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The know youw gear podcast. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast for May 22. So it's memorial Day weekend. I hope everybody is. Is is home safe and watching the video or at least on your way maybe and doing something fun with your families, making them watch the YouTube guitar. YouTube podcast. Okay. I hope you're not doing that to your family. Anyways, I'm sure a lot of you have had a fun week watching lots of diverse content in the guitar community where nobody made the same videos at all and there was just a plethora of topics to talk about. I think that's what I noticed all week, is that really it was the world was your oyster this week in gear. If you wanted to learn or have some more fun with your guitar, you could, you could, you could go through YouTube and see all the vast different topics that everybody chose to talk about. So anyways, okay, this one's from Odo says I'm gonna call you Odo because there's a lot of letters there says, what do you think of your car amp? I. I've owned the Mercury 8 and the Mercury 16. I prefer the Mercury 8. This is one of the first year editions of it. It's behind me somewhere. There it is. There's a car amp. So I like the car amp. I've owned mini car amps. If you guys are not familiar with the brand car, just understand it. C A R R Funny. My funny reasoning for liking a car was my Paul Reed Smith rep Bert, who was a very cool guy had he was a outsourced rep. In other words, he worked for prs, but he was not a PRS like employee. The way you, you, you think of employees, you know, he was, I don't know, probably 10.99 or something like that. Right. He's a subcontractor, as we call it. So he would have what's called, I called it a line card. Sometimes it was referred to as a line card. In other words, other brands he would carry and it was not very many, but one of the brands was car amps. And because we. So we did so well with Fender guitars and of course we did well with some other expensive amps. He was like, you should carry car amps. And I was not familiar with the brand and I didn't. Wasn't interested. So he brought me a car Mercury 8, which is a 1-12-inch speaker 8 watt amp that goes down to like a quarter watt anywhere in between and reverb. And I absolutely loved it. But at the time it was so mind bogglingly expensive. And I know it's expensive now, obviously more expensive. But at the time you just didn't see amps that is expensive. Not in my, you know, my, my circles. You know, an expensive amp usually meant like a half stack, you know, or expensive amp mean a big amp. The idea that you saw an amp that had 8 watts and this amp was, you know, 2000 do are north of the teens and in the low 2000s at the time was just crazy because at the time, just for reference, a Fender Princeton production one, not a hand wired was probably 899. So you're talking the price and a deluxe reverb. Well, just to give you a reference, when he brought that car, Mercury 8 to us as a loaner to check out at the store, I had bought a deluxe reverb 65 deluxe reverb that I still currently have for $350 used. So I was like, you know, knew they were like a thousand, like 999 and then they eventually got to a thousand 99. So it was double the price or triple the price, you know, in some ways of a Fender type amp. And. But I loved it and I never got a chance to buy it because what happened was I decided not to carry the line. I was mature enough at that time in the store that in the early years of the store, anything I wanted, I would just carry the line. You know, I'd be like, I want one. And then your brain goes and I can get one for dealer cost. And then you realize like you get the product and no one else buys it and then you sell it all at a loss and you probably pay twice of what you could pay if you just bought one. And I got smarter as I owned the store that just because I like it doesn't mean that the market immediately around my store would carry it. Keep in mind we weren't really an Internet based store. We were through the front door kind of store. Which means the local community is who you have. That's your main customer base. So you know, it's not like now when you sell it on the Internet, you know, of course now you're touching every guitar player on the planet Earth or at least in your, you know, on your country at the time. If, you know, if locally people weren't spending $5,000 for a guitar, there just wasn't a market for a $5,000 guitar. So I didn't buy it is what I'm trying to say. And then over time they came out with the Mercury 16. And I bought one of those as a combo and I didn't love was great but I didn't love it right. And then I sold it. And then one day I walked into the store and they had a mercury 8 head. And I thought oh, that's the problem. If I run it through a different cabinet maybe. So I bought the head and actually got a good deal on it and didn't love it either. And so I sold that off and then I then plowed through two different models of Mercury. Our car amps not Mercury's but car amps. And. And really kept thinking back to that. Wish I would have got that Mercury Car 8. And just so happened one day I was at the guitar center and in. In. In Phoenix where my buddy works and they had one there and they had it for a song. I've talked about this. I think it had it for 1400 bucks which was legit. And long story short, he got it to me for 12 which was even way cooler. 12ish. And, and I bought it and then I re tubed it and it's awesome and I biased it and I really really like it. Although I would say this there if, if it was between this or my Morgan PR12amp, I would pick my Morgan PR12amp. So you guys know I have two Morgan PR12s, I have a head and I have the combo. That's how much I love it. I have. So I. That's my favorite amp. As you guys know, I've been touting the. Touting the. The Paul Up. The Paul Smith. The Paul Reed Smith Princeton. No, the Fender Princeton forever. But I loved the Princeton so much that I followed the Princeton lineage. I got a. I got the hand wired Princeton. Then I got a vintage, a real Princeton. I was like, oh, that's the way you gotta go. And then one day I decided I wanna. I like Joe Morgan. I got. I have a. I don't know. I should tell this story. I got the most drunk I've ever been in my life. But Joe Morgan, it's the most drunk. I've never been anything close to that kind of drunk in my life. And it was in Hollywood. It was. So I was. So what happened was. And I was pacing myself in the night. I was drinking beer. I don't even. I would just be. Keep in mind not even like hard liquor. It was just beer. It was at an event and everybody was there. And afterwards after the event there they went to the bar and Joe Morgan was buying. So he was buying and they Were they were buying drinks and it was a bunch of friends that I know that I won't mention that that are German and so they can drink too. And I was pacing myself with beers, but I didn't know we were going to go to like two in the morning. So we went. No, four in the morning. I think it was four in the morning when we stopped. Anyways, always liked Joe. He's a great guy and he's super smart and. And of course that was a fun time. And so, you know, I didn't get sick. It wasn't that kind of drunk, but it was enough to where when we walked back to the hotel room, I thought, wow, this is fun. So anyways, I decided to buy one of Zamps and I just fell in love with it. So I bought another one. Boy, I feel like I didn't stay on topic at all for that. So anyways, let's, let's move on, shall we? Let's see if you're talking to me or if your subject is for me. Put the question mark at the beginning. Obviously Amanda always grabs and sends me ones as well. She grabbed this one from Lemon Lust. Who says, hey, are modern features like standstill frets, locking tuners and Fishman pick pickups actually essential? Or have got guitar influencers? All those damn influencers made people think the guitar isn't good enough without them. I like that. Look, I know because technically I'm a YouTuber, so I fall in that bracket so I could, you know, so I'll pick on myself too. But I, I really don't, I don't see that there's an agenda from the influencers for that. If anything, the, the agenda is. Look, it depends on what, what they're trying after. Like I'm after eyeballs and interest. So of course I'm. I'm gonna always have a sensationalized title and, and if I can, a dramatic thumbnail. But I'm really so bad at thumbnails that it just never works out. But. So I mean, that's my agenda for that. But when it comes to guitars and features, here's what I will tell you. And locking tuners for me are. Nothing is essential. I don't have to have anything. I prefer them. I would like locking tuners on every guitar, even my acoustics. Or why? Because I hate to restream guitars. Because I'm lazy. One and two, I. I work on guitars all the time. Like I used to work on guitars every day for customers. Now I work on guitars every day for videos and so I'm always working on something. I mean, just because, you know, whatever. My, my whatever is being pushed out to you guys videos, keep in mind, I mean, some of those videos take forever to actually get to the point where they're ready to come out, you know, when I'm happy with them. And a lot of it takes a lot of work. So when I'm. When I'm spending all day, you know, following a fret or, or restringing or fixing things or setting up guitars or adjusting things or making, you know, video clips about repair or doing live clinics for the patrons, our clinics, period. I. I just don't want to restring my guitars when a string breaks. So Point. Point, in fact, is case in point. Case in point is what I mean. One of my bases broke a string. I got doctor strings. I feel horrible now. I feel like I. I feel like I craft on the d' Art guys when my strings are breaking with. Moved to Ernie Ball. And then I'm still using Ernie Ball. But then I bought some doctor strings because I want stainless steel strings for my. From my base and the low E just broke. I would say I never had that happen. I just don't remember happen. So I had to buy a new set of strings. And the bass has been sitting leaning up in the other room against the wall with a broken string looking really sad and a pack of unopened Ernie Ball bass strings sitting in a box that came from Sweetwater. And it's because even though it takes minutes to change the string, I generally don't change a string. I always change all the strings. That's just my rule for myself, the only exception that would be if the string broke the first day. And it's still really bright like the other strings. But also I just do it. And so what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to do it because it takes a minute. And if it's a locking tuner, it's just going to speed up the process. So locking keys are all about speed and efficiency for me. So if it's easy, it's easier for me to go fill. Get off your dumb ass and just restring the guitar. It only takes a second because it's locking keys. So that's locking keys for me. Stainless steel frets. Stainless steel frets are important to me. In fact, extremely important to me for the guitars that I actually play on the regular. I've told you guys, one of my favorite guitars, I don't know if it'll come out. So I Don't know if I'm going to say something stupid out loud. The When I spent the week with the guitar center folks, you know, and all that stuff, they asked me to go on their podcast, so I went on their podcast. So assume it's going to come out. But anyways, in that he asked me my favorite guitars, and so I told my favorite guitars. And it's my Kiesel Delos, my PRS Mira core model from 2013, and my Gibson SG61 reissue. So those are my three favorite guitars. My Mira is I obviously have had the longest since 2013. I wore out the frets. So in 2019, I think somewhere on there, I refrated it and I refread it with stainless steel frets. So the reason I'm telling you that is because stainless steel frets matter to me on guitars I play all the time. So that Gibson SG will eventually get stainless steel. Oh, it's right there behind us. It'll eventually get stainless steel frets because I'll wear it out. Do I care about stainless steel frets on guitars? I don't play that often, no, because I don't play them that often. They're not gonna wear out. But I wear. I've worn out frets on guitars and basses. I've had a reef rat two basses of my personal basses over the years because I wore. I wear them out because I just play them all the time. I tend to grab a guitar. I tend to be a type of personality that when I'm in a mood and I like a guitar, I just play that guitar all the time. And I don't rotate all the time like you would think. Same with amps. I'm usually in love with one amp, and I'm just playing that amp all the time until I get sick of it. By the way, I do this with restaurants, too. My wife. My wife. My wife only has one gripe about me because I'm so perfect. And I can hear her laughing probably in the background, maybe. Anyways. So anyways, if I find a good restaurant, if I like a place, if I find a place to eat at, we're eating there every day for like the next two weeks. And she hates it. It. She's like, stop it, stop it. So if I like something, it's just. It's on repeat until I'm sick of it. So standstill frets are very important to me for a guitar. And so I can tell you this. When I. When I travel, when I do the video, when I go and Do a gig or when I go, you know, and I do out, you know, outward content I get. I always take the guitars that have stainless steel frets. I always take the guitars that have. In fact, I don't take a guitar that doesn't have stainless steel frets or locking tuners, unless