← Know Your Gear Podcast
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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast. The Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon Members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast. So if you guys don't know, some of you guys know that a few years ago I told this story on the podcast about the Moon Pie guy. That happened about 20 years ago. And if the interesting thing was because he was talking about a guitar called Moonstone, there's one behind me right there. That's the one from the video. So we finally got to close the chapter on that story by doing a deep dive on a Moonstone guitar. And I'm proud of that for two reasons. One, it's the only real review of those guitars on the Internet I could find. Otherwise I would have looked one up. You could find some. Some commentary, but not much. And of course, and then having a deep dive I think is just really cool. So it's really cool we can go back in time and grab something that's a piece of history, you know, it's just. It's not. They're not going to make that anymore. So it's nice that we. We were able to document that and put a close that story. If you guys didn't see my favorite part though, is this part. Let me go here. We. When I say we, it was. It was. Shauna Shawna created a Moon Pie shirt. Now there's two kinds. This is the number one seller so far. So you guys want to say number one. You guys have bought some this week. Number one. I'm just gonna tell you what they told me. This logo was the one that sold the most by far in the color blue. Then the color brown is the next highest seller of colors. And then if we go back out and it's on our link in the description, it'll take you to the alt color website. This is the other logo. This is the one I thought was gonna sell the best. The horizontal logo as we call Moon Pie guitars. These are limited edition. And of course, whenever I do anything limited edition because obviously, great. It builds revenue for the channel and stuff. We give you some time. So don't, don't jump, you know, don't have to freak out. These will go until August 11th, so you'll be able to buy a Moon Pie shirt. If you want to have one for the. The, you know, to, you know, for the fun of it and also support the channel, you can check one out. And like I said, you have till August 11th we will one time in the future or maybe multiple times, bring it back again, which will make sense when that happens. But that will be a further out. So I wouldn't expect to see the moon pie shirts available after the 11th for a little while, so just let you know. So. So like I said, if you want to support the channel and get a moon pie shirt and tell the funny story, when people go, what the heck's a moon pie guitar? You can go, interesting. You should say that. You. You want to get some frozen frozen yogurt and we'll. I'll tell you all about it, actually. So, you know, it was gelato. He was eating gelato. You should get some gelato and tell your friends about it. So moon pie shirts are crazy. If you guys don't know the story, guess what? There will be a link. I'll put it right now when I'm timestamping to the video of the moon pie guitar, and you can learn all about moon pie guitars. Yeah, I barge. I'm gonna say. I barge says it's algebra. Yeah, it's. It's funny. The. The funny part. I'll tell you on a side note. Here's a side funny note. So I wanted a moon pie shirt really bad. Soon as I got this worked out to do this video with Guitar Center. So Guitar center was able to facilitate and get this. This guitar from their Hollywood store. And as soon as I knew I was going to do it, I told Shawn, I go, I need a moon pie shirt. She's like, okay. And the problem is MoonPie is definitely trademarked. You can't make a. Like, you can't make a picture of a moon pie, you know, cake, and. And make a guitar out of it and put it out and not think you're gonna get in trouble. And I was like, man, but I won a moon pie guitar shirt really bad. And I was sitting there, and we had drawn a ton of logos, even a picture of the moon, and, like, the moon is the pie. And I kept thinking, I'm like, just, there's probably no way that moon pie cakes is not gonna freak out over this. And I'm like, okay, okay. And then I don't know what made me think of it. I was like, wait, what about the symbol for pie? Why does it have to be a pie? Like a pie, like a cake? We never said it was a pie cake. We just said moon pie. And I was like, we could make moon pie with the pie symbol. And I was like, all right. And then I did a Quick search not only to see if I could find a trademark for it, but I couldn't. But more importantly, we did a quick search to see if, like, there was any, like, you know, you know, like, Lambda Lambda pie. Like, I didn't want, like, a sorority, like, to be like, oh, no, where are the moon pies? And so, yeah, so now that's how we were able to get through with a moon piece. So now you can get a moon pie shirt. And, yeah, you know, a lot of you guys made a lot of jokes about moon pies and RC Cola. And I'm like, yeah, see, we should make a moon pie guitar one day, and we should make an RC Cola pedal and that you could have your Moon pie and your RC Cola pedal. That could be a thing. I'll have to figure out how to get around the RC Cola thing, too. We'll have to figure that out. Okay, so there, you know, now you're, you know about your Moon Pie shirts. If you want to check them out and support us. Okay, let's go to an early question. Here was an early question, and they're a little out of order, but they're. They're fine. This one came from Ice solo guitar, who said, hey, Phil, I have a Les Paul axis, and the collar of the trim bar of the Floyd Rose binds soldiers slightly. Okay. I'm worried about breaking the finish if I try and sand or dremel. Any suggestions? Okay, so I'm reading this, and I just want to be clear. I'm reading this when you say the collar. I'm reading it as the collar, the mechanism that connects the tremolo arm, the whammy bar, to the Floyd unit itself. Two things I didn't know. So that's okay. That's okay. So we'll do some searches. There's two things I don't know. So we'll answer both, and that way we're all covered. Right. You didn't say Gibson Access or maybe like the Epiphone one. So it won't matter either way. That's the good part. So let's go ahead and go to the web. Pull it up here. Okay. And we have here the epiphone. Alex Lifeson custom access. It doesn't matter. This is the. This is the bridge in question, the Floyd. And this is a Floyd 1000. Well, that. That's not a Floyd 1000. That's Alex Lifeson. But, but, but if you keep scrolling, you'll see here what it says. I think it specs it as a Floyd rose 1. Floyd rose 1000 series locking trouble. Okay, so let's go back, do some clicking there. We don't need that. This. And let's say you don't have the one, but let's say you have the Gibson one, right? Okay, so again, now you have the. The Gibson custom Les Paul access guitar. I'm assuming again, it could be any of these variations. This one I. I believe is. It doesn't say. It just says Gibson. I'm sorry, it's just Floyd Rose. Floyd Rose locking. It doesn't really say. That's a null material. It doesn't really say which Floyd it is. Doesn't matter either way. Now it could be the Schaller one. If you guys don't know. Let's go over a couple things. They're not really making the Schaller German Floyds anymore. So if you guys don't know that they've moved them to the US I've heard the US ones are good from some credible sources in the industry that I trust. I have not put my hands on one to know if they are actually as good or better than the Schaller, the German Schaller ones. What I can tell you though is that if you're having an issue, you were talking about Dremeling or sanding that. I wouldn't do either of those. What I would do is get yourself regardless of what bridge you have. I don't care if you have the 1000. If you have a German Schaller bridge and you verify that, then this may not be. But I'd still do it. But it may not be as helpful. But doesn't matter any Floyd Rose you guys have. If you're having an issue with the collar, in other words, the. The Whammy bar not doing well. Go ahead and go find yourself an actual German Schaller Whammy bar. Here's one. Okay. See right there, Genuine shawler German. You can still find them. Okay, this one's in gold. I don't know if you have gold. I don't have you Black. You can find them on Reverb. You can find them on. This one's 36 bucks. And you can calculate the Shimmy shipping. Keep in mind if I. That's from Pro Audio Store now because it's from, oh, Guitar Audio, not Pro Audio Star. We go here. Web. That's me. The website you can find. You know, here's. Here's a genuine Schaller. Genuine Schaller German Lockmaster for 21.98. And you can check that one out. And this is the whole mechanism. It's the, it's the collar, the arm, and the receiver, I would call it. And you just replace that out. It's very easy to replace out these. You'll probably never have any problems. I say. I say probably. I've never had a problem ever with them. The only problem I think you have is if you end up getting one that's not the actual German ones, until those are gone and we have a replacement from the US Ones that, and I know that it's very, you know that it's good. I could then maybe recommend that. But right now I'm going to tell you to get that every Floyd I have has that replacement on it. Unless, of course, I got a straight up German Schaller one. And that was fine. But even if I got a German Schaller and like you said, the mechanism was not working correctly, I would just go ahead and replace it. It's about $30. $30. You'll get a new one. It's fine. It'll be fine. Okay. And it's very easy to replace. It's not what I mean technically, time wise, it's going to take a little time because you take the bridge out, you replace it, you put the bridge back in. But, you know, technical wise, you'll need no technique, you'll need no skills in just a couple Allen wrenches. And they're probably all included in the kit. So that's what I recommend you do. However, there's a part of me, even though you did say the collar, that you're kind of talking about the inside cavity rubbing, and that's a different thing. And that I would say be cautious about dremeling out any wood, especially towards the top of the guitar, where not only because you could chip the paint, but also once you chip it or crack it, it can continue to get worse. So we're not going to go into that without me seeing it. I'm just assuming that you're having an issue with the. The whammy arm collar not working. Just replace out that mechanism. It's. You're. You'll be so glad you did. You'll be so, so glad. There's also another cool one where the bottom of it is a Allen wrench. And if you want to look, like I said, just go with the top quality one and replace it. Okay, let's do another early riser question. This one. Oh, we have. Oh, we have, we have a couple. Okay. This one came from Randall Vandergriff. Vandergriff says Hey, I got a Hagstrom Viking 2 Elvis reissue in Sunburst. Have you played the reissue or just the original you got with the PB neck? And will you review one on the channel to compare to the original? I have played the reissue Hagstrom guitars before. I was a Hagstrom dealer and I carried Hagstrom for a while. They were very hard to sell in the store, but they were very fun to explain to customers. There's a lot of cool, unique features in the Hagstrom guitars that are, especially in the way the truss rods constructed, that are different. And, you know, when customers come in, they never seem to really gravitate towards buying them. But I sure enjoy talking about them and I, A lot of customers really enjoyed the, you know, me explaining, like, here's what it does, why it's different. They're like, that's cool, I'm gonna get a Schecter. So. But we didn't, we didn't sell them very well. We did sell them for a while and they, and like I said, when I say didn't sell very well, they just didn't, you know, flip fast. They did flip, though. I have not reviewed one on the channel, however, I have one or two in the crosshairs for the channel. The Moon Pie guitar was another, I would say, the final test. So I was testing you guys. You guys passed or you failed, depending on how you want to look at that. What I did was I rolled out on the channel. If you guys now know, if you look recent this year, this is all this year. This year I have released the, you know, the Ikea caster guitar, which is the, you know, the hybrid PV, a Hagstrom guitar. I did the, I did the Pvt 15. I did the, I did THE PARKER PM20. I did the silver tone guitar from, you know, the 60s and now of course the Moonstone. And the idea was, could I get you interested in a guitar that's one probably not something you can even buy because it's, you know, they're either scarce or rare. Not so much. Some are expensive, some are not. They're just harder to find. So will the community take to something watching a video of a thing that they really can't just run out and buy or click a button and get. The second thing was, would they be interested in something that's not the new shiny, you know, lure? Would they be interested in us going back in time and looking at strange. And if you notice, those are odd guitars. I could have picked the PEV T series, but I picked the T15, the weirdest one, the 23 and a half inch scale. You know, I could have picked a Parker, but I picked the Parker PM20. It's a Paul style Parker. Again, going into the weirder fringes. The Moon Pie guitar, the Moonstone, obviously a very strange, odd guitar. No one even knew what that is, much less, you know, to get a quarter million views on it. And since you guys are showing the love, I'm gonna. We. We have pulled a bunch of models that we plan to do and we're gonna intersect them with as we go forward in the deep dives because I think it's just fun and I'm glad you guys think it's fun too. Okay, so yes, the Hagstrom's a yes. The answer is yes. It's not maybe. It's a yes. When? I have no idea. This year, probably this year because I have a schedule out of all the deep dives for the year and it's not in my most recent schedule. But my schedule is only going to September right now. So you think of the Hagstrom for fourth quarter. So that's probably where you'll see it. Unless, of course, things change. Sometimes I actually get ahead. I'm actually way ahead on videos right now. Oh, that's. No, that's a lie. I'm slightly ahead on videos right now, which means we have videos in the can ready to go. So I mean, that's rare for us. This other question came in. This is good. And it's funny because I thought I saw Steve from 62nd. I did 60 cycle Steve. 