A (0:00)

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast. How you guys all doing? What did I want to start with? I actually want to start with one of my own topics real quick. Something happened this week that I thought was really interesting, and it's because it's happened so many times. So I was on Reverb this week and something happened. So here's the Reverb page. And this keeps happening to me and I wanted to share it with you guys. So under conditions, they have mint, excellent, very good, good, fair, non functioning, and other conditions. Right? Okay. Brand new in B stock. Okay, so that's for the retailers. The reason why I brought this up is I think that Reverb needs a new condition. Salvage. Like a salvage title on a car. That was her suggestion. It needs a salvage. I would say refurb would also work. Here's why I want to know how many times this has happened to you guys, because it's happened to me a lot. So I'm kind of scrolling through Reverb, looking at stuff, dreaming of guitars that I don't need, but always looking. Anyways, I'm on Reverb and I see a guitar like this. Here you have a Gibson. It's a 2013 Ebony ES339. He won 28, right? $2,800. And I'm like, oh, okay. And he's got it on sale for $655 off $2,155 plus $55 shipping. So we're talking $2,200. So I'm like, 22, 20 $200. And I'm like, oh, that's a good deal. I don't know if that's a great deal. You know, the market's always in fluctuation. Right now, you know, I don't need an ES239, but I actually thought of a friend of mine. I'm like, oh, that'd be something cool to send him. And I go into the auction and this is the picture you see. And I'm like, okay, so the neck is cracked. And you know, I didn't read the description. They're always the same. You know, it's been headstock's been refit, repaired. And, you know, this is what I keep seeing, like damaged guitars and they're listed. And I'm always like, oh, that's. That's kind of a deal, right? That's kind of a deal. Until you see that and you go, okay, that's not $2,300. I don't think is fair. For that, in that condition, in my opinion, or at least I don't want it in that condition. I'm like, yeah, it's, it's almost like, you know, what condition do you list that under? I mean, I would say poor, but then that's the only issue on the guitar. And then I was like, you know, it's kind of funny that it keeps coming up, not just Gibson. So, you know, I had it, I saw an Ibanez and I was looking at it and it was, look, it was like, wow, that looks like a good deal. It was $1800. I was like, $1800. That's a pretty good deal. Not great, but, you know, kind of like I'd like to, you know, I'd be a buyer at 16. I open it up and it's got a giant chunk. Like I'm missing a piece of the guitar. I'm like, all right, that's. That. That guitar is worth nothing to me. It's not even worth, like, I mean, it's probably worth maybe five, six hundred dollars to somebody or something to somebody. But to me it's worth nothing because I don't want a guitar that damaged. So I just thought it was an interesting topic to see what you guys thought of that. Frank says, I avoid broken headstocks. I mean, if it had, if I had to get it, you know, it's funny, as someone who's repaired a lot of headstocks on all kinds of guitars, you know, Gibsons and epones and just any kind of guitar with a tilted headstock, I mean, it's just going to be susceptible. To me, I would say everybody was talking about Gibson headstocks being the, the most broken headstocks, but in my experience, it's mahogany necks versus maple necks and mahogany necks with a, a 17 degree angle, an extreme angle, or 11 degree angle, just an extreme angle are more likely than others, but it happens. But as someone who's repaired a lot of headstocks on, on all kinds of guitars, you know, they're not likely to break again. You know, it's possible, but it's not likely to. So if the repair is done well, it's gonna last. And if the situation's right on the guitar, it's. Well, but to me, it devalues the crap out of the guitar. I mean, it's just massively huge devaluement and makes it a great player. If anything, like sometimes it's a free. Not free, like, you know, free cost guitars. Like a free guitar, like a. You feel you feel good. You could play it anywhere. Who cares? I mean, how many rock stars have we heard saying they have? Like, I believe John Mayer has one, and I know Dimebag Darrell's had one. A bunch where the headstocks have been broken off. I think Korn, also the band Korn, said a bunch of their headstocks have been broken off re glued on. I mean, I've seen tons of stories where touring musicians, rock stars play guitars where the headstocks have been broken off and glued back on two or three, four times. So it's not that I think those are bad and they shouldn't, you know, those guitars are done. Those guitars are having a great life. In fact, if anything, they're players condition, maybe. Is that a player's condition at stock? That's really why I'm curious about this, because I, it was one of those things, like, I thought it and then I was thinking, but I mean, am I in touch with it? Is it players condition? Is it refurb? Is it a salvage? I liked, I like my wife's suggestion salvage title. Like this guitar has been salvaged. But it's like a, you know, it's like a salvage title where the frame's been bent or something's been happened where it's like, nah, it's never gonna be the same again. But it's fine, it will work fine. So, yeah, hey, Matt says sometimes a headstock repair makes it better. I, I, you know, I have actually heard musicians refer to broken headstock guitars as sounding better. I, I've never, no experience with it myself, but it's like I said, I've repaired so many that, you know, I mean, it's not the end, it's not the end of the guitar's life. That's for sure. A broken headstock repair. And a lot of times it's not even a difficult repair. So sometimes they get tricky, but a lot of times they're pretty straightforward and they can be fixed relatively easy and they'll last forever. Fernando says, neglected condition. Interesting. Interesting. Martin says, it's still, I'm still amazed that glue is strong enough to fix the headstock. The glue is stronger in most cases in the wood. I look a lot of wood. Wood makers will tell you this. A lot of repair techs, a lot of luthiers will tell you this too. In my experience, that is relatively true. Like, you know, and the glue work that I've done where it's come back broken again, because it does happen. It's very rarely I say that, but I'm trying to think of actually an instance where it broke at the glue again. I have never had it really break at the glue spot. The same crack again. Unless. Unless maybe I didn't put enough glue and it didn't have enough. It wasn't a hundred percent contact with every spot part. And maybe there was a gap in there and the gap was where the weak spot was. So even then it wouldn't be the glue. So yeah, glue is strong enough for sure. Without a doubt. Christopher wants to know. Hey Phil, Happy holidays. Do you have. I have an itchy nose. I'm sorry about that. Buddy says, do you have any suggestions for a single cut humbucker guitar? Yeah, all of them. Huh? Let's start with the most expensive. I think you should look at a $10,000 Murphy lab. Start there. You know, when I think of single cut humbucker guitars that I like, I'll give you four and four different price points. Let me start with the most expensive because that gives me time to kind of come up with the least expensive one. Most expensive one I would say. And I'm going to keep it crazy expensive but not super crazy like custom shop. I would say single. It's got to be a Gibson Les Paul. Like a Gibson in the $2,500 range. I like the Gibson Les Paul for that range. For a single cut. PRS makes a great single cut. But I don't think unless you look at the S2 stuff, they don't have anything in that range. But S2s are good too. So either one of those would be great in my opinion. I like those guitars. I'm gonna stick with ones I like and own and play in the next price point. We'll call that a thousand dollar price point. I'd probably say for me, prsse single cut it's gonna be less than a thousand dollars. But around that point, really good ESP Ltds too. Really like the Eclipse model, an EC1000, about $1000. Really like that guitar. Single cut with humbuckers. Those are two really good guitars. Then in the $500 price point I would say for a single cut with humbuckers, I would say now Epiphone. That's good, right? I. I like a lot of the epone price guitars in that price point. They're really nice. And then also since we're on the top end, the 500 to 500 to $1,000 say sire for single cuts have been really impressive as well for me. I really like them. Then when you get sub $500. I don't love all the epone offerings but there's a couple epone, especially if you're looking used, you know $500 can get you a really nice single cut epone guitar. That's nice. And then also in that $500 range, that's what I'm talking about. Eart guitars are really good. And then, then when we're talking sub$300 single cut guitars that's probably gonna be like Firefly or Harley Benton would be really good guitars. You know the, the thing about this question which is, you know it's. I say this all the time but it's. It's okay. It's part of the conversation of guitar talk on a Friday night, right Is there's so much that it's not like what you, you know, it's not like oh no, stay away from this. Only by this. Oh, somebody said the Schecter solo. That's another great one. That's the whole point. Almost all of them have something to offer that are really good. So it's. The suggestions are all about starting points. Here's stuff to look at. But man, I really like it. If I was gonna, if I was going to buy a single cut double humbucker guitar that I. That me personally that I truly love sub 1000, I know you didn't give me price points but I'm just thinking sub $1,000, I would probably say the PRSSE and the only reason I say that is because one of my favorite guitars is my Paul Reed Smith S2 single cut. It's absolutely one of my favorite guitars. I'm into that for $700. Cuz I got it in 2015 back when you can find deals on S2s like that. You know, they were blowing them out and stuff. So I mean I. And so now at the same price point that that guitar New Rus It's. You're not going to like, you're not going to find likely find a single cut S2PRS for $700. But I could tell you this part of the S2. Part of the thing I like the S2 over the SE E is it's built in the USA. And that's just like I said, that's just a prideful thing. I'm. You know, I'm American so I'm like oh, made America. Right? It's a, it's a thing. It's also a. It's a status symbol in your head. More so than you know. It's like I'm. It's not like I'm walking down the street holding out my American made guitar going, look at this, ladies got an American made guitar. You know, it's not a, it's not a fancy car. It's not that kind of showboating thing. It's more of an internal like, you know, when you, I've talked about this many times, especially people my age kind of get it. You spend a large portion of your early, younger years aspiring to get these types of guitars. And so when you get there, it's kind of like a, oh, I've arrived, I got it. Sometimes those things, those things go away. As a young kid, everyone I knew, everybody, all the adults I knew, like having a Cadillac was such a huge deal. And so, and now no one my age that I know wants a Cadillac or owns a Cadillac. And I'm not saying anything's wrong with the Cadillacs. I'm just saying it's not like a thing that's like I hear my friends going, one day I'm gonna own a Cadillac. But I remember as a kid everybody wanted to own a Cadillac. That's kind of how guitars work for me. It's like, one day I will own a made in the USA PRS guitar. And then when you get there, you realize, yeah, those other guitars, the Ses and the E Arts and the other stuff is just as good probably. I always wonder if that's what happens. If I got a Cadillac, I'd be in a nice Cadillac going, it's a Chevy. Get stuck with the Chevy, I'd be fine. Roger says, hey, why is an American made PV Predator I bought for $90 in 94, not $2,000 today? They are not worth $2,000, but they are worth way more than they probably, I would never say deserve to be, but you got to understand the, the reality is at one point everything was pretty much made in the usa. So think about it like just start with amps. Okay? Crate amps. I have a crate amp downstairs I was looking at. I have a 112 crate stealth tube amp that's made in the USA. It's worth nothing. During the COVID thing, they kind of boomed up a little bit, but they're, you know, it's a 50 watt 2 channel amp designed by Lee Jackson, made in the USA. Crate logo literally makes it almost worthless. When I say worthless, I mean a 50 watt 112 made in USA amp designed by Lee Jackson with