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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of 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. How's it going? Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 403. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. Uh, my week was busy, but that's good. Busy is good. Better busy than bored. I went to California. I went to Guitar Center. Not the store, but the corporate headquarters. I met with Gabe, the CEO. We did a podcast, A. A discussion, if you will. We did that and you'll be seeing that soon, in fact. So, you know, it's. It's just. Let me see. You know, actually, let me see. Right now it is finished. Just now finish rendering out. So most likely, not most likely, here's what's going to happen. It will go after this episode is over. It will go to the patrons. The $5 and up patrons will get to see it probably for the next 24 to 48 hours. And I plan to have it out probably by Monday. It'd be my guess. I'm just guessing at this point, but usually I get their feedback on anything. It was a very pleasant discussion for the most part, and awkward. I don't know if you've ever had to sit next to somebody that you just said a bunch of stuff about publicly, like, hey, you know, hey, I think Guitar center is going to fail. Hey, okay, I remember when you said that and then we had a discussion from there. So it was an interesting thing. Very intelligent person, which is. Was very obvious. And a lot came from the discussion, which is, I think is going to be shocking. I was shocked by it all different directions of how, what came from it. I don't want to give away too much. I feel like it was really, really cool, just really cool podcast. So those interested can join Patreon. So you guys know, I know I'm usually bad at this part, but I should be. I should really do this. If you sign up for the free Patreon, you don't get to see it. But if you sign up for the $5 patron, you. You can click that. I think it's like a 14 day trial. You get a trial, you'll get to watch the bonus or not the bonus. You'll get to see this podcast before it comes out. And then if you want to cancel your membership before it charges you, that's up to you guys. It's a good way. In other words, it's a good way to check out the Patreon page and support the podcast. Okay, let's get into the episode. There was so much going on this week and first thing, I'm just going to grab some early riser questions. First one's from Cowboy742 says, Did you keep your PRS horse meat overdrive pedal? I did not. I didn't keep any of the PRS pedals. They were really good. I don't want you to take into consideration anything quality wise in the pedals. Some products just don't stick. What I mean by that is like, I already have something like it. And I'm like, you know, it's cool and I'm glad I got to do the video and show it to everybody, but I'm like, am I going to replace my blah, blah, blah with this? And that's sometimes what that, that kicks in. Um, in those particular cases, that pedal sounded really good. If you watch my video of those pedals, my really big critique was how big they are. And I, I already have a couple pedals that I think are just way too big and I love them. So to me, the big pushback for me mentally on the PRS pedals was I didn't love them, any one of them enough to give up that much real estate on a pedal board. Um, because that's the, that's the, that's the issue right there. It's just a lot of real estate. And as if anyone watched my pedals, pedal board, pedal board video, know that I don't use a whole lot of pedals and I don't use a big pedal board. So to me it's like, you know, five, six pedals. I think the most pedals I've ever used on a pedal board that I remember is seven pedals, maybe eight. And I think that's a lot. So some of you are probably like, that's a lot. And some of you are like, that's nothing. For me, seven, eight pedals is a lot of pedals. The way I think of pedals is, in my world is most time when I'm playing music, I'm in an environment where I don't get set up. I'm not in a band that plays out every week. I'm usually guest playing with musicians. I'm jumping on stage with somebody or I'm joining something. And so my rig is light and easy. And to me, every pedal is one more potential problem. So I'm like, if I go on stage and there's five problem potential problems. I'm Like, I'm aware of it, but I don't want six or seven or eight. Just some guy says, why are they so big? You know, it's funny. I think everything's cool now. Look, some people know. Definitely the patrons know. When the PRS pedals came out, I said some things. The PRS guys didn't like it. There was some, you know, some fun times for everybody. It wasn't for. So. So I'm really just rehashing. This is just sucks. But just to give you an idea, why are they so big? I don't know. What I implied and said that was probably one of the many things they didn't like was, you know, I said Paul Reed Smith himself. Paul Smith is not a pedal guy. To me, it's a weird thing, okay? You have a guy out there and he's like, I don't like pedals. What did he call? He calls them video game controllers. Sometimes he's like, ah, you know, you just plug guitar into an amp. What do you need a pedal for? Most guys are more interested in their pedals than making music. These are all basic quotes that Paul Reed Smith has said. And then he came out with pedals. And the pedals are quality because I believe Paul Reed Smith Guitars, the company, they just make quality stuff. So it's not like they're going to make a crappy line of pedals and they didn't even build them right. They're ghost built by a really good builder here in the us But I feel like maybe, maybe, and I could be totally wrong because this is again, just my gut instinct. And this is what I said then. One of the things I don't want somebody who doesn't like something to make something. And when those pedals came out, I was like, yeah, this is what I feel like. Someone who doesn't like pedals would think that people who like pedals would want like big giant pedals with goofy names. Like, I made this joke once. Let me show it to you. So I don't actually just sit here and continue to bash on. On PRS guitars because, okay, it's bad enough. I always feel like it's a Gibson and PRS bash hour and sometimes Fender. And ironically we're going to be switching to Fender right now. But. But hey, you know, when you're the big guys, I guess, was it you punch up, not down? It's hard for me to pick on a small builder. I want to show you what happened with those pedals for me. And I'd like to point Out. The quality of the pedals was never in question. They sound great, they work great. It was the marketing and the, you know, the everything else. So when I. This. I'm going to show you this now. I'm just trying to find the picture that's going to show it. Do the best. Come on. Let me give you. So in the early 2000s, Fender came out with an amp. What a shock. Fender always comes out amp. A lot of you are going to have flashbacks, right? Some of you guys are going to be laughing. So in the early 2000s, I had just became a dealer for Fender and Fender had come out with this amp. And it's not even about the dealership thing. It was just me physically, as a musician, as a person. So Fender comes out with this amp and it's called the heavy metal. The bigs. That's where the metal head. Sorry. It's the metal head. I'm sorry. This is gonna be. Sound so funny, but I gotta do it. So Fender comes out this thing called the metal head. Let me explain this. First of all, you're looking at this picture right now. Yeah. It looks like a road case, okay? And it says MH in big chrome. And there's chrome every chrome. Number, numbers and letters. Chrome things. Big oversized cabinet. Big oversized head. Look, you get it as a full stack. And. And literally they made it look like. Like I said, like road cases. Right? It's got the road case handles and stuff. Very. Like I said, right out of like A. An 80s rock and roll music video where the roadies are pushing stuff on the stage. This is what they made this amp look like. And of course, I think it was like 300 watts. We could probably look. Cause we're looking at specifications. Does it give us the specs on this? It was like 300 watts or 500 watts. It might have been 500 watts. Yeah. And this is the market copy. Unleash the brutal guitar assault within one of the most powerful amps on the planet. Finder. First true metal amp, the Fender MH500. 550 watts into 2 ohms. 400 watts into 4 ohms. Solid state electronics. This isn't two, by the way. Okay? This thing came with a set of earplugs. I swear to God. This is all true, right? We're looking at it right now. I gotta make this crap up. So it comes with a set of earplugs and I love this. What does it say about the backstage? Like, oh, see? Accessory box. Oh, yeah, that's right. It came with an accessory Box, Right, Right. Brutal numbers, right? And I saw it and I thought, this is a true story. When I saw it, somebody goes, what do you think? And I go, this is what my grandfather thinks metal is. This is what? Like, this is it. Like, my grandfather watched two Beavis and Butthead videos and goes, this is what dumbass kids thinks. Cool. But keep in mind, this is early 2000s, so it's probably 20 years late for that to be cool. But I was making fun of the fact the Fender was in this analogy. My grandfather, right? Like, what is Fender doing? This is the dumbest thing. Now, for those out there, then maybe have purchased one and love them. Because things like this do get a cult following. And right now is taking to the Reddit page about what an asshole Phil McKnight is. Again, I am not critiquing the sound. I never heard it. I could no interest in owning it. So I didn't plug in. Because the worst thing that could have happened to me was I'd like it. Because then I'd have to sit there and look at this thing and go, I know it's dumbass, but it sounds good. So I know nothing about it. I just remember, like thinking it was the silliest thing ever and it would just felt so, you know. And here's a good example. One of my buddies, his name's Bill, he's retired. He was my everything but Fender. Fender rep. He was worked for Guild Guitars. And when Fender acquired Guild, he came onto the Fender team. And then they. They put him in charge of what they call Fender Specialty. Fender specialty is still to this. This day, it's referred this way. Fender specialty is everything that's not Fender is how you think of it. So if you ever meet a guy and he says, hey, I'm Fender Specialty, that just means he's everything but Fender. So in Bill's case, he was Gretch and Jackson and Evh and at one point for me, Tacoma, that was gone. And you know, all the specialty rants, right? Okay. And one day, you know, older gentleman, as you know, he's retired now, right? Retired many years ago. In fact, he retired before. Before I probably started even doing YouTube. In fact, he did retire before I started doing YouTube to give you a reference. And he said that one of the best things I've ever heard, I've regurgitated and used it so many times in my life. I love it. He came in the store one day and he handed me some catalogs because that's what reps used to do. That's how old timey just a few years back was reps would come in your store with stacks of. I got more catalogs for you. I know how customers like them. We never had to heart. I'm serious. This is no joke. None of us in our store had the heart to tell the reps that we were just throwing the catalogs right, in recycle bins, that no customers wanted catalogs anymore. We couldn't give catalogs away. So anyways, he would come in, like, all the other reps got more catalogs for you. And he put them on the counter, like, cool. And I remember he put the Jackson catalogs on there one day, and I'm leafing through it, and, you know, I'm getting old. So I'm like looking through and I'm like, I don't recognize any of these people. This is probably one of them was like, Misa Man Shore before it took off, right? And I'm like, who are these guys? And this is the line I love. He goes, I don't know. And if I knew who they were, they were probably the wrong guys to put in that catalog. And. And I to this day say that as I get older, when somebody goes, hey, have you heard of this blah, blah, blah thing, you know, that kids are into? And I go, no. And if I did, it was probably not the cool thing, right? Because I. I'm too lame and old to. To know it's cool. So anyways, the metal head was the thing. So I have to admit, there's a bias always with me, of course. Like any person, you know, you filter your life through your own paradigm kind of thing. And I remember when I got the Paul Reisman pedals, that was my first gut reaction, was like, oh, my God, it's the heavy metal amp as pedals. Horse meat. This is totally what somebody thinks. Like, he probably went out and he goes, hey, these idiots, like, fart pedals. Just make them a pedal. And he probably was like, let's make them sound good, but do what they want. So anyways, in my critiques of their pedals, I said that, you know, that they were large. They were large. By the way, somebody just said something in the comments. I want to pin it and I'll grab it real quick because why I have these amazing moderators and. Hold on a second. I'm. Okay, So I just sent something to the moderators. Now they're looking. Okay. So anyways, so now the. You know, I think about this. I could take the PRS pedals and put them in metalhead amp. Anyways, I feel bad because the person asked me probably has those PRS pedals and loves them. Look, I like. I said I like them. Everything I said in that video was 100 honest. I know it's 100 honest. One, because that's how I am. But two, that's what pissed them off. So obviously I didn't say anything to shine you guys, but in my critiques, I think were still valid to stay good quality pedals way too large. The naming was a little on the, you know, it wasn't really congruent with the PRS vibe. So I thought the pedal should be more vibe like that, but quality by any means. All right, let's go to another subject. Unfortunately, I have some bad news. So that's what I was asking the moderators was to verify. So let me share this with you. Let me do this. Speaking of which, about why it's important to talk about and maybe care about some of the people that have made our lives amazing as musicians. So it looks like we've lost Mark Sampson. So if you guys have recently seen. I just recently did a review of the Bad Cat amp with Mark Sampson. This is a big deal because Mark Sampen had kind of joined back with the Bad Cat family. As you guys may know if you watch the podcast, you know that John Thompson, the owner of Bad Cat, and I are good