60 cycle Steve is here and this one came in. So he's probably gonna enjoy this one because I actually saw it. So otherwise I would probably be totally confused. So I story four later in the show, I went to Sweetwater. I just got back, so I was at Sweetwater this week. So I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And of course on the plane. There's a lot of traveling. It's eight, nine hours there. Total travel time both ways through layovers and all that stuff maybe. And so a lot of time I listened to a lot of podcasts and of course I was listening to the podcast I listen to for reference, if that helps. I. I really like the Throwback podcast. If you guys like the Throwback Guys. If you haven't checked them out, I would check out their podcast. Very educational. The pacing is very calming. It's very nice if you want to listen to it in the afternoon, like when, you know, like if you want to relax that's good calming. Really highly recommend them, of course. Six Cycle Hum. I listen that podcast. They're like me. It's a little. It's a little jarring and it moves a little fast. You know, they're. They're more excitable. So that's fun. I listen to the 40Watt or 40Watt podcast. Sorry Phil, if I always stutter but the watt and the cycle thing is just always messes me up. 60 cycle hum and a 40 watt podcast. I'm not confusing those. And then sometimes and this. So you guys know. So I don't have. So I don't look like I'm dyslexic, which I probably am. It's because sometimes 60 cycle hum and 40 watt then come together to make. I don't know what the hell you guys call it when you come together. Is that still 60 cycle hum or is that 60 watt hum? Whatever. But anyways, I watch it on the 60 cycle hum side. So those are the podcasts I probably listen to the most. Apologies to any other podcasts I'm missing right now, but those are the ones I listen to the most. Those. So anyways, so I familiar with this question is what I'm trying to tell you is that I saw it on 60 Sega. Hum. So the topic is. Hey Phil, did you see where a person was stopped from selling their Harley Bitten on Facebook Marketplace by Gibson's attorneys? Now I did not see that. I did see 60 cycle hum. Talk about that be very clear. Okay, so I. Basically what I have seen is the reaction of that. And so let me explain what I thought I saw and then what the two cents are. So what I saw was that a, a person, not a, not a store, just an actual person put a, put a Harley Bitten on Facebook Marketplace to sell. And the. I guess you call it an auction. I don't know what you call it, but you know the, the list, the listing was removed by Facebook Marketplace. I want to be very clear, this is the way I understand it. You did not study this over weeks and you know, like a, like a reporter, I'm just reacting to it. Anyways, the listing was pulled down and the reason for the pull down was because a representative of Gibson, an attorney, a law firm of Gibson said that it was basically like a trademark infringement, I believe, or maybe a. I don't think it was a copyright strike. I think it was like a trademark infringement. Whatever it was, they requested the yankdown. And so the question became one, how is that possible? And two, why would Gibson do that? And I think at this point we've kind of decided, look, I like Gibson, right? Do I have a Gibson on the wall? See, I feel bad. I don't have a Gibson on the wall today. I usually have a Gibson on the wall. I like Gibson guitars. I love them. I own more Gibsons than any other guitar. However. Yeah, they got a little bit that twist their mustache while they talk. You know, we know Gibson comes up on the channel. It's always for the worst reasons. So not shocked to see Gibson do something like this. Interestingly enough, I can't tell you guys why it happened. I'm not attorney. I don't know. But I can tell you that something like that's happened to me in the past. I'll explain why and why that could actually tie into this and what happened. First of all, it could be bots, it could be AI. Found it. Maybe this law firm is engaging in an AI that that's out there searching for things. If you're on YouTube for any time, whether you make money on YouTube or not, you're very aware of AI finding things and then copyright striking you for it. It's a thing now. There's people who scour. So before there was AI, by the way, there's just rows of people, I guess, that just scoured the Internet all day looking for stuff to flag or hit. And so they would do that. Why Gibson would stop someone from selling the Harley Benton doesn't make a lot of sense to me, obviously, because they're not stopping Harley Benton from selling it. However, what we don't know. Here's what you don't know. We don't know if they're currently are telling Carly Benton to knock it off. Right. And that could be something we're just not seeing yet. Because, you know, some companies, especially in Germany, are kind of known for just ignoring things until it's, you know, it's public, you know, they don't care. So I don't know what's going on that. But I will tell you a funny story. Happened to me. So I used to be a Loud dealer. If you guys weren't familiar at the time when I was a dealer, Loud was Crate and Peggy and Mackie and Alvarez. That was the. No way Alvarez. The thing went to St. Louis Music Company. But it was those three entities. That's the most important thing because that's what I carried. I carried Crate and Peg and then Mackie. And if anyone remembers Crate, you know, you sold a lot of Crate when you're a Crate dealer. And if you at the time Crate was selling, AMPEG was the gold standard for bass amps, pretty much. So we would sell a lot of this stuff. And then what happened was my rep was like, hey, you should carry Mackie products. And I was like, I just am a guitar store. I don't sell PAs or recording interfaces. I don't sell any of this stuff. He's like, yeah, but Mackie's the best. I'm like, whatever's. I only sell guitar stuff. But he convinced me to what they call load on or put on to my account. Probably about $5,000 worth of mackie. Maybe it was more like 10 as a sample. Like, hey, give it a try. Throw in some powered speakers. You never know when a guitar player is going to want this stuff. I know this seems like I'm really just far away from the hard bend thing. I'm not. Just keep with me. So we bought this stuff and it was boat anchors and it takes up a lot of room in the store. The store was about 3,400 square feet, and you. Some of that's lesson space, some of that's repair space, and some of that's the floor. And so we had this PA stuff and it just. We could not sell it, and we would drop the price and we just could not sell it. And. And you know that money's trapped up. So you understand it was on an account. And you're like, okay, now I've paid for the Mackie stuff. I paid the account the. You know, I think they gave us 90 days. Like, hey, try it in 90 days. 90 days means before you have to pay for it. But we have now paid for it. So it's been sitting. And if we can sell it, we could take that money, put it back in our pockets even if we're at a slight loss, buy some actual Crate and Peg, make money again. So I decided to put it on ebay and sell it. And I sold it for under map. Okay. But I listed it as you guys have known, because Reverb sellers on Reverb do this all the time. I listed it as like mint condition. Like new in box, mint condition. It was something fits something so obvious in the top in the description was like, this is used but not ever opened in box. Right? Something like that. And what happened was Mackie filed a complaint with ebay saying I violated the trademark and I published I and ebay yanked down my listings. This is an absolute true story. So there's no, like, that story with the. The. I know the. The six Six sixty cycle home. Guys talk about the story, but, you know, I don't know how truthful that guy's being. I can just tell you this story is 100%. It happened to me, so I know it's real. I list the Mackie stuff. It all gets pulled from you, from ebay. And I'm like, oh, it got. It's just down. It's. All of a sudden it's gone. And ebay says, this has been pulled as a violation of trademark. And I'm like, what? And just like with that. What happened with that guy selling his Harley, Ben? You go and look who did this? It was loud. And I was like, loud did this to me. They yanked down my stuff. Remember, they don't know I'm a dealer. I'm pretending to be a person, right? I'm trying to get rid of this stuff, right? And that's not the worst part of what happens next. What happens next is ebay yanked down all my auctions, all my listing listings. And I'm like, what happened? And they. And ebay sent me an email and I had to take a test to list again. I'm not making. This is all crazy. It's all 100%, 101% true. To this day, I'm still bitter. It was like taking a driver's. You know, when you get a ticket and you gotta take the online driver's school. It was just like that. It was like, ebay's like, you gotta take this test. And if you pass this test, we'll reinstate your privileges to sell on ebay. And I remember, thank goodness, right, in the army, when you would take tests more so than college or school or high school or anything else, in the army, it was always easy. The answer was always no. Was always like, hey, your fellow soldier got a promotion. It's appropriate to put your hand on his shoulder and say, you know, you're like, no. Just say no to everything they ask you, and you're probably better off, right? It's okay to be, you know, on time. No. No. Just no. So I take the test and the questions are, you buy. I'm not making this up. This is on the test. You buy a Rolex watch and you decide you want to sell your Rolex watch, it is okay for you to list it as a used Rolex watch. And I put no. And it said, congratulations. Good answer. Yes, it is not okay for you to use the trademark name Rolex when using your listing for your product. And I was like, what? And in this Test. What I learned was for the, for the lack of a legal explanation, which I can't explain because I'm not a legal, I'm not an attorney or anything close to that. There's kind of this implication that I guess almost most brands or all brands are kind of letting us use their names even when we're reselling. Like we have the right to resell their product. We do not have a right to use their name. This is why I bring this up. What I didn't get to see was all the details of this Harley Benton. What I'm curious is if the name Gibson was used anywhere in there, that would have been the thing that he violated. And I'm saying he could have been a she. But, but you understand what I'm saying? Like to sell a Harley Bitten, would that flag Gibson? No, but what if he said, hey, like a less it's a Les Paul style guitar in the listing. That would be a trademark violation. And, and from my experience, they absolutely have the right to lock you down on that. I'm not agreeing with it. I didn't agree with Mackie yanking down my, my listings. Oops, sorry guys, gotta move my chair. But what I learned from that was, in fact all the questions on that test were basically framed around that same. By the way, when I say there was like questions on the test, I should point out it was the same question over and over again, except for one or two, right? Like it was like I told you the Rolex one. The next one was like, you buy a Chevy truck and you want to list it on, you know, ebay, auto place, you have the right to put that it's a Chevy truck. And you're like, no. And you're like, that's right. Chevy is a trademark logo. So it was just the same question telling me over and over again how you're not legally allowed to use a company's trademark name in a description. And some of you guys, if there's attorneys out there, maybe they can explain why that's the case or if we could probably. No, you could just add chat, chat, bt, chat, gbt and maybe it knows. But I'm wondering if that's what happened to that person and why I got flagged. And it could be, it could be Gibson. Like I said, they just found it hit him and, and it could. Or it could be specifically Harley Benton. I just, my gut screams that there's something in that listing that was an actual trademark and violation. And then Gibson was just hitting anyone who's using any Trademark violations as we know they're known to do. And I'm also cautious the way I'm talking because I kind of, I'm, I'm not really concerned so much because nothing I said is, as far as I understand, there's nothing I said is, you know, illegally, you know, wrong in a legal format. I haven't accused anyone anything, but there's a part of me on a moral point I'm a little concerned with like accusing Gibson of doing something wrong. We don't even know if they actually, you know, what they really did or why, you know, other than we just seem to understand that it was attorney that is somehow connected to Gibson. So I'm just saying keep all that in your, in your thing. I think the importance of the story, when I saw the question was one, I had already saw it on 62nd, but two, I just thought, oh yeah, that story that happened to me, that might give some insight in what you're doing. And it's the same reason why, you know, I've kind of learned this little thing, I'll tell you guys, a behind the scenes YouTuber thing too. So that will kind of also hit it home when I do an independent video. And I do it a lot in the video where I'll say, oh man, this neck on this Firefly feels just like a 60s fender strat. Okay, as an independent person I can say that, that's my opinion. But I have been told by many companies when they sponsor a video that why can tell you they won't do it at all. No companies actually mention. That's why they always say our guitar is like a T style or S style, right? Or single cut. They don't say the names of their, their competitors because that's again, those are those trademarked information, name information, what have you. But I have found that sometimes when a company is sponsoring the video and I, and they see it, they hate, they say, hey, could you remove the part where you say our guitar is like this person's, you know, this company's guitar. And I used to think like, you know, maybe it's because they don't like the comparison, but really it is. They're afraid that they're going to get, you know, the other company is going to get upset that they're using what could be construed as a trademarked, trademark name or whatever likeness in an advertisement of theirs. And, and just so you guys know, when, when companies don't say something like Firefly, it is my belief, it's just my belief they Just don't know because the companies that's. That have attorneys, the companies that do have their stuff dialed in, the companies who are very aware of the world that they're in, they seem to be smart enough to tell you not to do stuff when you're working with them as a content creator. And