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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe, thank you for making this possible. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 397. I grabbed some early riser questions. I usually try to grab them just because they send it disappear by the time the show starts. Because they come before the show starts. This one was from Happy Go Lucky with L U K K Y. So Happy Go Lucky says, hey, Phil, you called it. I did. What was it? Hopefully it was I was gonna be a millionaire this year. I don't know. What is it? It says you called it so for Several boutique guitar shops have joined forces. So far they have joined forces Novo and Fano under a British company and iconic guitars grabbing John Cruise. Any predictions on more to come? So this is from an episode. I'm sure it was a few months ago or whatever, when we were talking about the fact that in 2025, I predict there'll be less guitar manufacturers. And one of the things I was talking about in this, I don't know if we could call it a prediction. I guess it was more of like just an estimation. An idea was that some companies would merge up and that tends to happen after a boom. Like we had. The reason I discussed that we'll discuss those two companies in particular, but reason I discussed that a few weeks ago or a few months ago was, you know, during the. The boom, during the guitar boom, I would talk to guitar companies and some were very aware, in my opinion, very aware of what was happening. It was like every day was Christmas. We're all out there buying guitars and amps and pedals and. And just at epic levels. People are spinning at epic levels. And they were like, wow, this is crazy. And we're going to have to figure out what. When this all. When this dance stops, we're going to have to figure out where our seat is. But for every one of those companies I talked to, I felt like there was three companies that seemed to be oblivious to the term that I liked, which is everyone's a genius in a bull market. They would say, phil, we're rocking, we're doing great. I'm like, oh, that's great to hear. And they're like, yeah, and the next year will be better and in 10 years from now, even better. And it's gonna be better and just better and better and better. And I said, well, everyone is doing better, right? How do you know? One of what you're doing is what you've generated and just the mark or what is just the market, just, you know, with just consumption at crazy levels. And. And I remember saying this to a particular guitar company who's gone already. Just needed that sink in for a second for myself anyways, was, you know, when there's 10 doors and there's 10 people and everybody goes in a door, it's fine. But when there's only nine people, you don't want to be the 10th door. And when there's seven people, you sure as hell don't want to be the 8th, 9th and 10th door. You know, you want to. So you want to be in the first five doors to go into. Because if there's less people, at least you might have a shot. That was the term I used. That's actually the analogy. Not that great one, by the way, but at least that's what I told them. And they were like, whatever. And they're gone. So let's talk about this first. I'll do it out of order the. The fan or in order the Fanonovo thing. So for those that don't understand, Dennis Fano had a company called Fano Guitars. Okay? So that was his company. And then through. I'm not really versed in what happened. I know if I recall, and I'm doing this off memory, something about Fano was there was a group of boutique guitar builders and I think amp builders. I thought they were together or maybe I'm just confusing with a group of boutique guitar builders and a group of boutique amp builders, like at one time, like Tone King and two Rock. And all of them were together. When I say together, not one company, but they were working together or something like that. Anyways, this federation as you. As you will of guitar builders and amp builders and somewhere in all of that, Dennis Fano sells Thano and that goes away and then he starts later a company. And again, the details are not so much important for this quick little story. Dennis Fano starts a new company called Novo, which we all know as really being the it guitar. I think Novo is probably, when I think of it, guitars like in trend. Probably the most in trend guitar in the last, you know, five years, definitely right before COVID and definitely through that whole five year period. When I think of like, if you're going to spend $5,000, it seems like that name comes up more than, you know, most any other boutique builder next to probably sir, right? And different animals, but you get the same idea. So if you're not familiar. And just basically if you're not familiar, no Novo, I can't imagine you are because if you're hanging out with me on a Friday, you're probably into YouTube like I am. And most the YouTube community has a Novo, right? Everybody from, you know, Paul Davids to Rhett Shaw to you know, RJ and Khloe, you name it, has a Novo. So, so anyways, so Dennis Fano has Novo, right? So he has Novo and Fano becomes a separate company which was here in Arizona and I believe it's still here in Arizona. We've talked about that on the, on the show before. They're not that far from me, I guess. And, and then Dennis Vano also has a deal with Eastman Guitar. Eastwood. Sorry, don't confuse that. Eastwood Guitars to make Re Rolta guitars. So Revolta Guitars is a deal that as far as I know, that deal is probably still in place. Just so you know. So Revolto guitars are essentially the imp. Import Novos. I hate to say it's not Thanos, but they look more like the Thanos. It's very confusing. But anyways, so Revolta is a brand that Dennis Fano is involved with in the idea that he designed it. And he. It also supposed to get. It's also supposed to get set up front through them. So if you buy yourself a, a Revolta guitar, even though it's made in Korea, it's supposed to go through the Fan. The Novo guys. Dennis Fano being the Novo guys. So. So what's going on this week? What's going on this week is they made a big announcement that Fano Guitars and Novo Guitars are now back together as one under a new company. I think it's like psionic with a P or something like that. I don't, I don't remember. But it's a British company and I think Dennis Fano will be running the company is what I got. He's going to be in charge or something to that degree. He's going to be holding a position of authority. So anyways. Oh, by the way, Steve from Six Cycle some said it twice as fast. Fast Steve at 62nd. I'm just going to say it that way. So I didn't say. From Steve at 60 seconds said, yeah, Fano is in Tempe, Arizona. Yeah, that's what I recall, is that they're not far from me. So anyways, they'll be merging together. Now that I think is good news. All good news. Good news. Right? I hate to say this because it's a Public thing. But I'm going to talk to you guys. Like I said, we talk. It's public. I understand that. I get views on these kind of subjects, but it's not to shame or anything. Not knowing anything. I literally know nothing. I have no inside information. So I kind of enjoy that more than when I do know stuff. And I'm telling you guys stuff because I like to, like, you guys speculate why this happened. It didn't look like Fano was doing as good, great as I think it should have, given the fact. And here's what's funny. And I had a problem, too. You know, when I say I have a problem, which I'm thinking maybe that's why it's a problem for them. You know, I would look at the Novo guitar and I would be like, look at the price. And I'd be like, well, maybe I'll buy one. And I was like, man, it's like $5,000, right? And then you. 4, $500. Like crazy money. But then you could go out and look at the Thanos. And the Fanos were priced a little less. A little less. I mean, a little less because much. Not much, but anyways. And I was like, well, they're both, you know, Dennis Fano designs. They're both made really well. It looks like maybe I'll go with the Fano. And I never could pull the trigger. And I don't know what it was. I just never pulled the trigger. I've almost bought two or three Thanos in the last couple years. Not Novos, just Thanos in the idea. It's like, okay, I'm in the realm. I'm not spending the crazy money. I'm spending the less crazy money because both numbers are crazy and couldn't do it. And I wonder if a lot of players were in that same boat. Like, you know, I'm not poning up for Novo, but for some reason, Fano just doesn't feel Fano to me. And so maybe it didn't do it. If that's the case, this could explain this. Maybe with the downturn of sales, maybe the Fano guys were like, you know, we kind of really need to do something. And maybe that's why it's. They're back in the fold. I. I think this is going to be great. Because what's weird to me is that it's weird to me, and it's always been weird to me. But if you know the story with Jackson, it kind of makes sense why Grover Jackson, you know, there's Jackson Guitars, but then there's Grover Jackson guitars. You know, there's Charvel guitars, but there's Wayne Charvel guitars. You know, it's. There's so. There's so much of this. You know, there's Dean guitars, but then there's Dean Zielinski guitars, and there's Parker guitars, then there's Ken Parker guitars. It goes on and on and on. And there's just something about, you know, it's kind of like, for me, it's like when they get the band back together, you know that, you know, when they reunion tour together, when you see, like, the. The real band gets better, the singer who's always, like, always touring with the backup band, and then the real band doesn't have the real singer, and you just, like, it never feels as good, but it's what you got. And then one day you're like, what? They're back? This just makes most sense, you know? Right. And even if I'm okay with. Even if they both do their separate gigs still, as long as they come back together. So I like the idea that Dennis Fano is back with Fano, and I like that it Novos. Because Novo is not going anywhere. Like, right. It just. That's a perfect world. Be like if they announced tomorrow that Grover Jackson's back, even though Fender still owns Jackson. Grover Jackson's back at Jackson, right? And he can still make the other stuff. He does. But it would be that. I love that idea, right? Like, if you told me Ken Parker was gonna literally start back Parker guitars again and have his Ken Parker stuff and Parker, like, I would be super excited. I'd be like, yes. And what a great way for marketing. Think about this. You know, Here it is, like I said, we're talking about on a Friday. What are we gonna get, I don't know, 10,000 views in this show. Maybe we get 30,000, maybe get 50,000, maybe get 4,000. Who cares? It's free advertising. Because we're talking about it. And some of you guys didn't know who Novo was probably. And some of you guys didn't know how Fano was this. And now you do. And some of you guys are probably looking on their websites right now, like, going, maybe I need a fan before the prices go up. Because you never know. They can memorize the prices, by the way. I don't want to start them, you know, a rumor that their prices are going up. But I'm just saying, you know, maybe. Maybe you're thinking. That's what I'm thinking. Like, maybe the prices are going to go up. Maybe I'll get a Fano. Because it's not like. So, you know, it's not like in my mind, just for my opinion only, it's not like if you go, oh, I'm going to wait until the merger is done and everything's done and Dennis Fano is back. It's not like Dennis Fano is making any of these guitars, right? He's essentially Paul Reed Smith now. He's. He's like, he's overseeing it. He's the idea guy. It's his thing. But, you know, Paul's not sanding your guitars. Dennis Fano is not buffing your guitar, you know, and adjusting your tuning peg. For the most part. For the most part. So. So it's not like in my. In my thoughts. Unless the. Unless I don't know if this means that the Fano shop in Tempe, Arizona, moves to Nashville, which would make a lot of sense, by the way, if they did that. Made. Made it all in one shop. That would make a lot of sense, by the way. And then. Hold on, Chris. Chris has a statement. I'll. I'll go to him. But excuse me. But also, too. I don't know that Novo wasn't doing well, but if you noticed, a few months ago I mentioned that, you know, those long waits with Novo and the, you know, where all of a sudden they were like, oh, we have no wait time. And they're like, they. They spun it really, as a positive. But I was like, I don't know, man. Does it sounds like you've just slowed down in sales? And there's nothing. There was no shame in that because they went from. On, you know, like, literally on nitrous. All these companies on nitrous. I've taught, you know, Kiesel Guitars, they're. They're not selling as many. They're selling a lot, though, but not as many. A lot of companies. Vendor not selling as many, not selling as many. That was not a real market. That was a weird situation that was created that, you know, it's essentially no different than the toilet paper company saying, wow, we had a. You know, we sold out of toilet paper everywhere. And we'll do that every day from every. Now he's like, no, that was just something that happened. You sold a lot of toilet paper in a very short period of time. Now. It's nothing wrong with the fact that you're going to go back to normal as long as normal is good. And I think normal is good for those guys. Chris, comment. Chris, viewers comment was Fano and Novo are a bit apples and oranges. Novos are deliberately different. Well, I played both many times and I could only go off. I. I'm think of it like, I think like a tech all the time. Like it's quality to me. What am I, what am I sensing different in the overall quality? Not a lot of difference in the overall quality. You know. And when I say that I'm like, I'm not talking about the fact that somebody like oh, somebody left a mark here and somebody didn't leave mark here. We're talking about design, feel, you know, construction. I would say the biggest difference to me and a lot of people are not going to agree because that's what how it always is. It's just like everything. The biggest difference to me was that Novo has a few more custom type parts on it where Thano has a lot more production type parts on it. Let's say like a bridge is a good example. When I think when I feel the Fano and check it out, it has like a typical bridge that I would see on any other guitar where the Novo tends to have its own thing going there that seems a little different. So, so anyways, but, but if you were asking me like the dollar quality amount, you know, like is the Novo, you know, 1500 to $2000 on average. Because that's what it feels like on average better in quality. I. Not that I've seen that I could justify for myself. Obviously it's. To me it would be just a design characteristic. And you know, both of them I think are appealing. I think they both have a, a unique or cool look. You know, I, I mean I think that's why the, you know, some of the new Fenders guitars looks kind of very Novo Fano to me. That's. I don't know. Let's see. 60 second Steve says also 100% speculation. We like that says. But it kind of sounds like the CEO is a rich guy who wants to have fun. Are you talking about the Fano guy? Are we talking about something else? Did I get sidetracked into something totally different? But anyways, like I said, overall I think it's a good thing that they're merging up. I think it's going to be improved and, and I think it's uh. I think it's been. I think it's gonna make it again. I think it's like the band's getting back together. I think you have, you have. You know, I think it's. I think it's good. So let's talk about the other thing. The other thing is Iconic guitars, which have had their share of troubles for sure has now teamed up with John Cruz. So if you guys don't know who John Cruz is, he used to run the Fender custom shop. He was let go during the, during the COVID years for basically posting some stuff on his Facebook that you could do your own research because you know that gets into the weeds of the politics of it. All I'm going to say is obviously he posted something that seemed to be contrary to what his CEO offender was posting as a company mantra. So I could see why there was trouble there. Not agreeing or disagreeing with it, just saying I understand. Like oh yeah, I can see why that could be a problem. If I posted something publicly that was against what my CEO was saying publicly. I can imagine I'm going to go somebody's office the next day and have a talk. Anyways, John Cruise was no longer with Fender and, and then he started up his own line of guitars and those were being ghost built by a friend of mine and I didn't get the impression that went well but for not so much build reasons because my, my friend does great work. I think there was economic issues there to be had. Anyways, so, so now I believe John Cruise is now found iconic or Iconic has found him. This is a really interesting thing because I think this