friends. He's been very kind to me over the years and very nice to the channel. And when I say that, I don't want you to confuse anything. I've never taken a penny from Bad Cat. They've sent amps and I've gotten to keep them and stuff, but they don't pay me. They don't do sponsored videos. It's our friendship that connects us. And not only I enjoy his friendship and passion, I enjoy his amps, especially the Mark Sampson one, which I said was one of the best five amps I've ever tried in my life. And I totally mean it. Speaking of things I kept, I actually just sold. If you guys watch on my reverb, I just sold 4amps to Justify keeping the Mark Samson amp. So that's where I'm at with that. Anyways, it says with the most. With. With. I'm gonna mess this up. Okay, guys, just get do it. Let me do my best. It is with great sadness that we must announce that we have lost a beloved member of the Bad Cat family. Our dearest friend, Mark Samson has passed away. We will have much more to say on this later. But for now, please keep his family in your. In your thoughts and prayers. Especially since I happen to know Mark was not only. He was going through some. Some stuff with. With his dad and stuff. So. So, yeah, it just really sucks. This is really bad news. And the reality is, that's what I'm talking about. You know, everybody likes to make fun of, you know, Paul reesmiths and Jeff Geisel and all these guys, but the truth is, you know, I would love, as a person who got to interview everybody, to interview Leo Fender. I would have loved to interview, you know, Norland. I would have loved to interview these people and have video content like that. And because, like I said, just to pick somebody's brain, even if you don't like what they do and even if that, you know, it's. You know, that's not their thing. But I've. I've always said this. There's two. There's only two kinds of guitar players. No, I haven't always said this. I'm sorry. I've always said this to my friends. I've never said this to you guys. There's only two kinds of guitar players when it comes to guitar buyers, okay? Ones who buy originals and one who buys copies. That's it. Because it makes sense, right? So what I mean by that is when somebody says, oh, that guitar is silly and it's dumb or it's expensive, I'm like, yeah, but trust me, a version of it is what you have a version of. You know, like I said, nothing goes top to, you know, bottom to top. It goes top to bottom. They make nice stuff. Mark Sampson made premium amps. And if you. So when I want you to be educated about this. So if you're thinking like, oh, well, I've never owned an amazing Mark Samson. You have. It's like saying. It's like. It's like Ozzy Osbourne when he said one of his biggest influences, the Beatles. And you're like, I'm not into the Beatles, but I like Black Sabbath. You're like, well, actually, you kind of like, you like a little bit of the Beatles, too. That's where it comes from. It's. And same thing when you, you know, Mark Sampson was an originator. And literally, if you never played any of his amps, that's okay, because, trust me, you've played somebody who was inspired by him, and their amp has either a piece of his. His soul, technology, whatever you want to call it, or it's been inspired by that. And, man, yeah, that's. That's tough. So that's bad news. I saw it. So you guys know in the comments and thank you. I want to thank the moderators at all. You know, sometimes you guys don't, you know, they're the, the, the really. The hidden figures behind the show. I. Luckily I get to reach out to them like I did right now and, and thank you, Tim, and for getting that done for me and verify that so I don't give you guys. So like I said, that was. Information has been verified. I, I've learned now, obviously doing these shows over the years that when I hear something, when somebody puts something in the comments that may sound suspect, that's what the moderators do. Believe it or not, behind the scenes, they're double checking things that you guys are saying so that I don't sound like a total complete moron. Which even with their help, I can't. They can't, they can't stop it from happening. But they could limit it a little bit. They could limit it a little bit. Okay, on that note, what are we gonna talk about now? Because I gotta really switch gears. I think what we'll do now is we'll jump over to another gear question because it's a gear channel. By the way, thoughts and prayers out to Mark Sampson, his family, and to John Thompson. I know this is probably killing him. He. I just recently spent probably a couple hours about a month ago talking to John Thompson from Bad Cat. And in that conversation it was mostly about how amazing Mark Sampson was and how, how he pinches himself every day. This is literally, I'm quoting him, he pinches himself every day. He gets to work with his idol. And I was going to do a podcast with him. It's just, believe it or not, Mark Sampson had some personal family issues and, you know, the schedules weren't lining up, so it's horrible to hear all this stuff. Let's. Let's switch to mid guitar. Mid guitar says, hey, Philip McKnight, I bought a relic Fender custom shop and I. And the bridge saddles and the slug screws are rusted out. Okay. Any tips on getting these out or clean them up? The rust? Sure. Of course. You get. There's tons of stuff you can use. I just use WD40. I don't spray it directly on there. I'll put it on a cloth and kind of wipe it around and let it kind of eat at that. I don't think there's anything. I mean, I'm sure there's some, some guys out there that probably have some better Suggestions as well. But I've been. I've been. I have WD40. So it's always like what I have, I just use a little bit. And sometimes I will stick something like a paper towel underneath the bridge, the bridge plate of the saddles and the bridge plate, and I'll spray a little bit of WD4 on there. But again, just a little bit to kind of like, loosen up and break that up and take that apart if for some reason I can't clean that up. Sometimes you can use vinegar, but the problem with vinegar is it's more of a soaking thing. So I found that putting vinegar on rust or putting vinegar on a thing isn't going to really help so much as soaking it, because you can soak. So in other words, when you get those saddles and screws out, you can literally, you can just throw that in a, you know, a jar full of vinegar and wait, and it'll. It'll clean it all off. So that's what I use for that. But Dr. Frankenstein saying, Bristol gun oil cleaner, sure, there's a lot of things. Like I said, everybody's gonna have some really good suggestions. I usually just go right for the what do you have around the house? Thing. But those are great suggestions as all as well. But. Oh, he said ballistol, Ballistal gun oil. Apologize. But the other thing is sometimes if I can, I just cut them out with a Dremel. But that's not. That's not very common. Usually this stuff is not very hard. Jesse says Phil, the head of the screws was entirely ripped off by the previous owner. How can I get the rest of it out of the guitar? Well, first of all, at some point, you have to kind of validate the pricing on this. So it might be cheaper just to buy a whole aftermarket bridge, then buy the new saddles. But I use a Dremel. If you have that, I use it to cut those out. I have a little carbon blade on it, and it just cuts pieces out. That works for me really, really well. If for some reason you're talking about just like it's drilled out, you know, are stripped out to the point where you can unscrew it. What I do. So what I do is if you can visualize this, the grub screw now in the saddle is, I will take the saddle off, because usually that's just the Phillips head screw on the back. Take the saddle off. Once I get it off, I'll put some vice grips. I have some small ones that I just clamp down on the other side of the grub screw and then turn it out from the back and come from it from the back and it'll work as well. Don't use needle nose pliers, you won't get enough. Force a grip on it. So. But that usually will work. And again, like I said, this is, this is all without seeing what your problem is. So, so always filter what I'm suggesting as more as like start points. Because again, I'm not looking at your actual problem. I'm just hearing about it. John says, hey Phil, I see the emerald guitar is back on the wall. Is that a keeper or a temporary resident on the channel? It's a keeper. I, I wanted the, this guitar so bad. This was, I was super excited for this, the emerald guitar. So there are guitars, most of the guitars that you see on the channel come from two avenues by far. Companies send them, you know, they reach out and say, hey, you want to see the new thing? And I'm like, yeah, sure, right. So you know, it's part of the addiction, right? Like, hey Phil, would you like to see another Strat? I sure would, but how about red or black? Oh, I can't wait. So yeah, there's that. But if that's not the case, sometimes I'm. I'm just getting a guitar like I did like the, the Fender standards or the Ibanez Az to. To make a video or this ephone. This was a. Hey, I have a great idea for a video. This epiphone. If you didn't see it, last week's video, this week's video. If you didn't see this week's video, it's this epiphone special. And that was a great video for me. It was great. Meaning I, I enjoyed making it. I was dreaming up ideas for videos and I thought, what if I review? I was kind of like a. I kind of took the idea from like a chef versus like, you know, a at home cook kind of idea. I was like, what does a guitar tech think of a guitar that everyone who buys the guitar thinks is great, right? And I thought I was going to get this clickbait video and it was gonna be amazing, which was like. So I reached out to Sweetwater and I said, hey, this video is one of the. Or this guitar is one of the highest rated epiphones. Actually at the time it was the highest. If it was now it's the Firebird. I would have just had him sent the Firebird. Now that it be by one vote or one review. But anyways, I reached out to Sweetwater and said, hey, can you send me this epiphone special so I can do a video with it? And I sent him. The title of the video is like going to be, you know, something clickbaity. And they were like, sure, we're fine with that. So I sent the guitar out. I thought was going to happen is I thought I was going to get the guitar and be like, oh, this is a. This is a poop guitar. And then the title will be like, you know, guitar tech versus, you know, something clickbaity. Like right. You know, people are crazy if they think this is good or whatever the thing is. And instead it was a great guitar. So I was like, oh, well, I just confirmed what everybody's been saying is buying it. So I'm like, all right, well that's the video we have. But it was good. You guys all enjoyed it. The, you know, and it got it. It did well and I appreciate that. But that's my point is what I'm telling you is that sometimes the guitar is just function of, of the channel. The emerald guitar is something different. And here's why. My buddy Larry Mitchell got an emerald guitar. He, I saw him on social media and as you guys know, I'm a freak for carbon fiber instruments. I'm just like, I'm always curious about them. This whole idea that one day a guitar will be amazing but not made of wood is always interesting to me. And so anyways, what happened was I saw him and I liked his post and then I saw somebody else in the emerald guitar and I was like, okay, I like their post. And then because that, you know, the algorithm starts feeding me emerald guitar posts and I was just liking them all the time, you know, you know, doom scrolling and like, oh, I like that. Like that. And then somebody at Emerald Guitars reached out and said, hey, we saw you were liking our posts. Hey, would you be interested in doing a video? And I'm like, I absolutely would love to do a video. And they said, okay, how do we make that happen? I said, I said I'd like to pick out a guitar and have you send it and do a video. And they said, okay. And like everybody like, hey, what's your rates? Or what do you charge? And I'm like, no, no, no. I just, I really just want this guitar. This is like a big deal for me and this guitar so, you know, falls under a deal I've made. I don't feel really comfortable saying what other YouTuber gave me the idea, but he's Somebody you all respect and love. And one day he gave me this idea for like how to talk to a company. And what I did with them is I said, look, I either will love the guitar and I'll keep it forever, or I'll just do the video, you know, for the sake of making content. And so the deal I made with them was if I like it and I want to do the video, I'll do the video and then you can ra it back. And if I love it, I'd like to keep it. And. And if I ever don't want it, I'll send it back to you. So that guitar, like, I have a couple in that situation. Not very many where. Yes. So to answer your question, that guitar is a keeper. I'm keeping it. And even though I probably could have worked out some kind of compensation deal, what I worked out with them was I get to keep that. And then if I ever don't want it, I can't sell it to anybody. I has to go back. It's not, it's. Technically, it's not. It's like, it's not. It's on loan, so. But it's on loan as long as I want, and I plan to pay. Lex Garn, Garnier, Lex. Com. Lex. Lex says, which one is it? It's the X10. I would love to try more. So, you know, but I'm a little afraid to. I really, really am happy with this X10. I'm happy with it. I played a lot. You know, it's. It's definitely my go to acoustic for sure. It's the one that probably gets, in fact, without no question about it. So you guys know the two acoustics I'm pointing out behind me. Which one is the Godin nylon string, which is a semi hollow thin line, a classical style guitar. That one and the Emerald are the two most played acoustics I own, minus the. The keys. Headless. But that's for travel. Like I take that traveling. I don't use that so much in the house. Those are the two I use in the house because they're louder. So really, really good. Lex also wants to know, did you keep the guitar from the. From the. The Guitar center trade video? I do have the guitar from the guitar center trade video. It's downstairs. There are. It's. Yeah, it's the answer. There was a question on. We had a question, not you guys, whether or not I'll do a deep dive on it or not, I just don't know. So. So it's. What's tough is, as you guys know, I've revamped the studio to do more deep dives. But like this week, I mean, I went to California. That was three days. One day travel there, one day to be there and one day travel back because it's seven, eight