all the other companies just let you run ragged and ragged. They do let us run ragged. They let, they let you run, you know, rabid and just do whatever you want. And they don't seem to notice it. But, but, but I know deep down I'm like, yep, they might hear something about that one day. We don't like how you had the, you know, YouTuber say your neck was like our brand. And you know, so something just to be aware of. I hope, I hope that kind of goes over it. So there you go. Papa Steve says never bought on ebay. Really? I feel like ebay was. When ebay came out, it was so amazing. Like, especially when it first came out, you could snipe things and you know, do you remember the excitement, Anyone remember the excitement at ebay when you realize like the auction for the thing you love that hadn't been bidded up was ending at like 3:45 in the morning. And you're like, oh man. And you'd have to set out your alarm clock at 3:40 and you'd get up and you'd have to go to your computer because you weren't doing it on your phone at that point. And you, and you just log in and then you sit there and like, and it would be like two minutes and you're like, refresh. And then you put in a bid. And then somebody outbid you for a buck. And then you'd outbid them and then you're like. And it would sell and then you go $316. Like $316. I can't believe I got this. That was the good times. You could get the deals right. To me it was like when hotels.com or whatever, those websites, that's when you could get like a five star hotel like across from Disneyland for 35 bucks. Like you get those rates and you'd be like, this is amazing. And you get yourself a $500 guitar for 300 bucks on eBay. I feel like that was the really cool times. And then everybody started just doing reserve pricing and all that stuff. And then of course now ebay is to me, ebay. I don't purchase very much on ebay. In fact, I purchased my first thing on ebay in probably four or five years a couple weeks ago. And of course, I was an idiot. I fell for it. So what I did was on ebay, it's all fake stuff, which I hate. Every time I type in anything ebay, there's something fake on there instead. So if I type in Ibanez guitar, I get all the chips and Ibanezes. Or you call Ibanezes chipsons. I don't know how it works. Anyways. And I bought something on ebay. I went on ebay. I was like, oh, I was looking for something in particular. I go online, I go, oh, ebay will have it. I go on ebay, I spend forever trying to remember what my password is to get into ebay. I get into ebay, I buy the item, it shows up. And Shawna goes, oh, you got one of these? And I go, yeah. And she goes, yeah, it's from Amazon. I go, no, I got on ebay. And she's like, nope, Amazon. And I'm like, somebody on ebay listed it for, like, $35, $38. It was $38. I bought it, and then they bought it on Amazon and sent it to me as a gift for, like, $18. I'm like, that's so bad. I was like. I was like, oh, man. I didn't think to look on Amazon for it. And I'm like, right. So somebody was just listing the things on Amazon for more money to see if there was an idiot like me to buy it on ebay. And then they sent it. Literally, it came with the gift receipt from Amazon. It was like, this is a gift. I was like, this is a gift. And actually, it was confusing for one second because I thought, did somebody know I wanted this? And sent it to me as a gift from Amazon. All right. Yeah. Yardbird 68 says selling on ebay is the worst. You don't make anything anymore. No, it's pretty horrible. So let's. Let's. It's a good segue into. Yeah, let's segue into the gear exchange and the guitar of the week. And we'll. We'll button this up. So Guitar of the week. This is the last guitar of the week that we're doing with Sweetwater, where they had provided us all the. All the money for the shipping. So basically, they covered your guys shipping. They covered the bubble wrap, the tape, the boxes, you name it, right? Anything we needed. And I gotta tell you, it went really well, and I'll be able to. And it worked out great for Sweetwater because I was there and When I was there, I was able to give feedback to them about the gear exchange, including. I'd like to tell you that I actually sat with the CEO. Not only did a podcast with him, but I sat and actually explained my experiences with gear exchange. So he got to hear them firsthand, and he was very interested in that feedback. And so let me tell you, we'll do Guitar of the Week first. Here's what happened with Guitar of the Week. So, you know, I put it, listed it right before the show, and somebody already bought it, so it's already sold. So. But that's okay because it's all about just having fun. So. Gear of the Guitar of the Week. Guitar of the Week. Guitar of the Week. This week is an Ibanez RG565. This is a Genesis, which means it's made in Japan. This is the emerald green one. They currently now make the yellow desert yellow that I'm pointing at behind me with the headstock of the green one and the blue one. And of course, if you can't figure out what's going on, I'm selling this. Or I sold this because I bought the yellow one. And this one, though the person who bought it doesn't know something cool. This is the third Ibanez Genesis I got. I had an orange one. I did the deep dive in the orange one. I. I bought a green one. I did not like that green one. I didn't like the neck, and I didn't like how heavy it was. And so I kept looking, looking, and I was able to get this one. This one's £7, £7.10. So. Right. So nice and light. In fact, it's lighter than my yellow one, which was hard to find. And this one has the absolute best neck of all those guitars, including. It's better than the yellow one, but I just like the yellow one because I always wanted the yellow and the shark teeth and the rosewood. And then this one, I upgraded the neck pickup to a DiMargio, and that's actually not entirely true. So let me explain this. I actually upgraded both pickups to Dimarjio, but when I bought that one, I wanted to put them in that one. So I took the DiMarjio pickup out of this one, put it in the yellow one, put the original back in, and then because I had an extra chopper DiMargio pickup, I left the chopper in this and then I put another chopper that. So we both, whoever bought this, we twinsies, we both have the same neck pickup in our guitars. This has the. The Ibanez bridge and it has the old school bolt system with the die cast back plate that comes in the smoked chrome. No. Is that smoked? Yeah, that's what's weird. The. The back plate. Smoke chrome. Let's go to the side camera, which might have my coffee a cup in the way it does. So you can see this is smoke chrome. But all the hardware is black. And since they bought it, I showed on there. The only thing wrong with it is it's got a chip. It chipped right here. As they do sometimes because it's basswood, it's soft. And so you can take this out if you want to put a different one, like a locking one or a strap lock. Because I did seal this with a epoxy so it would not continue to chip. Unfortunately, if you look at it real close, you can see the chipping and it's not gorgeous looking. But it will not continue to chip because I sealed it up because I was afraid at that spot it would keep cracking. Sometimes there's a crack down the side, so no issues there. The other thing, other thing is I don't know what this is, but there's also one more other spot right here. Whatever that is. I don't know what that is. You can't feel it. It's just like a discoloration in the backplate. So that's the only problems with the guitar. So let's hear the guitar. This has the super thin IB in his neck and the. The fretboard is slightly rolled. I did not do that. Okay. I just want to let you know I was going to do it, but it came that way. Which is funny because I've actually owned two of these desert yellows. Now I sold the first one because it was a little heavy. I was able to find another one that was lighter and that one came in. That neck was rolled. Fretboard was rolled, but the first one wasn't. So it's just weird how that works out. So this had the rolled fretboard. The frets feel amazing. They are highly polished and the action plays great. Like I said, this thing plays fantastic. I'm sure some of you are like me in the idea that when you have two guitars that are the same, especially the only really difference is the color. You know, they're just not the same the way they play. This one was the better player than the yellow one. But like I said, the yellow one was a dream guitar. So, you know, I'm okay with it not playing as well as this. Let's go to the side cam. What are we running through? Well, we're not running through. Uh, it's going to be confusing because you're going to think because I turned on the mag, I turned on the Magneton because I thought the lights were cool. We're not running the Magnetone this week. Um, somebody asked me last week. Now, Phil, that you have the magnetones, are you hot and heavy on those and no longer Friedman? No, no. Still a huge Friedman fan. Friedman and Magnetone to me are different enough from each other. To me, Magnetone is more the vintage Marshall vibe to me, where Friedman is more the modern hot rodded Marshall sound to me. And I think they play well with each other. There's something amazing about that. So, and the amp we're running today, we're running the Friedman small box with a boost switch. There you go. And, and then we'll also run the Friedman clean channel and I'll run reverb on that. So let me start with the Friedman non boosted. So this is the higher gain of the two channels of the small box 50. I'm running it through my, my 112 Friedman cabinet with a red back selection in it. I prefer the cream back, but that's what I had, you know, all mic'd up and stuff. So I'm going with it. And let's go ahead and let's hear the neck and then the bridge pickup. No, bridge. And then the neck. Here we go. Bridge first, Sam. Okay, now I'm gonna hit a boost pedal in front of it. Here we, Sam. There you go. That's drums. Okay, so let's go ahead. We'll switch now to the clean channel. And let me turn on some reverb. That would help. Nope, reverb. There we go. And that's the neck pickup now and I'll, I'll. I'll show you the, the, the neck. And then the coil split on the neck. Here we go. Here's the neck. All right, so that's the guitar of the week, the Emerald Green Ibanez RG565. This is the first batch. So the first ones came in the neon orange and then the emerald green and. And then of course that later they came in the yellow and the blue, which is the current ones, if you guys are looking for the current ones. So you guys know. So you know what they sell for. I looked online, I looked around. Obviously, I wouldn't call this mint by any means. I think this is good condition. I think. Unfortunately, the chip right there and that mark in the back. And even though I've upgraded the pickup, I told you guys, if you upgrade your pickup, no value. So I wouldn't expect to give somebody more for the upgraded pickup. And I don't expect anybody to give me something for that too. So that's why I would tell you guys, when you do your modifications, put it back to where it was because you're not going to get anything for that. And so I thought when I was looking online, seeing Some people get 1200 bucks for these used, I think that was a rarity. I think that was a mint condition fluke. Maybe at the tail end of when the market was still booming. The fairest price I saw for something that looked kind of like this was about 700 to $800. And there was one for about somebody was. I saw one sold on reverb like this in condition that was comparable because they actually had some upgraded pickups as well. And it was 799 plus $100 in shipping. So I went 689 free shipping. So $700 basically 7ish with tax. Right. So somebody who bought this paid 7 tax, which I think is very fair price. I don't think that's a. I don't think they stole it, but I don't think they pay too much. I think that's a good price. That's just my opinion. Although I am the one selling it. But I mean if I was. If I was in the market again for this and I didn't have the yellow one, that price, this condition, that's where I probably snagged. Especially finding out the weight and having something that I trust say that it plays good. Because that's. That's another thing too. So. And then this ties into the gear exchange. So what did I learn about gear exchange? Well, there's a couple things to share with you guys that are good and bad about the gear exchange. If you guys are familiar with, you know, this, hey, this is my pick. Gear exchanges Sweetwaters not their attempt to compete with Reverb. I think that's the confusion that a lot of people have. I had it first obviously too. It makes sense. It's really in my opinion. But also that opinion is also informed from the Sweetwater guys too. Gear exchange is really Sweetwater's attempt to combat. And this is not how they put it. This is how I'm putting it. Trade in at Guitar Center. The I think you'll see when you see the interview with Mike Clem, the CEO of Sweetwater, there's some Some back and forth I had with him. That's kind of funny. And in one of the sections, I talked about this, and what I basically am saying to you guys is, you know, guitar center's advantage to sweetwater is you can walk in a guitar center, trade in your. Your wares, your goods, you know, your. Your guitars, your pedals, your amps, and get something and leave. You cannot do that with Sweetwater. You can put it on the credit card, you can order it online and pay cash, but you cannot trade to Sweetwater. But gear exchange is a way for them to let you sell your stuff online and get free. No fees. If you collect. If you click the gift card. And I want to talk about that in a second. If you click the gift card option with gear change. In other words, if you say, hey, I want a gift card and not cash, you know, a payout, you pay zero fees. Okay, now here's the important part of this, without a doubt, okay? I sold 10 guitars during this month. Okay? So that's how many guitars we sold through gear exchange. Three pedals, ten guitars, and one pick guard loaded with pickups. Okay? That's what I sold. I picked a couple things, A lot of the smaller items, and I did go the no fee, give me a gift card because I didn't want a huge gift card, which actually was dumb. I should have done a bigger gift card, but I was afraid to because I didn't want all my money trapped up and stuff. And I'll be buying stuff, but I should have. And you'll find out later in the show why. Anyways, back to this. The thing that I can tell you without a doubt on the positives, Gear Shane, Shipping is so cheap, it almost felt like it was wrong and I was gonna get. I actually didn't tell you guys all this month how stupid cheap the shipping is