it's a headless guitar, which, again, would just have a locking mechanism, usually a roasted neck or some kind of strong cortisone neck profile. Again, something I know when I pull out of the gig bag, it's still in tune. It still takes abuse. So I think it's essential for that. Fisherman pickups, I'm not, you know, I'm not necessarily need them. So, you know, I've reviewed a lot of the Fishman pickups because I like EMG pickups and Fishman's. Just a refresh of that idea, and I think they're a little better in some ways. But it's not specifically a pickup I'm after. So do you need all that stuff? No, you. You don't need anything. You need whatever, you know, and this is gonna sound like a cop out, but I promise it's not. You need whatever inspires you. The this or that segment is the whole concept is not to prove that the audience can't tell. It's to see how much of what mattered to me in the room. And personally connected to something matters to you as guitar players. You know, hearing it through, you know, your cell phone or your TV or your computer at home through compressed YouTube content or algorithms or whatever, you know, whatever. Streaming. And so my point is, is that I really think this. I like this analogy. I'll use it forever. And it's, you know, the. The tools matter to the chef, the tools matter to the trades person. The tools matter to the musician. Doesn't matter to the audience, doesn't matter to the. To the guest of the restaurant or whatever you want to call it. Because here's the point. The point is the chef is supposed to prepare you the best meal they can. The tradesman is supposed to make you, or the trades person, whatever you want to call it, do the best job they can. The musician is to give you the best music or best experience you can. And if they feel they need those tools to inspire them or to make their life easier. Because keep in mind, notice how I don't talk about the tone of a locking key. And that sounds silly because a lot of you are like, oh, yeah, he's being funny. I'm not being funny. There are people out there that Argue that a locking key changes the way a guitar sounds. Absolutely. That is an absolute argument out there. That it ruins the sound, it decreases sustain. That's absolutely argument that I've heard for many years. It has nothing to do with YouTube or Reddit. I've heard it when I was in my shop and doing repairs, customers would tell me, oh no, I don't like locking keys. It kills their sustain. So there's. But notice I don't argue that. Same with stainless steel. Some people will say they don't like the way it sounds. I don't argue that because again, there is certain things that matter more to me. So I care about sound and sustain, but I care about form and function. I care about how the neck feels. I care about whether or not it stays in tune. I care about how fast I can effectively restring the guitar or maintain the guitar. Having a spoke wheel truss rod that I can adjust easily and quickly without, you know, pulling off a truss rod cover or getting out a specialized Allen wrench, you know, like a 4 millimeter Allen wrench that I may or may not have with me at the moment where I always have my Swiss army knife with me. And there's always something in the Swiss army knife that can move a spoke wheel truss rod even if I don't have their little metal stick. So to me that's what matters when it comes to those features. So, and, and no one should be telling you you're missing out or you're wrong if you don't have any, you know, product. Whether it's a locking tune or a fret. Again, you have to decide what matters to you. It just in a world where it's harder and harder to go into a store and get a lot of different product in your hands like we used to get. Because that's what I'm a really, I'm a recipient of is the decades of being able to go in used doors and not just try gear. You can still do that, but try tons of different gear. I mean, it's not hard to see that, you know, more and more of the stores are really becoming focused on a smaller selection of product. And therefore you're going, you're getting going experience certain things. So. But yeah, so that's what I like said you, it's whatever matters to you. But what matters to me is that locking keys, out of all the things you mentioned, that's what I like the most. That's the one thing I have to have. Michael says everyone hears things differently. Like when someone says locking Tuners change the sound and can hear the BS. You know, my, my 2 cents on what people hear and don't hear tend to be connected to an experience. And what I mean by that is not us experience. Like having experience. Like they had a one time experience with something. So like here's a good example. A guitar player picks up a BC Rich one day and it's really heavy. They decide that all BC riches are heavy. I've experienced this so much over the years of doing repair that people, a lot of the opinions, not all, but a lot of them are not based on years of experience, but a moment of experience. They had a thing happen. Oh, I once had a offender that didn't stay in tune. So all Fenders don't stay in tune. That's the argument. You know, Gibson, a good example. Gibson's don't stay in tune. I have a couple Gibsons that don't go out of tune. They stay in tune perfectly. So I mean, you know, that's why you hunt and peck for them. You know, the perfect day, the perfect, not the perfect setup. It's just everything aligns and it's good. So I told you PRs known for staying in tune. All my PRs is stay in tune except for my favorite one, which is the mirror. The mirror is knocked out of tune all the time. And it's just what it is. I told you the neck moves constantly. In fact, famously. Is it famously? It's not famously. It's famous to PRS people. I once on the show because somebody at PRS said hey, we noticed that your mirror never has a truss rod cover. We'd like to send you one. And I said, yeah, it doesn't have one because I leave it off because I'm always adjusting the neck and if I put it on, it would just be another thing to do. And I don't want to do it. So that's why I've noticed like a perfect a thing too. That's funny is it's kind of like how well somebody's talking about the Tonewood debate. Same thing. I think Tonewood is the debate itself. Not so much the naysayers, but the people who are for it. It's because they played a guitar and it sounded really good. And it just so happenedly in that moment of experience happened to be a mahogany or a, you know, a maple or an alder or something like that. And they went and they decided that that was the, that was, you know, oh, then that wood sounds good. That wood sounds warm and a perfect Experience. A perfect example of that is with pickups. People, for some reason don't attribute pickups for as much sound as they give a guitar. They'll say, this guitar is really bright and it can be, but the pickups can really determine that, really more so than anything else. I like I said on the guitar, physically, we're not talking about outside the guitar. Once you're plugging in amp and all that stuff, saying in the guitar, electric guitar, the pickups are going to have not everything to say about how the guitar sounds, but they're going to have the most to say they can really compensate for a lot. So that's just in my experience. Somebody so Oblivion video says, clearly the Altitude Mirror is your favorite PRS because you. You love to tweak on it. Nope. You know what it is it. I didn't know I liked sgs and so in that experience because I hate the way they look. And I'm not like, I'm a fan of the mirror the way it looks either. You know, in my head, I like the. The Strat style body shape the most. You know, it's most familiar to me, whether it be an Ibanez or a Jackson or a Strat or sir or whatever you want to call it. That shape that's just the most to me, that's a more. It's just a more interesting shape or a more comfortable shape. And so the Les Paul, although I love them, has never been the shape I love. And. Or the guitar that's really, you know, drawn me to it heavily. And so the sg, same thing. I was never into the way it looked. I was like, I just don't dig the way it looks. So I just never wanted to play play one. And the PRS Mira was not a guitar I sought out. It was the PRS Mira that I own. I bought from my own store. They came in, we were carrying the mirrors. We were selling them really, really fast. And every time I picked one up and check one out before we. The customer left with it, I was always like, wow, this is really comfortable. The body's thinner. It's just really comfortable. I like how it sits in my lap. I like how when I stand with it, I like how light it is. I just was really drawn to the guitar. And I like the PR's neck profile, so that was easy. And then I was like, this is the guitar. I have to tell you that I think the Mira is the ugliest guitar ever. And my mirror, personally, I think it looks like dog vomit. That's how bad I hate it so. And I have tried everything in my. In every thing I can do financially to get rid of it and get another one. And. And if you watch the channel you have seen, if you're. If you got an eagle eye, you have noticed over the 10 years of the channel there must have been at least six or seven other mirrors on the wall at any one time. Flame maple ones, all kinds. Trying to get one that looked a little better than the one I have. But every one of them it just. Like I said it didn't. Didn't do what the one I like does. It doesn't play the way I like the one mine plays. I don't like it as much. So that's the thing that's you know, that's tough and say so think about this. The irony is the. The SG and the Mira, two of my favorite of the three guitars are my least favorite looking guitars. And that took me. I think that's a. I think that's a. Maybe that's what I'm growing up immature in a little adulting. It took me a while to decide that I just gonna have to because I. And I actually to be fair, I did spend a small fortune trying to not play those two guitars. So in other words what I meant is I. I probably bought. I'll say 20, but my wife will probably say 50 other guitars. Just trying to get rid of those two guitars and find something that I. That that felt like those and sounded like those but look the way I wanted and I've given up it on those days. That's why I don't care about headstock shapes anymore. I don't care about how guitars look anymore. I. I have a couple guitars. I love the way they look and to me I hang them on the wall and I stare at them and I pick them up and strum every once in a while. I think it's beautiful. They're basically art that I can interact with and play with. But essentially all the guitars that I play all the time I think are. Are pretty damn ugly. So. And boring I should say boring for those that are probably offended because they love the sges and the mirrors looks and stuff. It's just. It's boring to me. Shouldn't say ugly. Boring. So okay, let's go on to the next one. What do we got? What other problem can we solve for the world? Gentle. I think it's gent. Gentle, gentile glance. There's just. I don't even know Gent. Elegance is what I'm gonna say, okay. Says, hey, what's a. What's a God shim. Now, I know he means good, but it's like, what's a. But I'm gonna keep seeing God shim because it's God. What's a good shim material for us for a slanted neck? The material I like to shim next with is sandpaper. That's what I prefer. That's what I use. I could easily call the steel mat guys and get all the free wood shims I wanted. I've had so. And I still don't do it because I use sandpaper. I will even use old sandpaper that I've used before. Did see what Fender used? Forever and ever and ever. I have opened. I don't know if you call it opened. I've taken apart hundreds of Fenders in my. In my years that Fender had shoved sandpaper into shim the neck from the factory. And I go, good enough for them. Good enough for me. Doesn't seem to affect the tone. Doesn't seem to affect anything. For. I watched a guy on YouTube once explain that it's like you got to loosen up your, your, your screws and tighten your strings. And then screw you like to get this compress more compression the neck content on the body. And I'm like, man, I'll shove. Shove a business card in there. There's. I bet you right now somewhere in one of my guitars there's a real estate agent's business card shoved in between the neck. Because I'll use a business card too. But I prefer sandpaper because that's what Fender used and I have lots of it. And that's why I think they used it. So, you know, that's my theory talking to the people at the factory about this. It was used probably because it was just readily available cheap in there. So it wasn't like, oh, yeah, what works the best? They were just like, that's what we have lots of. We're gonna throw it away. Might as well use it. And I've seen all. And I've seen all the variations. I've seen new sandpaper. I've seen used sandpaper in Fender necks. I've seen like a, you know, a 400 grit. I've seen a fine grit. I've seen a rough grit. I mean, I've seen it all. So. But that's what I like. And it's. That's what I use. That's what I use my personal guitars. If it's. It was a customer's guitar I would probably use whatever they asked me to. So I'd say, do you want us to make a shim for it? Do you want us to just, you know. And most people didn't care. I don't know if I've ever had anybody specifically say they didn't want to use any certain material for that. Usually they're so panicked just to get the guitar play right, they don't really care what you do to get it right. You know, it's one of those things, like, a lot of people, A lot of guitar players really don't know, need to or want