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The Know youw Gear Podcast the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon Members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode three. No, 4:35. 3:45. It's 3:45. 4:35. 4:67. Anyways. 6:7. Anyways, what are we gonna do? We're gonna talk about guitar stuff. This one is. Hey, Phil. Not sure if this is the right place. Hey, if this ain't the right place to talk about it, then I guess there's no right place. But I have a couple questions for the podcast Friday. First you see Gibson and purest selling guitars with high end maple flame tops. Why is it that PRS seems to get much better maple than Gibson? Question mark. Any thoughts? Question marks. Okay, so let's start with that one. You know, I have heard over the years, many, many years from many different suppliers, you know, manufacturers, I should say that they get the best tops always because they always say the same thing. I mean, not to dog on them because a lot of them, my friends, I'm gonna be dogging on right now, but hey, bust their chops. They'll give it back to me, I'm sure, later. Everyone always says I pay the most for my wood or I pay up front, cash or whatever. They always have some reason why their wood's the best. I buy the best wood or I have the best of wood supplier. What? I've experienced a weird experience like yours that happened to me a long time ago. When you're saying, hey, why is the PRS tops, maple caps, you know, nicer than Gibsons? I always thought that why were the Carven tops way nicer than PRs? Like, you know, PRs would talk about how they have the most amazing, you know, beautiful wood tops. And every time you get the Carven catalog, it was like every picture of every guitar looked like peanut butter, just that quilted maple and was gorgeous. And I was like, I don't know, why is the Carven guitars and the carbon guitars were way less than purs. And it never made sense to me. And now over the years, here's what I have come to kind of decide for myself based on, you know, let's just say a couple dozen or more factory tours, more guitars, you make the less pretty tops you're going to have out there, period. So to say, like if I. What if I said to you, to answer your question, that Gibson absolutely has tops as good as, if not better than Pure S. And so does Kiesel and so does, you know, nags and so on and so on and so on. But the problem is, is that they make, Gibson makes so many more guitars. That one, you're gonna see more duds than you would see because just the sheer volume, right? It's just like a car manufacturer that makes a lot more cars. You're gonna say, oh, why are always seeing that car particularly broke down? You're gonna go, well, they make a lot more of them. So even if their percentage was the same, you're just gonna physically see more cars. Same thing with tops. You're just gonna see more, better more better better tops and worse tops when there's a bigger volume of them. Plus there's that hierarchy to the maple caps at Gibson and prs, which is, you know, purs. It's private stocks get the best, then artists, then 10 tops, then, you know, just standard cores. Gibson kind of follows suit with that same kind of logic with, you know, the, the premium tops are going to go on the custom shop. So your custom shops will be better looking than let's say your production guitars. But in, in my experience with this is just, it's as simple as if they make less guitars, you're going to see more percentage of great tops because they can sort through the wood a little differently. I think when you see guitar companies are smaller than PRs, I think they have much better tops. I think PRs has much better tops than Gibson. And again, it's just a volume thing. Think about it like logistically, let's say you wanted a perfect maple cap, but you want 10 million of them versus 100,000 versus 10,000 versus 1,000 versus 100. It's, it's a lot harder to supply that. So that's kind of it. Plus also on a side note, just to give Gibson some credit because they probably deserve it, they're not really known for that. You know, Gibson wasn't, you know, PRS is one of the companies like see people give PRs a lot of credit because they don't have a memory past for some reason. 1990. You know, when you think of the glamorous quilt tops, the flame maple tops, I mean, sure, PRS was definitely the first one to kind of garn itself, you know, on, on a guitar magazine. But don't forget companies like Warrior and Hamer, there were some companies doing amazing, amazing wood tops before PRS was, was really pushing it. And, and PRS is definitely one of those companies. Like I said, they kind of push that as their selling point. Look at this beautiful wooden piece of furniture. Kind of look to it where you know, Gibson just has more even though it's expensive like anything else. It's more like an every players kind of guitar in the kind. Well look behind me like right now. Look at this May. This beautiful PRS maple cap guitar I have in the blue and gray versus this custom shop Gibson right here with this flame maple top. Just looking at them, huh? I don't know, maybe I need to. I'm gonna grab it. Hold on. Let's grab it. I don't know the answer. All right, let's take a vote. These are both. Now I'm going to show you which one, which top. So for those listening later, I'm just holding up two guitars. They're gorgeous maple caps. There's the PRS guitar right here in the blue and this beautiful Gibson Custom shop guitar. Now something to point out. This PRS is not a ten top, just a regular top. And this Gibson of course is, you know, got one of those medallion custom shoppy things on there. So let me know in the comments which one you think is a more gorgeous maple cap. Now don't grade the color or the brand. Be fair, you're anti Gibson. Anti PRs. Don't play that game. Just tell me which top you think looks better. And I obviously, I think the Gibson Custom Shop obviously top looks gorgeous. Yeah, Susan says it depends on the color. Yeah, I mean to me looking at them, I don't really get a hard line opinion on that. I would say overall I would expect to see PRS's with better tops. But again it's also their selling point over Gibson. Since Gibson standards tend to not have, you know, flame maple tops, they tend to have plain maple caps. Okay, he has a second part of this question which is really good. Let's see what it is. It is. I recently took my guitar to a tech that was fairly well recommended. When I went in to drop it off his bench. His bench. His bench was just a mess. Globs of solder everywhere, tools lying everywhere. And it was just messy Workmanship Workstation, not workmanship. Workstation. Do you have any tips as to what to look for when taking a guitar into a tech? Was I right to just leave? Is the reputation a final factor? Well, you know I'm gonna steal this from Shawna because she sent these questions to me because she, she already read them and she was going to answer them to you and then anyways she said go with your gut. I think that's Always smart advice. Always take that not only from a woman, but from a mother. You know, trust your gut. I think there's some kind of something in the universe. My friend who's a. Who's a hand surgeon says, always trust a mother. When it comes to, you know, what to do medically with kids. They just have this intuition. I'll go with it. He's a smart guy. I kind of trust that logic too. So she says, go with your gut. You did the right thing. But let me break it down into some logic that might help. I. I used to keep my workstation super clean. Have you guys been watching this channel long enough? You saw, the original workstations you saw were actually my workstations when I was a guitar tech at my store. And then, of course, then it became the. My workstation that where I had people come to me outside the store. And then, of course, now it's just for educational purposes only at this point. Either way, my stations were always super, super clean. You don't see a whole lot of garbage and stuff on my. On my. My bench. I don't put carpet on my bench. I don't want carpet at all. Because it. Because of that reason, solder gloves onto it. And I want to be able to have a clean, fresh station every time. So I use different pads. One for soldering, one for fretwork. Or anything that's going to have metal filing in it are what I call hard work. So anytime I'm doing any kind of really aggressive stuff, maybe sanding, anytime there's going to be particles in this mat. And then, of course, I have a clean mat for setups, because, again, I just don't want any of those things to scratch the back of the guitar. Couple things. First, I think I actually care about your guitar. So of course, I kind of took that as a, hey, I would want to trust, you know, I would want you to trust me with your guitar. I would want to trust somebody. If I was given my guitar, that was kind of my reason for it. But there's also a secondary reason, which is one damaged guitar would financially blow out my week if it was the right guitar. So, you know, imagine if you will, you know, just throwing some arbitrary numbers. What if you made a thousand dollars a week and you got a $2,000 guitar sitting on your bench and you damage it? That's your week. It's gone. At the very least, it's gone. You make nothing. You're gonna work all week for nothing. Because, you know, it's not like some Other repair, you know, industries where you, you make a lot more money and there's a lot less stuff to destroy. I mean, I understand some work, some repair industries are even harder than mine for sure. But I'm just saying you really can't afford to destroy anybody's product. But, but the other secondary thing is the reason why I keep my bench clean is I always thought, I don't want you to think that if something, if you like, let's say you pick up your guitar. Look, we're all the same. You pick up a guitar, you don't remember that scratch there. You don't remember that mark, you don't remember that. You know, it happens all the time. Did it always there? Especially by, you're like, was that always there? I just recently actually had that happen with a guitar where there's a little not chip, there's a little smoke, micro crack kind of in the finish of a neck of a guitar. And it's on the treble side facing towards the floor of the neck. And I'm like, was that there when I bought it? Did I not notice that? I just can't remember. And I looked in the case to see if anything happened or anything. And my point is, the last thing I would want for me to happen to me and of course is that somebody find that and go, whoa, was that messy tech with his crappy bench, did it happen there? Did he scratch it? Did he just drop his screwdriver? Because they didn't care. And I think that's why your work area should help there to build a rapport and also