's cause you don't need that many views. I can make a company $100,000 off 5,000 views. Getting them half a million views doesn't help them. It helps me. They don't care. Because once you break past the addictive quality guitar players who are just buying and consuming all the time, most of you guys aren't converting. You're not buying stuff. Most of you guys are watching stuff right now. There's 1200 of you, 1200 of you watching. I couldn't tell you the numbers, but probably imagine that a hundred of you are ready to buy anything right now. Just because you're just looking for. You're like, your whole week is like, I'm going to mow my lawn and buy whatever somebody tells me to do on the Internet. That's a hundred of you right now. So. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you, if you're selling something for $100, that's 100 times 100. There you go. Right? So that's the, that's the tough part. Where do you balance that? So it's tough. Yeah, I get it. But that's how we, we mix it up. Let's see. Quaker Town, Quakertown. Rick says, hey, Phil, when you play a Strat without a rear cavity cover, don't you worry about grounding wire getting dislodged? No, my gut's not that big. It's. It's a big one. Don't get me wrong. We can, we can get. I can get some of this tummy in that Strato cavity, but not enough. No, I've never had an issue there. It's usually soldered on Hell, I would say. I think. Let me just give you the insight. Quakertown Rick, have you ever desoldered that wire from the claw? It's not that easy. Usually. It's a pretty big glob of solder and it's on there pretty hard. So pulling it off is gonna be super, super hard. So I wouldn't worry about it at all. Is it possible? Anything's possible. Have I ever seen it? Never seen it once. I've never seen anybody do it, not even accidentally. But also, it's hard enough when you're trying to do it. Like I said, I'd almost. Don't. I'm not going to tell you do this because it's a bad. Because I can tell you what's going to happen if you were to take that wire and pull on it as hard as you can. My guess is it's going to break from the other side of the electronics before it pulls from that claw. Just because usually the way it's soldered on there is the same way when you solder on the nickel cover on a humbucker, it's on there. I mean, you almost had to break it free or super heat your gun to your iron. So, you guys know I get a little grief every once while on the Internet when I say soldering gun instead of soldering iron. I apologize every time I say soldering gun. I'm pretty sure soldering gun came from. I think when I was in the army, somebody was caught. Somebody when I was young called it a soldering gun and it stuck. But anyway, soldering iron. So that's just my thoughts on that. Let's. Let's button this show up. This is also, by the way, all these have been from Amanda. So thank you, Amanda, for grabbing these. Mort 2700 says. Hey, Phil. I have an RG with a backbone neck. Truss rod is only one way. Oh, so no dual action truss rod. Well, your back bowed. That's good. So we want to straighten it. It. Oh, no, we're back bowed. Oh, yeah. So. And the neck's super thin. It's 19 millimeters, and it won't take a back bow out. Do I have to heat press the neck into shape or is there another trick? I would do a heat press on it. Or like I said, you could also, because there's no finish on that neck, whether you have the rose or the maple. Most likely you have the maple. There's no finish on it. So I would not only do that, but I would definitely increase the tension of the strings. I would block the trim. So let me say what happened. If you brought it to me, I would go, I'd block that trim just to get out of the equation. And then I'd probably put in a set of elevens or twelves on it. Probably 11s. Tighten them up to pitch and get, you know, just enforce that neck straight. And then. And then we would probably do. We'd probably steam it so ever so lightly. So that's and heat and steam, same thing. Try to see if we can do that that way. It sucks because that's usually not a problem with those necks. It's really bad that it sucks that it happened, but it is fixable. But you need more tension and you need it to relax itself, straighten itself out. So. Oh, somebody says soldering guns, dispense the solder. Is that true or are you just saying that so I don't know. Oh, Michael says, hey, so glad that you like the heritage. I'm curious though about the recent in house pickups being used Instead of Seymour Duncan 59s and Lawler dog ears. What do you think? The Lawler, I haven't heard. I haven't tried their dog ears versus Lawler's dog ears in their heritage guitars, but the heritage pickups versus the Seymour Duncan's. I absolutely love the heritage pickups. So I have not AB'd them, you know, in the same guitars to go. Oh, but here's the thing. I like that guitar and the way it sounds. There was no, no instinct in me to change them out. And I really like them them. So I guess sometimes that's probably a more accurate way of saying things is not that I like them better than the Seymour Duncan, I just like them. So I, I like them better than what came in all of my Gibsons. So. Blue note guitar says, apparently drinks water, says, hey Phil, I own a boss