hour drive. I drive pretty slow. So it throws my week off. Let's see. I think it's always funny when you guys, did you keep this? Did you have that? I always like, I don't know, maybe we should, we put that in the update. There was a person who once suggested that on my website I should have like my current gear. You know, just what I have, if people are curious about that. But I don't know, it's. It's like I always said, guys, it's. I'd love to keep everything. It's just, you know, a physical space and money and all those things. You just can't justify it all. So stuff goes, but if it goes, you'll always see it's, it's because I, you know, it's like a. I think, I think this saying that I love, a buddy of mine gave me, I don't remember, about a year ago. And I love it. And the word that I loved was the word that was curated. Like I have a collection of guitars and I'm. Because I'm. Because of how long I've been doing this. I don't have a collection of guitars. I have a curated collection of guitars. Now technically, everything, everybody has a curated collection. But what, what he said was, that was great. That I love is I. When I say I have a curated collection of guitars, I don't mean I have a Strat. I mean I have the best Strat I've ever played. I don't have an ES339. I have the best ES339 I've ever played. Like, it's, it's. I've owned, you know, many of that guitar and I've refined it through the years to basically find the one that speaks to me the most. So what happens is in the collection that's really the. If you're curious and if you're into this, like I am and, you know, just, you know, love guitar too much, maybe too much. The curated part is the interesting part because I guess if I was going to say to somebody, like, if somebody said, phil, do you still have that Strat? I said, yes. And they go, is it your best Strat you ever played? And I go, yes, that's the best Strat I've Ever played. So that's. That's staying. It's gonna be really hard for something to swap that out. But if somebody said, hey, Phil, is that. You know, this Nags right here? Is that the best Nags I've ever played? No, Larry Mitchell's personal Nags is the best Nags ever played. So I can't have that one. So I have this one. But I mean. So in other words, what I'm saying is, I love that guitar, but if something better came along, a better nags, maybe I would move. Move along and go. And that's why, like I said, I like that the. Yeah. And then the pick says curated means to have been selected by someone or people that know about the subject. Yes. You see what I'm saying? It's like this thing that you just kind of, you know, as you refine your collection. So I like that. So I like that term in reference. Does that make sense? I don't know if that makes any sense. Okay, let me go over here. Antique rocker says, hey, man, what's up with stumax logo on their website, they put in. They put an inlay on the 10th fret. Screwed up the trademark. How. How would you fix that in a real guitar? Wait, what? Go to Steamax website. So what's on? What's wrong with their logo? I'm looking at it right now. I want to share it with you guys. But let me go here. I think this is the logo he's talking about. Okay, let's read his. Let's read his thing. Let me go back to it and read it again, because I'm still a little off on it. He's saying they put an inlay on the 10th fret. Oh, is that. Because what you're saying is. I don't think so. That's not the way I'm seeing that. Oh, that's weird. I see what you're saying. Okay, so let's show this. I think what he's kind of putting. Can. You know what? Can I just go to a bigger Stumac logo? So let's pull this up. Yeah, it's weird. This. This makes me laugh. Makes me wonder, oh, no, I want the logo. Stu Mac logo. All right. Images. All right, here's something we can work with. It took me right back to their site. All right, let's just do this. Okay, so we're looking at this stuff right now. Okay. And this is basically what he's talking about. So that obviously the two dots is. That's. We're saying that's the 12th fret. So however we look at this, we have a problem, right? Because if it was the 12th fret, then essentially the 14th fret would be two away. So that can't be the 14th fret. So we would assume that the 14th fret is to the left. So then what we're looking at then is that. So here's what's weird. So basically what he's pointing out is that the two dots, which would be the 12th fret, essentially the next dot should be two frets away in either direction. So it doesn't matter which direction this is going. It should either be the 10th fret or the 14th fret. And it's not working. Now here's where it gets a little tricky. Okay, one, let's start with the very possible. Well, I'm gonna give you two possible answers why this is messed up. One, it is very possible that Stubak hired a marketing company and they made this logo or somebody and they didn't know guitar and they messed it up. That's possible. I just recently deal with an issue where I bought a device that was rather expensive, and the company and all their marketing pictures had a certain type of solid state drive with it. And so I went to go buy that solid state drive, and it's because. And that solid drive was incompatible. But the marketing company, they had to hire to do the pictures put the wrong. Put the wrong thing. So it could be, like I said, artistic license. However, there are guitars like classicals and all kinds of stuff that have double dot frets in different places other than the twelve fret. I'm trying to think of like a reference right now. I mean, I recently just reviewed one within the last year where it was like one dot and then a couple space two dots and then a couple space two dots. I mean, there are other things. So yeah, who knows? Max. Max says it could be a ukulele fretboard. This is the problem. You don't have a real reference. Cause it's so shallow. The humor of it is. There's a humor to the idea that a Lou guitar company would have a logo of a fretboard. That is actually incorrect. Is funny as hell, but. And it's possible that, like I said, it was an artistic license. Whoever they did had do it is messed it up. But I. I have a feeling that they probably. They probably had a guitar neck that they were referencing. And that one is correct because, like, I have seen it. I'm trying to think of like a. A reference. Let me see if I can Find one, like a lot of acoustics. Because you're thinking. You're probably thinking Stumac and you're thinking electric guitar. Just think of it as, like acoustic guitars. I wish I could think of the guitar video I did because I literally just did a couple acoustic guitars and that's what it was. There was like a bunch of double dots on it. Like, the double dots was on the fifth fret. So you know what? That's what we should do. Guitar with two dots on the fifth fret. Let's see if I can pull it up. Guitar with two dots on fifth fret. And what comes up? Come on. Images somewhere, man. Really? Guitar with two dots on the fifth fret. And it just pulled up tons of electric. Oh, there you go. This is it. See, I knew we'd solve the problem. I just don't know how to get a picture of it. I'm looking at the picture. Let me do this. Okay, go to the web. So if you're looking here, see this acoustic guitar? So in theory, looking at their logo now, their logo would be correct if this is. And this isn't the fifth fret. So I was wrong about the fret. So it's obviously first, second, third, fourth. There's your fifth fret. So weirdly enough, seventh fret has two dots. I just like said, if you watch my videos recently, there's a thing where it's like this. So there was two dots and then I just remember looking at it going, it's weird. I've seen that before. But it's not common. So here's what I think we're looking at. When we look at the Stumac logo, we're looking at the two dots absolutely being the seventh fret. Let's go back. You know, by the way, can I just point out, this is about as nerdy as you can get. I would like to point out that if you're hanging out on a Friday afternoon dissecting the accuracy of the Stumac logo, you're my peeps. This is it. This is my dream, by the way. Literally. I'm not kidding. This is my dream. Like, one day I hope I can hang out on a Friday night and argue how off a logo is from a guitar with some friends would be. Literally, like, if somebody wrote that down on a piece of paper, I'd be like, yes, that'd be my dream. So if we could add a cold beer and some. Some jalapeno poppers or something, this would be like the perfect Friday afternoon. Anyways, yeah, let's Go back. I got to go back to the Sumac logo because I'm pretty sure. I just want to make sure. I'm pretty sure we're correct. Yeah. So here's what we're looking at, guys. This is it in the corner. And I'm pretty sure that in this scenario, I think they're calling that the seventh fret. And that would explain why we would have a dot here. And so that would be the fifth fret right here. What I'm pointing at the dot. And. Or if it flip, it doesn't matter. It would be the ninth fret. So good catch on that being strange. And so, you know, you think that's something I would just have ingrained, like. No, no, this is what it is. It's weird. It's just like said, I've only encountered that on acoustic guitars. And so, you know, it's something that I never put a thought, a second thought on. Like, why is it like that? So I don't even know. So I'll probably look it up. Somebody in the comments is probably going to be like, here's why it's done that way. I just remember, like I said, I've done videos and probably worked on guitars in the past that were like that and just again, never thought of anything of it other than, I don't know, this. This person puts two dots there. So I'll have to know. You know what I'll do? I'll. For fun for you guys, I will send a message to the vice president at Stu Mac. He's a pretty cool guy, and. And say, hey, this came up on the Friday show about your logo. You want to give us some insight on what. What it's referenced from? Because now it looks like it might be referenced off that, you know, acoustic guitar that has the dots. Devils slide one says, why isn't the podcast updated on High Heart? I have been horrible at getting the podcast updated because of the. I just have excuses. That's all it is, man. I can give you another excuse. I always give excuses why I run behind. I will. Tomorrow is Saturday. I can tell you. This is what I can tell you. So instead of giving you excuse, let's just tell you what's gonna happen tomorrow when I get up, I'm gonna have coffee and I do the podcast. So I will literally edit them and put them out as the audio platform so it'll catch up. Oh, actually, you know what? I should give myself credit. I should give myself credit. There's a reason why they're not updated. I Forgot. Okay. It's not actually my fault. What is. But not totally my fault. The reason why they're not updated is not only do I pay for the podcast, the audio podcast, you have to pay a fee every month, you know, to get your podcast out. You're only allowed so much time to upload, so many hours of upload. And I reached the end of it this month. I had. So what happened was I fell because they don't let. They don't carry it over. So basically I get so many hours to upload a month for the fee I pay, which is like $30 a month. Right. I know it's not a lot of money, but you know, hey, man, 30 bucks is 30 bucks. So anyways, I pay 30 bucks and I can upload as much, like 10 hours or something like that, or eight hours. It's pretty reasonable. The problem was I fell behind, as you know, and then I pumped out like 4 or 5 early this month. And then it goes. You're out of time for the month. You can either buy more time at a higher rate or wait till March 1st and then I get my allotment back. So that's what happened because it doesn't let me carry it over. So I was like, okay. I was like sitting there going when you were talking, I'm like, yeah, I screwed up. Why did I screw up? And I'm like, that's why I screwed up. Because I was just waiting. So I will fix that tomorrow because tomorrow is the first. Perfect. Perfect. Let's go to Aaron who says, howdy. Howdy, Phil. By the way, thank you for the super huge chat. Thank you. The super chat. He says, I have a Les Paul style guitar that I want to put active EMGs in, but the cavity is not big enough to support the battery. Any suggestions? Okay. By the way, love the Badlands guitar I bought from you. It's the best. Thank you. From Texas. Oh, I'm. I'm glad to hear it. The. Because. Because you. I think you have one of my personal ones right. I'm doing this correctly, I think in my head. So let's. Let's back up to the. To les Paul. The EMGs in the cavity. You should have room to do that. So the reason I think you don't have room to put your battery. I don't know if I said battery a second ago when I think I said EMGs. Here's the issue. Let me just tell you what the problem is. You have a couple options to put a 9 volt battery in your Gibson Les Paul. The best one I'm going to give you is to the, the problem you're having is if you have a real Les Paul, a Gibson, I shouldn't call it a real Les Paul, but if you have a Gibson Les Paul, what happens is you have extra long potentiometers. So they're, they're very long shafts and they usually go onto a metal plate. So I'm assuming you have the metal plate and the shafts, but you could just have the shafts. But I'm going to say you have a plate and, and sometimes they're in a tray, which is even more problematic. But either way the problem is they're sucking up all the room in the cavity. So one fix which is not easy but very effectively cheap is you can buy four new short shaft potentiometers. Don't get the ones that are so short that go through pick guards, but get shorter regular shaft potentiometers and take out the old ones, solder in the new ones and. Oh wait, you're have to do that anyways. What am I talking about? This is easy. Your problem's already solved, buddy. Your problem solved. Here's why it's solved. You can't keep those original potentiometers. You don't want 500Ks in there with those EMGs. You want to go to 25K. So you should yank out those long shaft potential potentiometers out of your guitar. All your guts, because that's what's coming out. All the guts you're going to drop in the EMG guts which are going to be the 25k dime size potentiometers, gonna be very small, okay? And they're gonna go right in there. You're gonna just kind of, you know, line them all up, put them in there and then you're gonna have way more, more than enough room. You're gonna have enough room not only for a 9 volt battery, but you're gonna have enough in there for the foam. You're gonna wrap some foam to hold the battery still and