is good because Iconic has been having trouble ever since they did that contract which they're very public about and we talked about in depth on this show when they took a contract with the BC rich guys which you know, I didn't think was the best idea but, but hey, you know, hindsight's 2020 so it's easy for me to be the arm armchair quarterback and be like oh yeah Gray, it was a bad idea because it didn't work out. I mean who knows, it could have worked out, could have been huge for them, but it didn't work out. So I think this is overall good for the most part. You know my, my thought is John Cruz is definitely in the area of most people probably doesn't know who he is in the small community does are fans of his work. A lot of people still, still seek and they're sought after to get John Cruise Fender custom shop guitars. So that's just how that goes. So I think that's a good pair up because at this point I think Iconic is they're showing what they're showing to me as a potential customer because I'm always a Potential customer of any brand. Like I said, I'm loyal to my addictions. They're showing to me that they're in it, you know, and that's what you want to see. You know, they're really fighting to, to survive and do well. And keep in mind their issue is not their guitars. So I've picked up a couple iconic guitars. I thought they were fantastic. I've never seen or played a bad iconic guitar, and I've played three or four at this point. I have a friend that owns two. That's two of the ones I picked up. Worked on one for somebody once and then I played one once and every time I was really impressed. I liked it, I was happy and you know, the same thing. It was like in the, put it, put a little thing in the brain that maybe I'll buy one of those one day. And you know, not happy to hear they were having troubles when they're having troubles. But now I think, like I said, they there doesn't matter. Like they're, you know. The term I like is horsepower. Like, right? You can, you know, you can have any problem you want, but if you got the horsepower, which seems like they do, they're just going to keep going until they succeed. And I never bit, I never bet against that ever. My logic is if somebody won't, you know, like I call it, I call it like the, you know, when I say guitar center is like the Jason Voorhees of the music industry, right? It's like everybody says it's gonna die, it's gonna die, but it's back next movie. I don't bet against that mentality. You know, I don't bet against somebody who's not gonna quit. I've seen it too many times. You know, it's like it doesn't matter how many times they're down, they're not gonna quit. I'm like, I'm gonna probably just go ahead and wait it out and see how it lands. But I'm gonna guess it's probably gonna land in their favor somehow some way. So there's a two good merge ups, you know, let's, let's, let's talk about what. Okay. And then BC Rich581 says, Didn't John Cruise just fold up his tent for his name brand a couple weeks ago? Or is that another hallucination of mine? I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention to that. But that would not shock me as hearing that because like I said, I didn't, you know, the John Cruz brand. I don't think was, was working out the way everyone had hoped is the impression I got. I don't know. You know, you know who probably know is somebody like Casino Guitars. They were dealer for his guitars and I think they were doing well with them. It's weird. It's a weird industry as we talk about it. So it's fun to talk about this stuff every Friday, you know, because the fact that, you know, the, the things that happen in this industry are not just like, guitars are good, guitars are bad. And that is how easy everything is. There's so many layers to what's going on in the guitar universe. You know, it's, it's. They could make great guitars, but they can't get them made fast enough or, you know, I, I was dealing, dealing with a company that had an issue a year ago, and their problem was they were doing so well, they were dying. And if that doesn't make sense to you, let me give you an example. They basically got in with a big box chain and they were doing really well. And the box chain was ordering and ordering and ordering. And the problem was, is that they were ordering so much that they couldn't build anything outside what the box chain was ordering. And the problem was that they don't make as much margin because they were given way more margin to the box chain store, the big chain store, big, you know, box store. And they couldn't get ahead of the problem. Right. And so what happens is, yeah, volume is up, but volume also comes with costs. So costs are up. And, and when they looked at what they were making with the volume, it was barely paying the cost because of the difference in profit. So the issue became like, how do you turn off that sieve? How do you go, okay, I'm not, I can't send you any more product because I'm literally not making more, I'm just working more and spending more to make this. And I can't supply where I am more profitable because all my resources and time are going into you. So that's literally a problem, but it's a success problem. If you think about it like, right, they're selling so much stuff, right? They just can't get ahead of the mess. And so, you know, in their particular case, it worked out. So, you know, that was a good, that was a happy ending story. They were able to find a way to do that. But this is my point, is that not every story is like, their guitars suck. And then they went out of business. There's not nothing like that there's all kinds of this out there. That's why it's interesting to talk about. Let's see. Quilted maple says. So his guitars were being ghost built. I thought he started his own shop. So ghost built can mean many things. Okay, so ghost built is not, does not mean that somebody entirely makes the entire guitar. So for instance, like with that Bandland deal, Badlands was having the entire guitar built by a shop. That does happen. Like a bossy, you know, Tosin was having his guitars built by an entire place. Right. So start to finish, the instrument is fulfilled. But some ghost building is a. It's no different than if you guys ever watch any of these custom motorcycle and sometimes custom car shops and stuff, you know, shows, and they build custom things, they shop certain things out to somebody else. That term is also in ghost building. In other words, like for instance, maybe they built the necks, but they have the bodies made and painted somewhere else. Maybe they have the painting done off site. Maybe they have the necks made all by one place and then they build the bodies and do the assembly. So there's all kinds of things. For instance, in the 80s it was real popular for guitar companies to basically buy necks from one source, bodies from another source and then assemble them together. And so, you know, it also has to do with. Not only is it because maybe they don't have the, the competency competencies to do that, maybe they don't have, you know, a paint booth or maybe they don't have. Somebody can do those kind of things or maybe it can be done faster somebody else. But a lot of times it has to do with just cost. Right? You know, it's. It's no different than. This is going to sound silly, but it's no different than if you ever go to the dentist and they like have to make you a tooth, right? Sounds like a silly thing to say. Some dentists pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the machine and they make it there. And some of them just keep paying to have a third party make it. The same logic can happen in any business. And guitar is not different. So they can go, look, we can't do these certain things. So they were having certain things done. Ghost built. How much of that I don't want to disclose because it's not my place. I mean, already said too much kind of thing. Let's see, let's see. This is from Max Maxi Raider says, hey, do you think major brand guitar maker websites are horrible? Okay. And you end up finding guitars on Sweetwater or Guitar center website. Do I think major brand guitar maker websites are horrible? I don't know. Yeah, I don't think so. I'm trying to think of a for instance. No, I don't really. I don't really think of anything where I have to go. I, I tend out of habit to go to Sweetwater's website a lot for information and then sometimes I'll go to Guitar Center's website for other information, mostly Sweetwater, just because it's the way it's laid out as a website. It's really concise and I can get to the information very quickly than I do, but it's not for any particular reason. Then I just know you know where I can get that information. Let me go to Amanda's side. She's sending me stuff. This is from Michael, who says, hey, is Epiphone. Is the Epiphone Prophecy, Olive Tiger Burst the best deal at 649 right now? If I want a Fishman Fluence or should I just get an Ltd or even a Charbel? Well, you know, to me those are different monsters. I mean, I understand if you're trying to go for the same pickups and all those guitars, but to me an Epiphone, an ltd and a Charvel are just different animals and how they feel and, and, well, first of all, just how they feel and play. Like that's more so than even how they sound. Even if you go with the same Fluence pickups and all of them. Me, I, I mean, I don't Really, I mean, 649 for the Epiphone sounds great. I, I'm, I, I prefer Ltd Charvel, but I like Epiphone just as much as you guys know. So I don't know, I don't know if that's the best deal. It sounds like a good deal though, because Fisherman's are not cheap. So. 650, you figure? 650. The pickups are 300 bucks a set. That sounds like a good deal. Let's see. This one's easy. I'm just gonna. Monk Bucket says, hey Phil, what makes the Sustainiac pickup different than other pickups? I have a video and I will link it to the timestamp. Or you just go on YouTube and type in Phil McKnight Sustainiac and it'll come up. And I, I did a quick video on Sustainiacs and checked it out and talked about it. Let's see. Oh, YouTuber, this is what their sign on is called, says, hey Phil, what's the best low price entry attenuator to make a loud amp quiet. I did a video on the. The. Is it the. It's not Behringer, right? It's a Bujera one. The Bujera one was 99 bucks. It was fine. Some of the comments in the videos said that some people had issues with them, you know, overheating or having issues. So be concerned with that because that's a lot of feedback in my, you know, kind of torturing it. I didn't really have any issues. I mean, of course I noticed it was. It was getting hot. It wasn't that great. It was 99 bucks. It was hard to beat. I don't know what budget means to you. That's where it gets a little tough. I mean, you know, an attenuator can be $1,000 or $1,500 easy. I would say some of my favorite attenuators, without a doubt is the Tone King one. And you know, you said so you have to look at how many watts you need. So I would say I'm going to just give you my favorite attenuators and I'll show them to you because without a doubt. And I'll try to do it by price, if that makes any sense. Okay, well, I can't do that because it's not going to be able to find all this stuff. Okay, go shop amps. Attenuators. All attenuators. Mini. Okay, so let's start with here. This is the Ironman mini one at 395. This will do up to 30 watts. This one you can plug in power or have it no power. This is amazing. It's 500 or $400, which is a lot. But you understand, I mean, it's great. If you need more power, you have to go to their bigger one, which I have a video on that too as well. That one's great. But the main difference to me is that, you know, you just need it for more wattage. Then Sir, Sir. Sir makes an attenuator that is awesome as well. And by the way, you can get these used, right? So don't forget to check out used. The SIR one is the reactive load is 349. Here it is on Sweetwater. So 349. So $50 cheaper than the other one. Very cool. These are very basic. But this is, this is. This is legacy lifetime gear. Okay. So. So you understand YouTuber is that if you buy these things, I'm suggesting to you this, this should last you forever. You should not be able to kill this stuff. So yeah, I gave you the hundred dollar choice if you only got a hundred bucks, right? But if you go 400 bucks, it's a one time purchase. There's no reason to need anything else unless you need more, you know, to handle more wattage. Fryet also has one in the 5, $600 range. It's fantastic. These are, these are top quality ones. These are like, this is like I'm giving you these. To me it's like this is the best of the best of the best at these 4 and $500 price points. But don't forget used. Like I said, you can go out there and get tons of them used and you know, and save yourself a couple hundred bucks. So let's see, Brian says if you get the Mini only has one speaker out, so if you run a stack you won't be able to work both or you have to slave your cabinets. So that would. Until you having to put an extra output jack on one of the cabinets and chain the cabinets. The only reason you wouldn't, the only way you would not be able to do that is if you're running a 4 ohm cabinet, which you shouldn't have a 1, 212 or you know, single cabinet, that's 4 ohms. Well, even if it's a 412, it should hopefully be 16 ohms wired up that way. So if you had two 4 12s, two 2 12s. Two 2 12s at 8 ohms would be 4 ohms. You could, you could chain those. You'd be fine at 4 ohms with that unit. If you had the 16s, you would have 8, you'd be fine with that. If you had the 2 eights, you're still fine. The only thing you can, is that you can't have two fours because two fours will give you two and two is too much. But you could chain them if you wanted to very easily. You just would have to add that to one of the speaker cabinets, which, you know, not a bad thing. Just giving you an option like I said, soldering gun output, jack some wires in a little time. But, but yes, otherwise you're absolutely correct. And for the record, I just need to say this to Brian. Brian, you're actually just right. The problem is I live in a world of like the, the commenters which is like if I don't say the other option, somebody's like Phil, if you didn't know. And I'm like okay, I'll just give you all the options so I don't have to Hear somebody say, so you didn't know they can do this telly driver says, why would there be. Why would there be used attenuators? Guitar players go through attenuators probably, I would say I couldn't say the highest rate, but it would be. If you told me like, what gear churns the most with a single guitar player, attenuators would be in my top five things. Attenuators are very, very personal because of the fact that usually if you're trying to get. If you're using an attenuator, okay, you usually have an amp that you love that you're trying to keep at a more respectable volume level. One or two, you're trying to direct record with it in some way. And all attenuators, no matter how much they claim they don't seem to have some effect on amp. In my experience, where someone always says in a video like, oh, it makes the amp sound dark and therefore it's horrible piece of crap, I'm like, well, in some cases, that's actually what I like about it. Perfect example would be with the Friedman smallbox. I find the small box also like a real plexi, to be on the little on the brighter side when I get it to the tone I really like. And so when I crank it, you know, it's a little on the bright side running through attenuation, it darkens it up. I mean, I can adjust the EQ control, but it's nice. It's like a nice blend for me. It works out really nice. Does it make sense? Sometimes the attenuator just works with an amp and sometimes it doesn't work with another amp. I've had attenuators where I've really liked them for years and use them. And then for some reason I'm just using a different style amp now and I just don't think it works for that amp. It's a very personal, like I said, choice. So I'll just let that attenuator go on. Plus, you're always looking for that better, most perfect attenuator at least I think. Well, you know, I know that everybody is. It's like that's what they're doing. You get your first attenuator and you're like, oh. And then somebody on YouTube's like, but this one has no difference in, you know, in tone quality. And it's amazing. And I was up last night till about one o'clock in the morning looking at attenuators. I don't Know why? I'm totally happy with what I have, but I was looking at new ones either way. Just because I was like, maybe I need a new one. Another one that's a little better. It happens. Okay, so where is. I thought I grabbed something that was on top of that subject, and then maybe I didn't. Let's do this. Where are we at? Okay, let me come over here. Otherwise. Okay, let me grab some other subject questions. This is one from Litvay. Litvae says, hey, a YouTuber named Ben Jordan, Ben with two N's. So you guys want to check out his channel? He's a pretty good sized channel, bigger than mine, so. So that's a really good sized channel. And he says, so a YouTuber Ben Jordan said he