katana and I can't play loud neighbors, etc. Am I really missing out with a tube amp? Is it really worth spending a fortune on a tube amp and attenuator? Is it worth it? It's a joy. If you get joy out of it, it's worth it. I don't want to sidestep this question. If you have the money to throw around and you don't care about that money, if you don't have another place for that money to go and you want to just enjoy your life and buy a tube amp and just, hey, suck it. I only live once. Then yeah, you could do that. Are you missing out? No, I use a bascatana, literally in my bedroom. That's what I was playing through last night. My wife came upstairs, I was playing. So, you know, I go upstairs sometimes ahead of my. Of Shauna and I go in the bedroom and I kind of situate my side of the room, right. I don't know. And then I play a guitar. I have one guitar and one amp in there. And right now I have the katana and I had it in the whatever the lowest setting is before off, which is like a half watt. And I have a Strat in there right now. And I was just playing my Strat through the katana and loving it, you know. No, you're not missing out on anything. I don't really ever feel like I'm missing out when I'm playing guitar. I find every time I get to play guitar, that's not missing out owning nice stuff. That's a combination of two things. One, an addictive personality to this, this subject of music and guitar. And just I gotta try everything and I want to see everything. And, you know, it's been marketed to me since I was a young adult in guitar magazines and Rockstar videos and stuff like that. And then also just a point of, oh, I've gotten to a point of level where I can afford to buy nicer things, so I'm gonna do that. But no, no, you know, it's funny this. I told Shawn I might talk about this. Let me talk about this, this, and this maybe help, help you give you some insight. A couple weeks ago, or maybe it was last week, I don't know, it was a couple episodes, but it stuck with me. Stuck in my, my head. Somebody asked me, what's a good amp for a tube amp for under 1500 dollars that you know, that you like? And, and I said, if you go to side camera, side camera there, right There is the 68 Princeton. Okay, now, I tend not to talk like this because I think it's douchey. So the fact that I'm doing it, it's almost. But I just don't have another way to illustrate this. I said, that's the amp I would pick. The question was what amp would I buy for under 1500 dollars as a tube amp? Like. And I, I took the question as what would I buy and enjoy and want and be forever happy, right? And maybe I added all those things, but that, that's what I took. The interpretation of that question was what would you buy? And that's what I would buy. And there was a comment, and I mean no offense to the person that commented. Somebody said, basically I was wrong, you should just buy a monoprice. And I think sometimes in my attempt to not come across like an ass, I don't really hit the subject hard enough. And so maybe I don't know what the right answer is. Somebody, by the way, peak my Chew said DSL40. I would say DSL40 would be the runner up to me to the, to the Princeton 68. For me personally, Right. Like here's where I would say the DSL 40 because I, I did a video on the DSL 40 and, and the DSL 40, if I didn't have any overdrive pedals, I would have to go with the DSL40, but. And then after DSL40 I would also say the Fender Supersonic. But the point of this story with the Princeton 68 is in this collection of things that I have and these amps I have, you know, look here I, that's a car Mercury 8. That's one of the original ones. And then of course there's the, you know, the Magnetone stereo, you know, and then There's a Marshall 2061 and you know, there's Ampli Nation and there's a Two Rock. Right. I guess what I was trying to say to that guy was in a room full of really expensive amplifiers. That Princeton to me is everything I need. And I don't feel like any of these amps are much. I don't want to say better, just any. They don't do anything for me that that amp can't do. And so that's what I was trying to say is like that's where I would, I'm happiest with that amp in fact. So you know, I have a Princeton 64, which is the hand wired one. I still prefer the 68, so that's how much I like the 68. I have a video about the 68. It's called something like why I've loved the 68 reverb for 10 years. It's because it compresses. It does low volume playing. I can get it loud enough that if I have to jam with someone, I can make it happen. Hey, squeaky sounds. My chair's being squeezed. And so my point is not to belittle the mag, the monoprice or to say somebody who has a less expensive amp, you know, they don't know what they're talking about. My point is, is that this amp punches way above its, its pay grade, so to speak. And so to answer your question, are you missing out? No. You, you know, the Katana is also something that punches above its pay grade. And the only thing I don't like about the, the solid state amps is that there's not, they're not as compressed like the tube amps. You know, the clean channels just don't sound as, as silky smooth, you know, and velvety, you know, all these stupid terms. Transparent overdrive, all the