stuff. So you're totally fine. You're gonna be set and just keep as much of the original electronics out of the Les Paul intact and that's it, you're done. Obviously you could cut in a battery compartment into the back of the guitar. I don't suggest you do that. And sometimes if you are shallow on room, you can cut a hole in the center of the back plate, the plastic back plate, and put the battery compartment in there. And it will, it will pull the Battery up a little bit and you give a little bit more room. But either way you have enough room because you're going to yank those potentiometers out. So you should be good. I'd really be curious if that's not the case with yours. So. Huh. But that's going to be the thing. But either way, I was like, yeah, you have to swap them out. I'm like, yeah, I never thought about it. Yeah, I have to swap them for the 25k. You. You know what's funny is sometimes it's like taking a test. I'm like, I'm just like, oh yeah, how do I do that? That's how you do it. Okay. Let's go to Clan of House Cats. They said they refretted a full nitro Fender custom neck. Okay. Saved most of the nitro from chipping away on the fretboard on its edge. Almost like it didn't happen. Fantastic. Fantastic. The, you know, anytime you don't have to do repair work is great. And new frets. That's nice. You didn't say what kind of frets. I'm curious. I'm assuming you put some jumbo frets on there. Brad. Guitar Miller says, happy Friday. Have I have a Gibson Les Paul Classic Dual P90. I really want a humbucker in the bridge. I was thinking about routing for DiMargio P90 super distortion. Thoughts? So you have a Les Paul classic with dual P90s. I got that. But you want to put a humbucker on the bridge. You were thinking of routing it or. Okay, because that's where I'm confused. You don't have to route it if you're putting in the so or you can put in the DiMaggio P90 super distortion. I mean, I'm not a big fan of modding a guitar on an idea. You know what people sometimes don't think about and my. I do because it's just something I kind of have in context a lot. You know, a lot of our. Our guitar heroes, they mod their guitars like crazy, but they get them for free. You know, I didn't think about it until I got the YouTube gig. And a company's like, we'll send you a guitar. And I'm like, oh, I might as well do something to it. You know. Right. You're a little bit more haphazardly with a guitar when it's not your hard earned dollars on it. That's why I always said every review I do I try to be as honest as possible. But the one Thing sometimes I can't talk about is what it feels like to spend the money. So I try to defer from that thing. Like in other words, I try not to tell you like, this is a great value, even though I didn't have to buy it for this video. It's a tough thing, right? But if I do buy it, I tend to give you that value, you know, like, what did it feel like to spend that kind of money? So in, in this case, you know, the problem is when you route a Les Paul Gibson Les Paul and you modify it, the worst case scenario, of course, is that you're not happy with what you've done. And now the guitar's value has been seriously diminished and you know, it's just a, it's a no win. I have no reason to believe you wouldn't like a P90 shaped humbucker to drop in there. And it'll be fine. In fact, it might even better. Like I said, there's sometimes they give you a punchier sound that you normally wouldn't get from a specifically a normal size humbucker space. So I like non marring modifications. I've said this before. You know, my wife, who's very understanding of my addictions and my issues is she's got one line, you know, she holds the line on one issue, right? You know, what's the saying, right? She wants it. She's only going to die on one hill. Here's the hill she dies on. Modding guitars. She's very against it. Here's where she's okay. So I mean, because I push, you think, you'd think with a wife that's nice enough to be like whatever guitar you want, I don't care. And as long as you don't mod it, you think, you know, I'd be like, okay, I won't mod it. But I push that boundary every day. But I do, I do. You know, we negotiate. Like for instance, The Sibin is RG565. I modified it with just different color pickups. I didn't like change any of the stuff in it. And same with his nags. I modified the pickup rings and the knobs, but I left. And the switch tip, I left everything else the same. Well, I did swap the pickups. I'm sorry I swapped the pickups, but you get the idea. Everything can be retrofit back. The reason why she's like this, okay, is my wife has one benefit that most people's husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, you know, don't have. She worked in a music store for a decade. So she saw our peeps, right? She saw us. She knows what this is, right? This show does not confuse my wife. She's. There's no situation where I was like, I don't know why people watch Phil on Fridays and hang out. She goes, of course. She's like, they're all nerds. This is what they do. She didn't call us nerds, though. But she just says, like, yeah, this is. There's lots of them that like this stuff. However, what she learned, this is what she learned from. In fact, if you watched in the bonus podcast with her on the second channel, they're audio only. I think we talked about this, and I think she goes into detail this. What she learned from owning a music store, about musicians, guitar players specifically, is guitars are mostly parking money. You. You don't lose a lot of money on guitars. You can lose half and some people will go, that's horrible. But literally, you can buy so many things and not get anything for it. So the expenses are not as much as you think. So what I mean by that is if somebody spent a thousand dollars on a vacation, had a horrible vacation, that thousand dollars is gone. That's. The money's gone. If you spend a thousand dollars on a guitar, that's horrible, you'll probably get 500 right back. So it was a $500 mistake, not a thousand dollar mistake. So when my wife sees mistakes like that, she doesn't go, oh, you lost a thousand dollars on that mistake. She goes, when I sell it, and I go, I only got $600. She goes, oh, that was a $400 mistake. Doesn't make it good. Just makes it obviously within reason. So she's kind of seen all the things we do. The one thing she noticed was, was from me doing so many repairs over the years and just watching people shove money into guitars and lose them. Because my wife would have to sometimes be on the wrong side of that conversation. So here's my wife. And she would go, and you could just see it in her eyes. She would. Somebody come in and go, hey, I want Phil to install this. This, you know, these tuners. And I want him to route out this pickup and put this pickup in, and I want him to modify this. And I do all this stuff. And. And then she's like, okay. And she's like, parts are, you know, $410. And Phil's labor is, you know, 880. And so, you know, you're looking at, you know, $590 and tax on you don't tax the labor, but you tax the, the parts. And so it's like 600 bucks. And they go, okay, okay, now one hand, she's happy because we're working and we're paying the bills with the work. And. But my wife would also tell you like six months later when that guy comes in and goes, yeah, I just don't love it. I want to trade it in to you guys, sell it to you for something. And she's like, okay. And she's like, well, the guitar normally sells for a thousand, so we want to give you $600 in trade. However, with these modifications, we think it's worth eight. So you see what I'm saying? We're going to give like 450 for it. And he's like, wait, what? No, I put $600 into it. So it's like I was thinking it's worth a thousand plus. You know, she's like, no, the mods devalued it. And, and, and so, you know, one of the regrets I have, it happens. It just happens. I didn't do it on purpose, but when I did the trade in guitars at Guitar center video, somehow there was a small clip of footage that didn't get caught correctly. I don't know what it was, but we didn't get it. I think we had turned off the cameras and finally, you know, start doing something else. And then the, the, the guy behind the counter said if any of these guitars are modified, we would have gave you less. And I'm like, oh, we should, we all said at the same time we should have got that on because they said that. They did say that. I think he says something like it in the video. You might see that. But so, you know, without a doubt. Guitar center confirmed that if you modify your guitars and try to trade them in, they're not only going to not give you anything for the mods, they're going to devalue your guitars for the most part or they can devalue their guitars. So you know, so that's why I'm into no non marring modifications. In other words, try to do modifications that you can reverse out and keep your stuff. Guitar Max from the Guitar Max channel said something and he, I, I don't remember exactly the quote, so I'm going to misquote him but give you the sentiment of what he said. If you're not familiar with his channel, he's really into inexpensive guitars. Like he's a channel that focuses on like he loves these two to 500 guitars. And which is, you know, which is great. But one of the things he says is his favorite thing is buying used guitars that have been heavily modified because somebody just lost their ass on it. And you know, he's like, gonna win. You know, he's like, I love when somebody shoves some scene where Duncan's in the guitar, new tuners, and then I get to buy it for essentially the same price used as if it didn't have those things or less. And I have to admit that's. It's accurate. Right. And. And that's. And that's, you know, that's even if you don't factor in the labor that you lose if you have somebody do it. That's why it's important to learn to do it yourself and reverse it back out. So Brian says put your mods back to original before trading or selling. Absolutely. It is important. I agree. Yeah. And it happens on everything too. You know, I experienced it. I lucked out. I bought a new truck a couple years back. I got a deal on was during COVID Everything was horrible. You couldn't find a truck. When I bought my truck, there was one on the lot. One like, I'm not kidding. It was a one. They had one. We were looking at the one truck they had in the lot and thinking about how it's not the one we were looking for. And then they just got a delivery and then one of the trucks was the one I was looking at. So I got the truck and. Very, you know, boring story. But I didn't love the truck. It was good, but I didn't love it. So I got rid of it a couple years later, two years later. And I got a really good value for it. Cause I got such a good deal even during COVID It was really crazy. But the point is, the story is the truck was a good. Worked out pretty well because it went up in value and stuff. But however, because it was kind of unique, however, I did two things to it and I lost those things. And the two things I did was I put a level kit on it. So I lost the level kit. So I put a 1 inch or 2 inch level to make it level. And then I put side steps on it. So. And trust me, I was driving it when I sold it. I was driving thinking I should take these sidesteps off because I'm like, you know, no one's gonna give me anything for it. And literally, they gave you almost nothing for it. They added, you know, like whatever they added, you know, a Couple hundred bucks for your side steps. So same thing. It was just like the guitar. So I was like, ah, I should take them off. I was too lazy to take them off. On a side note, sometimes I feel like I have to justify my laziness. On a side note, I did do this in June. It was 115 ounce size. And the idea of sitting on a towel on concrete, taking the sidesteps off, I was like, I'm like. And I was. So I did the stupid thing where I rationalized like, they're gonna give me like a couple hundred bucks and I spent like six. And it's not really that bad, but it was. I lost over half on it. All right, so on the side steps. But it works out. Yeah. 40 watt podcast. Hey, what's up, by the way? If you haven't checked out 40 watt podcast. First of all, 40 watt podcast, very good podcast. And then Steve from 60 watt. There's a lot of wa in this, but It's. But anyways, 40 watt podcast is good to watch. And then you see 60. 60 watt podcast. Steve with Phil from 40 watt podcast. And I like it, except for they make me nuts. Because when I'm listening in the background, I hear Steve, who I know personally, say Phil. And every time he says Phil, I'm like, oh, what? I'm not making this up. I think. I know I go for the joke a lot on the show, but it does catch me. Every time I look up, I'll be working, listening, and Steve will say, well, Phil. And I'm like, oh, it's me. They're talking about me. And he's like, he's talking about The Phil from 40 Watt podcast. Anyways, 40 Watt podcast. Phil says you need to absolutely be absolutely sure you love a guitar before doing major mods to it and understand that it's going to be devalued. Yeah. And it's just nice to be, you know, hear that from reaffirm, from multiple players because it is a thing. I absolutely agree. That's why I said take those mods out. You know, it's. It's just. It's just where you lose the most money. So same thing with speakers. Remember we had a conversation last week about speakers? Same thing. Lose money with speakers too, that way. Okay, so. Okay, I'm jumping. So. Oh, somebody. Richard says 60 cycle. Steve. Phil. Yes. Is. Did I say 60? Yeah, he's. It's 60 cycle. Steve on with Phil from the 40 watt podcast. Am I saying this right? Right. That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot to say, right? Okay. All right. Anyways, let's see, what else am I. What am I gonna talk about? Let's go to the next subject. All right, we have Rob, who says, hey, Phil, can I use super glue to glue down a flake of paint right in near of the neck joint of my Fender Strat? Or is there something better? It's about the size of a nickel. I don't want it to fall off. Yes, you can use super glue, absolutely. I'm not looking at it, and I'm not a finished guy, but I've done enough of these kind of repairs that I'm. First, I can just affirm the most important part. It can be done. I've done it, and I'm not good at that. Depending on this. What I'm looking. I'm not looking at it. So depending on the situation is the type of super glue you want to use. There's different kinds of super glue. And viscosity, like, think about this. Like, there's really thick, there's regular, there's a bunch. But let's just keep it easy, right? There's regular, which is what most of you. If you buy super glue from your grocery store, it's