that they're charging you. Because I've had this happen before where you ship and then I don't know about you guys, but it's happening on reverb a lot. You get a bill later saying, oh, that was really. The shipping rate was this. We've adjusted the price on average if. Because I picked signature required and the top insurance I could. On average, I was paying about $40 to ship a guitar that is ridiculously cheap. The most I paid to ship one guitar was $150, which is what I pay about $100 every time I ship on reverb. The cheapest I paid to ship a guitar was $30. And so. And that's because I picked signature required and the top insurance. Without one of those things, I could ship guitars on gear exchange for 23. I don't know about you guys shipping a guitar for $23 was those are really reasonable rates on the gear exchange. So that's the positive. Gear exchange is that the positives is you can get the gift card and get zero and the gift cards never expire, ever. And it. And even if you lose the gift card, it's attached to you. So that's good. So these are. I'm gonna hit the positives. We'll definitely get to the negatives. So the positives are really good rates, shipping rates, obviously the ability to get free fees. You'll see. I can't tell you why I have something cool to tell you, but I couldn't tell you. You know, I want to say, but I can't tell you because in the interview, I presented an idea to them and his face was priceless. So anyway, so I can't tell you my idea here, but what I can tell you here are the negatives. The negatives are there's not that many people on gear exchange. So, you know, Sweetwater did inform me and show me some stuff that said that because gear is kind of the good gear priced right flips so fast on gear exchange that that's what you're kind of see gear that's not priced right a lot when it's hit sitting around. Because they are flipping gear pretty fast. They just don't have, you know, the huge volume that, you know, that reverb has. So that's a downfall. The other. What's the other? So there was another downfall. The other downfall is that it doesn't flip as fast. I just said that. So I think that's it. Because here's. Here's what I told them. And when they told me this, it hit me really hard. I said to them, one of the things I've noticed selling over the last month and I sold some to you guys viewers and some to some stuff that people didn't know who I was, which is cool. And I said, man, overall, the vibe felt different. I said it didn't feel like the. Like I called the swap meet vibe, you know, where it's just like resellers and, you know, just. It just seemed a lot cooler both selling and buying on gear exchange. And I was like, that's really cool. And they said there's. There's two reasons they believe when I said that, why that's occurring. One, which I didn't think about every single person who's on Gear Exchange is a Sweetwater customer. So like on mine, if you go to my gear exchange, it tells you that I've been with Sweetwater since 2011 as a customer. So unlike Reverb, everyone's kind of a little vetted because they have a real Sweetwater account. So it's not like Reverb where you could just create, you know, an account. You, you gotta have a Sweetwater account and that account's attached to the things that they verify. So I go, oh, that's interesting. The second is they can't stop anyone, but they discourage very much any Reese, any resellers or retailers selling on their platform. So they want Gear Exchange because here's why they want really what you can imagine what they want. They want us to sell our gear to each other and then buy stuff at Sweetwater. That's what they want. That's why they're doing it that way. So that's my report card of the Gear exchange. It was mostly a positive experience and keeping in one very important caveat, which is because I was here on the Friday show because there's a thousand of you right now watching. Because the shows get a lot of views. I was able to sell all the gear very quickly. I end because I priced. I obviously because I had the views. Also I think I priced things very reasonably. Obviously, if you guys sell on Gear Exchange, you're not going to have that, you know, that option. So that's the one thing I cannot tell you, which is I, you know, that your stuff will flip fast. My guess is it's not gonna flip very fast. There's not that many. But I would say, in my opinion, which is totally biased because the fact that they sponsored this content this month. But that's not why I'm giving you this answer. Okay. I'm just telling you that obviously if you want to think it's, you know, it's biased because of that sponsorship, I'm totally okay with that. I'm not going to be offended by that statement if you say that. I think you would be really wise if you're listing on Reverb to also list on Gear Exchange list both. Because if you do it on Gear Exchange, you're going to get a cheaper shipping rate. And if you want to do a gift card, Sweetwater, you'll save some. You'll save seven and a half percent. So that's really cool. And so that's an option. So that's, that's my report now. Why Did I mess up? I'll tell you why I messed up. Here's what I messed up. I didn't. I was afraid to put, you know, some of the sales as Sweetwater gift cards because I was like, well, I'm not gonna buy anything from Sweetwater right now. I'm like, I'm selling gear. I'm not wanting gear. However, I did go to Sweetwater this week, and I know some of you guys ask, so, Phil, did you buy anything at Sweetwater? I did. I did. What's funny right now is I'm actually laughing my head. Here's why. Yes, I did. I'll show you what I bought, and I'll. I'll tell you guys, because, you know, you have to. You have to justify your addictions. I did buy a guitar. Let me go into my email account. Because when, as you guys know, if you buy from Sweetwater, they send you pictures of the guitar, which is great. Okay, where's it at? Photos of your guitar. So I was at Sweetwater. I interviewed Mike Clem, the CEO, and I did some other videos. Can I make this bigger? Can I? I don't want you to actually see my email. I'm gonna just screenshot it and. Hold on. I should have had this prepared. I apologize, guys. I don't know why I wasn't thinking to have it ready. Is it. Can I make it big? Okay, cool. Let me share this with you. So. And so here's what's dumb. Because I didn't pick enough of the gift cards. I didn't get to use all my gift cards to buy this. I had to use or, you know, my credit card, which is dumb. So. So I was at Sweetwater, obviously. I walked the store. I did a bunch of videos. They'll be coming out soon. I interviewed the CEO, and Shauna was walking with me, and she saw this guitar, and she goes, oh, wow. And I looked. I turned the corner. I go, oh, wow. And we were. We're both like, that's. That's beautiful. And I'm like, I. It's a color. Now. This picture does not do it justice. I don't know why it's not coming out in the pictures. And I would have never bought it if I didn't see it in person. Okay, so here is the guitar that I bought at Sweetwater. But here's the important part. How do I justify this? It's my birthday Sunday. So this is my birthday guitar. I bought it for my birthday. Happy birthday. Me. I got a Dane electro 59 nos. I know what you're thinking, Phil, you have one. Well, I don't have one in baby blue. This is not to be confused with Daphne blue, a powder blue. This blue is like the deepest color. Like that amp is that. You know, it's blue. This is called turquoise, but it looks the same thing. It's kind of like that same blue. This guitar, this blue, I promise you, just does not look like this in the picture. It looks so beautiful in person. And I saw it and I thought, well, it's my birthday and I can just get rid of my other Dane Electro and I. And you know, and relatively speaking, it's expensive, but not crazy expensive. You know, it was a. You know, the Dane Electros are expensive. As I've said for many years. Some of my favorite guitars for the quality, for the dollar. It's just. They're still one of the ones that hold true for great quality. And. And there was a small part of me is like, I bet you I could reach out to Steve, the owner, Daniel Etro, and go, hey, man, I saw your blue. Baby blue 59 and Iwana. But here's the thing. I've already done two Dane electro videos in the past on the 59s. I did two different versions, and I was like, if they send me one, if Daniel Extra sends me one, obviously it would be some kind of trade for a video. And I just couldn't see why you guys would want to sit through another video of the Dane Electro guitar. That's the only difference is now it's blue. So I just. I just bought it. So I was like, all right, let's just buy it. So I justified it. I bought it. It's gorgeous. I'm curious to see when it gets here, if I can show you the. The. The depth of the blue. Or maybe if you go online. If you go online and look, if you can find one where it looks really deep in the color of the blue, I'm still very light. That's. That's what it looks like. It's just really great. But really what got me excited was when Shawna goes, oh, my. And I turn around, I'm like, what? She goes, that guitar is gorgeous. And I'm like, oh, yes. And then. And then I'm like, well, that's the approval right there, right? She just said it. Can't not get the guitar now. So. So I'll have a new Dan Electro for my. For my birthday. There you go. All right. I know we're all just lying to ourselves. Yeah, that's my birthday that's why I did it. Totally makes sense now. All right, let's jump around. Let's. Amanda sending me questions. Thank you, Amanda. And this one's from Rocking Chair Boogie says. Hey Phil, since you got a route out for an Evertune Bridge, would it help to install it on a guitar routed for a trim? I don't know. I've never actually done the route for the Everton Bridge. Obviously, you know, I've done a review of it, but I didn't actually route it out for a. For a guitar. I don't know that it would make it any easier. You know, to me you would. As someone who's done a lot of routing on guitars, you just put the template down and you just do it. I think some, in my experience, you know, it's not gonna, you know, having certain spots already, you know, empty space and then wood, it's not going to cause a lot of chip outs. You know, there's not a lot for to bind. It's just going to kind of go through. Knots are really more problematic for chip out and stuff. But I would say if you're not really skilled with a router, I would be afraid that you might jump when you hit. You know, when you're going through. Like then there's no, no, no wood, no mass for you to go through and then you hit mass. I would, I really hate for you to jump out of it. Out of it. So I would say there's no. The most important thing is, is it, is it harder? I don't know if it's harder, but it's not an advantage for sure to have a tremolo already routed out. So either, because either way you're routing out stuff. Okay, we have. Oh, Jesse says, hey Phil, I got an email from Stumac about Axe Labs pots. They are advertised as guitar specific pots. Have you ever tried them and do you think it's worth a try? I've never tried them. I will reach out and try ask because obviously I have Stumac contacts. I can reach out to Stu Mac and say, hey, any interest in sending those out? And we can do video. What's great now is if you guys haven't seen the new channel, which is, I mean it's been around but we've repurposed it, redid it. We, you know, we, we, we remodeled it the new channel which is Know youw Gear. This is the Film Ignite channel. Now we have a Know youw Year channel. And that channel is designed specifically to put stuff out that just. It's Just not gonna get, you know, we're not gonna get to it here. And so there's more help on that channel. So I can do that stuff. And so stuff like that is a perfect thing where I can do the video and then it gets edited out and put it on that channel. So I want to. So if you haven't checked out that channel, there's a link down below if you want to subscribe to that channel and support that one too, if you want. If not, you could just check it out periodically. I'm okay with that. It's really not so much like a, hey, subscribe viewers. Make sure you like and share. It's not that kind of channel really. What it is, is, is, is that like I told you guys, Shawna from watching the podcast is like every time they ask you about stuff like that, you know, you know, you can't get to it because I have already, like I said, all my videos are scheduled. What I have to do for months right now on this channel for months and months out. So of course, when you ask me about a video, I'm like, when I say, oh, yeah, I'll do it. I mean, realistically, I gotta say, like, I'm really. September, October minimum, before I can even think about doing another. Another video on top of what I'm doing now. But that channel is different because, you know, I can take some of my downtime and film it and then it gets edited and put out and it's like, okay, cool. You know, and that's really great because filming is. Filming is not the problem. I can talk, just turn on the camera, talk, play, show work. But sitting down and having, you know, the time to edit and put it together and create a thumbnail and create a title and do all that stuff, that's just. That's too much to do, especially with all the traveling. As you guys know, I just came back from Sweetwater, but would you, you know, some of you guys also know I'm going to Cortech. I'm going to be checking out core tech guitars. And so, I mean, with all the travel and stuff. So, yeah, so the answer to your. Your question is yes, I will reach out to Stumac. In fact, I'll. I'll even cheat more. Hey, Shauna. Because I know she's watching. Hey, Shawna. Ax Labs at Stumac. If we could send them a message saying we want to check out their guitar specific potentiometers, we can throw them in something and share that with everybody. Okay, let's see. Kennedy Ivy says Hey, Phil, I'm trying to teach my older dad how to play guitar. What's the best method? I think it's through songs he likes, I think. So. You know. You know, if you're gonna watch this channel, you're gonna get a cooking analogy at least every episode or every other episode. And I like this cooking analogy. It works for me. If you're gonna learn to cook, you should cook the food you like to eat. You know, I think that's what ruins it for a lot of people. Same with guitar. You know, learning to play, you know, a music you don't like is like learning to cook food you don't want to test, you know, I mean, how are you guys supposed to be excited about something you don't even want to eat? So I would say definitely, definitely teach him music using that logic, right? And the reason I like that is this. Okay, there's a that