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The know youw gear podcast. Hey, everyone. How's it going? Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast. I hope you guys had a fantastic week and are ready for some guitar stuff. So let's get into questions. I actually got a question, and it just popped in just now. It's talking about Early Riser. And let's get out of this. It came from Mr. Mont. Mr. Mont said, hey, Phil. He, by the way, he said this. I'm kind of messing with you guys a little bit. Here's why. Mr. Mott just sent me a message, an email, and like, literally seconds before the show starts, there's no way for me to respond to him. So I'm going to respond here, and hopefully he'll see it. He says, hey, I installed a set of Northern Lights into a guitar. I'm getting very low output. So he's talking about the measurements, right? He's like, on the bridge and the neck. He says he measured with a guitar cable, which is totally fine. It's going to give you a little bit more resistance than normal, but it's not going to change much. Do those numbers sound right? The numbers sound fine to me. I tried the green and black wire together. Okay. That's okay. I use the red is hot and the white tied to the ground. And could be. Could it be that? Yes. So he says, I just got them. And closer to the strings, maybe neck pickup height. Okay. Don't. Don't matter about the heights. So here's how it works. They are dimargio pickups are red wire is hot. Black and white go together. Green and the bare wire go together. So your green and your bare wire will be your ground. You'll want to solder that to, like, a pot or something like that. Anything that's going to be your ground, take it to ground. And like I said, red is hot. Black and white are your coil splits. So if you want to split the pickups, you would then go ahead and take the black and white wire together and solder them to your switch or to whatever your push, pull switch, your toggle switch, whatever you have, your PD switch, or you would tape them off or shrink wrap them off so that they don't touch anything. Because once they touch ground, they're going to defeat one of those coils, and you'll be back to single coil mode. So it sounds to me like you're in single coil mode. So that's what you need to do. All right, we got that out of the way. Let's get into another early riser. Question that I grabbed earlier, he says, let's see, this one came from Jordan, who says, hey, Phil. Guitar Center Gabe. This is where to call him from now on. Guitar Center Gabe, the CEO of Guitar Center Gabe. Yes. Asked you. Okay, so let's talk about this. Just make sure everybody knows. This week I was on the Guitar center podcast. So Guitar center has a podcast called behind the Noise, and it's hosted by the CEO of Guitar center, and that was filmed back in April. So it's funny, I actually had two people go, oh, you were just, like, out of town. What's going, no, I'm not out of town. This was done in April. That's how professional companies do it. I'm not a professional company. So in professional companies, they film stuff months ahead because they're always filming, I guess, people to be on the show. When I went and did the. The meetup with Gabe to have him on this podcast and the bonus podcast with him at the end of it, they asked me if I would be willing to stay a little longer and come on his podcast. So I said, yes, of course. And, you know, I've been asked to be on a few podcasts, and so I've gone on them, and. And it's not my favorite thing to do. I'm just being honest. But to go on podcasts. But. But I, I. It's. It's fun. It's not. Not fun. And so I went on, and he was very nice. I thought, oh, well, he'll put me to the grill now. And he was really nice. So if you guys didn't watch it, you guys can check it out. So. So thank you for that. If you wouldn't mind, I told my patrons this. If you go and watch it, please give it a like or a comment. And the reason is, is not because they need subscribers. They have a million subscribers, all that stuff, because I don't know for sure. I went through their archive, and I'm pretty sure I'm the smallest, not physically, of course, the smallest person they've had on that podcast. I mean, they had, like, the drummer for, like, the Chili Peppers on it. They had a YouTuber. They had Marty Sports, but he's like 3 million subscribers. The reason why I say that has nothing to do with me. I don't get anything out of it. So you guys know, I don't, you know, there's no. They don't pay you to be on a podcast. You don't get anything like this. If people watch it, maybe they come subscribe over here, but the odds are they'd have to. It have to outperform one of my normal videos to get it out to a new audience for the most part, which is not likely to happen. But what I think is if you go and let them know that you were excited about seeing a gear channel on, and maybe that's how what you should comment is that, God, hey, more gear channels like this, it would be nice because I bet you they'd be more likely to bring on some gear channels onto their podcast instead of just having artists and stuff. And maybe that'd be fun too for you guys. I'm just letting you know. And so if you have a favorite podcaster or if you have a favorite channel, maybe you can put that in the comments there, say, hey, look, I like this. I think you should do more of it. And this is my favorite channel. Go ahead, you know, and suggest other channels to them. They do read their comments. So, you know, maybe it will help. It's just like I said, it's just my thoughts because it could definitely help a certain size channel if they get on there because it will put them on a bigger radar. For sure. For sure. So there you go. And again, all the people who went on there and said positive things and put likes and stuff, thank you for that, too. That was very nice of you. Then back to the question that I'm trying to finish now. Okay, so Jordan was asking, okay, so the Guitar Center CEO asked you how many guitars you own? He says, he says, how many guitars do you own? But what's a better question to ask a guitarist about their collection? Have some ideas. He says he has some ideas, but he wants to hear mine. You know what? I'm interested. I'll tell you what I'm interested in. When I ask people, I always ask people a question. And whenever, not whenever I meet them because it's not 100%, but most of the time, if I ever met you in public, you say, oh, hey, I know you from YouTube or something like that. You'll notice a lot of times they'll say, oh, cool. You play guitar? Yeah. What kind of guitar do you play? I really like to know that. I feel like it tells me a lot about you as a guitar player, right? You're like, oh, I play a Strat. Oh, I play a Gibson Paul. Oh, I play an Epiphone. Oh, I play a Harley Benton. Oh, I play an old, you know, Silvertone. And it tells me not. Not so much like, how much did you spend on the guitar? That tells me everything. It's more like what, you know, what. Not what style music you're in, but just where your thought process is. I'm, I'm. I think maybe I'd love to say it's because I own a music store and I'm like this. It has nothing to do with that. It's just I've been that way since the day I started playing guitar. I'm just interested in all guitars. Look behind me. Dane Electro, you know, Paul Rich Smith, a Warwick, a heritage, you know, Fender, you know, you name it a Martin, there's a Martin on the wall. I just like all kinds of guitars and, and the reason is, is, is different. Some people, some musicians like the guitar that better suits them best, suits them to make the music they want to make. So if you're making metal, maybe get a guitar that's more metal. If you make blues, you know, maybe some. Me, I have some guitars that are definitely for playing, performance. So I'm like, this is the guitar that. It's me, it's my sound or it's this. It helps me play or perform in a way. But then I, as much as I feel like I love to play a certain style of music or a certain type of guitar, I like to fantasize and live in other people's shoes all the time. And there's just something cool about picking up the guitar. That's not my style of music. And, and I do envy some players out there. I have lots of friends that are one style of music, one style of guitar and they just do, they're, they play amazing, you know, and, and I understand the logic of don't serve too many masters. The idea that it's like, you know, if you play, if I play, put time on the Dan Electro and I put time on, on the seven string, you know, metal guitar, you know, it's not really going to help me for what I actually do or what I actually want to play, but I find that I put in the time, I put in a lot of time doing what I love and then, you know, and, and, and working on it. And then sometimes, like I said, I just need something I need to fantasize about playing, you know, the type of music that I really don't play very well. And it's just something about that. It's. I've told you this is, you know, you go to an Yoda concert and then usually afterwards you buy a couple more of their albums than you had before. I go to a concert sometimes and I just can't fixate on the guitar, I'm like, oh, if I just had a guitar like that, I could play like that. And I try and I think it's important. Here's why. I've chased a lot of types of music over the years trying to play that style of music. And not for me, the realism was certain styles of music. Although I love them, I just, I'm not. I'm not made for them. I don't know what it is like I can appreciate them, I love them, I know all about them, but I just don't. Don't have that technique. So. Yeah, so that's a question I like. What kind of guitar do you own? Uh, guitar collections. When I ask. I don't really ask about guitar collections. Uh, it's not something I ask about people, if you notice. I feel awkward when people ask me. He. I was awkward when he asked me. They edited it, I think to. They took six minutes total out of the entire interview. I believe off memory. When I was watching it, they took out six minutes of my stuff. I think that's what they did to be nice. I appreciated them doing that. Um, I didn't ask them to do it, but that's what I noticed is missing. And I think during that conversation they. I think I was stuttering a little bit like. Because I don't know how to answer the question, you know, how many guitars do you own? It sounds like an easy question, but in my world it's like, well, what do you say? Here's how many guitars are physically here right now, but also how many guitars are in my personal collection? It's a much. It's. To me, like I said, there's a personal collection in a. And a YouTube collection, I guess, because, you know, some guitars, like I said, are visiting. Um, let's see. Yardbird says 100%, which is why I never would be a shredder. I see. I love, I love virtuoso style music shredders. You know that style. I love it. I just wasn't built for it. And when I say built for it, you know, somebody's gonna. I'm laughing because I was about to say something that actually I've heard before. I was gonna say, you know, you. A lot of you gonna say just practice more. Uh, the reason I'm laughing is I. I was at an event in 2020, in January of 2020, and at the event was Rick Beato. It was one of the two times I bumped into him. And I. I've never had a conversation more than 13 seconds with him. Uh, but the. What happened was I was talking to RJ Rencilio. I think I told the story before, and I was talking about what I'm telling you right now. Like, I was never really built for shredding and that style, you know, like, in other words, I, I. And I. When I say that, I don't mean physically. My fingers can't do it, my hands can't do it. I just mentally, you know, just that the. The time put in that it just does. That's not where I can do things. I can't spend, you know, 10 hours just scaling, you know, playing scales. Like, it's just not something I'm interested in. I'm more interested into playing music. I can play music for 10 hours, but just scales, it's just not as fun. And I remember I'm saying that. And then Rick Beard is like, just practice more. I said, well, you. You know, that has occurred to me to practice more. But again, kind of like what Yard was saying, it's not something that I want to do. And that's essentially, you know, the bigger takeaway. It's when you go to practice that style music. I love listening to it. I love watching it. I love the idea of me even doing it, but only in the idea of I like it. You know, it could be cool if I could do that, but I don't really want it that bad. You know, as, you know, a bass player, a slap bass is something that I definitely wanted to learn. So I put in my, you know, thousands of hours on that. So I know that if you want to do something, you can just do it with practice. I don't know. Okay. Okay. Hold on a second. By the way, if you're talking to me, put a. Put your question marks at the beginning so I know it's to me. All right? And then also, I'm gonna grab a real quick one from oh, T. Texas Tiller. This. Amanda grabbed this. Thanks. Amanda says recommendations on a soldering iron. You know, I really. My favorite one is the Weller. I'll pull it up right now. It's the one I. You'll see in all the videos. It's baby blue. I guess it's the same color as that Dane Electro. It's the Dane Electro. Sometimes people look search green. It's really like a. I don't know. It's like a tropical turquoise. Turquoise color. Turquoise blue. As I. I've had this discussion with you guys before, so you guys know cameras don't capture all colors correctly. So what you See, in this guitar, just like I have a Telecaster that everybody thinks is surf green, and it's absolutely not surf green. It's. It's again, like a tropical finish or more like a seafoam green. And just every camera captures it is either a baby blue or is a mint green kind of color. Um, but anyways, I just want to double check before I recommend it, because every time I recommend stuff now, I also have to go look to see how much they've jacked up the price, because everybody. Oh, my gosh, it is gone up so much. I thought. I remember it being like 80 bucks, 70 bucks. Okay, maybe I'm wrong. Okay, so let's go to it. Here. Here's the. Here's what it is. The Weller 70 watt digital soldering station. Okay. Right here. And. Oh, I just realized I have the wrong here. Like this. Whoa. Like that. That's it. And $115. And why I like it. Let me move this so you can see better why I like it. Tons of reasons. One, Weller makes some of the best stuff, I think, in the world. Two, all these components right here, not only can the tip be replaced, this can be replaced every part. In fact, my cat. Don't worry. The. I told you guys last week about how I have a master power. By the way, a master power switch is not only great because of what I'm about to tell you. Remember I told you that if I leave this room, I have a button to kill all the power in my shop. I have a button to kill all the power. Well, guess what happened a few months ago, I went in to use my soldering iron, and it just wouldn't get hot. And the thermostat on it was saying, like, 800 degrees. And I'm like, wow, that's Fahrenheit, by the way. And I was like, well, what is going on? What is going on? And I looked, and there's chew marks on my cable. And the cat chewed the cable. And luckily for the cat, the power's off. So I didn't know she was, like, going through a teething stage, so she was chewing up the wires. So I replaced this. I replaced this iron. I will tell you what sucked is I paid $89 for the iron. I almost thought about just buying another station, but then I was like, what am I gonna do with two stations? So. So you can replace all the parts. The other thing I like about it is there's a setting in this so that when you set it to your temperature, like, I do after so many minutes, it goes and starts cooling itself back down so you don't have to worry about your iron burning up. Plus it has a little holster for the iron and a little sponge. And one of the things I like is there are these conda. You know, there is a. Let's see. I don't know what you call. Hold on. Water squirt bottle. Yeah, this. This is kind of it. I mean, these kind of work. This isn't exactly what I have. It looks like a condiment bottle and. But these will work. Just. I just want to give you the idea so you understand what the idea is. You can get these little bottles like this. I got mine at the dollar store. They look like ketchup bottles. You ketchup mustard bottle if you want to. But mine's clear and I write water on it, you know, with. With a sharpie. And then you've seen it in the videos. What you do is you get one of those. Here's why. Because if you get one of these water bottles, one like this, you can put some purified water in it or better yet, some distilled water in it. And because it seals tight, mine has a little cap on the end. You don't have to worry about it evaporating. And that way every time you go to solder, instead of taking your sponge and go getting water, I just squirt a little water on the sponge. And so have a little. A little bit ready to go right there. So that's something I recommend to get as well. But I absolutely love the Wellers. I recommend them. There is a cheaper Weller. Say that twice as fast. A cheaper Weller. That always comes up. It's this one right here. So if you're a little bit on the, you know, trying to cut. Be money conscious. $77 is this one. I've never specifically own this one, but I have two friends who bought this one for the same reason. They were just trying to save a little scratch. Because I get it. If you're only gonna saw it every once in a while, I get why, you know, 100 bucks, 150 bucks, whatever. It's gonna be a lot. Again, I recommend this as well. You know, I like all Wellers. That's just a way to go. For sure. So. So yeah, that's my recommendation. Just go well at Weller's, Travis area says. Hey, will you review a calling guitar? Sure, yeah. I have one to review. I have a deep dives of a lot of guitars coming. So actually. But that's what I'M working on. Whenever you see a slowdown in content creation, besides the whole Fender fiasco, which really locked up a lot of time, I'm working on a. When I did the Cortex video, you'll notice the same thing. The Cortex video was such a big video to make. In other words, big, like, time suck. The video I'm currently making now is actually taking more time than the Cortex video. And so once that video, which you'll know what it is when it comes out. As soon as it comes out, you'll be like, oh, okay. And then you'll know this is my big, like, documentary little video. Like the Cortex, like more of a documentary type. Videos like that are very. I don't want to bore you with the details, just to say they're very hard to put together. But on top of that, there's a lot of back and forth for fact checking and fact verification because the fact that it's not. Not so much like an opinion piece, it's more of like a. Here's some information you should have. And also, I need to make sure that information is accurate. So the Cortec video, I think I ended up doing, like, three different fact checks on it. And before I was 100% happy to release it to you guys, Glenn says, hey, Phil, I'm looking to eventually replace my old Gibson thin line hollow body with P90s that was stolen. What's the brand of your Hollow behind you? Semi Hollow. That is a heritage. I bought that heritage. So the whole, you know, I'm. I'm so sick of talking about Fender. But the whole Fender fiasco put me down a different road as it does. Right? Emotionally and not in the way you think. I don't. I don't have, like a whole, you know, boycott them. Like I said, it's up to you guys if you want to, you know, go that route and do stuff like that. That's just not how I think. What I will tell you is, you know, I'll just tell you what I think. If you. If you don't love Fender anymore, like, whatever Fender did, if this is just wronged you to the point where you don't love them anymore, I can understand that. And I will just tell you what I think. And I hope it helps you, too. I think it's. It's more important to go find something else that you love than it is to just hate on the Fender thing. So a perfect example that is, like, I'm not selling my Fenders. Like I said, I'm not selling my vendors in fact, I told you guys, if you don't want to support the parent company of Fender, then you can buy Fenders, not from them. There's used vendors out there. There's so many used vendors. Like I said, there are entire stores that just sell nothing but use vendor and have for decades and will continue to do for decades. So you can buy the brand if you want, if you don't want to, because, you know, just the way you feel about this whole thing. Again, I'm not telling you how to feel. I'm just telling you that my best, best advice is go find something new to love. And a lot of people are like, don't give Fender your money. Well, it's not so much. Just don't give Fender your money. Give your money to somebody else, somebody that you appreciate. Give it to a company you appreciate. Maybe show them some love. And, you know, not only as a guitar player, but as a content creator on the channel, I've tried to spread the love, so to speak. Look, you know, the wall changes behind me every week to week. That's mostly for entertainment purposes now. You know, I used to never put any thought into it until my wife started watching the podcast and telling me, man, they really notice all the different guitars and they really get excited when you change the background up. And I'll tell you what I do, and you can watch it on a regular in the week if you'll pay attention. You look behind me right now. I tried to put a smorgasbord of guitars up there to look, there's a thousand of you live. I'm trying to appeal to all of you for something interesting for you, visually stimulating. Obviously, I'm not visually stimulating. You know, there's a Warwick, there's a prs, there's a Kiesel, there's a Dane Electro, there's a Martin, there's a Taylor, there's a Nags, there's a Heritage, there's an Emerald, there's a Gibson, there's a Fender. So notice how I generally will not try to double up the brands too much, you know, and make it a little different, especially if I have stuff, you know, here on visiting. The heritage I bought and how I bought it was I decided I wanted to buy a hollow body and I was looking at semi hollow bodies and Very long story, because it's very boring. I bought a guitar from Sweetwater. It's a prs. I'll just tell you. I bought a PRS from Sweetwater and I got it and I just did not like it, there was nothing wrong with the guitar. What happened was it was 7lbs 3oz, super light, but it was all in the ass. Like I just, every time I sat in my lap, I feel like it just wanted to fall backwards. Like if it was £7, it was £3 from the bridge to the headstock and it was £4 all in the back. So it was just weirdly weighted. It was weird and I just wasn't liking it. So what I do when I have a situation, situation like that because you know, you, you can return it, they don't usually charge you restock stocking fee. You just don't get your shipping back right. They, you know, they charge you for shipping. I reached out to the sales rep, I told him, I said, hey look, nothing wrong with the guitar. It's a great guitar, I should love it. I don't, I want to return it and get something else. And, and I said, hey, I think I'm gonna get this hollow body heritage. Which is what I should have done in the first place. I will do a video of the heritage that I bought. I absolutely love was rather expensive, but less expensive than the Gibson. And it's not necessarily, I, I didn't buy it because it's not a Gibson. I wasn't going that route. Is the neck. I just took a chance on the neck being great. I read a lot of reviews as you guys do, and I watched some videos talking about how it's a 60s thickness but round on the back, which is like my favorite Gibson style neck, you know. And that's what it has an absolutely, I'd say best hollow body I own for sure. Absolutely. So really, really happy with it to say the least. Blaine says instead of guitars I should do banjos and violins on the wall. You know, maybe we can get one of those cgi, you know, backgrounds, whatever you call those green walls, green screen backgrounds. So, so Brian wants to know, are you wearing layers in the desert? I don't wear, wear layers in the desert. No. Here in Arizona you try to, I try to wear is just, you know, shorts and a T shirt all the time. That's usually the go to outfit. So here in the office I'll wear something different. I wear when if I wear a college shirt, I always wear undershirt. So that's why if you're seeing I wear two shirts, it's just because if I wear a college shirt, I wear undershirt just how I do it because I don't like, I don't know how to do it, man. I don't want to button it up so I'm like this. And I don't want to, you know, And I want to be like, yeah, look at my chest hair. I don't have any. I don't have any chains or anything. I don't wear jewelry, so I don't have anything to, you know. Like, I told you guys. I tell you guys all the time. You really, really have to understand, I have no interest other than guitars. I have no jewelry. I have no watches. I have no nothing. I don't have any of that stuff. So. So, yeah, I wear the shirt undershirt on a collared shirt so I can keep the button open but not look like I'm, you know, in a nightclub being like, hey, ladies. The 70s came back. So, all right, let's see. Kurt says, do I like the Heritage More than 335? The answer is two things. One, first, absolute yes. Two, they're not even close the same guitar, because this is a full hollow. The heritage is a full hollow guitar. And the ES335 is a semi hollow. In other words, has a center block. So this heritage is a pound and a half lighter. It resonates much louder. And so, absolutely, I like it so much that I almost want to buy the Heritage version 335 and then sell my Gibson 335. The only reason I haven't even done it yet is I don't have time to sell my Gibson right now and go through all that, because I got to sell it first, right? But also, you know, I don't know. I just don't have time. Let's just think about that. So let's start with that. That's funny. Paul's like, phil will soon start his own gentleman's fashion channel. You know, I'll tell you a funny story. I wore this shirt in honor of the fact that when I wore my Batman shirt, a lot of people put in the comments that they were excited about the shirt. And my wife mentioned it. She's like, they seem to like your Batman shirt. Now, here's what's. Here's what's funny. I'll share a little story. These shirts that I have, this. This is a Superman shirt, if you haven't figured it out. These are. I don't know if what they. Are they retro? They're vintage. I'm sure they still make them. I. I've owned this shirt for a long, long time. At least 23 years, 24 years I've owned this shirt. And the One you saw last week. So why I own these is funny. You know, you'd think I was a big comic book fan or big. And I told you guys, I have one interest. It's just guitars. What happened was when I used to work at Corporate America, I used to have to wear a real suit, you know, with a tie and all the stuff. And then the company went to work casual, which was. I had to wear no. Then no tie, but it was a collared shirt and slacks. You could do that. You didn't have to wear a tie. We were super excited. It was really great. Became optional to wear your tie and a jacket. Just. You could wear a dress shirt and slacks. And then what happened was the company decided one day to say, because people, you know, employees were getting sent home all the time. You know, work cash will become a nightmare in the office because. So employees would get sent home because, you know, they were not properly dressed. And it became really difficult to figure out what is word casual. So what happened is we sat in a community committee, the managers, and we kind of rolled out some new wording for what was casual. And it was simple. It was shirts don't have to be tucked in. Collar must have a Collar must have buttons, must have. Right. Must be slacks. Or we could allow jeans, but no holes nowhere. Right? And what happened in this is. As you can imagine, at the time, I didn't realize I was like this, but I obviously, I think I'm like this now. I thought, hey, I don't actually. It's the. As a manager, I thought it'd be fun. I went out and bought all these comic book shirts because technically this was considered work casual for the policy. Per the policy. Why did I say ver the policy? Per the policy? And so I would wear these. This is. Was my. This was my corporate gig shirts. And it didn't go over well at first. Had a couple meetings with the VPs and the senior vice presidents. And the problem was the. This attire was technically bulletproof from the policy. It didn't violate the policy anyway. And I thought it was fun. The employees liked it. And of course, I thought it set, like, some kind of standard with my. With my teams, which was, you know, look, this is what I'm wearing. You can do whatever you want, obviously, follow the rules. So I used to wear these all the time, is what I'm trying to say. And I used to have lots and lots of these. And then over the years, I stopped wearing them because I started working in music store, obviously, because I had my Store and my wife. I actually threw them away. Threw all these away. When I say throw it away, give it to Goodwill. I should. I'm gonna get mad. Everybody's mad at me if I say it. Throw them away. You know what I mean? I put them in the bag and I go, this goes to Goodwill. And I was actually in the closet a couple weeks ago on her side of the closet, and I noticed them. And that's cause she put them. She kept them. She's like. And she's like, I'm not donating these. She's like, maybe he'll wanna wear them one day. So I. Yeah, the. The Batman one I probably haven't worn in 20 years. This one I haven't worn in at least eight years. So there you go. All right. So that's my. That's my boy. Did we go off the rails? To be. To be wants to know what's my thoughts on ebony's versus rosewood for fretboards? I think it's just aesthetics. You. There is a feel difference, especially after ebony is really, really buffed smooth. It gets really hard, and it's. It feels the grain is so tight. You don't really feel the grain underneath your fingers, if that's a thing. But ultimately, when they say, oh, ebony's a brighter sounding wood, I always argue, again, just like all tone wood debate. If it's true, it's definitely true in the smallest amounts. You know, like I said, I always kind of go from the whole, like, hey, I don't want to argue whether or not tone wood is a real thing, whether it's a neck wood, a body wood, or a fretboard. Let's just go off the date that. Off the idea that if it is real, if tone wood is real, then how. How much effect does it really have? It. It doesn't have much. Even if somebody was to argue that tone wood is. Definitely has a huge effect, I would say, fine, but it's a very small effect. It can be countered very easily. I would argue. If you want to argue about fret materials like stainless steel is brighter than nickel silver, I would say yes. So look, let me put it this way. I would argue, just off theory, that a rosewood fretboard with stainless steel frets would sound brighter than a ebony fretboard with nickel silver frets, I'd give that argument. I think that's a good one. So. So. So, yeah. Okay, let's keep going. Okay. See, everybody always asks about those. That's so funny. I'll just. Bug generator says Phil there's always a lot of hype around the Fender confit pickups. That's how I say it. Confit. Confit pickups, wide range humbuckers. But I've never seen you talk about them. You know, what's funny is I must have done a video once about them somewhere because I owned a set and I tested them and checked them out. I just never thought anything of them. It's not a thing. Like I would. If I bought a guitar and they had them in there. There would be no desire for me to take them out. But I've never sought them out. In fact, there's just nothing, you know, nothing. Nothing about that. It's kind of like the Firebird pickups. I bought a Firebird. I did the video on the Firebird. And everybody's like, what do you think of the Firebird pickups? And again, it was one of those things where I'm like, I don't know. You know, it's. Again, it's not that it's bad or good. It's just nothing specifically that I was seeking out. So I. I don't know. You know, what's, what's funny to me is. And it's. Everybody's age is gonna really affect this because again, where you are in the moment of history of guitar, you understand, when I start playing guitar, all 70 stuff is crap. That's. I'm not telling you that's a fact. I'm telling you that's the mentality of like the, the guitar player at the time. If you were, if you were a young guitar player in the 80s, you know, young guitar player in the late 80s, especially me, I started playing guitar in 89. In 89, you would go in a store and even the pro, Fender Pro Gibson guys would tell you that the Gibson. Well, and, and the facts were, they were a nickel. You could go in and get a 70 strat for nothing if you wanted it. Big headstock, three bolt pro, you know, thing. Get the, the. The Fenders with the con fee pickups. That stuff that would just. That was rotting in stores. No one wanted that stuff. No one wanted to Gibson Les Paul. You know, one of my good friends, Thor, he. He's about. We're about the same age. I think I'm just a little older than him. And he'll tell you that he. All he wanted was an Ibanez. Like, I think he wanted an Ibanez shredder guitar in, in like 89. And he went in a store and he had 300 bucks and they sold him a Gibson USA Les Paul. He still has it this day. He goes, oh, I guess it worked out for me in the end. But he goes, at the time I was so sad. That's the. He's like, I had 300 bucks. I'm looking for a good guitar in the store. And I was like, I can see that Gibson over there. No one wants it. And I think a lot of people, especially younger people are going like that just sounds like crazy talking about. It's absolutely not crazy talk. It was just how it was. And not only was Fender and Gibson not a favor for the most part at that time, for the most part, the 70s era stuff was just not considered very good. And, and I know nothing about that other than that's what it was told to us all the time. If you're a young player, you're just told that that stuff was garbage, that the 60s era stuff was good and the, and the current stuff was good. There wasn't a, A, a massive desire to get this old guitar thing going. You know, it was always like the newest guitar was always the best guitar kind of mentality. So like I said my earlier years, I didn't put a whole lot of stuff in there. From the pages of the Boys says, hey, Phil, do you think that the, your. The Northern Lights are compatible with a 27 inch baritone guitar? Which version would be better in a mid tier? Which version would be better? I'm a mid tier patron. Okay. But I missed the first batch. Okay, I understand. Yes, they would. I would actually argue if I was gonna, if I was gonna recommend those pickups to someone putting in a baritone, I'd actually put in the Northern Lights in the neck and something else in the bridge or I put the Northern Lights in the bridge and something else in the neck or two sets of Northern Lights, but not the Northern Lights Plus. The reason is because the Northern Lights plus is a, is the Northern Lights. But just like I said, it kicks the amp a little harder. And I would imagine with the bigger strings and the tighter tension, it might be a little throaty, but you might like that. But if it was me, I would, I would not. That's not what I would put in the guitar for myself, personally. If I, you know, if I had a, like, for instance, if I got a Kiesel baritone guitar, I would probably put. If I was going to Mars you, I'd put the Northern Lights in the bridge and like a PAF 36th anniversary and the neck or, you know, some version that. Or like I said Northern Lights in the bridge and then put, you know, 59 Seymour Duncan in the neck and again. Or, you know, any kind of PA style pickup. That'd be my choice for that. But I don't know. And then keep in mind, you know, I don't believe that, you know, Nord lights are like the solve. They solve all problems. So again, it's not even a set I would consider. Like, if I had a baritone, I would seek putting those pickups in the guitar at all. Not because I think it would sound bad. I just. It's, you know, one of the things that I think the. They do by design is they really sustain really well. And I think baritones just by the sheer brunt force of high tension and bigger strings. Do you have a piano like ring? I don't think the pickup is going to help that. It's not going to hurt that anybody means. You understand, part of the charm of a pickup sometimes is the. The magnetic. Magnetic field and how it's interacting with the strings. And a baritone doesn't really need a softer magnetic field because, you know, the idea of a stronger magnetic field. The problem is, is that the string as it oscillates, it's kind of. It's kind of pulled down aggressively and it slows down, Right. I like to think of it like heavy boots, right? Just you're trying to run, but you got heavy boots on. And I would think when I. If I hit this, you know, the low string on a baritone guitar, it's going to ring. So I don't know if I would need a pickup specifically to help that. Where the Northern lights would be more about helping sustain and keeping the, you know, the note ringing more. Let's see, let's see. I don't know. Step Van Joe, let's take a look. Hold on. Here's a question. And I'm going to pull it up. Let's see. Okay, hold on one second. Okay. All right, Hold on. All right, hold on. Reports. Okay, cool. All right, so this is what I thought. Okay, so his question is. Step Van Joe says, hey, Phil, is Guitar center closing stores as a whole to save. To shave off dead weight? I went to my GC last Saturday it Just to find it closed permanently. But he didn't say where. So I'm aware of. When I talk to Gabe and somewhere in that discussion we talk about this. They did. They are closing some stores that are redundant. This is their. And I'm. What I did is I just did a double check just to make sure that that information is still accurate, and it looks like that's still accurate. So if you have a guitar center and it closed recently, as of the information it has of as of right now, now, something kind of transpired very quickly. Who knows? You know, business is fluid and especially in this market, but as far as I know, if a guitar center has closed, when I asked them about some stores that are closed, they said, any stores that are redundant. So in other words, if they feel like there's a store covering it, where I live, there's five guitar centers, and I would say at least one of them is redundant. Like, you know. You know, you don't really need all five, I think, but I don't think there's a problem with all five. I'm just saying, like, if one of them closed, I wouldn't be like, whoa, that's horrible. I'd be like, you know, I would. But I mean, I wouldn't be like, whoa, what's going on? I'd be like, oh, okay, yeah, there's a little cross over there. So that's what I think that is. But I don't know for sure. So you gotta understand, Mike, I don't. Where the problem always is is like, I. They let me talk to the CEO of Guitar center for an hour twice, and then I went on his podcast once, and then we talked briefly for about 30 minutes. All. All in total besides that. And. And then I talked to their. Their team a little bit, but, I mean, I'm not really in the know with them. Super. A lot of things. Right. I do want to say, just because sometimes I don't want to confuse everybody. I did spend the day with their Mitchell team, and that was a request they had made of me. And that's going to come probably come in August. I think they're going to be announcing a new Mitchell lineup to you guys and a new new business strategy for Mitchell Guitars. And they only asked me to come because they wanted to see if I could, I think, find any holes in the idea or. And. Or because I already had. Had bought some Mitchells and did some videos and stuff. They wanted to see if I saw anything problematic with the new way they're looking at things. And that was a favor they asked me. And so, you know, and to return the favor, I asked them a favor and they helped me, too. Which is the favor I asked for was could they get me into the Taylor Guitar factory? And they made the request to Taylor Guitar so I could get into the factory, which really helped me, because when I do factory Tours. One thing, it's everybody's like, you should do a factory tour here. And I go like, heritage. I was like, you should go do heritage. I reached out to Heritage to do a factory tour. They weren't interested. And then people go, I go there and they just walk you through it. And I go, I need, when I go to a factory tour, I need permission to film everything. And I want to get access to everything. Not just the preloaded tour of stuff that they say to everyone. I want to actually, I usually have a mission involved. You'll see on my next video that's coming, the factory tour that's coming out about a week or so. You'll see. You know, I was there to learn something that you don't know. I'm not here to show you what you can already find on YouTube. You know, just because somebody's like, I don't want to film a factory and then go, look, you can watch my video of a factory too. Right. I want to, I want to present something hopefully educational to you guys. Let's see. This is a question. Okay, so this is. Staff says, hey, Phil, if I like my action low, but the first two strings, first frets ring, dead notes, what can I do? Well, you could check if they're ringing dead. Obviously on the open strings, it could be your nut slots are cut too deep. But you're saying on first frets. So I'm assuming it just. You need, your neck needs relief. So your neck might be over bowed, in other words, have too much tension on it or it might be too straight. Sometimes a straight is bad enough. This is a confusing thing because if you go on the Internet, as you know, you're going to get conflicting answers to whether or not a neck should be perfectly straight or have some relief in it. And the answer is yes. And I did this before the same thing a couple months ago, I said this. And some people really lost their shit on it. They were like, they're like, what do you mean? Yes. My point is, is there? No, I'm sorry, I thought I was explaining it perfectly. Then I'll try a little better this time. There is no right answer on what actually the neck relief needs to be. And why I say that is, is that when a builder tells you the neck should be perfectly straight. Yeah. In a perfect world and everything is equal, a neck should be perfectly straight. How amazing is that? But it's not a perfect world. Sometimes there's other things at play. And yes, you could. And sometimes leveling all your frets and Crowning them. Crown and leveling all your frets is. Is a fix for that, but sometimes it's not. And so I've learned, you know, at every guitar's got a little bit of. They're a little finicky, they need a little finesse. Not all of them need a little bit of relief. Some of them are perfectly straight, but. And some of them move and some of them don't. And it's just because we took something that was alive, we killed it, we threw it in an oven, most likely because even before they did roasted necks, they were killing drying stuff for decades and decades and decades. Then we drilled it, shoved a rod up its ass, and then stuck it on a piece, another piece of wood. So essentially, what I'm trying to say is, is that sometimes it needs a little adjustment and care. So in your case. And sometimes there's a slight twist in the neck, and some people get really up in arms about that, freaking out, there's a twist in the neck. Look. Famously, John Mayer's black relic Strat has a twisted neck. He's talked about it many times about how they replace neck after neck, but for some reason, it never felt and sounded and played the same as with the original neck. So he plays it with the original neck that's still twisted. Sometimes necks have a little twist in them. You can sometimes steam that and fix that. Sometimes you can correct the frets. And sometimes if you just make some adjustments and it plays right and you don't obsess about it, you'll be fine. You know, I mean, it's just not, you know, like I said, it's hard to get perfection out of a piece of wood. There's a quote that I can't quote exactly because I don't remember it verbatim, but I remember Grover Jackson saying something to the fact of. And again, I'm apologizing for misquote. I promise it's 80% in the range or 75% range. He said all guitar players want is machine tolerances out of wood. And I was like, that's great. So. So, yeah, I would say in your case, I would give it some relief, and that will solve the problem. And then. And then just keep tweaking until it's. You get the action where you want and you're. You don't have those dead notes. All right. Oh, that's interesting. St. Strickland says, phil, I'm considering buying a Silver Sky Core model, and I'm hesitant because I hear the radius necessitates a Higher action. What were you able to lower the action on Silver Sky? It's in the video. Whatever the action is, that's what the point of the deep dives is. Whatever it was is what it as I was probably shooting for 2 millimeters. The thing about the action is I used to, before I had a YouTube channel run my action a lot lower than I do now. And the reason is because I learned two things. I learned it through trial, error and then of course interviewing people like John Petrucci or, you know, I don't know the others, right. Michelangelo Badio, whatever. When, you know, Steve, I. When you talk to them and I ask them questions, stuff. I learned this kind of like that. This, this made their answers, made my journey make sense, which is on YouTube, when you run or if I run the action too low, people will put in the comments. The guitar sounds thin, the guitar sounds too bright. No matter what I have in the room, no matter what I record. And I learned that instead of adding bass to an amp, I can just give a little bit of relief in the neck or raise the action saddles, whatever, just give it a little action. Get that string to spin without kissing that fret as much. And then all of a sudden you guys go, oh, that sounds really warm and beautiful. And so I kind of learned over time that the, I found the spot for me. The spot for me is about 2 millimeters to 1.75, where I feel like it's low enough to where I can play, but it's not kissing the frets so much that people notice that the guitar doesn't sound very good. And so that's where I've kind of learned where to be on it. Everybody's different and, and so, you know, if you're not recording all the time, you can lower your action more. The reason I tell it mentioned the guitar players kind of helped me the, these famous amazing guitar players is because what I learned is they do that and, and they actually know that what I'm saying, and they actually kind of adjust. What I mean by that is they record their guitars sometimes with higher action and then play on stage with lower action. And that makes total sense because people aren't critiquing the recording as much. On a live performance, you're not listening to every detail and going, oh man. I think his tone sounds a little sizzly right when he's running distortion. So they, they tend to do that in the silver sky. What I can tell you is it's a seven quarter inch radius or seven and A half inch radius. What are we? Seven quarter? Seven and a quarter inch radius. And out of all the seven quarter radius I've ever dealt with in my life, I would say this is not only one of the best ones, but the most consistent one. So you will get the action a lot lower than a normal one. But if that's something concern you, there is a fix for that. First of all, you can always get the SE which has eight and a half or you can get the Marc Lotiri which is basically the same guitar, it just has different pickups but it has a 10 inch radius and there's an option there. So I, I've said this before. I've owned two Silver sky cores and one SE and so PRs sent the SE and I did, you know, I liked it, it was great, but I didn't love it. So I didn't stay. They actually gave me a Silver sky core early on. You know, I was one of the first channels to get a review of one. So they sent one to me and then they, they didn't claim it back. They said you can have it. And I kept it for a couple years and just was finding myself not playing it and I sold it. And then when I sold it, I don't know, you'd have to go through my videos, but you'll see it because the original one was like silver and the second one was gold. The second one I bought because I was like, ah, you know what, I really miss it. And here's what I said and I trying to almost quote myself now, which is really hard to do a couple years ago when I said the John Mayer Silver sky is a great guitar for John Mayer, but it's not a great guitar for me. Everything everyone says about it I agree with. It's built well. It's, it's, it's, it sounds fantastic. It is constructed perfectly. Whatever all the great things you could say, I have the same opinions, but deep down it just didn't, it wasn't me. There was things I wanted and it didn't do and I, you know, so I switched back to Offender Stratocaster. That's what I was like, okay, I'll get a Stratocaster. And then I use my Delos. But my Delos is wired differently. I would consider that more of a modern take on a Strat because it's all humbuckers and modern and thinner neck and stand still frets. So it's like that I love, but I love it a different way. In the John Muir guitar I think of it like more of a. I'm going for a vintage Strat kind of vibe. And so I went back to Offender, and that's what I did. And nothing wrong with the Silver sky, but that's the way we did it. So in your case, you don't have to go with Silver Sky. It sounds like it might not even be the right fit for you. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, there's. There's other. There's other choices of Fender style Strat guitars out there. And sometimes you might want to check out other ones, too. Although Silver sky is great, I also like a lot of the others that are out there as well. How are we doing? Oh, good. We're doing good on time. Hmm. I don't understand the question. Okay, all right. I don't know what this means either. Okay, let me try this. Super Trav says Phil. These are all coming from Amanda, by the way. Thoughts on a guitar. Thoughts on guitar shows. Oh, guitar shows. Like, not. I'm thinking like a. Like a TV show. He's like, thoughts on doing a video on one? He. Okay, I think I know what you mean, Super Trav. You mean guitar shows, like, where they buy and sell guitar shows. There's, like, one in Texas. All this stuff. I usually don't go to those. I don't. I've never really went to them before. I'm sure it's great content and the concept. You can go there and, you know. You know, I don't know. They're never here where I live, so I'd have to drive to Texas or fly to Texas or go to California or go to wherever they are. And, you know, I've just. And I think there's a lot of cool channels that cover stuff like that. I always kind of find myself watching videos like that. I'm not a huge. That's not a huge appeal to me to go to the guitar shows. I don't know what it is. It's nothing negative. I. It's just. I mean, I. I mean, trust me, if there was one here, I'd definitely go, so. But there. There's not. Nothing, you know, never. Never grabbed my attention, really, is what I'm trying to say. Because a lot of times they're broken into sections. So first section is vintage stuff, stuff I'm not really going to buy. Then the second section is expensive stuff, stuff I dabble in, but again, not on a whim. I don't have on a whim. High end money. High end guitar money for me. Like when you look, there's some really nice guitars behind me, like that heritage. You got to understand a guitar like that is a process in my brain of justification. What am I going to get rid of? How am I going to justify the money? Right? Like it's a whole thing and it's. It takes a while for me to pull that trigger. I very rarely am in, in a. In, you know, in a store and I'm like, wow, $3,000. Why not? Gold card accepted. I'm just not really like that. I. And then to me, I'm kind of sad because I, I'll. I. It's happened to me before. One of my. The guitars that got away was I was at Carter Vintage Guitars. This was years 2018. And I was in there and there was a guitar and I should have bought it. Now the guitars were twice as much as they were then and I thought they were crazy then and I just couldn't do it. And. And you think I'd learn from that to do it, but it's still. I find that the opposite is more true than that. In other words, more times than not, I'd be more regretful that I bought it than if I didn't. Like I did. I have no idea. So mwcard says, are the new G and L guitars out of Nashville any good? I don't believe there is any in GNL guitars out of Nashville. So I would like to get a blues boy. So if that helps. There are as far as I know. And again, I'm just going off the information I have. As far as I know, there are no G L guitars. So there are. There will be. So here's how it works. There are G L guitars that are at dealers because G L had guitars. They sold guitars before they closed. And those dealers still own or possess those guitars because they buy those guitars. Okay? So that's one way you see new gnls to this day, I think guitars center sitting on some new. Not only used, but new. There is also, you gotta understand that G and L had some inventory left when they closed. Most of the inventory was defective, is my understanding from people at G and L. And that went to Mirc, to Merck. And Merck is a company that gets returned instruments from, from manufacturers like Fender and stuff. And then they refurbish them and, and then sell them to retailers and, you know, fix the. Whatever the issues are. They're like a B stock or a second sometimes referred to as a used guitar. You know, sometimes because they stamp used. It's more of an epiphone thing, but B stock or second. And so I believe they. They acquired up a bunch of that inventory as well. Now, how they got it, I don't know whether it was a negotiation from G and L to sell MIRC all the guitars, or if Fender acquired G L, Fender had them do it because they already have contracts, I guess, with MIRC to refurbish Fender guitars. So that would kind of make sense to take this inventory. I also believe what I'm understanding was MIRC took over the last of the warranty work for G and L because there was customers, if not dealers with guitars that were being fixed by GNL at that time that had warranty issues. And I believe mircule, mirc, I call Merck just to make that easy for me. So I believe Merck fulfilled those warranties or in the process of something like that. Basically, what I can tell you about G L, and I've said this kind of before loosely in the past, is when the end was happening, I was in a lot of communication with G and L. I was talking to them about a lot of stuff before this happened. And I kind of got the sense that something was going wrong when I was talking to them. And then, of course, when it happened, it went wrong. And I was in communications with the owner and others up until what I call the cutoff moment. And the cutoff moment is whenever the sale transpired, which Fender had publicly put that they acquired, or at least we know they acquired the Leo Fender name and likeness. The problem is going to be, it'd be interesting to see what happens to the company. Was it sold to a third party who hasn't pushed them out yet, or. Or was it sold to Fender? Whose Fender? Because Fender. Because you gotta understand, when a Fender didn't have to acquire the whole company, they kind of just acquired Leo Fender's likeness and name. This happens all the time. In fact, that would make sense with the Merck thing because maybe Fender acquired the intellectual properties, but then said, you know, hey, we want you to take all the inventory and disperse it and get rid of it. But here's what I do know. I've been around the block enough times to know that at some point the owner signed some. Something, some kind of NDA, as you do. And it was like, we're not talking about that no more. In other words, we could talk about anything else you want to talk about. He's like, we could talk about anything else. We're not talking about that anymore. And that's. So I don't know anything past that point. I don't think many people do, but we'll see. But. But, yeah. So anyways, if there's somebody building G L now out of Nashville, I'd love somebody to send me some information on that. I'd love to learn more about it. I'm curious. Obviously, I'd like to see the G and L brand not go away, but. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, so this is a good question. And I need a. What do I need? I need this. Can I make this bigger? Yeah, I can. Oh, good. All right, let's see if I can do it. Now. I have. Since you guys didn't like the dry iris boards, I have a new thing. So I got a question. Here's the question, and then we'll go, ooh, I'm not trying to break that. So the question was from. I'm gonna say Brad. From Brad said. Hey, considering Gibson's headstock breakage issues, how much might a Apex carve or a volute remedy that problem? Issue? Thanks for continued passion and diligence. Okay, let's see if I can draw. It's probably not gonna work. I have this option now. So if we look at a Gibson neck. Can we. Okay, we look at a Gibson neck. What's funny is, as soon as I do this, it. Okay, so this is the Gibson neck, and this is your Gibson headstock. I don't know why I can't drive with this thing. This is the important part. This is the channel that. See? Not gonna work. See, you guys hate the dry erase board, but it works so much better than this thing. Let. Let's do the old school way whether you like it or not. Okay, where is the dry erase board? Right here. Hold on a second. This is important because I think this is a very illustration, illustrative way to explain the Gibson headstock. Okay, so ready? Let's hold this right here. So we have the neck. This is the important part. And then we have the headstock. 17 degree angle. And what people don't really seem to understand is that when they break, it's because there's a channel for the truss rod right here. And it goes to here, see? And then your truss rods right here. And then what happens is it makes this part extremely thin. So this is why it cracks, usually splits like that. So if you add a volute right there, you're in. You're taking the thickness, and you're making it from here to here, right? These two points, which is making it much stronger at the breakpoint. So that does help a whole lot. That's why Gibson did it. There are Gibson Les Pauls with a volute. It was totally done. And why don't they always do it? Well, because guitar players are guitar players and because they are like, hey, it doesn't. Because it's not the same. It's not the same. It doesn't sound the same. See, if you put a volute on it, apparently it kills sustain or kills the tone or kills the mojo. It doesn't look right. I don't know. Me personally, like I said, give me the guitars that look like they're the old school stuff, but give me the new modern features. I have no problem with that. But that's not. I don't think is a common. As a philosophy. I don't think a lot of guitar players think like that. That. So. So he's like this week's thumbnail. Okay, so let's go ahead and do. What should we do? Guitar of the Week. Let's do Guitar of the Week. Guitar of the week's different. This was a question that came in and I was thinking about this. Going forward, a lot of Guitar of the week might be a lot more fun if it's specifically people ask questions, especially on this. On the know your gear channel, where the they, you know, where we have the sections of this podcast and stuff. A lot of people go, what is that guitar behind you? What is this guitar? Why do you have this guitar? Do you still have this guitar? Boy, do I get asked all the time, do you still have this guitar and. Or do you still like that guitar? Or you know, what it is that you like about this guitar? This is a guitar I got asked about a lot, and it's because it's a very nice guitar but very expensive. They saw me do a deep dive on it, and then they were like, do you still love it? Do you still get it? And especially since I bragged about it. And I think it came up this week because on the Guitar center podcast, Gabe asked me, what do I think is the most innovative thing that's ever been done in guitar. And I said, I think in modern years. And I said, I think the spoke will truss rod because it allows guitar players to adjust their truss rod with no skills, no effort, and pretty much no tools. And then I would say after that, it would be the action control neck by Taylor Guitars. So this is very. Let me. Let me explain this. So this is my Taylor guitar. I did a deep dive of this. So we will. We will do two Things. I'll show it to you and then we'll talk about it. But if you want to see a detailed deep dive of this guitar, there is one. This is my. This is my Taylor. Let's see. Taylor Next generation Builders edition. That's too many things for me to remember. All I Remember is the A14 cell. I am not usually a very high end Taylor acoustic person. I mean, I like Taylor's and Martin's. I have lots of them, but usually I go to mid tiers. They don't go so crazy high. But I fell in love with this guitar, in fact so much that when I did a video, when I did that video, I called them immediately and I said, hey, I. I gotta, I gotta buy this guitar. I gotta get this guitar. And so. And I just absolutely love it. This is, this is my favorite wood acoustic guitar I've ever had. Keep in mind I still love my emerald, but that's a carbon fiber guitar. Totally different world. This guit. So, so good. And mostly because it plays so amazing. And if you haven't seen what happens is there's an adjustment. Let me show you. There's an adjustment on it where the neck adjusts. And in that video you'll see that they. You can take a tool, it goes in there. And as you adjust it, not only can you change the truss rod, but you can change the pitch of the neck. So again, like doing a neck reset in real time. The action on this guitar is 1 1/2 millimeters off the 12 fret. It is so low. It's 12 gauge strings. Let me get a. Let me give you a tune up here. So close. But. One more time. We're good. We're still good. That was the one. Sneaky. It's drifting. There we go. All right, so I want to show you a couple things I thought would be fun. So let me, let me just show you what it is again. This is the Taylor next generation builder. So this is the newest one. It's got a scalloped V bracing, it's got an andiron deck spruce top and it's got a scooped V class bracing. All that stuff doesn't matter to me as a. I'm into acoustics, I work on acoustics, but I'm not a super acoustic aficionado. I'm not going to sit there and just have like 10 super high end acoustics. The main thing is I, I said this to. I said this to actually Andy Powers at Taylor. I said this guitar allowed me to have an expensive acoustic because the Problem with living where I live in Arizona is not only do tops crack, which is always scary, but a top cracking is something I can clean it and glue it and it's gonna suck. But neck resets sometimes become problematic because like I said, this neck dries at a different rate than the body. And having this. This action control neck was just fantastic. This also has their new electronics, which I should probably show you guys. So let me go ahead and plug this in. I know you guys are like an acoustic. I always feel like I lose everybody once I go acoustic, but I think it's important. Okay, so let's switch cameras if we can. Here we go. Throw my pick on the ground. We'll get a new pick out of the drawer. I'm gonna play acoustically because that makes sense. Acoustic, Man, I love this. Let me move this microphone so you can hear. You probably want to hear. And go to you guys and you can ask me anything about it. This is a crazy guitar. I think this is one of the guitars that a lot of us. Let me move this out of the way. There you go. That would love to own, but you're a little scared of it, like I was. Sam, Man, I love it. It's. It's loud. It's not as bright. A lot of Taylors get accused of being really bright. They. This one is bright, but it's. And. And so, you know, for true transparency. Shauna thinks my Martin sounds better than the Taylor, but she thinks. It doesn't matter what she thinks. It doesn't matter what I think. And I told her that I can play anything on this. Where I have trouble still on some of my other acoustics, especially the Taylor or the Martin where it's. It sounds great, but again, just. You get the action low, but it's still just not the same. But here's the crazy part. And I thought this is why somebody was asking. Still have it. The thing that's important to understand is that this is the top or the second highest model of the series. They do have other Taylor next generation guitars that are. Let's look. I think it goes as low as the three series. So. And you get the. The neck adjustment. It still doesn't make the guitar affordable, but it sure puts it in a more. More obtainable range. So it looks like. Yeah, the 3 10, 312 C is. Is still a next generation model. So let's show you this. I'll show you the guitar. And so if you go here, you can see here that the guitar is essentially the same style. This is the 3 model, I'm trying to hold the price from you for a second because I want you to see. So this is the 312ce acoustic. It also has the same pickup system, which I'll show you in a second, but it also has the same neck adjustment. This one's also super expensive, but it's at 2499. So $2,500. And then it has. It comes with a case. Little fun fact for you. Cool. Little fun fact. Taylor makes their own cases. In fact, you'll see in a video soon, coming up that not only do they make their own cases, they actually make Collings cases, too. But they make their cases in Mexico, and they're in their. In their Tecate factory in Tecate, Mexico. So it's kind of cool because it's very. You don't see a lot of guitar companies that build their own guitar cases, too. That's pretty cool. All right, so if you don't mind, let's go back to you guys and since I gave you a little taste of how it sounds with the. So here's a good one. Okay. So Dougl Dog said, seriously, Phil, has there been any pushback concerning how the action control might affect tone and connection to the body? There might be, but I'm going to tell you right now, barring anything, I've had this now for six months and I have played the snot out of it. And so, you know, just again, so you guys know, I liked it so much, I actually have another one. Not the same model. I have a different model. So I have two Taylor guitars with action grill next until I have a problem with it. I'm in love with it. But again, you know, I've been told by some people, you know, out there that have theories that it kills the sound, it changes the way it works, it changes tone. You know, I don't know, because I could tell you that if you took the old 814ce and you a be this. Maybe they sound different. That's possible. I mean, it's. It's possible. But again, at some point, it's. It's. A guitar, for me, is always about. I had a personal moment with this. It plays great. It sounds great. It does what I wanted to do, and I'm happy with it. So that's where I ended up on it. But I. I could understand the concern. Sure. So. All right. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna turn on. This is my Fishman acoustic amp. And I have videos on that. I've done all the Fishman amps. So this is a Fishman acoustic amp. We'll do real quick. We'll do that one. Okay, maybe. There we go. All right, so what you're going to hear now is just the. I'm going out of the way because you don't need it now. So now what you're going to hear is just the acoustic amp. This is direct in. So I'm plugged in the acoustic amp. And then of course, you'll just hear a direct feed. There's no micing of the acoustic amp. Sam. Now what's cool is I, of course, like all acoustics. I think the just acoustic sound sounds better than the, you know, the. The pickup, the transducer pickup. But what I love about the fact that Taylor had their old system which would hind the saddle, which I think sounded really good. But this, they went back to a more traditional under saddle sensor, which to me just feels pretty natural because that's what I'm used to with other guitars. There's. I love. I play mostly in drop D. I don't know if you guys know anytime I'm playing, if it's not a demo for a video, I'm always in drop d. I play 90% of everything. I told you guys I wrote a bunch of songs. Almost everything's in drop D. Why? I have no idea. I just like it. So. So I just want to show you some of the reason I like the. Something about the plugged in sound over the traditional acoustic sound. Just a little percussive on the muting is what I like. All right, so this is a good time. You get to ask me questions. That's what I, you know, cool about sometimes. Guitar of the week. So just about showing you something I really like, why I like it, why I stuck with it. Here's the other thing that's probably important to mention that is pretty unique for me. This is the original 1212 to 56 gauge strings. I, because I'm an electric guitar player primarily, usually play tens on acoustics. So I always put tens on acoustics. I absolutely love this with the 12s and I have no reason to change it. And the main reason is because the action is so stiff. Stupid low. I have a thing. Watch, I'll show you some funny thing. So I'm learning a song right now, and one of the things that's tough is I'm learning this. And with the action high, can't do it. Which is the. Should have turned the mic back on. Probably get a copyright strike right now. Totally Getting copies. Right. But I have trouble with that song. If I can't with this. This part right here is really hard for. Yeah. Good job, Steve Biffy. Claro. One of my favorite bands of all time. So. In my top 10 for sure. So. So that answer the question. Do I still have the Taylor A14? Yes, I still have it. Do I still love it? Absolutely. I love the contoured arm carve right here. You know what else? Let me switch cameras right here. Tada. Look at that. So I love how it kind of contours there. Do I think you need a guitar that's expensive? You know what? No, not at all. I. I would. You know, the sad thing is. The sad thing is they would have done me a huge favor if they would have sent me the. The three. The 312ce. Because if they sent me the 312ce and it played like this, if it. If it plays like this and even sounds remotely like this, I would have been so happy with that. But I don't know about you guys, but when I get a guitar and I love it, they, you know, I know I could have sent it back and got the three. The three, the 312, and saved a crapload of cash. But my experience is if you love the guitar and you're happy with the guitar, you stick with the guitar. You do not send it back. It'll just. You'll get. What will happen, what always happens is, is you'll get the. You'll get the new guitar and it won't be great, and then you'll have given up the guitar. And so I don't know. But I would have never in a million years saw myself as an expensive acoustic owner. I've always been afraid of them because like I said, I've repaired so many of them in Arizona. So it's a. It's a. It's a tough one. So I will keep you updated as I do on this guitar over time, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I usually don't do this specifically, but if I ever decide for some reason they need to get rid of it or if I have a problem with any of the systems, I will definitely share with you. So, you know, I thought I broke it. So I was. I was playing it one day and I was hitting it really hard right here, trying, you know, getting percussion right. So doing that right, getting that beat going. You're right. And doing that. And then all of a sudden I couldn't hear the. The Paizo and I was like, what is going on? What is going on? And I go. I couldn't figure it out. And so I was tapping on it and I was. It wasn't as loud. And I was like, what's going on? I'm messing with the controls. And it. I don't know what happened to this day, it just fixed itself. After a few minutes, it was fine again. And I've done it since a million times and I've never had a problem. But I was a little concerned about that. So that happened. Let's see. Again. If you're asking me a question about the guitar or anything, just put a question mark first. Okay, hold on a second. I'm just looking right now. I'm looking for anything specific specifically about guitar of the week. And. Somebody mentioned Cole Clark. I love Cole Clark acoustics, by the way. I'm actually repairing one right now. It's really, really sad. It's broken. I mean, it's broken. Broken. It was. It was dropped and the whole body cracked. Okay, hold on. I guess I'm good. I don't see any specific questions about it. It's a good. A lot of acoustic jokes. Okay, let's go ahead and go to the next topic then. What's the next topic? Let's find out. Okay, hold on a second. Huh? I don't know what this is. This is from Papa says. Papa says. Hey, I love the Line 6 guitar port back in the day. Excellent plug and play tool for a bedroom player. Are there any mainstream tools nowadays that offer the same value and banking the bug? So the line six guitar. Line six guitar port. Port. I think I remember what that is. The line six port. Hold on. Line six port. Because if it's what I'm thinking of. Nope. Line six port. I'm hoping Guitar port. Is that what you're talking about? The Line 6 guitar port. There's some couple things that call it the port. There's a line since tone port. There's a Line 6 guitar port. And they look like they're all interfaces to computers is what I'm seeing. Unless I'm missing something. Line six sonic port. So I don't really know the answer, but I will tell you that what I use is the pod. Is it the micro? Not pod. Don't listen to me. What is it? The spark? The spark Micro. Is it called the micro? What do they call this stupid thing? The garters. Go Spark go. So I use the spark go, which is this thing. And this is currently my only guitar product that I own that has an App. But this is what I use, and I highly recommend this. I've owned all the Sparks. I like them all. If you like your Spark, good for you. I liked it too, but I only kept this thing. And the reason is, is because there's very few things that do what it does. I'm really interested in the new JBL one that does that, but I don't necessarily want to buy something to replace something I don't need to replace. But the positive spark Go is right? Is that what it's called? The Go? The Go is, is to me is like the best little travel amp in. In the world for just. I throw it in my gig bag and I just go. And I always have it. So really straightforward, super easy. And you can record with it. You can direct out and record with it. So. And then papa's saying, no, it's the single knob interface with software. You know what, probably a thousand things are as good as that, if not better now. So if you're looking for something interfaces in your computer for recording, I mean, there's so many good things. You can use anything. You can use a Behringer mixer now for a USB plugin. You can use, you know, any of that stuff. There's tons of stuff. I use four for this. I obviously use a POD Rodecaster. So I use Rodecasters. So, you know, I have all kinds of nicer things. Like I have a. It's moved out of the way. It's up there now. What's it called? I have the Neves interface, which is a little bit more pricey. I would, I would. I like the UA stuff. Like if I was looking for a. Let me put it this way. I'll tell you what I bought my son. How about that? My son needed a interface to record, and so I bought him. This is what I bought him. He needs something inexpensive. And so I said, I'll take care of it. So here is the interface I bought him. And. Give me a second, let me scroll. I could have just went in my history and I'm pulling this up. I would have swore it was 150. Ah, here it is. I was gonna say, I know I got something cheaper than that because I'm fine with 260. Here's what I bought him. I bought the universal audio volt 176 USBC. That's actually not true. Now I look back, I'm looking at it going, that's not what I bought him. So it's funny, it looks like it was 199. Let me just show you. Okay, so that's close what I bought him, but not what I bought him because I know what. This is what I bought him. But. But what's funny is I would have swore I paid a lot less for it. Here it is. This is it. Okay. This is what I bought him, but obviously they have the other version too. This is what I bought him. I totally, I think out of everything I've tried for the plug and go type recording, I know everybody likes Scarlett. I did not like the Scarlett. When I say I didn't like it, it wasn't. That was bad. It was just once you go with something like the Neves, you just notice like everything sounds so much better that you're, you know, in your recording. So I was trying stuff and the UA stuff is the only thing that got me as close. I have a video. So you know where I. If you go to the. I compare the Neves to UA and I talk about that and same thing. So I. That's what I bought my son. As for his interface, currently for interfaces though, if I'm usually doing the podcast or if I'm doing, you know, deep dive videos, I'm using Rodecasters. I have a Rodecaster in here. I have a Rodecaster in the shop and it's just for functionality. It's the, the preamps in it are not amazing, but it's just my voice being captured and there's so many cool features in it and it just does what I needed to do. It works perfect for me. So. Yeah, but I absolutely love the UA stuff and, and I just bought mine from Sweetwater. I will highly, highly recommend this. I will never change my mind, ever. I'm just kidding. But I highly recommend this. If you buy any recording product whatsoever, buy it from Sweetwater. Always buy it from Sweetwater. The reason why is Sweetwater has. So when you buy stuff gear at Sweetwater, you get this two year service agreement for free. Okay. And I don't know, technically I could go through all the details of it, but you know what it's going to help you with or serve you. I don't know if it's always going to be a great dividend, but with the electronics and recording gear, it absolutely pays dividends. I've had Sweetwater save my ass twice and one time even more so where it was like, I got to throw this thing in the trash. I couldn't get it to work and I. And so, you know, that was actually Scarlett and Scarlett couldn't get it to work like Nobody could get it to work. And the only reason it. It's. It. I got saved was when you call Sweetwater, they have a tech support that gives you free service for the things you buy from them, and they help you with all that stuff. There's a. It's like a tech. It's not like your sales engineer going, I had one once too. I mean, it's a tech. And what happened in my case was I was like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. And then the tech was just working me through the problems, and he's like, nope, everything's cool. We checked it. I go, that's what Scarlett's saying. But it's not working. And then. Cause I called Scarlett first. And then the tech goes, hold on a second. And I don't know if you know this, but if you watch some of my videos, you'll know this. At Sweetwater, in the call center, there are rows of offices, and in those offices, there is a representative from almost every major brand. So there's a Roland rep, there's a Fender rep, there's a Gibson rep, there's a Ibanez rep, there's a, you know, a Scarlett. No, not a Scarlet rep, but there's an Apple rep. Apple, the computers. And so what happened in my situation was the problem became a update or something that happened where the Scarlett and Apple computers weren't working right. And so the tech was able to find the problem on the Apple side because the Apple. The computer was blocking something. And it had to do with an update, something that Scarlett did. And then it just didn't work with Apple now. And so the Apple guy was able to figure it out. So it was like. It was crazy. Richard said, Sweetwater texts are great. It's absolutely great. And it's. It's like, it's. It's the equivalent. Look, you know, I'm praising it pretty hard. You gotta understand, it's a free service. So if somebody, it's. I'm not saying it's the greatest thing ever, but for a free service, it is. It's up there with like, in the same regards, like the Genius bar at Apple, you know, where you can walk in and talk to somebody or talk on the phone somebody and have you walk through tech support. And it's really nice when you buy something and you can get tech support. So I. I highly recommend that. And I. I don't know if Guitar center offers that same service. I don't know if Anyone else does too. I'm just telling you I've had great experiences with Sweetwater and that particular service, which is great. So there's. All right, Huh? That's funny. From the pages of the voice says. Hey Phil, I think you have an acoustic baritone. No. If I have, is that right? Are you interested in baritone electric guitars? No. Which scale length do you prefer? Not baritone. So what are your thoughts? I have reviewed many baritone guitars. I've probably reviewed an acoustic baritone. I've definitely reviewed electric baritones. I don't. Currently, I don't own any of my, my personal collection. If they're here, it's because I'm doing videos with them. It's nothing. Baritones are great for you. Not for me. I don't play anything that needs a baritone. I have seven string guitars. If I need something low tuned for, you know that, you know, if I want to, which usually is like playing some kind of thumping thing on the low B string or something, I'll use a seven string. But even that, you know, I don't need that too much. But I, you know, it's just one of those things. Nothing wrong with them. It's. They're amazing. And so, you know, I played them, you see me play them and, and you know, I've demoed them and I've reviewed them and they're great, but I just don't know how, you know, I don't know what the. I don't use it is. I don't, I don't make any music with it. And you know, and the sad thing is, is even though I like making content and that's a lot of the equipment I have is for content. I actually like to make music a lot and I play a lot of music and I, I play with friends and I do that stuff too. And I, and I just don't play anything that would need that. Let's see. Happy good thing. What's up? He. He says, how's the training going? Army training, sir. Training's going good. This is one year mark. I've been trained. I think this is the one year mark, basically. So I've been going to a trainer for one year. I told the patrons, I said, here's my joke, take it for however you want. I said, I guess I make enough money to go to a trainer, but not enough money to not go to the trainer. That's what I've learned. Because let me tell you, I could be dying and I'm going to the trainer. I'm not because I'm not gonna. Because you gotta. You're paying whether you go or not. I'm going, I'm going. So I've been going now for a year. It's good. I like it. When I say I like it. I like the results. I do not enjoy going to the gym. I'm sorry for the people that love the gym. And I see them every day at the gym and they love the gym. And you can tell they love the gym. They're all smiling. Uh, Shauna's, she, she goes opposite days of me on her to her trainer. But when she goes to her trainer, I go and I do my workout. And when I'm with my trainer, she goes and does her workout. So we see each other in the gym. She told me, she tells me all the time that I look miserable at the gym because I look miserable at the gym because I am. But you know, hey, I'm going to keep going. It's cool. That's good. I've lost like 52 pounds. I got like 52 more to go. I'm not kidding. Like 50 pounds more to go. I have 52 pounds in a year, which is crazy because probably first three months I lost nothing. And then the next three months I probably lost like 8 pounds or 10 pounds. And then like one month I lost like, I don't know, 15. It was a lot. It was just nuts. I like, I just killed like a 8, 10 pounds in a week. And not sure what that was, but something happened. Something happened. And then when I went to the California trip, deal with Gabe, I lost a lot of week money. Lost a lot of week. I lost a lot of money. I don't know what the hell I'm saying. I lost a lot of weight at the California trip because I was, it was my first trip. This is so boring talk. I'm sorry guys. It was my first trip. It wasn't vacation, it was a work trip. But you understand. Leaving was my first trip since being doing better. I was so hyper sensitive to, you know, like I did the Kiesel event in January, but because we stayed there, it was a one day event and we were a hotel. I brought a cooler with all my pre made foods and stuff, right? Hello stuff. But I was so freaked out the California trip that I just didn't eat. So I lived on like protein bars and protein shakes. Like it was kind of. It was. And so when I came back, I lost probably about six pounds that week because I'd been walking all the time. And I just. So that was another Jump up. So that was cool. But, yeah, that's how it's going. Brooklyn Sound Garage says, how's the eating going? It's fine. I eat. I have to eat a calorie deficit every day. I don't have cheat days. Um, I probably could. I'm just not gonna. Cause. Cause I, I, I. You have to understand, I really do not love the gym. So I go and I'm doing everything but anything to. Yeah, you get the idea. Like, I look at it like, if I have a cheat day that I just have to go to the gym more. And I'm like, I don't want to go to the gym more. Unfrequently says, but put on muscle. I have lost. Okay, So I don't have my reports. Okay, well, we'll make this fast. I go and I get. So you guys know how it works for me is I go to the trainer and I. And then every once a month, they take this body reading. You know, your arms, your throat, no neck. You know, they measure you. They run this thing through your feet, and it comes out your hands. Some kind of thing. I don't know. I have hand controllers. And then you have to have bare feet. And then it tells you, like, this is how much muscle you have, this is how much fat you have and all this stuff. So I have lost, like, I actually have lost more than 52 pounds. I've lost like 56 pounds or 58 pounds. I don't know what exactly, because I'd have to do off memory, but I've lost that. And then. But I gained weight in muscle. So I've exchanged. So I've lost fat, but I've exchanged some fat for muscle. So I have more muscle. I have more muscle mass now than when I started, which is important. But then also quarterly, once a month, I go to the doctor, and I don't know if you've ever done this, but you breathe in a tube into a machine for 10 minutes, and then that machine gives you a report and tells you how many calories you burn at rest throughout the day. And that sets my calorie deficit. So currently I'm at 16 to 1800 calories per day as a calorie deficit. So that's where I'm at. So how's my eating going? It's fine. It's, It's. Anyone who's done this can tell you it's impossible to get enough protein. It's almost super impossible to get fiber. You need. See, so supplements of fiber, protein shakes, Opti wazoo, anything to get the protein in the, the fiber in there as you can. Because again you're, you know, I don't have a huge amount of calories. And then when I go to the gym, this is the last part and it's over. Specifically, I go on the treadmill multiple times a week and I burn somewhere between 400 to 500 calories per treadmill. And what I'm doing is I'm zeroing out a day. So the, obviously What I kill 1800 calories a week in the gym because it, because, because that way if I go a little over each day. So sometimes I have like a, I'm supposed to have 16, 18, but it'll be like 18 to 2000 when I eat a couple of hundred calories a week. Over on accidents, you know, things happen. I don't, I, by the way, no sugar. No no, no treats like that. There's no, like I don't have slip ups. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm pretty regimented for the most part. If I'm having treats. It's very specific. But what I'm trying to tell you is, is that no matter what you do, the restaurants lie their asses off. Everybody lies their ass off. So you're like, you go. And then you find out you actually took in like the 700 calories when you thought you were taking in 450. So I go to the gym to it a lot further when there's mistakes in the calorie counts. That's the, it's the most boring thing ever. I could literally put you all to sleep and, and that's it. And then Slice said 400 calories in the tremol. It's like an hour. It depends. It depends on it. I really told you I don't like the gym. So the, the less, the more weight you lose, the less calories you burn per minute, right? Or per hour per minute, whatever. And so you know, it's, it's harder to hit that number as I lose weight. But I, I just incline the crap out of the treadmill. If I'm in the treadmill, it's a 15 incline. And I do 15 incline at speed 3. And then sometimes I reduce down to 2.8 because I'm tired. And then Shauna says I look miserable. So there you go, all the stuff. And Brian says, no sugar, just kill me now. Look, you're gonna get sugar. You get sugar, I get sugar. I put ketchup on certain things and you know, you Eat a lot of fruit. And I sometimes have. I have. There's these bore the crap. I would. I eat these skinny. They get them at Costco. It's like a dark chocolate and peanut butter thing. It's like 80 calories. So you can have a, you know, you know, chocolate. I mean, it has some sugar but like. What I mean by no sugar is there's no like sugar in your coffee. No sugary drinks, no adding sugar to anything. No, you know, no, no. No tangible desserts. And then of course, you're reducing carbs. It's fun. It's all great. It's good. And no gravy. Thank you, Tumbleweed rancher. You're absolutely right. It was a really tough for me to give up the gravy when the trainer is like, don't even think about putting gravy on things. I'm like, I'm not. Don't worry. I'm not thinking about it. So. So. And then like I said, I don't want you to. Guys think I'm eating some kind of weird like chicken, chicken grilled chicken and lettuce all the time. I mean I eat everything. I just. Like I said, it's just reduce carbs, increase protein and. And calorie deficit all the time and then go to the gym and apparently look miserable for periods of time. All right, so. Oh, for. For whom the. For whom the smell tolls. Nice sign on says are Dan Electro is made in the same Korean factory as Reverb. As Reverend why am I saying Reverend As Revan? Nope, Reverend Is made at the mirror factory. And oh, you know what? Dane Electro is made at the mirror factory. Yes, you are correct. They are made in the same factory. Danalektro is not. I used to think they're not made at World. I think they're made at Mir. So I believe they are made at the same factory. So. And it says OG USA Reverence kind of remind me of Dane Electros. Yeah, me too. Same thing. Same kind of composite kind of materials and hollow. Yeah, same. Same deal. Dane Electros to me are still the guitars that punch way above their weight. Even though their. Their prices skyrocketed over the last, you know, five years like everybody else from when you can pick this guitar that I'm pointing at behind me, you know, for 350 now it's like, you know, 600. It's still at 6. It's still pretty. Still pretty good. You know what I mean? It's pretty good. The I'll. Since you guys asked me about the Weight journey. I'll tell you my joke. I told my daughter at the end of the show. So. All right, it's. She asked us. She asked me, she asked me, she asked me a very important question about health and, and this journey. And I'll. Anyways, I'll tell you at the end. All right, so. Oh, this is a great question. Jason wants to know, hey, Phil, when you're making pickups, do you associate certain types of wire with certain sound? Like heavier farmvarve for old school blue sound and plain enamel for hotter pickup sound? I mean, yeah. I mean, you kind of think that way, right? You know, like, you know, playing it. Yes, I would say yes. I found that on my journey of making pickups, what I found was, is that I didn't know this. You know, I learned, you know, I told you I learned how to make pickups. And then I started designing pickups. And then I had a friend who designed a pickup, and then I started making his pickup. And then I made another generation pickup from that and another generation. And now I'm in my third generation. This is the third generation of the Northern Lights that's currently exist pickup. And what I can tell you is, is that I think one of the things that's nice about not having any history making pickups like, you know, Gibson or Fender or Seymour Duncan or even DiMarzio, is that I don't have or, you know, think of this like I use this all the time. This is a good example. Let me stick with it. John at throwback, I think he's a genius. And they make amazing pickups and they recreate something from the past that's really good. And although, you know, some people are like, they're very expensive because they are, it's still very thoughtfully done. Like, he's, he's obsessed about how do you replicate this type of pickup. Okay, so good example. But then you look at a modern, a modern pickup maker, which actually now is a vintage pickup maker. Like DiMarzio pickups. They're. They're modern because, because they're philosophies. But they've been around for 54 years. So they're not, you know, they, their, their pickups are old now too. They don't think that way. They don't think like, you know, Gibson got it right in the beginning. They think like, here's what guitar players were unhappy with. You got to understand, how did DiMargio start there making their pickups? They started making their pickups the way Seymour Duncan started to make the pickups too. Is not going, hey, everybody wants this old, you know, pickup and nobody can get it. So I'll recreate it. It was like, everybody doesn't like this and we're going to make something that's better that musicians like. And the musicians gravitated towards it. And so the reason I tell you all that is like, I, when I started making pickups, I started doing what everybody does. I recreated pickups because I'm like, oh, I'm going to get a kit, get a pickup kit. But nowhere in my brain said that the old way was right and the new way is right. So I don't have a problem making a hybrid. I made a joke, and I mean this in the nicest way possible. But I would imagine that, that when I put some pickups together over the years, there are pickups that I believe that neither like seymour Duncan or DiMarzio or throwback would ever do. Like, in other words, a modern pickup maker would never put those older vintage style components in their pickup and a vintage style pickup maker would not put any modern components. And I mix the components based on like a. I don't really care if this on paper or if, you know, the culture doesn't think it works. I found this works best for me. Like, I think it works good. So that's why I kind of approach that way. And again, you know, you're not going to reinvent the wheel. Nothing I did is new or innovative or interesting in that way. And that's not the point either. The point is, I just thought, hey, I'll actually tell you a simple, simple philosophy, a simple way of thinking. I thought, hey, I like it when the pickup has a softer, not so, you know, punchy sound. I like it when, like I said, when you hit a string and I feel like the string just sustains forever, but then I feel like they're not, they are not hitting the amp hard enough in the front end. So you use a boost pedal, like a clean boost. And then you go, well, what will get me closest to giving me those two things together? And that's all I cared about. And there's pickups that do that out there too as well. But I was looking for something else different too. Okay, Okay. Something about sugar in your tea, whisking your water. Okay. Oh, I don't know the answer. Jonathan says, hey, I got David Grissom's personal dgt TCI Tune Capacitance Inductance Pickup. That's what TCI stands for, Bridge pickup, from his reverb sale. Since the DGT Pickups aren't sold standalone. Which PRS neck humbucker should I pair with it? It's for an S2 standard 24. I would go with. I personally like the 5909. I think that's a good pickup to go for. I just. I don't know how aggressive. I don't remember the DHT how aggressive it is. I would assume the one that you bought isn't the one from the SE. I remember I've only had the DGT SE guitar. So I would imagine that if it's a TCI pickup, it might pair better with the 5708. Right. So something like that. But I like the 5909S a lot, so that's a way to go too for that pickup. But both those are great. Go something vintage. I would say it's just based on what I feel like Dave Grissom's likes and dislikes are. Steve be the real. I never noticed it says the. I thought it says Steve B Real. I swear. I've read it that way and I know, but looking at it, I know it's right. It's always been Steve be the Real. Steve be the Real says, hey, Phil, both you and Gabe like the new Taylor Action Control neck for acoustics. Can you explain why that feature doesn't negatively affect sustain? I don't know that it doesn't affect sustain. It's one of those things again, you know, does carbon fiber rods affect sustain? Probably does, you know. You know, over trust larger truss rods. Look, a classical guitar player doesn't even want a truss rod in the neck because they think it ruins sustain and ruins the guitar. Ruins how. How much the guitar projects. Right? So, yes, through modern features. Like I said, there's an argument out there. As you know, it's like, hey, this is. The vintage guitars are better. And like, let me explain why. And you know, it's kind of like, you know, if somebody argued that, you know, cars go were better when you just hit the gas and they went. And now they have, you know, regulators and, you know, governors and all this stuff in cars. Like, I get that. So I wouldn't argue that, like I said, because I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna a be the tailor to another guitar, another Taylor, an older Taylor. I've heard through the grapevine that the new Taylor Action Control 814CE does not sound as bold or big as. As. As full as the previous generation 814C. However, like I told you, my. My Martin right there which will eventually be a guitar of the week. We'll do a guitar of the week. The Martin too. Shauna believes that Martin sounds better than my Taylor. Now when I say that I was playing them and I go, which one sounds better? She's like, the Martin. I'm like, okay, now I have another Taylor acoustic that I actually does not play as nice through luck the draw. It also has an action control neck and it does not play as nice as this, a 14C. Because again, you can only put so much tech engineering and then, then the truth is, like I told you, wood is wood. This, you know, that's why I told you I was going to take a chance on not keeping this a 14ca different way. So that acoustic, which has a much bigger, warmer sound than this Taylor and that has an action control neck too, but it's much bigger sounding. I mean, it's a much fuller sounding acoustic than this 814ce. And when I beat that against my Martin, Shana said she still liked the Martin. So if the art, when somebody goes Martin sound better, I mean, if that's what you think, great. What I can tell you is two things. The Taylor records, amazing. Just the microphones, like, sounds good. I mean, keep in mind I'm not really mic'd up here correctly, but you get the idea. It, it, it's, it's just different that way. But my problem is for acoustics forever, like Cole Clark's was one of my, some of my favorite acoustic guitars because again, they play great, but they're. I think their pickup system is one of the best sounding pickup systems ever made. It just sounds amazing. But like I told you, I live in a desert and acoustics, especially high end acoustics do not do well in dry climate. Currently. It's good in here. It's 51% humidity, which is where we usually keep it in the office, about 45 to 55% humidity. And it does okay. But I think I would emotionally have a meltdown if I had a guitar this expensive and the neck needed a reset or it needed to be totally redone. So. Yes. Yeah, because like, like I said, it's. It's a really big deal to have an acoustic that can not need massive repairs or adjustments. So farmer Stan says this or that. Taylor versus Martin, we could do that. I mean, you know, the funny thing about that is I'd be. What I'd be really interested to know is if, like I said, recorded through a microphone, transferred to the Internet, would the Martin still win? I actually don't think so. But who knows, Mike? We could do that. We could do it this or that. Like that. Ellen says, I'm with Shawna. Martins are perfection. Martins are amazing. If I could get my Martins to play like this, I'd be a little happier. My Martins play great, but this is ridiculously good. So this plays nicer than my emerald, which is crazy. Crazy. So. And then I have other reasons for liking Taylor as well, which is, you know, you'll see when I have. I have a little mini documentary going about Taylor, about, you know, and a lot of the patrons have seen pieces of it. About how they treat their employees, about how they treat the environment, about the other products they make. That's top secret. It's not top secret. Okay, Let's see. Metro says Martins are the only brand that is worth the money. All right. I mean, I get it. It's because you like them. I like them too. I have Gibson acoustics, too, by the way. I like. I like, you know, like, guitars. I like them all. I just think everybody's. Every guitar is different. Perfect example. I love Gibson's. Like I said, my SG is one of my favorite guitars. It's one of my go to guitars. It plays amazing. And I would argue that if you told me, Phil, you know, I said it when I did the interview, Gabe, you know, my three favorite guitars by far is my Mira that I've had since 2013, my Delos and my Gibson SG. But. But. But if I could keep one of those guitars, I would probably keep the Delos just because it plays the best. Again, I would argue out of the three. Those three. I think out of those three, the SG sounds the. The best, but the. The Delos plays the best. And I'm always gonna. If I'm. If I ever had one. Like, if anyone ever said, hey, you only have one guitar. Whatever I pick is gonna be because it plays amazing. So. So I just really like. Because the better it plays, the easier it is for me. I don't have to work as hard. And that's a really big deal, because if you're not an amazing player, you need as much help as you can get. Or more importantly, not help. You need less obstacles. You need to minimize the obstacles. Okay. Sadly, Traversy's like, hey, can you tell us which Collins guitar you would like to review? Nope, because I already have them. So I'm not gonna tell you what they are yet because then you guys won't watch the videos. Oh, the real R. Oh, I remember the sign on the real RND says, hey, Phil, I'm one of the first thousand. I've been to your shop, met Shauna. How come I had to watch AGC video to find out that you had a line of bases, you know, and then we'll go to this or that. So let me just tell you the line of base story that I told you guys in that video, because again, I'm. I know I'm talking this whole time, and it seems about me, obviously, I was just talking about my training and stuff. Generally, the show, I think, is for you guys, for you guys, by you guys, you know, kind of deal. Right. You ask questions, and if I can, you know, chat it up and talk a story, tell a story, it's great. But I generally don't talk about me so much. So when I do go on another podcast and they're asking me questions, he's asked me a question. How did I get started down this road? I started building bases. That's how I got started down the base road. And that's actually only part of the thing, which is, I think, is boring. The important part is this. I was building bases. And then, like I said in the podcast, I got a great bad idea, which is, why don't I do import basis? I thought because. Why? Because. No, no thought other than that is the business model that I had seen. I had seen that business model. Everybody did that. You know, Fender did that. PRS did that. Everybody did that. They made a thing, and then they made an affordable thing to, obviously, because again, you have more market, you know. Right. It's easier to get people to buy a $300 thing. And so, like I said, my first order is basis. Now, we didn't go into detail in that story. So, you know, the detail is. My first order was 400 bases. So that was not my only order. Somebody said, there's 400 McKnight bases on the world. There is a lot more than that. There's thousands. We made thousands of them. The important part is we sold a lot. It was. It did well for us as a. As an instrument. We. So I would make the USA ones mine and then. Which we didn't do very many because they're expensive, but we would. We would do the import ones. And that's how I got into owning a store. Because what happened was when I was. I was selling the bases to stores and I didn't know the market, I didn't understand that, how this. This industry worked. I went in with my brain and I went, If I'm using this as analogy, if I Pay. If I pay $200 for a base, then I would sell it to a dealer for $400 and they would sell it for $800. And that's the way I thought it worked. So the dealership were immediately like, I'll take 10. Because they weren't used to getting double their money. They don't get double their money. Like I said, they run small. Dealers run a 30% margin. Bigger. Dealers run a 40% margin to a 30. It's 30, 30 and 10 or 30 and 20. Which kind of think comes to 32 or 34% off. Okay, I hear it all the time. I see in the comments. Dumbasses are always like, man, to be a guitar center pays twenty dollars and sells your two grand. You're idiot. If they did, they wouldn't fucking file bankruptcy. The amount of companies that go out of business industry, there's no way they could burn through money if they were making it like that. Like every industry, a lot of industries, it's a low margin industry, which the problem is not a high volume industry. And so because there's not, it's not like you're selling, you know, toilet paper, you're selling guitars. And so it's a. There's a much more smaller. There's a much smaller market. So you're not having a margin, which is what they used to have. So, you know, they used to have a margin, a bigger margin. In fact. I'll tell you what, not today, but we'll pin it for next week. I'll make a note right now about, you know, there's a reason why. Hold on, there's a. I'm going to make it next week's part of the show discount story. Why this industry is discounted the way it is. There's a reason why it didn't just happen by accident. It was a strategy that happened. This industry used to have margins and then it was destroyed. And there was a reason why not only who did it, but why they did it. So anyway, so back to the important part. So I was giving these dealers margin they were buying up and I had no idea they didn't have margin. And so what happened was specifically a dealer in San Francisco that I was selling to was telling me about how they're closing their store. And I was like, oh, that's so. Because I was like, hey, you need another order? And they're like, I'm closing my store. And I go, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that it's doing bad. He goes, no, we make about $80,000 a month profit. And I'm like, what? What? And he's like, but we can't afford the rent. We can't. They just keep raising our rent and raising our rent and raising our rent. And he's like, it's just. And now they want to get, you know, somebody else in there. They want to get something else in there. And I was like, that's crazy. And I learned from a lot of the smarter dealers that negotiating a lease was a huge part of deal. Right? Get it? And also I started thinking, like, oh, you know, I got in this. I like everything. Like this YouTube channel. I started it because I just wanted to talk about guitars and hang out with people and be around guitars and just like, anybody, like, sports fanatics, right? Hey, I want to talk about my team and your team. It's like, the joke is, you know, I opened a sports bar because I want to talk to sports. Instead, I threw out drunk people and try to collect on beer tabs all day. That's, you know, Right? That's the joke. That's what happened to me, too. I started making bases, thinking this is going to be me talking about basses and guitar and enjoying life. And instead it was negotiating deals with dealers and selling bases and making sure the stuff's delivered and doing all this stuff. And it was like, okay, this is not fun. So I go, why don't I. And I told my wife, why don't we open a store? So we open a store. And the idea was, I'll do repair. We'll do repair. We'll have a lesson academy. We'll teach people how to play guitar. We'll be around people, and it'll be a love of music. When we opened the store, this is why the story's funny. The name of the bases were called McKnight bases. I was not going to call my store McKnight. That was just dumb. So I decided to call this store. I came with an idea. Oh, here. You know what? Here, I'll just give us a bonus. You're going to get bonus for this today. So let me share you a funny story. So. So I decided I wanted to call the store the Guitar Company. I thought of it because of Tiffany and Company. Why? Because Tiffany and Company was expensive. I don't know anything about jewelry. I told you, I don't wear it. But the only jewelry I've ever bought, my wife. I went to Tiffany. Why? Because that's where everybody told me to go. You go to Tiffany Co. And get your wife Some jewelry. So I went and got my wife some jewelry. And here, let me just. Here we go. And oh, you know what? I should have just opened it up in the Patreon page, but that's okay. So anyways, I wanted the store to be cool and I didn't know how to make cool because I'm not a cool person. So I thought, oh, I'll make it like Tiffany and Company, right? The guitar company. It'll be great. And so I like Tiffany and company had this like their color is this like egg. Eggshell blue. It's like this, like this color, but more baby blue. It's like baby blue. And so I thought, oh, we'll do it like that. So what I did is I, I, I bought this. I'm gonna show you a picture of the store right now. So this is the picture of the store. So hey, there's Warren. There's Warren. He moved back to Canada. So anyways, this is where Shauna would sit right here. And there's the couch. That's a waiting area. And then in there there would be all the lesson rooms. There's eight lesson rooms and a classroom. And so this Statue of Liberty was there. And we would walk in. It's in Arizona. And like, why is the Statue of Liberty there? Because I needed a, I thought of like again, no original ideas. I'm just like, I don't know what I'm doing. I go, I'll make the store look cool. So I did everything and we did, we did all this stuff ourselves, by the way. Look, go back. We did the faux brick. You could get, we got this brick. It's black and red. You get it at Lowe's. But we painted all of the f. Gray motor. Mortar. Mortar in it. And then this was just the MDF slat wall. But then I spray painted it silver. And then we spare. I used a, a round sander and made it look like steel. So it looked like steel. And then by the way, we were the one of the first strings. Our first source. Definitely in Arizona, but pretty much I ever seen where we put out all the accessories where you no counter. So the accessories you went and got yourself and no one, everybody thought that was crazy at the time. Now they all do it, which is good. So anyways, the reason why the story is the Statue of Liberty. I did it because I go, oh, that color, that, that'll associate that color to us. And so I had our receipts that color. So if you're one of the original customers, you know, the receipts were the Color of the Statue of Liberty. And everything was the color of Statue of Liberty. And I, and I go, we'll call it the Guitar Company. And it will be like, you know, and we'll have our color like. So I'm just ripping off Tiffany and Co. And then what happened was two weeks, approximately a couple weeks. I just don't remember. It could have been a month, could have been a week, but yes. And then Tumbleweed says, did the Statue of Liberty hold different guitars each week? Yes, I change out the guitars all the time. So here's why the story's funny. The story's funny is this, I don't know, it's like 60 minutes or some one of these news organizations do a show and on the show it's Starbucks and they're suing this school teacher in Rhode island and her name is Sam Buck. And she has a coffee shop, shop called Sam bucks. And it's 400 square feet coffee shop. And the Starbucks sues her and says, or, I'm sorry, cease and desists her and says, hey, you need to stop, change your name or else we're gonna sue you for calling your store or your coffee shop Sam Bucks. By the way, population 400, right? So anyways, the, the funny part is they interview like the head lawyer for, for Starbucks and they're like, she's, she responded to their season diseases with if, if you help, I have no money. If you. I'm a school teacher and nobody, they don't make any money. And if you just help me change the sign, I'll change the name to whatever, but I need help changing the sign. Can you, you know, help me with that or whatever? And they're like, no. And then they asked the guy, the, the attorney, they go, you know, do you think your guys are being a little aggressive? And he says, no, she's a leech. That's what he called her. He called her a leech. He goes, she's a leech. He goes, look, Kleenex is not a, it's not tissue. It's Jello's. Not a. You know, it's not a, it's not a food. It's a brand. And we're not going to let our brand, you know, be leeched off of. And he goes, and one day everybody's been calling coffee shops Starbucks. And even though we're the Starbucks. And I was watching this and it was like, holy crap, they're just killing this lady. And so she went out of business. She closed her. That was the whole story. The story Is she couldn't afford to change anything. So she just closed and. And because she had cups, said sandbox. And they were like, you can't even use the name sandbox. You understand? Like, you understand? To comply with the season says she can't even, like, sell the sandbox cups. She has. She has to throw those in the trash and get new cups. And I'm watching this, and I'm like. And I look at Sean. I go, you think the guitar center will sue us for being the guitar company? And then she goes, I don't know. And I'm like, man, I don't want to be sued. So I go, I gotta change the name. So I had a file. The next day, we filed all the paperwork, we filed with the state, and we changed the name to McKnight Guitar Company. Because I was like, well, it's my name. They can't sue me for my name. Maybe. And I go, and I will be McKnight Guitar Company. So we changed the McKnight Guitar Company. This is important to the story because this explains what happened to the bases. Remember, I had no intention to stop making basses. I would build basses. We would import basses. We were making money. That's what funded the store. It's where the money came from. I was making money. In fact, in today's money, people would kill to have a brand that was doing as well as my brand at the time. It was just killing. And then we opened the store, and then here's what happened again. Because I'm dumb and naive, and that's what happens. Remember, I'm 30. I just barely turned 30. I understand I was a manager at a corporation and stuff, but I'm still like, you're 30? Anyway, so what happens is everyone would come in my store, and they'd be like, oh. And we would carry our bases in our store, too. I think I have pictures of those. And let me see. Oh, here, hold on. I'll share this one. You know what I should do? Why don't I just pick them all real quick? Hold on a second. All right, here's one. Give me a second, guys, and I'll share. Oh, here, look. Okay, select. Here we go. There's that, there's that, there's that, there's that. And we'll do one more for funsies. This one. And we'll do that one. Okay, so send them. I'm sending some pictures. So anyways, why the story's funny. So. So we're carrying our bases, and my neighbors, who don't know anything about guitar. And my friends who do but don't know any, they're like, oh, you opened a store. And I go, yeah. And they go, for your basses. And I go, no, it's a. It's a store. We carry Schecter, we carry Washburn, we carry Eden, we carry Randall. You know, we hadn't got Fendered yet, but that came shortly after. I go, you know, we have Ibanez, we have Crate, we have all this stuff. And they were like, no. Oh, I thought it was just your basis. And so I started getting paranoid because remember I. This is like, if this fails, you know, like any starting up startup business, I sweat equity in. We spent every penny we had. If it defaults right away, it's just gonna be catastrophic. And so I'm like, I'm like, no, you know, no, we carry everything and. Oh, okay, here, hold on. Let me show you some pictures. So we go, here, we'll go to the web. Here's the pictures. So these are Fender amps. I'm just trying to get through pictures. So if you guys don't mind, let me do this. Let me go to the next one. Here's some. Hey, there's a boss display and there's some more guitar pictures. By the way, this is the sign that was in front of our store. You get free air guitars. It was funny. People loved it. And then some people had trouble with it. Like, a lot of people would walk in the store and go, you're out of. You're out of the free guitars. I'm like, yeah, they're free air guitars. And they're like, but I want. But I get a. Where's my guitar? And I go, it's a free air guitar. They're out there. No, there's no guitars out there. Do. We would play. This is no joke. We would play who's on first with people all the time. And not like jokingly, like they were in on it and we were in it. Like they were upset visibly. People got upset. Didn't happen often. But every once while people like, yeah, it says I get a free air guitar. I'm like, yeah, they're out there. You just grab them off the rack and they're like, there's no guitar out there. It's the air guitar is right out there. We even once this we did for this one guy, I said, hold on a second. And I went in the back and it came out like I was walking with a box. And I go, let me get another one. And I go, And I go, like, here you go. And he's like, what the hell are you doing? And I go, this is your free air guitar I got. You said, we're out in the front. I got a new one. No one liked the joke. Actually, everybody loved the joke. He didn't like the joke. It was. It was a. It was a communication breakdown. Okay, so here are some. Some ignite basses, and you guys are going to tell me how ugly they are, but I'll. No one asks why they're designed the way they are. So here's some ones. There you go. So they had a body. The reason why the body's like that is. It's like. It plays like an upright base. We had black ones, we had sunburst ones. And. And I got the idea from Stephan Lesser from Dave Matthews Band, you know, the idea of playing a bass so that it situates itself in this correct playing position, and that's the way I would like to play it. So anyway, so here's why the story's funny. Maybe the story's funny because, oh, I thought I had another picture. I don't. Okay. I thought I had more. So anyway, so what's funny is everybody was like, oh, you carry your bases. And then I got panicked and I told Sean. I go, they're gonna think the store is just an outlet for our bases. Because I'm not smart enough to understand that, really. No one knows who I have bases, right? I'm thinking, like, people are gonna drive by. This is what I'm telling my wife. People are gonna drive by the store, see McKnight guitars, and think it's the McKnight basses, and not come in. And they. They didn't. Because no one knew the bases. No one knew it. No one knew us. No one knew the store. No one knew anything, right? But when you're in your world, you believe everybody's in your world with you. And so. So anyway, so what's funny is, is I blew out all the bases and we stopped making the bases. And by the time I figured out that was probably not necessary, I lost the connection with the factory, lost the connection with how I was doing that. Obviously, you know, I could start building the. You know, I was building ones from orders. But then, you know, that was problemsome because every time I was taking an order for a bass or do something like that, you know, we could be spending time fixing guitars and doing stuff in store. So that's why I went down the range. So it just kind of. It just kind of Fizzled out that way. So looking back, you know, I would have definitely not come to that same conclusion. But. And it was really two neighbors that was just really doing this to me. They were just like, oh, every time I. And they were just like, oh, how's your little base store going now? And I'm like, it's not a bass door. And for those that maybe don't understand in the United States at the time, which is why I was in the bases, There was a lot of high end bass guitar shops. Bass central. The bass place was in Scottsdale, Arizona and moved later to Glendale, Arizona. So I. So you gotta understand, my other concern was they would also think we're like the bass place, like a standalone little specialty store of just high end bass. And I was like, no, we're a guitar store. They're not gonna understand. I know guitar is in the name, but it was confusing. So. So that's how that went. And so. And then we just put the focus on the store and. And as we've talked about, the store took off very quickly. So that kind of worked. We were in that store. The first store was 1400 square feet. And we were in that store not quite two years. We were in that store like just shy of two years. And then we moved to 3,400 square feet to. Because we needed a bigger space. So. And then we were in that spot for almost 11 years. So until. Until YouTube happened, whatever the YouTube thing happened. Okay, let's see. Let's do this or that. Okay, let's go ahead. Let's do. I'll do the thing. Recording. Ready? And now it's time for this or that. All right, I'm going to be quick on this or that because we went in a little overtime. I'm sorry I went over time, but I thought I'd tell the story. What are we doing today? We're gonna do a pedals. This one was another request. We're taking requests now, like songs. And here we go. We got a guitar. This is important. We have a guitar. We're running through a D. Kowalski Enigma amp that you guys saw last week. We're running through that. We're gonna rerunning the amp clean. There'll be no overdrive from the amplifier. We're going to be running a Flint Stryman Flint reverb. We're running the echo Plex delay pedal. That is our delay and reverb sound. Let's go ahead and turn on the. The guitar mics. Guitar wise, we have a Paul Reed Smith and A Blue. Beautiful. Bluetiful. It's Bluetiful. Gosh, that's got to be his name right now. It's Bluetiful. That's his real name. Bluetiful. It's blue. It's beautiful. This is a beautiful PRS special. And so you get a little clean. Let me give you a little bit more sample to clean. We'll start with the neck pickup. Neck pickup is in single coil mode. Switching to this camera here. I'll move my mug out of your way. And here we go. Let's see. We're in tune. Close enough. Here we go. Okay, we're good. All right, so we will go to the this or that camera. It's a this or that. We will start with that, I think, because we started with this last week. I don't remember, but we'll see. We'll start on the first pedal. This is an overdrive pedal. And we'll start with the first overdrive town. And then while we'll do that, we'll get the survey going and start the poll. And we're say this or that. This or that. This. I know. Why am I. Why do I say it out loud when I'm typing it? I'm so you guys know. Somebody asked me that. Why? I said, because I'm stalling, guys. I'm trying to make it not feel like a long time before the poll starts. Okay, I've started the poll. Here we go. We're starting with that. Here's the first overdrive pedal. All right, let's go to this. Okay, one more time. We're going to that. Here's the. That overdrive. Okay, we're gonna go back to the this overdrive. Here we go. Okay, and last, we're gonna stay on this. We're gonna do the bridge pickup. This is a bridge humbucker. Bridge humbucker. And then we'll do both pedals, starting with the this pedal. Okay, let's go to that pedal. And this is the humbucker. Last. Last one. Get your votes in here. We. Okay, so we have done it. We have done this or that for the show. Let's see where we voted. Okay, I'll let you see your votes, then I'll tell you my votes, and then I'll tell you what the pedals are. So we have 184 votes. We are at this at 27. I'm gonna say it's a landslide for that. So unless you guys want to. Here we go to me there. Unless you guys want to get in that Last try to try to get this to win. But I don't think it's gonna happen. We got 210 votes. I'm gonna go ahead and end it. And we ended it. And so here is the official this or that this week. Which one won it was. If I can screen grab it. I need to screen grab it. There you go. It was that at 69%. That was the winner at 69%. And here is where it gets fun. What did you pick and did I agree with you? Let's swing out the arm. I picked that as well. So last week we did the max on 0808 versus the TS10. The 400ish vintage no longer made Ibanez tube screamer. And to see and you guys said that the OD8 was the best. So I put the OD8 overdrive by Maxon against the HX1 line 6 stomp and the Scream 808 which is their version of an 808 copy. And so obviously we all picked the Maxon. I don't know you guys though it was close. Like I gave it the Maxon. There was something texturally better about it. It seems like it was just, you know, the notes sounded a little bit more fuller. It didn't sound. You know, it's. It just sounded. It just sounded better. But what's funny is I. I don't know about you guys. I mean, obviously I have. I have the placebo effect. I knew what I was doing which one which. But with you guys, I didn't detect the HX1 having like a digital tone or sounding thin or weird. It just. Just the 8008.1. In fact, I would argue the HX1 did great. I thought this was fun. Somebody asked me specifically about this. Would I compare one of the sounds from the HX1 to one of the pedals and I thought let's do one of the pedals that won and then try to find the 808. I will tell you that the only thing that I did that's a little bit tricky. So you know, just like last week, the Maxon is set all knobs at noon. So all straight up the. The Screamer808. I did adjust the gain only and. And the level controls a little bit differently than straight up because they just sounded so dramatically different in volume. If I didn't do that. If I didn't, I wanted them to kind of get as close. This is where I got them to sound as close to each other as possible. And. And so that's why I did it that way. All right, so it looks like that one. We agreed again, which is nice. That's always nice that you guys are hearing what I'm. What I'm hearing, and vice versa. We need to do a thumbnail. We're going to do it with the Paul Reed Smith with. Why? I don't know. Because it's gorgeous. Look at that top. That's not a tin top, by the way. No tin top. And it's beautiful. Okay, let's do it. Do that. Yeah. All right, so this will help. All right. We did another episode. We. We did it. We. We've solved all the problems in the industry, which is good. We've grown as guitar players, which is even better. And Brooks Soundgrads. That wasn't even close. You know, it's funny in the room, it's pretty close. But yes, absolutely. The 808 sounded better. The. The Maxon. So. And again, you kind of hope that it would, right? I mean, this is one of those things. Like, I guess if the. If the little. If the Line 6 digital modeler sounded as good as the real thing, what's the point of having the real things? Right? And so it's really good. All right, on that note, I want to thank everybody for a fun show and some. I had some nostalgia today, and we learned some stuff, and you guys are awesome. The moderators are awesome. As always, I want to thank you for helping out so much, and I will see you guys next Friday. Also, look for videos in between the week. And if you like standalone clips of this show, check out the Know youw Gear channel, where we put clips with a little bit more texture, a little bit more stuff, sometimes more ads, you know, more information. So. And on that note, I'll let you go till next time. Know your Gear. The Know your Gear podcast.