terms that, that we use. I, I just like said I really like the 68 is what I'm trying to say. And I don't know if that's going to help you with your question but maybe it's insight, This one. You know what, Odo? I think that's how I'm. How you say your name. I can't answer this question but I want to read it because I know someone who probably can't answer it. Okay. It says, why do you think. Why do you think we do not see PRS nitro finish guitars that have aged from heavy use. Is it that they use an extra durable nitro formula? So I have a friend who's a Finnish expert and he can. I'll ask him because he's so. You know, when I say I ask, I'll ask him. I want to be very clear. He's already told me this answer but I wasn't really paying attention. Like I didn't need it. I didn't need that information in my head. So I didn't retain what he said. But he was talking and I'm going to be talking in a term. He was saying something about they do it a little bit different and they use an undercoat. Some like. I don't know what, ceramics, something. I don't know what he was talking about. He's like, oh, and it's really. This is the undercoat. It's acrylic undercoat with the nitro over the top and yada, yada, yada. And this is like I said, somebody, an authority who actually knows about it. And I was like, oh, okay. And at the time I didn't really care. But now you're asking. I'm like, I could probably find out. But yes, that this is what's up. So, you know, PRs went full nitro, I think in 2020, in June of 2020. So they did nitro before that. Okay, some guitars were Nitro but all PRS guitars USA S2 and Core USA June of. When they came back, it's. I think, I believe it's when they came back from, you know, the, the two week flatten the curve covet thing. From then on, it was all nitro all the time, all guitars. And so that's how long they've been making them doing that and that. He told me that then, you know. Oh, yeah. Well, they're doing it this way. And I'm like, oh, okay. And when I went to the factory, I. And it actually came up because it was a question because their dry time is significantly less than Gibson's for nitro. Which I thought was really odd. And again, he explained it. So I will. This subject, I'll timestamp it is, I don't know the answer to your question. And then I'll send it to him and he'll tell me the answer, and then I can tell you his answer. Okay. Okay. Are we done? I think we're done. Okay. Vim69. So we're gonna just button up a couple last ones for fun. Says, hey, Phil, can you intonate a guitar with it lying on its back, or does it need to be in the playing position? This is a great question. Okay? And the answer is, yes, you can intonate it on the bench. You can do anything on the bench. However, the argument. The argument is the. Without a perfect phrase for it, it's like a 1% argument. It's a. Well, technically, when you lift the guitar up, the weight of the guitar that was pushing on the neck, now the intonation can be slightly off, and it's not the same. Just like if you said the action, everything from the bench is not going to be the same as in the playing position. Sure. But no one that makes your guitars cares because they're doing it that way. So, you know, most setups, look, when the 55 point inspection guys at Sweetwater hold your guitar, they're holding it in the playing position. When PRS is setting up the guitars, when Kiesel setting up guitars, they're holding in playing positions, generally speaking, everybody's gonna do most their stuff in the playing position. Okay? So that. That is correct. And I've said this in many videos, do it in the playing position. I'm illustrating always in a video. So if you notice, a lot of times I'll say, I try to do the disclaimer of time, but I forget all the time too, which is, hey, you know, do it in the playing position. But illustrated wise, it doesn't make sense because unless I put a camera in front of my bench, it doesn't. There's no way to get the angle correctly. And it's not. Again, I'm just at this point, I'm like kind of like thinking like a clinic I'm teaching. But that being said, no one would complain. I would argue for everyone who says, oh, man, if you intonate your guitar while it's sitting on the bench, it's going to be out. I'd be like, how much money you want to throw down on that? You know? You know, I always talk about how people are very brave on the Internet, but then they're not so brave in person. I don't even care about bravery. I care about money. Thousand bucks, right? You tell me, you know, I'll make the video. We'll do it together. The guy who's gonna. The guy whose opinion's that strong who says, hey, man, if you intonate a guitar on a bench and you pick it up, it's gonna be out intonation. Cool. Well, then what I'll do is I'll intonate the guitar. You know, either two exact guitars or something like that, right? I'll do one in playing position, doing. And you'll guess which one's right and which one's wrong. And you'll tell me, and you'll. And if you lose, you gotta pay me a thousand bucks. And I bet you there's not a lot of takers. I wouldn't take that bet. It's a hard one. So. So vims, it's pre. It's better to do everything in the playing position. Not only because of the weight, the ways. It's just