doesn't mean don't teach him theory. That doesn't mean don't teach him chords. Don't, don't. Doesn't mean that. Use the same cooking analogy. If you're going to teach somebody food and they go, hey, I like how, you know, teach how somebody cook and they like Cajun, you're still going to teach the method of Cajun. In other words, like, the spices used, you know, this is pepper, this is salt. This is Cajun powder. This is whatever. So you guys know I don't cook. So that's why the analogy is kind of funny. But you get the idea, right? You still want to teach the method, the method of how you cook with just not just like, here's the ingredients, you know, and definitely that. And it's your dad. So look, you know, if you get the chance to do some bonding time, that's a great time to do some bonding time. So, you know, play some music together. Especially as people get older and learn stuff, especially music. It's impossible. Here's what I've learned, and this is from over a decade of running a lesson academy, teaching all kinds of people, all kinds of age groups. It's not even just that the older you get, the harder it is for you to teach them and the harder it is for them to learn. It's not a dig against older people. I'm an older person. It's just the proof. It's just proof. It's proof. I don't know what it's proof. It's sad, but it's true. The one hardest thing about teaching someone who's older is that when you're young, you can take things as, you know, as just do it because, okay, when you're older, you have to know why you're doing it. So same with teaching of music. You can't just go up to an older person and say, hey, learn your scales. Learn this. And if you do all this, then we're going to learn the thing you want to do. You really want to start. And so that they see definitely a type of improvement and immediately go, you know, and their growth immediate. And that is, that's definitely, definitely do that. Because like I said, there's a reason why even the military cuts. Well, physical reasons too, but they don't. They cut off people for basic training because they just know like older people are just not going to go listen to somebody, spit in their face and tell them to do something that doesn't make sense like pull weeds or do push ups for no reason. Right. And same logic here is you want to make sure that he understands why he's doing what he's doing. So that's just my two cents. The Apricot agency says, Phil, can you review the graph tech, the graphtec unlock nut? So if you guys don't know the Graphtec unlock nut is a nut that you can take the locking nut out and put the Graphtec nut on there and you know, and have a nut instead of the. I guess I could. I've installed them for customers before and I will tell you this. I personally would just take the locking mechanisms off the Floyd or the, you know, the edge nut or whatever, you know, the edge bridge from Ibanez or the Floyd. Just take them off and use that. The argument I would believe with the. The Graphtec nut is that it's lubricated because it's graphite. So therefore it's going to help tuning stability. I don't really notice. I think I can just take the locking mechanism the. I'm talking about these, the clamps. You take the clamps off this nut and just use that nut. I've never had a problem with that. That to where I had, you know, that nut fixes it, but who knows? So would I do a video. I don't have any. That it's different. I know I, I said I could do all kinds of stuff on the second channel, but that's just a video. I just don't know if I. I wouldn't say you would have to do that to any guitar. You would specifically need a guitar that you took the locking mechanisms off the nut and it's having trouble Staying in tune. I don't think that's going to be super common. Right. That's going to be a 1 in a 10 problem. So I don't know if that I can. But maybe. Maybe I'll look into it. But I'll look into it usually means I'm not going to do it, so. But at least I will look into it. Okay, let's see. Let's go. Let's grab some topic. Subjects here. Why can I not? I feel like I got eight of the same screens going on and none of the screens I need. So that means a good time to switch screens and drink water. And I also need to look. Okay. I just want to make sure that I'm not missing my notes. All right, we have one from Litvay Lidvay says, hey, Phil, you built an incredible community. Shout out to another one of your patrons. Warm five. Warm's amazing. So warm is. Well, Litvay, you're amazing. How about that? Litvay and Warm are both amazing. He says, he. He said, he who reached out when I said I'd be in Korea. We hung out. I saw the pictures of you guys hanging out. You were in his car driving around doing guitar safari, right? He says he helped me pick up a used hex headless for $165. That's awesome. You know, this is something over the years I've heard and I. I love hearing it, you know, that, you know, the patrons interact with each other off, off site. You know what I mean? In other words, when they. When they meet each other, I've heard that people see like, the, know, your gear shirts, maybe one day the moon pie shirts. Who knows? And they, they recognize, like, oh, there's your. Like, hey, we're both, you know, both guitar players. Oh, we both like Phil's, you know, stuff. Maybe, I don't know, maybe you don't like my stuff and you just wear my shirt. I appreciate that either way. But. And I. I love it. And I think, me personally, I mean, it's. It's just like the coolest thing ever because like I said, I spent a chunk of my life where I just didn't have any friends that played music or guitar. And I was always very lonely in that I had friends. Just didn't have a lot of friends that played guitar. And so when I would meet somebody who played guitar or liked what I liked, it was always super exciting. Like, it's Sue. I was like, I just feel like I finally got to talk to somebody about, you know, because when you have a lot of friends are into things that you're not into. You end up talking about, you know, all the stuff you don't like. So I'm glad it worked out. I'm glad that you guys had fun. Tsi said. Hey, Phil, my kezel came in this week. I sanded it, and I wiped it off. And the mineral. Oh, with mineral spirits. Okay, great. I don't want to stain it or paint it. Can I leave it alone, or do I need to clear coat it? Want to keep it flat, matte, and looking? No, you don't need to clear coat it. The neck. You can. Might put some gunstock oil on that maple neck. If your body's ash or whatever, you. You know, you can also put. No, you. You could put some oil on it, or you could leave it alone. So, yeah, no, you don't have to clear coat it. That's the best answer. You don't have to clear coat it. It could be natural wood. Antique rocker says. Hey, could you review the new Kemper Profiler Stage Mark ii? Should I make it my first modeling unit, or should I start with something simpler? Like what? So I. I have a Kemper. I have two Kemper units. So I have a Kemper, the main unit, the toaster oven that's powered. And then I have the Kemper. I don't know what it's called. You know what I hate? I don't know. I don't know what it's called. It's the new smaller Kemper unit. It's a smaller pedal. I'm gonna look it up. I'm like. I look down to see what it is, and I don't have it here. Products. The Kemper. Oh, it says the. Oh, it's called the Player. The compact Profiler. So the Kemper player. Let me go here. There you go. So I have this one, which is a smaller one. I got this because, as you guys know, I was looking at UA pedals and a bunch of other things for a mobile rig. I had a HX stomp. I liked it. I got this because I was like, well, it makes sense, right? The UA pedals were about $400 a whack if I got them used 250. A lot of you guys offered a loan room to me, which is great. I appreciate that so much. But either way, I was looking at, like, what the expense on this. And two UA pedals were going to cost what this unit cost. And I thought, well, I already have a Kemper. I already like it. So let me try this couple of things that I didn't. I don't like about the player is, in fact, every review that was negative, I didn't have any of the problems. I didn't mind that didn't have screen. I didn't mind have. Doesn't have an effects loop. I don't mind that it's limited. I don't mind any of that stuff. I only minded that the app sucks on the phone. I thought the app was pretty not great, but I just plugged in my computer and downloaded my profiles into it and I was good to go. So there's that. But my thing with Kemper is, for me, like I told you, I tried Axe fx. I tried the Kemper, I tried the Head Rush, I tried the HX stuff. All of it. I've had all of it for a length of time. I don't mean like, I tried it in store, tried a friend's house. I mean, all of it was here for long periods of time. At the very least, out of all that piece of gear I just mentioned, nothing was here. Less than six months minimum. And I went through everything. And what I learned for me is the Kemper sounded great and it was easy for me to operate. However, nothing's easier than Head Rush to operate. And nothing's probably easier after Head Rush. It's probably the Fender. What do you call it? Tone Master Unit. And then after that, it's probably HX Stomp or HX. I'm sorry, the HX stuff. The. The Line 6 stuff. So here's my. And I. They also sound so damn good. Everybody's gonna have hardcore opinions about this. Everybody's like, oh, Axe Effect sounds the best, but it's also, to me, was the most confusing. Not confusing, just the most confusing. And for some reason, I just lent myself. I just leaned in and I liked the Kemper. What I would caution anybody is if you're looking at this stuff, it almost, in my opinion, either be ready to sit down with the manuals and learn the Kemper or the Axe Effects or whatever you want, or if you don't find you're that kind of personnel that can sit and learn this and learn. Because I don't mean learn it like, how to what, jump screens you need to edit. You need to learn the sounds in them are not that great. That's why a lot of people, when they go, oh, these modelers and profilers on the great. Well, you got to kind of get in there and kind of dial it in. I would say. I would say Head Rush and line six are the easiest if you want to just get into this and see if you like it. And I would almost say at this point, buy yourself a used Helix or use Head Rush and try that. I would really recommend that. And this is a good time to mention, like, you know, if you buy it used from the Guitar center guys, they can ship it to your house and you get 45 days to return it. And there's no grief. If you return it, you can walk it right back in the store. If they don't have one in your store, you'll probably eat the shipping, which is on average, $23. And I have. I. You cannot. There's just that value in. That is so good to me. If I could. That's like, I could check something out for 25 bucks for a month, and if I don't like it, return it and get a full refund for the $25 of the shipping. Basically, do it. Just do it. I keep telling you that's. I always say this. You know, I met with the CEO of Guitar Center. You guys. A lot of you guys saw the interview. The takeaway I have from the interview is the same thing I said before I even met him. That's Guitar center strong suit. That's the thing that no one can do. You can't just buy something from a person on reverb. That's a person trying to sell their stuff so they can put their money into their next, you know, maybe their rent, but also maybe the next guitar project. You know, Guitar center has no issues with you buying something, trying it. If you don't like it, just return it. That's why they have that policy. That's how they get higher sales. Higher sale volume is. You're more inclined to buy something if you can turn it. I would highly recommend picking out a used piece of gear. You could do it with new gear with Guitar center, but I think that's. I think if you're not sure you want it, I think that's not very fair to them. The best thing about used piece of gear is if you buy a Head Rush or a Helix from Guitar center, you know, in Minnesota, and you have it shipped to where you are and you try it for, you know, a couple weeks, and you don't like it, and you take it to your local Guitar center, return it, I mean, or you can ship it back, but if you have a local one, you don't have to pay the return shipping. They'll just put it in their store and they'll sell it and for the same price. They just put it for the same price you did because it's not any more. Well, technically, I guess it's more used now, but you understand that's not how it works. So that's what I would definitely recommend. A lot of people are talking about the Tonx. I liked Tonx. My complaints with Tonx is, sound wise, I was happy with it. I just didn't like their interface either. And again, if you have Tonx and you're like, I like it, that's great. It's not the quality. Notice I'm not talking about the quality of sounds because I don't think that matters if you can't actually hear. Let me put it this way. This is not like an amp where there's three knobs. And the variables are very simple. Like if you turn one knob all the way and it sounds bad, just start backing off until it sounds good. That's a pretty straightforward thing with this technology. It. It is a know your gear system. In other words, if you. I don't care if somebody says that they, I, I'll. I'll fight. Let's fight. Ready? If somebody says the Ax Effects is better than Head Rush, I would argue is Head Rush with somebody who knows how to dial in the sounds and get a good sound. Is that better than Axe Effects with somebody who can't even figure it out? And just going through this, the presets are already in there. I'd argue Head Rush wins. Right. Maybe you'll disagree. That's okay, we can disagree. But. But I'm saying when it comes to the technologies aspect of gear, your knowledge in how to execute it and use it is more. It's more important than the sounds they give you because you have to be able to go in there and find that sound that sounds good. And so that's what I said. That's why I push anyone who's like, I'm getting into this, trust me. Get into the ones that are easier to use first. Don't worry about it, you know. And ironically, the least expensive ones are the easiest ones to use. And the Head Rush to me was just, it's. They got a touchscreen, it's like an iPad. It's pretty basic. And a perfect example is the first time I ever got a HX stomp. I took it, I plugged into it, it went. And then I put it aside. And then one day I go, okay, I'm going to get this out. I'm going to get in it. I watch 20 videos I pull up the software, I pull up the manual and then I was able to style in a sound and by the time I got the sound right, I was like, oh