has a media liability. He has media liability insurance. So when he gets angry letters. So not when he gets angry, but when he gets the angry letters, they can be forwarded to a stonewall legal team of an insurance company. You know about this? Do say more. I know nothing about that. I don't know. Nope. I can tell you I have an attorney, if that helps. And so usually if I have any issues like that, you know, at this point, you can't. Any problem. The way I look at it, for me, I just always tell you about my personal. So I can't tell you about him and why he's doing that. You'd have to watch his content and have him explain why he's doing it. Let me explain my content, why it works for me, the way my relationship has worked with the attorney I've been working with the longest. And there's two that I work with, but one specifically for this, you know, for this kind of stuff, you know, business stuff. I call it a $500 problem. So, like, for instance, it's usually cost me about $500 to have an attorney do something which is expensive but also relatively inexpensive, depending on how you, you know, perceive what it is. So sometimes I look at something and if I. I go, okay, this is a $500 problem. So I'm like, I need you to read this and tell me what you see. So my issue for legal issues on YouTube, if we're talking about the YouTube side of my business, is not angry letters. Those are few and far between. You know, that's not a thing that's really a concern for me. My issue is more like legal documentation sent to me to sign so that I can do something. You know, a perfect example is like an NDA is a perfect example, you know, like I had once had a company who sent me an NDA and it was basically, they were, they were basically putting me in a position to where like on a show like this, I couldn't talk about their company any way. Like, because the way they had written the NDA was so crazy. Which is why I was like, oh, I'll have an attorney look at this. And he came back and he's like, this is insane. He's like, just so you know, I'll tell you what he said. He goes, here's the problem with this. This is so open ended that he's like, they're basically saying like anything you even figure out on your own, you can't share with people. And you're like, what? He's like, that's crazy. So like imagine this. Imagine a company's like, hey, we want to send you a new product. We want you to show it to your viewers. We don't want you to tell your viewers until the 15th of a date of a month. And we want you to sign this document that says that, you know, we're going to give you the information but you won't disclose any information till this date. That's usually a typical NDA that you might have to sign. Right? It's all about just not leaking the information. Okay, so, and most that NDA so you know are going to be done via email with just a, just a basic, like don't disclose until this date. And then you acknowledge with a yes on the email. And that's enough legality that needs to be introduced for two people to talk about a product release. Okay, but sometimes the NDAs get crazy and in this one it was so open ended and so strange and the idea was like, yeah, we're gonna send you this product and you can't talk about the 15th. But also you can't talk about our company in any negative or positive ways. And you can't disclose anything you ever figure out for the next three to four years, even if we don't tell you about it. And you're like, wait, what? So basically like imagine if a company, let's say company A says, okay, don't talk about this guitar until the 15th next month. But also in the future, if you ever figure out anything on your own about our company or our products and you disclose it, that's part of the NDA. It was really weirdly written. So that's where I would have that stuff. I don't know where an insurance legal team or having an insurance policy to send angry letters to would help me if I'm getting angry letters. Yeah, that's, that's not how it works usually it's not my, it's not my personality in, in this idea. Most 99.99% which is enough to almost say a hundred. But not, not quite quite. If I say something on the show, this is usually where I'll get the headache from is the show, the podcast, the company that reaches out to me. It's clarification. It's not they're angry. It's like, hey, we would like you to, to talk. You know, we, we'd like to talk to you and tell you more, you know. Right. So you have more information to share with people. So because I think it's my personality comes across as I'm obviously don't come across with like I know everything and you should listen to what I'm saying about this company. It's like we're talking like today. This is a theory, this is an idea. I'm pretty good with the disclaimers and I always want to learn more and therefore I assume you guys want to learn more. So I don't know. That's my NEA. Let's see. That's my idea. 60 second Steve says the last NDA I saw come in was from Marshall. I don't. I'm not going to tell you why I'm laughing because of that. But that one was a funny one. Anyway. Anyways, yeah, some of them are weird. Some of them are weird. So I don't know to, to, to, to combat that, what I do now a lot of times is I have my own NDAs. So I just send them the NDA that I have that I've made. You know, that it's like, it just makes life easy for me. Although like I said, the only thing that sucks. I'll tell you the. Just on a side note, just like I have a five second therapy session for me. You know, the worst part is a YouTube channel having NDA's. Almost every time the company locks you down from talking about something, you can go on Reddit and it's there. Somebody already published it. The guitar dealers all publish it. The dealers are the worst. They're the ones, they're the ones that publish it because they don't really have like these strict NDAs. So like what's funny is they got to tell the dealers to order this stuff, order it now, but don't tell anybody till like next month. And the dealer, like some employee at the dealer is like just posted on his Facebook. And then that gets out there, and then it's out there. And next thing you know, everybody sees pictures. And I've had it where I'm like. People are like, have you seen the new, you know, purple pumpkin guitar? And I'm like, I can't talk about it. And they're like, well, here's pictures of it and detailed information. And I'm like, oh. And then technically, even though you were giving me the information, I still can't tell anybody about it. So I try to stay away from them, do my own. All right, so that's. I don't know. But thank you for the litvay. I really appreciate you at least giving the information. I think it was more for, you know, me and. Good to know small YouTube channels usually don't have to worry about this stuff. This is from Al. He says, hey, I don't record, okay? I don't record. And I plug into a Blues Junior. If I. I think he's saying, if he doesn't record and he plugs into a Blues junior, will tonex hx stomp ua deluxe, etc. Modify the output of the amp to simulate the other amps? What? I have no idea. Why can I not understand what this is? You don't record, but if you plug. But you plug into your blues junior, will the tonx hx stomp UA deluxe, etc. Modify the output of the amp to simulate other amps? I think the question you're giving me is like, can you use amp simulator type pedals to plug into your Blues Junior? Absolutely. You're a Blues Junior. You run it as flat as possible. Yeah, you absolutely can. It's up to you. Some people are going to say it's going to sound horrible. Some people are going to tell you it sounds fine. In my experience, I've had no problem with it. Amps that are totally clean, like Fenders, like the Hot Rod Deluxe and the Blues Deluxe. Although I wouldn't put them in the same, you know, line as FRFR cabinets if, you know, like, you know, totally flat response cabinets. But, yeah, totally fine with that. It's what I would plug into for sure. Yeah, absolutely. You could do that. No problem. If that's your question, which I think it was. Antique rocker says hypothetical three case. What? Hypothetical three cases. Okay, we'll do one. No. Guitarist just lost all their amps and effects. Okay. All right. So hypothetical. What should they spend with $2,000? Okay. Well, I thought we did this literally. Antique rocker. I swear we did this question last week. Like literally last week. I almost feel like I think I'm just going to do it. You got to go back to last week's question. Literally, this was a question we got last week, but he's got more information. He's saying one is a bedroom player, one plays in a bar, and one is a studio musician. Again, you know, I would stick with what I said before last. I'm gonna go with the same thing I said last week. Sounds like a cop out. I'll. Let me chew on that one and see if I can come up with a better angle for it. And. Yeah, let me do that. We have. Hold on. We have, we have John. John says, hey, I got a new warmoth neck for my Strat. Okay. It's not fitting in the socket. Is that what he's saying? It's fitment. It's fitting in the socket is tighter than the Fender neck. Should I be worried on how? No. How snug it is. Okay, cool. I'm on John. We're on the same page now. So John's question is he got himself a new neck and the neck is warm from warmoth and he's putting in the pocket of the body and it's really, really tight compared to the Fender one. That's good. Tighter is better. So it's fine. You're gonna be fine. Concerns. The only concern would be on the thin little part on the upper bout of the horn. No, you're fine. I'm trying to think like there's no way. Somebody asked early question came in, it was really interesting one and it talked about the fact that they wanted to know what I thought about the NAMM show. And the NAMM show has been an interesting topic because as this is, it's next week and a lot of people have been asking, a lot of companies have been reaching out to me, like, oh, are you gonna be at the NAMM show? Can we meet up? I'm not going to the NAMM show. I have not been to the NAMM show since January of 2020. And I just don't know if I'll ever go to the NAMM show ever again. Uh, it's just, it's something. The problem I've had. And if you notice, like, it's also why you haven't seen me at a lot of the guitar events. You know, usually, you know, every year or two years you see me at one of these guitar YouTuber events. And it's just so you guys know, I have a, you know, the real, the real important answer for you guys to understand is I've worked really hard over the years based on your feedback to kind of create the videos I do now. The, the guitar, you know, for lack of better term, deep dive videos. Going through the guitar in such detail that it's almost impossible to bring that kind of level of quality to you guys. When I'm mobile, you know, as you guys know, I had to go back at Sweetwater and do it in the middle of night, you know, because like while the YouTubers running around, I couldn't do it. You know, I need intimate time with the guitar. I just, that's the way I like to be now. You know, I've come, you know, it's probably not great for the YouTube career because as you know, it's probably a lot easier and a lot better me to run around the NAMM show and be like, this is the new thing, buy it. This is the new thing, buy it. This is a better new thing. Go buy that. And I get lots of clicks and do the booth thing. And maybe that's better for me. But I decided instead of taking the money because it damn sure cost me money, we took the money and we invested into a better strategy. And I'm really happy with what we did with our time and money and I'm super excited. I'm not going to tell you what it is because I feel like that's the jinx, right? If I do it then something will happen. But I, I'm sure you'll notice this week when NAMM show happens, what we did with our money instead of spending it to the NAMM show. And so, you know, just for the reference, because I don't want my wife to be like, what? Why did you tell them that when I say took our money from the show, what we spent took cost three times what the NAM show would have cost us. So we spent a lot more than the NAMM show. But. But still it was where the NAMM show money would have gone. Couple things also too. You gotta understand. The NAMM show I think is more of a trade show obviously. And yeah, it's to see the hottest new gear. But the reality is, you know, you see the gear on the, on the, you know, on videos now and to be honest with you, having early access, these YouTubers that are getting early access to the gear and getting their videos out, you should watch those way more than the NAMM show. The NAM's loud people aren't very versed in the pickups are the pickups the gear. And it's to me, it's just not a great, you know, look. Plus, you know, think about this. I just, just found out the other day, I guess through two, two sources that Fender and Gibson and possibly PRs, but definitely Fender and Gibson's booth, that they were the NAMM was so importantly telling us like Fender and Gibson are back. Remember, Fender and Gibson are back. That's not even open to the public. I guess Fender and Gibson's booth are just for the dealers and they're private and they're not for the public. So that's what. That's. So I'm just telling you that because I don't want to give this speech of like the nam's old, it's outdated, it's over. It's. It has nothing to do with the namm. You know, there's things I think of about the namm, but the reality is me not going to the NAMM has to do with me and not the naming. So you know, what we're putting our efforts into is more factory tours. Hopefully we're going to be doing two epic tours this year. Hopefully we're working on both. They're very, both very tricky to get done. I think that's better, you know. You know, I want to do something that I can bring to you guys that not no one else can bring, but you know, just involves you guys. So. But that being said, we got to talk about some of the cool stuff that's happening at the NAMM that is going to be cool. So the first thing is a lot of products have been released. PRS released some new products and including their new pickups which were a little much for. As we talk about, you know, the pickups are not magic, they're math. But remember, PRs definitely thinks they're magic. But that's okay. That's okay. You know, right. Who are we to. Yuck. They're yum. So to speak. Let's. Let's take a look at this products. So if you haven't seen PRS has new core guitars. I'm going to share a lot of stuff. Okay, PRs, but I really want to talk about the new PRs pickups because so PRs is. That's the McCarty. So McCarty's got new pickups. Do these guitars have the new pickups? These do. Can we see a front shot of these pickups? So the new pickups that PRS is now making is called the DMO and then the B and the T. So bass. This is bass. That's what they call their Neck pickup. Treble is what they call the bridge pickup. They're called. They stand. They're dmo. What does DMO stand for? I gotta look again because it cracks. Cracks me up. It's a name only PRS could come up with. You got to give them credit. Dmo. Come on. What does the DMO stand for? Okay, hold on. I gotta. Give me a second. We're gonna look it up. If anyone has the name, if anyone remembers what the accurate acronym means. Dmo. PRS Pickups. It's funny. My mic is on top of my keyboard, like, over it. Okay, behind the scenes. DMO. DMO. The new DMO. 40th anniversary. DMO. Come on. DMO pickups. DMO pickups dynamic. Okay, ready for this? Somebody probably put in the comments. DMO pickups now stands for dynamic Musical open. What the hell? I. I can't even stop laughing. I'm sorry. Look, I watched a. I watched a video today of them comparing them to the 8515s. To me, they sounded better. They did. They sounded better. I'm sure PRS has improved the pickups. Of course they can. They. They're really good at consistently making consistently good pickups and voicing them better. They know how to improve their pickups. But the. The acronym just. I could not stop laughing, and I laughed even harder just now. So these are the new pickups they're going with. These are the pickups that they claim Paul Ray Smith claims is better than any vintage pickup before. And. And. And basically, this is like, the most musical pickup they've. Hey, the word musical's in them, right? It's. I mean, it's literally dynamic. You know, I'll tell you one thing, I. When I was listening to them, I'll tell you, seriously, no jokes, okay? I was listening to a music store Today review them, and I was listening, and I kept thinking, like, these pickups had a really, like, kind of, like. I would say, like a dynamic sound, but then, like, kind of like a musical sound, but they were also kind of open. And I'm just kidding. Anyways, I know I'm busting their chops, but you know what? You know, he made a horse meat pedal. He's. He's. You know, this is. This is the thing I almost feel like. And I have felt like this since. Not the horse meat pedal, but before that. That PRs, who I think is a master company at social media marketing, okay, where PRS was way on social media way