help kind of give the customer some ease a mind. I'm a little sensitive to this question because when I started on YouTube, I got a lot of grief for having clean areas. I never, never thought that would ever happen to me. It almost got to the point where I have to admit I wouldn't make my area a mess, but it's a little less organized than sometimes than I'd probably keep it because so many people commented negatively about how clean my work areas were. You know, like, why are your tools all put away all the time? And I'm like, well, this is just how I built how I'm going to work. I pull the tool out I need, I do the work and I put the tool back. I keep the areas clean. You know, if you brought me an expensive guitar, I not only keep it on the clean mat, I usually buy those Kirkland microfiber cloths, those yellow ones, and I will put brand new ones underneath the Bot the base of your guitar where it sits and over the cradle where they hold your neck. So I know, you know, your guitar never touched anything but a brand new clean cloth, you know, surface. And again, just because it's financially just really a mess for me, but also I think like I said, it makes you a little, a little nervous. And I think that's what you were experiencing. You went there and he probably does great work. You know, some people who work in a mess, it all makes sense to them. And that doesn't necessarily mean he does bad work. It doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad tech. It doesn't mean anything. And sadly enough, you know, it just. He lost a client because of that. But you know, hopefully, like you said, he has a great reputation. His reputation pulls people in. But even if a tech had a great reputation, I don't think if I, if I got a bad vibe, I will tell you this, and this is the hardest thing to say. I'm not going to give a percentage because I just don't know. I'm just going to say the majority, the, the, the mass, majority of experiences I've had in my life as a guitar player, taking my guitar to attack have been horrible. It's been one horrible experience after another. Every horrible experience you can think of, somebody overcharged me for basically doing nothing. They flat out lied to me. You know, I moved to Phoenix when I got out of the army because what happened was I was living in Tucson, I went in the army. When I got out of the army I moved to Phoenix because for the economy, you know, hey, let's maybe there's jobs here. And every, when I got here, every musician, first thing I did is I started jamming with musicians and you know, for fun. And every musician in town was like, this is the guitar tech to go to. He's the best. He does famous people. It's always like he does some famous person's guitar which I think is just a load of croc. Anyways, absolute worst, worst experience ever. I brought him, I bought a brand new Warwick base. Well, it was new to me, used I guess anyways. But it was a beautiful Warwick base that I had and it was the lower tier of the main Germany Warwick and I wanted to put some better pickups in it and I bought the pick. No, I'm sorry. If I would have bought the pickups. I went to his shop and he was like, I said, hey, I want to order these pickups and I want to, you know, put him in the space and Long story short, I dropped it off three months later. You know, I was like, okay. I waited. That's what sometimes you do. You just wait forever. You're like, you know, you don't want to piss them off because then they're notoriously known for putting your guitar in the back and not working on it. And I went into his shop after three months, and I said, hey, I'm just checking on my base. And he said, oh, I ordered the pickups. They sent the wrong pickups. And I'm like, oh, my God, they sent the wrong pickups. He's like, yeah, these were the wrong size. And I was like, how? How is that? How is that possible? They're just J based. They were two J pickups. And he's like, yeah, they sent me two. Two. And they don't fit. I'm like, okay. So I'm like, whatever, dude. Okay. And three more months went by. Then I started. I started calling him. When he would answer in his shop. By the way, this is a shop, and if you're in the Phoenix area, you know who this person is. Everybody knows who he is. Most famously, he shot his gun off in his store. In his shop through the. Apparently there's a hair salon next door. He shot the gun through the wall. There's an article, so you probably Google it and find it. Everybody said he was amazing. And every time I was having this experience where it's like six months and it's just a pickup swap, you know? And this is like, you know, you can imagine the pain. You guys all have it too, you know, this is the bass I have. I love it. I haven't even played it. I had it for a couple weeks, and now he's had it for half a year, you know, so what's funny is. What's funny is finally I called and called, you know, every couple weeks I'd call again, and finally he was like, it's ready. And I came in to pick it up. And I remember handing him my credit card, and he was like, can't you read? Which apparently I can't. I can't read. Is he making fun of me for not being able to read? And there was a sign under the counter, low, I guess I was too tall for it, that said, no credit cards. And I said, oh. I said, where should I get some cash? And he goes, try a bank. So I got in my truck and I drove up and down. This is so long ago. No gps, no nothing. Just driving up and down the street, all the way up, looking For a bank and our atm. And I finally found one, Got the cash, went and gave him the cash, got my base, and it wasn't even wired up correctly. But here's what's interesting about that. It was a horrible experience. And this is why I tell you the story. Not to share an experience of a tech that's not even doing stuff anymore. It's what I learned from this experience over the years. I would still hear people say, oh, he's the best. He's the best. Later, through time, you know, obviously, I started building bases. I started fixing things. I opened my own shop. I become a tech. I become backlogged. Still to that day, people would come in, and this is what would happen. People would come in and say, so. And so this person just ruined my instrument or screwed it up or halfway through it, refused to keep working on it because I upset him. And I would get those stories weekly. Horrible, horrible stories. And then what's strange about that is every week, I would also hear, he's the best. He only works on my stuff. He's amazing. He's like. No one does. Like, no offense. No offense, Phil. You just don't do work as good as him. He's the best. Hey, I like you, buddy, but he's the best. He did this. Look at what he did. And they would show me his work. It's amazing. It's amazing. And through time, finally, I demystified the mystery. This isn't the mystery we're gonna solve today, by the way, if he likes you, right? If he likes you, he does good work. And if he doesn't. And guess what I found out when I first went to him, I was working a corporate job. And because I had a corporate job, I had to wear slacks and a dress shirt and I think a tie. I think I was wearing a tie. I think you had to wear a tie. So. And he hate. One day, somebody says, he hates wannabes. He. And so if you came in and he thought you were a, you know, a hobbyist or a wannabe, which apparently I was, with my shirt and dress slacks, he just hated you and just wouldn't do good work. And. And then I heard that, and I'm gonna tell you right now, every time somebody came and told me story, not to hurt any of their feelings, when they were like, he's horrible, I'd look. I'd go look him up and down and go. That's what I would call wannabe. Like me not dressed right. Not the real deal. So go with your gut. Is what I'm trying to say. And that's why. And that's also to answer your question, why a guitar tech can have a great reputation and also be as shitty as hell. That is absolutely the truth. Trust me. The person who that guy shot at one day probably doesn't think he's a great tech and doesn't tell great stories. And so, yeah, that's. That's just how it goes. And it's a funnier story for local people in Arizona because everybody kind of knows him, and I don't know if he's still working on stuff or not, so. But it's just how it goes. There's millions of those stories in the biz. It's the only. It's a weird industry, right? I don't know. I don't understand it sometimes. But that hopefully answers your tech question. Good job. And also to the rest of Text, keep your bench clean. I think it's a good. I think it's a good business decision. So. And then the real RD says, what does the real deal dress like? I'm going to say, not like me. So. I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know. So. All right. I don't know. We got to. We got to move on. Do we got to move on? We just got to move on. All right. The Alexander wants to know, Phil, would you prefer a maple cap over veneer? I have no preference whatsoever. One of the confusing things that I've done to you and to myself, and I really am trying to rectify it over the years, is in a deep dive video. I point out things like, recently I just did the new Ibanez, and I'm like, hey, it's a three piece, you know, basswood body. And I used to just say that, you know, hey, it's a three piece body. This. And I would draw like I did this week, you know, with a Sharpie, just like, hey, this is where the parts are. Or, hey, this is a scarf joint. Here's the scarf joint. Or, here, this is a maple cap with a flame maple veneer. And I would explain this. And even when I did the Fenders earlier this year in January, I would say I did a. They took a YouTube short. I say, they. The. I don't know what you call our team. It's us as a team now. There's. There's a bunch of us now. And a lot of people are like, they think I was saying something negative. When I point those things out. I really. Just pointing it out for Your educational purposes. My only thing thought process when it comes to how many pieces of wood body has and how many. You know, whether or not it's a veneer or a real, real maple cap, whether it's a half inch maple cap or a quarter inch maple cap or a veneer, whether or not it's a scarf joint or a one piece neck, whether it's quarters on or flats on or whether or not it's, you know, multi laminate or not. My only thoughts on all that have to do with the price. In other words, I don't care as long as I'm not paying for something I'm not getting. So. And, and that's just, and that's really not something that's easy to, to write down and, and quantify. But what I mean by that is I wouldn't want to pay $5,000 for a guitar with a veneer top, a three piece body and you know, like a scarf joint. Not that a scarf joints. See, like I said, not that I'm saying any of those things are bad. In fact most of my guitars