wow, now this is really good. But I wouldn't have thought that if I didn't learn all the other stuff. So, yeah, so like I said, that's what I recommend. If you don't, if you don't let me go back, I'll tell you also if this helps to antique rocker. If you don't think that you are the. And it's okay. It's okay to not be a technology person has nothing. Most engineers are in their 50s and 60s right now. It's not an age thing, okay. It's just some people like technology and some people just don't love it, especially when it's on their free time. Like I said, I don't want an app on my phone because when I'm not, when I'm working, I'm with my phone. When I'm not working, I don't want to be around my phone. But I will tell you something to think about if you think you're not a technology person, but what you want is all the advantages of what the profilers and the modelers give you. And maybe it's not about portability. You know, you're not looking for 50 sounds that take on the travel go. You just want really good sounds, but you don't, you know, you want to be able to record them because that's usually a big deal, right? You want to be able to record them or have them at low volumes. I highly recommend the Universal Audio aux. It's fifteen hundred dollars. It's a lot of money. Okay. I could take any one of these amps. Anything you've seen behind me. This is the, the super loud hand wired 1974X, the Magnetone. I can take anything that's here. I don't care how loud. I can take 100 watt plexi. I plug it into the aux, the universal aux box, which is an attenuator. But it's also. And I can literally send that to my computer and it's going to sound on par with my Kemper in every way. And for the most part again we're. If you're arguing that, you're arguing that the 1 or 2% difference, which I'm just not going to argue that, right? When somebody's like, well, I don't technically wins better technically, yeah. But we're talking about, you know, and Sean Brooks says what about the boss IR2, I just don't know, Sean. It's not that I don't like the IR2, I've just never tried the boss products, you know, the. I've told you guys before, you know, channels, whatever the size. Just a lot of companies don't send a lot of gear this way. You know, I'm not saying that everybody should send me gear. I'm just saying, like a lot of that stuff when it hits and you see the 50 youtubers all talk about it, I'm just not a lot in those campaigns. A lot. And so UA and BOSS have never sent me a product. And with the ua, why I decided to go with UA oxbox. And this is just as brutally honest as I can be about something. I only own a universal oxbox because every YouTuber who got sent one had one a year later. I noticed that all the YouTubers that praised the other stuff, I noticed that stuff wasn't being used a year or two later. I'm skeptical youtubers just like you're skeptical youtubers. I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical of myself. No, you get it. You know, I get why you'd want to doubt everything the YouTubers say. And that's why, like I said, I try to be as upfront about everything I can. And you make your educated choice there. But what happened with UA was I would notice after a couple years, everyone who was like praising it still had one. I still saw it on YouTube channels. I still using it not just hanging out in the background as background filler, it was being used. And same with rock stars. Had them on stages. And so how I got my ua, and I've told you guys this up front, Sweetwater asked me to do a video, a sponsored video for something. And I, I said, hey, I have a great idea. Instead of paying me or giving me gear, could you send me an aux box? And if I like it, I'd like to keep it. And I'll do a video of the oxbox too. I just want to try an Oxbox because, you know, at that time they were 13. Now they're $1500. And I said, I just am skeptical, like, because, you know, everybody said was great, you just don't know. And that's what happened. So I didn't do it, you know, so they did. I did the video that they paid, you know, we're gonna pay me for, but they sent me the oxbox. So I did the video they wanted and I did a video on the oxbox and that oxbox Video is. You'd have to look. I want to feel like I. I did that four years ago. I've had the oxbox for a while. I have it sitting right here. So you see. No, I haven't seen right here. I just don't have it on. But I absolutely love it. So. And if you have a. I told you guys in that Oxbox video, so it helps. I gave some suggestions how you could use two notes, which is a lot less money. So when I say, you know, the oxbox, I'm not telling you to. The oxbox is best. I'm telling you I have it, I like it, I use it. Two Notes, though is good. In that video of the oxbox, which probably didn't make the auxbox happy, I showed how the two notes could be just as good. My main thing about the auxbox and two Notes is oxbox. And this is my analogy. And this will also help you make a decision. I think ua, Universal Audio, especially the oxbox, it's like Apple products. I think it's quality, I think it works. I think it's dummy proof. And if you want to change a lot, you can't. So I would like. And if you want, you know, like the two note stuff, maybe the boss is like that too. I don't know where. If you're really into getting down the nitty gritty and figuring stuff out, you can do stuff. But with aux, it's like you don't get a whole lot of choices. The interface is very weak. It's just like Apple. It's got its own proprietary power cables and weird crap. But like Apple, you could turn. I'm a moron. I could turn on an Apple product and literally without thinking things are happening. Same thing with Oxbox. It's dummy proof. You just turn it on. You set it a couple settings if you want, on your tablet and you just go. So that's why I suggest things to new people like that. But it's expensive. But I would stick with my original suggestion, which is some kind of more basic modeler. Okay, we have, we have Toneseeker says, hey, Phil, I'm looking at purchasing either a Magnetone Baby M80 or Super 15. There are not a lot of comparisons. I know. That's why I had them send me two. One of each. I was like, please send one of each so I could do a video because I like you. I was going out there and there was a couple good videos, but there was no real comparison videos. And I was really nervous because they're so Expensive and. And I, you know, and I. I'm, you know, skeptical. Like man, when there's a price like that much, what's the difference? He says there's not a lot of comparisons out there. It looks like you own both. What are your thoughts? Best Plexi with clean. I'm doing the video. Okay. That is a video that will be out before I go to Indonesia to cortech the factory. So that is a video that will be out. So thank you so much for the super chat. We'll say because of the super chat I'll definitely make sure that that gets finished editing and goes out. I'm gonna compare the two and then give you my insights on which which one. I not I will tell you which one I think is better and why in each way. Because there's something about each one that's really good. And what's nice is it'll I think what I've determined because I spent some time with them. This isn't like I just open the boxes and check them out. I've had these for months and months now and. And I think there's something positive about each one. And then I'll tell you why I prefer one. I do prefer one of them over the other but that may not apply to you. So that's why I'm giving you. I'll give you both sides. So yes. Brad Guitar Miller says happy pre birthday. Thank you for all you do for this community and have learned so much from you. Keep an eye out from a custom CNC project. You rock. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know it's funny is I still have you sent me a long time ago you sent me a really nice pre wired tele unit and I've been like trying to figure out like you know if there's this time to give it a week and do a giveaway or if I can use it in a video. So I. I just let you know. Sometimes you guys send stuff. The we have a term it means no disrespect. Okay. That's not what it means. The When I say the term I mean no disrespect anybody. I just, I just the way my brain works is how I said I refer to some stuff is called unsolicited. I just like. What I mean is like it just shows up and maybe I don't have like a clear reason why we're have it here and but that stuff so I'm just telling you when companies or you guys send me stuff and sometimes you don't Hear me talk about it and stuff. It's here. I just waiting for the opportunity. Sometimes that could take forever, though, because I'm just looking for the time to talk about or show it. Okay. All right. I got two from Dr. My Ball Zich with a Z. I'm always going to say the Z. Guitar Fetish Hardtail Strat body is US spec'd. Do you have to adjust the Squire neck nut for US Space bridge since US first import? Spacing is different. Do you have to adjust the Squire neck nut sometimes? Yes. It's really dependent on. You know, this is a weird thing. Before people knew stuff, they just did stuff. Okay. It's kind of funny. So there's a lot. And the Internet gives and it takes, right? So where there's now information on the Internet, and you learn like, oh, you don't mix this with that. That's a bad idea. There's also, like, everybody always uses this analogy for jazz. They go, jazz is like four musicians playing four different songs. And I don't think that's what you call jazz. What I always call jazz is jazz is something that shouldn't sound good or work and does. Right? Like, that's the whole point I think of it. It's like, I'm doing something that shouldn't work, but it does. Or I'm doing something that's, you know, so same thing with this. You can stick all kind. You can stick the neck, this neck on that body that doesn't necessarily have the same spec or the same measurements. You can do all this stuff. You. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, doesn't. So that's where I'm always cautious. And the reason I say that is because sometimes if I say, oh, no, no, you definitely want to get the right spacing on the nut. And then somebody's go, oh, trust me. Somebody's going to say in the comments. They're going to say, oh, no, don't try. Whatever Phil's saying, trust me, you need to get the right spacing. Look, you could say that. But as someone who's repaired thousands of guitars, people brought me stuff that shouldn't sound good, play, good work, right? Hey, look, how about this IKEA caster? That shouldn't work. Which is why I have it. It's why I bought it. It's why I'm keeping it. It's because this is the reminder that we could argue all day about the right way to do something, and yet this guy just shoved this all together, and it's great. So, you know, so I would say in your case, yes, technically you'd want the. The nut spec correctly, but. But also you could just do it and see. Maybe you like it that way. I don't know. The. He's got a follow up to this. He says the guitar fetish hardtail strap body only has string through holes. Realize I have no idea how to drill in the bridge for proper alignment, scale length. I have a video where I'll put a link to it when a timestamp where I. I put a bridge and a neck on a guitar and I. I show you how I line up the bridge using string and that would be the way to do it. There's tons of videos on YouTube, but I actually have one too. So it's one of the things I wouldn't say it's not hard, but it's not. Not really hard. Does it make sense? It's not. Is it's not really hard. It's just not really hard. I'll say. That clan of house cats says, thank you, Ozzy, for all the music entertainment. So, yeah, the, you know, it's funny. Funny odd, not funny. Ha. We got on the plane, me and Shawna go Sweetwater. And on getting on the plane, as you're turning off, as I was turning off, you know, the, the airplane mode. So because they're like, you know, so we could take off and my phone doesn't crash the plane. It came through that we lost Ozzy. And I was like, I looked at Sean, I go, ozzy Osbourne passed away. She's like, what? I'm like, that's crazy. And so we, we were talking about on the plane, you know, it was obviously Ozzy's. He's iconic to me. You know, everybody's got it. You know, like I said, it's just like when we lost Van Halen, Eddie, everyone and all the, you know, Tom Petty, you know, again, I can name everybody, but I'm just saying everyone has that moment in their life where, yeah, these are famous rock stars or maybe this is a person who's known for music, but some musicians are more than that to some of us. Ozzy, to me was. He was this music that my older sister listened to before I was into music. Like my sister was listening to like Dio, Ozzy and like. And Dawkin, funny enough. And I remember her, she would have the albums, you know, and she would have, you know, the Blizzard of Oz album, you know, cover. And as a kid, I was just like, that looks weird. Like, it's Scary, right? And, uh, and I listened to it because, you know, that's what you do when you have an older sibling, you listen to their music. And of course I got into that kind of music too. And Ozzy was, I would say in the same vein, in my mind, in my. In my body as Aerosmith, where I realized they were good. They were from a time before me, so to speak. But what they both did, that Ozzy did in Aerosmith in particular, to me is I was never thinking of Ozzy as like an influence or as anyone that's like, okay, you know, yeah, I'm a huge Black Sabbath fan or anything like that. I liked that music. I was listening to more at the time, newer bands than him. And then when no More Tears came out, I was like, this is amazing. Whatever's happening here, amazing. And I am just huge. I'm like a huge Ozzy fan. And the reason I bring that up is because. Not only because Ozzy is amazing. And we'll get. We'll get to the other things we need to talk to about this too. He's amazing, but he's multi generational. I don't mean like some artists make some songs that are so good that they transcend time, like the Beatles, right? They're forever in a catalog of great music. But some musicians get to tap on different generations by. With new music. Like, like I said, I could almost start a fight. I don't want to, but I could start a fight with talking about Van Halen because of the Hagar time versus the, you know, the Roth time. Ozzy, same thing. You know, somebody could be a Black Sabbath fan and then somebody could be an Aussie fan, and then somebody could be the more modern Aussie fan, you know, the Zakk Wilde era. Ozzy is what I would say, and that's what's great about someone like that, is that it's not just he's so amazing. It's just different generations can have the same emotion. Because what reason I say that is when we lose someone, you know, another person I'd be. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention was Tom Petty was like that too. Tom Petty was around. I heard Tom Petty music. But in the early 90s, all of a sudden Tom Petty is like, he's on mtv and I don't know, he's. Same with same thing. I just didn't realize, like, oh, this is an older guy, that I thought it was a new artist, right? When I heard no More Tears, I knew it was Ozzy I knew Ozzy was been around, but it was still like, to me, he was a new artist. It was new stuff to me. And so that's what's. What's amazing about the Ozzy legacy like that. And of course, this is why I got to talk about this. So obviously we. We lost a lot of amazing famous people this week and a lot. But one other thing that happened that was strange was we were getting on the plane to come back from Sweetwater and same. You can't make this up. Like, it's so weird. I'm sitting there, the captain's talking, and they're like, please turn off your. Put your phones and you know, technology and airplane mode so we can take off. And as I'm doing that, it says, hulk Hogan passed away. I'm like. And then I think Shauna looked up the same thing and she goes, what does it say about Hulk Hogan? I said, he passed away. And we're like, whoa. And like I said, that was just crazy. So, yeah, it's. And like I said, yeah, Chuck died this week too, as well. We lost. Yeah. Chuck Mangione, which was a amazing jazz musician. Obviously, I think we lost. Like I said, it was. It's an intense, intense week. But. And as much as all the people that passing, you know, that week is. It's always sad to hear this stuff. You know, sometimes when you see somebody you. You like and they, you know, that you're a fan of and they pass away, it has an impact. But there are people not. Unfortunately, fortunately for me, Ozzy is one like Eddie Van Halen. Not just because they're musicians. There's a lot of great musicians who passed away that I'm like, oh, I'm really sorry they're gone. But there's a difference between that and just. I'm saying not. Not a value thing. Just. I don't know if I'd be still, you know, the musician I am now if those things didn't happen to me. And. And Aussie was one of the people. Like, all of a sudden I was like, what. What is going on here? I love this. I need this in my life more. This. This album. So. And again, some of you. And the reason I say all that is because some of you, you know, it's not your album. It's not your Aussie time. But that was my Aussie time, so. And yeah, they'll. Oh, yeah. Brian says I. I. I looked it up. Somebody said, I. And again, I apologize. The guitarist from Golden Earring. Is that what it is? Earring also passed away. I'm not as familiar with his work. I think he's. This is where you're like, I don't want to disrespect him. I think he's an Irish or a Scottish artist. Does anyone know? Can somebody just put that in the comments? I don't leave, like, looking like a jackass for saying that, but I. That, you know, like I said, there's artists that, like, I'm said I'm familiar with, but I mean, I, you know, I'm just not as familiar with. And then Brian's also mentioned we lost Malcolm Jamal Warner and Malcolm Jamal Warner, same thing. He's. He's a. I didn't even. So, you know, I didn't know he was a musician until I saw. I was listening to the podcast, and one of them was Jeff Giesel's live show, and. Oh, he's Dutch. Okay. So. Okay. Thank you for clearing that up, guys. See, I didn't want to. Didn't want to insult anybody. Thank you for. But. But with Malcolm, I found out through the Jeff Giesel live thing that he was a bass player and he was playing Keisel basses. But the more important takeaway is he was a bass player. I didn't know that. So I was like, well, that's crazy. So, yeah, it's just. It's just horrible to hear this stuff. So, yeah. All right, let's. Let's move on. Thank you guys for bringing that stuff up. You know, it's. It's nice to honor as many people as we can, because just a reminder, I've talked. I talked about this before, Ozzy. Unfortunately for me, he's what I talked about when we lost Eddie Van Halen and we lost some other artists. He's on my didn't get to see list. And I told you guys that I, you know, that's what Covet took from a lot of us as musicians, aside from thousand other things it took. You know, I didn't go see concerts for three, four years, and I'm not going to be happy or. I don't know. I'm bitter about that. I'm bitter because, as I told you guys before, that I was making attempt. I saw everybody I could. I've seen, you know, Elton John. I saw Kiss. I saw, you know, anyone who did a farewell concert, I would go see it. Anyone who does anything, I would go see it. I went and saw Barry Manilow. I talked about this. Like, everybody's like, Barry Manilow. I'm like, I Want to see? I'd like to say I saw Ozzy before and now I can't. There's no way to say it. So this is my point to remind you all that their big reminder for us is that when somebody like Ozzy or Malcolm or these, these amazing artists, you know, they, they pass on. Go see, go see your bands that you love. If you've never seen them, go see them now because you'll. Otherwise they'll be on your I missed it list. Like Ozzy is for me. And that's really sad. In fact, that's the first, absolute first thing out of Shawna's mouth after she took it in. She's like, man, we never got to see him live. And I'm like, I know. She's like, and he was on our list. He was on our list. Ozzy was on our list to see live. So, Mr. S, let's go on to the next subject. Happy Friday. The Bigsby pedal by Game Changer Audio has been out for a while. Have you or your chat heard good or bad things about the results of using it? I don't know anything about it. I will pin this right now so I can take a look at it later, especially tonight. But I don't know anything about the Bixby pedal. Anyone have any feedback for Mr. S? Put it on the comments so we know. Greg says. Hey, do you think any potential damage issues with mixing metal types on a Floyd, like having titanium saddles inserts, but not tight titanium saddles? Not that I'm aware of. I guess your concern would be obviously harder metals would then wear against the softer metals. I just don't see that as a potential issue as there is all kinds of components that are all kinds of already made of like some stuff are gonna made of like really hardened steel and then stuff is gonna be made of a softer like pot metal stuff. So there's already kind of stuff like that. But the important part is. No, I don't. I've never heard of that being an issue. And I don't think it's. I think if anything, anytime you put a better quality part, even if it's only the one part on the whole mechanism, you're improving the mechanism as a whole. Randy says, hey, what is the best advice you can give to someone who wants to open a music store? Well, first start with a million dollars. Just kidding. What's the best advice? I've talked about this before in the past. I'm going to give you the very first, the best. The very first, the Very best advice I have, which is a music store doesn't. If you're going to open a music store, the most expensive overhead you're going to have is the rent by far. Unless you open a big music store and you have lots of employees. But I'm sure if you're doing that, you have some money. Okay. But if you're going to open a music store the way a lot of music stores get opened, which is a one person's mission to make music part of their life and put music equipment on the wall and try to interact with people, the best thing you can do is learn everything you can about negotiating leases. The lease will destroy you. This is not even musical advice, but this is absolutely important. Music stores profit margins are not very big even if you deal with used. And you're like, well, sometimes they're double. It's not enough. And the lease will destroy you. And the biggest mistake everyone makes, and you will make too, without that advice is assuming that the landlord is vested in you. Succeeding is absolutely not true. Not in any way whatsoever. The you'll find that when you start a new business, the people who you interact with that sell you your credit card processing your, your build out, if you don't do it yourself. We did sweat equity, we did our own build out. The people who rent you your space. Everyone actually has a vested interest in doing really well off of you. And watching you go broke, it seems unintuitive for most people. You're like, well, why would they want you to go broke? It's because that's how it works. You gotta understand, most people who deal with businesses that profit from working with businesses know that most businesses fail. So they learn real fast to adapt their business model to making money off of failing businesses, not succeeding ones. It makes so much sense when I say it like that, right? They, they're, they're gonna make more money if you fail, so they're actually stacking everything against you. And that, and that's where a lot of people walk in, not knowing that. And so you want to learn everything you can about negotiating leases. And, and, and of course, learning the business. Not just in the music store business, just retail business, making sure you can do accounting. If you can't do accounting, you make sure you hire a good accountant or all that stuff is super, super important because it's what will kill you. Very rarely, very rarely in my experience over the years have I seen a music store go out of business from the. Because they were not selling enough gear. That's what they tell everybody, oh, no one was buying anything. But behind the scenes, when you go through and forensically look at everything, you'll find that they were pretty much they just didn't know how to manage the money or the business. And I know that sounds horrible and it's a lot easier to say, like, yeah, nobody was just buying any guitar, so. So I went out of business. But really, it's really just like, like I said, a bad lease will pretty much make it to where you can never get ahead of it. So that's my advice. It's not sexy, but it will save you. Because if you fail, you'll be cleaning that up for 10 to 20 years. And I'm not trying to discourage you. I think you should do it. It can be done. You just need to learn. And in today's day and age, you used to learn that by how I learned happened to you. And then you would just adjust and keep working and fighting until. And surviving. But now you have ways to learn ahead of time. So let's see. Oh, Mr. S wants to know. This is a follow up to when I was talking about the Loud and the. And the Mackie issue. Did I talk to Loud about the ebay issue? Yeah, of course. Now I didn't talk to him like, hey, could you get this off of ebay? So I don't do. There was no way I can do that. And they basically said, what? Well, first of all, the people I talked to obviously want to sell me stuff. So they were like, oh, that's so weird. I don't, I've never heard, but I'll find out. And through finding out, that's what I. Or I found out what I already knew, which is yes, they had the right to do that and that's what they do to people. So that was. Wasn't the basic takeaway from. It wasn't personal. They weren't attacking me personally. They were just attacking anybody who was selling lots of Mackie stuff. They're not dumb. They knew it was a dealer. They didn't know it was me. And they knew, but they knew it was somebody who had a lot of Mackie selling it used saying it was new in box. So they were just shutting it down. To them, it could have been stolen stuff. They didn't know. To them it could have been a dealer trying to avoid map. They didn't know if it was an employee at a music store selling it all out back door. They just didn't know. But that's not. They didn't care. So you know, it wasn't like, oh, if they knew it was me doing a, a normal thing, which is selling the inventory I had versus someone who stole it, that you think that have effect. It didn't. They just shut down all that stuff and that's how they do it. Music therapy. Laz says, hey, go get yourself a growler for your birthday. You rock. Thank you. You know what? It's been a long time since I bought a growler. I used to get them and I love them and I just haven't done it in years. So maybe I will, maybe I will this weekend. So. And then thank you. Music therapy Laos. I appreciate that. Jeff says. Hey, Phil. Thoughts on solderless cable kits for pedal boards? I found the cheap one on Amazon. Works better than the big brands for triple the price. Yeah, I could see that. I've done one solderless cable kit. I did the, the Daddario one when I did a pedal board build and it was okay. That's what I said in the video. Hey, it works. I'm not a huge fan of solderless kits. They make me nervous and it's not. I don't want to testify to quality of them like I used to. I was a George L. Cable dealer and George L. I thought made the best ones quality wise for sure. Just in my opinion. But over time, they would still fail. I just find they fail a lot. And here's why I think it happens. Everybody always talks about how the quality of the solderless kits are not very good. My mother used to yell at me a lot as a kid for yanking the cables out of the wall, the power plugs, like, you know, like the vacuum. You used to. Did anyone else do this crap? I used to grab, like, I'd be in the middle of the room and I was done vacuuming. I just take the power plug from the vacuum and I just pull it out of the wall. And my mother would be like, don't do that. I used to be like, well, I don't know. I always thought maybe she was afraid I'd whip it into something or something. It was, it was later, it was like when, you know, she's so old when they say, like when my mother would say, don't stretch out the phone cord. And then one day you'd be on the phone talking to somebody and it was. The phone would crackle because the cable was stretched out and it was all broken. And the same thing with the vacuum thing one time, like, it just broke off and you're like, oh, Crap. Same thing with Solidus cables. I think they work fine. But I'm aware of the fact that I'm still pulling out the vacuum cleaner cord the same way. I'm still pulling on cables this way. And the, the, the solderless cables. If you pull on the cable, if you unplug your, if you don't grab it from the actual source and pull it out gently, you are gonna have issues with. So when everybody says like I saw Rhett Shaw say, like he hates Solidus cables and it work and I remember thinking like, oh, poor Rhett. He's like me, he ain't getting from the cable. We're just both idiots. You can't be an idiot. You can't be lazy. I'm all those things. I'm lazy, I'm an idiot. It's just. And I, I know I could correct the behavior and move on. I just rather have cables that I