two channels and dual reverbs should command, you know, more than, let's say 200 or 250, 300 tops. The point is, is that Randall was made in the usa. You know all the, all the, all the lower line stuff, which PB was a lower line. PB was an affordable working musicians product. It was you can't afford Fender and so you got pv. And I know because my first real amp was, you know, practice amp was a PV rage, you know. And I got it and I was like, oh, I actually have distortion and distortion channel and I think it had reverb too, I can't remember. And like it had features and it was because you could, I couldn't afford a Marshall. Couldn't afford, you know, the higher align stuff. So that's the thing with pv. And there's a lot of brands like that. Carven, same thing. Look at Carvin. They have come up so much in price. You know, I remember when you could buy an American made Carven used way back five, six years ago. Now understand, I want to say, I'm not saying 10, 20, 30 years ago, you could buy a carbon for 300 bucks. Five, six years ago, without a doubt, the Delos that I like right there, you can find the Carven version of that guitar. You could find it for a couple hundred dollars everywhere. For a while now they've inched up. Same thing with pb. It's inched up but it's not going to be. It's relative to the Fender pricing, Gibson pricing, PRS pricing, you know, and so on and so on. Right. Like the more premier brands that are made in usa. So the point is they have gone up, but they're not going to see the jump that everybody else seen. But so you know, that's not entirely true because some PV stuff has gone up in value a lot. Part of the other problem with PV is like Crate and Randall, it's kind of lost its way and it's gone, you know. Right. I mean those are not brands that are. You're seeing out there in the wild new. You know. First of all, they don't make Crate anymore. So that's easy to talk about. But Peavey is the. As a shell of what it used to be. It's weird. And I say that because. I say that, no disrespect, because I like Peavey. As you know, PV Classic is one of my favorite line amps. The PV5150, the 6505 now amp. Right. Great amps. There's a lot of things I could say great about pv, but you gotta understand PV at one time did everything they Made drums. They made, they made some of the best basses in the market. The Cirrus basses were some of the best bases you could absolutely buy for any dollar. PV had PA systems. They had, I mean they had recording equipment. I mean you should go look if you, if you're not old enough to remember the old PV catalogs and the massive amount. PV was a one stop shop for a retailer. You could carry PV in your store and literally have almost every major product a customer would need walking in and satisfy that customer's need. It's like I need a guitar, a drum set, an amp, a bass amp, a bass, a PA system. Literally they could supply everything thing and service all of those things. PV would service like they would. You could recone your speakers, you blew a PV speaker, you could fix it. It's almost like an insane thing to say today, the fixing a speaker, right? Yeah, they. You so it's so they're not the same as what they were. It's not the same thing. Neither is Carvin by the way. The carbon side of, of Carvin. You know, the, that audio section, the PA systems, the amps. That's not the same company than it was before. Things have changed with those guys. And the main reason that a lot of us believe it's that way now somebody Michael said, did PV make keyboards? I don't think they made keyboards, but I could be wrong. But I could be totally wrong. But the main thing is that you had companies that were making affordable stuff and PB would do things like make the cabinets for their amps out of particle board versus birch or pine. Save some money, right? They were saving money by materials and unfortunately the, the world changed and then there was saving money by going to countries where cheaper labor was at. And maybe the laws are a little more lax on some of the protocols like the environment and safety and stuff. And so that stuff easily started dominating. You know it's. I always tell people with pv, I always like to, to remind my friends when we have discussion about pv. PB is one of the last companies to go all in on the overseas thing. And that's how I think killed it. And again, PB's still around. But you understand when I say killed it, I mean from the iconic empire that it was to where it is now. I think what really hurt it was, you know, everyone was building stuff overseas super cheap. You know, you had Behringer. Now think of this. There was at one time there wasn't a Behringer stuff. There was. If you wanted an Affordable mixer. You went to Carbon or pb and then Behringer came, you know, and it was way cheaper. So there was a lot of stuff. Obviously line six, all that stuff made in China, slowly, all the USA branded stuff, which is Crate Randall pv, they started going overseas too. And the problem is once you go overseas, well then it's a brand exchange. What I mean by that is, you know, if you had three M's, and I'm just asking, you know, since there's a thousand of you here hanging out, if you walk in a store and you see three identical amps made in one factory and one says pv, one says Marshall, one says Fender. I mean, come on, right? It's at that point the value proposition is like the always, I'll buy a Marshall, you know, I'll buy the Fender, I'll buy the brand name. And so that, that's really where, where I noticed it. I was a PB dealer. So, you know, and I was at the tail end of PV really falling apart. I've said this before, when I became a PV dealer, we put in a large order. They couldn't even fill 90% of that order. They didn't have any product. And they would send us mismatch. Mismatch, mismatched things. We would get like base heads, but no cabinets. So we had nowhere to sell them. So we would put them in the back room of our store. They would sit there for six months. We had no way to sell them. We had nothing to put them on to sell them. So we got all these incomplete orders. And slowly over time, we'd start figuring out because they were discontinuing stuff left and right and we were just not getting the stuff. You know, certain guitars would come in, we'd order. They told us we had to order. I can't remember. I'm just kind of, you know, this is just for the story. I can't remember the number. Maybe it was like 16 guitars you had to order PB, 16 PB guitars. I was like, that's not a big buy and we can do that. And like two guitars would show up and then they were like, we don't make guitars anymore, electric guitars. And it was crazy. Um, but yeah, it's, it's. So back to your pv. Why your PV is not super huge in value. It's because the brand doesn't hold its value anymore, but it has way more value. Like I said, I don't want to say than it should. That's not the right way to say that. It has way More value than a lot of other inexpensive things. Let me put it this way. Take a pv. Here's the question. You guys could be rhetorical or some of you guys could put answers in the comment section in 10 years, much less 20 years. What do you think sitting in a wall? You go in a think about the next generation going to music store and they see a PB T38, you know, some PV USA made guitar from back in the 80s, even 90s sitting on a wall and a Harley Benton. Which one you think is gonna have more value if you're gonna bet, right? So that's my whole thing. I would imagine that even though PB doesn't hold the same value point as Fender and Gibson and those things, I don't think Firefly, Fiesley, Harley Benton, you know, I'm trying to name a lot so that no one feels like I'm picking on any one of those brands. But name all the brands that we see today as inexpensive, affordable brands. I don't think they're going to ever have the cachet that PV does. And then PV will be. Jason said neither. You never know. You could be right, Jason. I mean I'm just. Again, we're just throwing guesses on the wall to see. But it's, it's crazy. So I don't know. I don't know. Crazy. All right, let's go to something else. Let's go to, let's go to a question. Amanda Grabber, quick. This one came from Paul. Says Phil just heard from a repairer in Australia that he's had some of the Martin composite guitars having problems with delamination. Maybe something to watch out for in humid conditions? No, if there's. Look, they make a lot of those guitars. I, I've worked on, I said it in that video. If you watch the recent video I did the Martin. I, I've, I've owned personally a couple of those guitars and I'm a big fan of them. And I've repaired an insane amount of Martin guitars. The backpackers crack like crazy Martin guitars. So like the, the Mini Martin and the Martin Backpacker and the X series with the solid top. You know, where I live. It's brutal. Think about this. My room right now is 47% and I've had a humidifier going 24,7 full blast for a week and I can barely maintain 40°40 humidity in this room. Normally I don't humidify the room. It's just really dry here right now. It's just weird, you know, it's it's the Arizona desert. So I've repaired a lot of Martins and Taylor's, especially Martins for cracks, for, like I said in the video, those laminations, they can delaminate too, in the extreme heat. I don't know about dryness. I've never seen the dryness come in. But the heat can move that material to the point where, you know, it's got. Everything's got a strength point. And it's like, it's just, it's just not designed to sit in a car that's 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It's just, it's just not. But my point to you is if a repair person, first of all think about repair people, and this is where I have a different perspective. Maybe this will help you, Paul. Remember, repair people only see broken shit so that everything is a negative with them. The reason why you don't see it in me is because I sold it and I repaired it. I did both for a long time. That's usually not the case. It was very unique, you know, that I, you know, you'll see it with store owners that are like me. They were like, hey, I do the repairs here and I do the ordering and I do the sales. And I'm. So as I would, as I would sell lots and we sold a lot of stuff, as I would sell lots and I would repair lots, I got to see perspective of it. And then now having YouTube, it's just a weirder perspective to see it all in a, in a mass market thing. They sell a lot of guitars. The amount of, of those laminate guitars that have issues are very few. So there are going to be problems. That's why I mentioned them in my video. I didn't think about this. You know, the guitar center was nice enough to send that video out, the guitar out for the video so I could do that video for you guys. You think they really are excited about some of those comments I made in the video, like, oh, by the way, here are the issues with the guitar. It can sync on the top, it can delaminate, it can do this. You know, you have to think about this stuff. Here's. How do you. Here's. Their frets weren't polished correctly. Here's how you polish them. These are not ideal situations for them. And you can, you can understand if I don't, if I don't have to mention something I don't want to because it's, it's. I only mention it because it's like, oh, this is important. It Needs to be communicated, so I mention it. So in that case, like I said, those are the issues you'll see with those guitars and you'll see it. And like I said, you're in Australia. Same thing. Just the point that's really important to think of when it comes to those kind of materials is whatever those materials do, wood would have done much worse. There's a lot of comments in that video that don't make a lot of sense. But that's okay. You know, like I tell my wife all the time, they get a D minus for paying attention. I mentioned in that video that I'm not. I would never claim that guitar is better than anything. I don't make those kind of claims in my videos. I don't go, this is the best guitar ever. I just give you a realistic look at it and go, here's what it is and here's what I like about it, and here's what I don't like about it. And here's what you should pay attention to, structurally speaking. That being said, a lot of people are like, for the same price, you can buy an all solid guitar. Look, I have repaired so many guitars in my life that I still love it. But I gotta tell you, you know, people don't understand if you have an all solid instrument, all solid back and sides, it. They are not, you know, they're not made like they were. They're just like electric guitars. You know, A best example I ever, I ever realized, you know, this is how I realized in life that things are weird. I had a. I had a customer come in one time and he bought a Martin. Not from us, but he bought a Martin and it cracked and he