have scarf joints and I actually have no issues with them. I like them. I'm just saying if you're paying, you know, I guess kind of same logic with anything that I think is a luxury, you know, if I'm buying luxurious luxury items, you know, the best, you know, the best leather chairs. I wouldn't want to go to Copenhagen and buy a $6,000, you know, vinyl chair. I would expect that now it's going to be actual leather. You know, it's going to actually be made really well somewhere. So, so that's, that's only my thought process on it. So no, I don't really don't care about veneers and stuff. I have not experienced personally the, the magic that is if this is a one piece top with a nitro finish and a one piece neck that is somehow resonates and is more magical sounding than a multi piece body with a veneer and a scarf joint neck. It's, it's, it's. My argument is that usually the thing that's going to make the guitar the best is how well it plays. In other words, how, how well the action doesn't buzz. How well the string actually gets to move without being obstructed by anything. How much, how much the, how good the pickups are is a big part of it. So when I'm assigning things to a value to me for, for how well a guitar is like in quality, I'm really More assigning things to the way it plays, more so to the way it looks. I think veneers are great to. Personally, I think it's a great way to guarantee everybody gets a great top if that's what you're into. Interesting enough to give you a point about that. I purposely, I purposely have. I do not have great looking quilt tops or flame tops on most of my guitars. Now I just showed you two that do. But I mean like most of my guitars, like there's some washout on that pure sce over here I'm pointing at. And most guitars that I buy, if they do have a maple top, I, I don't really worry about it. And if you notice when I'm doing the videos again, somebody will go, I can't believe Phil didn't call out how ugly that piece of wood was. I actually like the imperfections in wood now because that means it's not a veneer. And it's again, not that I don't like veneers. It's just kind of like, hey, it lets you know it's a real piece of wood, you know, and because otherwise there's no reason with veneers not to have an amazing top on every guitar. If you watch that prsse video, which I hope you guys do. The factory tour, I just finished the Cortec one one and the patrons got the preview of it. It'll be edited a little bit, a little bit from what the patrons see. There'll be a little bit more added to it. Not so much removed, but added to it. But if you watch the SE Factory video that I did this week or last week was this week, I think it was this week. You know, they talk about the veneers and it was really interesting. I mean, basically, you know, veneers allow them to give everybody a beautiful looking guitar. So the argument though against just for you. So you have a, you know, just not just my side of the argument. Some arguments are that the veneers, again, you're just gluing that on and more sheets of glue stop the guitar from resonating kills, you know, and you know, that's, that's the argument. I really don't care. You can make a whole guitar out of glue, I wouldn't even care. So now when I say that as long as it sounded and played great, I mean that's ultimately what it is. You know, you pick things up and they play great or they don't play great, they sound great or they don't sound great. And I can't figure it out sometimes myself. Sometimes. A guitar that should be on paper magic just is like, okay. And a guitar that should be, you know, sound like a concrete block. Sounds good. So, you know, the argument that I've heard from the majority of people I respect in the industry, behind the scenes, secretly, without you guys knowing and not being videoed. Just kidding. Is that it really comes down to how well it's made, not what it's made of. And I think that's a great argument. I think that's, you know, if you gave someone who doesn't have a clue all the right components, right, they would put you together a really great component piece of crap. And if you gave somebody that knew what they're doing and knew how to build an instrument really well and you gave them some. You know, we talked about this once episode once before. One day we gotta get Paul Reesmith to do it. He said publicly. He said this publicly once, that he'd like to do a competition with, like, John sir and all these guys where they're forced to go to Home Depot and come out and build you a guitar from only stuff they get at Home Depot. And it seems a little, you know, clickbaity weird, but. But, boy, I really think it'd be interesting to see what they come up with if restricted. So, yeah, let's see. James wants to know. Hey, Phil, how about a podcast episode for us bass players? All right. I wouldn't even know how to do that. I mean, ask me a bass question. We'll talk about bass. Guitar players will let us talk about bass for like 10 minutes. That's the cutoff. And then they fade out. So. Okay, let's see. Oh, Alexander wants to know. Hey, Phil, when I bought a guitar, an affordable PV guitar at the end of the 90s, I was told that the maple top was actually photo print. Is that true? Yeah, it's called a photo top. Photo finish. Photo. Photo finish. Photo finish. Yeah. Just like, you know, if you're like me. If you're like me. I grew up. We never had real wood furniture. I don't think we have real. We have real wood furniture now, but we didn't have, like, all my furniture had. Was like vinyl right on. On particle board. So my dresser and stuff. And then what happened is this. The. The corners would always peel, and then you could see the particle board. And the vinyl was like a picture of wood. So every piece of furniture I grew up with had a. It was a picture of wood just glued to a particle board because that's what you could afford. I guess that's what my parents bought. And. And so. So Matt says photo Flame. Photo Flame, yeah. Photography finish. Photo flame. I think photo flame is correct, Matt. I believe you're correct. And so. Yeah, so same kind of logic, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't as easy then like it is now to make a veneer like they do now. Like I said, look at that. I just said, look it with a w. Look at that. Look at that. That prsse factory tour where Jack shows the veneers. And it's really crazy. They are super thin. I mean, super, super thin. And they have to be because you have to bend them. You know, they have to bend the contours of the top of the guitar and stuff. And that's how they vacuum down and bend them and glue them down. So. So, yeah, so before that, they would use essentially, you're right, like a decal. It was like vinyl, I think, some kind of, you know, material like that. I'm not really sure, to be honest. By the time, you know, you said the end of the 90s, by the time I got into playing guitar. For real. For real. Like, in other words, like, you know, in a way that any meaningful way, that stuff was gone. You just. I would hear about it. Fender was apparently notorious for doing it. They would. They would put a photo flame top on the. On the top of the guitar and then one the bot on the bottom. And then they would use like, ply plywood to make the guitar. And then they would airbrush, you know, the. The sides. So the sides would be dark and you can't see. And then it looked like it had real wood, but it was just a. It was just a photo flame. So. Yeah. Yeah. Dennis says the photo flames cracked a lot. Yeah, that would make sense. I. You know, what's sad is I'm sure I've seen a photo flame especially Offender. And I think Fender was more notorious for that actual photo flames. I'm sure I've seen some, but I just. I just. I haven't seen any like that. I can think of like. Oh, yeah, that was definitely it. I just know models were. What I remember the most was, is that older guys would tell me that veneers that I was looking at, like, schecters were photo flame tops. And I was like, no, this is a real top. And they go, you know, a veneer? And they go, no, it's. It's. It's. It's photo. It's a photo of wood. It's like A picture of wood. And I go, no, it's really a piece of wood. It's just really thin. And that's because they remember it went their way. And by the time I was involved with guitars in a real meaningful way, like I said, veneers had taken over. Irregular Star says, hey, Phil, why do you think there are so few options when it comes to solid body electric guitars with piezo guitar? Piezo pickups. What are your experiences with ones you've tried on custom fitted or custom fitted? Most of the time they don't sound great. That's the big thing. It's really a. It has a use, obviously, but it doesn't sound great, you know. You know, the most, the, the most I've ever installed of any of those is like the ghost systems always into Strats. Like, always a Strat guy trying to have a Strat that does it all right. Like a humbucker and then two single coils. They get the rock sound. They get their blue sound, you know, and then they get the acoustic sound and it, you know. And what I remember most was what you got was something that did everything mediocre and. But hey, if it worked, it's versatile, it's great, but, you know, it's tough. But that's the main thing. Main thing. Part of the other problem too is they didn't do it right, which is you're going to run it through some kind of acoustic preamp or into an acoustic amplifier of some sort. But they don't sound great. I own a bunch of guitars that have that. My Parkers have it. I have two PRSs with it. I have a music man with it with the piezo in the electric guitar. What else do I have? I have a keel that has it. And what I've kind of weirdly learned is semi hollow guitars and the more hollow the guitar, the better. Tend to sound more acoustic with that transducer pickup than solid body guitars. And that's probably just how the string resonates. Just how the string moves. Something about maybe the hollow just makes the acoustic. The, the string have more of what's. What I, what you detect is it acoustic sound. That could be it. Who knows? But yeah. 60 seconds says piezo pick. Electronics were the rage in the 90s and the early 2000s. It was huge. It was. I was. I mean, because it became a thing that everybody was like, I could have it all. I could have it all. Every sound ever. So I don't know if that's. Is that gone? Not that, just that Whole, like, if you think about it, for the longest time ever, everything was about having every sound. Like, when you think about the line six, kidney Bean. When you think about, you know, guitars with, you know, synth in them, you know, in the roll in pickups and stuff, you know, and coil splits, coil splits and coil taps. Everything was about, you know, having it all. You could have every sound. It