know I can pull on and not worry about it. So I'm, I, I don't know how to say specifically the cheap ones you found are better than the better ones, but I can tell you that they're all susceptible to. If you yank on them, they just don't do well. So you got to take better care of them. And so the advantage, the advantage is you can make them the exact lengths that you want. The disadvantages you, they take less abuse in my, in my experience with them. But I still think I like George L. The best. But who knows? I don't even know George L. Still in business anymore. Isn't that funny? Anyone else know? If you guys know, put it in the comments and then let's do these last two super chats and then we'll grab one off from, from Amanda. This was from, I'm gonna say Volv. Volvi. Volfi. Volfi says I bought a cab from a local builder, but it's poorly made. Oh, okay, that sucks. Should I have, should I bought a brand name one instead? Any thoughts on this? Cheers. In my, in my travels, hand built local small stuff is usually not better. Everyone is a self proclaimed, you know, master luthier. Everyone's a self proclaimed amazing amp builder. Everyone's a self proclaimed cabinet maker. I mean that's just how that works. And some of them are just bad at business but good at actually doing stuff. Some of them are good at business but bad at making the stuff. Some of them are bad at both. And it really sucks because deep down I think a lot of us, the majority of us, we want to support someone who's like us. I want to support someone who's feeding his family or her family with the money I give, not investing it in their new, you know, sports car, whatever, you know, you know what I'm saying. You know where I'm going with this. But I used to have this problem when I had the store with small builders. You know, you, you, you'd work with them, but they were, they were problematic sometimes. That still didn't stop me from doing it on YouTube. And as I've told you on YouTube, I'd say 60% of the time, it's not going to end well. When I work with small builders, which is why I go hard to vet them so that you don't have, hopefully an experience from somebody I suggested to you. That's the worst feeling in the world. But I have made that mistake and maybe given somebody a spotlight that I just didn't vet enough. And that's why. And, you know, and it's. And, and I have to take the abuse of that. So, you know, some of these people, you know, they'll go, hey, Phil's a jerk. We reached out to him and he's just being difficult. I'm like, I am being difficult. I'm protecting the consumer. And if you really want to work with me, then we're going to go through this process together. And same thing because of what happened to you. You know, you spent a lot of money. You could have just bought some. You could have probably bought a hardly bitten cabinet. Probably works fine. So I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope it doesn't discourage you from ever working with a small builder again. If you notice, I. All my bad experiences never stop me from working with small builders, but it sure changes the way I perceive things. And the one thing I will tell you is I don't like resumes. Like, I don't like people who give me a resume. It's. You've never heard me do it on this channel. I'll never do it to you, and I don't want to. I. You've never heard me start a video going, hi, my name is Phil McKnight and I've owned a store and I did this and I did that, and then I did this and then I did this, and now I'm going to tell you about this. I don't need someone to give me their resume. You just start talking, I'll figure out how full of crap you are. Fast. Not fast enough, but I'll figure it out. And same thing I think is, I'm always skeptical if somebody's like, oh, I'm. You know, I studied under the greatest guitar builder in the world, and now I'm building guitars. I'm like, you know what? Just hand me a guitar. You let me play your guitar. And so the same thing. The one thing I will tell you is one thing that I look for really hard when it comes to a small builder is to find someone who actually had a real experience with them and that I. That I can trust and say, okay, how was that experience? And a perfect example, a perfect example of that. There's a builder recently, like I said, they sent me a guitar. I have the guitar here at the house right now because I don't know what to do with it. And they wanted me to do a video. And so I reached out to my patrons and I said, hey, have you heard of this? And one of my patrons was like, yeah, I bought a guitar from him. And this is the horrible experience. What happened? And they showed me essentially the proof of that horrible experience. I'm like, that doesn't mean I'm not gonna work with a company. Just means I'm vetting them even harder now because I have something like that that tells me that that's a. That's a red flag that they treated somebody like that. So I would also say too. I don't know why I'm saying say to also, if you don't mind, maybe if you send me a message who the builder was. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to dox them here on the channel. You gotta understand the problem with having, you know, a podcast that's getting like 50,000 near 40,000 views on YouTube and another 50, 40,000 views streamed. So 100,000 on average. 250,000 streams and views per episode is. I could cause a lot of damage to a small company real fast. That I don't mean to cause, you know, again, I don't know you either, so I haven't vetted you also. So. But if you let me know who they are, I will start. I'll look into it and if there's something worth sharing with everybody, I'll share. You know, so just something to. To be aware of. And then sent me Happy birthday. Hey, thank you. It says you're the man. That's good. You guys are so nice. That Dan Electro looks absolutely beautiful. I hope you have a great weekend. It is absolutely beautiful. Like I said, I'm super, super excited about it. I don't know why. I just. I think it's A beautiful guitar, and I like Dana Lectros and. And in person, it just sounded and played so good. So, like, that's the way to go. Okay, let's. Let's see what Amanda sent, because she sent a lot of stuff and I was not getting to it. Thomas, this is self indulgence. I might do another one after this. Thomas said, hey, Phil, curious, what made you choose the Amp Nation Wonderland overdrive over the overdrive reverb? That's a. That's a great question, and thank you for asking that. So Amplify Nation is a company where they make a lot of good amps like Magnetone. And companies come to YouTubers and they say, hey, look, look, we're not sugar. We know why I have the gear. They sent it. They can. They can pay you, right? So, you know, there's options. Some companies, like, hey, we could pay you to do a video or we can, you know, give you some gear or whatever. And with Magatone and with Amplify Nation, I kind of came the same approach. I said, look, I'm really curious as I'm a musician who loves gear and I want to try all your stuff. I would like to have an experience where I go through all your stuff over a period of time and then pick the thing that just kind of I like the most. And with Amplified Nation, what I can tell you about the amps, okay, is the overdrive reverb. By the way, the overdrive rebirth reverb, I think is the newest one, right? So. Because I'm thinking of the other overdrive by Nation. Hold on, let me pull up their amps. Because, remember, they had to change a couple amp names. Remember I told you guys when the double guys popped out of nowhere, saying, hey, we're back. We're not really making anything, but we're back. And then all of a sudden, Amplified Nation changed names. I'm like, oh, and that could be a coincidence, huh? Okay, let's look and we'll share. So maybe this will be the last question because there's going to be a little. Okay, amps. Okay. So I have tried. Oh, okay. Yes. All right. I just want to make sure. Yes. Amphonics Gang, the Phoenix Fury. It was not one that's changed. The Dirty Wonderland, the six string sustain, which is, I think was the six string singer. There's the trim drive, which is different. So the overdrive reverb. I tried all the amps except for one amp, and that amp is actually downstairs. And I'm going through that one right now. And that amp is the. Hold on. I'm pretty sure that amp is the Trim Drive. Trim Drive Deluxe. I have not opened it out of the box. I have no idea what it is. But that's their newest amps. They sent me the newest amp. So what I did is I tried all of the amplification amps at any point, any one of them. I personally thought they were great. So, I mean, if that was the amp I kept, I'd be like, that's the amp to keep. But over time, what I was figuring out was like, okay, what did I like about each one? Some of them, I thought they did a great clean and the overdrive was nice. Some of them I thought the overdrive was amazing and the clean was nice. This amp was the most compromised amp. So I guess to just get to your question. As easy as possible. The Wonderland overdrive. Why did I go with that one? Because I didn't think it was the best one of the bunch, but it did the most out of the bunch. Ample phonics and gain I thought had the best, like, higher gain, mid gain sound and a great clean. And it was like fantastic. But the lower gain sounds I thought were good. They were great. See, like I said, in and of itself, isolated, it was great. But comparing it to another amplified nation, I was like, oh, the lower gain of the. Of, you know, of like the overdrive reverb, it was really good too. Right. So this one, I think was the. It wasn't the. The best single amp of the series. It just had the most variety of the amp series. And I'm not keeping 10amps. This is not going to happen. I mean, I rf too many amps now. You know, I like ha. You know, I like having, you know, some amps, but I just don't need 20amps. There's just no way. There's no place for them here size wise. And it's just a lot. And keep in mind, when I say a company sends an amp stuff, as you've heard other YouTubers talk about, you know, you're trying to be compensated for your work, your time. And so sometimes you're like, this product is so good. I'm just going to keep the product that's actually like me in my mind. It's almost like buying it because it's like I sell it, pay myself, or I could keep it and enjoy it. And I'm like, well, I'll just do that. So that's why I did that way, I think. I hope that makes some sense. Yeah, Susan, Says the Steel String Singer was my favorite by them. The Steel String Singer, I think, actually could have been the best one of the bunch. But it. I guess my thing on that was. It was loud. It was really loud. The one they sent was like the 50 watt version. Maybe if I would have had them send the 20 watt version, it would be different story, but it was really, really loud. And so I could get it good at lower volumes, but this one plays the best at the lowest volumes. And that's my. My thing is, in my world, I need amps to sound really good at a lower volume because I'm either recording with them or I'm practicing with them. And I'm just not using them, you know, in a live stage environment where they got crank up, you know, I don't need them to crank up. It's not what I need. So the Bombshell. Which one was the Bombshell? Let's look, because I'm going back through amps. Bombshell overdrive. Let me pull this one. Did I do that one? I don't even know if I did that one. I don't think I did that one. That's maybe one I didn't do. So maybe I didn't do them all. And I'm pretty sure if I did, I don't remember it. So that tells you right there. Did I do the Bombshare? Now I gotta look. Seeing that sad. That's what happens when you do so many videos over the years. After a while you're like, okay, let's try pull it up. I. It's not showing. I did it. Nope. Ample phonics and gain. So maybe I didn't do the Bombshell. I did Steelstring Singer, which isn't called that anymore. So maybe I didn't do that one. And I think if I recall, I can tell you I watched RJ's video and I'm pretty sure I'm looking at right now. It did not have reverb. So that if. If I'm right, which it looks like I'm right, it doesn't have reverb, is why I haven't sent it out. I was very focused on one in one with reverb every. Because. Because look, this amp is to me is like my, you know, the John Mayer, Joe Bonamasa thing. And I like to having the reverb with that sound. So that's what's really important to me is the reverb. Like the magnetones, no reverb. But that to me is getting like the slash or the you know, the, the, you know, the blues, rock or rock sound. So I don't, I didn't need necessarily. Although I think the magneton reverb might be even more happy. But it doesn't happen. Okay, on that note, I think we did it. So the, you know, it's funny, unfrequent, believable. Says still looking at bad cat amps. Yeah, you know what's funny is I'm. I'm actually weirdly enough back to playing my cub. That's the amp I'm playing now is the bad cat cup. I like the Black cat. I like all the bad cats I've had. But really what happened, the era was amazing. Like I said, the era amp, the Era 30. The only reason it wasn't, you know, like I said, it was one of the best I put in my top five amps I've ever played through my life. No reverb. And at some point practicality does come in. You're like, this amp sounds great, but I gotta run things through the effects loop and do all this stuff. And in a cup I can just turn on and play. And so I decided like the cup, it's, it's a, it's, it's, it's part of a, of, it's part of the world of me. Like, like this week I'm making content, I'm traveling, I'm doing stuff. And when I'm making content, it needs to form and function well. When I'm doing on my personal time, I need to form and function well. Otherwise I'm not going to use it. So on that note, we'll let you go. I will be here next week. So you know, the only show that's gonna be. There's gonna be a pre recorded show coming up in a couple weeks when I'm in Indonesia and but other than that. And then look for some cool new videos from Sweetwater. I did some cool videos at Sweetwater that I think are gonna be fun. Since I had to do the interview with him, I went and did the interview and I thought I said, hey, can I run run amok and do some fun cool videos? And they let me. So we did. And so look for those and some deep dives coming. I got some dedives coming this week. So on that note I want to thank you guys. I will see you next Friday. And as always, I want to thank all you for supporting the channel and tip your waiter. All right guys, if you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget you can subscribe for free and help this channel or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patreon for live.