to know how the sausage is made, you know, kind of thing. They're like, just as long as it plays great. Ben wants to know, do I have an opinion on guitar mutes? I use a mute on my bass. I don't use one on guitars. So do I have an opinion on one? I use it for my bass. I'll show it to you right now. I have two. Hold on a second. Give me a second, guys. Okay. All right, I'm back. So this is my jazz deluxe base that I've had since, I think, 2006. So 2006. And this is the Michelangelo Badio mute that. That clamps on. Yeah. You'll notice they clamped on the back. Mine does not clamp on because I have a hip shot drop D lever there. So I could not put a clamp there. So I cut mine, rounded it off, painted it, and permanently mounted there. So that's the mute right here. I'll go to the side cam. Side cam. So that's the mute. And the Michelangelo Betio has this little. Little thumb thing here, see, so you can push it up. And now out of the way. And that's how I get there. The reason I have to put it out of the way so I can play on the first. I want to play the F. What do I use it for? When you slap, See, it mutes it versus this. I don't know how much you're hearing of this. So anyways, that's unmuted mute. And then. So that's why I do it. It cleans up your slapping. Guitar players will use them for tapping. Funny enough, how I got this mute was I was talking to Jennifer Batten one day, and I said, hey, you use a mute on your guitar. I would like to mute my bass. I saw Victor Wooten was using hair ties on his bass. I was using the hair ties, but then they discontinued that hair tie, and the new ones had a brass crimp and Piece of metal on there that would scratch up the back of your headstock. And I go, I can't use those anymore. So I go, do you have, you know, can I buy one of your mutes? And then Jennifer Batten goes, I stopped making them. Michelangelo Beidou has better ones. And so I have one that, that you can use as a clamp. And then I have that one I permanently mounted. So to answer your question, do I have an opinion for the bass? I use it. It's really nice. The reason I like it is I don't really use it. I wouldn't. I don't use that like recording. I wouldn't use that in the room. I use that on stage sometimes when you're slapping, it's really nice to have that come down and you can adjust it really quick with your. With your thumb. I. I use it barely touching the strings. So all I'm trying to do is stop the resonant, the. The resonation of that, the. The strings from just going through the PA because I'm, you know, you're holding down the low end frequency of this. Of the band. So model. Model Burrow says, Fender kitchen sponges work great. They do. So as you guys know, that's actually. That's actually a great idea. So, yeah, the 11 says, fender buying. No, sorry, Fender. Phil buying hair ties. Yeah, I know. It's like, I got lots of bald jokes. So. So I'm laughing because. Yeah, I'm just laughing. I got jokes. Okay, So let's see. And. The real RD says, your jazz bass has the same color as my NF3SE. Yeah, this is a candy. Tangerine is the color of the bass. So. Yeah, I know. Derek says, I remember. And he goes, I love the story of when Phil called Mab. Yes. I'm not gonna talk about it again. I told that story once. You'd have to go back in the old podcast. It's the time I called Michelangelo Badio, and I am 100% convinced to this day that he was on the phone with me and pretending he wasn't him. And it made me laugh because he's. If you don't know Michael Angel Bado, first of all, he's like, very lovable guy, very talented, but very. He has a very specific voice. So when he's on the phone, I'm like, what are the odds that two people sound exactly like this guy? And I'm. I'm talking to him, and I said, you're. And then on the phone call, I said, are you Michelangelo B. You're Michelangelo B. Because I'm calling his company about these. These mutes. And he's like, no, it's not me. And so I always laugh. Yeah, I always think about that story. It's funny. See what else? Okay, let's go to. What do we got next? Oh, look at timeline. Okay, so here is a subject I wanted to talk about for me personally. Okay. Nope, wrong one. We would help if we go here. So I saw this, and then somebody asked me about it, and I thought, oh, this would be interesting. Talk about it. And I'm. And I'm. I'm a little nervous about this one because I feel like I'm just. I don't want to keep beating on this drum so much. But this one caught me off guard and I want to talk about it. So I saw this article in Guitar World about Guitar center. And as you know, I've recently met with the CEO of Guitar center. And I. I really like Gabe and I like where he's going. And this ties in because somebody was asking me some questions and I thought, this article will actually apply. And so, you know, I actually plan to talk about this before I knew the article was going to pop. So this article popped 12 hours ago. So it says, David cult spearheaded reverb six years ago. So basically, what's going on is that Guitar center and Reverb are partnering together. They're not merging. Don't confuse those two things. They're partnering. Whatever this means. This article is very strange, by the way. The. So what does it mean? So I read this, and it basically goes on to say that Guitar center is going to partner with Reverb. And even the article I thought was really weirdly. It was really hard for me to follow along and understand it. But here's what I found interesting in there. Gabe talks about the fact that used. He says, we're heavily leaning into used and vintage. And I was like, wow, that's a great idea. I wish. I wish that. Wonder if somebody came up with that a couple years ago. And I'm just kidding. So, you know, every time I talk to Gabe, that's all I talk about is how use gear is the future for Guitar Center. Now, here's why I want to talk about this, because somebody asked me about the interview I did with Gabe, and the question they asked me was, let me find it. Let me pull it up so I don't get it wrong. They said, phil, what are your honest thoughts after meeting and interviewing the CEO of Guitar Center? And I was like, well, my honest Thoughts are what you saw in the video. But I think what they mean is honest, like, in retrospect. And like, what. What do I think now after meeting him twice and talking to him twice? Well, first of all, here's what. I want to tell you a couple things. It's almost impossible for me to critique him in a negative way because he's so willing to talk to people. And I mean, not only like some YouTuber, I mean, all of you. He's really interested to learn more and interact with the community. Okay? And for the lot of you, you probably think, well, of course he is. He has a company and he's trying to. But that is not my experience in this industry. My experience in this industry is that when you say something that a company doesn't like, they shut you up, tell you to shut up, ignore you, lock you down. He has done the opposite every time I've had any discussion of him on the show. He has been open to the criticism. And that says a. Because it's a very short list of people who were interested to. And I don't. And here's what I mean by that, too. He's really interested in it. To tell you why he thinks maybe I'm wrong. So when he talks to me, like, if you please understand, he's not like, you know, hey, Phil, tell me what you think. He's like, let me tell you what I think you're missing and what I'm saying. And that's what we kind of talk about. So in a. In my perspective of him, for an honest way, he's. First of all, he's. He knows the Guitar center has problems. He acknowledged that, which is important because a lot of us know the Guitar center has problems. I mean, and. And you. And this is where I think a lot of people in it, like, said, won't understand this. I want you to really understand a couple things. Guitar center is number one in the United States. There's no question about that. Sweetwater is growing fast, and Sweetwater has taken up a lot of, you know, a lot. A lot of space in the. In the. On the sales market, you know, the Internet market. But by no means is Sweetwater bigger than Guitar Center. Guitar center is the biggest. The reason I tell you that is they're the biggest, and they're willing to listen so they can get better. They could argue. He. Look, he could have sat in a room with me and easily argued, phil, you're a moron. Because we're winning. We've had. He. He. When he took Over Guitar center, they had eight quarters in advance in a row of losses of losing, you know, losing market share. He's given them like nine consecutive quarters, I think. What is it? How many? Look, six quarters. Let's just call it a year and a half. He's given them a year and a half of gains. So the company has been gaining momentum in sales and growth. So he's definitely winning. He just acknowledges there's still a lot of problems and we all get it. There's a lot of problems. My argument isn't that Guitarson has problems and they need to fix all the problems. So again, back to my honest reflection of this. There's a couple things I want to let you guys know. There's two things in that video that we didn't talk about that I wanted to talk about. One was employee compensation. How are the employees treated and compensated? And the second thing was how the repair shops done and how does that work and how are they compensated? There's a reason why we didn't talk about that. I was given, just like the first time, one hour. He is the CEO. He's the CEO of a 2 billion dollar company that is the largest purchaser of Fender and Gibson and Martin and Taylor in the United States. So regardless of what you think of my little YouTube channel on you on the Internet, he does not have to kowtow to me. And it is so he has. I mean, he has two assistants, right? You know, so what I'm trying to say is I got an hour with him and it was very nice for him to give that to us both times. So in that hour, I knew that there was a couple things I had to do. First, I could not just berate him. Why? Because if you notice, I was able to talk to him this time. Again, the reason why that's important is if I berate him the whole time, why would he talk to me again? Who wants to sit there and listen to some jackass on the Internet tell you how you suck when really you're running the largest guitar retailer in probably the world. Okay? So he's like, you know, he doesn't need this crap. The second thing is. So I wanted to address where he was winning. I wanted him to be able to tell you guys where he has succeeded. Obviously his pedal stations are working. Obviously a couple of things are working. So that meant the second half is where I would hit him with the negativity. He knew that going in when I say that, knew that he already figured it out from the first time talking to Me, that's how I, that's my, that's my standard operating procedure. That's how I talk to people. I don't just hit them with negativity. I don't think that's fair. You have to acknowledge where someone's doing well. It's not for flattery purposes. It's not to catch him off guard. It's because that's an honest assessment. Just like when I do a deep dive. This is the thing I don't think they do well. This is the thing I do they do well. You have to be honest and fair. So I was honest and fair. What I wanted to talk about, and all I really wanted to talk about that was most important to me was the policy in which how they treat the instruments, that they're damaged. Now the reason why I'm telling you that is because employee compensation. I knew we would not be able to get into that detail, not in that short amount of time. And also he already acknowledged that they're trying to do promotions within and 100% of managers will be promoted within from now on, which means more training will be involved in employees and the employees will have at least an opportunity for more advancement, which is more income. The other thing is on the policy of the damage instruments. That's the word I want to use, policy. See, I don't want to talk to him about the jerk off employee in the one store that one time that I can talk to that employee's manager. Like I said, using military logic, I'm not going to the general, you know, on the base and saying, hey man, what's up with my parking space in front of the px? Right? Like I can go, dude, there's so many lines of, of that I can go to that before I go that high. Right? Does make sense. So with him, what I wanted to talk about is what he could control. What I wanted is to talk to about how he could change the policy. What you didn't see in the video because the video was only edited short shortly. This video, by the way, that you saw was 46 minutes. I believe the entire interaction was 58 minutes. What is missing is two things. Okay, the two things are missing is where I repeated what I say at the very beginning, which is that it was one year in retrospect, so there's no reason to repeat it again. The second thing that was removed from it was removed purposely because I'm doing another video and I wanted that specific clip for this video. So you'll see that. So that's Not a big deal. The only thing I removed that you really would want to know is when I asked him about the policy, I told him the story about how I bought a guitar and it was damaged and it was very difficult to buy the guitar. And then he said, well, the employees and the managers are empowered. Now when he said they're empowered, that's not an impolicy. I mean, I guess it could be a policy to be empowered, but it wasn't a policy that would help me as a customer and you as customers. What I want to be able to say is. What you want to be able to say when you go in a store and there's like, hey