was almost like the industry decided that we were all wedding. We all played in wedding bands, and we needed every sound to every song. We were gonna do everything from, you know, we never. You never know what the bridesmaid's gonna request. You got to be able to do everything right. Grooms are gonna be like, play Metallica, and the bridesmaids are like, play. Play Cyndi Lauper. And you got to be able to go through. You got to play, you know, Cyndi Lauper ballad, and then you got to go right into a Pantera cover. You need every tone available. And it seemed like that was a driving point forever. And what's funny about that is you could say that modeling with the Axe effects and the Kempers is about that now, but it's really not about that. It's about getting different tones but not the actual sounds. What I mean by that is, you know, having an acoustic sound, having a Strat sound, having a Les Paul sound, having a. A 12 string sound, you know, right? Like a Brickenbacker having all those sounds versus just having like a Marshall tone and offender tone and a Mesa boogie tone. I think those are two different kinds of thought process. And I think. I think, personally, I think what we learned is when everybody chased down that. That. That road, they found exactly what I was saying, which is they. You can't have it all, you know, and if you need it, it's great. In fact, that's how I end this little part right here. I actually think that's the end. The lesson learned here, if you need to be able to play 12 string in one song and the next song play an acoustic, and the next song play Pantera cover, and the next, you need, you know, a Telecaster tone. If you need all this stuff, I understand it, it makes total sense. But if you just want it, because you just want it, what I'll. What I'll tell you is you'll never use it. And the reason is, is because what I learned, just because guys would buy that stuff or have me modify guitars for them. If you have 30 guitars and you're. You don't have a real purpose to have to need 30 different guitar sounds like on stage, quickly. You're never going to play the fakey thing. You're going to play the real things. You're going to grab your real 12 string and your real acoustic and your real. You know, that's just my two cents on that. So. Yeah, but I mean, you know, I think this was all the rage. Remember when the Variax were huge and then of course, you know, Fender had one, everybody was doing it. Hmm. This, this question is. Hey, Phil, why do you think PRS does not make gloss black core guitars? In fact, they only have the model in S2 line, if I'm not mistaking. Well, I'm sure. Here's what I'll tell you just to make it easy for you. They absolutely did, did do black gloss guitars in the core and the ces. Absolutely. So they. That they did that. And I remember one year. It's a funny story. This is a funny story. If you guys remember when Sweetwater, back before COVID used to do the. What do they call that? The gear thing. Gear Fest. For real. Right back when it was real. So basically it was like two days or one day, it was like a Saturday. And they'd have all the vendors come and they'd sell, you know, SM 57 microphones for like 50 cents or whatever, and they'd, you know, give away stickers and picks and stuff. And. And you would have smoking deals and the ven. They would blow out. In fact, that was the main thing, by the way, if you guys don't know this little, little top secret stuff. You know, we had Gear Fest for the longest time. They would do that every year and it was very expensive for them to do. Not only physically, you know, for employee costs, but also just physically doing it. But it had a purpose, which is to blow out all the gear that wouldn't sell. And then Covid came and so they started doing like a digital version where they'd invite YouTubers. As you know, I went to one of them and a lot of people thought, oh, okay, when Covid goes away, they'll bring it back. And they really never brought it back the same way. And a lot of people have, you know, some misconceptions of why. The main reason why they never brought it back was they really don't have to blow out gear like they used to. First of all, sales have been way stronger for them than they've ever been before. But. But also they're very smart and more strategic about what they buy because of analytics, you know, the analytics they have. So What I'm trying. Why I told you that long story is to tell you this one year, I think it was 2019, I think it was the last year of the gear fest. If you went to the PRS booth, it was hilarious because they had crap, tons of black core guitars that they couldn't sell. And the reason. So you're asking the question, so why don't they do it? I don't know. If they're not doing anymore, I'm gonna tell you what happened. So no one would pay full price for the guitars. And I. Everybody uses the same math, which is like, oh, okay, a custom 24 in gloss black. Well, that should be like a thousand dollars less than the flame maple top. And PRS Logic was, no, it's the same price. It's the same, same, same. And because there was no discount for it, you know, they wouldn't do it. So more they did it and people wouldn't pay it, pay it. So I just remember Sweetwater got stuck with a crap ton of them. So they just. I remember the booth was like. It looked like the PRS booth was in mourning. It was really sad. It was a sad booth. It was like. It's. It's like you almost thought, like, what did. Why did PRs. Because the people didn't know that PRs didn't bring those guitars, that they were just there and. And then they were using the guitars that Sweetwater has. So it's just kind of funny that they're all black, tons of black guitars. So that is the reason for that. Okay, so the good news is this. Absolutely. You can call any real decent PRS dealer and tell them whatever PRS core guitar you want in gloss black, they will absolutely order it for you. They will absolutely probably get it for you. When I say absolutely, I mean, I can't imagine they're gonna say no, but you're gonna get no discount for it whatsoever. So you're gonna pay full price for the guitar to be black. Okay, we have this one. What do we have? This is from clan of house cats, who said, hey, thank you, Ace. He says, for inspiring all of us guitar players to pick up the guitar. I feel like we were all just getting over what happened to Ozzy. So if you guys didn't hear, Ace Freely passed away this week. I didn't get to see how old he was. The Ace. This is always tough. You know, we lose these legendary guitar players and Ace Freely, I never seen him. You know, I. I saw Kiss once, and it was the version of Kiss where It was just Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons and that's it, you know, And I don't even remember the two other people. I apologize. I just don't remember them. I. I don't even think. I don't even. I don't even know if when I saw them, those guys weren't just like stand in studio musician guys or if they were some kind of unofficial or official part of the band. I just don't remember. So I don't have a real. I don't have a memory of Ace Freely. So you guys know. What I remember about Ace Freely, besides, you know, the makeup and, and the look is that he's a great guitar player. I remember that. I thought. I remember his, his Les Paul had the, the dual cream DiMargio pickups. Does that sound familiar? Am I totally mistaken that I just. And I, I know it had smoke. It shot smoke out. Like, that's the thing I remember. It's like, oh, my God, his guitar has smoke come out of it. It's like crazy. And yeah, it's just. It's horrible losing these amazing talents. For sure. For sure. And yeah, my heart goes out to his family and, and you know, play a, play a Kiss song this weekend for him. That's definitely something you should do. Honor him in the best way you can. Nathaniel says, hey, Phil, I love the channel. Thank you for the compliment. He says, thanks for all you do really appreciate the honesty, integrity in your reviews. Hands down, best YouTube guitar channel ever. That. Did you just want to just say thank? That's nice. I'm waiting for the question. I'm like reading. So you know, Nathaniel, first of all, thank you so much. Like, heartfelt. Thank you. Second, sometimes I realize there's something wrong with me because I was reading it. I was waiting for but. So you've noticed that when I was reading, I was. I was waiting for a comma where it's like, but. So thank you for not having a but and just saying a nice thing. Okay, but he's got more. He says, ordering my first Keezel on Black Friday. Any common mistakes to avoid with custom guitar? Torn between the Osiris delos or headless delos? Never had. Hello, headless. Is that a bad idea for my first Kiesel? Do you ever miss not having hss? So, okay, couple things here. First of all, I kind of think Kiesel kind of dominates in the headless category. So if it's really a. If you like headless guitars, I think it's going to be hard for you to not like one of the guitar keels because their variety is really great. And they just. I think they do a great headless guitar. They're my favorite headless instrument. However, we're going off the assumption you don't know because you've never had one. It is a different animal. You know, it's. It's a. It's. It's tricky. I will tell you, though, that I really believe that Kiesel will become a timeless instrument in the headless category. And what I mean by that is I think Gibson and Fender, obviously, and now we're seeing PRs kind of float in there, become these timeless instruments where it's like, you know, 10 years ago, it doesn't matter. 