going to come out. It's kind of. Kind of goopy, right? Consistency. It's not thick and it's not runny like water. And then there's a thicker kind and then there's a really thin kind. And of course, they actually have names, But I just want you to understand the concept. But anyways, depending on the situation is what type of those glues you want to use, and that's what you want to do some research on and then blend it out. What's nice is Nathan, who is a Finnish expert, who is a good friend, the last couple times he was in town, he was doing wrestling and stuff. Anyways long. I don't know why I'm going on this tangent. What I was going to tell you is my plan is to take some of this stuff and have him do maybe some content for us and do some finish work, patching finishes, because he's, he's. He's not only does finishing work, a lot of that stuff won't help you guys or me. You know, how he's finished guitars and factories, but he's also had to fix a lot of guitars, like what you're dealing with. And I was going to tap his brain on some finish work and maybe film it. So we have it on the channel and, you know, use some Resources. So this is, Rob, just another reminder that I need to do that. But, yeah, it can be done. I would do some research before you do it from somebody more qualified than me, though. And that's my suggestion. Romero says. Hey, Phil. My 2008American Standard Strat has two screws drilled into the bottom of the Stockbridge pickup. Any ideas as what their purpose is? I'm the original owner. Haven't modded at all. So underneath your stock pickup of your American Standard Strat, there are two screws drilled into the bottom of the stock bridge pickup. So I'm not reading that they're screwed into the guitar. They're screwed into the actual pickup itself. So there should be four. So let's just start with easy. There should be four screws on the bottom of your pickup. Screwing the plate onto the bobbins. In some cases, there could be two. I mean, I'm not looking at it. So let me just say, without looking at it, let me tell you what should be under the hood in your Fender Standard Strat. You pull the pick guard out, and here's what you should see when you're looking down at it. There should be one screw, usually black, with a wire soldered to it, screwed into the body. Okay. And that's a ground. So that should be there when you pull this up and look at it. That's the only screw I can think of that you should see. That's a. You know, besides your pick guard screws that you've taken out to get your pick guard out, looking at the back of the pick guard, you should have no screws in your single coil pickups at all. You should just have this two screws that come through the top of the pick guard and go, you know, to adjust it with the either surgical tubing or springs. And then your humbucker is going to have the two long screws, same thing, attaching it to the pick guard. Usually with springs, and in some cases with Fender or Kiesel guitars or whatever, there's three screws. So one on the treble side and two on the bass side. And that's just. So it's a design to keep the pickup from not being tilted, you know, so it, like kind of, you can adjust it basically. Think of those two screws on the side as a way to adjust it. Make it perfectly flat or tilted a little bit. And then on the back plate of the pickup, you could see four screws or two screws. And again, they're just attaching the plate on. That's it. So that sounds, that sounds right. If you're looking at something different than what I said, I just don't know what could be under underneath there that you're seeing. But all of those things are normal. So. Yeah. Okay, let me go and refresh this. And we have, we have the doctor. The doctor says new 35. Of course, the doctor, of course. You're signing his doctor and you're gonna have a $3,500 guitar. Just go, I'm sorry, buddy, I'm just busting your chops. $3,500 guitar. He says new 3500 guitar had scratches not shown in the pics. Shop stopped responding to emails when I asked for a partial refund. Do I leave a bad Google review? You can, you can. Because sometimes they'll care about the Google review and then they'll reach back out to you. But I kind of like look at Google reviews. I look at review the final review as a nuclear option. Usually go that way. You've decided that it might just like the nuclear option. It might be enough to make them take notice and do. But it's also going to be the thing. There's like, they're, you know, sometimes they go with the whole, well, they've already done the damage and they give us a bad review. We're not going to fix it. What I, what I, what I would tell you is this. When dealing with a seller and you're unhappy as a customer, you need to, you get out of a, get out of the mindset of like, they need to fix this. They, they, they, they, they. Okay, because although you're right, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you're wrong to think that way. I'm saying get out of that mindset. It's not going to do you any good. You need to change tactic is what I'm trying to say. So there are multiple tactics when dealing with somebody. When you want to get your way. I'm trying to say it as nice as I can, but, you know, look, you have an issue, you want it resolved. It's just really simple, right? It's really simple. Um, first of all, if you throw out a suggestion like, hey, I would like a partial refund, here are the issues and they're going dark on you. Um, first of all, keep in mind, the Internet is, you know, just the Internet. You can, you know, people ignore emails and texts and stuff. You can just call them if they have the ability to call, call them, talk to somebody. You will never get as much Done as what you do when you talk to a physical person, whether it be on the phone or a zoom call or in person, people treat each other differently. I mean, you guys are here, right? Hanging on Friday, the Internet people treat different people differently in, in the comment sections and in than they do in person and you know, in the street. So you'll get a little bit more done when you talk to somebody physically. Now that's an option. The other option is you could suggest that they suggest an option, you're like, hey, I'd like a discount on this. And then they go dark. After they don't respond, you respond back with, hey, I haven't heard back from you. If that's not acceptable to you, I would love to hear any suggestions you might have because I just want to resolve this. Right? Look, the more you do that stuff, the more you're going to decide that they need the nuclear option. Like they need a bad review, right? And think about how much worse they're making their own review. If you were reading a review, I got a guitar and it had scratches and they wouldn't give me a partial refund is a bad review. I had a guitar and I've attempted to contact them multiple times and they will not respond to anything is a worse review. Because everybody who reads a negative review, okay, let's say you read a review and it says, hey, I went to this, you know, restaurant and the food was terrible. That could be the restaurant and that could just be the person you know. You don't know this person. You don't know what their taste buds are like, you don't know what their standards are. You don't know anything. But if I read a review, and I'm just using the analogy restaurant, that said I went to this restaurant, the food was terrible and they wouldn't talk to me about it, I'd be like, well, that's the last thing I want to hear. I don't want to hear if I have a problem, I'm getting the silent treatment. That because, because here's why we all understand something go wrong. We just don't know in that what went wrong. How much of it was you, this person, we don't know, or them the seller, right? But when they won't work with you, when they refuse, like, hey, I gave them several options, they wouldn't do response. And you document all that and then you break it down into a smaller thing. By the way, you could cheat. Now you can write a long review, like a two paragraph thing, like talked about this before you'd be like, type everything that went wrong and then put in ChatGPT and go, give me a three sentence version of this and ChatGPT will give you a version and you can ask GB Chat BT, like give me a more professional version or give me a more, you know, something version and refine it even more and drop it in there. But, but it would be nice to have more data about the experience. Okay. And again, more opportunities for them to either take care of you or mess up even more and then confirm the problem. One of the issues is, you know, sometimes they're going to come back later and go, oh, we didn't get your messages or we were out of town or something happened. So you want to be, make sure you do that. Also, I like to suggest an option like here's what I think is going to rectify the situation. But again, I can always, I always say, but I'm open to hear your ideas as well, you know, and, and that, and that, that's, that's definitely important, you know, and, and then also keep in mind all that really helps in a new world where we buy with credit card money and all that stuff. You have other avenues like through your PayPal, your bank and stuff, especially if you have documentation. I have never, ever, this is me thinking like, is that ever, ever? I think once, maybe once, all my life once had an issue with something like PayPal or bank where they wouldn't help me maybe. But usually I try everything through the pleasant accord of things like, hey, you know, this is my issue. Can you help me figure it out? Can we get it resolved? You know, I'd like this. And then usually it's about them giving you out options that you just don't like, you know, like, how about you, $5 off? I'm like, well, I don't want $500 off a $3,500 tar for it being scratched, right? That's like, here's something else, here's another suggestion. But usually what you want is back and forth. Because I take that back and forth and that's what I send to dispute. I go, hey, I'm having trouble with a seller and here's what they're doing, right? And usually what you're trying to do, I mean, I've just, well, I don't know what you're trying to do. Let me tell you what I'm trying to do. I'm usually trying to get them to acknowledge the mistake in the communication back and forth, which is helpful for the, the, the Pay the paying party, which is the bank or the, the PayPal. So they can see like once the seller says, yeah, you know, I understand scratches happened. Right. Especially if you're sending pictures and stuff. We do live in a world now, Unfortunately, Dale says PayPal will not protect you. I literally have them protect me all the time. All the time. Maybe. Dale, it's possible you could be having a total experience, different experience than I do because there's different PayPal accounts. But I have excellent luck with PayPal, so, so, you know, just giving you my reference. Okay. But also, like I said, it could be in how you're interacting with PayPal and stuff. I find I've had PayPal literally give me back money on something that the, again, the other side was not like they were not agreeing to anything. And PayPal was like, based on this correspondence, we're, we're just going with this. So. But again, every, you know, everybody's mileage may vary. There's, everybody's got a different, different thing. But anyways, back to your. The suggestions for what to do just, I would keep coming back at them with different options and stuff. And, and if you're getting nowhere, then leave the full review and so, and leave as many reviews you can, as many places you can. It's nice. And I'm trying to think of anything else. I mean, that's pretty much the big one. I understand it sucks, but also make sure you're sending them pictures, documentation stuff, because again, not that that should be there the case for them, but a lot of sellers now are just like, they're, they're like this person's lying. They're trying to get a discount or deal. So, and I can tell you right now, all the stuff that doesn't work, all the stuff work is like people send the same things all the time. I buy expensive guitars every week. And you know, and so you're like, that's somehow you're the authority that it's not about that. Like, they don't care if you're, you know, if you have money, they don't care if you're smart. They just trying to figure out if you're honest or not or if they're dishonest. Then they don't care at all. And then you have to deal with that. So. Okay. Bitmat says Phil, I just got a kezel did on the keel cell. I got a super pumped. I got my first seven string. That's very awesome. I I Keisel seven string is definitely something that I would love to have it's just I've been pushing back because I'm like I. Right now if I get a seven string, something's got to go. A seven strings got to go. And I don't want to give up what I have, but I really want a Keisel 7. So yeah, Matt Sanders, by the way, speaking of what I was talking about earlier, he's saying document, document, document. That's exactly better put than I just put it. Okay, fast ready says what was the guitar of the week? I did not get a guitar of the week ready because I literally was driving seven, eight hours this show. So, you know, there was a 50, 50 chance and maybe 64. There was no show today at all if I couldn't get here in time and get the show going because again, I was traveling for the Guitar center. The we're just calling a podcast. But it's essentially the interview discussion. It was really a discussion. The CEO of Guitar center and I discussed my comments about Guitar center that I've been public about and what they felt about those comments and what they've done because of those comments and what things they're. They're not going to do and you know, stuff like that. It's very, very interesting interview in my opinion. It was, it was good and good on a lot of levels. I think most people come away from it. Like I did, like, wow. I was impressed with a few things they decided to do and a couple things I was like, I guess they just don't want to do those things. But so, you know, ultimately net. Net positive in my opinion. So I thought about just grabbing a guitar, but I don't really have a guitar. Like there's nothing really around here to plug into and do. I mean, I could maybe I can grab a guitar from the back wall. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. Brent says he can't wait to see the CEO interview. You know, one thing I will share with you is this. This is in the interview and it's kind of taking away, but it's on the back half of the podcast right now. So I kind of don't mind sharing with you. Let me pull it up. It's in here. Actually. I have them on my computer. So this was kind of fun. Let me open this up. And so the new CEO of Guitar center, which has started by the way, if you guys don't know the story, it goes like this. A few months ago, somebody asked me what I thought about the new Guitar Center's new philosophy of selling expensive high end guitars and going for the professional market, yada, yada yada. And of course I did. Instant reaction is why this show is live because I instant react to things and try not to filter, although I try to keep it clean. But when I'm tired, that's not possible. There's no way. Anyways, anyways, so I reacted to it and of course the, the show, the title of the videos are usually the subject we talk about the longest or maybe something most interesting. And of course, you know, sometimes the, the businesses get eyeballs. So if it's something, you know, sensational, we'll put that. So the title of the video was like why Guitar Center's plan is not going to work. Right. Something like that, right? Why it's going to fail. Guitar center is going to fail. Whatever, right. It was in context of the discussion. And by the way, it was ChatGPT or whatever the AI that YouTube uses that suggested it. And I was like, okay, that's a better version of what I was doing. So I put it out and that got their attention. So they. So one thing that happened that is interesting and I'm kind of giving away because I, you know, in the beginning of the video we talk about this is that the discussion happened here. So let me show you this. So what you're looking at looks like, hey look, it's a guitar center, right? But if you look at the top, you see the plastic and stuff. This is a fake guitar center. So I'm going to share this with you a couple of things. I have to be careful of what I share because I was pretty good at not taking pictures of stuff I wasn't supposed to. So the only thing I was, I didn't. Okay, this is go to the only thing I wasn't supposed to take pictures of, which I did, but I not sharing with you guys. So I don't. There's not gonna be issue was there was some guitars in there obviously that aren't out yet. So of course, you know, guitar centers want that leaked out. So here's another one. So this is as you can see from the ceiling, where we're in is a warehouse. So in the middle of a warehouse they built a guitar center. They just built it. It's just like it looks like a guitar center and that's why it has concrete floors. Right? It's a warehouse. And essentially this is a mock guitar center that they use to strategize like where things go and how customer flow works and you know, where stuff should be and you know, what, what's effective and what merchandise looks better? And so, you know, you know, when I was there specifically, there was a team there working on, what do you call it, loss prevention. So they were working on, like, how to stop people from taking stuff besides putting locks and stuff, right? And so this is the brainchild of the new CEO. He decided that since they have 300 stores and of course, duplicating things 300 times is you just can't do that. You got to work it out. So they work it into a store. But of course, whenever they do that, they're taking, you know, you guys, some people have jobs and they know what it's like when the corporate guys come into town, right? And now of a sudden, everything's in disarray, right? So you can imagine when they need a store to mess with, what's going to happen is they're going to email the store manager and say, hey, we need to use your store for an afternoon. And they come down there and, you know, now the store owners, the store manager and the employees have, you know, look, if you have a boss, you got to make sure everything's, you know, set a certain way and do stuff. It's disruptive is what I'm trying to say. So one of the things he came up with, which I thought was interesting, was to build a store in the warehouse and that they could do without disrupting employees. And anyone who's ever had a job knows that's just the coolest thing ever. Could you imagine if your boss is like, hey, I duplicated your work area so I can work out some ideas and not jack with you all the time. It's just, I mean, that's a great idea. So I'm for that idea. So put in head said, oh, Fender can use a new co. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see if Fender ever talks to me. Well, it'd be interesting. That tells you exactly. Think about this. I've made the same criticisms publicly about the Fender CO as I have the Guitar center co. And nothing wrong with the Fender side. But the Guitarson's reaction was, can we talk to you about it? And again, keep in mind, it's not like, you know, my. My opinion matters in that weight. What it is, is they're like, you know, you guys are here. They know the audience is listening, and they know this is what we're talking about and they want to hear what we had to say. So I took some of your guys's suggestions and comments and took them to them. So like I said, it'll be out probably Sunday or Monday. Monday, most likely. Of course, it's because I release things like this to the patrons first. This is so that they. If they see anything, they can suggest they're almost like the editing team. The patrons, they. They go, hey, something, you know, here's not right or whatever. And then we can make adjustments. But. But yeah, so, yeah, I was really cool, so I thought I'd share that with you. It was pretty interesting because I didn't. That's something new. Something new they had never done before. The mark says, I thought they were all fake, bro. Nice. I know there's always going to be jokes. Okay, let's. Let's see. Dale says they wouldn't free ship a $2,000 item, so. Interesting. I don't. I don't know. In reference to that, when I bought online with them, it's. I get free shipping at certain numbers. Certain numbers I bought and I got free shipping and sometimes. Don't, Don't. Okay, I'm just looking to see if any of you guys have anything about the mock guitar center. They literally call it the mock. Actually, they call it. So to be fair to them, I. I called it a mock guitar center. They said, yes, that's correct. I don't know if they were just being nice. Like, yeah, Phil called it that. So we'll. We'll stick with that name. But they call it. I had the picture and now it's gone. Hold on a second. Where did I put it? Oh, here it is. Let me go to the first one. I apologize. I had it up. This is it. Okay. I don't know if he says this in the podcast or not. I don't remember. But here it is. They call it. See, it says Beacon Street. They call this the Beacon. You know, basically, it's the. The light that they're going towards. In other words, this is the ideal guitar center. You know, it's funny, is a lot of you. I know when you see this, you can't help but make jokes. I get it. I'm the same way. That's how I got in this mess in the first place. I was smart, asking comments about them stuff. But what's funny is what's interesting is that's the concept is to build a guitar center and then try to make a perfect one, then duplicate it. So that's the irony of it. So when you're like, yeah, their stores suck. If you say that, you're like, well, yeah, they kind of know. They. I mean, let me tell you one thing. You'll Take from this podcast with him that I took away with is no defensive apologies of anything. Everything was like. Every criticism was. Yeah, they. They took it with his merit. He took it with merit. And he explained either why they're gonna fix it, why it's been fixed, or why they're not gonna fix it. But at no point in the hour interview did he say, like, you know, never heard of that. And that's not a problem. There was nothing dismissive there. So I thought it was interesting. I expect that on one or two things, but not the fact that he never did. It was really interesting. So again, find it. I hope you guys find it interesting. So. And you can make fun of me too, because you can see a couple minutes or a couple times where I look like, if I look like I'm in the hot seat. I was like, you know, it was. I was. All right, let's. Ah, Scrap Dog, this is great. Okay, and then we'll go on. Scrap Dog says, why are you not Sweetwater? I actually asked that worse than you're saying it. I basically told him why Sweetwater's kicking their ass. This is true. I said it in the video to him. It's tough to say things like that in front of somebody, you know, I, you, you, you watch faces. I watch his face when I'm talking. You know, kind of like, okay, how's this gonna go? Right? And I basically said, sweetwater's kicking your ass. And like, what's the plan with that? You know? And his responses were pretty good. You know, like I said, very good. You know, he could have said, like, what's the Sweetwater? It was good. It was a good. I like said I loved it. So Wiz Dog says, hey, Phil, did you see Robert Baker's video on Chips in? I did not see the video. I saw the viral clip. Unfortunately, it popped right around when I was getting ready to go to California. Unfortunately, when I go. I know it sounds weird, but when I go to a trip like that, one day travel, one day there, one day travel back, three day trip, I have to do extra the two days before that because, you know, so I literally get no free time for about two days. I have to work really hard. Like, you know, I have to double up those hours to get the stuff that's getting done. Otherwise you guys wouldn't have got a video this week and stuff. So I didn't see it. But anyways, I'll put a link to it. If you guys didn't know, Robert Baker put a video out with like, Joe Bonamas and all these guys, and they were like, literally looking at these chips. And, you know, this is a funny thing that happened. It's not in the podcast. And it was something I overheard them saying. When I say overheard, I heard the employees at Guitar center saying this, that when I was standing around, right, Waiting, doing stuff, right? There was a couple employees and they said. And by the way, I don't mean like, they said it and like, you know, they didn't know I was there. They knew I was listening and stuff. They were there. It's like, not like they were keeping a secret, but they weren't specifically telling me to tell. Like, you know, tell your audience this is a funny story, or, hey, Phil, you'll think this is hilarious. They were just talking freely and they were very aware I already shook their hands and introduced and stuff. So they knew who I was and knew what's going on. But anyways, they had made a comment that originally, when they made the mock store, instead of all the inventory now, which is the correct inventory, because they had to lay it all out, they. A store was just full of nothing but fake Gibsons. All the fake Gibsons that had been traded in and sold to guitar centers. That's what they. Apparently, it's what they're at. They're there at the corporate headquarters. They just accumulate them up. I'm sure at some point they destroy them or whatever. I didn't ask, but they were basically saying, like, yeah, they were saying, yeah, when this started, it was just all fake Gibsons because they have so many of them. Because they take it in the shorts every time a store takes in a fake Gibson. So, you know, it's funny, the reason I mirrored that up is, if you haven't caught it yet, the whole Robert Baker video is about detecting a fake Gibson and. And what they see and what they don't see. And I've had this argument for years, and it's. I feel like I've never won the argument on this, and so I'm okay with it, but I don't know what to say. Every time I talk about fake guitars, people are like, it's obvious. And I'm like, it's not obvious. People get screwed daily with them, and everybody's like, it's so obvious. And I'm like, you know, yeah, I get it. To some experts it is. To some it's not. And also, there are better versions of fakes than others. But ultimately, every fake is a potential problem because it's something that steals money for like to me, if I, if a guy sells you a, a fake Chibson for $2,000, it's just stealing. $2,000. It's just stealing. It's fake. It's, it's a con. It's a con. It's no different than any other con taking place. So I've never been a big fake anything fan. I've never been pro them in any way. And I, I, because I, I've seen, I've seen it, I've seen it so many times. I've seen with customers, bring them in, you know, for repair and you're like, this is fake. It's the worst information to give somebody. It's just, it's so, so what's weird is to hear Gibbs, I never put in, never put into a thought that Guitar center is a victim of that. But obviously, I mean, think about this. You saw the pictures I showed you. They said, they didn't imply like every single hanger was a fake Gibson, but they had enough to fill up most that place with fake Gibsons. And if you're doing the math, because I am, you could put 300 guitars on those racks easily to more than that. So if they only had 150 gibsons and they were buying those things dirt cheap off people you, you already see there, you know, you could, you could be anywhere between a hundred to a hundred thousand dollars to a quarter million dollars easy. You know, it's funny, because of the, the missed opportunity was the CEO of Guitar Center. The missed opportunity was because of my reaction video. That was the discussion point we wanted to have. Right? So in other words, like Phil said a bunch of crazy stuff about us. We want to talk about that. So, you know, to either get more information from me to get a refinement of my critiques, or to discuss, you know, what they're doing to, you know, fix it or maybe I misunderstood stuff. And so the missed opportunity was, because that was the focus of it. We couldn't talk about stuff like this. But I would love to do it again with Gabe and this time go in with just a QA like that. Like, hey, what, what is, you know, what is, how does fakes work? What do you do with them? How much does it cost you guys? How impactful is this? You know, the, you guys know I did a podcast a couple months ago about the fact that they seized a crap ton of fake Gibsons, you know, coming to the country. And I think everybody always makes the same jokes. You know, it's funny, it's very dismissive. It's always like, ah, it's a couple hundred bucks, it's a fake Gibson. But I'm like, but people get conned all the time. It's just, it sucks. And, and I think that's my, my mentality is, I'm not saying I'll never get conned by a fake. That seems too bold. It's not likely though, because I'm informed. And so I could be cavalier and be like, hey, if you don't learn yourself, you're an idiot. But the problem is I know the one thing that's important to know, which is people who take advantage are specifically looking for you. They're looking