before. And when. I mean on it, I mean, figured it out. Way before Josh Scott ever did before, you know, Kiesel did, before any of those guys did. PR really was one of the first adopters of social media. Not only working with YouTubers and trying to figure out, but also creating the things, right? Like, Gibson only has one way to get on the social media radar, which is to do something horrible to another company. Like that always seems to be like, that's the subject matter that we're just going to constantly bring up with Gibson. It's like, oh, what did they do this week to somebody? And that's their. That's their talking point. But PRs can get not only enraged the. The. The chats at night, but get the YouTube channels, influencers, whatever you want to call them, to talk about him all the time, his product. It's. It is. It is like the best guerrilla marketing strategies I've seen. And so I say that because when I read this dynamic musical open pickups concept, the. The concept sounds fine. There's nothing wrong with that. By the way, the idea that they. They revoice their pickups to be guitars and have their guitars have more of a definitive sound. Sure. Of course. That makes total sense. By the way, so does Fender do that, and so does Gibson, and so does tons of other companies do that. They come up with new pickups that they think sound better with their guitars. That's totally great. And yeah, you do want to put a marketing angle on that, of course. But I. Not only a marketing goal, but PRS has always figured out a way, like, I mean, I could not talk about this. It was so crazy, right? It was so crazy. I'm like, well, we got to talk about that. I don't even. So you got to know the dynamic I get because pickups have dynamics and musical. Of course. What a great marketing way to attach, right? That's like attaching flavorful to your food. We came up with a new food. It's very flavorful. And you're like, that's great. I love flavor, right? You're like, what do these pickups sound like? They're musical. I love things that are musical. Right. The open is the one that's weird for me. It's like an open. You're like, oh, and open. It's an open sound. I mean, I guess that's a term we use. It's good, but interesting. So basically, PRs brought back some stuff. The big. The big discussion point with the PRS guitars. We're not gonna go through everybody because I want to hit other brands too. The big discussion point for PRS's new lineup is that they came out with this satin finish core guitar and a lot of cool things about it. Obviously, this has the DMO pickups. I'm just going to keep saying it. Dynamic, musical, open pickups. By the way, if anyone at PURS sees this video and isn't too pissed off to talk to me again, if you send me a set of DMO pickups, I would be. I would be more than willing to. Oh, especially if you send me a set of 8515s. Like, send me. I mean, I could probably figure it out, but it'd be really nice. I would do a video, like, just compare the two. I would. I'm curious, outside of your guitars, put them in one of my, you know, my guitars and. And just do an AB comparison. I'd be curious, I'd be curious. I'd give an honest response to it, you know, and if you didn't want me to keep the pickups, I'd do a giveaway or something like that. But, you know. Yeah. Anyways, back to. Back to the. Their new lineup. Okay. So the big deal is this satin finish. And of course, it's really smart. They're like, hey, you know, the SEs were a big deal with the satin finish. My only thing on this, by the way, is I think they look great. You see the colors they came in. They got the red. Let's see, they got the blue. So that this blue looks nicer, though, than the SE blue that I. That I have. They got. They got black, but it's pearl black black. And then they got the white, which. The white looks good, right? Looks good. I wish this. I wish they would have done, like, the dog hair ones. If you guys don't know what that is, that would have, like the silvery white in this and then this one have the black streaks in it. The only critique I have that's negative about this guitar is I have not seen the price. And, you know, my brain is like, I see this guitar and I see 1999, and I. I'm. I'm curious if anyone knows the price. If you would definitely put it in the comments. I would love to know if anyone's found it. I. I didn't look super hard, but I was out there looking because My guess is $3,500. That's my guess. And I bet I could be. It could be. That could be low. I mean, it could be high. So somebody said 35. William, you said $3,500. Is that the Real. Oh, my God. Did I nail it? You guys said it's $3,500. I nailed it. By the way, if I nailed it, because you guys are saying $3,500 is the right number. You know how I came up with that number? I thought, what's ridiculous at 500 bucks? 3. $3,000. Like I said, it should be like 2 grand. 3,000 is ridiculous. Then 500 bucks. $3,500. But here's the deal. I also know that, I mean, if you're buying a core custom 24 at $4,000 is the minimum. 42. $4,600, the minimum you're going to buy one now for. So of course it couldn't be, you know, $2,000. It's not gonna be half just for satin finish. But it's cool. It's really cool. I like it. I mean, I would be a buyer. I just. It's one of those things where unfortunately, you know, it's just my. My logic is, as much as I like it and I actually could see myself enjoying it more than any other PR. It's like, I don't know, for 500 to $1,000 more, I could get the, you know, a fancy finish. And I just feel like, I don't know, it's tough. But yeah, $3,500. So really cool. But I can see why people are excited. And then southpaw07 says this. They have a CE version. So they have a. That's a USA built one bolt on neck. And that's 22. That is really cool. That seems pretty cool. So really cool. But like I said, I mean, it was a smart move. It's the guitar. I would have suggested if they were going to check out things like, because that guitar was really impressive as an se. And the only other thing that was weird to talk about with them is that my buddy reached out to me and said, did you notice, like, the absence of single cuts is gone? And I was like, yeah. If you look at the single cut cores now, if you go in SES, you're going to see a single cuts in the SEs, but like, here's the Tremonti. This is a single cut. Okay. And then here's where it gets a little tricky, right? They already had phased out the hollow body single cut because I have a hollow body single cut and they don't make that anymore. And the McCarty's. No single cut for the McCarty's. And wait, does that mean the 594 is gone? No, there's a 594. So no single cut. 594. So that's what I think we're. So I, I. If this website is accurate, which it looks accurate, like, I don't think they're, you know, keeping off menu items. I think everything on with them is on menu. In other words, if it's not on their website, they don't currently have it in their lineup. There is only if you want a single cut PRS in a core. The Tremont is the only one they sell. And that one has a pattern thin neck, the tranny pattern thin neck, and then a tremolo. So it's not even like, you know, so really strange. Anyways, buddy told me about that. Another buddy of mine, who I sent a reference to him, said he had heard that sales were just not that great on the single cuts for them. So they just phased them out for the record. Just so there's no confusion. In the S2 lineup, they still make a 594 single cut, although it looks like. Yep. And then that's it. So in the S2s, there's one single cut and then on Ses, there's a couple single cuts. I think there's a 594 and there's a Zach Meyers. So little. Little thing. So we spent a lot of time on prs, more than I thought we're gonna do. But let's go to another cool product launch. I'm not gonna do Ibanez stuff. A lot of you guys saw the Ibanez stuff. Something else I saw that was really cool as a product launch for the NEM show was the new MXR pedal. That's essentially. Let's see, MXR new pedal. Okay, and let's do this. Handsome is queued up now. It's missing. Okay, here it is. Here it is. We'll go, we'll use. Oh, that's the blurry one. Use guitar. Oh, they're using the same one. Okay, let's go here. So this is Guitar World. However, they have a new high def picture of this. It's essentially the Rockman, the chorus section out of the Rockman. So if you guys ever wanted the Def Leppard Rockman sound, this doesn't have the delay. It doesn't have any other functions. It's just the chorus. But keep in mind, that's basically what everybody was using. So iMixr is really smart. You know, I think of RJ Rencilio, I should get credit for this. You know, it's funny, like, literally he did a video that sold way too many Rockmans. He did a video and literally made the Rockman sound amazing. If you guys, I'll put a timestamp, I'll put a link to RJ's video. It was amazing. Trust me. He almost got me too. I was like, nah, that thing wasn't that great. It did chorus, but you could get some other chords from a lot of units. But it was. I mean, he sounded so good. It sounded so good. And of course it was on the Def Leppard album. So. So anyways. But here's the thing. This, this is something like I. I'm kind of like. I don't use chorus a lot, but if I was going to use one chorus pedal, just the cool vibe of this is. Is cool. The. Let's see if there's. Oh, you know what? I didn't look for this. There you go. There you go. Now let me show you this and then I gotta give you a disclaimer because of something I saw. So this is the non blurred version. So this is the Rockman X100. So it's got the two sliders and it's got a little selector knob and stuff. So this is the legendary Rockman is back. So this was posted on guitarbomb.com to give them credit because that's where I'm sourcing this from. So that looks really good. I don't really care what the price is. I can't imagine they can get more than 200 bucks for this thing. So pretty cool. So that's a cool thing to know. But the one thing that I do need to point out, because again, I have to think about, all the people are going to put comments like, Phil, I can't believe you mentioned that and didn't mention this. There's another company, this company right here, that makes a version of that thing. But with everything it looks like it's got the preamp, the comp, the gate, the phase, right? Something like that. I believe that's the comp. And this, this might be not the. The only one or the. But I saw some people mentioning it. I just like to point out that I think again, kind of like with PRS's marketing, I think it was smart, right? They know that the Rockman's been hyped and obviously we're all like, you know, we're. We think it's cool. And to me, having it on a foot pedal is just even cooler. And the fact that they. What they did right is they got the look right, because like, you know, you put that on your pedal board and you'll look down and go, yeah, it's the Rockman chorus. So that was really cool. I thought that was really cool. If you guys didn't see, Synergy released a new amp, which is cool. So Synergy has a new 20 watt head that takes one module and it's a. It's a Toaster amp. What? I mean, toaster is small. So if we go to the synergy. Syn 20. Synergy 20. And here's why I want you to be aware of this amp. Synergy 20 watt head. I'm sure the Internet has an image because it always seems to have an image. I found them easily online. Let's see. And then, of course, now I can't find it. But what's important about this amp? Huh, it's funny. Oh, Nope. Huh. Okay. So I would have swore I could have found a picture earlier of it. So I apologize if I can't find it. But the Synergy amp is essentially. Oh, here it is. I knew I could find it. Give it a second. It's on. Here we go. So this is the new Synergy amp. And what's cool about this is it's a 20 watt head. It has IR's impulse responses. You can see right here. You can look in the back. It's got an effects loop. It's got a headphone amp out or headphone out. And like I said, this is usb, so you can put in your own impulse responses and you load in your module. Now, what's really cool about this is it's a three channel amp because remember, the module has two channels and then this has a clean channel. So it has a really nice clean channel that has like a chimy kind of fender clean. Why this is important is this amp is $1,000 street price, okay? But a module is 400 bucks. Okay, so it's 1400 bucks. But let me give you a great argument. And I was thinking about this when discussing with a friend the other night. If you got this Synergy head and the, like a Friedman module, whether you got the Dirty Shirley or you get the small. That small box, the Dirty Shirley, or you get the be loaded in, that's actually cooler, in my opinion, than what Friedman's currently making. So if you think about the Friedman, like the Jerry Contrail or the runt or the PT, you know, 20, or even the. The Dirty Shirley mini, I mean, essentially that gives you like some of those amps like the PT and the Dirty truly gives you one channel. And then the this, the Runt and the JJ Jr. They give you essentially two channels. They give you a clean channel. That's okay. And then they give you the main channel. So if you get this and load in a Friedman module, you have a Friedman amp because Friedman designed the preamp and the synergy. And then you get a good clean channel. So that. And you get impulse responses. And so and, and it's the same price. It's 1500 bucks. Like 14 actually it's less. So it's $1400. So it's pretty cool. And of course you could, you could put, you could get the Saldano module and load that in. Right now where this amp goes awry is, you know, then if you start buying modules every month you have 20 modules. Well, yeah. Now you've spent a lot of money because now you're gonna have, you know, another sixteen hundred dollars in modules or whatever. But you know, if you want to get one or two modules, it's really cool. It's a really cool idea. So small amp that's made in the usa so you know, they make it in their facility in California. So that's another cool thing. So made in usa, you know. And for fourteen hundred dollars for that and a module. Okay. Or you can get used modules. So I'm very excited about that. So I thought that was really cool. What else did you guys see? Let me know in the comments what you guys saw. I mean I saw the new Ibanez stuff that looked pretty cool. I saw this. Somebody mentioned earlier that boss has a new WAZA like attenuator that looked pretty cool. I've never tried their other one so I never tried the, the. The bigger one. Now this one seems like a smaller scream down version. So. So, so yeah, I. A lot of cool stuff. I'm trying to think what else. I saw a lot of cool other gear coming out. Really cool. I'm wondering if Line 6 has something new coming out because I saw. If you guys didn't see. You guys are looking for a deal. I don't. Fortunately I don't have an affiliate link for this because I'm like that would be helpful. But if you go on reverb and type in line 6 catalyst amp 100. Let me find it. There it is. I'll share with you guys right now. Check this out. If you go to reverb.com you'll see that the line six is 50% off. It was 399 to 199. And this is direct from line six from Calabasas, California so anybody been thinking about getting the hundred. This is the 100 watt. This is the nicer version than the 60 watt and has a couple more features because I think over the 60 watt. So 112, 100 watt catalyst for 200 bucks. Just to give you a reference, I saw a few people selling the catalysts for used for 200 bucks, but most used ones were going for more than that. And I can imagine once they do this blowout, you know, it'll, it'll go back to, you know, the normal use pricing. But my guess is they're blowing those out because something's new. I don't know. But maybe check those out if you're interested. I really like that amp. Okay, all right, what else? And then all. Since we are all talking about new gear and the Nam, somebody asked me if they, you know, somebody was talking about the fires. A viewer sent me an email saying, hey, do you think the fire is going to affect the NAMM show? It's definitely affecting the NAMM show. Companies like Maybach and a couple others had make, had made choices. I don't know if that's specifically because of the fires, but they made choices not to go to the NAMM show last minute. A couple companies that I do know also are not going and a couple of friends are not going because the fires or something related to the fires. Right. And for the record, so you guys know, for those that are going to put comments in sections because as everybody always says, like, oh, the fire's not even buying them and stuff. One of my friends is not going because of a health reason. He's like, you know, he's, he doesn't, he has lung issues and he's like, I don't know if the, the, you know, the stuff in the air was going to be a problem for him and he doesn't, he's like, this is not important enough for me to take a chance on that. I understand that. I get that. And, but anyways, my point is that yes, I would imagine some people are going to stay home from the damn show, especially if you're