20 years ago, it doesn't matter how old it is. In fact, older is better. You know, where some companies are really about the newest thing, and I think what happens is they just become more iconic. And I think that Kiesel's really kind of found a niche with headless. I'm not going to show it to you because I'm doing a video, but I just got a new headless Keisel. It was actually mistakenly in my Ibanez video. So if you guys saw my Ibiz video, it's right. It's behind me. And just to tell you, I. How literally I can just not pay attention. When I came in, I filmed that whole video and then I did the last part in this room and I came in and I just never. I just blocked. Must have blocked that. It was right there. And I was like, oh, well, I guess that got leaked out. So anyways, so. But I have a video talking about that and why I picked it. So that's. That's my thoughts on that. I. Headless is definitely a strong candidate. Mistakes buying online. I think the biggest mistake since keys will neck profiles like the way the car feels in the back. It's pretty standard where you go thick, thin or regular. It's gonna be. They're so close to other. I don't think it even matters. I think the real problem for a lot of players that I've talked to is the. Is the radius of the fretboard. And so I would not get adventurous. I did one keyzel guitar build out of all the builds I've done where I picked a radius that was not my typical go to thing. And it's the one guitar. Even though I love the guitar, I love the way it looks, I love the way it sounds, and I like the way it feels. That one negative is I almost did it twice. I almost thought, like, maybe I'll just pull these frets, reshape the fretboard and throw the frets back on. Because I was like, did I pick the wrong radius? But I've kind of learned to love it, right? So I would pick other radius that you're most familiar with, if that means anything. And then to your second part of your question is, how do I miss not having hss? I have hss. I just don't have it in my kezel. So you gotta understand, like, you know, one benefit of having multiple guitars is when I have my delos done, it's like kind of like, oh, I have a single. A single, single, single Strat. I have an HSS Strat. And now I have this HSH Keezel, you know, that I use. But I do have another Keisel Delos that we'll call prototype right now that I'm messing with. You know, it's just another delos and it has a HSS pick card that I've dropped into it. And I'm messing with because I do kind of think about having HSS version as well. But it'll be different. It'll be a different HSS than what you're thinking of. But I. I love hss. This is probably my. One of my favorite. My favorite go to instruments is S. Hss. Okay, this one says happy good thing. Says hey. To his credit, PRs Jack Paul Reed Smith. Jack. So I think he's talking about Jack Higginbotham. Seemed to look. Wait, I have no idea what you're saying. To his credit, prs Jack seemed look a tone with tone with realist. Find something good and use it. Love the show. I think I know what you mean. I don't know what you mean, but we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out before we go, I think. Oh, perfect. Great. Thank you. Enrico says, hey, why do players say there's a difference in feel between fretboard woods? Perfect example is, I was just playing a maple fretboard. Well, it's because usually the way their fingers feel on it. So some people like this. Usually when you have maple, it's either going to be sanded really smooth or in this case, this maple has a polyurethane finish on it. Sometimes, of course, it has nitro. It's nitrocell lacquer. But either way, it's finished. There's a finish. That's why it's glossy. So this feels slippery to some people and sticky to others. Depending on how well you do with either, you know, glossy back necks or satin necks or unfinished necks. Same thing with fretboards. Some people don't like that you can feel the grain in a rosewood fretboard sometimes, you know, they just don't like that. You can feel like all the little fibers of wood underneath your fingers. So that's what they're, they're noticing. It really depends on whether or not your fingers, you push down hard enough for your fingers to rub on the fretboard or, and, or you have frets that are tall enough or short enough. So I could argue for fun that when you say, hey, I don't like the way this fretboard feels, I'll say, hey, you don't like having really low frets, because if you have tall enough frets, you wouldn't feel it for the most part. You still kind of glide over it a little bit. But I, I do have a preference, and it's really just, I don't like it to feel like I've gotten rosewood sometimes where the, the fibers were just really, just really far apart and it feel too rough. So I buffed it. I'll buff my fretboard out. So you can buff fretboards. Fenders known for buffing their rosewood fretboards as well. You just buff the fretboard. Susan says she likes ebony. Same thing, ebony, tight grain. Feels really good. I like it as well for that feeling as well. So, okay. All right, here's one. Any idea which way used guitar prices will go in the short term? Buy low, sell high. That's all I can say. I want to rebuy a mid 2000s Gibson that I regret selling. My, my strong opinion, even during the boom, I was getting deals, sure. Did I buy to, you know, over buy, sometimes pay too much. Sure. But that wasn't the market. That was me. You decide, you decide what you pay, not the market. You know, and when I say that, I mean you, you just trust me. Somebody's out there. This isn't, Look, I, I, this isn't like the housing market. I don't, you know, that's a different world. This is a small commodities market, I should say, where basically there's always an opportunity for whatever you're looking for. So I would say, you know, the sad part is, is if the prices come down as a whole, that's probably not, not going to help you too much anyways. You just want to be strategic with what you're buying. I do it all the time. I did it the other day. I saw A guitar. I thought the price was okay. I thought if it's a little better price, maybe I'd buy it. I thought it could be a good video. And so I messaged them and I said, hey, you know, oh, no, that's actually not true. You know, that's not what it was. It wasn't a price thing. It was a clarifying question. He had a good deal on it and I thought it'd be a good video. And I had a question. I sent him the email, the question, and then while I was waiting for the answer, it sold. So I don't regret it because since my question was never really answered, I don't if it wasn't what I thought, you know, if it didn't have the thing I thought, then it wouldn't matter to me. So again, I guess my point is if you want a mid 2000s Gibson, you look for them, you hunt for them. You hunt a lot. You know, you will find them. I look every day. So, you know, all of my guitars that I have that are, that are important to me, that I did things that I've always wanted, I just hunted for them forever and ever and ever until one made sense. And sometimes makes sense is not. It's cheap, super cheap. Sometimes it's in the condition I want, sometimes it's the color I want or the weight I want or what I want. And it's not about the price. And sometimes it's absolutely about the price, you know, so it's. Yeah. So the my point is, is I wouldn't worry about the market, good or bad, when it comes to just finding your deal. You'll find your deal no matter what. There's always a. There's always somebody who has something. And keep in mind that's why trading is important in this part of, this part of our world, the industry. You know, the best deals I ever got on guitars as a whole, the majority is trades, the best deals. Because here's why the best deals I ever got were with friends. And with friends, they tend to take care of you and I take care of them. But, you know, you want to be fair. And one, sometimes the best way to be fair is trade things because, you know, it's a perfect example is like, you know, hey, if a good example this actually happened, like, hey, there's a guitar and it's worth $2,500. And I'm like, ah, just $2,500. And you know, and if they take $2,000, that's not fair to them. They could get 25. But obviously they want to give me a deal because I'm their friend. But obviously they don't want to sell it for cheaper than they know they can get. And so one of us has to either have to pony up. So you could come with a fair price and say 22.50, and I suffer a little bit, and he suffers a little bit. We're both happy. Sure, you could do that. But a lot of times what happens is like, well, why don't I find something that you really want? And. And. And I trade him that. And when I say that I want you to be. I want to be very clear when I say trade. Yeah. A lot of times, because I have it, I'm like, yeah, I'll trade you something. Half. Sometimes I just go find what they want. I've done that multiple times. You know. You know, I've. I've. I'm not a. I'm not a. I'm not ashamed of this, what I'm about to tell you, but I'm not super proud of it. But it's maybe twice in my life, for sure. Twice. Because I can think of the two instances somebody on Craigslist would post something like. And I'll give you a good example. So it doesn't get exactly out. Let's say they'll go, hey, I have a. I'll use a Warwick bass. I have a Corvette standard Warwick bass that they'll sell for fifteen hundred dollars or trade for an American Deluxe jazz bass. And I'll go, oh, I can get my hands on American Jazz Deluxe bass for, like a thousand bucks. So I would message them and be like, what color are you looking for? What are you looking for? And they tell me. And then I would go find that bass, because that bass was easy. Like, I can that. And so you just find it. And then once you find a couple, you go, okay, what will you take? And you're just trying to think of this. I already know the war book base is $1400. So if I get for 1390, I'm saving 10 bucks, right? So I'm like, could you take a thousand? No. Will you take 1050? No. 1080? Sure. Done. And that's how you get the Warwick. For 1080, you go, okay, I have this base, and I'm gonna trade. In fact, in that particular case, which is not exactly what I traded for. I took a picture of it. It was at a store. I took a picture of it. I sent it to the guy. I'm like, would you trade for this? And he's like, yeah. And I go, okay, I'll buy it. And I took it to him and we traded. So, in fact, I think the funny story was I bought at the music store, and then I had him meet me in front of that music store. But anyways, I'm just saying, look, this is a luxury guitar playing. You know, we're very lucky to be spending our afternoon on Friday talking about it, and very lucky to have it. And whatever your guitar is, whether it's a hundred dollars or it's $100,000, whatever you. You have that makes you happy, it's expensive to you. It's always. It's every instrument I've ever bought my whole life has been expensive to me, no matter what the price was, because it's always been relative to whatever I could afford at the time. And what's the saying? Like, you know, champagne tastes with a beer budget. Jeez, that's me for no matter. No matter what. Because I'm so passionate about this. It never changes. There's no amount that I go, oh, I finally make enough money, I can buy the thing I want. No. What happens is everything just seems so ludicrous because the prices keep going up. So if I can't figure out a way to buy it with a clean conscience and feel good about having it, you know, I just don't do it. But in your case, I would say you'll find the deal. Like I said, your money will run out before the deal is due. Is a great saying. I like to say it all the time. So Dale wants to know, can I use Turtle Wax or can he use Turtle Wax or a similar product to fill in smaller scratches in Nitro Finish? I have no idea. I'm not a finished person, so I don't know. I can probably reach out and see if I can find that answer from somebody I know, but I just don't know the