because in the playing position is how you're gonna do things. One of the best piece of advice I ever got when it comes to repair and setup came from Scott Grove on the Scott Grove channel. You know, he always had his tidbits of wisdom. And one of them was, again, and this is where I try to take leads from things like him, you know. Cause he had his. You know, he didn't really care about people. He wasn't really worried about the trolls. So he just tended to say whatever he liked, which is nice. It's a nice, nice thing to do. But what's great was he would say things even though they were. He was up anti the industry, you know, standard. And. And one of the things he said was when he was tuning a guitar or intonating guitar, he would pick, meaning take the pick and hit the string as hard as he normally hits it. I got so curious about this. This statement that was, oh, gosh, I don't know how many. 15 years ago. I mean, it was a long time ago he made that video or wherever he said it in the video. I started not only doing that, but then analyzing people who. I set up the guitars and saying, hey, you know, how hard do you pick? You know? And they would show me, and I go, okay. I try to mimic it when I'm setting up their guitars. And what I can tell you was that that one piece of advice instantly improved my customer satisfaction on setups. Because all of a sudden, I never thought about it. Yeah, you. You know, I was always told you, you pick the string evenly, right? You got the tuner and you hit it and boom. Normal amount, you know, right? Not too hard, not too light. You know, you got to. Got to get it to intonate perfectly. And then he was like, no, hit it however you're gonna hit it. And I tried doing that way. And here's the deal. I don't argue if it's right. I don't argue it's wrong. What I can tell you is absolutely, customer satisfaction skyrocketed. People liked my setups way more once I started doing stuff like that. So a lot of times when I implement things or say things in my videos, I'll have. It's fine. People call me out and they'll go, hey, that's not it. That's not right. Or that's not the way you're supposed to do it. And I never argue with this. I just go, that's the way I did it. And I got great customer satisfaction with it. And people were happy with the service. And that doesn't prove anything, but. But it does. Say. It's. Just say something. So vims, I would say do everything in the playing position, but if you can't, then don't. You know what I mean? Just don't worry about it. So me personally, here's a wacky thing. I set up almost every customer's guitar or any guitar I'm doing for a video. I'll do most of the setup, if not 99.99% setup in the playing position. My personal guitars, I don't. I don't care. Sometimes I'll just do the whole thing on the bench. Why? Because it's lazy and I'm the player and I'm again, customer satisfaction. I'm. I already know what I'm looking for. And if it's slightly off, I'm not going to care or notice, you know, if it's slightly off. So. So. Blues Man 970 says, do you tune at the Attack or as it rings out. That's a good question. I can tell you a trick that I use a lot. If you look at my bench, okay. In the videos. So. So the shop that I'm in is a studio shop. So it's a repair shop studio. Because it's set up with all the cameras and stuff where if you look at the old videos when I was in, you can always tell the background was brown. That's my old actual shop shop with cameras in it. When it's a gray background, it's the shop that's now set up like a studio. But either way, I had not only my Petersen strobe tuner and stuff, there's a rack mount tuner. You'll see it sometimes in the shot, you'll see it in the corner of the bench, it's facing down. What I will do regardless, so when I plug into it, I plug into the tuner, I always take the tone control and I run that all the way back, back. So that's what I do. If I don't have the control, tone control all back, I hit the string and I, I watch the tuner, wait until it rings out. That's how long I do it. So. But if you run the tone control back, I don't think it matters. Just a little. Just a tidbit there. Okay, I think we did it. We solved all the world's problems and, and with love and guitars and that's all it really matters. I want to thank everybody. If you guys are a patron, just remember that tomorrow is the clinic. It's tomorrow and it's on the Patreon page if you're at the mid tier above. And on Sunday, if you're on the top tier, we have the coffee hang where we discuss the secret society of secret guitar stuff. And so. And all. That's it. I was gonna say. And also. That's it. And. And also check out on the other channel. I did a cool clip today about the new guitar center guitars and it was, I thought it was insightful, as you know. And what else? That's it. Also, thank you guys for supporting the second channel. It's about to hit 40,000 subs, so if you haven't subscribed to the second channel, that's where we put pedal videos, amp videos, the pod clips, but also bonus clips that are not always in the podcast, which is kind of cool. And so check that out as well. And what else? That's it. And on that note, thank you guys so much for your time and Know your gear, the know your gear podcast.