man, this guitar has some damage. And I know your policy is this, you know, when the employee goes, you know, like the employee treated me and said, yeah, man, that's a really good deal. That's just how it is. You're like, now I gotta fight and negotiate to get what's fair to me, which is stupid, right? And I'm not gonna be a customer very long. And that's really what matters. I'm not gonna buy guitars at Guitar Center. Every experience is a used car haggling experience. It's just not something I'm looking forward to. I dread like everybody buying a new car or used car when I have to do that. I don't want every guitar experience to be that experience. So what happened was when he came back with, you know, they're empowered to do that, that's when I came back again and I hit him again with it. And if you notice the second time he starts adjusting and saying, okay, I hear you. Because he understands. So in the edit and that one edit, that's the only thing. Because I really wanted to get to his response more so than my complaint. Does it make sense? The reason. So that's why the problem is once we engage with that, if you look at the video, that's a big chunk of that video. And I think I made some ground there because he's honestly going to look at maybe changing policy there. Why? Why? The next problem was I knew we had to talk about the new guitar line. One, because that's the clickbait thing. One, two, that's something I. I verbally assaulted him with publicly. So of course I got to give him a chance to, you know, give me a response. But also the last thing is he wanted to talk about it and I knew that. And you got to give him what he wants to talk about too. So what you don't see is at the end of the video, again, a very quick little edit. Just like when you see my wife go, hey, guys, you're standing in front of the bathroom. Move aside. There's an edit that I edited out where somebody says, hey, you have two minutes. And then we finished up our little talk and then we're done. So I want to let you know that those two things are things that I believe that when we talk again, that's what I want to talk about. So those are the two things we're going to focus on, and I believe we're going to talk again. Why? Because after that conversation, he. They asked me to come on the Guitar center podcast, which I did. And of course he. He asked me questions this time. So obviously they. They're interested in this dialogue. So we'll continue on. So I'm just letting you know that's it's important to me why this all ties into this article is what I believe that there. I think Guitar center is totally missing. And off is I believe that the used experience at Reverb has gotten worse. Although I again, giving Reverb credit, I, you know, they, they take care of customers, they take care of me. And you. When you have fraud, you know, when you have issues like that, it's really great. There's a lot of good things to say about Reverb. I understand one complaint is always the cost. That's one of my complaints. And not everything's about cost. But I gotta tell you this, just overall, Reverb experience is not better than it was 10 years ago, and it's not better than it was five years ago. And I don't even think it has to be better, but it'd be nice if it's as good as it was. It's actually getting worse. And it's not all Reverb fault. Some of it's the scamming, some it's the craziness out there. But it's also Reverb's not making things better. The other thing that I want to talk about is I think that's Guitar Center's opportunity. Sweetwater doesn't really sell used, although they try the gear, the gear exchange thing, and it's doing okay. It's just not doing great. They're not gonna really chip away at Guitar center or Reverb anytime soon. So if I. When I talk to Gabe at Guitar center, to me, the logic is that's where you focus. And I think if Guitar center wants to make use experience great, they need to do two things and only Two things. Things. It's a very simple, simple thing. They need to make the trading experience faster and easier and more pleasant. And then you need to make the buying experience of buying these gear faster and easier, more pleasant. Again, make that process. I have gear that I want to sell to them right now. There's certain gear I just like to give, get rid of, not deal with selling to you guys one on one and just take it to Guitar Center. But I don't have four hours to spend in an afternoon. And what's funny about this is, and this ties in the reverb thing, you know. Guitar Center's biggest thing they can do to improve the trade in process is just make a trade in counter. Really all they need to do is duplicate what every record store does this to this day, which is you walk in, you take your CDs and records or whatever you do, you put them on the counter, they give you a slip of paper so that they know this is yours and they tell you to come back in 30 minutes or an hour and, or 10 minutes or whatever. And you walk around the store or you go get a coffee or you go have lunch and you come back and then they say, we'll take these three things, we don't want these things and this is what we'll give you. And that's it. And you can decide right then, like, yep, I'll take that, that's cool. Or nah, I think I'll keep all my stuff. Or could you just tell me real quick what are you giving me for each thing? Because I might want to keep a couple of these things if you're not giving me enough. That's the process. Try to go into a record store, any record store. Just think of your local used record store. Try to go in there and try to walk up to the cash out counter and try to trade in stuff. They're like, yeah, you go over there, sir. Like, can't you read where it says trade ins over there and rest over here. They don't talk to you like that, but you get the idea. They look at you like, you know, can't you read? Guitar center needs to make the Trident trade in process faster. I'm not giving Gabe crap for this right now because if you notice, he know that. He knows that too. We talked about that a little off camera. And in the video he says they know it takes on average 27 minutes, which is important to think because I'm sure they're factoring in somebody walking and going, you guys take trades? Yep. Okay. Well then that brought down somebody's two hour experience. But he also said they're trying to get down to 13 minutes. Why is all this important? Well, because what I think they're going to do with this Reverb thing is I think they want to do the thing where you go on Reverb and when you go to sell something, if you notice they have a couple of dealers doing this now, if you guys haven't experienced this, you go in and it says I want to sell my pedal. And they say okay, this pedal sells between 110 and $130. We of course Reverb's always like you can sell it. You know, if you sell for 110, it'll sell fast. And I think they're going to say but Guitarson will buy it for 80 bucks. And here's is great. Maybe that's a cool idea. I don't know. But what I do know is I think if I was Guitar Center I would really focus on making the come in the store experience better than working on that. But who knows? I wanted to talk about it because I wanted to put on the radar of everyone. I want to know what you guys think about that. Do you think Guitar center should be partnering with Reverb in some capacity or do you think the Guitar center should really be focused on making their process for used buying and selling much better on their own? And maybe I should put up a poll. Oh, let's do a poll real quick. We'll do it real quick. So we'll, we'll call it Guitar center with Reverb. And you guys know what we're talking about. Yes or no? Ready? Start the poll. So we'll see. Do you guys believe that a partnership with Reverb and Guitar center to maybe do what I said in that regards where like when you go to sell something on Reverb there's a third step option. In other words, it'll say sell your stuff for, you know, the low price, sell yourself the high price or sell your stuff directly to Guitar center for a lower price. Would you guys think that would be a cool idea or do you guys think that's a, a bad idea? So we'll, we'll wait for you guys to decide and, and I won't tell you what I really think until I hear you guys thoughts because I don't want them mess that up. I don't want to, what do you call it? I don't want to influence you. I don't want to influence you. Since somebody Said influencers do stuff. I don't want you to think Stanley steel frets and tuning keys and fisherman pickups are all you need. And I don't want you to think that you a certain thing about Guitar center and Reverb yet. Okay, so what else we're almost ready for. Hold on, I'm scrolling. There was one other thing that I thought I was gonna bring up and now I'm not sure because I can't find it. Well, you know what? We might be okay with the poll. Let's see what happens with the poll. The poll has 218 votes, so I'm gonna call it 225. 227. What was the verdict? The verdict on the poll was 57% of you guys say no Guitar center should not partner with Reverb. 43%. Yeah. Yes. What's interesting about that is I can obviously see that obviously no one, but it wasn't a landslide. So it seems like you guys are open to it. I would say I 100 agree with you guys that I. My. My reaction is no. But. But since like you guys. Not 100, you know, a lot of you guys are definitely convinced that it should. I'm not 100% convinced. A bad idea. But I think, I think. This is what I think. I think that when I think of Craigslist and I think of reverb and I think of ebay and I think of Guitar center used, I really don't want them all to be the same thing because I really. Right. I just, I would. I really like having a little bit of different options to sell is what I'm saying, and buy. So John says, why would reverb do that? Why would reverb do that? Maybe because they're also going to cross list. So I would imagine the. And the power to reverb would be. Well, first of all, you have to understand first of all, two things. One, maybe this is a way to partner with Guitar center to get Guitar center start listing all their used stuff on Reverb. That's one. I don't know if that's true. I'm just giving you a theory. The other thing is that is important is you understand. So if you go to list, like I said, if you go to list a Timmy pedal and Reverb says, hey, these are selling on the low for 300 bucks and on the high for 500 bucks. And then. But Guitarson will give you 60% of the low probably. Right? So think about that. Right? So they'll give you 60% of the low. And you say, okay, right? And let's do that just for fun. So Guitar center will give you 180 bucks. And so a lot of you be like, that's crazy. I'll get more money. But maybe it's an easy, convenient thing. Like, all you have to do now is just ship it to Guitar center, where they give you a, you know, a shipping address, and you're done, and you don't have to worry about anything. Now, here's the thing about that. There's two problems. One, if you do that, you've got to guess the condition of the. Of the product. So you're going to say, is it great? Is good. And a lot of us would not want to see it come back. So you can probably say it's good when it's great, but maybe you're doing it already. The thing is that you need to understand is that there will still be a fee. So it's not like Reaver would have you go straight to Guitar center and not charge a fee. They charge a fee to Guitar Center. So Reaver gets a fee no matter what. It'll be a reduced fee because they get a percentage, right? They get a percentage of the sale, so. Well, I guess it's not reduced because it's a set percentage, right? It doesn't variate. So they get a set either way, they get the percentage. So it'd be no different, like, if we. You and I took an offer and the offer was for less, and they get a lesser percentage, but they still get a percentage. So I would imagine Guitar center, they would get a percentage. So that's why Guitar center would. That's why Reverb would want to do it. Bunky Mucket says between Guitar center and Reverb, who packs things for shipping better, Guitar center is the. I'm stealing this. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm not gonna say who said it, but he knows. He'll know. They're like the Lord of the Flies. I cannot unhear that. When he texted me that a week ago, a friend of mine had a crazy package coming from Guitar center, and it looked like he said, who? Who packed. It's like Lord of the flies in the Guitar center sometimes. Guitar center packaging to me has come into my house. When I get stuff used from Guitar center has come all the ways. There is no consistency if you use. There is no way anyone, including the CEO of Guitar center, can convince me that there is any training on how to pack a package. There's just no way. And if there is no way I'm sure there's a module that they all have to watch. Right? It's probably trogly watch trogly pack a pack of guitar. I don't know. I'm just making fun. So it's probably a module they all watch. But let me tell you, I don't know if that's true or not if they watch the module but there's no way they actually take that to heart. I have had every single conceivable wacky ass way to have something shipped to me. I have received a pedal and in a basically a 112amp box and then wrapped in bubble wrap and I've had that. I've had a guitar wrapped half ass in some foam and then thrown in a box with no other packaging. I've had. I've had an amp put in a box with like overbuilt box with foam blocks and all kinds of stuff and they just pack to death. I've had an amp show up with no packaging. Like I had a. I had a Saldano amp. I buffed them. None. No padding, just in a box and touching. So it's like they got the head to fit in the box and that's all it got. And it did exactly. I think that one. The pedal got smashed in the corner of the pedal made a little triangle imprint in the top of the head. I've had all the things the guitars there my friend. His made me laugh was his. I think he did an instagram of it. His. They. He bought a guitar pedal and they stuck it in like a big ukulele box which is like a small guitar box and you think that's good. But then the one side of it got crushed and it was like the pedal got all busted up. So yeah, it's a. It's so hit or miss now Reverb's a little hit or miss because it's all private parties. Right. So I've had all the gamut of that stuff too. But I would say which is really not really funny at all is that I've had more consistency. Think of this. If I bought a hundred things on Reverb it was probably from 98 different people and that was more consistent than buying in packaging consistency. So 98 totally different people in different places in the United States shipping me things are more consistent than Guitar center and packing and shipping which is crazy. And. And I know part of the problem is Guitar center uses the boxes they have in the stores. And again the you know I don't, I don't know what, why it is, but it is really crazy. But I would say for the most part, and this is the important part, now that I've bagged on them, I would say out of all the things I bought from guitars and which is quite a bit at this point because as you know, I went pedal buying like crazy. So I probably bought about 40 pedals from guitar center and used. And I'd say out of that 40, I would say 30 were shipped. So in, in that and guitars and stuff, I would say overall the packing experience is fine. Like in other words, like I have had very few damaged things. Now that also be fair because again, that won't be fair. Some of those non damaged things were just luck because the, you know, it was packed not well and it came and it was fine, but either way it was fine. And you know, I shouldn't beat them up if it wasn't bad. So it wasn't bad. Let's go ahead and do. And now it's time for gear of the Week. Gear of the week. We're not doing guitar of the Week. There'll be a guitar. We're gonna do guitar of the Week. Get the gear of the week. This is not this or that. This is gear of the week. So I want to talk about this. I am totally biased. This, this is. I don't know what to call this. I'm gonna say it's worse than sponsored. Like they're sponsored. And you're like, I don't trust Phil. They're paying him, which is fair. This is worse. This is my friend. So this is even worse. So I, I want to do this. I'm gonna do it. So let me go and show you what's going on. How do I. How do I. Okay, so my buddy Michael Nielsen from the Michael Nielsen Big Harry Guitar channel. So you know, not only do I love his channel and I've been loving his channel for years and do I love his album and I enjoy every conversation we have and I think he has a great ear. He has decided to do a. Oh, good. By the way, I'm gonna tell you in a second because I was like, hey, why? I thought my pedal was different. So anyways, it's a pedal. So what is it? So some of you guys all know Lawrence Petros Pedals Designs has made a. I believe it's limited edition. I don't know if it's limited edition or not. It says only five available. So I made me think it's limited edition. But anyways, they're doing this pedal called the Spearhead. Now I have the pedal. He sent me one. I don't know if mine is. I think mine is a production pedal, if you could say such thing. Because keep in mind, Lawrence makes the pedals, so obviously they're made the same. But, you know, it's not like, you know, there's a production versus some. Some special, you know, you know, prototype pedal. But anyways, anyways, he sent me. Michael sent me one of the pedals. Now, here's what's funny. I. I gave him feedback, which is what he wanted. And. And it's fair enough. And he's doing. He did that for me with my pickups. I sent him a pet set of my pickups. He. And. And he gave me feedback, and I appreciate that. And so I'm doing the same for him. And of course, I'm going to share with you guys, so I will. So if you want a link, I'm sure Brian will put a link to the LPD pedals website. I believe you can only buy it directly from them. What is the Spearhead? Well, it is a really cool pedal because what it does is it solves all these problems. And. And I gotta tell you that I watched most of Michael's video, and he gave me a really nice note and explained what it does. But I wanted to show it in my context and why I like it and what I'm using it for. So let's. Let's grab a guitar. First of all, what guitar am I using? Well, this week, since everyone's all upset at the world, because heaven forbid you make anything that looks like something else, I figured out today, I play a guitar looks nothing like anything else. This is my Parker Fly. There is no other Parker Flies. No one's gonna go Parker Fly. Took that idea from Gibson. They did not. So this is my Parker Fly. This one is a. A. It's a. What is. This is a 90s one. Oh, it's the early 2000s, early 2001 I've had for a while. You guys seen it? The only thing that's different now is I changed the pickups in it. So I've changed the pickups a while back. That's all you got to know. They're just something I wanted in my guitar. So I put a set of pickups in it. Okay, so let me turn on this light. Because I just turn off. Put stupid lights on timers. Okay, we have a pedal cam. We hope. See if it works. It works. So we have the Pedal cam. So this is my pedal board. This is the spearhead. How it works is pretty simple. It's a boost pedal, but it's a boost pedal with some EQ and then it has this cool low cut feature. So I'm going to be very, very important. I need to figure out. Yep, I'm in the right amp. Okay, so I'm in an amp. I'm going to turn on the overdrive pedal. I'm using my plexi tone, Karl Martin plexitone pedal. I should have put a little like me, like me in the corner thing. So let's go ahead, situate myself, switch camera angles. Look at that. You care about the guitar, you don't care about me. Okay, so here's the guitar. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you the overdrive pedal. I'll play that for you guys, and then I'll show you how to use the boost on this and why. The boost is important because it has. It's like an EQ boost. So you can boost but also add some low end and then there's a cut. And I'll show you why that's cool too. So let's start with the overdrive pedal first and then I'll kick in the boost. Okay, so. And I'll show you the. Well, you'll see. We'll go around. Here's the. The. The overdrive Ped. It. Love. I love how that feedback just kicks in with all that, that push. Now, one of the things that happens when you use a boost with eq, when you play chords, it will get a little mushy. Okay, so let me hit one for you. So what Michael did is he decided to add a low cut feature. So that low cut, that is so that if you go to play chords. So if you're doing a solo, you hit the boost. But if you're doing some chords, you hit the cut and the boost and what happens is you get. You don't get that mud anymore. So here's the chord. Okay, but this is where I said I want to show you something that I use it for. So let me go ahead. And I'm going to turn the boost off. Okay. And I'm turning the overdrive off. Okay, so we'll do that. We'll keep in. We're here back on the guitar. So I'm going to go to the middle position on the guitar. Okay. Okay, so we have. Okay, so now that's your clean. So what I want to show you is you can use the cut all by itself, and that's what I love it for. And so what you did, what it does, is it'll give you, like, a coil split effect. So I have two humbuckers going in the middle position. Okay. And then what I'll do is I'll engage the pedal or the cut. So all I'm doing so, you know when I watch this is hitting that button right there. Okay. So let's go here to the main cam to me. Here we go. Okay, so now we hit the cup. And keep in mind, this is still two single coil or. Sorry, sorry. Two humbucker pickups. Here we go. So it gives you that kind of coil split, bass cut effect that I like. Now, you're. I know you're thinking you could do that with a coil split, but now you can just do it with your foot controller, your pedal. So that is what basically he created is a boost pedal. That can be a clean boost. It can be aggressive boost pedal. It can be a cut pedal. If you want to cut some frequencies, you can add some frequencies. Now, if you are asking yourself, like I did, what about just the boss G70Q pedal? Yes. So, you know, I did a video with Tim Pierce, and me and him basically said in that video, we thought that was one of the greatest pedals for solving problems. What it's notoriously known for is that it adds a little bit of noise to your signal. And so there's a modded one. And the modded one is like 300 bucks. I can say this. I don't have the modded EQ pedal. And so when I abed it to Lawrence Petrov's pedal, this one, the Spearhead, it's exactly. It's a lot cleaner than the Boss EQ pedal, and it's definitely not nearly as muddy. And it's probably because the EQ spectrum is easier to control because there's less of it, is what I would say. Less control of it. So it's just easier and better. So it's a great pedal. Sounds great. Feels great. If you don't believe me, that's fine, because it is my friend, so I'm totally biased, but I wouldn't lie to him. And I'm just telling you this. Whatever you guys think I might say to you, I wouldn't lie to him. And I told him the truth, which is I love it. And so, you know, I told him. I'm pretty sure I'm buying it, because when I say that, I mean I told him I want it. I want to Keep it. I want to buy it. So whenever somebody sends me a bill, I'm paying for it. And if they don't send me a bill, well, then I'll tell you guys, I didn't have to pay for it. But either way, I want it, and I love it. I'm keeping it. So. All right, and then, even though it's not guitar of the week, let's do the thumbnail, because you know why, by the way, I'm wearing my Avenged Sevenfold shirt? Because Sinister Gates from Avenge Sevenfold used to play a Parker. A little fun fact about Parker. So let's do the. This is a good thumbnail because this is like. Everybody's gonna be like, what? What is that goofy white guitar? All right, so there's that. Okay, so that was gear of the week, different than guitar of the week. Gear of the week. Let's do this. Drink some water. By the way, these are also handmade in the usa, so the pedals. And if you want to read all this stuff, and I'm sure somebody else did some really good examples of actually how to use it, but I want to show how I was using it, so just fine. 7, 7, 7, 7, 7,. 7, 7, 7 says sinister gates is so good. I agree so much. I love. I love his playing. I love his songwriting style. I like everything about Avenged Sevenfold. So to me, Avenge Seven Fold is all the bands I love from the 80s in one band, and I think they do a great job. So. Oh. Somebody asked what pickups are in the guitar. So here's the problem. The pickups on the guitar are not going to help you. And. And I. I. If I knew I was going to use this guitar as some kind of demoing reference, I just didn't plan to. To ever do it. So it's. They are dimarzios. They are Northern Lights. However, they are not made the same way that a Northern Lights is made because of the fact that I. The way. Here, I'll show you. The way Parkers work is the pickups. If you see there's no adjustments, and there's nothing in the back for. See, for the. The pickup. So how you mount a pickup into a Parker guitar is you. You. You get the pickup, and then you cut off the. The tabs or the wings. And then what you do is I. You have to use hex screws. See? Hex screws. And then in this one. One here, you drill through the body right here on this screw and this hex screw over here. And then you put Longer hex screws. I actually have four in there. And so the pickup is direct mounted in through the actual hex screws. And so because of that, this would not be the standard way I make this pickup. But I wanted to see how it sounded when I did something like this. And it works with this guitar. It worked great. So, yeah, so they're. They are dimargios, but they are essentially proto custom manipulations I did. So. But they are voiced. They are voiced. I mean, look, they're made to sound like a Northern Lights because they're normal lights. They're. They're. They're just not the same. There's. Some of the components are different just from the physical issues of the. How Parker guitar is done. So let's see. Dog says, when you said you'd play a guitar like no other, I thought you're gonna pull out a bass. Yeah. I mean, a bass would be like a guitar like no other. So. And by the way, if anyone's gonna ask, like, does the. Does the. Yes. The arrowholic says wait straight through the pole pieces. Yes. So that's how it has to man through. Because there's no way to mount the pickups. They don't have. You know, they did it for aesthetic choices. It was done to make the guitar look sleek and beautiful. Back when they used to think of new ideas. They're like, we got. We got. Somebody says rewired. Nope. Everything else is stock in the wiring. I didn't change anything else. I just swapped out the pickups. So this is a. A refined one. So if you know anything about Parker's. There's pre refined and refined depending on when who owned the company. Pre refined would be when Ken Parker owned it and refined would be when US Music Corp. Owned it. This is a US Music Corp. One, but. All right. Okay, let's. Let's go to the next thing. Let's see. Okay. This