answer. Sorry, buddy. Let's see. Jeff says, hey, Phil, I'm moving to a small place. Lacking. Lacking in places to easily get small repairs. Work done. What's the best way to learn setup and simple repairs? Well, I mean, obviously, I got videos. There's tons of videos on YouTube. Videos on YouTube are very, very good. But I will tell you that the best skill comes from getting yourself in a situation that you have to get out of. It's weird. Before, there was instant, easy instruction everywhere. Okay. Which, by the way, just. This is a way of thinking at this. Instead of watching, like, a how to video and then doing it step by step. One of the things I would recommend is trying to figure it out and then using how to videos to get yourself out of the. Out of the situation you've created. Because what happens is, is I think a lot of times, you know, your fear is that you're going to mess something up. And I've really. I've really learned that messing something up is how you learn the most. Because now you're in a position, and maybe it's not good advice. I don't know. And now that I'm saying out loud, it sounds like horrible advice, but it's something I've done so much in my life, you know, I'll take it apart, and I guess I'll have to figure out how to put it back together. And if anything, I feel more emboldened to do that with. Now I have the access to the Internet to go. Well, if I can't figure it out, I'm sure I can figure out someone who figured it out and learn a little bit from them. But I think when it comes to a pair of, I think trying it. Now, should you try things with your most cherished guitar? I don't think that's a good, good plan. Right? But taking a guitar, an inexpensive guitar, which is. There's plenty of them out there. I mean, that you cannot. You cannot, you know, used to not be able to buy that kind of experience and knowledge so cheap. The information is relatively inexpensive. Now, most cases, it's free. Okay, in most cases. But really, the thing that was always expensive was just having the practical ability to get the tools and the, you know, obviously, like the. The. I want to say cadavers isn't weird. You need a cadet, you need a cadaver. You do need a guitar to. To, you know, kind of learn your experience on. And I think Ralph might have said this on a podcast years ago when he came on once he ratted me out. This is a true story. So when Ralph decided he was gonna learn how to repair instruments, he came to me and said, hey, I want to learn how to repair instruments. And I would teach him a few things, like, literally a few things, like, here, you do this, you do that. This is simple things. And then almost like a Mr. Miyagi moment, he's like, okay, I want to learn how, you know, to do setups. And so I took. You'd have to ask him for sure. I think 20. I think it must. Had to be at least 10. Could have been 20. 20 brand new in box Squire bullets, which at the time were $99. Apiece. We paid $67 each for them, dealer cost. And I took them all, stacked them up, and I said, set up every single one of those guitars and come to me with questions. And he did them all and he got really good. And so that taught. He'll tell you, to this day, he's like, you know, he could have sat there and I could have just taught him stuff and taught him stuff, but he said, you know, that's what would happen. He'd work on him and he would come to me and every time, it was almost like a crisis, hey, this broke off. And I'm like, oh, that's easy. We can glue back on. That's easy to fix. And then we just fix it. So I would say that's my advice, always is. My advice is to do, just to do stuff. Get yourself inexpensive guitars and, and just do it and, and watch some videos and then get some, get some basic tools. Don't worry about what they cost. It doesn't matter. Keep in mind, good quality tools make your job easier, they make it faster, and they sure as hell last a lot longer. None of that stuff matters in the beginning. There is the saying, you know, buy ones, cry once. So buying better tools is a good investment if you want to do so. I recommend it highly. But I understand if you, if you want to keep it on the, on the cheap, as we've all done when we're starting out. Robot Shlomo. Hey, is there one guitar brand that may play and sound great, but you can't get past the way it looks? For me, that's Yamaha. It just doesn't seem like they got cool. No. You know, I don't care anymore. I used to, I used to care, and caring screwed me more than anything. Every brand that I love, the way it looked, sounded, sound like ass. To this day, I collect guitars that are esthetically pleasing but sound horrible. And I don't like them. I'm not gonna shame the brands. You probably could figure it out because I keep buying them. I buy them, they're like wall art. I get them and I go, this thing sounds like cardboard. Like it just doesn't have any, anything going for it. And I, I told you everything. Like every guitar. When I, when I was, when I was starting out guitar, I got the fake looking Strat guitar. Mine was a JB player. And I thought it looked horrible. It looked like, you know, I thought the Strat was the ugliest thing ever. It looked like something that your grandpa played. And I was like, I was Trying to be cool by the way. Not for girls. I didn't even think about that. I was just thinking like I just wanted to be cool. Who doesn't want to be cool? I was like, maybe this will make me cool. No, I'm not sure. I just wanted to play guitar and I. And I wanted to feel cool playing guitar and that guitar just did not make me feel cool. And, and all the guitars that I thought looked cool, I would get them and I didn't like them. I didn't like the bridge, it was too weird. Like, you know, or I didn't like the neck, it was too thin and it didn't sound the way I wanted. And I would just force myself for years this would just go. I would go down this road forcing myself to play things that looked cool that I. And then you would pick things up. And I use. A perfect example is the sg. The SG on paper. If you look at the majority of my guitars, they are a little thinner bodied, they're light on the lighter side. The neck plays pretty easy like a 60s style Gibson neck. The humbucker sound a little full. I mean on paper. And SG is like, it's like I did a video long, long, long time ago and it was talking about how to buy the perfect guitar, right? And the way you. And this is, this is how you know if you're, if you have a, if you're conscientious and you sell things for a living, you do tend that to worry about, you know, whether or not you help people in the best way. It's just something you know, you think about. And so when people come into the store and they. I would have to sell them a guitar, I would want them to buy the, the best guitar for them. And. And so I kind of learned a philosophy and that's why I taught it in that video. I'm talking about real quick now on how to help somebody pick the perfect guitar. And the way you do it is you write down as many things as you can as quickly as you can about what matters to you. Don't think about it, right? Just go name something that matters to you. I'll give you example. Guitar stays in tune. That matters to me the most. If a guitar doesn't stay in tune, I get really irritated, right? You could almost see it when I was playing that telly a second ago and I felt like one of the strings route, you just see like I'm just look, there's a reason why I have clip on tuners on every headstock and Everybody goes. They look. They look horrible. I go, I don't care. I don't care. Because I just don't want to be out of tune. Right? It's horrible. It's a horrible feeling. You're like. When I'm out of tune, I can't figure out if my playing sucks or it's the guitar. I want to know, like, you know, I want it as effortless as possible. I want to keep my stress down. I want to keep the enjoyment optimized. So I care if a guitar stays in tune. Maybe you care if a guitar looks good. Write that down. Maybe you care if a guitar has a tremolo arm. Maybe tremolo, that's important to you, or you hate that. That's important. You write that down. The guitar sounds like Le Zeppelin, or the guitar sounds like the Ventures, or the guitar sounds like, you know, Pantera. Write that down. Here's my argument. If you write down enough things, whether it's a six or seven or ten things, you know, it stays in tune. It sounds like this band that I like or this music, or it can make this kind of music. I want. It has either hardtail or tremolo. That matters to me. It has this style of pickup. In other words, it has the ability to have single quill tones, or it just has fuller sound. It's light, it's heavy. It feels good on a strap on my shoulders, or it feels good in my lap. Write that down. Be honest with yourself. You write those things down. I tell you why you do this. You go in a store and you pick up a guitar, and this is what happens. I've watched it a thousand times, and I still can't explain the logic to it. That happens only in stores, but it happens. Everything that didn't matter to you matters to you in the store. And everything that mattered to you, you're not paying attention to. You'll go in the store and you'll be like, but I don't like the way it looks. You're like, what, was that on your list? No. If it was, then maybe. But that's not what I experienced. I. They'll go. They'll play the guitar and they'll go. They'll put on their list, it stays in tune, and it doesn't have a tremolo, and it has single coils. And. And. And it's light. And they'll pick up a guitar and they'll go, man, this looks cool, but it's heavy. And it kind of doesn't stay in tune, and it Has a tremolo. I'll take it. Or this is actually a crazy thing that people do. They'll go into the store. I've heard this advice. It's shit advice. Have a budget, have. Don't have a budget. Have a list in your head. Write it down on a piece of paper, put it on your phone. Remember it. Here's why I say that people will pick up a guitar and they'll go, this is good, but it's only $300. And I was gonna spend five. So what do you have for like four? Because now your brain's going, I'll save 100 bucks, but I'll get something a little nicer than three. And I would say, well, you put on your list, it stays in tune. It does. It's light. You put that on your list. It looks cool. It does. It doesn't have a tremolo. Great. It has single coils. Yes. And it's $200 less. It's the right guitar. Why are you trying to find another guitar? If it meets. If it's right? And so like I said, I've learned this list that really help you. And what. What you'll learn is, is that you do. Some time goes by. You don't need that list. Every guitar player just inherently just understands it. So to answer your question about guitars that are ugly, I used to care about that. I just don't anymore. I can tell you right now. And I. And again, this is where you get in trouble. But I'm just, you know, I'll get in trouble today. I lose a couple of subscribers. It happens every week. Anyways, I think PRS is ugly as shit. I always thought they looked like old people's guitars when I was a kid. Carlos Santana. He's an amazing guitar player, but he was older than my dad, as far as I know. I have no idea if that's true. I just know when I saw him, Guitar World magazine, when I saw Carlos Santana for the first time, I thought, oh, my God, that guy's older than my dad. He's playing guitar. I don't know if that's true. I'm just telling you what I thought. I thought that was ugly guitar, okay? And so I was not a PRS guy. I thought Gibsons were ugly. You know who played Gibsons? When I was a kid, guys in biker bars played Gibsons through pbs. Like I said, I kind of grew up like, you know, I started playing guitar in 89, and then here's what happened. The cool metal looking guitars that's what looked cool to me, but I didn't like the way they sounded and played. And then that whole genre just got wasted by the grunge movement. But that doesn't matter. What matters to this is that over time I would focus on these things like the looks. And I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't. What I'm saying is your question was, do I? And I'm explaining to you why I gave up. The guitars behind me are representative mostly of let's play. Let's play a game. For most of my life, if 70% of how long I've been playing guitar, I thought PRs are ugly. There's one right there. 