for the person who's not informed and they're putting in, you're putting them in a position where they don't get to inspect enough and they don't get it, you know, so it's a very easy manipulation thing. Yeah. Wizdoc says not everyone is a guitar nerd that buys these. Exactly. You know, in fact, usually it's an con. Jobs are opportunistic by design. So it's usually what it is. It's someone who's never owned a thing like a Gibson and like, and they're presented the opportunity, you know. Yes. Do I think there's people out there? It's like, haha, I'm gonna buy. This guy's trying to sell a Gibson les Paul for 800 bucks and he's a moron. I'm gonna buy it and sell it and make three grand. And they're, you know, obviously an idiot and they don't know what they're talking about and they get screwed. Maybe there's some justice in somebody trying to, you know, take one over on somebody else getting taken over on. I could get with that. But a lot of times what it is is, is someone who's never going to be able to justify or afford a $2,500 Gibson. And then there's an opportunity now to get one for 800 bucks. And 800 bucks is everything to them. They probably barely have 800 bucks, but it's like, man, I would never spend 800 bucks willy nilly but for this once in a lifetime opportunity, right? And I know what that feels like because what's funny to me is, you know, when I took guitar lessons when I was a teenager and I had this crappy little amp and this crappy little guitar, my guitar teacher one week came into the lesson, we were talking and he was like, oh, I got a new Marshall cab. And you know, Marshall was Like, you know, unobtain them, you know, unobtainium. It was just nobody could get Marshalls. And he was like yeah, I got a Marshall head and I got, he got a full stack. So he had a head and cabinet and he finally got another cabinet and. And I'm impressionable, you understand. I'm 15 years old, you know 15, barely 16 years old. Very impressionable. Impressionable, impressionable. And he said passingly. He's like I got a new Marshall cabin. I'm like oh man, that's awesome. Right dude? I probably said dude, that's awesome. And then he said yeah, I got it for a hundred bucks from a pawn shop. They didn't know what they had. And I remember when I started driving and I got my, you know, I got my car and I was driving. I went to pawn shops like all the time because I was convinced like winning the lottery I was going to walk in a pawn shop one day and be like there's the thing that I want that I cannot afford and this dumb pawn shop's going to sell it to me for a nickel. And all I ever saw was tons and tons and tons of crap that was overpriced. And I hear people all the time get those deals. I've never walked in a pawn shop and got a deal. I've always walked in a pawn shop and always seen. I got Series 10 guitar for 300 bucks in a. And a. And a Fender solid state one 8 inch speaker amp for 129 when they're 190, 109 new. So it's just, it's funny and I never, I don't think of myself as a bad person. Like oh, I'm trying to try and find a dumb pawn shop to sell me this amazing thing for knuckle. I was just looking for that opportunity, that thing, that moment where it's like I'm gonna get something I couldn't get and. And because it's out there and that's where I think of as people do that stuff and that's when they end up with a fake. So Pablo says, are fake Fenders as prevalent as Gibsons? Well, I would say and I no data to, to back this up at all. So this is just gut feeling. My guess would be Gibsons are the first number one fake guitar just because they hold so much value. There are so many of them relatively easy to fake because of the fact that so many of them are made in China. Anyways through the epiphone lines and all the copies so it's just really easy for those manufacturers to just go ahead and make them. If I was going to guess next would be Fender, which is ironic. The reason I say that is ironically is I think if you looked at volume of guitar sales, I think Fender sells more volume than Gibson. So you think in, in theft, you know, they would go after the bigger seller. But dollar wise, you know, Gibson holds more value. What I've seen now is everything is a fake now. Everything they fake. I think somebody said they were faking. Harley Bens. I'm not making this up. I think it's absolutely true. I think I saw that. I've, I've seen. Mine is. I did a video where a friend of mine bought a fake. Mine is. And I. That's where it really hit me was because the smart ones are learning to fake the guitars that most of us have never seen in person. When, when he bought the fake mayonnaise, which I did that video, I had never seen a mayonnaise in person ever in my life. So he didn't know it was fake, by the way. He didn't bring it to me and goes, I bought a fake minus. He brought it to me to set it up because it played horrible, right? And I had no reference of the guitar at all. I had never seen a minus. I never. It's not like I looked at him in Guitar World magazines or everything for years. I'd never seen them anywhere. But what happened was it was really bad. The setup was really bad. It was just, you know, fret, sprout, everything wrong with this guitar. You could be wrong. But what happens over time, like a lot of people is you start noticing not a thing about fakes, but you start noticing like things about guitars, you know, like main China guitars, main Indonesia guitars, main Korea guitars, main USA guitars. There's certain things they do right, Certain things you see, like I've had it, I've had it happen now where a company and I'm, I'm not, I'm gonna pin this. I'm coming back to the minus. But I'm just saying I had a company reach out to me and I'm not gonna mention their name but. Because I'm never gonna work with them. But they reach out to me as a YouTuber and they're like, hey, this is how they reached out to me. They said, hey, we build guitars, custom guitars. We want to send you guitar and have you do a deep dive. We'd like to build you a custom one, you know, and so in other words, send Me one, do a video and then build me a custom one. And you're like, look, if you had my gig, you'd say, hell yeah too. What? Custom USA made guitar. And I. So I get a video and people watch it and I'll make money from that. And then I, I get a guitar and that. Like, this is the dream, right? Like, we all should be so lucky. I get the guitar sent, and they were conning me. Here's the con. Because it started with the con. It started with, hey, we don't have one to send right now. What we're sending you is a demo model. So there's going to be some issues with it. So I'm thinking like, oh, okay, it's going to have playwear or scuffs. And you get. It has issues like it had like glue, glob issues. Things that you just see. Like, I can tell you what you see. Like if you Send me a $200 made in China guitar, even if I go, oh, it's a pretty good guitar, I'm still going to go, yeah, here's some things you don't see on a, you know, on a, on a $3000 USA guitar or maybe a made in Japan guitar. So anyway, so I'm going through the guitar, but the flags for me were first metric bridge. I'm like, why? Why would a US Guitar company use a metric import bridge? That's weird, right? So, you know, you pull out your Allen wrenches, you're like, oh, this is a 1.5 millimeter. Huh, interesting. It's weird that they're using the metric bridge. So it's an import bridge. Okay, well, they make good quality import bridge, but not this one. This bridge was a cheap one. And then, you know, I did what I do in the videos. I take stuff apart. I'm looking at stuff, and here's what I figured out. The tuning keys were cheap, the nut was cheap. The bridge was cheap, all the materials were cheap. So I responded with a nice email, as you can imagine, very, very polished, very professional. Like, hey, man. And the guitar, thank you so much. I'm checking it out. I just have some questions for you. So you're making them here in the States, but why are you using, like, all inexpensive parts? And they respond with, oh, thanks, Phil, for asking. But they're like, to get the price down, we're trying to keep the price around $2,000 U.S. which is, you know, is a really good price for a USA made guitar. And I'm like, yeah, but I mean, like, good parts are like, you know, you'd be talking about 23, 20 $400 guitar. It's not going to really like. And for a USA made guitar, no one's going to. I mean, you guys are standing here, you tell me, I'd rather have a 2400 man USA guitar with the right parts than a two thousand dollar guitar with all inexpensive, low grade import parts. And through this experience I was like, this is interesting. The luckily for me, they, they were really bad. They said, oh, it's nitro lacquer. And it was poly. And I was like, oh, and it's thick. It was sprayed on heavy. And I was like, okay, okay. But it did say Made in the USA right on the headstock. It had their name. And through some period of time I figured out, you know, I won't even tell you. You know, I'll tell you this part. I actually found the import version of the guitar. I thought, what are the odds I can find this guitar on AliExpress? So on AliExpress and looked and looked and it was probably two, three hours. You know, you have to be a moron like me to kind of spend that kind of time to, to prove something to yourself. And I found the guitar. Their guitar, their design, not like a copy of their guitar. I found a guitar where it's like I could throw a logo on it too. And so they were ordering an AliExpress guitar and they, I guess they were going to. I get, hey, great business model, right? Send Phil McKnight and Alexpress guitar. Tell him it's $2,000 even though they paid 180. Get a hundred of his followers or viewers to buy these guitars. You starting to do the math here. Let's do the math, right? Let's have some fun. Can we talk about how much everybody would have been happy about this? So they're going to be into the guitar for 200 bucks. I said 180, but I just want to keep my numbers easy. Let's say 100 of you pull the trigger, right? They sell 100 guitars, their investment is $20,000. You pay $2,000 a piece for the guitars, right? Whoops, that's the wrong number. 2000, right? And now here's what's great. And so minus their 20, they'd make $180,000 off of us. And here's the worst part. I would say out of the hundred of you for sure, without any reservations at all, 20, 30 of you would never know you have a fake. Because Phil McKnight, the YouTuber that you trust. Because he takes guitars apart. And he should know, right? He's fixed guitars for two decades, you know, right? He. He's. He's supposed to know. He told me, this is a good guitar. You probably know a few chords. You play pretty good. You know, you just wanted a good guitar, and it looked exciting and unique to you. And now you have this. You have an AliExpress guitar for. So 30% of you don't even know you have a fake guitar. And so like I said, it's out there. Every. Everybody's got a game to play is basically what I'm trying to say. And they. So back to the minus guitar. What happened was after time, same kind of thing with this other guitar. I was like, man, this is just. Doesn't look right. Why would they use these cheap pickups? Why would all these components be so cheap? This guitar I thought of mine is. Was a quality instrument. And luckily that pinged me to start looking at things. And the first thing is that when I googled or went on their website to mine is. And said. And it said, oh, this is the wood that it is. Well, I did what I always do. I pulled a pickup out. I sanded the side of the wall of the pickup, looked the wood, looked at it, and go. I even did a little. I have a. There's a poke test. We have a little. I don't know what you call it. It's like a needle I have, and I push. And it. It was obviously basswood. Like poplar, basswood, whatever. It was really soft. It was supposed to be mahogany. Look, sometimes they can make mahogany really light and it really throws you off. But this. There's no mahogany. That's gonna, like, take a pin like a. Like basswood or poplar and stuff. What's the other one that's really light. There's one that's even softer than Palo. Like, so, you know, it couldn't even paloina because it was super light. The guitar was super soft. And so now you're like, man, you're like, okay, this is the wrong wood. And so then luckily, I did what I tell you guys to do. I took pictures and sent it to Mayan is. And they were like, yeah, this is not real. This is fake. And I'm like, you have fake. I mean, who the hell would fake a Mayan is like, no offense. They're great guitars, but what, you know, what do they sell? Like, you know, three, four thousand a year of those I'm rounding up. They probably don't even sell that many Right. Minus probably sells a thousand guitars a year. Right? So, I mean, so think about this. How many people are in the market for used? Minus, it's not a lot of people. In fact, I bet you if I go on reverb right now and look, somebody do that for me. Somebody go on reverb and type in mine as and see how many guitars are sell. Just total guitars, electric guitars, new and used. Right. I would say it's going to be a couple hundred maybe, right? It's not going to be like, you know, 4,000 guitars used. So again, there's not a lot of people out there looking for it. But what happened when I was doing the. I decided to do the video, what dawned on me was, but look what happened. Look how hard. Look how long it took me because the whole time I was in denial. I know this is getting long on the tooth, this whole discussion, but I want to tell you guys how this whole process worked for me. I knew it was fake, but I was doubting myself because I'm like, I don't know. I've never tried a minus. Maybe minus just makes crappy guitars. Like, I was like, okay, and my friend's just an idiot and he bought a crappy guitar. And, you know, that's just how it goes. And maybe all these guys that buy these guitars are idiots. Like, how am I to judge them? They, you know, I buy dumb things too. And so think of this. Thanks, Reese. 