one is from XO Money label says watching from South Africa. So it's midnight. Oh, wow. Well, have a. And you're in the future. Tell us what happens. I like that joke. I said every time. And I'm going to be tired for band practice in the morning. I appreciate you hanging out. How badly does using a bridge pickup in the neck position affect the wiring setup? Doesn't affect it at all. In fact, there's no such thing as. Think of it this way. There's actually no such thing as a neck pickup and a bridge pickup. Originally, they didn't even care. So if you look at like the John Muir Silver sky, which is based off of, you know, the pickups are based off this like what 63 or 64 Stratty likes or something like that. The original Fender Strat pickups first of all were all the same. So they were the same wind they would use. And when I say they're all the same, they were the same pickup. Like you, they would just get three pickups and. And it's just luck of the draw where they went, right? So like they could have 50 pickups in a row on a bench and they just grab three and stick them in there. Whatever goes neck goes neck and bridge and bridge. And that's why the middle one wasn't reverse wound and it wasn't reverse polarity. So in other words, the, and the original Strat pickups, Strats did not have a five way switch. They had a three way switch. So there was no, there was no need for the middle pickup to be reverse wound and reverse polarity in the magnets. It was players later who were just balancing the switch. And then later some of them took it out and notched it. They would notch this, the brass on the switch so that the switch would stick in this new second and fourth position. By the way, totally done by outside by musicians. Not something offender did. It's not something like Leo Fender thought of or any of those thought of. What happened is almost like everything that Fender has done and big companies have done for years is they were reactive to the community. In other words, the people were doing this and they thought, oh, we should do this too or we should make this. Because if we make this, they'll buy it. And so that's when, you know, and they wanted to sell products so they would do stuff. So that's how it was. But then guitar players, and Stevie Ray Vaughan was one we got became famous for having an overwound bridge pickup. So you gotta understand it's two things that happened really probably separate of each other, okay? But. But then came and overlapped. In other words, one thing is like, hey, we need the middle pickup to have the, the magnets upside down. That's what reverse polarity means. And then reverse wound, which means that as I. If you watch any of my videos, you know that a single coil pickup, like any pickup especially single coil, is actually one wire. It's one wire and it round, it wraps. And so what we call the hot and the ground is really the start and the finish. Okay? So in other words, where the wire starts and where it ends. So we take the end Part of the wire and we ground it and we take the start, fire start, part of the wire and we put that on the switch. So essentially what they did in the middle position is they took the, the end of the wire, the ground, and they made that the hot and they made the hot, the ground. You could do that to any pickup. You don't actually have to think of this. It doesn't matter. There's no way to control when you wrap a wire. There's no like wrap wire this way, wrap wire this way. It's all the same. Think about it. When you think about it in your head, wrapping wire, it's really just where the start and the end is. So on a, on a Strat, somebody just switched the hot and the ground. In other words, the start, in the end, they just, they just soldered them to the different terminals. These, the magnets though do have to be reverse polarity. So that's as simple as exactly what I'm saying. You take the magnet, you pull it out, turn it upside down, you slide it back in. That's how that would work, right? So now you have a north facing versus a south facing or south facing versus north facing, essentially how you made a humbucker pickup. And it works the same way. And that's what they wanted. I'm sure the player did doing that, wanted to have a humbucker, in other words, a noise canceling pickup like they had in humbuckers. And then of course the, as we know, the, the two and the four position. Especially the four position, right? It's very sweet sounding. It sounds nice. So that happens. Okay, so that, that happens. And, and then of course you have another, another player out there and they're making their bridge pickup hotter. And that's why for a long time the middle and the neck were also rated the same. So they only were over winding the bridge. So Eddie Van Halen, famously with the Wolfgang guitars, if you look at, if you own any of the EVH Wolfgang guitars, the bridge pickup is actually not wound as much. It's not as hot. When we say hot, we mean more wines. Okay. It's just a figure of speech. It doesn't always necessarily mean what we want. We, we all think it does, but in most cases it does. And that's why it's okay to generalize it. You're to say all pickups, if they have more wines are hotter than pickups with less winds is inaccurate. But to say that most the time it's accurate would be accurate. So it is most time. So no, you can put a bridge pickup in the neck. You can put two bridge pickups in a guitar or whatever. Overwound one and a regular one. You can do whatever the hell you want. Really. There's no rules. The only thing you need to stick to is that when you have two humbuckers or any two pickups, you might have phase cancellation issues in the middle position if you don't wire them correctly. And. But that's easy to fix. Again, it's usually a reversal of two wires. So. So that's to answer your question. Not only is it okay to put a bridge pickup in a neck or vice versa, somebody like Eddie Van Halen famously did it. And here's why. Here's why. The reason why people started doing that was it's about the string tension. There's more. The string is more. The string is. It doesn't. It doesn't oscillate as much closer to the bridge as it does closer to neck. Have anybody seen a jump rope? Two girls playing jump rope, and you've seen the jump rope. Obviously that's how the jump rope works. The guitar string works the same way. If you look at the guitar string from the nut to the bridge saddle when you hit it, obviously it's. It's oscillating more in the middle of. Of it. Of the middle string than it is towards the end. And that's why, because the bridge pickup is closer to where the string starts and spinning like this versus towards the. Where the neck starts like this. A little bigger. For those listening, I'm making my fingers spin bigger. You don't have to have the pickup as powerful at the neck. And so that's why they started doing that. It's a good rule. I follow it sometimes, but I have guitars that are absolutely the opposite. I have guitars where the bridge is not as hot as the neck. And I have a lot of guitars where the bridge pickup and the neck pick bar the exact same pickup. One of my favorite Seymour Duncan setups is two JBs. I put a JB in the neck and a JB in the bridge. I absolutely love that because sometimes I like. In Seymour Duncan world, I like the. The. The 59 in the neck. It sounds really nice, but it sometimes sounds thinner than I want it. And a JB in the neck sounds huge when you hit, you know, if you want to. Because sometimes what sucks is that's why you hit a boost on an overdrive like the Spearhead is you want to push the amp a little harder when you're Playing a solo so you get more sustain and more distortion. But sometimes you can do that with a pickup, just go into the neck. And I generally play solos on the neck, so I sometimes want a guitar. When I go to the neck, I want that pickup to kind of punch the amp a little harder. So that's. That's why it's done like that. The Bad Guitarist podcast says that's. I'm trying to decide if I like that name. The Bad Guitarist podcast. I like it. I'm decided to like the name. Hey, Phil, I'd love to hear what you think about Gibson Victory reissues. I got one from musicians from friend closeout sale and ended up making a video about it. A laundry list of QC issues. Yeah, you know, the. The. It is. It is crazy to me, right, that I feel like the highest. The guitars I've ever been. Look, guitar's always been more expensive. That's how it works. Like there's no time where, you know, ace. We're not talking about import guitars being, you know, and being introduced to cheaper guitars. We're talking about like Gibsons and fenders and PRSs and mainstream guitars. Every guitar is more expensive now than it was 10 years ago, than it was 10 years before that. We get that prices go up, but it's just because of the inflation and because of the things that's happened that made things so expensive so fast and feel so much more expensive because it happens so fast. It's the speed of it that really kind of shell shocks you. I have to say, this is the worst I've seen guitars as a whole. The amount of defective guitars, the way I make content, the deep dives. The worse the guitar is, the longer the video takes. It becomes a much longer process when a guitar is bad than when it's good. And the guitars I've been buying or having sent to me by companies, it just seems to be worse and worse and worse. And it's getting so bad. And I talked about it when I bought the Musician's Friend. The. We're talking about the prestige and same thing. It needed a setup. It needed to work now. It didn't have defective parts, but again needed a lot of setup. And some of you go, well, guitars need setup. I. I know I was a tech. I know they need setup. But for $2,000, I kind of feel like maybe not so much could we just need adjustments. I want to adjust it to my liking. I don't want to make it playable. I want it playable out of the box. And I want to make it better. So, so to the Bad Guitarist podcast. It sucks. But yes, that is my experience with Gibson and Fender. Look, we all know this is one of the hot topics with Fender this week is they're, you know, they're look, Gibson and Fender spending more money, it feels like on lawyers than on qc and, and maybe take their money and pay their employees better. And that's what I feel like, you know, when I talk to employees in this industry. I hope you guys really, really do hear what I'm about to tell you right now, because it will. It really matters to me the most. I have a video coming out about Taylor Guitars and why Taylor Guitars is truly different in the way that it treats its employees and how it's. And how it treats a lot of things. And I'm not saying they're the greatest company and I'm not saying become a tailor, you know, cult follower. What I'm trying to say is, is that when you see this video and how hard I've worked on making this, this video and giving you this information about this company, when you watch it, I think you'll truly see why Fender and Gibson and so many companies are in are. Are why we're getting bad guitars. You know, it's just you can tell you cannot physically wear out your employees and wear them down really hard and increase their living costs and not pay them well. And us buying the guitars not see that come through. And it comes through so much. And that's why it is a big deal. And that's why I said I do want to eventually talk to Gabe about the compensation for Guitar center employees and, and all that too. Like I always say, I can't fight all fronts at all wars at all times. But you know, I do want to bring you guys as much information about the industry as possible. But back to the Bad Guitarist podcast QC issue with his Gibson. Well, the good news is hopefully you listen to my show and you know, you can just walk it back into a guitar center and get a full refund or and I hope Guitar center, this is where I hope Guitar center will start learning that this is when they probably need to see set up the system to where when you bring it in, they can say, look, because I used to do this at my store, you'd walk it in and go, hey man, this is not great. And I go, okay, well we can return it or I can set it up for you. And sometimes that would save me some money doing the work for you. It's, you know, it would make it better but yeah, it's an unfortunate that it's, it's not good. I was really interested in that guitar. So, you know, and I still kind of am. But yes, I, I, I have. I don't want to talk because I got some videos coming. I did recently buy some guitars, and it did kind of put me in a. It was a really tough mood between the Defender lawsuit fiasco that was. It definitely sucked up an insane amount of my time in the last week, which is fine, but it was just astronomical how many hours I had to spend on this, this. And then just so, so it happened. Coincidentally, I got a couple guitars for videos and they were just all so bad. And the same thing. I agree with you. 100. You get them and you know, and here's what I will tell you for those of you out there that aspire to buy these 2000, $1500, 3000 guitars, they're not better anymore. They're just not better. And I'm hoping these companies will start realizing that. I'm not here to tell you that. Oh, 300. The guitars are better than anything else, and they're great. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that it feels like as someone who pulls guitars apart and examines them and shares that with you guys for years, I feel like the cheaper guitars are getting better and the expensive guitars are getting worse, and they're actually, I should do it like this. And they're getting closer to being the same. And that's just really strange to see. And I know, and I even factor in that some of it's emotional, you know, part of it, you know, with the, the Bad Guitars podcast, what he's saying, some of what your experience is an emotional experience. What I mean by that is you spend a lot of money. It's not a little bit of money, right? $1,500. A lot of money. $1,600. You spend that and then when it's not amazing or at least doesn't hit some baseline expectation, it's actually worse. It's why I tell you in videos, when I review a $300 guitar and I find a flaw, it's almost like, oh, here's a flaw. Here it is. Notice I'm really not really emotional about it because it's not really hard to be. It's not. It's like, hey, look, man, you know, if you want to go have a glass of wine and a steak with your wife, it's $150 now with tip, $200 sometimes. So I'm like that's, you know, 200 guitar. That's like a dinner out now. So I'm like, unless you go to Texas Roadhouse, which my wife won't go to. I'm laughing because I can see her again rolling her eyes. Okay, so. But anyways, she does go to Texas Roadhouse. She just doesn't love it. Anyways, my point is, that's my point so is that it's. The expectation is a lot easier when the price is not as brutal. So yeah, let's see. Brooklyn Sound Garage says, I'm still amazed I got a $98Amazon guitar a couple years ago and it plays so well. Yeah, well, I told you guys, all guitars are luck of the draw. Okay? So when somebody says they had a bad guitar or they get a good guitar, that is luck of the draw. I told you new companies, like I can only do so much on this channel. Okay. When we deal with a new company, a company that we've never heard of, that you guys aren't, you've never heard of. So, you know, I've done it with companies like Jet, I did it with RJ Guitars. We do a tons of guitars. We make them, provide two or we get one and then we buy one. And sometimes what we do and we do it as much as we can. So you guys know, we actually, we try not to get the company to ever send us a guitar. We try to get them to pay us and then we take the money, they pass and then we go buy the guitar. I think that's the actual best way to be sponsored for a video. And it's just really hard. The companies just don't like the idea. But I, if you're going to get sponsored, I think the most, I think the most honest sponsorship you can do is let the company pay you. But then you go behind the guitar, you know, their guitar in the wild and buy it or whatever and they don't know which guitar you got. And that would be great. But I've done all the ways I can. When I again, when I'm tracking some kind of sponsorship to try to give as much information. And what I will tell you, and this is goes for the other YouTubers too, that know. This I will tell you is shockingly, I have never had an experience ever, not yet. Not with any company that has sent me two guitars where both guitars felt cherry picked. One guitar always feels really good and one guitar does not feel as good. It's funny, it's like almost like, it's almost like they can't cherry pick two guitars. So, so I'm just saying, you know, I try to do that because of this, because of what we're talking about, that every guitar, whether it's good or bad, it's just a one time experience and it doesn't prove anything. It gets tough. But I will tell you. And back to the comment. A minute ago they bought a 98 guitar and on Amazon, it was great. Absolutely. Like I said, you could buy a 100 guitar. That's amazing. And you can buy a ten thousand dollar guitar. It's not great. The, the problem is that what's supposed to happen is it's supposed to be less likely that you get an expensive guitar. That's not great. See, it's all about how likely it is. I, when I did the, the Sweetwater video where I Talked about the 55 point inspection and I flew out there and I went through that in detail with that and I, and I hope you guys know they didn't want me to say this. That was not something they were too keen on. When I said that they ship a thousand guitars a day and that if they screw up 1% of the time, that's 10 guitars. So 10 people every day get a bad guitar from Sweetwater. And I, and when I said that, you would think that the community and I know you guys watching this are much smarter than the average person out there because you actually care about this stuff. Not because you watch me. You're not smarter because you watch me. You're just smarter because you care more. You, you understand what I'm saying? Which is when somebody goes, the comments are in that video, they, I almost like embarrass. I'm embarrassed for how dumb the comment is. This comment came one over the other when I said, hey, look, they ship a thousand guitars a day and they screw up 1%. I'm not saying they do. I'm saying even if that's all they do is screw up 1%, no one screws up 0%. That's just ridiculous. Right? So if they screw up 1% of the time, 10 people have a bad day because 10 bad guitars got out and comment. There's multiple comments saying I got a bad guitar from them. Yeah, I just told you why. But the problem is, is that there's like four people that made that comment on a video with 200,000 views. Proving my point, A couple people got a bad experience from Sweetwater because it's very, absolutely possible. What would be the sign that what I said was wrong or that my assessment was incorrect or that Sweetwater is lying would be if the majority of the comments or even half the comments or even 30 or 40% in the comments said, I got a bag guitar. So the numbers, right? And then from the volume would say, oh, those numbers don't make sense. But we know that if we know that there's 1500 of you live right now, those who buy from Sweetwater, I bet you if I pulled you right now, 80% to 90% would say overall, overall experience, Sweetwater is pretty good. I know Sweetwater does a good job because the CEO of Guitar center said so. He alluded. So I said, yeah, I said, it's really tough when I'm interviewing people Sweetwater. And he goes, because they're perfect. And he was being sarcastic, he was being aspirational. You can tell he's. He really wants to beat them. So give Gabe his credit where he deserves it. I don't know if it's ego. I don't know if it's because, you know, he, he just as money motivated. I don't know if it's because he cares about people. I don't know if he. Because his love guitar. I don't know what the answer is. And I, I'm just telling you, I know he wants to win. He wants Guitar center to kick ass. Like it's just in, in him. So, yeah, on a side note, I've got to tell this joke and I kind of feel bad, but I want to do it. I've been wanting to do it so bad. So I'm gonna do it right now. Because we're deeper in the show. I was walking with Gabe, you know, and the Guitar Center. We were walking to where we had decided we're gonna start in a corner and start walking this way and do the discussion. So we had a walk to it and Shawn was prepping the camera and his people were doing their thing because they were. They were photographers there taking photos of the stuff because, you know, because our center has a team of people and anyways, here's where it gets good. So we're walking and we walk by the Tom Morello guitar. Now if you guys don't know, when I called out Gabe at Guitar center, so did Tom Morello. Tom Morello from Raging Against Machine was very public about how much he disliked Gabe Guitar Center CEOs idea to put more high end guitars in the store. And he, he basically said that they want to, you know, because they said, because Gabe said he wants to put more expensive guitars in the store. And Tom Morello is like, what about the kids? You know, they can't afford these guitars. You need to focus on more affordable guitars. And he really hammered Guitar center saying that basically it's about kids and it's about affordability and Guitar Center's lost their mind because they're not focused on that. And when we were walking by, there was the Tom Morello guitar there. And Gabe goes, yeah, Tom Morello guitar. And I said, I know he beat you up pretty hard on the Internet. And then Gabe goes, yeah, he told me basically I don't put affordable guitars in my store yet. His guitar is seventeen hundred dollars. And then I hit me, I was like, oh yeah, why didn't he do a Squire? Why didn't Tom Morello do an affordable version of his guitar? Yeah, it's like I never thought about the fact that he publicly said, yeah, you guys don't put out affordable guitars. Then he didn't put out a public. But I could tell in Gabe's face he was, it hurt him emotionally. Like, yeah, I got tortured by this guy publicly for basically being told that I'm only want to sell rich people guitars and it literally makes a guitar that only rich people can buy. So, so anyways, I, I thought it was funny. It's assessment. I know that kind of flares people up and stuff, but I, I just wanted to talk about it. Okay, let's, let's, let's button up a couple things that we have. What else do we have? We have, Okay, Sound of sound of SoCal. That's a cool name too. Says in this market better to consolidate a small batch of low cost guitars to trade a guitar center or try my luck parting with them in Reverb. Look, the way to go is to sell them outright to people. Whether you sell them on offer up or Craigslist list or Reverb, you'll get more money selling your own stuff. First of all, Guitar center is only going to give you at max 60% of the value they think it's worth. So keep in mind it's not 60% of the value or 50% of the value that what it's worth. It's what they think it's worth. So they could decide. That's why you want to do some research and be educated. Because if you know, you could say, oh I think everybody's selling this for a thousand dollars. But if you go on guitars on the website and they're selling them for 800 bucks, they're going to say it's $800 and they're going to tell you it's worth about four or 450, right? So you have to decide if that's worth it to you. Where I'm at with it is, is that you have to factor in, in your mind what is more valuable to you. And I do all of the things I, I mean I decide all the time. There's, there's sometimes I pay too much for a guitar. I wanted it, I convinced myself to get it. I bought it at premium and now I know I'm going to take a bath on it when I don't want it. And so what I want to do is try to get the Mac most I can for it when I sell it used. So I'll sell it, you know, try to sell it, you know, locally. So there's no fees, there's no shipping, there's no, you know, sales tax for them because there's no sales tax to the person buying it. They're willing to pay a little bit more because again, because, you know, that's the downfall when you're selling something for 100 bucks. Because it's 100 bucks and then whatever their sales tax is. So I tend to do that. However, there's some times where it's, it's just a difficult thing to sell. Like I told everybody, there's a strategy I used, I gave, I give it to my friends, I've given it to you guys. What I trade at Guitar center are usually things that are difficult to sell, like an off brand thing because Guitar center doesn't factor in difficulty of selling it. So you have to understand this, and I know I mean this. And if you go to a Guitar center and you have a bad experience with a salesperson buying to understand sometimes it can be that person. You could just go to a different guitar center or come back when a different shift is available and try a different salesperson. But what I'm going to try, what I'm trying to explain to you is, is that there are certain guitars that they don't sell very well. They're very hard or pedals or amps. And you, you can go online and you can just see it. You're like there's 10 of them on reverb and they've been taking a year and no one's budging on. You know, no one's buying them because no one's, no one's breaking to buy them. So sometimes that's a great. The product to take to Guitar center because no one really wants it. And so when guitar so what happens is in that case is everybody's asking a thousand, no one's selling it. But Guitar center might go off that number and give you 600 bucks. And I'll sometimes go, you know it's worth it. Because I would rather do that than let it sit for 6 months and then get 20 lowball offers anyways and then end up selling it for closer to what Guitar center was gonna sell for. But keep in mind, I've never, I would say never and I don't know for sure. For sure, right? But I just feels like never as a good. Feels right. I, I never sold anything to Guitar center and thought, wow, that was way better than selling it to a director. When it says money wise. Like I've never said, wow, they gave me 600 bucks. No one would have given me that. It's always, I could have got more. Like I said, the one thing that happens in my area and your areas might be different. So don't factor what I'm saying into your area. In the Phoenix area where I live, when you put stuff on, if I put stuff on Craigslist, I've tried it a million times, a million times, over and over again. I'll have something, let's say, I don't know, I'm trying to think of something like a PRSSE custom 24 and I'll go, wow, this thing sells all day for, I'm just throwing numbers, generic 600 all day long. So Guitar center is going to want to give me like 300, 350 bucks for it. Okay, cool. So I'll put it on Craigslist for 400 bucks going, why not? Why not just get an extra 50 bucks and somebody gets a smoking deal and I'll put it for 400 bucks, nobody will call me or if I do, I get two emails and it's always like, hey man, when you trade for a PV tribute something, I'm like, no, I don't want a PV tribute something. So it's sometimes it's, it's, it's just sometimes you have to do things. My big thing if, when I trade a