70% of my life or more, I thought Strats looked lame and boring. There's another PRS I thought that was ugly. The Jazz Master, I thought was a disaster. That ugly. When I say ugly, I mean this beautiful. That 80s looking metal thing with the orange pickups and the green keisel. I custom had that made because I think that's, that's what I think is cool. I think it looks like a sports car and it looks amazing. The Firebird, I thought was ugly. The Warlock, first time, I thought it was cool. Then I thought it was lame and old and you know, because then it got, you know, it was outdated. But then I thought it was cool again. It's cool again, right? And El Dunrido says, beast rich smells like Lita Ford. You know what's funny is. Can I just tell you a funny story about this? I. I wanted a. I wanted a BC rich with. Is it the reverse headstock? Is that what that is? A reverse? Let's take a look. I gotta look. When Lita4's video came out, Kiss Me Deadly, she would pound. It looked like in the video she was pounding the headstock on the floor. And I remember thinking like, I want to do that. So I don't remember if it was reverse or not reverse. I just remember all I wanted was whatever that was. But anyways, like I said so to at some point, just like with gnl, the headstock's ugly. I got to the point where I just don't care about that. And now when you ask me, and this is a hard question to ask or answer, what headstocks do I like? And I know we weren't talking about headstocks, we're talking about guitars, but I just want to do headstocks. I don't know if I actually like any of the headstocks in this room. So isn't that funny. I don't. So, like I said, it's just weird. There's guitars I, I like, sure, more than others, but it's just, it just became less of a thing for me and just more of so. But I understand if you guys can't get past it. Robot Shlomo, if you're like, hey, man, I can't get past it, I understand it. The question is, is there a guitar so ugly I wouldn't own? I don't know if that's the question, but we'll just do that. Is there a guitar so ugly I wouldn't own? No, there's a guitar that's so awkward I wouldn't own it. So, for instance, if a guitar shape was just too weird or if it was too weird, I just wouldn't own it. Because, again, on my list, comfort is absolutely on the list. So comfort is really important to me, how it feels when I play it. It doesn't poke me. It doesn't make me think about anything. I just want to feel ergonomically like it's comfortable. So the more ergonomic, the better. So I just lost a bunch of people for no reason. All right, the good thing about those, when people unsubscribe every week, I'm pretty sure we look at the analytics and it looks like they subscribe. The following week back, they come back like, I piss them off for a week, and then they come back and try it again. I think maybe, I don't know, somebody has a base question. So this is a good time. Good change of subject. Says, what do you think about the full contact bridge on Thunderbirds? I don't really think about it at all. Like, I, I mean, I've, I've played Thunderbirds. I, I, I probably worked on one or two over the years maybe, but probably mostly epiphones, so I'm not really. No versed in it. So Billy wants to know how many new Strat and Tele models can Fender release in a year? So that's a good segue into a fun story. So Fender released new product this year. Let's talk about that. It's the new Fender American Pro. Is that what it's called? American Pro. Okay. Pro, for those wanting, laughing is, is that if you look at this camera, this camera is in my. Or this microphone's in my face. So can this camera see it? No, you can't really see it this way. But anyways, yeah, you can see this mic. This mic is in front of my keyboard. So sometimes when I'M typing things and I typed pro, but I typed P, R, I, O because. And found something weird because the camera's in. In my way or the microphone's in my way. I'm sorry. So, no, what's the new. Let's just type in Fender and look at the new Fender guitar. So if you guys didn't know Fender came out with new guitars this week, there's the Ultra Lux. That's not it. Why? You guys are probably putting in the comments what it is, but I'm trying to actually find them so we can actually discuss it. So let's go to Solid Body Guitars. We'll discuss the lineup. I. I purposely did not look at this line this week. I want to tell you, there's a backstory on this. Fender did reach out to me, but not in a. Not in a cool way. Okay. Am I missing it? Fender did come out with new guitars. Yeah, right, huh? Professional classic. Oh, Jesus. Okay, excuse me. Let's go here. Okay, so Offender came out with new guitars called the Offender American Professional Classic. Everybody loves them. They're the greatest thing this week. Why could you not love them? I mean, new guitars are new guitars. What are my thoughts? I did not know. They're fifteen hundred dollars. Oh my goodness. So what is it? What is a Professional two now? Is that eighteen hundred dollars, then? Seventeen hundred dollars? Do I feel like the entry level is at 1500 bucks? Huh? Is that where we're at? Okay, so that's my first reaction. Woo. To the price tags. There's one that made me laugh and I couldn't get past it. This one. I gotta just tell you. Look, I thought when I first saw that they kind of brought the Nashville tally. I was like, oh, Nashville telly? But then when they renamed it, I was like, now it's called the Hot Shot Pas deux. The Hotshot. This is the new Hotshot Classic Professional Hotshot. Dude, this is the dumbest name. Hotshot. Come on, Fenders. What's wrong with you, Hotshot? Hey, what's Hot Shot? I, you know, I think when I think Offender, I think of old and I think of myself as old. And then I think, well, something's wrong because Hotshot's what jerky PE teachers called you. Hey, Hotshot, did you dress out today? Hey, Hotshot, right? I feel like Hotshot is something. Hotshot's not a cool thing in my mind. Hotshot's what you called somebody Hot Shots. Would you call somebody when you're trying to be an asshole, right? You're like, nice job, Hotshot. That's how I want to feel about. That's, that's how I feel about the new Fender Hotshot. Like, what do you think? Oh, I'm on the wrong page, this one. What do you think of this new Fender? It's for hot shots like you who have fifteen hundred dollars. You have fifteen hundred dollars and you feel like a hot shot, you buy. I'm killing this routine. By the way. Color wise is great. The, the green is cool. I thought the Sherwood Green is good. Obviously, I like that they're doing the butterscotch. This is cool. I like the pickup configuration overall. Like, the guitar weights look good. Look at that. Seven pounds. Seven pounds. Seven pounds on the lighter side. It's nice. That's good. Fifteen hundred dollars. You know, hey, we're not going to be happy that I'm not happy about any prices anymore. I feel like everything just feels like a shell shock of price tags. But these are the new guitars. So Fender came out new, new guitars. I don't know what's going on. It's like Fender needs to come out with a new name for a new guitar every couple years or it just. I don't know what that is. There's a logic to it. I, I kind of just hate to say it. It's just obviously some marketing thing that they're in a marketing room and somebody who went to school for marketing is like explaining the logic of this every day. And yeah, we need new guitars. And you're like, hey, but how do you. How do you sell the same old guitar but as a new price? And you're like, you call it a new thing and you just put a new name on it. And. And you know what? As stupid as that is, I like Fenders, so I like Defender came out with this. They reached out to me. They asked me if I would interview some VP or something. And I didn't. Let's just say that. Not in a negative way. I was just like, yeah, I don't want to. If anything, I was just trying to figure out. So you guys know, really on my level. I'm just trying to figure out if this is worth buying one of these guitars and doing a deep dive of it. If that's even worth it to you guys. Let me know in the comments if there's a particular model that you'd like to see on the channel and we'll maybe think about putting on the channel. But I mean, the only thing I'm really making fun of is the name isn't great and the hotshot thing's stupid, but other than that. Excuse me. Other than that, if I don't. I don't know why I couldn't hit my mute button. I even like this, the faded black color. This is cool. This. I mean, it's gray, but that's cool. I like it. I like it. With the tortoise pick guard. Again, consistency and weight. Seven pounds, six ounces. That's legit. Seven pounds, four ounces. That's a light Strat. What pickups are they putting in this, by the way? Let's look a. Take. Take a look at this. I saw somebody showed me they have a copper one. I'm like, of course they do. They made it. They made a copper one many times. Now it's the Fender Coastline 57, single coil. Okay, so. Sounds interesting. I don't know what that is. It's probably repackaged. They like to do a lot of repackaging. Synthetic bone nut. So, of course, they're not going to give you a bone nut for. Until you get some. Give them some premium money. You got to give them some. Some professional