brought it in for repair and he was very upset. Okay. And he was upset because he took it to the. I think it was guitar center sold to him. But I'm pretty sure I'm doing off memory. But anyways, he got the guitar and they told him it wasn't warrantied because he didn't humidify it. He was honestly confused. Let me give you his backstory. So he'd been playing guitar, you know, as a hobbyist, strumming chords on the back porch. Literally, in a second you'll understand that. And he decided, you know, he's going to buy a nice guitar. He found his, you know, he's probably in his 30s, he's got his first real job and he wants a nice guitar. So he bought a Martin. And what happened is he gets it, he plays it for a couple months and then it Just cracks, right? And so you understand, the seam down the center of the top cracks. But the brace had come free. It's disaster. Has to be cleated, has to be clamped, has to be fixed. I tell him, what? Well, yeah, did you humidify it? Did you. You know, you kind of leave it in your case. He's looking at me like I'm insane. Because he says this. He goes, I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. My. My best friend's dad had a Martin. And we played that Martin all the time through high school, all the time, you know, after high school. And he goes. And we left it on the porch outside. He. He's like, we never did anything to it. He goes, I've never. He's like, I. He goes, if I call my friend's dad right now and say humidifier, he's gonna go, what the hell's that? And he's had a Martin now for like 30 years. And I said, yeah, but they don't make guitars the way they used to. Cause the woods don't dry the way they used to. Things aren't the same as they used to. The things are different. And every time I bring this up, this always brings some kind of headache for me. Because a lot of people in the industry that watch a show are gonna be like. They send me messages, and they're like, phil, let me explain how the wood. We dry the wood. Now I'm like, I get it. I've been to the factories. But I'm trying to tell you I understand what people are saying. The guitars were a little bit more durable back then, or at least perceived to be. Or maybe it's because the good ones survive, and that's the ones you remember, not the ones that didn't. Right? The ones that cracked in the 50s, maybe we didn't see in the 80s. So maybe that's the problem. But my point to the composite thing is that a composite guitar is about, for the most part, freedom to enjoy and play guitar anytime you want. As I think people, sometimes they watch a video, and that's great. I love the feedback. Just like here. I love all the feedback. But I want to give you perspective of where it comes from. Let me tell you a harsh reality that happens to people who are not hanging out on a Friday watching a guitar tech nerd. All of us talk guitar. They're not into it. Like, we are as nerdy as us, right? They don't need the measurements in a video. Those are the comments I see all the time in my videos. Like, why the Hell, are you taking time to measure things? Just play it. I just want to hear it for a second. I understand that too, but you understand that somebody buys a guitar and the neck moves and now the action is really high. They just stop playing it and then they stop playing guitar. It happens all the time. It's like they don't understand this concept. Oh, you take it in for a setup, you have it adjusted. So that's why I said, if you notice, I have an affection for composite guitars. It's because repairing so many guitars, especially acoustics, I have a nice. I have a warm spot in my heart for the composites and how they. How they ease the concept of making music. Just making music. I understand they don't sound as good as wood. I've never claimed that. I'll never claim that. In fact, most of them are unbearable to listen to, and a lot of them are great. I really like that Martin one. That's just my thing. I didn't really say that in the video because it's like, that's not the point of the video. The video is just to do the deep dive and show you all the stuff. But I really like that guitar to the point where I asked if I could keep it. So you understand. So I liked it that much. But my point is, is that, yeah, you're gonna have issues with those guitars just like in everything else. But I'm gonna tell you, percentage wise, I can tell you for a fact, they don't have nearly as much as wood guitars. And that doesn't make them better. It just means. It means that if that's your need, right? If you want to take your guitar, like if you want to take a guitar and throw it in your RV and tour the country, whatever country you're in, those composite guitars are going to take a lot of abuse. Even if they're made of plastic. A lot of people seem to get upset with the word plastic. I understand. Like I said, I made jokes in the video. For those that didn't see the video, you should go watch the video. The video. I made the joke that the. The guitar, the Smarten is made of Formica. It's like cheap countertops. Well, at least what we refer to as cheap countertops. And they had a Corian nut. So I was even making countertop jokes. But I understand they. They did something really interesting. That material and the guitar sounds way better than it should. That. And that's absolutely. I think that's a best accurate way to explain that guitar. Somebody said it sounds horrible. Some People think it sounds good. Obviously everybody's gonna perceive it differently based on what you like and how your ear goes. But I will say this. That guitar sounds way, way better than it should on paper. Literally. When you write down how they make that Martin guitar, it sounds like. Not literally sounds like playing, but sounds like on paper, like the worst thing ever. And why would they even do it? I thought it was really crazy. But anyways, like I said, good. I like said thanks for the feedback, by the way, Paul. Thank you for that too. But I'll just give you a. That's my two cents. I imagine the delamination, it's kind of like the Parker guitars. It's a famous guitar player said on a. On a thread somewhere that a Parker guitar's frets popped off. And then all of a sudden, every Parker I see, somebody goes, oh, the frets pop off. And I'm like, dude, I've repaired so many Parker guitars. There are so many issues with Parker guitars. That is not an issue. That's common. That is the rarest issue to have on a Parker guitar. And I've repaired, okay, I can't say thousands, but so, you know, there's not like tens of thousands of little guitars out there. I've repaired hundreds, hundreds of Parkers. That's got to give me some credibility there. Hundreds of Parker guitars. I can tell you exactly what happens. The Piezo systems, Piazzo systems, Pazo systems, however you want to say it. Every time I say it, doesn't matter which way I say it, you're going to say it's wrong. They crap out all the time. The electronics are the weakest link in the Parker guitar. There's always issues with them. People sweat into them and it causes issues. Or they just, you know, or time. That's. That's the thing you repair the most, the electronics on a Parker. The least common repairs on a Parker guitar are going to be frets popping off. That's probably the least repair. Common repair. The second least is delamination from the fretboard. Where the fretboard lifts off the neck. That is not common. But that. I've seen that happens. But it. And both those scenarios, by the way, with the frets and the delamination have to do with the glue process not working correctly. So it's not like it went bad. It's something they shipped out. And that I only saw on the refined versions. Never on the pre Refined. Not personally, I'd never seen the pre refines act up like that. But I think it's because they just had a different process and they were a little. Took a little bit more time and care on making sure the glues are right. But if you have ever worked with those kind of glues that they make those Parkers with, you'll know that you can get a bad batch of the glue. It's not even their fault in the shop. You can get bad batches of those epoxies where they don't work right with each other and they can have act up. So I've dealt with all that stuff. So like I said, that's just my insight because I am a repair person as a repair channel. But I just want to point out sometimes the repair guys seem to be a little bit more upset about everything. And it's because like I said, if you were in repair, everything is a negative. Because everything you see is a negative. Everything is broken. You can imagine if I was a Fender warranty center, I'd probably tell you, which I was. All Fenders are broken and they're bad. But I've seen the goods and the bads and it's the percentages we care about. Antique rocker says, I purchased an eart headless for travel. So the eart guitar, that's headless, huh? Due to your review. Okay, now I want to upgrade it with coil split pickups. Easier install push pull pots. So he's saying what's easier to do? The push pull pots are the five way switch. Technically, like work wise, push pull pots and five way switch just soldering. There's nothing really easier about any one of those switches. But in my experience, it depends on how good you are at reading these schematics. To me, a wiring schematic for a guitar is a very basic schematic. If you look at them, I'm not saying you personally antique rocker, but anybody looks at them and thinks they're a little complicated. Just understand these are really basic schematics and anything that's new to you is going to look a little complicated. But they're not. They're super easy color coded. In my experience, the push pull pot wiring schematic is so easy. It's a really kind of as simple as, you know, you're just connecting the two wires together, you know, and you're going to put that onto something that can ground out in the switch. And that's pretty straightforward where the five way gives you way more options. But you need to be a little bit more savvy with how the switch goes. So I prefer push pull pots because I don't the reason is, is because when I throw a switch, it's. It's kind of violent, you know, if you watch me in videos, it's like, I don't like aim. I just kind of hit it, you know, it's like go to the neck, go to the bridge, you know, And I kind of want to like be that way, just. And if you notice like on my, my delos it has a three way switch, that's a blade switch and same thing, throw to neck, throw to back to bridge, and then I have a little toggle instead of a push pull. I just like, you know, like I said, I like to just not worry about kind of nailing the fourth position or third position or the second position on a switch. So that's just my personal thing. But I would do whatever you think you want the most. But I would just be aware that the five way is a little bit more difficult for some players or some people to wire up. And that's it. And he says, what pickups do you recommend on that guitar? You know what I would do, I would go a little aggressive. So maybe like a JB59 or maybe the Tone Zone and Air Norton kind of vibe or something like that. Not super aggressive. I mean, that's just. I'm, you know, I can't answer questions like that. Like what do I think you should do? It's like asking me like what color looks good on you? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what you. I don't know what you look like. I don't know what you. But I, I'll just. So I always just kind of say, this is what I like and this is what I would do on that guitar. That's what I would put in those guitars is the one of the two of those sets, one of each Seymour Duncan or, or DiMargio or. If you have a preference of brand, then find the likely. Like if you like bare knuckle, then find their versions of that. But I like, I like the bridge and that guitar to be a little bit more aggressive and the neck a little bit softer and sweeter. And those two, those pickups will do that for sure. Gm, like the car company says, glad to watch you live. Hey, thank you. Desperate cry for help. Okay? He goes, I hate my job. All right? This is going a different way than just guitar talk. He says, do you offer lessons on how to start your own channel or get involved in guitar business? Quest number. Okay, question number two. Okay, let's start with the first question, so starting your own YouTube channel. First of all, the odds of you making enough on a YouTube channel to pay any kind of real bills is I wouldn't say it's the same as winning the lottery. But I just gotta tell you, just so you know, I don't see this as a super, you know, obviously it's not I'm not like an influencer with a million subscribers kind of thing. But just to get to whatever the hell I've pulled off, I'm giving you Google Analytics. They're like, this is 1 in 2 million. So that, I mean that's already crazy. So the reason I tell you that is I'm going to give you. Don't worry. I start with the negatives, I'll end with the positives. It's just because I want to scare you. And then I'll give you some hope. Okay, so if you want to start a YouTube channel or whatever your social media thing is because you feel you have a voice or something to offer the world, which is how most these channels started. Okay, now remember, different generationally channels are different times. Throughout YouTube. When I started YouTube, they were paying YouTubers. You mean YouTube. So keep in mind, when Rob Chapman started YouTube, they didn't pay YouTubers. Nobody got paid for making YouTube content. When the generation of guitar channels before me started, when Fluff started, when those guys started, they didn't get paid. There was nobody paid YouTube, YouTube didn't pay anybody. When I started, I didn't know people got paid. Like I had no clue. I've talked about this with my patrons in detail. It took two years. Just so you know, this is absolutely true. It took two years from when YouTube tried to pay me for AdSense to when I got paid because my wife and I thought that was a scam. We thought they were tricked, that was a scam. Who would get paid on YouTube? So I only got paid on YouTube because my wife, after two years AdSense said I'll just tell you so you guys know, said I had $1,500 in an account, which is a lot of money to not get. So my wife set up like a whole other account from the, at the bank, the whole like set up everything and had it isolated from us and finally gave that information to Google to deposit the $1500. Because we were like there's a 50, 50 chance this could be fake. Because that right now sounds probably crazy to you guys, maybe some of you, but understand like we're talking, by the way, we're talking 2015. So 2015, it just. I didn't know YouTube paid anybody. So the point I'm trying to say is a lot of the channels that are somewhat. Somewhat successful or successful on YouTube, you understand, they didn't even know. Like me, I didn't even know this is a thing you could do for a living. So I got to tell you, the amount of work I put into it, it was. It was. It worked for me. The reason I tell you that is because. Let's fast forward to this now. We are. Now, you can make YouTube. You can make $10,000. You could make 10 cents. And there is. There is no. Once you make $10,000, then you make $10,000. I literally can make $20 on a video, and I can make $2,000 on a video. And it is as random as I'll get out. And because of strategies and stuff, I can. I can, you know, make it all work. But my point is, is you want to be aware of that going in. Okay, that's the negatives. Here's the positives. I. I really will tell you this. If you don't do this because you love it, you won't last anyways. It. It just won't work unless you, you know, not in the guitar community. There's just. It's just not. It's not that kind of community. So, I mean, maybe you can do it on TikTok and, you know, do the latest dance craze. I. That I can't tell you. But on YouTube, if you don't do this because you love it, even when you love it, you got. 20% of the viewership is saying that you're doing it because you don't love it, Right? So, I mean, you can imagine if you don't love it, it really sticks out to people. So I would say do it because you love it. And that's the best part. The next part is if you want to, you're talking about lessons on how to do this. I wouldn't give lessons. We talked about this before. We, meaning my wife and. And Sean and I, we had these communications about, like, helping smaller channels that need help. I would have to be honest with you and say you'd have to be at a certain point that I could. I could help you. You know, I mean, and at that point, I mean, maybe I could figure out some kind of consulting thing. But I would say, here's the good news. I remember I told you. I know good news. If you hate your job, then maybe when you're not at work, maybe making some Content and see if you have a fresh voice to give and see if you have something to say or have some fun. And remember, you don't have to do a technical channel. My channel is technical. But there's guitar channels that just make jokes. I mean there's like, you know, so I mean it's just. It's a. Not everyone reacts the same way. There's as many people like this channel. There's twice as many people hate this channel because they watch it and they. They think the kitchen geeky section is just boring and stupid. So you just find your spot. You ha. You do have fun with it and then hopefully something will come of it. That's my advice. And I don't feel like it's great advice, but I mean I gotta tell you, just because it's tough. The other thing and again. Cause I said I went on a happy note. Here's the happy note. The happy note is you don't have to have a lot of subscribers. You don't have to do very well to make something that's a decent living on this channel. And that's where I said that you have to figure out what that is for you. So. All right. The second part of his question is which is guitar stuff? He says PRS SE Swamp Ash special or Tajima T style? Oh, I like the Tajima stuff a lot. I would pick the PRS Swamp Ass special versus a Tajima T style guitar. Me personally, and I've played both and I like both. I like Tajima a lot but I kind of like. I personally like the pure SSE a little bit more. For no particular reason. There's no thing I'd like to get my hands on some more Tajima stuff. But maybe I'll have to buy some for 2025 and put some deep dives out for it and Mukbang fatty. Wow, that's a. I haven't seen you in a while either. He says is it okay to plug a speaker output of my Joyo tweed band amp into an instrument jack of my Voltz 2 audio interface? No, you don't want to send powered signal into the interface. It's not going to sound good. But also you can damage the interface. So on the Joyo Tweed I thought. Let me. Here, Here we go. What do we have? We have speaker out. So you don't want to put it there. Foot switch phones. Oh, you know what you can use? Okay, so here's what you can use to send out if you want to. Again, I'm not gonna. I'm not going to say it's going to sound great. You could use the phone jack. You might have to use some kind of adapter because it's going to be stereo to mono. A lot of time these amps though, I don't see it written here, but a lot of time these amps are set up so where if you stick a stereo cable into it, it's headphones and if you stick a mono, it's a line out. I don't know if Joyo did that on this amp, but that is a common thing that amp companies do. So check that. The other thing you can do is you can use the effects loop so you can send signal out of here. So this is the send I know so that you would plug the cable into the send into your interface. You could send signal out of the amp into it that way. Those are your two choices that I would follow and hopefully that works. But that, yeah, definitely don't use the speaker out. Vim69 says. Hey Phil, I really like Billy Duffy. Me too. That's why, why I like Gretches from the cult. And I've always wanted a White Falcon. Especially the Billy Duffy White Falcon. Well, does he have a Blue Falcon as well too? My thing is the same person as a White Falcon Blue Falcon. Anyways, is there a more cost effective, effective option? I already have a 335 and a 355. So Gretch does this crap where they don't make a whole lot of the electromagnetics in white and they won't do a, a like affordable electromatic version of the White Falcon. When Joe Carducci, when I knew him, when he was running Gretsch, he told me they just won't do it right, like because it's too iconic to mess with and make it affordable. There are white electromatics that have, you know, like the Penguin look and the, in the, and the White Falcon look. But it's, it's really tough one to, to, to do man. The closest. Well, first of all, nobody does that. Nobody, not even Gretch does the White Falcon headstock correctly on anything other than the White Falcon. So if, if the very least, if you're just going to get a White Falcon because you're like, okay, I'll have a white looking Gretch. There's the White Falcon. There's a white Gretch that you can look at. And then also Ibanez has made over the years hollow bodies that are white. But again, it's going to look like a, you know, a 6120. Not a white Falcon, at least as far as I know. I haven't seen, I haven't seen anything. Google Dog says there's a new model white Gretch Electromatic recently. Yeah, there's White Electromatics, but they're not, you know, they're, they're not the White Falcon because they don't have the orange sparkle binding. They don't have the different, the different bridge that's a little bit more ornamental. And they don't have that giant headstock, which is really where the White Falcon kind of gets its, you know, its vibe from. Yeah, yeah, I, I vims, I understand, man. Look, I, my buddy Matt sold his White Falcon and he was here and he's like, hey. And I, he's like, if he asked me if I would sell it, so I sold it for him. And it was at a time where I just couldn't justify the guitar at the time. And I've regretted not buying it ever since. Like, why did I buy that? But it's just, I mean, look, we all want a White Falcon. They're just crazy expensive. So I would say vimps. I don't know, man. I caution people when they. If you really want something and have the means, you should buy it. But if you, you just want to taste it, I say the great thing if you don't own one because you say you have two Gibsons. If you don't own a Gretch, electromagnetic gretches are great. Like, if you just want to get. First of all, I really would not recommend you buying a, a, a White Falcon if you've never really played a Gretch in any way. If you're a Gibson hollow body person and you get a Gretch, they are so massively different in how they feel and play and vibe. I've had most of my friends that are into the. Any kind of semi hollow or hollow Gibsons really hate gretches. They're just, you know, it's, it's just, they're too jangly. There's too much rattling going on. It's too, you know, the vibe is too different. So I would say maybe right now the deals are crazy out there. There's good deals because like I said, there's overstock. When I looked on Reverb, if I recall, there was an insane amount of gretches listed on Reverb right now. Let's do it. Let's take a look. Because I thought it was like 6,000 or some crazy number and I have A feeling no matter what number I say, I'm going to be wrong. 13,580 Gretches are listed on Reverb right now. And one of the first ones come up is a White Falcon. But it's $3,500. There are so many gretches. So. I know. Here, look here. You know, I know it's not the White Falcon. Oh, but see, here's a. Here's a. Well, here's a white one. It's a rat rod. But I'm just saying, I would look into just getting Electromatic, something like this. What's this? Look, we're gonna sell him a guitar right now. Gretsch G54 4T.4410T.T stands for tremolo. That's how they do it. This one, I don't. It's. Is that like a gold back and then ivory? Yeah, it's a white with casino gold. And the headstocks. This is kind of cool. You know why? Because one of the things about electromonic electromatics I hate is they do a lot of headstocks just black, so it doesn't look like the pro series. But this is not, you know, a White Falcon. But it's 600 bucks, and it's going to vibe and play great. And it might, like. Don't think of it like, oh, you know, if you're going to spend that money, just put it towards the. The White Falcon. I would say, honestly, if you haven't. And I don't know, this vimps, but if you haven't owned a Gretch by Electromatic, set a timeline, like a year. You know, I've done this before, so, you know, it's how I've graduated guitar sometimes is. I'll go, I'll buy the less expensive version, and I'll tell myself, I got to own this for six months. I. I gotta own this for a year. And at six months or a year, and if I love this, then I'll pass that along. It'll move itself along, and I'll get the real deal, whatever that means. And. And that's how I justify stuff like that. But you know what happens? What's great is, is when six months a year go by and you go, I like it. I don't think I'm, you know, I don't think it's worth the investment because it's a big difference. Like I said the cheapest. I don't say the cheapest. But you understand a White Falcon is about $2,500. More than something like that. And, you know, and like I said, main Japan gretches are fantastic. The new ones are great. The. I always, you know, I'm a favorable to the Korean made ones. But the. I did a deep dive of one of the new main China ones, and it's really, really nice. I was really shocked at how good it is. And again, the price difference is massive. Just massive. So squirrel. Squirrely lessons. I think that's what it says. Squirrely