595 minus. And by the way, guitar circuit as well. Everybody else, aerial Ari Holic arryholic arrowholic596 so, thank you. So again, not a ton of guitars on the market for sale. And so. So anyways, my point is, you know, they clone. They. They clone everything. They try to, you know, they try an angle every way they can. It's just how it works. So kind of beat that subject, guys. Let's. Let's button up the show. I know there was no guitar this week, but we'll do something extra fun next week, I promise. Let's do Zach. Thank you for the super chat. Mark says, hey, Phil, what is the best neck size? And scale length is best for someone with smaller hands. I really enjoy your show. You know, I've heard all the theories over the years, and in my experience, it's not as simple as, hey, if you're small hands, get a small neck. Your playing style has to do with how the neck feels more than anything else. So, like, there's a. This is. I won't promise, I won't leave you hanging with, you know, no. No information. I'll give you a kind of a quick answer, but I want you to understand how important it is to have more than just that answer. If you roll your thumb over the side of the fretboard, it's nice to have it rounded. Some players, you know, whether they have big hands or small hands, the V, soft V on the back, neck. So neck shape is really important, more so than neck size. In some cases, scale length is not huge. Like, so, for instance, most people can't tell the difference between 24 and 3/4 and 25 and a half. Most players are not doing that. What I mean by that is you're not seeing a whole lot of players that play. Les Paul's going, I'd love to play a Strat. I just can't get my hands to work spread out that far. You're not seeing a lot of that. But if you have really small hands and you could say that a 24 and 3/4 is going to be better, you could say a smaller neck is better. What I always think about is this one of the necks that I think that is, like. Let me just tell you where you can start if you want to look for a small neck and see how you like it. To me, the smallest necks on the market out there are going to be a lot of the Music man necks. Not all of them, but most of the Music man necks are very, very small. And the EVH Wolfgang series, Indonesian ones, the made Mexicos, those necks tend to be on the smaller side as well. So those are good smaller necks you can check out. But also keep in mind that sometimes the setup when it was how high the action is, and the strings are gonna have just as much effect as that. So it's like I said, when I talk about, like, if a neck's too thick, it hurts my hand. It's not so much that it's thick. I have some necks that are thick, and they don't hurt my hand. It's also the type of carve, which is why we always discuss the carve. It's just to have that information. Whenever you ask a question like this, whenever somebody says, hey, what's a good neck? I'm gonna point you in directions, but trust me, you need to go to a music store and just try guitars. And one of the things that's great is if you're a newer player, right. You know, a lot of people have concerns like, I don't want to go to the store and stand there and play in front of people, you don't have to play necks. You don't have to play guitars. You hold them. Just hold them. But don't just hold them. Hold them for a second. Just sit there with it. Think about it. Take a second, like, breathe, right? And go, what is it that I'm feeling here? And go, you know? Oh, I guess the arm feels good. Is my arm here? Is my arm here? Is this good? Does this feel good? I don't like my arm up here, which is why I don't love acoustics that are like jumbo acoustics, right? Because I don't like my arm in this position when I strum, I like it down here. I just do same thing with my hand. I like my hand in a almost like a calm, rested position at all times when I push down the first note. Some people, they like it more tense. So, like I said, hold guitars. I've always said this. You don't have to be able to play guitar well or at all to know how a guitar feels. You just kind of feel the neck and how your hand fits in it. And what's funny is you can hold a neck for the length of. You don't have to do it for a whole song, but for a minute. And whether playing or not, in that minute, you'll discover something. So that's just something I suggest. But I would try those if you want to try small necks. And then. And funny enough, I don't think the EVHs, right? There's a 25 and a half scale. So it's funny to me. I bet you most players, if I handed you an EVH Wolfgang and a Gibson Les Paul, most players would agree that didn't know. Like, you guys that know are gonna be like, of course it's this. But I'm talking about players that know. No. And you guys that do know kind of think about it for a second, see if you agree with this. I think most players, if you played a Wolfgang and a Gibson Les Paul, would think the Wolfgang is a smaller, shorter scale than Les Paul, just because the way it was designed, it brings your arms in like this, and all of a sudden everything feels really easy. It's probably one of the most comfortable playing guitars I've ever played. And that's why I think they were smart enough to make hardtails and stuff instead of just all Floyd Rose. So. And. And. And that's because. Oh, sorry, losing my voice. And that's because when I got to meet Eddie Van Halen, I think I told you guys this story. Right. I got to meet him and. And shake his hand. And they. I told the story before, but it's important because it really, really dials us in. So here's my paws right here. You know, I don't know if my hands are big, but I'm 6 foot and I'm a bigger dude. Some of it, you know, is fat, and some of it's just the size, physical size. But anyways, my hands are pretty big. And when we were in line at this private event, little small party, the EVH Wolfgang party, we were there. They told us that when we. We shake Eddie's hand, the process is we're going to shake Eddie's hand, we're going to talk to him for a minute, each person, and then we're going to stand next to him, take a picture. Okay. And. Oh, I'll go get the picture. Hold on a. Because what I'm gonna do is give you scale. So here's the picture of me and Eddie without the glare. So this is the. So what year is this? 2009. VIP access. That's me and Eddie. So you guys get a sense of scale, right? That's Eddie Van Halen next to me. So you get the idea. Now, why the story's funny is I've always heard he had big hands. That's why he plays great, by the way. I've already told you, Steve, I and Paul Gilbert's hands are massively huge. Massively. Both about the same. But Paul, 10, is definitely bigger. I mean, huge. Larry Mitchell, my buddy Larry, same thing. Massive pause, man. Crazy, right? Like, if I don't want to offend Larry because he's my really good friend and I love him, but, like, you know how you. Like, if you get a kitten or a puppy and they're like, oh, they're gonna grow into those things. Larry has not grown into his paws. Neither has Steve I or Paul Gilbert. And they're both. They're all very, very tall. So anyways, so. So what happens is we go to meet him and they say, shake his hand, talk to him for a minute, and then take the picture. And then they develop, you know, okay, so. But they said to all of us, they go, do not squeeze his hand. And, like, okay, don't squeeze his hand. Like, do not. So I'm like, okay. And it was just tough for me because I learned firm heart, firm handshakes in the army. Like, that was the first manly thing I had to do in the army was learn how to shake somebody's hand. Because, like, I just the unit I was in was. Took it very seriously, to say the least. So, anyway, so. So here's why the story gets funny. So we go up and I go to shake his hand, and he crushes my hand. And he's like, crush. He's super nice. He's like, hey, how's it going? Crush. Like, literally, my hand is crushed because, of course, I'm not in the right position for strength. And my hand is like, I'm running a limp. And my fingers are not. Like, everything's just crushed. And he crushes my hand a little bit and like, firm shake, basically. Firm handshake, right? Very firm handshake. Things I got right away in one second. Firm handshake, small hands. I was like, oh, his hands are kind of small. Or I should have said, oh, man, his hands are kind of small, but it hurt. So then I go over, and afterwards, we're talking. All my friends, Frank and my wife Shawna, and my son was there. Everybody. And everybody's like, man, Eddie crushed my hand. And they go. I go, me too. He did it to all of us. They were like, did they punk us? Like, is this a thing? Like, did they know Eddie is a firm handshaker? And they told. They thought it'd be funny. Tell us all this. Shake his hand soft, but we don't know. But he did it to all of us. It was very firm handshake all the time. So the reason I tell that story is his hands were small. And then what's funny was instantaneously what I got from that was explain why his necks to me, always been kind of small. Like, maybe he preferred that. So, yeah, Max, Max, Max said Eddie had strong fingers. You know, I'll tell you a funny thing, and then. Oh, I'd say it's the last thing, but we got to finish out a couple super chats. No more super chats, please. I've been very fortunate in my life, first of all, to have a show like this every Friday and have you guys hang out and stuff. But one of the things I was very fortunate of is I get to meet and interact with super talented people and learn from them and then kind of maybe have this, you know, this conversation with you guys. And one of the smartest guitar players I've ever heard, Ever met in my life. Not heard of, but met in my life, said this amazing thing, and I like to share it, okay? And I tell you who it is, but you wouldn't know. It's not like he's famous. It's just he Just does. Amazing guitar players. Another one of these ones where all, you know, if you saw him play, you'd be amazed. But if you don't know who he is, he said, guitar players don't have hand strength. They have finger strength. And in a perfect world, a guitar player's pinky is as strong as their pointer finger, as strong as their thumb. And it's, you know, in the ring finger, like all your fingers are the equal strength. He goes, that's a perfect world. He goes, whatever you do with one this, your pointer finger, you could do with your pinky and vice versa. He goes, it's not your hand strength. We know it is. But he. But his analogy was great, right? In a perfect world, every finger is independently strong. Like, they don't need to, you know, they don't need to work together. Any one of them can do the job. And I thought, wow, that's really cool. So I would imagine Eddie's like that. His hands are. His fingers are very strong because obviously his hands were very strong. So small, strong hands. So. So that's my way of saying you could try his necks. I'm sorry. That was a long way to say, Mark, just try a Wolfgang out. Start there. All right, T size. These are. We're going to finish up these two. I just want to make sure real quick that I'm not missing one. We're going to finish up these three. I'm sorry, Amanda, I didn't get tomorrow yours. T size says, hey, I'm a Strat guy and a Les Paul guy. I played an SG before, but I felt like everything shifted left. Oh, it does about 3 inches. It's totally out of whack. Yeah. The SG is like. Yeah, to me, it's like, to me, it's like where I'm looking down and where I see the 12 fret. To me, on the SG, the 12 fret isn't down, like by my leg. It's forward. It's absolutely forward. Yeah, okay. I'm agreeing with you so far. Let's go on. He says, but I feel like everything shifted about 3 inches. And it feels weird. Is there some learning curve with the sgs, or am I just weird? No, no, no. It's a learning curve. And the only thing I can tell you that's positive is as someone who, who discovered SG very late in life, think about this. I was. I don't know when you could find it. You go find my SG video. It's a tobacco burst SG video on YouTube. Whatever day that video came out just Understand that I got into SGS about within a couple weeks of that. That's how long I've been playing and loving SGS for the most part. So it's not something I've been doing for decades. It's been, you know, probably six years, right? Six, seven years long, but not super long. It did take me a while. Some people. You're not going to jive with it. I did. All of a sudden, it just did. And one of my concerns was exactly that. Like, what if I get used to this thing and everything else feels weird for some reason? It just. I get used to it and nothing else feels weird. But I do prefer it. So because I've been a Strat style guitar, so before Strats, I played Strat style guitars like Ibanez, because I'm a Strat style guitar player. In other words, that's the guitar I've dominated my life with. I'm always going to be kin to, you know, going to the Strat, like, it's always like perfect for me. It's like that's home. But that besides that lineage of like I have. I've had a Strat my whole life and I just like Strat style guitars. Not physically Strats, but style guitars. I. I could easily be an SG player only for the rest of my life. So those are the two guitars for something that appealed to me the most. By far. The by far clan of house cats says A Customer wanted 61. Customer wanted 6105. Narrow, tall. I prefer jumbo. Yeah, I like the frets to be as big as possible. It's just, you know, the. Sometimes, you know, I, I regret it because, you know, you feel the bumps on the side of the neck when you feel the frets are so big. But I like tall frets and big frets are bigger, wider, thicker, bigger. Just, you know, I don't know why. I just really don't like feeling the fretboard underneath my finger. So it's all about just. I don't want to touch the fretboard. Not so much the fret material and stuff itself. It's just how, when I do vibrato, I just don't like to feel, you know, saying nails on a chalkboard. Chalkboard. When I feel the fretboard with my finger, it just does that to me. It's like almost like. So, you know, I can't. Two things I can't really handle. Especially rosewood fretboards, right? More so than ebony and maple when it comes to touching the fretboards. That's even more so. Two things I just can't do. I can't have my finger touching or scratching the fretboard when I'm playing. And I can't have an aluminum, a brushed aluminum pick guard on my guitar. Both those, if my fingernails cross either one of those two surfaces is like, I can't do it. So I love aluminum pick guards on guitars. Brush aluminum, I love the way they look. I just can't own one. So I always have plastic pickards. Like in a perfect world, I have aluminum pick guard on my keys. Old Delos. But I just, I can't do it as soon as my fingernails cross it. It's just weird. Same thing with the fretboard. Just too weird. Anyways, please check out the podcast with Gabe, the CEO of Guitar center, if you so wish. And then there's a couple of deep dives that are coming out. There was one that was supposed to come out Thursday, and then I was on the road. I couldn't do it. So you'll see that one very soon as well. All right, guys, thank you for that and I'll see you next Friday. Till the next time, thank you for your time and Know youw Gear the Know youw Gear Podcast Today's episode of 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.