Guitar center, it's always the most difficult stuff I have to sell and it's always because I have a lot of it. So just to be clear, because again, I'm always upfront about all this. I sold two times this year. I've sold the Guitar center both times. It was probably about 10 guitars each and about five or six amps each at a time. So I'm taking a, a truck. In fact, in Fact just actually really makes it make sense. I took a truckload to them, and then I would have. I. I only took a truckload because that's all we could fit in my truck. And that's why I did it, because it time wise, it would have took me a months and months and months to. To sell it one by one to you guys. And that's sometimes my problem. And that's. But that's a YouTube channel problem. And some of you guys that you just. You over collected, and that's. That's a problem too. I don't tend to over collect. I just appear to seem like I'm over collecting because it's hard. It's hard for everybody and I understand to disseminate when it's. I'm buying gear for the channel when I'm buying gear for myself. So. All right. Okay. Yeah. Mostly real key says, want to trade for a Saturday night special? That's funny. That's my favorite story when somebody wanted to trade me a gun for a guitar. So. And. I'm gonna say Nautilus 1753 says, hey, if you want to build a Delos HSS that gets the closest to the classic Strat using a Kezel pickups, what would you use? You'd use the Mark. Mark Keel's Jeff dad. He has a vintage strap pickup that works great. But also, keep in mind, you can send them any pickup you want, and they'll put them in the guitar. I think there's a fee now. I didn't know there used to not be a fee. And then, of course, they added a fee. So there's a fee now for that, but they'll do it. So you just send them the pickups and they put them in. But the Mark. Mark Kiesel has a vintage set of pickups that he. That they. It's called the Mark something pickups. I've tried them and I really like them. So the one thing I've done is a lot of experimentation with pickups with those guitars. So that would be my suggestion. So. Okay, you know what it's time for? I don't know what it is. Oh, this. And now it's time for this or that. All right, it's time for this or that. This week's this or that is. I hope it's gonna be fun. Let's see. I almost feel like. Oops, turn on the light. I almost feel like I don't want to use the Parker again, but I'm good. Okay, so this week's this or that is Tada. We gotta give it to the Mrs. The Mrs. Made me some not crappy looking things. So I said, so this was a, this was a, a Patreon feedback. We were talking about making an officially like a, a, you know, a professional this or that. And they said, no, we love that. It's a Sharpie and it's a mess. So I asked Sean, I said, well, you, when you do this, can you make it look not, you know, over the top crazy? So she did it just because otherwise I'm just really drawing us all the time. So it's a little bit nicer. So. Okay, so this or that. This week's this or that is going to be really fun. Okay, so what are we doing? We're going to start with a clean sound. I'm running a reverb pedal. Okay. So I'm using the Mr. Moto Jrocket audio reverb pedal. That's important in a second because we're going to compare clean and then we're going to compare some overdrive. The overdrive will also be again, the plexitone overdrive. So we will, we will start with clean. Let's start the poll. Okay. And. This, that. Okay. All right, so we'll start clean. You can start voting on clean if you want or you can wait until the distortion comes. What you're going to compare is this or that. You're going to tell me which one you like better and then we'll talk about what this or that is. We'll start with this because why not? So what is this? Okay, cool. I just want to make sure. I want to make sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Okay, let's go ahead and switch cameras and start the poll. And we'll start neck pickup on the guitar on a clean sound. Clean with some digital reverb. I know you're like, what do we listen to? Don't matter. Don't matter what you listen to. Just have some fun for a minute. Okay? This isn't scientific, this is fun. We're going to hear the clean and then I will switch and then you tell me which one you like. Here we go. Okay, now we're on that. Okay, here we go. Here's that. Okay. And now back to this. And one more time we're gonna go to that. Okay, so now we're going to go to overdrive. And again you're listening to the overdrive pedal. Okay. And this is this in overdrive. And then I'll switch to that. Here we Go. And now that. Okay, back to this. And one last time to that. Okay, so this or that. Now, I know I didn't give a vote yet, so let me do that. Let me do that. Give the vote. Hold on. It's really difficult to put the guitar in a stand. Okay, so let's. I'm gonna write my answer down. How to look. Okay, I did in green Sharpie. I know I didn't put it behind me this time, but, you know, that's fine. Okay, so I got my answer. I'll share my answer with you guys. All right, let's look at the poll. I know this is. I feel like this is going to be a tricky one because this was not first. You don't even know what the heck you're listening for. But ready? 59 picked this. We have three. 234 votes. Let's get to 250 votes. At 250 votes, I will share to you what this and that is and what you guys are picking. 244 votes. Six votes away. Come on, guys, let's do 250 votes. 250 votes. 247, 48, 49, 50. Okay, we're ending the poll. So what did the audience. What did you guys pick? Well, 58% of you picked this, 38% picked that. 4% picked none. I picked this. So we all. So we're. We agreed. What is this or that? Well, I got to show you two different things. First of all, I'm going to need this camera. It's a little. It's like a hard thing to explain. So what we were actually comparing today was amps. We were comparing 2amps. The reason is because somebody asked me a question about amps and how much they make a difference, so I thought, let's do this or that and find out. Okay, ready, everybody? This or that? What was this? And what was that? This was a two rock and that was the Boss Katana. So let's go to the pedal cam. And here we are. There you go. So, you know, I labeled them this or that now. So you guys know, if you notice, there's no microphone in the katana. That's because I'm running both amps into identical cabinets with a red back selection speaker. So they use the same speaker. Okay. So it was the Boss Katana in clean only, no reverb. That's why I use a reverb pedal. And the. The two rock studio signature 35 watt amplifier. And both running through identical. Friedman, let's go here. Here. Identical freedom look, look, you can see you guys if I turn it back on. Identical Friedman112 cabinets with redback selections. So. And then miked up the same way. So you guys picked. So what you guys heard was first the cleans, but not the reverbs. Because I thought, well, the. The two Rock has a spring reverb, a real one, and of course the Katana has a digital reverb. So I thought, let's be safe and let's just put a reverb pedal through both. So again, what's interesting about this is the game. It's a game. It's not scientific proof. Please don't try to. People like to plug holes through this. Like, this is where you messed up. What were the settings? What were the settings? I love that one. What were the settings? And I'm like, look, that's not what it's about. The question is, keep in mind, I'm trying to deceive you guys a little bit. That's what the game is about. I'm trying to. I'm trying. I'm sorting out two sounds that I think are good. And then I go, which out of the two do I like? You know, once I dial them as close as I think I like them together, then I try to pick which one I like. And then I try to see if you guys will pick the same thing. And so far we're picking the same thing. We've. We've disagreed a few times here and there as a. As the community hears things and how I hear things in the room. But it was kind of funny. The, The Arrowholic says, I feel like the two Rock dirty was a little boomy. Yeah, a little. I thought, a little. Funny enough. Here's what I thought. I thought the Katana was more articulate in every way, but it was absent a little bit of fullness. Right. And that was tough because I was eqing as much as I can and, and, and, but that's what I thought. But of course I agreed. I think the two Rock sound a little better. For reference, for funsies, let's reference. I think the 2 Rock has a street price retail of $3,800 or $3,600 to $3,800 versus this Katana's street price of about 350. 50 to 400. Because this is the 50 watt Katana. If I didn't say that, this is my 50 watt Katana version 3. So for this, the newest version in 50 watt mode. So the fact that you guys don't go, oh, My goodness. The, the fact that, that, that didn't sound horrible to this is. Tells you a lot. Again, this was a little fun game I like to play. I told you guys last week I thought I came with this idea because I was, I told you I was telling you when I was talking to some, some other friends who do YouTube. We always talk about the fact that every time you do any expensive amp, everybody goes, it sounds like my katana. Okay, well let's see. Does the two rock sound like a katana and vice versa. And, and the fact is that, look, the, the real embarrassment would be if you guys actually picked the katana over the, the, the as a whole, if you picked the katana over the two Rock. But obviously the majority picked the two Rock. But again, I would bet you if I redid this poll. How much did it really matter to you in sound wise? It was very little. And this goes back to the beginning of our show where I said this gear is really for me and the, the person creating the sound, not so much the audience. It's my job to make the best sound out of both as possible. Just like I said with a chef, it's their job to make the food taste as good. And you know, if they want to buy a $600 or a thousand dollar knife versus you know, a knife, they get it, you know, for three bucks at Walmart. You know, will you taste the difference? No, but it may make a difference to them. A lot of you say not worth $3,000. Yeah, I mean look, a lot, a lot of things ain't worth $3,000. So this is one of those things. Like I always think about this when we talk about expensive guitars. It's like no guitars worth five grand. Look, not a lot of things are. And so let's be, let's be clear. So there. So but yeah, that was funny. And I strategically picked those because of the extremity of it. I wanted it. I was like, I was, I picked the katana. I was like, okay, well, because Hana is the brought up thing. What's the most not katana thing I can get my hands on? And I thought, okay. And the problem was I didn't want it to be so drastically different, like a Marshall head or something in the katana. That's really not fair fight. Since both by the way. And, and just so you guys know, if you're familiar with two Rock, anyway, you know that this particular two Rock is actually kind of marketed as the ultimate or a fantastic pedal platform. So which is funny because when I'm using both amps. Whenever I use either amp, I'm using as a pedal platform. The two Rock is a visiting amp. So you guys know that's very clear. I buy amps sometimes for the channel to use for all kinds of stuff, or I'm using it for research for something or some other reason. But it's not. It's not necessarily something I purchased for myself to stay. You know, it's not my personal thing to do, so. But I really like the two Rock and I like the two Rock guys. They were very nice. So I bought this two Rock, and the store that sold to me used the file photo. They didn't use the actual photo lamp. And so when I got it, it looked slightly different. The knobs were different and stuff. And I was like, oh, that kind of sucks. I wanted the knobs in the photo, so I just said, screw it. I didn't want to complain to the store. So I sent two rocket things saying, hey, I like to buy the knobs because they're. They're. They're knobs. They're knobs modeled after what the Dumbles use. But they're smaller. I knew they were smaller. They weren't the full size knobs. And I was looking online, I couldn't figure out where to get them. And so I said, hey, can I buy a set of these knobs? And if not, could you just tell me where you sourced them so I can buy them? And then two Rock was very cool, and they said, we'll just ship you some. So they shipped me some knobs. So that was really cool. So that was nice. Somebody. Authority. Authority. 1. Wait, authority on everything says 2 Rock is a stupid name. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it comes from, so I don't know. So again, I. I stopped caring about headstocks and generally what guitars look like for the most part, and what amps and what names everybody uses. So I don't know. I'm sure two Rock means something. Okay, so on that note, we're gonna button up the show. I want to thank you guys all for a fantastic week on the. I know we didn't talk about the Fender lawsuit. I figured everybody needed a break from that. I sure as hell needed a break from that. We'll probably talk about it next week because I think you'll see some developments next week at least with information and stuff or at least other things going on. And so that might be something that. To talk about with that. So, you know, and so for those that I don't know. Want to update on that. And on that note, I want to thank you all for your time. Till the next time, Know your guitar. Know your guitar. Know your gear. Know your guitar gear. Know your gear and your guitar. I don't know. I'm never going to get it right. The know your gear podcast. It.