essence. Squirrely essence says. Have you ever regretted selling a cheaper version? Oh, yeah, of course. Both ways we call that, you know, the gear math, right? I've. I. I got something. I liked it. I thought if I got the more expensive version, you know, my most recent horrible experience. Horrible experience was, you know, I try, like a lot of you. If you don't. Guys, indulge me for a second. A little personal note here. When I have guitars, I try to find a purpose for them, you know, musically, emotionally. Like, they have to serve a purpose. They just can't be wall art. I just can't, you know, so it's. It has to have a purpose. When I got the delos, I really loved it. I started playing all the time, and there's nothing in me that's like, I'm gonna get rid of all my Strats now. I'm just a Kiesel Delos guy. There's nothing like that to me. It's like, okay, I like this guitar. So where do my Strats fit in this? Because there's no way I'm just gonna pick up my delos one day and then pick up the Strat one day and just bounce it forth. I'm gonna play one, and if I play another one, it's gonna be for a reason. So I just couldn't find a. A reason for my Strats. Not so much to exist, but to. To make sense in this, you know? You know, if I have this delos, I'm playing all the time. So I came up with gear math. And the gear math was so bad. So bad. What I did was I go, hey, if you guys seen me over the years, you know, I had a blue American Strat. I had this cool, made in Mexico Strat. And, oh, I got the emoji. There it is. I had the green. The. The olive green Strat. I have the copper custom shop Strat. And. And that's just the name, you know, those are the main ones that I had on the channel. And then I had. For one, I had a pink one. For a while. I don't know if you guys. Metallic pink. Anyways, so I had these Strats and I'm like, you know, I need to get rid of them all and get one custom shop Fender Strat. So I sold off the blue one. I sold off the made Mexico one. Oh, I had the baby blue Squire. Remember I had the Daphne blue Squire. Some of you guys remember I used to love that guitar. That's why it's gone. I started like, I'm just getting rid of all the Strats. I'll just have one ultimate vintage custom shop Strat and my Delos. And they won't cross because the Delos is modern with humbuckers. And the custom shop is, you know, vintage with vintage pickups. So I buy this vintage Strat. I go and buy a 61 Journeyman, which is just. They're ridiculously priced. It is a piece of crap. I am so distraught on how not great it was. So I went to this music store, I plugged into it, I played it for about 10, 15 minutes. There was an appointment only store. They were nice. So, you know, no pressure or anything, but, you know, I'm aware that I'm there for an appointment. So I'm there, I'm playing the guitar. I'm like, yeah, it's good. Okay. And I get it. I get home and here's a couple things. First of all, the high E falls off the edge. I just don't like the way it plays. I just don't like the guitar. So this isn't gonna work. But I've already committed to this idea. So I'm like, okay, now I gotta figure out what to do with this custom shop. I'll have to sell it. So I went to Wildwood, their website, and I bought a blue custom shop, right? Cause I'm like, oh, I have the money because I'm selling off all these Strats. I'm selling off piecemealing off the Strats. And that one was better, but not great. Like. And by the way, I want to make. Make very clear when I. This is the emotional side of that I'm having. The guitars are probably fine. It's just. I'm not having this. Oh, you know, like, wow. Way better than my Made in Mexico. Way better than my, you know, American Fender. Way better than, you know, I'm not having the. This is way better than that. What I have, I was like, you know, it's different, but not better. So I end up. I think earlier this year, I sold the Blue Custom shop off and I sold it for a massive loss, which I really hated doing, but I just couldn't. Whoever bought that, by the way, I hope you enjoyed it because I gave like a smoking deal because I just, it was good but not great. That went off its way and now the other customer shop, you know, just can't stand it. So if you guys notice, that's why the olive green Strat now has single coils in it at some point. To answer your question, do I regret it? Yeah, I regretted all that because I really like the green Strat, the army green Strat, which is olive green. And I thought why don't I just put some pickups in it. So I wound up some, some pickups. I just wound up my own single coils. I made some and I vintage spec'd them out and I threw them in there because I was like, well I can do that in the afternoon. I did that and put it in and now it's great. And the gear math did what gear math always does. It seems to be a flaw that just because it's more expensive does not mean it's better. And that's the lesson I learned. So to answer your question, there's several times I've done that. I mentioned before with certain guitars. I've gotten spr SSE and loved them and thought if I get the core one it'll be better. And it's not. Nothing wrong with these high end guitars. There's. Some of them are so great. It's the opposite. The inexpensive stuff is just not comparable in quality. But it doesn't always work that way. There is no straight thing about it. In fact, I was just recently talking to some, some friends and we were talking about the ES335 and the ES339 by Gibson. And in my opinion again I just. Because I don't want to trigger anybody. It's the holidays and I just kind of like what the. I don't know why everybody gets so upset. Everything, everybody, somehow somebody, every time someone has an opinion, here's my opinion. I personally like the Epiphone ES335 as much. I'll say as much. I couldn't say better, but definitely as much. Maybe a little better than the 335. But I do not like the ePhone 339 as much as the Gibson 339. I don't know why that is so in fact when I got that 335 I said in that video I said I only bought it because you know Bizarre guitar was. Had a great deal in Reno. And I thought, this is a great way to get into that kind of guitar and try it out and see what I think of it. Now that I've had it, I really like it. I might eventually just actually get rid of it and get an epiphone. I'm just trying to get there with it. This came from Lee says, hey, Phil, were you saying maple necks are stronger than equivalent mahogany? Yeah, I mean, it is. It is. It's not. I don't know if it's a fact. I'm not that versed in the. In the wood because I'm not a. I'm a guitar tech. I'm not like a wood person sort of thing. But in my experience, the maple necks take way more abuse than the mahogany necks. But like I said in that comment, keep in mind that also because the variable that's hard to understand is that a lot of times the mahogany necks have an extreme angle on the headstock. Like a Fender neck with no angle on the headstock in maple is pretty bulletproof. You could play stickball with a Fender neck and put it back on your guitar. I wouldn't trust that so much. With a mahogany neck with an angle headstock, you might snap it if the ball hits it. So, yeah, it could be just the design difference too. But I have to highlight that the design difference is a factor, plus the wood in. My guess is if you had two identical necks made the same way with an angled headstock, one made of maple and one made of mahogany, I would imagine you could break the mahogany one easier. That would be my guess. Like if I stepped on it, I would maybe less force to get to the same place. Hey, Dave says shout out to stickball. Yeah, that feels like a very old timey thing to say now, right? I don't think I could. I don't even know if I told my kids stickball, they'd even know what it means. Paul says, thanks. The Martin guitar I want is for. As a beach guitar we're talking about earlier. That'd be cool. Like I said, those composite ones would be good for the beach. Martin's X series is. They put all the electronics inside the sound hole, which is really cool because then there's less stuff, you know, dirt, sand, moisture to get into the electronics on the outside. I thought that was a smart move. Is my baby Martin more durable than a standard acoustic? Well, no, because remember, Martin is made. So Martin is made the correct way, which is going to have a solid top, solid tops, the Laminated guitars take way more abuse because there's layers of glue in between each sheet of wood, and each sheet of wood is usually going different directions. So it becomes really strong. It's plywood, it's really strong. So especially when a piece of wood is really thin like that, so. And they're less susceptible to the moisture changes and stuff. So laminate guitars are more durable. That's why I told you it's a different experience. Electric guitar players, if you buy a Squire and then you buy a Fender, nothing really changes in how you take care of it. Maybe treat the fretboard, maybe that's about it. That's what you do, right? It's like acoustic guitar has got a little bit more going on. And a laminated top, sides and back. Inexpensive acoustic is not going to crack very easy. It's not going to move very much. It's not going to do a lot of things that have problems where. And it's counterintuitive because you're thinking, well, I bought a more expensive acoustic, so it's more, More durable. Well, it's also, it's more delicate, but it's more delicate because that's how it projects the sound, right. The more solid the guitar, the thinner the, the sheets, the more loud it can be. Is it more louder thing? It's more. It's louder. Shouldn't say more loud. It's louder. So, yeah, so that's, that's why, like the Martin backpackers, which sound great, they crack because again, they're. They. Martin really cares about the sound. It's very. Martin's built. The company's built on their sound, so it's hard for them to compromise. That part of the, of the instrument is my guess. That'd be my guess where a lot of other companies don't have to worry about that. They're really not known, you know, for that. Mike wants to know any new gear coming that you can't tell us about? No, the, the funny part is most of the stuff I don't know about isn't that funny? The channel as the channel, which is good. I'm. I'm actually, I'm very in a. I'm in a good place with this. The channel, for some reason had a record year this year on YouTube, not only with views, but with average views. The average views this year was way higher than previous years, as you guys can see on my videos. Like, I, you know, like every channel, you know, I have a 10,000 view video or something like that. And then I have a 300,000 view video, something like that. And you're like, that's cool. But the average man just really has picked up the channel, has done really well in spite of the fact that I've almost had no early release products from companies. In other words, the companies working with the channel gets smaller and smaller each year. So I know less and less about what's going on. So I, I react to it a lot of times. Like you guys, ah, you know, the, the conclusion is that we've decided that one, we don't care because the channel is doing really well. Because I think the less, the less that the community perceives the channel as a marketing arm for companies, the more maybe that's why it's doing better. I have no idea why if that's a factor. But. But that all being said, the main thing is we think also the deep dives, which I think you guys have really responded to that formula of how the video works across and how what I'm targeting across the video, I think the companies are less excited about that. That formula as a whole. Not all companies, some companies love it and they can't wait to have me do another video. But a lot of companies are like, yeah, we're not interested in that kind of formula. That being said, what I can't tell you, which sucks, is we have something exciting coming to the Geeky Dive Deep Dive videos next year that I'm super excited about. And that's kind of a crappy thing to do to teach you, but I'm super excited about this. Just it's enhancing the video even more. More stuff coming, more tests, more like we're looking at 20, 25, like a new season on the channel. Like, let's add some new stuff. So we're gonna add a couple new tests on the. In the geeky stuff section, which is cool. It's not gonna make the videos any longer. We'll just keep them smooth out and some new, new feature sets. So. Really cool. Thank you for. For letting me torture you with that. I'm basically saying thank you for letting me have the ability to do that stuff. That's really cool. I'm really excited about that. Locks sustainer. I'm gonna say that's right. I'm hoping that's right. Says thanks for the great content this year. Phil, how many more new guitars do you think the market can bear? In my 20 