going great distance because it's all unresolved. And I, you know, my hearts go out to all the people in California and it's a big mess. And, and you know, and you guys know if you're a die hard viewer of this podcast, you know that in 2022, in November, I, my wife and I had our honeymoon. Literally we never had a honeymoon before. We went on our honeymoon for, and we went To Hawaii. And we went after the, the, the. The fires there. And we, we waited the, you know, we waited till, you know, everybody said it was fine to go and we went. And it's. It's a weird feeling to go to a place where something has happened. You know, you don't want to be a problem, but you don't want to. You know. So I'm just telling you we had a great time. Was amazing. It was. Obviously, it's a moment that I'll. I'll cherish for the rest of my life and my wife too. But you know, I'll just share this just so you guys understand where I'm coming from mentally. You know, I have so many great memories from that vacation. It was the longest vacation I ever took in my life. It was eight, nine days. I'd never taken a vacation that long, neither my wife. So an eight, nine day vacation in Hawaii was like an amazing experience. But I also think of all those fond memories. I also think about my wife. She was like in the. We were out of like a shop buying products and like her and the clerk were crying because of, you know, the devastation stuff. They're just crying cause the clerk broke down and my wife broke down. And you know, it's just. It's a lot, it's a lot to take in when this stuff happens. You know, the, the reality of this is. And I don't want to go on a tirade about this because it's a guitar channel, but the reality of this is always remember people. That's. It's easy. It's not that hard when, when you. When devastation happens, just focus on people, not anything else. Because the, the p. It's people. And you know, anybody can be a jerk to an idea, but when you're looking somebody in the face that's gone through tragedy, you realize real fast again, it's people. So I'm just saying. So I feel for everybody. And yeah, I think we'll have some effect on the NAMM show. And, and. But I think ultimately it looks like it's gonna be a success. I don't know. So. Yeah. So let's go on another subject. Let's go on to a guitar related subjects. Now that we've covered the namm, at least I feel like we covered the NAMM unless anyone else had any subjects or thoughts on the NAMM show. And let me, let me do this because Amanda's sending me stuff too. Let me grab this. Okay. This one is from Michael's. Amanda sent me this. It says Michael says. Any suggestions? Under $1,000 for most maintenance free, bulletproof, easy to set up guitar. I was thinking Yamaha Rev Star, RSS2T. Here's what I will tell you for the things brands are great. So Yamaha is a trusted brand. Sure. Of course, you know schecter guitars, right? There's always the golden. The golden ones like for the most part, Fender is. The most part is a great guitar for low maintenance stuff. But feature wise, I'd like to talk about features feature wise. Definitely a spoke wheel truss rod. If you guys don't know what that is, I'll show you. Hold on, let me grab one. So this is a Music Man Petrucci 7 string. But this here is a spoke wheel truss rod adjustment. You see this little wheel underneath the neck where it meets the body. You don't need anything but the little metal stick that comes with it. And you just turn it. And if you turn it too far, then you've gone too far and then you just turn it back. And if you turn it the other way and it's too tight, then you loosen it back up. You can't strip it, you can't break it. I say can't. I mean, yeah, you can, but you know, you really weren't paying attention. It's pretty straightforward, right? When it feels a little loose, then it's loose. And when it feels a little tight, it's tight and you just kind of go. That's an easy adjustment. Stainless steel frets on guitars, as long as they come from the factory, polished and good. Again, you know, zero to no maintenance on that. And tremolo hardtail. Of course, hardtail is no maintenance in a tremolo. That's really quality is low maintenance. But to me, if you get a guitar that has a spoke wheel style truss rod, a stainless steel frets and a quality neck, in other words, made of a quality material like a, you know, not. It doesn't have to be cortisone, but just a good quality neck from a brand you trust. That's a pretty much zero maintenance guitar. That's a guitar that should last forever. Worst thing to happen to you, which is output jacks. As I point to where there's differently for some reason, no output jacks. Let me put this here in the stand. Okay. Those things definitely, those features definitely make a guitar last a long time and have zero to no maintenance. I would argue that if, you know, besides fret sprout, which is always a potential issue, besides that and possibly an output jack because it's a wearable part like tires on a car. If you get a guitar with stainless steel frets and a truss rod that you can adjust very easily yourself and something like a hardtail, there's no reason you should ever have to take it in for maintenance. It's you should be able to maintain it all yourself. And if you can't, if you can't most anything that goes wrong with it, you should be able to learn to do on yourself and maintain it. Pal effects. What's up petal pal? How's it going guys? He says, hey Phil, Happy Friday. What is your favorite 10 inch celestian speaker? It's the cream back in order Cream. For me personally I'm not a big Jensen fan although I have 10 inch Jensen's in my Princeton because that's what it came with and I just like traditionally it's great but I'm talking about you're asking like my favorite speaker. I'm not going to change the speaker because the amp sounds great. But if I was going to get a speaker. I like the 10 inch creamback celestion and I like the blue al Ninco in 10 inch and the gold Al Nico Celestian in 10 inch. Those are three, my three favorite. There's so many though that are great. You know somebody right now is going to be like don't forget warehouse speakers. Don't I mean all that stuff great. But you know those three like if I'm buying a speaker, a 10 inch speaker, those are the three. I'm buying one of those three probably in order just because of pricing and use cream back. Super easy for the cream back to sound good in a 10 inch. And then after that probably the gold Al Nico and then after that the blue I'll not go and only because the gold will take a little bit more abuse. And I kind of like that. But that's, that's my go to's And I'd also think for me personally I think of the Creamback is more modern and then the Alnico is more vintage vibe and I don't obviously they're both kind of old and new in a way. But sound wise like I said, what sound you're going for? That'd be my. My thoughts. So yeah. Chris, Chris. Chris says hey, that Hawaii trip was in 2022. It doesn't seem that long ago. Yeah, we got the Spark video. Yeah, I know. I was thinking that the other day too when I was thinking about it. I thought it was last year but it was not. Amanda. Amanda. Amanda just became A member, okay, and says she just wanted to be highlighted. Amanda, you're always highlighted. I'll tell you what, you're always highlighted. I wish I could get the moderators like highlighted as well too. We're working on stuff. But thank you, thank you. Amanda is a very hard working individual. Not only for me, she's out there helping so many channels. I, I, you know, I think a lot of you guys know that she really, really loves the community and puts a lot of effort and time into this community and that is, you know, it's, it's impressive, it's an impressive thing because I don't think you guys, I don't think you guys could understand and nor does it matter that you do, I guess. But moderators are a big part of these channels. They're a big part. It's huge. It's not just like taking out the guy who's just a little abusive or whatever, a little crazy and posting things or the SC things. The bots came in, you know, they got to clear that stuff too. You gotta understand the information that you get later when they're like, hey, this happened, just, you guys know that. Or they're highlighting or recognizing you, you know, the notes that you can get sometimes like hey, you missed somebody mentioning this, you know, all that stuff is really, really important. So I really appreciate them as, as you know, I hope you guys do as well. Larry says he doesn't know if I'm saying creamback or greenback because I'm saying it fast. It's cream back. Like whip whipped cream. Like whoop cream. Not whip, whoop cream. In fact, I have a new speaker coming out called the whoop cream back. If I could have a custom speaker make, I would absolutely call it the whoop cream speaker. Okay, so let's see. Peter says, so basically a secretary, interestingly put it that way. I would say more like a bouncer, a mediator and a project manager. Like that. That way. And I mean that wholeheartedly. That would be the jobs. It's a, it's a hard job, man. So you guys know on a side note, and then I won't, I'll just make this fast and easy. The moderators are super nice, especially Amanda. If Amanda was in charge of, you know, of blocking any of people who are inappropriate or doing things, she would probably do nobody. Because she's like, no, I'm so, you know, I, 100%, I'm. The one afterwards on the show is like, no, you know, that's their behavior. I believe. I don't care what anybody says. I believe in a code of conduct, you know? You know. You know, the gym. You go to the gym. Anybody goes to a gym knows, like, there's a code of conduct. You can't walk around the gym naked. You just can't. Okay? It's not freedom of speech. It's not freedom to express yourself. It's the gym. We're here all together, and we have to. We have to be together. We have to learn together. We have to have fun together. And so now if somebody can't, you know, basically act right, and they gotta go. So it's a hard job because the. So, you know, I'm not. I'm not unaware of the fact that the moderators get the hell for that. They kick somebody because basically I or another channel tells them to, and then that person just hates the moderator. So. Which is not fair. But it just. It's like I can't kick them because I'm talking. So they have to do the dirty work. So they do the dirty work. They're the bouncers. And. Yeah, and Brian's right. This is a fully closed chat. Yes. Yes. All right, let's. Let's go to another topic. All right? And I haven't forgot you. Antique rocker, by the way. Still gonna figure that out. This is Dr. I have. Man, I've just butchered this name. I'm gonna say Dr. Mab. You're Dr. Mab right now for me. Says, I had four listings sit for four months with just lowball offers. Now, three of them sold in two days this week for nearly. What I asked. Is the market rebounding? Well, it's not that it's rebounding. Well, again, who. You know, who the hell knows, right? I don't know, but I'm just saying it could be. Yeah, it could be a rebounding. But I actually also think that, remember, people go through. We're all going through a purging. There's a lot of people selling. And when people purge, this is the important part. Think about it like a gear addict, right? Let's just. Let's just pretend that a lot of you have an issue with gear. Let's just say theory that you guys have a problem with what? With gear. It's hard to buy gear when you're trying to get rid of gear. Not only just financially, because obviously you need to free up the cash to do it, but it's hard to justify. Like, if I have, like, three or four guitars I'm trying to get rid of, because I'm like, okay, it's time to downsize a little bit of stuff or this stuff needs to find a new owner. And then I see something I'm in love with. It's hard to go, oh, I should get that. I'm like, well wait, I'm trying to get rid of stuff. How can I buy stuff? Right? And so I think that's what happened. So whenever a lot of people were purging and I think that purge will continue for a little while. But I don't, I think the most people got the thinner the herd, so to speak. So yeah, yeah. So that would explain why I, I gotta tell you, I just sold a bunch of gear and I sold way more than I thought, faster than I thought. I was putting it out there as a tease, like, hey, I'm gonna sell this in a month or so. And then I sold so much I was like, oh crap, I wasn't ready to do that. I thought like you was gonna take a couple months. And it went a little bit more aggressively than I thought. So that's good. That means I probably set the prices at, at a great price for them. And also just means again, people are buying gear. I mean, you know, Joseph says, hey, Phil, would you rather choose four Gibson Les Paul tributes, two Gibson Les Paul standards, or one Gibson Les Paul custom Shop? I would like one Gibson Les Paul. I would like one Gibson Les Paul that doesn't weigh a lot. It's, it's, that's, that's it. I, I, I sold one of my Gibsons recently, so now I'm down to two Gibson. I'm down to three Gibson Les Paul's, but I have one on the chopping block. I'm gonna be getting rid of my Gibson R9. So I'm keeping my Gibson Classic, which essentially is a model below the tribute, because I absolutely love it. And when I say love it, I love the way it plays, I love the way it feels, I love the way it looks. I love the, I'm not in love with the pickups. I don't know why. And I've, I've been trying. So I think I have something that's going to fix that. Excuse me. And, and then that will be, that will be a main guitar for me. And then I have a Gibson Ro. Although every time I say Ro, somebody goes. You mean R0? Yeah, the R0. The RO. What do you want to call it? And it's 7lbs 4oz, super light. And those are the two I'm going to keep as my Gibson Les Paul's. But I should have just stopped at the classic. So the answer your question, I want. I like one Gibson Les Paul that's light. So same with Strats. I'm down to two Strats. I mean, I have one on the. On the chopping block, but I'm gonna have two Strats. I. I think two Strats is not enough for me. One Les Paul's enough for me. You know, I kind of like to have. I kind of like having a different variety of guitars to play. Since I play pretty much the same two or three all the time, I like to pull in something different every once in a while. And having replicas of the same guitar doesn't work for me because it's. Then it's just them randomly grabbing one. Mike says, hey, Phil, I saw your review of the Blues Breaker pedal. I was traveling, found one used at Guitar center and bought it. Great pedal. Makes the Rivera sound like a Marshall even at low volume. It's a fantastic pedal. I have it on the board right there below me. The Blues Breaker. I hope a lot of you guys jumped on that. So you guys, looks like to me, if you saw Marshall put out a teaser, they're going to be releasing a new line of pedals, and that would probably explain why everybody was blowing out these pedals and that Blues Breaker. I think the Blues Breaker was the star of the show of those pedals. So if you. I bought a, A. What's the driver pedal? The red one. What's it called? No, Moss. I don't love that one. That's essentially the governor. It's all right. I got that one. The Shredmaster is cool. It's fun. I really enjoyed it. And so I'm gonna keep that one. And then the Blues Breaker, though, is the. Is the star of the show for that. So. And for those that like the Marshall blues. And for me, I, I know there's a lot of companies that make up Blues Breaker style pedal. I just like the way the Marshall looks because it's. The original. Looks cool. Patrick says, hey, why do you think the Steinberger Trans trim never really caught on? I figure with all the down tuning these days, it would be very appealing. Well, Steinberger is another brand that I would say is. It was transferred. Right? So you had Ned Steinberger, who's essentially a genius, who's created so many stuff. He's like, literally, you know, he's up there with in the top 10, you know, designers in the guitar industry for coming up with the craziest and the Best ideas not only for Steinberger stuff. I mean, he's done stuff for so many companies, right? And design stuff and, and the Steinberger guitars, you know, we know what the problem with the Steinberger guitars are. Same problem with this Strandberg guitars are. Same problem with the Kiesel headless guitars and the Ormsby heads, less guitars. And it's that, you know, think of this. I know because I do a video of a headless guitar. It's like half the comments are like, that thing is ugly. I would never play that. So that's the problem. Headless guitars are, are going to always have a problem with the fact that the majority of guitar players just don't love them. What I've seen now is younger players are adopting the headless guitars for sure. And maybe that will change and you know, generationally, generationally, maybe there'll be some people to go for it. But you know, the real reality is, the, the reality is, is that then, now Steinberger is essentially a Gibson product and Gibson is no different than Fender