Episode: "Fender is ready to fight the cheap Amazon guitar market"
Date: April 14, 2026
In this engaging edition of the Know Your Gear Podcast, Phillip McKnight answers a wide variety of listener questions focused on all things guitars—ranging from high-end Fender and Gibson custom shop instruments to the booming market of affordable Amazon guitars. The episode tackles topics like guitar resale value, YouTube’s impact on modding cheap guitars, how brands like Fender and Squier are responding to budget-oriented competition, handling negative online comments, practical advice on guitar selling and setup, and a fun interactive "This or That" pedal comparison game. Throughout, Phillip’s authentic and conversational style makes the show both informative and enjoyable, peppered with humor, personal anecdotes, and candid industry observations.
"None of them has made me think that I have arrived at a level that just everything below it is just substandard (...) My favorite Les Paul I own is my Gibson Les Paul Classic."
"If I post a video and I don't read the comments, I have a much better week every time."
"If I had a contribution to you having trouble selling heavier guitars, I'm sorry. I've sold many heavy guitars recently, so they buy them."
"YouTube has provided so much content on how to make inexpensive guitars great… People like buying guitars and kind of modding them up a little bit."
"This guitar is $300. If it just can stay in tune, it’s already a win. Novo at $4,000? It better be amazing."
"It's crazy to me when I take cheap guitars out of the boxes now and they're actually playable."
“I think the Katana. I think the Katana is a bigger thing than we all probably thought.”
"Yes, you can intonate on the bench... but in a perfect world, do everything in the playing position."
On Collector Mentality
"If you buy a $200 guitar, you're gonna buy 10ish. When you buy a thousand dollar guitar, you're gonna have ten $1,000 guitars. Everybody just picks a comfort zone and then they just buy that." (31:30)
On Reading Comments as a Creator
"Don't read the comments, read the stats. YouTube is one of the best platforms for giving you honest and good feedback with stats. Numbers don't lie." (16:50)
Live Pedal Game Reveal
"The reason I came up with this game idea was I bought this pedal, and my wife goes, ‘Did you buy a Metal Zone?’ And I'm like, yeah. She’s like, it’s gonna sound horrible. I go, it's the WAZA Craft one!" (1:05:00)
On Industry Trends and Boom Years
"In the boom years, everyone had rules about how dealers could buy in. By 2009, it was like, ‘Hey, if you just want to buy one...’ That’s when you knew the market was hurting." (1:55:00)
| Topic | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Custom Shop vs. Boutique Guitars | 00:01–10:00 | | Handling Negative Online Comments | 10:00–18:00 | | Guitar Weight & Selling Online | 18:00–23:00 | | Fender/Squier vs. Amazon Guitars | 23:00–35:00 | | Intonation Tips & Clip-on Tuners | 45:00–50:00 | | Speaker Upgrades—Princeton Amps | 1:10:00–1:18:00 | | Interactive Pedal Comparison ("This or That") | 52:00–1:10:00 | | Entry-Level Guitar Quality | 42:00–45:00 | | Cable Brand Preferences & Pulling Techniques | 1:40:00–1:52:00 | | Retail Industry, Sales, & Exclusives | 1:52:00–2:02:00 | | Collector vs. Player Philosophy | 2:02:00–2:12:00 | | Troubleshooting Electronics | 2:12:00–2:20:00 | | Helix vs. Katana—Which Mattered More? | 2:20:00–2:25:00 | | Gear Donations, Sponsorships, Channel Funding | 2:28:00–2:36:00 | | Setup: Bench vs. Playing Position | 2:45:00–2:52:00 |
Phillip’s style is affable, transparent, and sometimes self-deprecating. There are recurring themes of practical wisdom (“numbers don’t lie”), mild industry snark, and empathetic advice—always with a tone of someone who’s “been there,” whether it’s with negative feedback, gear addiction, or collector’s remorse.
This episode provides a masterclass in not only the technicalities of guitar gear and the realities of the instrument market (from entry-level Amazon deals to exclusive custom builds) but also in the importance of community, honest feedback, and maintaining balance between industry trends, personal priorities, and pure fun. The interactive elements and Phillip’s candid answers make it a standout episode for gearheads both new and veteran.
For more gear talk, demos, and bonus segments, check out the Know Your Gear second YouTube channel.