two money. But that's fine. I mean, their other models had that, too. I mean, that doesn't really tell me anything. Overall looks good. I'd say. I'd say my overall take on it is it's a win. When I say it's a win, I mean it's not. It's not. Not bad. If you don't want one, it's just because you don't want one. You already have 10 strats. I mean, that's my thing right now. I already have four or five Strats and couple of tellies and couple jazz masters. So, I mean, I'm not in the market is what I'm trying to say. But if I was in the market, they look legit. I mean, the price isn't fun, but that's more of a. Just, you know, reacting to the inflationary cost of prices. I'm not used to. Like I said, I thought. I thought professional twos were fifteen hundred dollars for some reason, and these were like twelve. So. Ah, Multi Revelator says that's faded fire mist gold, not copper, baby. Okay, let's look at it now. I'm curious to see if. So they got the burgundy mist. Let's hold on. Let's see if it's really fire mist gold. Because remember, they can just name a color whatever they want, but vintage two shoreline gold. Why am I not seeing this color? I apologize, everybody. I'm taking forever on this oh, here it is. Fireman's gold. Yeah. This might be a different color than copper, right? Yeah. The. The reason I'm saying that, by the way, just so you know, so I'm. So you don't think I'm being snippy with you. My copper Strat's not copper. I think I've told you guys this funny story. When I had the Fender make those copper. The copper Strats for the store, they gave me a sample of copper. Copper. The copper paint they use. And I didn't like it, and I thought I looked horrible. And why that was hard is so I had them to use a different color, and they said, oh, that's not the color, actually. I'll just tell you. I was bronze. I said, oh, no, I want this color. And they go, that's bronze. And I go, yeah, I want it that. But I want to call it copper. So we called it copper because you. We got to name them because it was for a store. I don't know if you guys know that. Like the Wildwood guitars and stuff. So Wildwood guitars are Wildwood orders guitars, just like Chicago music change orders guitars. And it has their branding on it. I don't know if you guys know, but my copper strap has my store's branding on it, on the backlight stuff. Because we ordered them just like they did. We ordered enough custom shops. They did it. So when I did it, I did a bronze and then. And we called it copper. But a lot of you had trouble because the. If you look at mine, it's brown. It's not copper. So. So it's kind of funny. Okay, let's button this up. Let's button this show up. I'm sure we want to play guitar and do fun things for the weekend. Okay, so happy. Good thing he's talking about Jack. He says, hey, sorry to be unclear. Jack seemed very practical. He's talking about Jack Higginbotham from prs. And reasonable when talking about wood, unlike Paul. Also, check out Fender's new yellow soft cases. Very cool. Oh, well, now we got that. Okay, so sidestep. We got to look at the Fenders new soft cases. Yellow Fender new yellow soft case. Is that what we're gonna refer to? Gig bags all day? Oh, wow. This is either the most horrible thing I've ever seen or I love it. You know what this is? This is the hello Kitty gig bag. That's funny. That's gotta be. I have the hello Kitty gig bag, and it looks just like this. And it's pink. So 200 bucks. So they probably said, hey, what other colors can you do besides pink? I will tell you the problem with the hello Kitty gig bag. I have it. I bought a hello Kitty gig bag. Let's do the look. Hello Kitty. What? Kickback. Come on. Hello Kitty gig bag. They called that a gig bag, right? Not a soft case. They're out. They don't have them no more. Hello Kid. Anyways, the hello Kitty gig bag, I bought one and I'll tell you, it sucks. It's horrible. Literally, if you do anything to it, it's dirty. Nope, I guess not. Because. Well, they look pretty similar, but they're different. Here, I'll just show you guys. See, but this is what I got. See, the back looks like the same, but the front looks a little different. But maybe it is the same. I don't know. What I'll tell you about this case is I bought it. I don't know what I paid for it. Probably 140 bucks. Like this some ridiculous price tag. I thought it'd be cool. I thought it'd be fun to put my guitar in a hello Kitty gig bag. I figured out in seconds that if you were to take that case anywhere, it's gonna look dirty as hell and it's gonna look like an old beat up pink case, which is looks really weird. So. But yeah, the yellow case looks cool for a premium gig bag. You know, gig bags are expensive now. That's just how it is, you know, I mean you can get. Look, here's the good news. You can get gig bags affordable. Just like you can get anything affordable or you can pay good money for it. It's up to you. You know, it says Fender on it and it's yellow. There's the premium for that. They know they got something unique and fun. But back to, to the comment that we were working on before, which is still off that same question. What happy good thing want to talk about was. So Jack Higginbotham, COO of Paul Reed Smith. He says he sounds basically more reasonable when talking about wood. Jack's more reasonable about everything. You know, I don't know if you guys know so I've told this before. Jack started out at PRS in 1985 sanding guitars. He started out at the beginning. He was like basically with Paul from the very beginning. If you've ever talked to both of them, you can tell why they're worked together for 40 years. I mean, they've been working together for 40 years. Jack has done pretty much every job at PRS. He's worked every kind of department. He's worked everything. He's well liked. And, and. And he is everything that Paul is not. And Paul is everything that Jack is not, if that makes any sense. And I just like Jack. That's. Jack's more my speed. Right. Jack's just Jack. That doesn't mean anything. Paul's smart and Paul has, you know, Paul's. Paul. It's not a negative thing. It's just there's different personalities. So, yeah, Jack is definitely more approachable. That's better yet. I don't want to say likable. He's definitely more approachable and he definitely has more even. He has it more even killed opinions, but he still has opinions. There's pretty stressed. So. So, you know, I have. I'm working with right now to get Jack and do the podcast with me and we'll talk about all kinds of stuff. I want him to talk about his pizza thing and his other stuff. And so I think it's really cool to give you a different perspective of. Of things. Okay, I. Okay. After a while, I'm like, how many screens do I have up now? Okay, this question is, do you like the look of the Vella? Vella. He's talking about the PR Villa. I do. I had two Velas over time. I don't have any anymore, but that's because I had to pare down guitars. I still am paring down guitars. So you guys know, you know, the, the. What you guys see. Just like what you're seeing behind me right now is a mix of guitars that I'm doing videos for my guitar collection here. And then we'll end on this note, is a mix of essentially three different kinds of things. There's some of my personal guitars because obviously I'm a guitar player and I like it. And there's the guitars that are coming in, which means they're coming in to do a video. So they're here for a video or they're here because they were in a video and I still have them. So I have a lot of guitars boxed up. And because, you know, I did the video and now I don't know what to do the guitar. So when I say that, you understand, I buy the guitar. Sometimes I buy them from the companies when I keep them, sometimes the companies give them to me as a compensation piece. But the majority of guitars I do for videos do not stay. 95% is, to be fair, 90, 95. And I'll just say nine out of 10. Just keep it easy. Nine out of every 10 guitars that I get, whether I buy them or they're shipped to me or whatever, they're not staying here. Very few of them actually stay for ever for any particular reason, mostly. And if they. And so, you know, it's not even my personal collection needs. It's just if I. What do I. I already have something like that. Do. I don't need multiples. I think I told you. I told you a funny story. I told you a couple months ago. We did a thing where we sold, like, I don't know what. We sell, like 10 guitars. I thought we sold, like, 10 guitars in a month, you guys. And I said I had to sell 30 guitars. And I'll. I'll never forget this. I told you guys. I said. One of my friends was watching the podcast, and he says, oh, I saw you had to sell 30 guitars and you sold 10. And he says, how many you have left? And I know he's waiting for me to say something funny, And I go, 42. And he goes, yeah, that's funny. And I go, no, I'm serious. It went up because guitars are coming in for the video. So right now I can. I don't know how many guitars we have to sell, but it's probably 30 or 40 is still the number. And they just sit. And for those of you, like, want to. Here's the problem. And when people reach out all the time, they just don't have. It doesn't matter. We'll sell them when it's time. People always like, hey, would you like to sell that? And then they throw these ridiculously low offers, and we're like, no, we can wait. We'll just sell them or, you know, we'll figure out what to do with them when it's time. But yeah, it's. If you're going to have a guitar channel, you're, you know, you're going to rotate guitars. It's just part of the. It's part of the thing. Okay, so what else do we got? That's it. I think we covered everything. We solved all the world's problems. I feel better if I missed anything. We'll scoop it up later. I want to thank you guys for hanging out with me. The Cortex video will be out soon. Like I said, it needs to get sent to Cortek, and they need to approve it, make sure there's nothing in there they don't want you guys to see. And we'll do that. And. And that's it. That's the show we did it. We came together, we hung out as a group. We learned we maybe we learned we, we had fun. And I want to thank you guys. I'm looking around to see if there's any cool things I can share with you last minute. I always like at the end, like share anything cool at the last. I just got any cool things to share. So I think I'll go back to work. All right, guys, you have an amazing weekend. Thank you so much. I will see you guys next week. Please be good to each other, be good to the moderators, be good to yourselves, play some guitar and I'll see you next week. So if you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget you can subscribe for free and help this channel or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patreon for live clinics where you can ask questions every.