when it comes to. They focus on Gibson and then they focus on Epiphone. And then if you're lucky, they think about Kramer for a minute. And then after that there's Steinberger to the point that most people don't even know Steinberger is owned by Gibson. Think about that. Right? So there's not a whole lot of effort put into it. So I think, I don't think it was the trim that was the issue. I think it was the headless guitars. And I, I have no interest in a Steinberger headless guitar for me personally, because I. My opinion, I think the keys will makes the best headless guitars. I just love them. It's. Everyone I've played is really cool and the one I play the most is the Delos. And then after that I play the Tim Miller. And then after the play that is the new, the new one that I just got shipped to me that I'm checking out. And yeah, I just like them because it's like, you know, pretty cool. Funny, funny story. Funny haha story. The Kiesel Headless Delos is the guitar that. I think that again, I would say absolutely without doubt, in my opinion, allegedly. Whatever. The thing that gets me out of the legality issues, in my personal opinion, the Kiesel Delos is a funny guitar because if Fender would just make a headless guitar, it would make the Delos useless. And this is the same story that I think about Friedman. If Marshall made one Friedman copy, it would be the end of Friedman. Right. Not really the end, but you understand. Not like it would destroy the company, but it would just be the biggest problem they have to deal with, which is if. If. If Marshall could make an amp that sounds like a Friedman, a modified Marshall that sounds good at low volumes like the Freedmans do, and sound great in loud volumes too, essentially, that would be a problem for the Friedman guys because they're. They're just so small compared to Marshall. Same thing with Kiesel. If. If Fender made a headless Strat, like I said, 799, made in Mexico, something like that, 899, it would be hell for Kiesel. So. So you. Funny story. This is why I'm gonna share this with you. I'm sure this. This great story with you. I told this to Jeff Giesel. I mentioned this to him. I go, you know, same thing I told Dave Freeman. I said, you know, you're one amp away from Marshall, this taking you out. And then I remember Dave Room was like, yep. I said, yeah. I go, you know, and he goes. And he goes, well, thank goodness they don't do it. I don't, actually. He goes. He's. I think he said, but they won't. They're not going to do it. I said, yeah, I don't think they are either. The funny part with Keisel, I said to Jeff, Keisel, same story. I said, yeah, you know, if Fender ever made a headless Strat, it would be like the end of the Delos, right? Headless guitar. And then Jeff Giesel goes, yep, good thing I trademarked and patented it. He goes, so that's kind of funny. So. So if you're not aware. Funny little tidbits that know about Keisel, he owns. He. He trademark and owns the name Vader. Like Star Wars Vader and Leia and solo and stuff on guitars. How that got through Disney, I have no idea. But. So, like, if Disney tried to make a Vader guitar, he's got a trademark on that. So not saying they can't do it, saying there's a fight, there's a problem. But the funny thing about it is, is he got. When he made the. The Delos headless body, he trademarked it. And so it would be a little bit of a problem for Fender. So interesting. I don't know. But the good news is, half you guys hate headless guitars, so you guys hated that entire section. All right, back to another subject. Okay, so Mr. S says, oh, I want to say Thomas just wanted to say Rad channel. Thank you man, I appreciate that. You're too kind actually. But I appreciate that, you know, it's nice to get. It's nice to get the champion stuff, you know, and say something nice. I'm excited about the new videos that are coming out and the new changes to the geeky stuff videos and. And hopefully you'll say rad channel even louder when you see the change. It's don't think major change but enough of a change. I think it's going to be cooler for sure. Mr. S says, hey, Texas Toast Dunnable Earthquaker are having an off site show during NAMM called Wood Wire Volts. Gonna check it out tgif. They're not the only ones. There's tons of companies doing stuff off site around NAMM Show. There's a lot of companies that are going to the NAMM show, but not going in the NAMM show is. Is the best way I put it. I would say a lot, some for the cost, but a lot of them just like they don't see the purpose. You know, they don't do dealers and stuff. So they're like, you know, if you're a direct consumer, I don't know what really the NAMM show would bring to you at this point. At this point without the. But who knows? Alex says, hey, so many boutique pickup vendors. There are. Yep. Are there really enough components that are very the sound enough to justify that? I'm surprised how many are there. So I would say, Alex, the best way I could ever say it. And keep in mind I'm biased because I make pickups. So I'm going to go. Of course there's so many different ways you do this thing. The same thing. Here's what I will say. I could say the same thing about barbecue sauce. Yeah. I don't know. This is maybe the wrong analogy, but it's the one I like. Man. You ever go to Tennessee and have Tennessee barbecue and then go to Texas and have Texas barbecue? You ever go to places where they have barbecue and everywhere you go to barbecue you're like, yeah, it's just gonna be barbecue. But it is amazing. And the differences are ever so slight. But man, the more vinegar sauce, the more sweet sauce, the spicy sauce, right? The, the way the brisket's made, the way just it's the same. It's meat. It's meat and tomato paste and spice and sugar and molasses and vinegar. Like it's just ingredients. So that argument, I understand your argument, but I would say and this has nothing to do with pickups at this point, we could say pedals and guitars. When you're talking about a formula or ingredients and a way to make something, yeah, people can variate it ever so slightly, and that could be the difference between night and day. However, generally, if somebody told me I had, oh, I had different, 10 different kind of barbecues from across the country, and I thought they all kind of taste the same and I didn't like them, I go back, yeah, I could understand that, too. So there's always a little bit of that. What I will say is this. When it comes to pickups, it's some of it. It's what they're after. Some are after the formula. So the design, in other words, you know, how is just formula, like the recipe. The recipe dictates the quality. Some pickup manufacturers, whether they're small or big, are after the ingredients, in other words, the components. So you could say that same logic for, you know, for anything. Some people, some chefs are going to say the ingredients are the heart of how good some of food is. And some chefs are going to say, no, it's how. How they're put together. So there is a slight variance. The reality is this. There is very little difference. Like, I use this. I use this all the time. When Tyler, when Taylor Cox from Amplified Nation was on the podcast, my favorite thing he said ever. In fact, favorite thing anyone ever said on this entire channel, I said, if every dumbbell amp was made specifically for an artist and every one of them is different, how can there be a dumble sound? And his answer, and I have a YouTube short of it. I'll put it here so you can see the actual answer. Mine's just going to be interpretation. Answer was, well, but the differences are slight. He's like, yeah, they just change a couple components here. This one had slightly more gain, this one had more mid. He just tailored it like the. The main schematic is the same. He just made some adjustments, right? It would be no different than. Than a guitar builder saying, well, what makes this guitar different? Like, well, they all come with maple fretboards, but this artist put a rosewood fretboard on his, so his is slightly different. Or this one got a different pickup, or this one got an extra tone control. So slight differences. So the point is, all this stuff is really slight differences. So if somebody argues that it really doesn't matter, you're right. And if. And. And the slight difference is if. If it really matters to you, then it matters too. See what I'm saying? It can be either way. Me personally the way I look at pickups and just keeping pickups under control in my head is the way and the way I, I think of them personally, not the way I tell you guys how to think of them. Essentially there are a lot of great pickups out there and there's a lot of great unique pickups out there. So we'll talk about take all the unique pickups out. I'm going to say argumentatively for me Personally, there are four pickups. There's a PAF style pickup, whether it's the 50s or 60s. Take whatever. It's a PAF style pickup. Then you have the super Distortion pickup, which is the DiMarjo pickup. You have the JB right pickup. And then you have. See, I said four. I don't even think I have four. I gotta have four. There's four. Remember, I'm just talking humbuckers. I should just say this in humbuckers. And I'm not saying Filter Trons because that's a different style too. But maybe I'll say Filter Tron is the fourth one. But more importantly, I'm talking about saying the anatomy of the actual humbucker. I want to say maybe, I don't know, maybe something like the Bill Lawrence blade pickup or something, which is kind of borderline, kind of like superstortion. And the idea they move to ceramic magnet. I could argue, just like if somebody says, when you hear Josh Scott say, like all these pedals are basically blues breakers. All these pedals are basically tube screamers. All these pedals are basically, you know, clones. All these pedals are. There's a lineage. They're all very, I would say almost the same thing for this classic humbucker. All these are PAFs, all these are JBs. All of these are Super Destroyers portions, right? So that is the truth. And then, then there's this minor differences. It's just subtle. It's just a subtle difference. I make a pickup specifically. So, you know, I'm, I'm working on a deal now. I'm hoping it's going to go through for the, the, the Northern lights in the discussion. So, you know, this is a little too soon to tell you guys, but in the discussion I told you guys, I've been after a way of not making this, the Northern lights, having somebody OEM that for me so I can focus on content and other things. And in the discussion was the neck pickup. And I go, well, in the neck pickup, I'm essentially recreating a PAF style pickup. So we could use your PAF the bridge pickup is more important to me. And then. And then how those two interact. But realistically, the bridge pickup is where it's different. And I only make that pickup because, again, I was looking for a certain kind of sound. And. And like I said, a friend of mine made it, and I loved it, and then he stopped making it. But to back to your question, yeah, there's essentially only a few pedals. There's only a few guitars. There's only a few pickups. And then there's minor tweaks and changes. And if that doesn't matter to you, it's fine. You're not wrong. You're not. I love it when somebody's like, you just can't hear the difference. Eh, you just don't need the difference. It's a tool. If it's not bugging you, right? And it's not. If there's. If there's not something clawing at your soul, that something's off here, then you're fine. Like, if somebody honestly plugged into a Blues Junior with an Epiphone ES239 and a Joyo overdrive pedal and said, this is the best sound ever, I wouldn't go, you just don't know good sound. I'd be like, no, you found it. Now make music with it. It's awesome. I'm glad you're not tormented by the idea that something's out there. Better. It's like I said, it's what works for you, Mac. Oh, no. Mad. Mad Maddie. 5291. I always wonder. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do the joke. Mad Maddie. There was 5,290 mad maddies. And then Mad Maddie was like, oh, then I'll do 5291. I only say this joke. So you know this stupid joke that I said, this stupid dad joke I do with the numbers after your names? It's because in my email address is the number seven. Is because literally I just made my email address and one, and it said taken two. It's taken three. It was taken four. You get the idea. I got to seven. It's like, it approved. So I just assume everybody does that. So in my head, Mad Maddie, you did that 5,290 times. And then finally it took. I hope not. Says, hey, Phil, I practice scales for years, and still I am terrible at lead playing. Any advice on how to practice better? Yes. So the idea that scales are somehow going to fix your thing. I'm still horrible at skills. I'm horrible at Lead Play. And. And so I'm maybe not the best person to give advice. But. But. But the secret. The secret. Mad Maddie, you're gonna. You're gonna be a commercial here, okay? I'm going to use your thing as a commercial because it came up as a question, and I can answer your question, somebody else's question, and do a commercial. It's a win, win, win. Here's the commercial. A viewer sent me and Shawna a very amazing email that was four paragraphs long. We read it, and he basically said that he got the Tim Pierce course. Cause I suggested it. He loved it. And his feedback to me was, I'm not selling it hard enough because he's taken every other lesson course on YouTube. And he names all. You know, I think he named all a bunch of the names. But. And he's like, you know, you need to let people know. It's. You know, that his is the absolute best. And he's like, you need to really let everybody know. Now, hold on. Here's the reason for this one. The reason why I don't say Tim Pierce is the absolute best is, first of all, Steve Stein, good friend, amazing teacher. Robert Baker, good friend, amazing teacher. Tyler Larson, good friend, amazing teacher. I have a lot. There are my friends. Marty Schwartz, my friend and great teacher. Tim Pierce's course is what connected to me. Those guys probably better than Tim Pierce. Who the hell knows, right? But here's what the secret to practice and learning is. The reality is that it's not. No one has a magic trick, okay? It's all a lie. Okay? Everything's a lie. Everybody's gonna say, like, here's the. If you do my course, I'm gonna unlock the fretboard for you. How many. Look, I can recite all the crap you guys hear. I'm gonna unlock all the. You just need to know your modes. These are the modes. I'm gonna unlock the key to the fretboard. I'm gonna show you this one trick, and this trick is gonna unlock the thing that you don't understand. Or I'm gonna tell you the thing you need to practice that you've been doing wrong all your life. And it's not gonna work. And none of that is true. Here's what's true. If you want to be a better guitar player, there's only one way to do it. Play with better musicians. It is absolutely a fact. There is nobody who's talented that questions this. Anyone who plays really well will tell you whether they are a Grammy artist, whether they are just a talented touring musician. Whether they are a famous artist with hit platinum albums, they will tell you. Who you play with is everything. And especially if somebody's better than you for some reason, not only does it immediately up your senses to. All of a sudden, you're just paying attention to what's going on more. But more importantly, it's almost like they just kind of unlock things out of you. It's weird. It's a weird thing. It's like they don't even have to teach you. You just kind of. You get it through. Maybe osmosis is not the right way to put it, but you get it through just the sensory of it, just the lick they play, the way they feel. If you get out there and play with other musicians, you'll. You'll do better. Absolutely. If you can't lead, trust me, you get around the right musicians on a jam night, you'll pull off your first great lead. It'll happen. The problem is that is the hardest thing to do, which is find other musicians and jam with. It's what we struggle with. And the older you get, the harder it gets. When you're young, it's easy. You go to a friend's house and you go off the afternoon. When you're older, giving up an afternoon is a hard thing to give up. So. So here's what's interesting to me. I could tell you Steve Stein, which. I've said amazing stories about him over the years on the channel because I told you I played. I have a Guinness Book of World Record because I played in front of like this giant 60,000 people audience and Steve Stein, literally, if it wasn't for him, I probably would have been a mess. Like a couple other YouTube channels that were there too. He really pulled us through it. And you could see how his. His mind worked and has a teacher and how it worked. But what's funny is, notice that I don't say as much as I love him as a person, as a player. And in that experience, I don't go, oh, go get his last course. You should try him. But I push Tim's course because that's where I click for me. And then what clicked for me is Tim, Tim. Just like watching