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The know youw gear podcast. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast on Friday, June 26th of 2026. Hey. 2626. 6. 2626. I don't know if that means anything. So it feels good. Feels like another day. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. Is ready to talk about some guitar stuff. My week's been good. Is interesting. I did some fun stuff this week because the summertime I went paddle boarding and that was fun. It's nice to break out the paddle boards and do that. Let's get into new stuff. What's going on? Let's see. Proud Bear Music says watching your interview with Gabe was like watching the Looney Tunes cartoon where the sheepdog and the coyote punch and punch out of work. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. Punching out. I remember that. You're talking about the cartoon where they like, they, the sheepdog protects the sheep and then they were like, you know, attacking each other and then at the end of the day they punch out and then they would chill out. He said, great interview. Yeah, it was kind of interesting. I saw his, he did a recap. Guitar center did a recap of like their first or the second season. And he went through each interview and it was really cool. It was interesting to hear his thoughts about how he, you know, what he thought of the interview I did with him and the interview he did with me. It was quite interesting. Like I said, I was very shocked when they asked me to come on to their podcast. When I say very, I mean, not because I was like, what I, I, I was more like shocked they would ask. I guess that makes sense. Like I'm not shocked that to be asked to go on a podcast. I was shocked that they asked me. So it was interesting. And I think, I think I'll tell you some behind the scenes stuff. That's the whole point of this podcast, right? Is that, you know, it's a little deeper into the world. You know, with the first time I met Gabe, I told you guys, I literally met him for if I said five minutes, I'm rounding up by four minutes. And then we sat and then we did the interview and, and then I talked to him for about another 10, 15 minutes after that and that was the end of it. That was my first and only communication with him. Then the second time I interviewed him, you got understand, I hadn't talked to him. I don't, I don't, you know, like, I don't really know him like that. Right. I just, you know, I've obviously just the Shows, I want to say, large enough that you guys have a large enough voice that they recognize that it's worth having me come talk to them. So the second interview I did with him, I think we Talked for maybe 10 minutes this time before. And two things that are interesting that I've learned when I meet people, whether it's Jeff Keel or it's Gabe or if it's. I'm trying to think, all the people, Mike Clem at, you know, Sweetwater, if it's, you know, you know, you name it, guitar builders, amp builders, Andy Powers, they all understand the power of social media and they all get punished by it. Social media is a give and take situation. It gives you lots of advertising and at very low cost. Sometimes no cost puts your product and your company out in front of people very, very effectively. But of course, it gives voice to everyone, and everyone doesn't have the same thing to say. So basically what I'm trying to say is when I was talking to Gabe and I don't feel like this was like, off the record, after we did the interview, he said, and I think this is a prompting, in other words, why I think I was asked to come on their podcast for a few minutes after the second interview. We had talked briefly, and one of the questions he said was, he says, he said, how do you handle the trolls, the people who are always attacking and what they say? And keep in mind, I'm not saying they're all attacking, you understand, it's not pleasant to hear is what I'm trying to say. And I said, what I've learned is I listened to them. I wish I couldn't. I wish I could drown it out, so to speak. I said, but what I've really, really learned is it doesn't matter what I do or say, they hate you anyways. Like, 10 years, there's no. There's no right answer to any question that stops anyone from attacking. And I said, either they either misunderstand what you said or they just don't like you, or, you know, maybe they don't like your haircut. And. And I. He. His head kind of went down a little bit, you know, kind of like he understood. And because he does read a lot of your guys's comments on all the platforms. There's other platforms and I can tell that obviously you can imagine some people are like, guitar center, turn around. This is great. I'm sure that he's like, feels good. And then they're like, guitar center sucks, and here's why. And of course, I'M one of those people who have been on both sides of that coin saying things. So I, I think that's why he was kind to me on the podcast because I thought, not that he would attack me in the podcast, but I thought he, you know, run me, rub me through a little bit of it, you know, and he was really nice. So. All right, all right, let's, let's deal guitar stuff. Okay, so the. This is good. Wrecking Dog says. Hey Phil, does balance tension strings help improve floating bridge guitars? That's a really interesting question. The answer is absolutely not. It's a great question because I could see why the word tensions in there in their marketing. So of course when you think bridges, you think tension. It's not. I just set up two guitars yesterday and I'm mad at myself for not filming it. I don't know why I didn't film them. I was just restringing my personal guitars and setting them up. I have a video on this and we had talked about this privately with the patrons. So let me just tell you what's going on. Something to go forward. I had created some like repair type content and you know, setup content, including where I show one of my favorite tricks to get a guitar bridge setup floating. I put that on a patron only platform. The main reason is, is if I put it on the YouTube platform, it just doesn't, it doesn't gain a lot of activity. You know, in other words, you're not, you're not going to get any subs from it. You don't get any views from it. It's not really, it doesn't really add to the channel. This is important because when I talk like this, people really focus on like, well, not everything has to get a banger views on YouTube. You get punished when your views are not good. You know, they, they throttle down your other videos and you know, and that's really tough. And the. We're living in a time on YouTube where sometimes it makes sense not to make a video at all and let your channel keep moving. And then instead of putting out a video that for some reason you guys, you guys right here don't seem to like and don't watch and then. Cause you don't watch that YouTube goes, oh well, stop suggesting his other stuff to them too. And so you actually hurt your channel sometimes. So I had started throwing that kind of stuff on Patreon and then the discussion was, do we put on the second channel? What do we do with it? And through a discussion with Patreon, we Decided we'll put it back on the main channel and I'll just take the beating. Because it's gonna be a beating. Cause It'll get like 6,000 views and it'll probably throttle the channel down for a couple of days. But my answer to you, Wrecking Dog, is I have a video where I show you how to set up a guitar in literally three minutes, floating bridge and all. And it's on there. And all I have to do is click it and move it over. So I kind of want to watch it again and make sure I like all the edits and everything is done. And if so, I'll throw it over. So I'll make that a priority this week for. For that. And that will explain what I'm trying to get to. Is that will explain to you why balance tension will have no effect on. On the strings on the br. The reason is, is because basically, whether you have five springs, four springs, three springs, or two springs, it doesn't matter. Just like it doesn't matter what your gauge of strings are, just like it doesn't matter if they're balance tension or not. Essentially, when the tension is equalized between the springs and the strings, then the bridge sits in the right position, or at least the position you want it in if you're floating it. And if you're not floating it well, then a lot of that doesn't even matter. And we'll. I'll do that. So I'll move a lot of stuff over and you guys will be seeing that soon. Okay, let's see. Caught me off guard. I read Catalyn. I'm gonna say Catalyn. Catelyn says, hey, did you know Hans Dolman has the balls to fight Fender? Ernie balls got him. I. That's what made me laugh. The Ernie balls thing. Yes. So it's good. I. Like I said before, I did a video because I didn't want to spend a lot of time talking about Fender. I'm sorry. Fendered the hell out, as I'm sure you all are too. It kind of feels like every time it comes up just puts me in this mood to not really want to play and enjoy guitar at the level I usually do. So. But I. That's why I did the video separate this week. If you notice it. I was normally would be a Friday topic. And then I figured we'd go on for an hour and just kill the show. I didn't want that to happen, so I put it separate. I'm really happy this is happening with Toman. And Fender only for one reason, one reason over only it'll get resolved. Like I said, if the offender wins, good for them. If Toman wins, good for them. Ultimately, you know, I think it's. It's for the companies to fight it out now. So at least it's. At least it's two companies that can handle themselves. They're both big enough to. Where they can handle it financially. That's the way they want to go. Right. Shadow says, does Phil have any pets? I have dogs and cats and dogs and cats and cats and dogs living together. I want to do the quote I get. I met. I'll mess it up from Ghostbusters. Dogs and cats living together. I just don't remember the second part. What does he say? He says mass hysteria, something like that. Right. Dogs and cats living together. So, yes, on top of that, my wife fosters animals. So mostly, the way I understand it, she fosters the animals that are too small to adopt. So sometimes, like maybe they have feeder bottles and stuff, but usually it's like they just can't really eat on their own stuff. So she gets animals that are too small to adopt and then she holds them. We usually have them here for a few weeks. I will warn everyone. She's going to. I know she's going to hear this right now. She's going to roll her eyes. But I always tell people, don't hang out with my wife. You're going to get a pet. Ralph and his girlfriend's got a pet. Now my wife's trainer's got two pets. Hang out with my wife. You're adopting a pet. I'm just telling you, she adopts them. She gets other people adopt them. She is very good at adopting out pets. So I'm just letting you know. So. Yes. All right. That's if for those that always ask sometimes, like, you're into guitars. What are your wife into that. My wife's into that. Pets. Taking care of pets. Let's see. Okay, let's see. Hold on. Oh, bird. Rockin says inquiry. Inquiring minds want to know what's up with the Gibson CEO. If you guys didn't see the Gibson CEO step down. That was Cesar. Cesar stepped down. I saw that. There's an interim CEO. My usually, My conclusion is usually say that. You see an interim CEO, it means decisions happen fast. Whether that means he left fast or they, you know, they asked him to leave fast, it happened fast. Because they obviously didn't, in my opinion, didn't get the successorship quickly. And, you know, I Saw a thing on he. He posted on his socials that he's starting his own company or starting his own. Sorry. New business is what he says he's excited about a new business. Seems weird. Always seems weird to me when, you know, he's always been like, Gibson's his dream come true being the CEO. Gibson is the. His life. He's a Gibson, you know, blood and, you know, he plays Gibsons and he works on Gibsons and he's all about Gibson and. And so to see that he's going off to do something else, you know, somebody said it about the. Bud Cole was the CEO of Fender. CEOs just change out all the time. That's just how it works. It's the boring part of businesses when they get that big, whatever internally is happening, it gets locked up in ND8. And. And really all that matters is, is that. What does it matter? I don't know. It matters that obviously something's not too horrible because, like said, he's. They're keeping him on the board of directors as a thought person, helping with thoughts and marketing and also a brand ambassador. So again, doesn't seem like it's, you know, get the hell out of here and never talk to us again or vice versa. So that's good. Again, I just don't have any information that would be helpful. And, you know, and I don't really. Like I told you, it's. I don't know. That's it. Boring. It's all boring stuff. I feel like we've all. Come on, man. Haven't we all had enough of the corporate boringness? And, you know, companies, it's. I think the. To me, the shot in the veins for the Fender debacle has been. It was a reminder that these companies are just big corporations. And there's something I see it in when I watch other YouTube channels that do reviews of like Marvel movies or YouTube channels that love Legos or anything that's been this lifelong thing that's been in your life as a comic book, as a. As a youthful toy. Something that's been a part of you so much that it's actually part of your personality or in some cases your