years of playing, buying, selling and trading, I've bought one new instrument. You are unique, right? Thank goodness. The cool part is for, for you, for every one of you. There's three gear fanatics that I can't stop buying guitars. So that's what keeps the industry alight. How many more new guitars do you think? I don't think any new guitars can come to the market. When I say that by, by the way, when I say that I believe and I have and I take. I've been saying this before. The COVID boom for the guitar boom, that happened after Covid. Take that out. Okay? So go back to my old. You. My old podcast and what I was projecting, what I was projecting was no more growth in the industry when it comes to more companies. More. I just say more. There's going to be no more. Okay, all right. So I'm not saying it's going to shrink, but it's probably going to be shrinking. What's going to happen now is exchange. Okay? And what I mean by that is do. If you asked me, Phil, do you think there'll be how many new guitar companies added, in other words, more guitar companies? Do I think they'll be in 2025? I will say the answer is zero. That's my belief. I think during COVID we had this because of this artificial boom where everybody had a little extra cash, a little extra depression, little extra alcohol. Perfect formula for whatever happened, right? Buying all this stuff that take that equation out, that's a fluke. That's the anomaly. Okay? So you take that out now, then you go, and you go, where are we at? Here's where we're at. If a new company kicks in the door and does great, somebody's going. I believe that. So if you said, hey, Phil, how many new guitar companies, like, let's say there was a. Let's say for argument's sake, there was 1,000 guitar companies on the planet Earth. And you say, phil, how many more than 1,000 will be in 2025? I'm saying none. Because every time one pops and does well, somebody's going away. In other words, that. And you can see it. You can see it. We can. I can cite so many examples of amp companies, of pedal companies and guitar companies where instead of more, we have an exchange. Somebody comes in and then somebody kind of fades out and it's taking market. I was once asked by a guitar builder in California, it's not Kiesel who does high end guitars, does extremely expensive guitars. Guitars that don't go, they start at $2,600 and they go up. So I'll give you a reference. And he said, how do I get more guitars into Players, hands. And I said, who is your biggest competitor? And they named two custom brands, two high end brands. And I said, that's your customer. Now you have to get the person who has that guitar to get rid of it and get yours. That's the exchange out. It's an exchange out. Now that's what I believe. It's just how it's going to be for a while. Because here's why. Guitar companies, amp companies, pedal companies don't create new market. Artists create new market. That's how all the gear we have now is here now. If you look, it's, it's crazy. Take, take. If you're like me, you don't have any guitar magazines anymore, but it's okay if you don't. Next time you're in town, wherever you're in town, there's going to be some book exchange store. There's going to be one of those stores that just trades books all day. Right now it's like books and gym equipment or whatever. Go to the magazine section, the used magazine section. Pull up guitar world magazines or whatever. Guitar for the practice musician, all those from the 70s, the 80s and 90s. Go through them. Just leaf through them real quick. Look at the ads, dude, no joke. 90% of the stuff in those ads, that's what people still want now. That's it. Like there's, you go through there and then start trying to think of how many things existed now that didn't exist then. It's a short list of gear, of brands that are here now that weren't there. Then it's a short list. And if there is a brand, for every brand you mention, I'm gonna tell you what brand's now gone. Because there's so many brands that are gone now. So, so that's my whole point is I believe that musicians are the chefs. The chefs make us want to eat the gear. This is getting weird with the analogy. But you get. I just, I feel like I need an analogy. I think you guys understand it, right? You need, you need Slash, you need Jimi Hendrix, you need Clapton, you need Van Halen, you need, you know, Pat Matheny. You need like I, you know, right. You need whoever. You need somebody. That's how you get inspired. Sure, you'll cycle gear, you'll, you'll watch a YouTuber for a minute or you'll, you know, you're flipping and you see a, an ad on Reverb or something and that sparks the. Or some guy says you says this is the worst pedal ever. And then Next thing you know, you're buying it that night online. That will happen, but not at the scale of what a amazing artist can do. That an artist can really move the needle. And until we get whoever that is, which we'll know it. None of us will have to guess. Right. You'll just all of a sudden be like, everyone talks about this artist, and everybody has to have what this artist has. And that's the. That's the thing. So that's my answer to the. To that question, so to speak, if that makes any sense. Yeah. So there's no more room. So now it's cannibalism. They gotta, you know, survival, the fittest. The brands have to. Have to take each other's market share. So that's a thought. Live to play guitar. Love that. Sign on says, live to play guitar. Live to play guitar. Okay. Boy, I'm reading this. This is a good marketing post. Says, hey, Philip, should I tighten claw screws to deck Floyd or add extra springs? So I. Here's. Here's the easy answer. If you're going to deck the Floyd Rose and you're going to use it with the claws, use at least three springs and then use the claw. If you don't have three, if you only have two, I would add a spring then. And then clamp the. The claw down. The. What I don't. What I don't recommend is like putting, you know, not doing the claw and then putting like five springs. Here's why. The springs, if they're not super tight, they actually get noisier. So when you play guitars, they reverberate more when they have a little bit of sag in them. So you want to. And if you put too many, it gets a little. Sometimes a little hard, depending on your string gauge and stuff. So I'm gonna go usually. And also I tie that into string gauge, like. So I always talk to you, like, if you brought that guitar to me and you're like, hey, can you deck my Floyd? I'd be like, o. What are you using? If you said nines, I'd be like, okay, let's put three springs on it. Tighten it down. If you said tens, I don't know, I might do two and two, you know, springs and. And deck it down. And if you do 11s, you know, maybe I go five, whatever. But threes probably would. Three would be good enough for my. Almost all those string gauges as well. But I would do three and then do the claw. Searching for tone in all the wrong places. Searching for tone Is why I don't sing. Says, pedal sucks. Throw it away. I'll throw it away for you. Yeah, see, that's good. It's good. Scent of a wheelchair pillow says, Merry Christmas, big homie. That's cool. You know, it's fun. I won't tell you that that's funny. It's. You make me think. You know, it's funny because you're sign on a scent of a wheelchair pillow and you don't have a real name. I have a friend who calls, calls me homie a lot. So I was like, oh, I wonder if this is him now. It says, you make many lives better. Definitely mine. Wishing you and your family the best. I appreciate that, man. That's really kind of you. Tom says thanks for all you do on the channel and building this great community. I appreciate all the compliments, although they're not very interesting for everybody else. So I appreciate the super chat and the compliment. So I want to say thank you because that's obviously amazing. Being told nice things and then funding my channel, which is always nice. But I, I, yeah, it's a little tough because it's not really interesting for everybody else. Mr. S says, what power supplies and pedal boards do you recommend? Thanks a bunch. Just for Phil, thanks again for mentioning my Hollow Flash last week. Oh, no problem. So if you guys don't remember, Mr. S has his, his Hollow Flash Badlands listed at that store that I want to say is Maze with a Z. Something with a Z. I will tell you what, I'll timestamp it and then I'll put the link to the store again. If not, it's on last week's show. You can check out the link there. Pedal boards. For pedal boards I like personally, the pedal boards I use are the holy board, especially the new one. I will be doing a review of the new one. The new one allows you to use some of the plates from the temple boards, which is the other pedal board I like. So I use holy boards and temple boards. First of all, I like Chris, the owner of Holy Boards. I bought my first holy board. I just found it one day online. I fell in love with it. I just started using it and then I got his next one. It came out and then because I had a YouTube channel and he saw me do a review of the first two, he sent me one. So the third one, you know, he sent to the channel and now he's got a new version that's even better. I really like his stuff. He's made in the usa. He makes it as steel out of steel. He's a owner operator. Like you're funding the right things, right? You're funding his family. You're fun and funding everything. And I love his quality. That's what I use. And then I use temple boards, which are made in Canada that I also like for the same reason. First of all, I don't use Velcro because I've said before I have dogs and cats and to me it's all just a lot. I guess it's ocd. I don't know. I don't want to look at hair and dirt on my boards as I'm trying not to burp. Sorry. So anyways, so those are the two boards I like for sure. And that's what I use. And that's all I've really ever used. I've highlighted some other boards like the ones from Daddario and stuff, and those are really cool, you know, as I like to show you guys all the choices, but sometimes on the podcast I try to lean towards what I. What I personally use is not so much what I've shown you guys on the videos and stuff because I mean, I mean I've shown every kind of brand of guitar, but as I only like personally own a few, you know, brands. So those are the ones that kind of highlight power supplies. It depends on what you're using. I like Chucks. It's C I, O K S C. Maybe there's. But it's pronounced Chucks. Weirdest spelling, C I O K S. I highly love those. And then I like one spots. Although one spots are fun because every time you bring up one spot, half the Internet goes they horrible and half the Internet loves them. If you're going to use one pedal, I use a one spot. I don't know, I've never had a problem with it and. Or use Chucks. Those are what I recommend for sure. But the good news is for you is I have a video coming before the end of the year of Holy Board. And at the very least like all my videos like that I'll be not only showing the product, but then highlighting some, you know, like how you know, all the like I did before with all the other petal board videos. Couple tricks and tips and stuff and then some power supplies and stuff like that metal burrow 6174 says Chuck's Rock. Yeah, I really, really like them. I never knew about them. What happened was when Sweetwater did the Guinness Book of World Record largest pedal board ever, they sent me a section of it and had chucks and I just, I started using it and because you know, I was like, hey, it's here, it's free, I'm going to use it. So I started using it and then I liked it so much I bought one. So I have two, I have one of each of their models and you know, no particular one over the other but I needed, I have two pedal boards. So I, so like I said, I liked it because I liked so much I bought it. Ray says, hey, thoughts on the Bose JB on Bose jbl. Why not make instrument compatible speakers? You'd think they'd be great at turning speakers into a pedal platform. Oh, I understand what you're saying. So are you talking about like using Bose and JBL as like an FRFR or something like that? I don't know. I will tell you this and I know very little about the PA game, right? I, I, I had a store that we only sold guitar stuff. We never sold any real PA stuff at all. Now, now I say that because we did carry Mackie for a very short time and it was a big huge mistake for us because no musicians came to our store for a pa. So we just had this Mackie stuff laying around. Ended up having to blow it out for probably at a loss, you know, or something like that just to get it out of the door. So anyways, my point is I, I would imagine PA people are, are happy with their market and not the guitar market. So in the guitar market it's, I would imagine the PA market's a much bigger market than guitar market. The reason I say that it's very uneducated what I'm saying because I'm not, I'm not versed in that at all because like I said, I didn't own a music store. I owned a guitar shop, right? So we sold guitars, basses, all that stuff. We didn't do like drums and PA and band work and all that stuff. So it's like I'm not a music typical music store owner per se like that. So I'm not versed now, but I will tell you that when you walk the namm, the PA guys had bigger booths and usually the size of the booth dictates the size of the market share they have. I mean that's usually the case. So they had much bigger sections than the guitar company. So I would imagine maybe that's why they're not interested in doing fr. Fr. Fr. A lot of, a lot of people like Mackie and stuff have done like guitar centric small, mini PA stuff, but I think the market's just too small. The guitar market is super, super small. It's most. The guitar market is hanging out right now. Just kidding. But it's a small market. It's not the. It's not the. The biggest. Oh, by the way, Mr. S says it's Moe's Guitars. M O Z E Moe's guitars. Thank you, Mr. S. So you guys can check out Moe's Guitars website. I will tag it as well. Okay. Okay. Where am I missing stuff? Let me grab. Okay. This is from Amanda. Amanda sent me. Checking your reality for you. That's their sign on. That's a lot of words. I didn't even know you could put five words as a sign on. That's a long sign on. Checking your reality for you. He says thoughts on tone rider pickups. Jensen P10Q in small combos. There's two questions. Let's go with the tone rider. I don't know much about the tone rider pickups, so I don't have any real thoughts on them. You know, we're. It's sad. I have this guitar that can demo pickups. I have a platform where I can demo pickups. And to date, I've had maybe a whopping four companies ever much less reach out, respond to emails about doing reviews of guitar pickups. DiMargio. Because Larry DiMargio is my friend, in fact. So, you know, I did a giveaway with his pickups recently at Sweetwater. That was because he asked Sweetwater to sponsor the video. And so they sponsored the video so we could give away the pickups. So that's because he's my buddy. That's it. Like, think about this. He. He likes the channel because we're, you know, we're friends. But I mean, he's mostly just sending me pickups because he's like. He almost like, hey, Phil's channel needs some help. Dylan talks tones and some pickups. Thanks to Dylan talks tone for doing that. And Fishman for a little while was sending pickups. They probably still are. So that's a good. That's good, too. And then, I mean, there's been a few in the past, but I mean, recent years, that's it. I said four. I couldn't even name four. So. So we'll see in 2025 if we. If we do that. Keep in mind, like I always say, I don't have to be sent product to do videos. I just need to know the video is wanted. Obviously, if you guys want videos, if you're interested in tone rider pickups, Let me know. Message me. You know, the one thing you can do is you can email me and say, this is what I'd like to see. I get those emails all day. I don't respond to them. But people don't understand. It's like, I. If you're nice enough to send me an email saying, hey, Phil, do the Squire. Classic vibe. Hey, Phil, could you do this tone rider pickup? Whether you ask me or not, one, that could be enough to make it happen. But trust me, if two or three or four people ask, I go, hmm, what am I missing here? What. What can we talk about? What can I make a video about? I. I've said it before, I'm proud to say this. The huge majority of the income I make on YouTube is from YouTube. It's from the videos. So that's you. You're literally watching the videos. You're paying the bills. You're the boss. If that's in an order, it goes like this. It's the YouTube. It's the YouTube channels, which is you guys. Then it's the Patreon slash channel members. Then it's probably affiliate links. Then it's sponsored content from companies. That's the four revenue streams of the channel. And that's actually not true. Here's why. Because technically it's really you guys watching the videos, then it's the patrons and members, then it's my selling my pickups and merch. So again, you guys, again, then affiliate links, which is you guys again, right? And then companies. So that's how my loyalty lies out. It's just a not even ethical aspect, just on the What's. What's good for me. So please suggest things, because the majority of content is. That's how it's. That's how I'm deciding to do it. But the one thing you guys can't do is make it easy for me. And that's what companies can do. And that's how they get my attention. Because obviously you can imagine if a company was to email me right now and say, hey, we'd really like to have you do a video of this guitar. We'll send you the guitar and we'll pay for the video. Well, that's. How do I say no to that? That's an easy video to make and I can use that funding to make other videos that you guys like. And see, that's how it works. So luckily for us, I guess, as a community, that doesn't happen very often on the channel. So we'll stick with this, but let's get into Marcus's. Marcus Graff says. Hey, Phil, we know that you think vintage is a scam. As you mentioned this in a previous show. What are your thoughts on relic guitars? Relic guitars to me are. Is a finish. It's a type of finish. You know, it's funny is I realized that I don't own a relic. A relic guitar. But it's not a conscious decision. I don't value the relic for the price. So, so understand, get perfect example, like the guitar's behind me. Let's, let's take a look. Okay. Because I need to look. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. If you just don't mind me, guys, take a second here. Okay, Ready? So. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no. Yes, yes. Okay, cool. I just want to make sure before I tell a story that I'm actually accurate on the guitars wall behind me. Okay. So you guys know there's a Gretsch guitar in black because this audio podcast too. There's a Godin in a matte. Like, it's like a darker blue gray. There's an ES335 Gibson. There's a Fender Jazz Master. There's a Charvel custom painted by my buddy Brian at painthoffer. There's an ES339. There's a Gibson Les Paul Classic. There's a Framis television. There's a Kiesel Delos. There's an Ibanez RG7. Sorry, RG565. And then there's a PRS Hollow body of these guitars. That Framis was sent to me by the company and that Delos was sent to me by Kiesel. These, all these guitars I bought. Now, I reason I tell you that is to tell you, look at what I bought. I buy like, obviously. I, I just, I like finishes that look fancy or I like cool colors. I value this. I, I, the difficulty of making them look nice. So I, that's kind of what I, I go after. So the relic. I like relic guitars. I want a relic guitar. I just don't want to pay the charge for a relic guitar. That's, that's the sad part of it. It's like if a relic guitar, like if you told me, I don't, I, it's, I don't think it should be less money. But if you told me that a relic Strat was the same price as a non relic Strat, I'd probably be a buyer. I'd be like, yeah, let's get a relics guitar in here. It's kind of cool looking. It looks all worked in and stuff. But when relic guitars are way more, I'm like, way more. Nah, I'd rather have fancy, you know, something fancy. So I think they're a finish. I think liking a relic guitar is no different than liking a fluorescent pink guitar or a, you know, a sunburst guitar or whatever guitar, you know, tickles your fancy. It's just an aesthetic. I don't believe in the whole, like, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's fake and it's posers. I'm like, all this stuff is kind of posers. For the most part, we're all posers until you made it. And I don't know any of you made it. I haven't made it. So we'll see who's. Who's the posers. I think it's definitely all of us, I think. Or most of us, at least me. But back to your comment. But keep in mind, I guess I, maybe I want to read the question. The way it kind of vibes, which maybe your question deep down is, you know, when I talked about vintage as a scam and why I kind of did that, remember I went for the extreme on that because I wanted to make my point that like with my Ibanez, my Ibanez universe, they could make that guitar. They choose not to. Or when they do, they make it super limited and super expensive and it keeps driving those used high prices. That makes the vintage price crazy. I feel the same way with like, you know, Gibson and Fender, they, they, they relish in the fact that they can artificially keep the prices high. And this is the thing that sucks for me mentally. Fender wants us to pine after. And I'm sorry I'm picking on Fender, but it's just an easy analogy. And they're the big guy, so it's not, you know, okay, they want us to pine after a 60s strat, a real one, because then that get they. That gives them the ability to slap a ridiculous price on a reissue one. I mean, anybody that looks at this stuff can see it. It's easy to figure out, look, there's nothing wrong. I told you. I'm the biggest dumbass anyways. I buy stupid stuff because I want it just like everybody else. And it's an emotional response, not a logical one. But even with an emotional response, my brain kicks in going, you sucker. Because of course you're like, let me get this straight. So offender makes a guitar really nice. Like think about this. They make the Ultra series and they're like, it's the greatest guitar we've ever made. It's got quarters on maple, it's got laser pointers shooting out of it, noiseless pickups, new finishes, new neck carves. That guitar is still not as much as a vintage reissue. We're not talking custom shop, we're talking about vintage reissue. Let me get this straight. So it costs more to make a guitar like they did before than making it even more modern and more. Right. No, they, they put a premium. In fact, the proof in this, in my, in my logic and watching it is if you Squire, go to Squier, go to the Squier website, go to Sweetwater Guitar center, go to Squires and look at Squires and you'll see that the more expensive a Squier gets, the more accurate it gets to being vintage. We're not even talking about Fender now. We're not even talking about Gibson. You do this with ephPhone 2. The more it's like the original spec wise specifications, the more they charge for it. If you follow that logic, then go into Fender and then like Epiphone and Gibson, you'll see it keeps getting more and more expensive. The more they're like, oh, this finish, it's. It's nitro. It's more like the original. The more they get like the original, the more they charge. Why? Because somebody will pay it. Because the originals are worth so much money. So I always point this out. It's not that I'm like, I'm not saying vintage guitars aren't good. I'm saying that they all have learned to cash in on that value. And that's apparent across the industry. And I'm not even calling them out for it. I'm just explaining it because even knowing that I still buy the stuff because I told you I'm loyal to my addiction, which, My addiction is gear. You know, I've said this before. I own a Gibson Les Paul because of Slash. I own an Amplified Nation Wonderland amp because of John Mayer. I'm a poser. I'm sorry. You know, I'm not into sports. I would assume that if I was into sports, you would have to watch me. I'd have my face painted and I'd wear some jersey of some person that throws a ball somewhere and I'd be all into it. That's what I think of myself as this. I'm. That I'm just wearing the jersey and I'm painting my face. But it's for guitars. That's how I look at that. Okay, Sean, what's up? Sean Brooks. This came from a man who says, hey, Phil Friedman is the modern Marshall. Who would you say is the modern, better Fender? He says, tonking interesting. Wow. You know what's funny about that is I think the problem is you don't need a new Fender, a new version of Fender, because Fender, think about the, how the, the history of it goes. You have Fender first. They make amps. They're not loud enough, right? So you got Marshall comes out, he's like, hey, I can make an amp. It's louder, it's bigger, it's ferocious, it's distorted and it. And it's the new sound, right? You can imagine how happy Fender was when Marshall kicked into the market. I'm sure for a long time it was like Fender was just playing catch up. Everyone was playing catch up to Marshall. So here's my point with this. Then the market swung back the other way. It took a long time, four decades at least. Now we're back to, okay, now Everybody wants a 20 watt amp again. They don't want a hundred watt amplifier. So I think Fender then fell back into its own. In other words, everybody's. Think about this. If I go on YouTube, if I was going to take a temperature of the guitar community on YouTube, and I don't mean the YouTubers, I'm talking about, like, I'm not like you guys, I'm on YouTube and watching some guy. He's got 300, 300 views and eight subscribers. He's got a little quick little video. I'm watching it too, all the time. Lots of cool stuff out there, man. The Fender Princeton, I think would be the most. If we're talking about, you know, like, literally, I see the Princeton everywhere, actually almost as much, if not more as than the blues junior. And that tells you something. The Princeton is 12 watts. Blues junior is 15 watts. These are very low wattage amps. Very, very popular right now. And so I think that's kind of why Friedman is killing. Because the thing you can't get with Marshall is the volume. The volume to sound huge and full at a lower setting, where the Friedmans really can kick at a lower setting. And of course, Friedman's doing a lot of the 20 watt heads. And they did, he did, did it a little better than what Marshall put out for getting the volume controllable. Because like I said, I can't get any of the 20 watt marshalls to sound good without using some kind of attenuation but that still didn't answer your question. I just want to give you why I think we don't need so much as a new modern take on the Fenders. But if I was going to say who's the new Fender? Fender? Trying to think if I even own anybody like that. Yeah, that's tough. I mean you could say Tone King, but it's, it's tough. And keep in mind when we say Freeman's the new, you know, kind of the new modern Marshall, I mean his numbers versus Marshall's numbers, they're not in the same league. Just like Tone King wouldn't be in the same league as Fender. But I'd give you two. Maybe Tone King. Trying to think who else is out there? I can't think of it. I can't think of anyone. That's because think about this. I have a bunch of Fenders and I play them every day. And I don't. I. There's nobody like pulling me like you would think like maybe Dr. Z or tone King or Morgan. There's so many great amps but nothing's really pulling me away from Fender. So that's an interesting question in that why is that not happening? Because I was definitely pulled away from Marshall. I did not. Look, in a perfect world I'd play Marshall and I play Fender because I love them 2amps. But I have a Marshall. But I play mostly my Freedman. So it's been, I've been pulled away from it because like I said, I would gladly very happy to own a Marshall that sounds like a Freedman. Somebody says Benson Kochamps. Yeah, line six Mesa. I mean there's tons mean nothing really is pulled me away though. I like said I like all those amps. It's not about liking the amps. It's about like I said. I would think that it would have to be a pool who's pulled me away from a brand. So yeah, it's a great question. I don't know, maybe I'll have an answer in the future that's better than that. All right, let's button up this show we have. Mr. S says hey, if I'm starting out on bass, what to buy, I want to add some bass lines to my home recordings. And it's fun. Use Fender P, Bass, pb. It's up to you. I'm a real big proponent for short scale and medium scale basses for guitar players. The reason I say that is because, you know, the stretch on a 34 inch scale bass is a little much for some Some guitar players, they don't like it. Maybe it's not a big deal. I could tell you this though. A P bass is always a fantastic idea. You can do anything with a P bass. You can record any with it. It's probably the most recorded bass in history, probably even to this day. So there's nothing wrong with going with the P bass. But I'd also check out shorter scale or mid scale basses. I always love it when people are like short scale basses don't sound right. I'm like, well don't tell Paul McCartney. Ray says, hey, Bose portable speakers with jacks to be like a spark mini. Oh, okay. I think he's clarifying. I don't really have an answer to that. But I'll come back to it if I can think of something was kind of. Still, I'm sticking with my first original answer. Dr. Thunder. That's a great name man. And why do they call you Dr. Thunder? Because I bring the thunder. Okay. It says I have an eight string multi scale guitar with the trim, it's 28. So he's talking about scaling 28 inches by 26 and a half. I have nines on it. How many springs? Oh, I have no idea. I mean I have no idea. All of them. You know it's funny is I had to set up a two setups on smade strings and they got more popular in the mid 2000s, like so around 2012, 13, 14. Around those years. So let's say 12, 11 to 14. I would see more and more come in the shop and I'd have to set them up and they're, they're brutal because the frets are so wide. You know Mo, you're just always leveling the frets and they never seem to be leveled right because there's just so much fret, so much real estate for those frets and then I don't think I've done one. Well, I can tell you the last eight string I probably touched was uh. Lawrence Petros had a. Was that an H set? That was a seven. Nope, that was a seven strandberg. So I, I think the last eight string I talked touched was probably some agile and it was probably 10 years ago. Coming up on eight. 10 years ago. So that's a little out of my thing. But good news is we're doing an eight string. We're going to do some eight strings this in 20, 25. See, I can't tell you the secrets or some of the cool new stuff. The secret stuff that's coming on the channel for the deep dives. But we're going to be expanding the types of guitars we do in a way that I think you guys are going to be super excited about, because I, I, I'm excited about it, and it's a, it's a cool idea. And like I said, hey, it's only a couple weeks. You'll always know in a couple weeks. But the answer is. I don't know the answer. And, but we do have more eight strings coming on the channel, so that helps at all. All right, let's do one more, and then we'll call it. Okay, let's. Oh, Tessie Switch. Tessie Switch asked, does PB still own composite acoustics? I believe they do. I believe they did not say sell it. Composite acoustics is what led me to Emerald. Emerald acoustics. So. Well, this is fun. Since we're ending the show, I'll tell you guys a little fun secret. So I, I had a. My first composite acoustic guitar was not composite acoustic, the brand. It was a rain song. And so I bought a rain song, and I absolutely loved it. But I thought the neck was a little thin and the edge was a little sharp, and it just kind of didn't feel right. I've talked about it. Like, I feel like it was bruising my, my hand right here. Just the heaviness of the neck. It was just a little intense. I've had composite basses, too. The moduluses would sometimes do that to me where the Zon basses didn't, because they were a little softer, the way they were rounded and. But anyways, I had a couple rain songs, and I really liked them. I really like the idea of just, like, picking up the acoustic and strumming it and, like, kind of, like I said, with a electric guitar, just pick it up. It's always in tune. It's not reacting to the environment. And when you live in a very dry environment, whether it's very hot or cold, it doesn't matter. There's very cold, dry environments. Dry environments are just, you know, they're not. No moss, no good for wood. So I had this rain song. Didn't love it. And then I. I played a composite acoustic at the NAMM show when at their booth, and I fell in love. And then they got acquired by Peavey. And I thought this was gonna be great, because at the time, I was a PV dealer. I was like, this is good. And it took a while. There's a weird transition. It didn't happen. And then I just never got my Hands on one through Peavey. And then it's like they went away. So I haven't even looked. Has anyone looked? So this is Composite Acoustic. So they're still owned by Peavey. So this feels like a placeholder. So this is exactly what Parker did towards the end. They just had this website and everybody's like, no, they still have a website. I'm like, I don't think it exists. So if anyone knows anything different or knows any inside information, I don't really, you know, don't tell me crap. I already know they don't have anything on their website and PV owns them that I know, okay? Because I just saw it and I just verified that. So those two things are accurate. My guess is it's. It's a shelved brand. So PV owns it and they're not manufacturing it, probably because again, they couldn't move enough units. It's not their focus. Who knows what the story is behind that? But yeah. So back to. So I said, in with Emerald acoustics. So when Emerald came out with Acoustics guitars, I was super, super stoked because it's like, well, finally I'm like. I felt like. So I don't know if you know this, but Rain Song closed. Rain Song. When the owner retired, I think he retired. I don't think he passed away. I think he retired. When he retired, there was no successorship and no. And I don't think he could sell the company. So he stopped too. Again, I was telling a friend this a couple weeks ago. I said, he was asking me, he's like, we was talking about composite style guitars. And he said, do you really think there's a future in composite. Composite style guitars? And I said, I have a real big affection for them. But I gotta tell. I said, I gotta tell you bad news. By the way, he's in the industry and he's a guitar builder. I should say that too. I said, here's some bad news. Every composite company goes out of business eventually. It's like, I. It's just how it goes. Now, keep in mind, I'm not trying to doom Aristides or Emerald. Maybe they're the. Fine. They're the ones, right? They're the ones that make it. But in my experience in this industry, and if you've been in this industry for any time as either a guitar enthusiast or in the industry working it, you know what I'm talking about. The composite material instruments, just. Eventually the company dies. It just goes away. It's just for some reason, they can't get the guitar public to break away from the traditional materials, which is fine. I'm not saying they have to. I'm just explaining why. I have an affection for when somebody tries something different, because I feel like. So it's interesting. At the very least, it's interesting to talk. To talk about and look at and talk, you know, and learn about. So. So when Emerald came out, I was very excited about them. That's why I got an Emerald acoustic, because it kind of finally fit that, you know, that desire. And I. I gotta tell you, out of the three rainsong composite and emerald, I 100% like my emerald the best. And I really like composite acoustics, and I like the Rain Songs. So, you know, I mean, like I said, but emerald. And so if you're like, me, and you want a composite acoustic guitar, you know, and you're looking at those kind of expensive guitars, Emerald, I can. I still cannot recommend it enough as I really, really enjoy it. So, you know, mine's still sitting. It's right there in the corner. You can't see it. I could turn this camera a little bit. You can kind of see it maybe. There you go. There it is. See? So, you know, it's right there. So turn this stuff and break things. Okay. So there you go. Yeah. David says even Ovations had their ups and downs. Absolutely. If you want. If you want next week, we could do. Anytime you guys want to do stuff, I'll talk about this. We could go into, like, cool little sections of telling the stories about what happened with Ovation and why Ovation ended up stripped. They were stripped to death. They were destroyed by a. In fact, this is a teaser. I've never done a teaser. Like, this is like a. Like a real TV show where I'm like, next week on know your gear podcast, right? I'll be like, we'll find the answer to how Fender actually destroyed Ovation. That's actually how actually true. So that's a. That's a teaser, but it's a true teaser. That's who destroyed Ovation. And I can tell you guys the story of how it happened. It's actually a really crazy. Crazy, but interesting story that involves Guild, Tacoma, Hamer, Fender, technically, in a weird way. Dearmond. Swr. I mean, it's crazy how it happened, but that's what happened. So that's really what killed the Ovation that people knew. And the iteration of Ovation today, I think, is really cool, but it's a different version of what most of you who know Ovation grew up with. And it was. They became a casualty of a situation that will tease if you guys want that, if. And by the way, I'm not going to do it next week unless you guys want to remind me. So somebody remind me next week if you want to do it. That's your teaser. As always, I want to thank you guys so much for hanging out with me. Congratulations to the winners. Thank you guys so much for the. The moderators for moderating the channel and doing all the cool stuff. As always, guys, have a great weekend. Get some vitamin D, play some guitar and know your gear.