Tim in videos is like hanging out with Tim to me. And so all of a sudden I got to hear his logic and his thoughts. And this is why he plays what he plays. And, you know, and to me, the one thing I learned was I like you. I'm like, I could keep playing scales, but I'M never going to play like these shred players or these players that can pull off this licks it. Now, I don't say never like I can't do it, but keep in mind I don't want to do it. So the fact that I don't want to do it is a big problem. Like, I don't mean I don't want to put in the work. I don't want a virtual solo. I'm not a virtuoso or virtuoso. So anyways, to answer your question, and also to the viewer who was saying I should praise Tim's lesson program more, that's why I praise Tim's lesson program the way I do. I really highly suggest if you have a lesson program that works for you, or if you think it's going to work better going another way, do that. I'm just telling you what works for me, which was Tim's course. That's what worked for me when I couldn't get the interaction with those musicians. Right. Just being around Phil X for a day made me a better guitar player. That's absolute truth. You can see the video I did with Phil X, you can literally see the videos afterwards. And just being around him made me better. Just being around Larry Mitchell made me a little better. Made me a little better, made me a better player. Right? You gotta understand just so if you can do those, if you can get around these kind of players, that's why going to lessons, one on one lessons is great. Just being around someone who's more talented than you. It's not just because they tell you what to do. It's just being around them and seeing how they work and what they do. It really kind of ups your game. So I would say to practice, try to play. That's what I'm basically trying to say. Some people get backing tracks that kind of works. You could try and maybe play along to a song. Try to play, right? Instead of like. For me, what I learned, what helped me the most was instead of trying to learn a complicated solo that I thought would impress somebody because that's kind of where my brain went, especially for YouTube, because I was put on the. Among this. You know, people are watching me. I got a. I don't know what. I got 200 million views on YouTube. People are watching me play guitar and I'm like, I don't even think of myself as a guitar player, you know, as much as a repair guy and a bass player. But now I'm on the. I'm on the deck. So my first thought was, I mean, I'm trying to impress people. And then what I really learned is, no, if I play okay, people will just see it better that way. So with you, same thing. Instead of learning a scale and practicing, I would learn an easy solo. I would Google what is the easiest. Watch this. Mad Maddie, what is the easiest guitar solo to play? What does the Internet say? Sorry, guys. Okay. Oh, about a girl by Nirvana. Bad Penny by Roy Gallagher. Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley. Okay, so here's what you do, Mad Maddie. Google easiest guitar solo to play. Find a genre that works for you, and then play along. I don't care if it's two notes. But you. You nail that thing playing along to the actual song. You could slow the song down on YouTube alone. You could just go on YouTube and you can slow songs down and speed them up. Slow the song down. Play. Learn the. Lick the piece. This. Pick a solo that wouldn't impress anyone. You know, not that that's your goal, but I'm just saying. No, you know, it wouldn't impress anyone, but if you master it and playing with it, you're gonna. You're gonna see exactly what I'm talking about. It's almost like the next morning you'll wake up and you're gonna. That. That achievement alone is where you connect with. Oh, wow. This is all I nearly need to do to pull this off. So that's my two cents for whatever. But that's also. So that's why I suggest you do that. But that's also why I keep praising the Tim Pierce course. So there. There you there. By the way, I saw Susan. Susan mentioned that she was on the Tim Pierce master class private thing today. She said, so it ties in, because I saw it said, Tim Pierce had nice things to say about you, Phil, today in the masterclass. He is. Look, I am super pushing his product. Not only because I work for me and I like it, but yes, of course, like, I. The bias is clear. Not only with friends. He's. He was so nice to me. He was the first. The first big YouTube channel to ever like. And I'll just. I don't care. I'm gonna tell it again. So I met Tim pierce at the PRS event. I believe it was like, 2017, 2018. I came. I always mess it up. Somebody always corrects me and says, like, 2018. I was at an event at PRS. I've told the story a thousand times. Tim Pierce was there. I saw him. I was a huge fan of Tim Pierce. So I walked up to him and I was standing there, he was talking. It was him and his wife, and he was talking to somebody. And then when they got a break in their conversation, he turned his head to me and I said, hey, I just want to say I'm a huge fan, and I'll never forget Tim Pierce, out of nowhere goes, oh, I'm a huge fan of yours and I want to talk to you. Do you have a minute to talk? And I go, yeah. And he goes, and then I'm just going to say this just because it's just the truth. He goes, I heard you're the smartest guy on YouTube. Can I pick your brain? And I was like, wow, what? And we sat and talked and. And then this is the funny thing, and this is why he's not. I don't love him because he said I was the smartest guy on YouTube. Here's why I love him. This is why I love this man. We did some videos together. I did a video with him, and it is in his top 10 most watched videos. So if you look at 10, Pierce's channel, if you pick top 10, his top most 10, 10 Pierce, top 10 watched videos, right? The video I did with him is in that top 10. I don't know where it's in there, but it's in there. Lower five, but in there. If I'm anywhere, and I know he does this on purpose if I'm anywhere, I mean anywhere. Event in public with Tim Pierce, when he sees me, he always says, oh, hey, Phil, it's good to see you. You know, you still. You made the most watched video on my channel. Was with you. He always says, even though it's not the most watched, I mean, I get it. It's up there. It's not the most watched. It's beaten by many of his own videos that are probably way better than what I could contribute to his channel. But I know he doesn't say it to me when we talk on the phone. He doesn't say anywhere else. He only says it when other people can hear it. In other words, the first thing he thinks to do. Tim Pierce, the first thing he thinks to do when he's with me in public is tell everybody how great I am. I've been around people. That's a term, and I've heard a million times, it's called share the stage. Some people are very good at sharing the stage. In other words, get up on stage, you're, you know, let's highlight you. And some people are steal the stage. Tim Pierce is share the stage. That's why I think. And maybe that had an effect on why I like his lessons. But really, honestly, I think he just happens to be an amazing guitar teacher and player too. And I think that helped. But I love telling that and I'd like. So I love it when I get a chance to tell that story because it was really, really good for me as a really, really nice. Okay, Alex. Two, four, one. I'm not making that joke twice. Okay, so is this so many? Oh, no, we did the thing. Okay. Road rash 6565 says gassing for guitars is awful. When I get one in my head, I don't think about much else. Yeah, I get that dumb thing too. My big thing that I have to worry about. My. My cross to bear. I don't know if that's a term. What's a. What's the thing that monkey on your back? Right. Whatever the problem that I have all the time, there's gotta be a thing for it, right? A term for it. The problem I have is not obsessing over a new piece of gear. That's. I mean, I do that and that's probably a small problem, but it's not my focus. Main problem. My main problem is I focus on gear I got rid of years ago. Like, oh, I need that amp again. I need that guitar again. Things I got rid of. And everybody says the same thing. They go, well, then don't get rid of your stuff. I'm like, no, trust me. Almost nine out of ten times, if I buy that piece of gear again, I go immediately go, oh, yeah, that's right. I get rid of it. But for some reason, the memory of a thing is just. It haunts me. It's like, oh, I would just. I. Why did I ever get rid of that great thing? And so, you know, that's when YouTube videos save me a fortune. Because, like, I had in my head a couple weeks ago, I had to have this amp, and it's only $400. I mean, not only, but you know what I mean? It's not like crazy expensive amp. And I was like, three, four hundred dollars, this amp. Maybe I should buy it again. And I watched like eight videos on it on YouTube and I went, nah, yeah, I think it sounds the way I remember it. Not that great, you know, so that's my issue. That's my thing I got to deal with. So Destructo says, hey, Phil, thoughts on the new Vox 8386, whatever. Ottawa Vox 863 Ottawa. I saw that. I don't have any thoughts other than I saw the Wah pedal. Let's see if we can find it and share it with you guys. An actual picture image we can. I saw the WA has a lot of knobs and stuff. Hold on. I have to accept these things. Here's what it is, guys. If you guys don't see. So this is a new Vox WA. It's the V863CA semi auto wah, three modes and a lot of knobs on the side. So you can do. Unlike traditional Ottawa pedals that often compromise tone, this one uses a neat design that directly drives the pedal inductor, preserving the iconic Wah sound. So that, you know, no thoughts on this. I saw it. I'm not, not looking for a new Wah, but you know, I. I would be up for a video on it. So. Pretty cool. I have a video coming, a W video coming in the next month I hope and. But I would do more of these. So it's too early to announce it will be next show. A little teaser for next week's show. Too early to announce it now, but there's something coming to the channel that's going to make it. When you guys think like, hey, would you like to check out a piece of gear? It's going to make it easier for this channel to do more videos than we ever did and do your. Some of your special requests. Aussie English says, hey Phil, I play two Ibanez artists AR3 hundreds, same specs, one 1981. One's 1982. 1981 is bright and articulate. 82 is very dark. What explains this? So first of all, anytime you're talking about a hollow or semi hollow guitar, you're really talking about guitar that's pretty much all handmade. Okay. So first of all, just that term alone, all handmade. So. And then further reference, I'm gonna show a 1979 one because that's what just came up. Oh, it's not. This one's 1981. Let me show this. It's. Oh, that's not that. That's me. Okay, this is the 300. They are semi hollow, right? Do I remember this correctly? Or maybe I'm not. So maybe I'm wrong. They're not semi hollow. So they're not handmade. Does not look semi hollow to me. But I could be wrong. So if it's not handmade, that's a big factor. Another thing that could be a factor is the pickups are big difference and that's about it. I would imagine the pickups are the biggest change in it. See, the thing I can't see with your question is, you know, you said they're pretty much the same, but I mean, that one had brass saddles. They both have brass saddles. Does one have made a different material? One is very dark. Oh, you know what it is. First of all, make sure when dealing with guitars and comparing two guitars, always make sure the same strings, the same age. Strings have a huge factor in this. It's actually massive by far. When you're comparing guitars, the strings can be huge. For instance, the ES339 I was playing today, this one I'm holding up, I said, has pure nickel strings on it. These strings are going to sound way warmer and deader than some bright strings. Whether they're, you know, the NYXLs are just typical strings. Somebody says, Phil's wearing shorts. No, I'm not wearing shorts. I was up early standing saw I had pants when I took the guitar down. Anyways, it's too cold. Arizona is too cold for shorts. Isn't that funny? Joking. Anyways, so strings first, absolute. Make sure the strings are the same. Otherwise you're not even this. In fact, every time anyone compares two guitars, if you're not, if they, if they're not the exact same gauge, exact same type of string, brand, type, everything and age. In other words, they're not exactly like two days old each or one day or brand new or whatever. If they're not the same, that's going to throw everything off right there. Then after that distance of the pickups going to be a factor, then the pickups themselves. And that is so much of a factor that if those things are exact, then we're talking, you know, small things that are going to probably make those differences. But those, those things have to be the same, otherwise the other things don't even worry about speculating. So in other words, instead of going like, oh, the thickness of the paint or the type of woods, or this one's a maple neck versus a mahogany neck, or this one one was made in 1981. In 91 there was less pollution and then there was an 82. Whatever the theory, those two things are by far the biggest things that you have to. They have to be exact, otherwise nothing after that matters. Dr. Diff says, I will, I will be in Tokyo in May. Any thoughts of what I should be looking for? Like when he's basically going to all the cool guitar stores. Anything made in the USA that's really cool, that's always Cool. Because they ship a lot of the cool vintage stuff there, I guess. Me, I would. I don't know. I would say focus on some of the cool. Made in Japan only products like by Fender. That's really cool. Ibanez, There's a lot of cool products. There are just. They're made in Japan, but they're only available in Japan kind of product. Stuff that's. Stuff that's cool. Very cool. I would definitely look for that. That's what I would do. Cameron says, hey, Phil, love your stuff. What is the best guitar for small hands? I'm dealing with hand pain, and I want the smallest possible scale neck. So first of all, don't confuse hand pain with the thickness of a neck or the scale length of it. There's so much more to that if you're dealing with hand pain. Okay. So if you're dealing with issues, whether it's arthritis or it's just, you know, whatever, you have tendon issues or whatever the deal is, unfortunately, do yourself a favor and spend time with guitars. Do not buy online. It's, you're, you know, for the. For the rest of us with, like, if you're not. If I'm not dealing with hand pain, if I'm not dealing with a bunch of any specific issues, I can make education, educated guesses online of whether a guitar is gonna be right or not. But, I mean, essentially, you're in your situation. I would take yourself down to a nice music store and spend some time with guitars. You will be shocked with what actually feels good and doesn't feel good. Because whatever advice I give you, it could be the totally wrong advice. It doesn't matter if your hands are small. That doesn't matter. None of that matters. Right? You know, it's. It's funny. Somebody will say, I have small hands, so I don't like chunky necks. And somebody say I have small hands, and so I don't like really small necks. Like, it's just weird. It's funny to me how a millimeter difference in the width of a nut is massive to me in the way I play. Not only the thickness, just that width right there. Huge factor for me. Also the action. Right. So a chunkier neck with lower action I'm actually okay with, but a thinner neck with higher action is a little more difficult for me. So sometimes action is a driver for me. So you definitely want to go out there and play some guitars and it will speak to you. My guess is if you're having any kind of real pain, it's A real simple thing. It's a simple test for me. It takes in my situation, personal situation. It takes me 20 minutes of playing because I play so many guitars for this show, the channel. One thing that's tough for me to do is sometimes the guitar. Although it's a great guitar and you guys are gonna love it, it's the wrong guitar for me because maybe the neck's not right for me. After about 20 minutes of playing is when I start noticing, like, oh, just feeling it right here. Like right here in my tendons. And I just don't love it. And it takes me 20 minutes to feel any kind of pain from a neck being too awkward. And I say awkward, meaning it could be because it's thick, it could be because it's too rounded, could be because it's too flat. I mean, it's just weird how it works. So I would definitely go out there and put your hands on instruments and doesn't matter what playing level you're at. If you're newer or, you know, more of a veteran, it doesn't matter. Just literally put your hands on the instruments because everything else is just going to be somebody like me going, oh, go with a short scale and a thin neck. That's like a right. No, I don't think so. I don't think it'll work. So Nella