wardrobe. Like me, where I wear. I mean, I have more Fender wardrobe than Vans wardrobe. And the reminder that they are now becoming or are a kind of like soulless entity, you know, or it's just about the money. Look, it's always going to be about the money. You got to pay your bills and you got to pay your employees, but you understand and it's, it's just that I think that's what it was for me. It was like a reminder, like, oh, when they get that big, it really kind of turns. You know I said this before about Guitar Center. You know, if Guitar center would have went out of business 20 years ago, I'd been cheering because I think we would have got the mom and pops back stronger than ever. And that's just where I sat. I said that to Gabe. So you guys know I said it to his face on the camera, off the camera. But I believe now that if Guitar center was to close its stores, two things would happen. The industry to get shell shocked from just losing the massive amount because being one of the biggest retailers in the US with now because of, probably because of Guitar Center a really undervalued, under source, underfunded mom and pop situation. But on top of that, consumers have really shown that when you take away brick and mortar, they just go more online. The facts are there. Like I said, my analogy could be wrong. I'm just giving you an analogy. If Walmart closed down 20 years ago, maybe all the bicycle shops, the hardware stores, all that stuff would come back. We'd all be better for it now. I think if Walmart goes under, just more Amazon. So I think that's what happens in Guitar Center. I think Guitar center closes. I could be totally wrong. And I hope I, well, I hope that I am. But if I'm, if I'm even a little right, and that's based on all the stuff I've seen in the last, just the last five years, much less the last 20 years, I think what happens is Guitar center closes those stores just like Sam Ash closes stores. And here's a perfect example. No one has reported since Sam Hesh has closed all their stores that Guitar center saw an uptick in stores. The mom and pop stores are not claiming, wow, it's way better now. It's not what anyone's claiming. They're claiming the same thing. It's hard to fight the online battle. And the online battle is growing. It's growing, it's growing, it's growing. So maybe, maybe having Guitar center have stores is, the theory is, is that if you go to a Guitar center store, Guitar center store, you might visit your mom and pop stores as well because you're, you're in the habit of going to stores and it's keeping that part of our, our romantic guitar loving experience alive. You know, I'm, I'm, I kind of go to a music store once a Week, So I still do to this day. I like to go in, say hi to somebody, a store I know, maybe pick up something. This week I bought an LPD pedal from Zims Guitars. Sometimes the Zims Guitars. Sometimes it'll be like Milanos if I pop in there. Sometimes it's a guitar center actually this week because it was Father's Day last weekend. My. For Father's Day, my wife took me to Guitar center. I wish I wasn't kidding. She took me to Guitar center, let me buy a bass amp. She. She sat there while I. Oh, by the way, just to give credit to my wife, my wife didn't sit there and let me buy a bass amp at a guitar center. She let me buy a bass amp at a guitar center that was having the drum off where they had nine different drummers competing to win, like, you know, like 25 grand and a drum set, all this stuff. So there was just drumming and drumming. So my wife's sitting in the guitar center, just drumming, pounding. Right. And I know some of you are gonna like, well, she could sit in the car in Arizona. You really don't want to sit in the car. Even with the AC going. It was probably 106 or 107 at the time. So, I mean, she could. But it's not fun. All right, um, so let's go on. Let's. Let's get into this stuff. Okay. I have. Here's one. Whoops. Where's that? This one's from WildWarlock 1896 says, what's the best way to not get scammed for the first time? For a first time buyer on Reverb for secondhand gear. First thing, I gotta tell you, there's a lot of things I could give Reverb critiques about in the negative, of course. Course. Right. I have some things to say. Their fees are getting, I think, a little much for me. There's some policies, like the fact that they hide the majority of the new gear from you. If you guys remember that I was the one that reported that. No one even cared about that, by the way. Still to this day, I still never will understand. I don't want to go on a tangent, but I'm going to for a second. I still can't understand. Everybody lost their shit because Fender says they're going to want companies to destroy their guitars. But no one lost their crap when I reported that. Reverb now will not present to you all new product you actually search for. You go in right now in Reverb and you Type in like Ibanez RG550 brand new. It only presents a fraction of the ones listed to make it. To me, I believe that it's to make it seem like there's less inventory. And so you, you're, you're going to make a purchase, which to me is horrible because I think you should make part of an informed decision is knowing, like, oh, wow, there's 500 of these for sale. Maybe I should be asking the dealer if they want to make a deal or maybe I should be looking at something else or anything, you know, any kind of decision. When you see that there's only four and you're like, oh, there's only four, but there's really 60 of them and they don't show you anything beside the first ones. Still think that's crazy. So back to you, Wild Warlock, those kind of things. I'm not a fan of Reverb on. What I am a fan of Reverb on is how they take care of customers like Guitar Center. Lots of flaws, but return policy is going to protect you every time at Guitar Center. Same thing with Reverb. It's why I can't go crazy on these companies because like when I talk to Gabe, he's, you know, obviously, look, you can walk into Guitar center, they don't even look in your box. I don't know about you guys, maybe they treat people differently. Actually, I told you, when my, if my wife returns something, they don't even look in the box. It always makes me like, don't you want to know that I returned the thing I'm saying in return, they don't even care, so they just give you a full refund. The same thing with Reverb. So to answer your question, if you buy on Reverb, you will be protected. I still, as a habit, probably because I'm an old school ebay buyer from the 90s. At least the late 90s, I think is when I started using ebay. That's when I remember it. Late 90s, early 2000s. Always look at their feedback. Look, negative, positive feedback doesn't help you anymore because of all the scams and crap that they do where if you give them negative feedback and then they return your money, then they remove their negative feedback. They all do weird stuff like that now so that when you go in there and like they have no negative feedback, that could just mean that everybody got, you know, refunded their money and protected by Reverb and then Reverb. So the irony is somebody tries to Screw you over. Reverb protects you, but then Reverb removes the person from trying to let you guys know they got screwed. When I had a bad reverb experience, I did a video. Everybody's like, did you report him? I did report him, and Reverb didn't care. You want to know why? Because they took care of me. Everybody asked what happened with that PR se that got. You know, that was all the drama. You can watch the video if you want. And the end result was Reverb looked at the case and said, yep, you actually are right. He obviously misrepresented the return to you. We're gonna. We're gonna pay you out whole. I got the whole amount that he paid me, and they sent me a label. I stuck it on the box, and they had me send the guitar to them. And then I don't know what they do with it. They don't say, but. So there's nothing I can do to tell you guys who the person was in Reverb. I wouldn't out him publicly like here, but I would out, you know, put it on the Reverb feedback. So all of that is my way of saying Wild Warlock is just make sure if they have zero feedbacks, that's usually a flag right now, because it's probably going to scam. Even though I believe with at least an 80% gut feeling that reverb would take care of it. It's probably 100, but, you know, you know, let's go with caution. I think reverb would take care of you, but I would, to avoid the problem altogether, make sure that at least they have a few feedbacks. And if you're buying something expensive, the first thing I always look for, just to see what kind of competent seller I'm talking to, whether it's a store or a person. If they sold anything like this before, that helps. So, like, to me, if it says they've sold 12 pedals, but now they're trying to sell a $5,000, sir. Maybe they know how to ship a pedal, but they don't know how to ship a guitar is what I'm trying to say. So I'll be a little cautious with that. One thing I like to do whenever I'm weary of a seller to the point where it's, you know, I'm like, man, this is the guitar. This is the thing I really want. They have it. I send them an email. I. I find that the interaction with email back and forth will tell you everything about them. You need to know that's it. You know, if you ask them a question and they. Because I've had it all. I've had it where sometimes they don't answer. You sure, they're probably busy. Sometimes people message us and you know, if I'm busy that day, I'm not going to see your email until that night or later the next morning. So I understand that sometimes the message back is short. That's not great. But I've had people respond to me with like, you know, I'm trying to think of a for instance. I remember once I asked somebody like, how much does a guitar weigh? And sometimes you get people and they go, 32 pounds. And you go, well, obviously you didn't weigh it. But sometimes if you ask how much your guitar weighs, they'll send you something like that doesn't even matter. What are you too stupid to know that doesn't matter? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's what he said to me once. Somebody said, you're too stupid to know it doesn't matter. And I'm like, what matters to me? And I'm the one with the thousand. $2000 to give you. So. So again, I'm not begrudging him. I'm just saying I'm like, well, obviously I'm not moving forward with. With him. Wannabeetle. What's up? Wannabeedle says, hey, Phil, what's your opinion on Seymour Duncan's mini humbuckers? I'm pondering on putting those in my Hoffner Club base. It's not the German model. The neck pickup is weaker than I am at the gym. That's funny. Good, good, good joke. So I like the Duncan Mini Humps humbuckers. So, you know, I like. It's one of the things I think DiMarzio and Duncan does very well as mini humbuckers because of the fact that they have the facilities to make those. You don't see a whole lot of small builders, small pickup makers making them because they're a little bit more difficult to make for the most part. So Duncan's sure to this day, I think, I mean, I love so many pickups, you know, I love bare knuckles. I love Lindy Fairlance for so many reasons. The throwback guys, their pickups, you know, are pretty impressive as well. You know, there's a lot of cool pickups out there, but I still believe dollar to dollar value, you can't beat Seymour Duncan and DiMarjo. I just think for a ton of reasons. One, they're still not that ridiculously priced. I can't. I'm gonna tell you half. I apologize for not selling the half. Other half. I made a comment to Larry DiMarzio once. I said, you know, I bought a pickup on his Black Friday deals last year. I bought a bunch of pickups actually, from DiMargio on Black Friday, and they had him at 25% off. And I think I paid $75 for a pickup. It was like a hundred bucks. 75 off, no sales tax. I think there was shipping. Maybe it was like eight bucks or something for a couple pickups. And I mentioned to him that I. My first DiMarzio pickup was in, like, 1991. I want to think that was, if I'm off, I'm a year in either direction. It could have been 92, and it could have been 90. And I remember it being 79.99. Now. I don't know what the. The shop was charging me full retail or if that was a map or what that was. I said, how is it possible, you know, all these years later, you could buy a DiMarzio pickup for $5 less than it is now? And he laughed. He laughed. And he goes, you know, he goes, you know, we've raised prices over the years, but, yeah, he's like, not a lot. And same with Duncan. They haven't raised prices a lot. You know, pickups are kind of like. Sure. Microphones and stuff. They just haven't really raised prices a lot. And that's. I think that's why. I think I always appreciate a lot of their. Their. Those two brands pickups. And I think it's because they hold the line on each other. You know what I mean? And so I don't know. That's one of the things I appreciate about them. Eric wants to know if he. He's got a 75 Marshall amp Super lead head. How can he run reverb since it has no effects loop? You know, I mean, you can try. You know, rock stars like Eddie Van Halen and George lynch, they actually ran reverb in front of those heads. I actually was. Had George lynch do a clinic at our shop. And one of the team, one of our employees, they offered to set up George Lynch's rig. And George said, go ahead and do that. And George went in the back store. I think he went and smoked. I think I remember he smoked cigarettes. And I apologize if I'm wrong, but I just remember he had to go to the back behind the store. So maybe he's smoking weed. I don't know. I Don't think he was doing that, but I think he was smoking cigarettes. But anyways, I think it's because I think I had two teachers out there smoking cigarettes with him. And I remember walking out there, and if he wasn't smoking a cigarette and they were, I know somebody was because I remember walking out going, I really don't want to get secondhand smoke. And I. But I really want to be out here talking to these guys. So I sat there and suffered through it. That's what I remember standing next to cigarette smoke. If you don't like cigarette smoke, it's not a pleasing experience. So anyways, my employee set it up and they run the reverb through the effects loop of his random. And when George came, he goes, oh, that's all. That's all wrong. He goes, I run all my effects through the front of the amp. So he ran everything through the front of the amp. So you can do it that way. Also, of course, there's like the friat. There's the Waza craft. Waza Craft. I don't know why I call it craft. The Waza boss has a attenuator, and there's a ton of them. If the attenuators that have power amps, what they allow you to do is they insert a effects loop in between the amplifier head and your cabinet. So if I had a 75 Marshall amp Super lead, and I want to put reverb in it, I would buy something like that. I would buy something I trust, like the fry it or something that has the ability to plug, put a load against your head. Then it puts out its own power amp into the cabinet. And then you can put the. Your effects in the effects loop. And I would. That's the way I would go if I was doing that. What do I do? So obviously, like, my Marshall head behind me has no effects loop. How do I get reverb stuff in there? If I'm running reverb and stuff, I'm usually running the distortion pedal in front of the amp. If I'm cranking the amp, I'm just cranking the amp. I really don't care about reverb at that point. I'm just. I'm rocking out. So. Okay, let's get out of this one. Let's go here. And again, if you're talking to me, put a question marks at the beginning so I know it's to me. Okay, I'm scrolling. Oh, okay. This is a good one. It says. I think I say Umari says, hey, Phil, if you've tried an explore type guitar yet, what do you think of the tail fin? You know what's funny is I love the tail fin on the Explorers. I like my arm there, but they're so short, so narrow in the middle. I feel again hunched over and I don't really. I didn't love it. So I. I picked them up from time to time over the years. I think the last time was. It feels like it was months ago, so it's probably a year ago. I was in a guitar center and I picked one up. It was used. I think it was white, something like that. I was like, ah, maybe I need an explorer in my life. And I picked it up and same thing, the horn, the tail fin does not bother me. I kind of like that. I have guitars that kind of put your arm there when it puts it up like this high. I just didn't like the narrow, how narrow it was in the center. I feel like there wasn't enough mass there. A couple reasons. One, when I'm sitting, I don't like to hunch over. When I'm standing, I don't mind it except for. I don't like really small and narrow in the middle guitars. I'm a big guy and it just makes you look bigger. It's one of the things that you're trying to, you know, you. You know, you're trying to make it look presentable so you don't feel like big man with a tiny guitar, you know, kind of thing. So. But I like the way they look and. But nothing's has and same thing with a Kelly, the Jackson Kelly. I always love the Jackson Kelly's. I pick them up and I just go, yeah, it's. It's not, it's not for me. So. Yep, let's see. Okay, hold on a second. And again, if you're talking to me, put the question marks at the beginning. I'm gonna go here. Okay. This one came from Bug Generator. It says. Hey Phil, haven't heard you talk about Fender Wide Range Humbuckers. Oh, the Conife or. Yeah, right. You know what? This comes up over and over again. You know, I've tried them and I just not. There's not nothing that's ever made me seek out any kind of guitar with them in there. So like I said, I don't think there's anything, anything I would. There's no guitar that if I had them in there I could imagine if I like the guitar that I would yank them out for any particular reason. But there's never, I've never had an impulse to put them in there, so. So that's where I'm at on that. I know it's kind of boring to say it, but it's just where it is. Mike wants to know, hey Phil, what mods would you recommend for the Firefly Mad cat telly? I would upgrade the pickups. Firefly's weakest part is their pickups. For sure. There's, you know, they're, they're budget guitars and they're made to basically, you know, they're, they're made to excite you with a couple features. You know, the importance no name guys have really figured out that if they throw some features in there, like I said, it's a laundry list. It's like standstill frets, roasted neck. Throw a couple things in there that maybe some locking tuning keys and a bone nut, right? Things that when you hear those things, those components have value to you because you know that they're good, generally speaking. And also you know that most brand names won't either put them in at all or put them in at their highest tier. So when you pick up a Firefly, you're like, wow, I'm getting a lot of money for 200 bucks. You're getting ridiculously a lot of guitar for 200 bucks. I mean that's just the reality of it. I mean I have, you know, you buy pedals for 200 bucks, so buying guitars for 200 bucks that actually can play is still mind boggling. But I, the, the Fireflies that I have purchased, that's where I think I've always felt like I'm not a big fan of the pickups. Now. I'm kind of a pickup snob. When I say that. I mean I don't have to have the best pickups. But I don't like it when pickups are microphonic. I don't like it if I can hear too much movement. Sometimes again, if you don't wax pot the pickups correctly, if you don't wind them correctly, if you don't do a lot of things, the details correctly on a pickup, there's this more than squealing problems. Sometimes you just hear a lot of movement in the guitar because again, the wires, if they can move, they become problematic and sound wise. So. So I would say pickups on that guitar for sure. Get yourself and always with pickups, I always tell people, go look for used pickups, man. Pickups hold no value and it makes no sense at all. It's because, I mean very Rarely are they going to be bad. If you're going to buy it from somebody, like a reverb situation, you're going to have a track source so you'll know if you get defective pickups, you have a way to, to get taken care of by reverb. If you're going to meet somebody on Craigslist, you know, take your multimeter, buy, go to Harbor Freight and get one of those. Some people say they get them for free on the weekends. And some sales. I, I think when I bought mine, it was five bucks to do it. I bought one just to show everybody on a video. If you want to spend a little bit more money, I think that's always a wise decision, right? Buy once, cry once when it comes to tools. But I also like the theory. I like two theories when it comes to tools. Buy one, cry once is a absolute great saying for tool buying. But also there's, there's also a good, There is a good reason to buy cheap tools when you're just trying to get, you know, some tools and then slowly replace them out with better tools. Because sometimes what happens is the. I don't think you ever regret buying an expensive tool except for when you don't use it. And so, you know, I've had that experience, you know, where you buy a nice tool. I'm like, I'm not going to buy cheap. I, you know, I spent a couple hundred bucks and then I used it once and I've never used it again. And you think, okay, I could have bought that one a little cheaper, but. And say, so a multimeter might be the same thing. Maybe if you feel like you use it. But you can check a pickup to make sure that it works very easily. Save yourself at least half the money buying used pickups. Again, stick with the companies. Like I said, get some Seymour Duncan's. I have bought Seymour Duncan's for as low as $5, especially from music stores. It is the weirdest thing sometimes when music stores have bins, sometimes they have bins of necks and bodies and pickups. Those are my favorite little stores. You go in there and they will deal with you like it's like it's a yard sale. Like you can just pull out a couple pickups and go, hey, what do you want for all these pickups? They can actually be priced. And you just do that. I just like, hey, I want these three pickups. And they'll go 50 bucks. And I'll go, Do you take 40 for the three of them? And then you go, yeah, and Then literally you have, you know, what would cost you $300 in new pickups for 40 bucks. And it's crazy. And so that's a good way to get pickups used. And a lot of people worry about pickups being used. But I will tell you, for the most part, pickups are a pass fail system. In other words, they either will work when you test them and you're fine, or they don't work. If you're worried that like, well, what happens if somebody did something to them and they don't have the correct output or they're not there. The magnet has been degaussed a little bit. It's very rare that I've seen that. Usually where I've seen most damage pickups is the wire has been cut. That is the thing that, that is the problem, right? Once the wire, the wire is smaller than a human hair. So once the wire snaps, then actually what's funny about that is that means it's not working. Could still be fixed. However, even sometimes if it's in the wind, that doesn't mean it's not gonna work. Still, at least there are pickups in notoriously who are broken that still work. So. Oh, Funky boss says, what if the wires are too short? You can extend them. First of all, you can extend them the right way by disassembling the pickup and putting extensions on there. But you know, you could just, you could make it look like a mess in there. Who cares what it looks like inside the cavity? I've seen it all. I've seen, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen like a Demarzi or Duncan pickup where the wires stick out this far and you go in the guitar and then they, they didn't even solder it. They took two wires, they soldered, they, they tied the wires and then they electrical taped them together and then they soldered those wires or you know, tape those off on the terminals. And it worked. I'm not recommending that. I think if you watch any of my videos, I think you're going to learn a much better way to do it. However, what I'm trying to say is, oh yeah, you can put extenders on, on pickups all, all day long. And if you want to do it the right way, you actually just replace the wires from the, from the base of the pickup. If you want to do it the cheap lazy way, you just put extenders on wherever the end of the wires are and extend them out. Not a problem at all. And so, you know, I am Guilty of both. If I was doing it for a customer, I would always do it the right way because I'm getting paid. It makes sense for me. There's no way I would ever put down a thousand dollar bet and say, hey, let's go through all my guitars and see what you find. You would probably find some hack job stuff that and a couple of my personal guitars. And I know this not because I've done it, because in the last, probably about three years ago, I remember I sold a used guitar that I had for about four or five years. And then I, I do this with guitars. You know, I'm going to sell it, I need to pull it apart and, you know, make sure it's good, set it up. A lot of people really scrutinize the hell out of my used gear because they're like, Phil McKnight owned this for a minute. And because he made a video on how to set up guitars, he must know everything about setups. Anyways, my point is, I remember pulling a, a pick guard off and look in going, oh, I got to fix all that. I fixed all that. And I go, yep. And I'm. And I think, in that case, I think I remembered that I, I did a really bad hack job. And I remember telling myself, I'll fix it later. And then I didn't. So, you know, what isn't there saying something like mechanics, Cars are like the worst cars. I think that's sometimes how it is with my personal guitars. Sometimes they're the worst, you know, because I'm, I'm putting them together and I'm like, I just, you know, when you do it all day, I'm better now because I don't have to do it all day. But when I did it at the shop all day, I come home and just hack on my guitars and get them done. Okay. Okay, let's do this. Go here. This one came from Choprock Guitars. Oh, that's a cool name. Hey, Phil, I pulled the trigger on a Firefly bone shredder. Should be getting it Monday. Curious what mods did to yours. So I did two mods and then I got rid of mine. So first thing I modded, I put a. A Duncan in it. I don't know what Duncan I put in it because I just have a bucket of. Or a bin, I should say, of pickups. And I was like, let's put a real Duncan in there. I put a Duncan in there. And then I. What I do, I changed out the block on the Tremolo. I was Just messing with it. I liked it so much that I go, I'm gonna get another one. I end up buying three of those bone guitars. That's the problem with some of those Firefly guitars, is that you buy them. Now, in all fairness, when I say I bought three, I would be very clear. I should. Should stipulate something. What happened was I ordered one because I wanted to show it on Halloween. I thought it'd be cool for the Halloween video. Remember? If you remember, like, the. The hot. The podcast happened on Halloween. I thought that'd be great. So I ordered one, and I don't know why, but Firefly did not ship it. It sat for days and days. So I mentioned that to Shawna, and I said, hey, can you check on that? So what Shauna did is she bought another one and had them overnight it. And then the overnight one and the real one all. The first one, I should say, showed up on the same day, so. Which was in time for the show. So I had two. So the day I showed you, when I actually had two, and I was like, oh, I have two. And then I decided to get a third one because I was like, oh, they were 230 bucks, I think. I think it was like, 239, something crazy like that. So a very boring story. I ended up getting another one not from Firefly. And so now I have what I would call a more legitimate one. When I say legitimate one, it's just the carbs are more legitimate. The Firefly one is really cool, but I actually liked it so much. That's kind of like what I was talking about. Tools. I've done that with guitars. I don't know about you guys. Sometimes, like, you get like a. A Squire jazz master, or you get like, a affordable guitar, and then you go, wow, I like this way more. Now I should really think about getting, like, a, you know, a more forever type guitar for you, if that's what you're after. Like a jazz master. So. So that's what ended up happening. That. But the mod, definitely the pickup and that guitar. The only thing I think about is the pickup. A lot of people complain that the way they cut the. The lower horn because they leave a lot of the wood on there. It's hard to get your hand in there. I. I don't really play a lot of that stuff up there on the high part of the neck, so it wasn't something that affected me in any way. But, you know, and also, I kind of had this dream that I was gonna deck one out and paint one. And after a few months, I didn't do that. I was like, okay, that's gotta go to. So that's why I did that. It's. It's. It's a tough, tough thing. You're always looking. I'm always looking like, oh, I should get another video. So let's get another guitar and go. Told you. It's crazy. I really want. You know what I wanted, though, Firefly, I really wanted was the Snake. To me, in fact, I was at a friend's house a week or two ago, two weeks ago, for his wedding reception, and he still has the Kamikaze Made in USA that I sold him because I had one, and then I got rid of it, and because it was heavy, it was like 12 pounds, something ridiculous. 11, 12 pounds. And that's the one I got rid of. I got rid of the Kamikaze and I got the Bones guitar, and then. Or maybe I had the Bones guitar for the Kamikaze. But anyways, the lynch guitar, that's always meant the most to me because everybody. It's like, I told you about Van Halen, right? Everybody. To. To most people, it's the striped guitars. Whether you're the Bumblebee or the white and black stripes or the red white. To me, Van Halen's always been, you know, the music man. Like, that's. That's when I'm like, oh, yeah, that was. You know, when I kind of think about when I started appreciating him on that level. Lynch. For me, it was Lynch Mob. You know, I listened to Dawkin, but when Lynch Mob came out, that was like, oh, wow. I like Lynch Mob. So to me, it's always been the Skull and Snakes guitars, and Firefly did one of those, but I just couldn't. I can't. Every time I see somebody have one, I go to Firefly's website, and they sold out in a second. So. And I know the. When I say I know I should say I know the owner of Firefly, but when I say I know him, I mean, I have his email address and I've talked to him. At least I think he's the owner. His name's George, But. But I don't. You know, like, I said stuff like that. I don't really need. You know, I don't want to get involved with sponsor content because it's a $200 guitar. I've told you guys this many times before. When I buy a $3,000 guitar and I do a video, it's impossible. It's very hard to not only turn a profit but get your cost back out of it. So those, those, those get but $200 guitars. If I make a video on a $2 guitar, obviously at this channel size, the that makes enough to pay for the guitar and keep going. So you just make the content and go. There's no reason to, you know, spend two weeks negotiating a deal. Is that whatever. So Brian says, hey Phil, do you have any experience with late 90s Washburn USA bases? I, I love them. I couldn't afford one. I thought the bantam bases, right? By the time I had the money to afford the, I wanted a bantam bass more than anything. Remember they made the four strings, the five, the six strings. I thought they were cool designs. I thought they were played amazing. The store that I would go to when I was a kid was a washman dealer. And that's the premium bass line they carried. And I love them. I thought they were cool looking. And by the time I had money, which was after the army and when I say had money, I still didn't have money. But you know, shortly after, you know, because you got school, the army, you get through all this stuff. And then by the time I had money, bantam bases were the import cheapo stuff and they were pretty much phased out of almost doing most of the USA stuff altogether. So I never really got my hands on one. It was another one of those bases like Tobias bases where I wanted one really bad. But by the time I had money to buy one, or I should say means because even then it would be some kind of trade, trade in, you know, figure it out kind of thing, they had kind of went away as the premium product. And then if they did make them, they were even more ridiculous than before. So. But love the bantam basses. I love Washburn USA stuff. I've just always thought, you know, it was some of the best guitars made especially for the money. They were always really cool. I remember when Jennifer Batten was playing a USA Washburn and I thought it was awesome. And it's again another one of those brands. You know, I believe this, I believe that. And I've said this for years. Fender and Gibson and maybe prs will be the exceptions. Fender and Gibson is definitely the exception. Maybe PRs be the exception too. I told you the first time I ever met Jeff Kiesel and I talked to him, he said, hey, do you think we should do an import line? And I said no. He said, why? And I said, because. I said because you'll make more money doing import and you won't want to do usa. And then I said the second part, which is later that dinner, I said, and there's a second twist to this. When you go import, you make more money and then you go out of business. That's the trend. It happened to Hamer, it happens to everybody. How many brands you know are, they were premium brands, then it's an import brand and then it's a gone brand or it gets acquired. And so you know, some people, when I've said this, people go, well, I don't know. I said Kramer was you know, high quality USA and of course Japanese parts, all that stuff, all that story. But you understand it was a high end brand. And then it's an important, now it's just an import brand and you know, same with a ton of the brands like that. And somebody will always say to me, yeah Phil, but they're still around. No, they were bought by someone else for pennies on the dollar in a bankruptcy or in a loss. And so, and somebody's keeping it alive because like, because it's got a brand attached to it and they're just basically slapping that brand on Cortec built product or some like Factory. So. And there are a few exceptions that. And again, it's not to say that those products are bad. I'm just saying that's the, that's what happened with Washburn for sure. You know, at some point Washburn was down to just making the Nuno guitar. They were down to like the Michael Sweet and the Nuno guitar. Then it just got to just the Nuno guitar. And then of course now they're just doing acoustics. And that's because there's, it's easier to sell acoustics than electrics in the market. And then because I always feel like if I say that somebody's going to have a question later. So let me just make sure you guys understand in the acoustic guitar market, in the entry level acoustic market, you do not have a whole lot of brand loyalty. That's an absolute fact. You can ask any retailer anywhere in the world, they'll tell you the exact same. Every retailer. I don't care if it's Guitar center or if it's, you know, Bob's Bargain Discount Emporium in Minnesota, whatever store it's, they will tell you that you carry in, you bring in many types of different entry level acoustics. And most of the time it is such a price focused thing, it doesn't even matter. In other words, some mom comes in, it's usually the mom and they come in with the kid and they tell you the price. It's not like, hey, I'm looking for a guitar. What will keep this, you know, child playing guitar? It's what do you have for $99? What do you have for 109? What is, you know, what is the least expensive acoustic. So acoustics, electrics are like that. But here's why electrics are problematic, because electrics are not. They cannot sell electric just by itself. It's got to be an electric and amplifier. You need the amplifier, then you need a cable. That's, that's already three things now. You're already, you're already going to jump the price. And remember, if you guys have ever been to a music store, of course you know that pretty much the cheapest you're going to get an amplifier is about 80 to $100, let's say $100 in today's market. So you're adding a hundred dollars to that. And we're, we're talking about people who want to spend a hundred to $200 on acoustic. So a lot of brands like Washburn figure out that if they're going to get into the entry level acoustics, the $99 to, let's call it up, all the way up to $700 now. And that's on the top 10 of those line, our top end of that line. They know that it's an easier market to sell because the retailer isn't so focused on it. So like I said this many years ago with GNL and Fender, it's so much easier to sell offender in a store than a gnl. You don't have to explain to somebody what a Fender is. You know, somebody comes in and you go, hey, here's a Fender. And they go, that's great. If you say it's a GNL now, you got to spend 20 minutes educating a consumer of what GNL is. Consumers are not so strict on the acoustics in the entry level price points. So they're just like, you know, is it, you know, is it a good acoustic? Yes. So let's see. Paul wants to know, hey, Phil, where would you. Where would be a good place to find clear descriptions of different neck carves? I'm not always clear. On modern cv, there's no, there is no definition. So, you know, Paul, it's all just made up. There's no. There is. Generally speaking, what you have to do is. What I do on the deep dives for you is say, here's what I believe the carve is C meaning like this. U meaning like this. V meaning like that. D, you know, right. These are just generalized as guitar players. And the only reason you know that is from reference. You pick up a guitar and somebody says that's a C carve. And you go, okay, I understand, I think what that feels like. And then when I give you the thicknesses at the 1st and the 12th fret that gives you the guidelines. And the width of course at the 12th fret and the first fret that gives you like a. Okay. And it's only comparative. You can only use that to compare. First of all, Paul, just to make it. I don't want to make it worse for you, but you know, you need to hear it. Just trying to get two Gibson 50s necks that feel the same and two Gibson 60s necks from different years that feel the same is almost impossible. It's all over the place. There has been considering that guitars have been pretty much made by CNCs for all 40 plus years now. It is crazy. The tolerances for what the carves are, what the widths are and the depths are all over the place. And part of it is because, and I've experienced this in person with both Fender and Gibson, but Fender was more so the case. They don't even know because you gotta understand, you know, these aren't. This isn't like Paul. Reed Smith has been there since day one. If you ask Paul Smith a question, look, he's gonna give you his tirade or his thing. But if you ask Paul a question about a guitar, he, he knows the answer. He'll know when the neck changed, he'll know when the finish changed. He knows the history of it. I talked to Larry DiMarzio. He can tell you throughout the decades when, when the pickups went well, this is when we went from butyrate this to this plastic. This is when we did this. This is why we. This, this is when we did this. This is where we moved this. This is why. He knows all the things about his company. It's his company. These people know their companies. Fender doesn't know their company. Gibson doesn't know their company. It's not, it's not, by the way. This isn't picking on them. This is not. And it has nothing to do with their size. It has to do with the fact that when I was a Fender dealer we would have. I had at least three different, I think Fender project product managers. I think three, maybe two, you get the idea. Different. And the product manager, they come in and their, their first thing they do, you notice this is they come in, they take over the product line, that, that department. In my experience, the first thing they start doing is making changes because they got to make their name. They're going to be like, hey, I'm going to turn this around. I'm going to make. Well, I'm gonna do better than the last, you know, last person who did this. And they start changing neck carves and Fender to the credit. There's a wall. And I wish I had the picture. It's. I. It's actually a, like a picture. I developed it at Walgreens. It's. There's a wall in the Fender factory and it's a wall of all the neck prototypes, all the artist prototypes. And, and because even though they have the CAD files, they still go physically touch the neck. So. And I remember this because when they were showing it to me, there was two Jeff Beck necks. And at the time there was only one Jeff Beck guitar. And I go, why is there two Jeff Beck necks? And they said, well, it's because he came in the factory like 10 years later and told us that when we handed to him, he's like, this neck doesn't feel like my neck. And it's because I guess that maybe his tech had sanded his necks or changed things, so Fender had to update his necks. So basically it gets a little confusing over the years. And then what's really made that a mess is the overseas guitars. And I mean that like when companies have their guitars built overseas, as you guys know, BC Rich, I. I did a video on the BC Rich Gunslinger and where I mentioned the neck did not feel to me like the gunslinger neck. I was a guitar made in India. I didn't feel like this was the correct neck. The CEO of BC Rich reached out to me and told me two things. He told me that the neck was actually modeled after his 84 charvel. And. And after watching my video, they went and checked the gunslinger necks. And he agreed with me that that neck is not correct. That the factory did not. Did not make the correct neck shape and thickness on the. That he specked. And you know, it was one of those things where, you know, you could ask, well, I noticed. How come they didn't notice? Well, they didn't break out their calipers and measure everything down. So sometimes on feel you might not notice it's a little thicker. I noticed it was like. It doesn't feel as right, but sometimes you don't know if that's you or what? And so when you have the measurements, you go, well, I felt a little thicker. And it says it's a little thicker. So I'm not crazy. I've actually had that so, you know, happen in the opposite way. I've convinced myself that a neck is different or something is different on a guitar. And then through measuring and stuff, I found that I'm. It's me. I'm. I'm remembering it wrong. So, yeah, it's Paul. I know that's a horrible thing about necks, but it's tough. And Fender makes it a little crazy too, with necks. They're all kind of guilty. I actually once said this to Jack Ebotham at Purest. We were talking about necks. A lot of people, I tell you that I like the wide thin more than the pattern regular neck, but that's not actually true because my favorite PRSs that I have are all pattern regulars. And I made this joke to Jack and I'm sorry, I'm getting water and Jack. Okay, so let me tell you what I told Jack. He said. He said, what's your favorite neck? PRS neck. And I said, my favorite. I tell people my favorite neck's the pattern thin. But really my favorite neck is the pattern regular. That the employee was a little aggressive or overzealous when he was sanding it. And then he said, yes, me too. And I said, yeah, it's almost like you can tell like it was the first guitar they were sanding that day or the sandpaper was brand new sheet of sandpaper, whatever it was. Or the guy had a great night before with his girlfriend or his wife or whatever. But that neck is just slightly thinner than a normal pattern regular. And again, the calipers confirm that. So, you know, that's the thing. Kiesel is now trying a new machine that they can put out necks that are more consistent because of that reason, because the machines get your neck so, so accurate. And then hand sanding just takes. So the only way to get the variance out of there is to reduce the amount of hand sanding. So. So that's the. That's the problem. So I, I have, I have tried a bunch of the new Keisel necks that are off the new cnc. I don't know if it's a new CNC machine or program. And the necks are different than before. I think I like them more. There's they. To me, they're just a. Not thicker, just a little bit more happening there. But also I noticed they're definitely consistent. They're More consistent than they were before, for sure. So I am noticing that. Okay. And then Tony says, hey, Phil, how much can you sand off to make a slimmer neck profile? The crazy part is, is how much, how much different if. How much different it feels with just little to no. With little to no sanding. A millimeter makes a difference. It's weird. I tell you this all the time. It's just my theory that your hands, your nose, your ears, your mouth, they're more sensitive than the rest of your body. We're very sensitive. We can tell things. It's why when you pick up a Fender neck with a skunk stripe and the walnut skunk stripe has lifted, essentially what's happened is the maple neck has shrank and the walnut has not shrank. And so there's a little bit of a line there. And people can feel it there. And they go, whoa, what is that? And it's. To you, it feels dramatic. It's almost non existent. So that's why I said people always say I got to sand the neck. But it has a finish. What I do. And I always say, you can use steel wool, believe it or not. What? You know, you're just smooth. You don't need to sand it flat again. You smooth it out. You don't. You don't even. You won't even go through the finish. It's just so subtle. It's because, again, these little things really matter a lot to guitar players. And some are blessed to not notice at all. I have a friend who could not tell you what fret wire is on any guitar ever. If it was vintage or jumbo tall, he doesn't notice it. And I would never curse him with giving him the information to make him miserable to him. He does the thing that's crazy to me, which is he has a guitar with like a fat 50s neck and vintage fret wire and he loves it. And then he has a super thin neck with super jumbo fret wire. And he loves that. And he. And he not loves them because they're different to him. They're just guitars. And when I talk to him, I go, I don't go, you're crazy. You don't notice. I go, you know what? Good for you. I wish I didn't know. I wish I couldn't tell. Wish I didn't think about it. Every guitar would be the same to me. And I wouldn't. I would love that because most of the guitars that I. The guitars, I love the way they look. I don't love the Way they play and feel and the guitars. I love the way they play and feel. I don't love the way they look. Step Van Joe says. Hey, Phil, what's your opinion on using solid core wire during builds? Any issue with cause? No, I mean, it's wire. I don't believe. I mean, there's not, you know, I know we talk about wire and resistance and all that stuff and you know, potentiometers and stuff. I have not experienced anything that can. You can notice, you know, kind of like guitar cables, cheap ones. You notice, you know, you notice when the insulate insulation on the cable is thin. Yeah. Because when you move it, you can hear it. Stuff like that. I know that's not what we're talking about, but we're talking about the wire inside the cavity. I told you I learned this when I learned I took an amp class on how to build an amp. I built two amps. I learned in amp building. Totally different world than guitar building. In amp building, like everything mattered how, you know, how long the wire don't make it too long. You got to twist the wire. You know, where you present the present. Push the. Put the wire in a guitar. I've never had a problem where I've had to worry about any of that stuff. If I want to put an extra couple inches of wire in the, in the cavity so that they have some room to play with later, do that. So if you want to use, you know, a cloth braided wire or solid core wire, do that. I've. I've experienced. No, and so, you know, it's. It's usually as long as the solder job is good and the work is somewhat clean and when I mean clean being, you know, they didn't, they didn't make an entire mess in there, it usually works pretty good. I tell. I have found that we hyper focus on things for the wrong reasons. Potentiometers, you know, small alpha pots versus CTS pots. I don't argue whether or not one sounds better than the other. It's not something I'm concerned with. And it's not even a longevity thing in all cases. It's just a feel thing. I, I can feel when a potentiometer is really stiff and hard or if it's. It's loosey and goosey and you can just kind of mess with it. So those are things I kind of notice, you know, where, where that works. As long as the, as long as it's like the 500k is supposed to. Which, you know, no is ever the, the Correct number. I don't really get too hyper focused on that. Some potentiometer. Some potentiometers are put together so bad that they're just not going to last. Just like some of the five way blade switches that are on PC boards are pret and they don't last because they just don't take abuse. But again, that's not a quality of sound I'm focused on, is just a durability factor. And again, my point always in the videos is kind of like with an output jack is if you're paying $200 for guitar, that's fine. You know, you have some lower price components in there. Makes sense. It's just a sin when it's a $3,000 guitar and you see cheap components in there because you're paying the right price, they should give you the right stuff. So yeah, I have no issues with solid core wire. I would find it had little to no difference in my experience. Lemon Lust wants to say at what point does spending more on a guitar result stop resulting in noticeable improvements in quality? I'm thinking of something like Ibanez J Custom versus Ibanez Visions. You know, it's funny, I was gonna do this so I'm answer your question and bring up a topic. My wife asked me a question. Sean asked me a question at the gym and it and I was on the treadmill and I wrote it down. It says, it actually says my wife's question. My wife's question was why do guitar players always say if I can only have one or five guitars? She goes, why do they always ask that every week? Why does somebody always go hey if you could only have one guitar, hey if you only could have five guitars. And I told her, I said I think there's a ton of reasons for that. And by the way, Lemon Lust, totally going to get to your question in this. I think it's one, it's, I think for me, in other words, when you guys are asking me, I think it's to figure out what of the guitars behind me are the company sent guitars and the guitars I actually love. I think there's a logic in that. It makes total sense. Some companies send guitars and some guitars are, are things I passionately found and I, and I care about. And so I think that's a good way to figure out where my mind is on certain things. Um, I think another reason people ask is because you're trying to figure out exactly limitless what you're trying to figure out. Where does the, you know, where's the law of diminishing returns come from. In other words, like, you know, if you have. If you have some nice guitars on the wall or, you know, whatever. A variation. Like, I have a variation of guitars. If you ask me to lock down to one or five, do I pick the most expensive and in my case, never. The most expensive guitars are never even. No. None of my expensive guitars would ever make a top fifth five list for me. Because expensive guitars for me have been about and will always be about a collecting. I got the guitar that's just iconic or it's cool. It was the guitar that in my head, I promised myself would be the greatest guitar ever. And they are fantastic instruments. But like I told you guys before, for me, the guitar that I've spent the most time with is the guitar that will always be the one I keep. It's because I. I know it in and out. I just know it. I love this guitar. I love. I can make the sounds on it. You know, I have guitar. I have guitars, just one guitar, and I can make all the sounds I need out of it. So when I tell myself and others like, well, this is my jazz guitar and this is my rock guitar, and this is my metal guitar, that's just something I have to do to justify it in my head. We all do that. I think it's just a logical thing. The reality is, no, I can do all that from one guitar for the most part, for the genres I play, I can. But limitless, where it connects with what you're saying. And what my wife is asking is, where's the law of diminishing returns happen? Everybody has a different opinion on this. So if, you know, some people are going to tell you, like, no guitar should be worth over 200 bucks or 500 bucks. I'll tell you this. Besides, what guitar I would keep if I only kept one guitar. Let's just do this. If all the guitars were gone and I had to do one guitar, which is. One of my wife goes, why do you guys talk like that? Here's my answer. I got to tell you what I told her. I said because a lot of us feel gluttonous. I do. For having too many guitars. Some of us. I'll just talk about it. I won't speak for you guys. Speak for me. Sometimes I feel like I have too much crap. Sometimes I worry that something's gonna go wrong financially and I'm gonna have to sell stuff. So then it's like, what do I get rid of the fact that I'm always Kind of thinking, you know, what if everything goes bad? It's just part of life. I'm, you know, I'm a. I'm a. I'm a father, I'm a husband. It's just something I've been worried about since the day my mom didn't buy my food. Right. The fear has kicked in, you know? Right. It's been that way forever. I just go. And also, I have had a couple moments in my life. Like I said, I sold all my stuff when I joined the army. You know, I've had to sell stuff to pay bills. And once you do that, I think emotionally it sticks with you, that it might not happen again. Even though one day you go, God, I think it's been like 30 years since I've had to do that. Doesn't matter. It's in your head. That's one. But also, like I said, sometimes I feel guilty, like, do I really need, you know, this many guitars? And the answer is no, by the way. You don't need any. Any guitars. I just want one. So let's go with, what would I do if I had no guitars and I had to start again tomorrow? This is exactly what I told my wife today at the gym. I said, well, I hope that I could have 12 to $1,500. I feel like, without a doubt, I could buy a guitar that I would absolutely love and have no problem with for $1,000. Why I've done it as recent as a couple months ago, I was at the Guitar Collector in California. I went in there and I bought a Fender Pro Professional 2 Stratocaster in Burgundy Mist with HSS thousand dollars cash out the door, I could keep that forever. I believe. I told her, I said, I believe that If I had 12 to $1500 that loosen up a little bit, I still, I think I would buy like a Gibson sg. I could. I could own an Epiphone sg, no problem. I just don't want one. I want an. I want a Gibson. I don't know why. I just do. Maybe because, again, pickup snob. And maybe if somebody had upgraded. That's another thing too. You got to factor in. If you go and use. You know, you. Sometimes you walk in a store and somebody has just tricked out a guitar, and then you're like, okay, that's cool. They got the right pickups in there. They got right stuff. But essentially, for me, where do guitars. For me personally, where does the law. It's over about $1,000. Because after me personally, after guitar is about $1,000. Maybe I'll go as high as $15. Everything after that when I'm purchasing one, I'm not factoring quality in playing. I'm not factoring like, oh, this is the frets are good, or oh, the nut is good or it's set up right. None of those things are factored in anymore. All it's factored in is what's the resale value on this? How cool is it? How long have I wanted it? You know, it becomes more of a collector kind of vibe. Somebody's going to have a different opinion on that. And to be honest with you, I could also find guitars for five to six hundred dollars. And again, we're talking used. I wouldn't. Anytime on a budget, I'm not really going to be buying new for the most part. So. Robo. Robo. Rob. No, Robo just says Rob. Rob 2662 says, My favorite guitar is a PRS CE24 used about $1500. Dude, I have a PRS CE24. I like it more than core. I got rid of my core PRs. I have the one that Nathan made me and that one's, you know, amazing. But I have a C24. So you guys know that's just a bolt on custom 24. But it's a USA one. But yeah, my friend Richard just bought a guitar and. And I helped him buy it. And what we picked out was the PR C E Satin SE and it was 579. So because he wanted with tremolo, it was 549 with hardtail. And I went through it for him and did a quick setup. And I told him exactly this. I said, feels exactly like my S2 and CE, it's the same. So. Yeah. And so, you know, I could buy a guitar in the 4, 3, 3 to 4, $500 range. But the question my wife gave me was, you know, not could I find one? It's, you know, I have to find one. Kind of like, hey, if you had to get one, I feel like a thousand dollars for me is a safe space. Like, I can definitely find something I love for a thousand bucks. To your lemon lust. To your comment about Ibanez, dude, I played this week. I played an Ibanez that is at Zim's guitars. That's $1,000 and it's made in Indonesia at the Cortex factory. It was absolutely flawless. Now, he said that the customer traded and said it was plaqued. So it was an S series guitar. And I. I'm sure it was because whatever it Was the setup was amazing, played amazing. So, so. And by the way, I also played a Godin. What was the model? It was a go down at his store for $600 and that needed a little bit of a setup. I adjusted the neck a little bit just for fun because I was looking at it and I told him, I said, he goes, what do you think? And I go, I like it. I go, I just feel like for 600 bucks I can buy a Mexican made Strat. And the Godin is great and it's probably as good in every way as a Mexican made Strat. I'm just like, in my brain I'm like, get a Mexican made strat for 600 bucks. So. And that's again, notice I didn't bring up all that stuff made Mexico stuff. So fantastic. So, Lemon lust, I think prices have gotten out of control. This is, you know, just a few years ago, if you go on this podcast, you go about maybe right before COVID It's almost, it's depressing, but it's almost crazy to watch the conversations we had on this channel, all of us, you guys going, man, price is so cheap. You can get gear for nothing. It's so great. And then five years later, it's everything is. Prices skyrocketed, quality has dropped to, to, to, to, to much, much, much lower standards than before. And it happened during COVID And then it just for some reason hasn't all come back. In other words, the quality hasn't improved and the prices sure as hell aren't coming down. So that's what we're seeing everywhere. But even with all of that doom and gloom prices being higher and the quality's down, I find deals every single day on guitars and guitar amps and every. There's tons of stuff out there. Lemon lust. So I, I think this, I given this advice before. It's boring. I just like it. And I'm going to give it to you. Give it to you. Which is when you buy a guitar, you, you don't, you don't set a price point. You set a standard that you want. Like you want a guitar that has a coil split, you want humbuckers, maybe you want Seymour Duncan's, maybe you want a maple neck. Whatever it is, you need to make a list of things you want. Like if you want an Ibanez, you want an Ibin is that plays amazing and that has these features and stays in tune and whatever the features. And then you just go and find it and you'll. And I guarantee you every time you will come to the same conclusion I have many times over, which is you don't have to hit a price to get that. The only reason you have to have more money is if you want the color you want. If you want, you know, the limited edition one, right? Like whatever marketing spin they put on it to make it sound like it was, you gotta have it. That's. And I'm a sucker for that. Every day I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell you every day. I recently, I'm going to video. I have a video coming out, a couple videos that we're editing right now. I just bought a Les Paul studio and I absolutely love it. And it's because it's a limited edition color. I love studios anyways. But this one, it's definitely the color. But here's what's funny. They jacked it up a couple hundred bucks in the price and I was like, oh, so not worth it for the price. Except for it is because this is cool color. So. Oh, the Ms. The real Mr. Zombie says, Phil, how do we find that happy place again? I'm in it right now. I don't know about you guys. You know, I think the Fender thing and all that stuff, it's a. It's a discussion. Of course. You know, all the YouTube channels, including me, are going to make content on it. Why not? Because it gets views. It's. Because it's engagement you. It was somebody. I watched a YouTuber say it best. He said, I made three videos this week and nobody watched any of that. And then I started talking about Fender again. You guys all came back and I'm like, yeah, I understand that. The funny thing about this and this is to go to real Mr. Zombie, I think we're so addicted to guitar that we'll talk about news on guitar. We talk about everything that's good and bad, but I'm still in a good place. By the way, there's some new products coming out next month that I think are really interesting. Not the typical, you know, like a price increase. Hey, you know, one new color. I think some brands are really trying. I, you know, look, there's some good news. Here's some good news. The good news, in my opinion, between the CEO of Gibson and the CEO offender and all the debacle offender, we know at some point they got it. The companies have to feel a little pain so that they get a little bit more. They get a little bit more aggressive with trying to make us happy customers by giving us either a better product or a better Deal. You know, the. You know, we're well past the days that they had for a while back of like, we're just happy they have it in stock and we're willing to pay whatever they ask. Those days are definitely gone. And so. And I still see tons and tons of amazing deals on used. I definitely think this is a used market. There's very few things that I'm gonna really focus on buying new and. And I think that's where everybody should be focused. So notice how if you notice when I work with companies, whether I work with Sweetwater or work with Guitar center, you know, like I said, I work with companies, but I try to keep it manageable, you know, not do it too much. Notice that a lot of times I'm like, now mentioning constantly the used market. Used. And Guitar Center Used. Guitar center used. It's because I think right now that's the way to go. You can find great stuff on Guitar center used. I bought so many great pedals. So many things used at Guitar center that are smoking deals. And you can do that on Reverb. You can do it on. You know, like I said, you can find on your local Craigslist, go to your mom and pop stores if they have them. You know, use gear. You know, definitely check out the use gear. But yeah, let's. Speaking of that, let's do. Should we do this or that? Yes, do this or that. Well, where are we at? You know what? Let me take another question, and then we'll do this or that. This is from Uncut. Mastodon says, hey, Phil, I recently watched your video on the Pacifica guitar. The. That got hot rotted from Sweetwater. I am absolutely in love with the amp tone in that video. Oh, what amplifier was that? So that was the Steve Morris Engle so amp. So when I'm using in that room, There is generally 3amps mic'd and ready to go in that room. And so the amps I have is. I have the Synergy sen20, which is usually what I'm using. And I always tell you guys that. And in that video, I didn't say it. And I don't know why. Um, I don't. I didn't edit it out. I just for some reason didn't say what it was, what amp was it was. Which is dumb for me, by the way, because you gotta understand the whole point of saying the products and the videos is that you can put links and maybe people buy something and then you get a little kickback from the companies, you know, with the Retailers so. But I forget to do that all the time because it's stupid. So anyways, so yeah, that was the ste. I still absolutely love that amp. As you know, I was a huge. My Fireball 25. I kept for what, five years, four or five years saying I loved it. And then I only got rid of it because I got the Steve Morris amp. I absolutely love that amp. I think it does rock and metal perfect. And I think it with it has delay built in, has reverb built in, has noise gate boost, a mid boost. It has everything. It's attenuator, it has irs. It is an absolute fantastic amplifier. It's made of cold rolled steel, it's made in Germany. And I would say, I'm sure they've raised the price since I've done that video. I'll put a link to the video, the Steve Morris video. But I absolutely love that amp. So in that room, the three amps that you generally will see in that, in that room is that amp always going through a 112 cream back celestion because I have it all mic'd up and ready to go because it's just standard in there. And then I'll switch sometimes between that and the synergy send 20 head and. And then the other amp is the boss Katana 50. And that's like I said, if I'm doing a guitar that's a little lower price point, I'll do the Katana amp. And that's just because it's easy because those, you know, it's just all mic'd up. I like to have everything mic'd up in the, in that room. All of the audio, everything's happening in real time. There is no post production. I have no way to. Well, I mean, I don't wanna say no way. I don't know how to post production it. Right. I'm sure the really advanced, you know, editors, YouTube editors can do that stuff, but I don't do that. The. If I'm in the shop room, understand, I can chop and edit it like crazy, but I can't really change the audio. The audio was all hard recorded on one track. So how that, how those videos are made is the audio. I have a lapel mic that goes into a mixer and then the microphone to the amps in a mixer. And when you see me playing behind the bench, I'm switching the mute. I have a mute from my mic on my voice and I have a mute for the mic on the amp. And so. And it's all recorded onto A solid state drive which now apparently costs $6 trillion. So I got to hold onto this. Like, like this is the most. These, these solid state drives are the most important things in my world now. But anyways, all of it's actually recorded onto a solid drive and it's not, it's. There's no multi tracks. I have no multi tracking going on. Just like there's no multi camera editing. All cameras. There's nine cameras in that room. Everything is done. The only thing that's edited is, is I chop out. If you're a Patreon member, you see, you see the first drafts of videos all the time. I'm just chopping. So, so I make a video, it's about 40 minutes long to an hour and then I start chopping it down. And it's based on attention spans. I'm trying to keep the video as long as possible but keep you engaged because that makes me feel good when people like the video. So if you make it to the end, I feel like I did something good or if I got you in, you know, watching the video I feel like, oh, that's good. They liked it. So. Okay, this one's from. Hey Phil, Greetings from Chile. It says, what do you think about 22 versus 24 fret guitars? I have a JS1000 and I loved it. But now I'm playing an RG and I'm having a hard time going back to the js. I have no issue with it at all. In preference, I prefer 22 frets because I can't play anything up there. I don't play any lead stuff. I don't play like I have no idea what I'm doing up there. Above the 12th fret. I. I've said this before. Not only was I a bass player for the majority of my life where like I said, for like five years I didn't even own a guitar, just a bass. But also when I do play guitar, when I did play guitar and I'm in bands, always rhythm guitar. And I'm from a generation for those because there are some younger kids apparently watching the show now. There was a time where that was something you had to stipulate. You're like, oh, you in a band? Yeah, I'm a rhythm guitar player in a band. You better say that you're the lead guitar player or you're the rhythm guitar player. I was the rhythm guitar player. I never did leads. I never had any desire to play leads. The half assed lead playing you see me now do on YouTube is just because that is the comment section saying, hey, you just played chords. Yes, I played the riffs. Yeah, because I care about riffs. I don't care about the Ned Flanders diddle a Dilla Doo. I famously said, as much as I love Steve, I've never seen him live because I don't really go watch virtuoso style music. It's. I like it in the car, but it's not really what I'm connected to. So anyways, my so 22 frets. So if I like. If I order a Kezel guitar, I always order at 22 frets. I get 22 frets because why have 24? I don't care. But if a guitar is 24 frets, I have no problem, like, on the custom. I have no problem, like, oh, no, what do I do with 2x frets? I'm really like, yeah, it's like, what's past E minor pentatonic. Oh, no. Actually, it's funny. My only real good lick. I gotta tell you a funny thing. My only real good lick, and I don't even know if it's a good lick, but the lick that I will do sometimes that somebody will go, oh, that was pretty good. That's a Phil X thing that he showed me. And he's like, oh, here's how he gave me a little cheat code. He's like, here, do this. And then I did it, and I really didn't have a. I could do it, but I didn't how to put it together because, you know, it's not like he gave me a real lesson. He just showed me something. We were hanging out once and at an event, and then when I took the Tim Pierce course, something in the Tim Pierce course made that click. And I go, oh, I can put that here. Okay, so, all right, let's see. Let's do one more. And then this one is Phil. I was at a music store and I tried a Kaizen, and the bridge pickup sounded lower volume than the rest. When I opened it up with the guitar text, there was a PCB inside. Yes. How to debug the pcb. I don't think it's the PCB that's causing that. It's. They are voiced dramatically different. And the guitar. Some guitars are like that. I had the Kaizen and I felt that it did the same thing. And I felt like the pickups were very sensitive on their height adjustment. So that's something I. I would focus on. The PCB isn't really so much like an active system as so much as just a way for them to streamline wiring up the guitar, because they can just load that in as a module and get it done. It's a strange thing, now that we live in a world where four and $5,000 guitars, they're figuring out how to make them cheaper. Like, they're literally focused on, like, how do we make this faster and cheaper? And it seems weird. I feel like that's why when people talk about the law of diminishing returns, you're like, sometimes you're like, you know, you kind of feel like. You feel like if you get to a price point, you're like, you're. They're not. You're not going to see certain things. Like, you know, you're not going to see the guts of an epiphone. Like, you see the guts and the Gibson, but now you see the same thing. They're using the same stuff, and that's just where we are. They're just all focused on that. And so, yeah, I would say you don't have to debug the PCB board. I would say it's an adjustment on the pickups. It could be a faulty pickup. I'm not a huge fan of those pickups. I'm not a huge fan of Music man. Trying to develop their own pickups. The way they're doing it, it's not something I've really liked. Something I pointed out to a friend just recently was, you know, whether it's Fender or it's. It's Gibson or it's Music man, or it's Paul Reed Smith, I find it interesting that when you go on their websites and we've never talked about this on this channel, I find it interesting when you go on their websites and you look at the artist guitars there, all the artists are like, DiMarzio, Seymour, Duncan, Baron, Knuckle Fishman. And then you go to their models and it's just their pickups. And I'm like, wait a minute. So all your artists don't want your pickups, but I want your pickups. And I see it so much now. And their pickups, because I think it's, again, it's a marketing tactic. And their pickups cost more. Think about the logic that's applied here for a second. Okay, you can go and get again, let's say a Fender guitar or a PRS guitar or Music man, and you can look up their pickups that they actually make. And their pickups cost way more than a Duncan DiMarzio. Even a bare knuckles, even A Lindy Frailin. Sometimes it was Crazy or Fishman. And then yet when their artists have a signature model, they go with those pickups. And I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking because I thought it too well, maybe because the artists get paid by those pickup companies and they got to put those pickups in. That's a good point. And some of that's going to be true. That's just the reality of all this. Okay. But I'm here to tell you that a lot of them don't make a lot of money off those pickups. So there's not a whole lot of financial incentive. In other words, there's not a whole lot, you know. You know, sure, Steve, I is getting a nice check from, you know, for pickups, but a lot of artists are not getting huge checks from, from, from pickup companies because again, your royalty is going to be small on a pickup that doesn't have. It's not a high cost. In other words, it's a hundred dollar thing. They can only be getting like what, 6%? Let's say they get 10%. So making $10 a pickup and you go, well, they can sell a thousand pickups. Okay, do that math. Okay, so they got $10,000. I don't know if that moves the needle for everybody enough to do that. I really believe that the reason they have their pickups in there, which really decreases how much profit, by the way? It's another thing you have to factor in. Not only will they make it off the, they'll make the money off the pickup manufacturer, but they'll make less on the guitar because the manufacturer cannot effectively make the guitars as profitable by buying some of these pickups. Because as I've explained to you, because I've made pickups for years, pickups have a high margin and the margin goes to the builder, not to anyone else. So that's why the incentive is for the manufacturers to make their own pickups, because they have a low cost with a high margin, Especially when they don't sell pickups. See, the incentive to the manufacturer that makes guitars is they don't really sell pickups. So they can make the pickups. Outrageous. SEYMOUR Duncan and DiMarzio, I'm just using those two as an example. Would never make a set of pickups. Well, Seymour Duncan did do a pickups and made a silver for a thousand bucks. But think about Gibson going, oh, we're going to snake a set of pickups, $1,000. I'm just using Gibson as an example and Paul Rees Smith, you know, making pickups for $600 a set. DeMarcus and Seaweed Duncan can't make a pickup for $600 a set because they're not going to sell. They're not going to sell. So they can't make them because they're not going to sell. And you go, well, okay, then how can they sell them? The manufacturer? They don't. They don't sell. They sell very few in those price points, but they stick them in the guitars. And when you see the high price of the guitar, you go, oh, well, it has a set of $600 pickups in it. So the guitar being $3,000 makes sense. It makes a lot less sense when you go into the guitar center and you see a Schecter with Seymour Duncan's and the guitar is 699. And then you see the other guitar that's $3,000 with same pickups in it. You're like, the same pickups actually upset a small builder. Not say, it's Acacia. I upset Acacia so, so much because the first time I met them, I was introduced by a friend to them. I was at the NAMM show and they were showing me their guitar and I was really impressed. And I honestly said this to him. I said, man, this is a really impressive guitar. And they said, thank you. And I said, I just got one question. Use a JB and a Jazz. And they go, yeah. And I go, why do you use the Seymour Dungeon JB Jazz? And they go, well, we really like them. They're good pickups. I go, I agree, they're really good pickups. I go, but it's so strange because I can get that in a schecter for like 600 bucks, you know, And I was just trying to understand it. I wasn't telling them anything. I was asking. I was. That's how I figured this all out, by asking these questions these companies like. And what you learn is they were different because they were willing to put the pickups in there they liked, which were Duncan's. But another company will go, no, the reason we went with our in house brand is that, you know, we can inflate the cost. And then the guitar seems like it makes more sense financially. Offbeat Base Gear says is an Acacia a ghost builder for balance. They were. I don't think they are anymore. I think they moved on since then to a different builder and then they ended up having to buy that builder's facility. I believe that's what I understand. So again. But yeah, they were the Ghost Builder, they were building Keisha at the time, was building for Tosin, Abbasi and Badlands and Vola guitars. So at the time, yes, you notice that a lot of shops. It's kind of like how iconic was building BC Rich. Right. So ghost building is very typical on our industry and it's done a lot. We're just used to seeing it. I call that domestic outsourcing. We're used to seeing it with international outsourcing. In other words, you see a company in the US now have somebody overseas make their guitars. But there's all kinds of domestic outsourcing where you have companies building guitars in the US for other companies. Dave said battling guitars are still a thing. I believe they are. I don't know. So if somebody knows for sure. If somebody knows for sure, put in the comments. But I believe they are. Okay. Speaking of which, let's go ahead and do. And now it's time for this or that. Okay, so this one will be fun. Let me turn on my light. Ta da. Okay, so no guitar of the week this week. I wish I had a guitar of the week, but I have so many videos that if I took any of the guitars that are for the videos, I'd be. I. I just can't. I gotta. I gotta. You guys, I know. Want to see a deeper dive of the guitars. So today, what guitar am I using? I'm using my GNL ASAT ass hat. This is the A set that I got in 2017 when I visited the factory and I had the maid. This is Margarita Lime, I believe is the color with the hardtail. And it has two G and L pickups in it that they made. I believe. And this is. This guitar always kind of is funny. Now when I see it, it's. I always crack up every time I see this guitar. Because when I pull out of the rack, this has a chechen fretboard. I wanted a rosewood fretboard. So I got an alder body with an arm carve and a belly carve. And I asked for a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. And this will tell you everything when this guitar was built. I wonder if the serial number tells you. Says 2018. So was it 2018? I thought it was 2017. So I think they built this in. In December of 2 or, sorry, January of 2018. So what's funny about this guitar is when they built this guitar, couldn't get rosewood. They're like, phil, we can't get rosewood for your guitar. I'm like, really? And they go, we have to do chachen. So this is a chechen fretboard because it can get rosewood. So just always makes you laugh when you think back. Going, wow. Remember, for a short time rosewood was gone and then it was back. Okay, so let's go ahead and do this or that. Let's switch screens. I'm running. What am I running for amp? I'm running the Morgan PR12. This is a the 12 watt Princeton style amp by Morgan amps and I'm going to be running a echoplex delay by Dunlop. There you go. A little delay. Make sure this is off. Okay, we'll do clean so you can hear the clean. Sorry, I had the audio off. All you missed was the start of the poll. Okay, so the poll is going. We're gonna start with this and I will ab or go between them and tell you which one's which and then you guys can tell me which one you like better. Let's turn on my microphones for the amp. Okay, here we go, Sam. Okay, let's go to that. Okay, one more time. Go back to this. Here we go. Okay, and that. Okay, so how do we land? Let's take a look at the pole and. Okay, one second. Okay, there we go. So I'm showing 59%, 60%. 58% is jumping around. 58% have picked this over that. Let's go ahead. And we're at 162 votes. Let's see if we can get to like 170. 170 is good. And then we'll do something different this week. I'm going to reveal it to you guys and then do it again because somebody pointed out like they wanted to hear it again afterwards. All right, so I'm going to end the poll at 200 votes and it shows that at 220 votes, 56% of you pick this. So crazy. 29% you picked that. 15% pick none. So let's swing the arm out. What did I pick? I picked this. So what is this week's this or that? It's the Timmy petal by Paul Cochran versus the Tenna, but which is the apparently copy of the Timmy pedal in the HX1. And I think it's crazy. I. I sat here and as I always do, a B and back and forth, the two pedals trying to find the sweet spot in each one. And every time I got the Timmy to sound cleaner, it sounded really good. But it, for some reason it just didn't sustain like the HX1 was doing. And I was really shocked and I thought this would be fun because I'm like, I can't keep doing this, you guys, because last week we did the. The maxon tube screamer versus the tube screamer in the HX1, and we all picked the same thing. We picked the. The tube screamer. But this week, you guys agreed with me that the HX1 sounded a little better. So one of the questions I got. I'm gonna leave my mic on, so you're gonna hear the. The pedals again. This is with the mic on the cabinets, but then also my mic on, because somebody asked me if I would actually show you, you know, the two. So we'll start with the Timmy. Here's the Timmy. Okay. And then here's the hx1. And a couple of you. I saw comments say they sounded pretty close. I thought they sounded pretty close. Especially since I think the Timmy pedals are going for about 400 used right now. Something around there. I was gonna do a video. Let me know. I'll switch cameras. I'll let you guys know. Or you guys let me know if I should do the Timmy versus the MXR Timmy. You know how we did the MXR king of tone versus the real king of tone. And I will. I'll do that. I'll buy that pedal and do the video on that. But I was really, really thought this was fun, and I thought it was crazy. So this is where we aligned. But in a weird way, remember, mine is more different. Mine is more biased than yours. First of all, the main bias I have is I bought these pedals. So the HX1 is like $250, and the Temi was like $400. I think I paid. I think I paid 250 for the Temi and I think I paid 200 for the HX1. But my point is, is in current value money, the Timmy is worth about 400 bucks, and the HX1 used is worth about. I don't know, what is it? 200 bucks used. I don't know what it goes for. My point is half. Either way. It's half. So in my mind, that's factored in. I can't get my head around the fact that I'm like, oh, for half the price, I can own this. And it sounds pretty damn good where you guys don't have that in your. You know, you guys just went off the. Your ears. But what I thought was really interesting was I heard something about the HX1. I'll do it right now since we're still on just Sounded cleaner. And if I like said if I back the gain. Let's go. I want to do this one more time. Go here. If I back the gain off here. Right? That's gay. I want to back the gain off on the Timmy. It's really nice and clean. I like it. See, it sounds great. But. But your sustains gone because you're almost clean again. Look, I'm almost like. I like the clean just as much. And by the way, this does it as well. So if we turn this one off. So now we know that that was fun. Hold on a second. When I say I know, we know. I got to do the thumbnail real quick. Do this. Ta da. Okay, there's a thumbnail. All right. So that was this week's this or that. Oops. Move my chair again and. Anyone got any comments? Sounds better with the pedal off. Oh, sure. Of course. The amp sounds amazing. This is my favorite amp. I told you, the PR12. I really like my magnetone a lot. Of course, my Amplif Nation. I have a lot of nice amps. My Fender Princeton. But for Some reason the PR12 just. It works for me. I have a thing to end the show with. I thought this would be fun. So I got a question and let me pull it up. This one came from Tracy. And Tracy basically has a Morgan PR12 combo. I have the combo in the head, okay. And so in her combo, she wants to run it through an attenuator like a Tone King ironman tone king ironman 2. And so she asked me how to do that. So I'm going to share how to do that right now with you guys. And let me go ahead and go here to downloads. Okay, so Tracy, here is how you would do that. So on your amp, this is the back of your combo, your PR12. This is your greenback selections in there. And you're going to have two terminals right here. And you're going to have a red wire which is your hot soldered here. And you're going to have a black wire soldered onto this terminal. But there's four terminals. See this terminal here? It's nice and clean. Okay. So what you want to do is you're going to have to. There's a cable, okay, There's a cable that this, this wire right here goes into a quarter inch plug that plugs in the back of the bottom of the amp. This will all make sense. You look at it. What you need to do is unplug the amp. I'd wrap some tape or electrical tape around that cable, you can leave it attached to the speaker if you want. Just leave it hanging. Just like I said, as long as it can't touch anything, okay, you'll be fine. If you want to desolder it off, you can as well. That's fine. Now what you want to do is you want to buy. I looked everywhere. Because the problem is. I told you I was going to show you how to do it. But the problem is I don't know if you can solder or not. So if you can solder, that's easy. But just in case you can't, I found this for you. This is the cable you need. Okay. So you can see it's combo amp, speaker cable, quarter inch, 2, 2 clip on spade lugs, which is what you want. This is 799/499 shipping. You can probably find this, maybe cheaper, I don't know. But this has got the two clips. These will go right on to your speaker, to those two terminals that are not being used. And this you will. It's 3 foot cable. This is 34 inches. So you have 3ft of cable. And this will plug into. So you'll run this, that plug out of the output of your, your Iron man tonking attenuator and then you'll put those two clips on the speaker. Make sure you go plus to plus plus and negative, negative. It's not scary, I promise. And then you'll run the cable. You'll. You'll take another speaker cable and you'll plug it to the output of the amp into the input of the Iron Man. If that's confusing, we can do it again. I thought about doing it, but I don't have that cable. So I am. If I have to, I will buy that cable and I'll just do it. I'll just demo it for you. So if you can't figure it out from what I just explained, just let me know, I'll buy the cable. I can always use one like that. I have one now. I thought I'd. That's what happened when I told you. I go, I can show you how to do that. I. I went to grab my cable and it's this long and I was like, that's not going to work. You need at least 2 to 3ft. So. So that's how you make a combo amp. You got to. Obviously you're inserting the attenuator between the amplifier and the speaker. And that's how you would insert it on a combo. That's how I used to do it on the combo. Except for I realized when I told you, oh, yeah, I used to do it. I didn't use the internal speaker in the combo because I could just run the speaker cable into another cabinet, and you probably don't have another cabinet, so it still can be done. So. So there you go. Let me know if that works for you. If not, Tracy, I will definitely get the cable and then show you. Okay, I think we covered everything this week. I think we solved all the world's problems, which is important. So I have videos this week. I finished the first draft of the Taylor Factory tour video, and I don't love it, so I started focusing on a second draft, which I'm almost done with. That'll be this week. And I have two guitar deep dive videos and an amp video. So some exciting stuff. So I hope you guys look for those videos as well. Please check out the second channel as we do clips from the podcast and all kinds of other extra bonus materials. And you guys. Oh, and my wife said, don't forget the joke. Okay, for those that hung out to the to the end of the show, here's the joke. Last week, I promised you a joke, and then I got scolded. My wife's like, you never told the joke. Okay, so my, here's the joke. It's not a joke. It's just what happened. So I, I, we were talking last week about me going to the gym now, and I go to the gym and do all the stuff, and this week was a tough week. It was five times at the gym because we went paddleboarding too. So on top of that. But anyways, my daughter said to me, she said, dad, are you going to the gym to get jacked? I thought that was hilarious, right? And I said, no, I'm going to get fat. See, I'm obese and I'm trying to get to fat. In fact, I'm 20 pounds away from being fat. So I said, then once I'm fat, then I can try to figure out how to get not fat. I go. My daughter's face was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, that's not how it works. You don't go, yeah, I go, so because I've lost £52, I'm still, I'm still obese. And so when my trainer, this happened with my trainer, he's like, what's our plan? This is a true story. When you sit with the trainer for the first day, he's like, so, what's our plan? We trying to get healthy. Trying to get some muscle, what we try to do. And I'm like, I just want to be fat. I don't want anybody to call me obese. Just call me fat. So. And then once I'm fat, I'll worry about how to not be fat. So I have a chart, and it tells me. And I'm. I. I don't know. I should look it up. Maybe I'm closer to being fat than I think, but I'm, like £20 away from being fat. So. Anyway, so that was the joke that I told my daughter. Not going to the gym to be obese or jacked. I'm going to be fat. All right, so there's the joke. I promise to tell you guys. Okay, on that note, actually, you know what? Okay, I'll do one more joke. One more. This actually happened. So this is special. This is how much I love you guys. I love you guys. So much. So here's what happens. So when I go to the gym, one of the things I do, I do a bunch of routines. They have me doing routines, right? You go do routines. And one of the routines I do is there's this box. I don't know how to explain it. It's just a big box. And sometimes it's a step. They have steps, but it's a box. It goes to about my knee. Okay. So I wanted to show you. So it goes here to about my knee, right here. And I have a kettlebell, and I hold this heavy kettlebell, and then I step up on the box, and then I step up with one leg, and then I step back down, and I step up, and then I switch the kettlebell to the other leg and I step up. So it's basically doing steps. I'm doing steps and I'm holding the kettlebell. Now, you gotta understand, my wife goes to the gym. She goes and does her workout. When I'm with my trainer, when she's with her trainer on a different day, I go and do my workout. We alternate every other day. So one day, my trainer, who, by the way, is very athletic, and I've done this hundred times, it feels like, step up on the box, hold the kettlebell. So it's not like he has to tell me what to do, right? And I know it's how we do it. So he said he steps up on the. He gets. He goes, hold the kettlebell. Gotta yell because I'm far from the mic. Hold on a second. He says, hold the kettlebell. Step up on the box. Go. When you get Up. And he goes, don't fall. Do that, right? He goes, don't fall. He's like, step down. So I get up on the box, I get the kettlebell, I get up on the box, and I go like this. He goes, what are you doing? And I go, is this like this? Do I hold my leg out far? How far do I hold my leg out? He goes, what are you doing? And I go, how far do I hold my leg out? He goes, no, I was. I told you not to fall. When I stood up there, I lost my balance for a second because the kettlebell. He goes, I was trying not to fall. And I go, oh, I'm not being a dick. I didn't know. I thought you were. I thought this was like a new thing. I thought we were going to stand up on the shelf, and then you. I'd stick my leg out, right? And he goes, no, Phil. He goes, I was trying not to fall, man. I'm like, oh, so this is why the story's funny. So I go again. I remind him. I go, not giving you crap, dude. I had no idea. I promise. I don't think I'm that dumb, but apparently I don't understand. So we do our workout, do the routine at the end of the gym. What you do, I don't know about you guys. You go, and you squirt the hand sanitizer on your hands, and you walk out. And as I'm walking out, Shana goes, how is your workout? It was good. And she goes, what's that balancing thing you guys are doing? And I start laughing. I go. I go, apparently, it's not a thing I said night. And I told her what I told you. She goes, it looked like it was a totally an exercise. I said. I told him the same thing. He thinks I'm being a jerk. She goes, no, I swear, I'll tell him. I'll tell him tomorrow. She's like, it looked like whatever I thought. She's like, I thought I could do that, too. So. So anyway. So the. The thing was not the fault. That's. That's. So. That's the end of my humor for the day. That's a tip your waiters. And on that note. On that note, I'll let you guys go. You guys have a fantastic weekend. Go play some guitar, have some joy, and. And know your gear. All right, guys, the know your gear podcast.