says, hey, Phil, would. Would a video about inventorying and insuring one's gear be worth doing? You mean for me? For you? You can make whatever video you want. Inventory, ensuring one's gear. What I recommend. This is. What I recommend is. Can I show you guys? Let's see. I've shown you this before. I'm going to show you what I use. For the most part, I'm going to try and show you guys something. Okay, so here's a perfect example. So here's something I use. So on Reverb, there is a tab in Reverb. So when you go to your Reverb store, this is my personal tab you're looking at. Actually mine. Obviously, I just showed you that music man. And there's a bad cat, my jet black that I have. And funny, I got to change this because my combo I converted to a head. So anyways, and then here's my. My mic. So Reverb has this feature where I can go. Because obviously I don't want to show you my. My account. And if you go down to your. Where it says menu. So if you go into. So if you go into Reverb, just anywhere in Reverb if you're signed in in the right hand corner, it's going to say menu. Just remember this, it's super easy. Then a drop down menu comes down. Okay. And all you have to do is keep going down to at the bottom category it's going to say my collection. Okay. And what we will do is. Okay, so when you go to my collection. Right. I'm gonna do it right now. Try to share with you guys. Add to collection. Oh, look at that. It's pretty easy. Okay, so if you go to my collection. Okay, go to my collection and you tap on, add to your collection. I'm gonna add this Marshall because I have a Marshall Class 5 that I bought and it's added. Okay. So now what happens is go back to me. And again, I'm sorry that I have to be like this because I just don't. I didn't plan to do this. So I don't know what it's showing and not showing you guys. And I don't want to be like, oh no. Okay. So in my collection it should be the newest thing. It is the newest thing. Okay, perfect. So this is what it does for me. So in my collection. It's now in my collection. And so it's telling me that Reverb says that the average price for this is 358 to 437. And since I purchased it, I have lost $90 because I paid $487 for it. Isn't that good news? This does everything automatically for you. It's the descriptions. So when you want. Here's why I like this. You go to Reverb, you hit my collection. If you bought something on Reverb, it's going to auto pop. It's going to be the option option to auto populate it like I just did. And because you bought it on Reverb, it's going to keep what you paid for it in the memory. And then it's just going to tell you the going no, no. Unfrequently says the problem is that is the pri is that problem is that the price are not of your actual gear. That's not true. I just showed you. If you look, I paid. I did. I paid 400 right here. Since I purchased. I paid 487. See, since purchased it. If you bought it on Reverb, it puts exactly what you paid for it. And now what they say they're going for, whether you're up or down and it just gives you a range of what they're going for. This isn't really the important part, but it's a good way to kind of get a general idea. The problem though is if you didn't buy it on Reverb, you have to manually plug in what it is. But it's a dropdown menu. You just find the product on Reverb, type in what you, you know what it is you have. You can upload the picture if you want. You know, if they don't have a picture and you can put in exactly what you. You paid. Okay. And. And he says pics. I'm pretty sure you can add pics too. Let's see, Edit details. Yep. So look if you go to edit details. Look if they. These are the file pictures the person used to when they sold it to me. But I can go here, see, upload pictures and I can upload my pictures. It's now you got to keep in mind and Chris, so you may not know this, they update this thing so it might have revisions since the last time you use it. I've been using it because once you spend the time, trust me, it takes you a while. If you have a lot of gear, you take your time to put all your stuff in there. And the reason I like doing that is because it's off site. It's in the cloud. Right. It's in Reverb. So it's not in your computer now. It's not your information. It's you drop down and you get it from them. So obviously if, yes, if there was a fire or something in your house and everything was lost, the information would still be out there. You'd be able to pull up on Reverb actual pictures. If you bought it, it'll have the serial numbers have all that information. Anything that was populated when you bought it will be there anything else that you want to put add to it. So in you don't. If you don't. Like I said, if you don't buy gear on Reverb, you just put in your, like I said, your pictures of your gear and what you paid and it will still try and give you the best value for it. You know what I mean? Or you know, the average value. So it's a good way to get an idea what stuff's worth. But mostly it's just a way to keep a list of all your stuff and you can do this a ton of other ways. I, I get that. But I started using this a few years ago when I shared it to you guys. You know, for those of you, I'm just gonna say because I said it when I shared it with you guys years ago. The only downside that I see, but of course you guys can see a lot of downsides too, is that obviously Reverb probably has this information too, right? I think it says in there that obviously they won't share any of this information and stuff. But I'm. And I think it says they can't see it. But I don't know. I don't remember. But I don't care. I was like, I don't care if Reverb knows what gear I have. I just did it because, like I said, it's really easy for me real quick to go. So, you know, it'll give you a total of what all your gear is worth based on what you put in, what you paid, and what the average rate. So it gives you an idea. And I'll tell you something that's done, that's positive, maybe for me is I had a couple things that I didn't really love. They were sitting around and one day I was updating something and I saw like. Because see how it said my amp's worth $90 less in red? It said all of a sudden I saw a thing that says $800 in green, it's worth $800 more than you paid. And I clicked and I listed it for a thousand more and I sold it in an hour. And I was like, oh, I made a thousand bucks and I didn't even care about that thing anymore. It's just because, like I said, it just. People started wanting it. So that's something that I recommend. Yeah. And then KDUB says, you can add serial numbers, right? I add serial numbers to mine with. What I do is just for laziness. I don't actually type in the serial numbers. I just take a picture of the serial number and I upload the picture into it with whatever pictures it has, or if I'm adding pictures so there's a picture of the serial number. And there's a reason why I like that, because then I would imagine. Again, I'm just guessing. So again, take the information the way you want. That the AI, if there's AI involved or anything, the AI can't read the serial number off the picture, but it probably read everything that I type. Does that make sense? That's kind of like a lot like logic. Like, if I put all the serial numbers in this in typed in, my logic was some kind of AI can have scan all the serial numbers, all my stuff. Not that I'm overly freaked out about that, but I thought, oh, a picture of it just seemed a little easier because, you know, if I need it to show a police officer or anything, it's just the picture of the serial number is gonna be enough. So. So I would, you know, Max. Max says, why serial numbers? Because if your stuff gets stolen, this is what. Like, think about this in theory. Like, think about a theory situation. You're at a gig and somebody steals your Marshall Class 5amp. It just gets stolen right there. And the police is there. The police come and they're like, okay, what happened? I'm like, yeah, this guy took it. This people saw this guy run off with it. And so now you're reporting a stolen. I can pull out my phone right now. I can go to Reverb and I can pull up and I can go and I can. I can send the cop. I can text him, like, here's the pictures of the amp and here's the serial number for the amp. So the police immediately have the information. They can immediately put it. You know. So like, we talked about pawn clearance on this channel before. So, like, if that guy goes to pawn it or sell it to a guitar center or something, it's in the system already. Like, I don't have to go, well, let me get back to the house and get the information. It's like, I have it in my phone. It's wherever I go. So it's just a. I think it's a nice feature. You know, I think it's one of the. I think it's one of the coolest things Reverb's done, in my opinion. So, and so that's. So that's what I suggest for that. And then insurance. I always tell everybody the same thing with insurance. Dirt Racer X says receipts are best for insurance. I mean, obviously, this is the. So you know, this. This is the receipt. If you bought it on Reverb, that's the receipt. Just again, so we're clear, I just take pictures of the receipts and put the pictures too. So, yeah, and again, that's just what I do. I'm not giving you guys advice, what you should do, because somebody's going to say, oh, the insurance will take the receipts. I've had their insurance just take whatever I said. So, you know, just go, this is what happened. And you show them what happened. And that's what works. So. But I haven't deal with it in a long time, so who the hell knows? And then Brooklyn guitar, Brooklyn sound garage says, why do people hide serial numbers? I believe it's for two reasons. So, you know, one, let's give the. The reason. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt reason, and then why the nefarious reason. Benefit of the doubt. I think the reason that people don't do it is because people apparently, if they see your serial number in your picture, in your thing, they can report the guitar stolen and say it's theirs now. Right? That's why I've heard somebody say they'll go, oh, yep, that guitar stolen. And here I have the serial number. Because again, the police are going to go, what's the serial number? This item you're going to. Here's my serial number. Now they're reporting it stolen. I don't know if that would really work. I've kind of walked it through my head and I've. I found a few holes in that theory. Like, I'm imagining, like the police are gonna then go, well, okay, we want a receipt. And, you know, and what if that other person has all the proof that they got it? Like, that doesn't make any sense. That's 1, 2. They also say that people can make fraud, you know, so they can list an item on. On reverb or ebay as, like, you know, so somebody. Let's say somebody takes my urge base and the serial number and says, oh, here it's for sale because they take my pictures and the serial number, and then they commit fraud. Because people are more willing to believe it if you see the serial number, right? Because they're like, do you really have the base? Yeah, but. But I also think it's because some people don't want. So let me explain how this works. So we talk about pond clearance. Pond clearance is usually by state, by state, and sometimes even by county, which is even tougher. So let me give you an example. Somebody steals a guitar, and the serial number is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Just keeping it easy for you guys to remember. And then they go. They go. They can't. Now, let's say that I'm not talking about the person who stole the guitar. Let's just say you were in a best buy parking lot. Some guy's like, I'll sell you this Fender American Strat for 75 bucks, and you buy it. I've seen so many people do this as a store owner, so I'm just gonna tell you how it works. People are gonna be like, oh, yeah, and they bought it. Cause they're like, that's a deal. But they're like, it's probably hot, you know, how many people tell me, like, I got this guitar for a deal, but it's probably hot. Okay? So I. And here's what happened. In my experience. They come in your store and they want to sell it to you. And I'm like, okay, I need the serial number. I need your driver's license. We're gonna run through pond clearance. And they're like, what's that? And I go, well, we wanted to see if it's stolen. They're like, oh, it's probably stolen. Okay, well. And then, you know, you're like, okay, well, you should turn it in. And they're like, well, I bought it. You see what I'm saying? This is where it gets weird. I could tell you stories about that time, but we're too late in the show to get into a story about that. So here's what's important, though. What's important is that is only for there. So if that person who has a stolen instrument, whether they stole it or they bought it thinking it's stolen, or they're just nervous, maybe it is stolen, right? They can list it on Reverb and ebay and they sell it out of state. Once it's out of state, no one's going to know it's stolen. I mean, that's how. Think of this. People who steal a lot of guitars. I mean, other things, too. But I'm just saying, in my industry, in the world of guitars, people take still, like a ton of guitars, throw them in a truck and take them and see it over. That police department doesn't have the information to know that they're stolen. So what happens is if you take the stolen guitar and you post it on Reverb, and then the person who's like, obviously, if my Marshall Class 5 got stolen, I'd probably look on. I'd be looking everywhere, and I'd look on Reaver one night, and I go, hey, that's my class five. And then I email the guy going, hey, this is mine. And then I report it to the police department. They have to call that local police department. And now this person has that local police department. This is what happens, by the way. They come to their door and they're like, hey, this report is stolen out of state. So I think a lot of people cover up the serial number so that you can't figure out if it's your stuff. It was stolen. That's why I think I said that. That way is more nefarious. Me, I don't cover up any serial numbers. Whether it's in a video or. Or you know, I'm selling it. My logic is if somebody calls me and says it's stolen, then we'll deal with it, whatever issues. Because obviously I. I definitely unknowingly got it if it was stolen. So. So that's a couple reasons why they do it. And then I've heard a couple other reasons too, but those are the big ones. Okay. Max says there are some bad people out there. You probably would be shocked. I got stories on top of stories we could. Anytime you guys want those more horror guitar stories from the store. I got tons of them. Anyways, we. Okay, hold on. I thought I had. Okay, I have the last question. It's a super chat scent of a wheelchair pillow says, has anyone ever made a 12 string headless acoustic or electric? Not that I'm aware of. Seems like a good solution to a 12 string neck dive. There might be a headless, but it's like the six on the head goes down and then. No, I don't think there's a six string headless. Not that I've seen. I'll google it real quick. Six string headless guitar. Keisel makes a headless double neck, but it's a seven and a six. I don't see nothing comes up. No 12 string headless guitars. That would be cool, but I don't know how they would do it. And I would imagine they wouldn't sell very many. Not a lot of people loving the headless guitars, comparatively speaking. And not a lot of people. A lot of love. Not a lot of people love 12 string, so can't imagine it's 12. Okay, I think we covered everything. If I missed a super chat, I know I missed some of the mana's questions she sent to me, but I got to a couple of them and so I want to thank you guys for everyone hanging out. Thank you guys so much for supporting the channel. Like I said, you can always check out the merch or the Tim Pierce course or you can become a patron or you could just like the video or whatever it is you want to do, support the channel. Any support is definitely appreciated. I appreciate it. Look forward. I hope you guys look forward. I look forward to showing you guys the new geeky stuff videos. And for those that hang out to the end, I'll give you the tease on it. We just reworked the entire shop room. It was two to three weeks of work and what I feel is an excruciating amount of money, but maybe because I'm cheap, but with new computers, new cameras, new everything. Why not to make it better? Video quality improved a lot. But that wasn't the focus. The focus is that hopefully now we should be able to make, and we don't know, we're pretty sure the videos, we should be able to make twice as many videos. So if that's the case, that's going to be just right there, epic. Because, you know, we can make more deep dives and, and then some new features in the deep dives that I think you guys appreciate. So look for those, you'll start seeing those real, real soon. All right, guys, on that note, thank you so much for your time. See you next Friday. And Know youw Gear. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible.