Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:11]
Phil
The Know youw Gear Podcast. The Know youw Gear podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Okay. All right. So the interface just disconnected last minute right at the, like, literally the second the show started. So nice timing. Okay. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Episode 4, 418. I hope everybody had a fantastic week as I try to get anywhere close to the correct screen to see you guys. And we have a lot of subjects today, a lot of topics. I thought it was gonna be fun. And a special, very special guitar of the Week. In fact, let me. Let me double check, verify that. Yep. And we do. And what else? We got some stuff, maybe some updates or some stuff going on. And let's. Before we get started, let's do some quick announcements. The first announcement that's most important is I want to thank the moderators for helping each week. They have the blue names with the blue wrench. I want to thank the channel members and the patron for supporting the podcast for 418 episodes. And if you're interested in supporting the channel that way too, you can join us on patreon. It's for $5 a month. You get bonus podcasts, which is tomorrow, by the way, live podcast tomorrow on the Patreon. And you also get all of the regular podcasts with no ads in them. That's nice. And of course, you get no ads if you're watching it live right now, and no ads if you're listening to it on Spotify, iTunes, all that stuff too. Just let you know. And then for $10 a month, you get that what I just said. Plus, I do a clinic every week. This week on Sunday is we're doing a guitar kit build, but we do a different clinic each week about some subject or topic. And. And there you go. And then there's a top tier. If you crazy enough to want to hang out with me and drink coffee and. And we're doing that this Sunday. We did it. I think we did it last Sunday too. I can't remember. Anyways, but this Sunday we're. We're going to be buying some guitars for some new deep dives. So that's if you're interested, check it out. If not, I'm just happy you showed up. And supporting the channel with a Like or subscribe or just watching the video, which is probably the most important thing. Okay, so what do we got going into this? Let's go to the early riser questions. The things that I saw first that grabbed my question. This one was from Nicholas, who says, hey, Phil, I'm getting a mad cat today. The mad cat is a Telecaster, obviously based off of Princeton's. Princeton Prince's not Princeton. Well, maybe the Princeton's named after Prince. No, I'm just kidding. The Prince Prince the artist guitar. He says 105 degrees now letting shipping box acclimate. What's your procedure for letting deliveries acclimate? Fellow Former Army M88. Oh, okay. Recovery vehicle. The section member here. Thank you. That's funny. So I have. I've worked a lot with the M88. I was a 63 hotel. So, yep, M88 was something we would have to be around with us with our big hemets and stuff. And I did secondary, I did recovery, so I did recovery school. So a lot of M88s trying to. And digging out M1s out of the mud. I look back, it's like a different. It was like a different planet, different time. Anyways, okay, so let me get to your question. Your question. What? So acclimate my procedure. So first of all, if I tell you what I do, this is what I do. You have to take it upon yourself to do your own research. This is what I like to do. Even though it goes against what the companies tend to do. First of all, there's one thing that I will probably follow is that if I'm having a nitrocellulose lacquer guitar sent to me, like a Gibson or like an Eric Johnson Strat, and it says don't open for 24 hours, I tend to just follow the rule. Why? I don't know. We did it at the store when the product came in. It's kind of like, you know, you just don't want to. You don't want to have a problem and then them ask you did you do it? And then you're gonna have to lie. And you don't want to lie. So you're just gonna be like, yeah, waited 24 hours, like the box said. So I tend to do that. Polyurethane finishes guitars, you know, like of that nature. I don't wait the 24 hours. I usually wait. It depends if the guitar is in a case, not a gig bag, a case or not. If a guitar is in a case, I generally will put the box in the house. Doesn't matter if it's winter or summer, doesn't matter what it was. And I wait until the box is the room temperature. If the box is the room temperature, then I'll open the box, you know, however long that takes, pull the case out. When the case is room temperature to the feel of touch. Or you can use one of those little laser thermometers if you want. I'll. Then I'll open the guitar. Okay. Now keep in mind the case is going to hold in heat, so a little bit longer. So you, you know, you want to at least wait to that long. If it doesn't come in a case like it's in a gig bag, where it's just not in a case at all and it's in the box, same rule applies. Like I would do for the case. I just wait the extra time. I just wait until the box is room temp and then whatever I think time it takes for the inside of the box because you just want it to, to kind of acclimate steady is what it is. The main reason they do this is it's really for nitro lacquer. That's the biggest problem. Yeah, of course the necks can move, but I adjust my own neck, so I don't care. So if the neck moves, I'll just adjust it back. But the nitro finishes are very problematic. For instance, if you were in a house that was like where we're at right now, let's say today is about. But today was probably 104 or something like that. So 100, 405. And obviously that's not the big problem. The temperature outside is not the problem. The temperature is inside the truck that it came in. The truck can be 130 degrees, easy. And then you bring it in a house and say the house is 70 degrees. That's a pretty huge swing. I mean, that's 60 degrees difference in temperature. And when you open that box, if it's lacquer, it could cause cracking or checking issues because of the fact that the extreme temperature change. It happens the other way too. If, let's say the house was 70 degrees and in the winter, but outside it was like 30 degrees. By the way, for all the people outside the U.S. this is all Fahrenheit. So if that helps for those that, that, that want Celsius, just remember this. If it helps. This is my way of remembering Fahrenheit and Celsius. And a little tip for you guys, Fahrenheit's easy. It's easiest temperature to remember on the planet Earth. Even though most of the planet uses Celsius. It's just, it's a percentage of heat. So what I mean by that is if it's 50 degrees outside, it's 50% hot. Okay? So that tells you it's like it's cold, but it's not super hot because it's 50% hot. If it's 80 degrees, it's 80% hot. If it's 100 degrees, it's 100% hot. If it's 110 degrees outside, it's 110% hot. That's how you think of it. That's how you remember it, if you're used to Celsius. Celsius, I believe. Right. Is 33 degrees is the human body temperature. Let's see what body temp. I'm pretty sure I'm right. 30 what temp body? Celsius. Pretty sure it's 33 degrees is, oh, 37 degrees. Okay, so I was pretty close. That's how I kind of remember it. So, you know, so when I need Celsius, if Somebody says it's 40 degrees Celsius to us that use Fahrenheit, we're like, 40 degrees is 40% hot. That's pretty cold. Right? It's 40 degrees. But 37 degrees Celsius, you don't have a reference. That how I remember it. So that's how I remember Fahrenheit is just think of the temperature as percent hot Celsius. I just remember that the human body is, Well, I thought 33, but 37 degrees, which we call 98%. So 98% hot Fahrenheit. Right. So if somebody says 40, I go, oh, it's 3 degrees hotter than I am. So if somebody says 30 degrees Celsius, sometimes people who use Fahrenheit, well, they think that's freezing because 30 degrees Fahrenheit's cold, obviously because it's 30% hot. So you would think. I would think, oh, well, seven degrees colder than I am is not that freezing yet. Right. So that's how I remember it. There's other ways to do it, but I tend to. I needed a quick trick in school to remember Celsius and Fahrenheit all the time. And that's just what worked for me. So if it works for you, great. If you have another way that's better, you do it. I always find everybody, no offense to anyone, every time somebody tries to tell me an easier way, it seems more complicated. I'm like, just percentage of hot is Fahrenheit and Celsius, 37 is your human body temperature. And that's where you kind of base your from hotter to colder from that. There you go. And you could do the same thing, I guess, with Fahrenheit and say the human temperature is 98 degrees and just kind of, you know, kind of thing. I don't know. All right, so let's just. There you go. I don't know. Okay, so back to guitars. So that's what we're worried about is extreme. So it's a good idea to always let your guitar acclimate before you open it. And, and you don't have to think it takes a long time. It just, you know, it just doesn't. It doesn't take a long time. I would say it takes an hour, right. To acclimate for the most part, maybe a couple hours. But I would definitely up the severity of that if you're using nitro. Cause you can cost, you can cost yourself a lot of money and trouble with that. Let's go back to another early question. Well, let's see. This was a question that came up on the Patreon thing and I wanted to pin it. And this will help. So there was some discussion on the last guitar clinic on Patreon about the fact of the Martin and Taylor guitars not giving truss rods with their guitars. This is something I was merit aware of because I've recently received some Martin and Taylor guitars and none of them have truss rods with the guitars. I did some research. This is my preliminary research, and I feel pretty confident with it. I've been told by people, you know, you know, they, the they that say things, the people, people saying that, you know, obviously Martin and Taylor are not including truss rods anymore, but they're saying that they, meaning people, guitar players are saying that they don't want you have truss rods because if you use them, you're voiding your warranty. I didn't think that made a lot of sense because I don't know how they would do that from. I mean, not from as much from a legal standpoint, but from a. As someone who's been a warranty center tech like, you know, and, and seeing what people do to new products that are warranted or not warrantied because of the damage they've done versus the damage that was done by the manufacturer. It's. Look, it's. I'm not, I'm not an investigative csi, you know, person, you know, guitar tech's not going to be able to look at something and go, did you turn this truss rod? Right. It's not like some amps and pedals where they put some paint or something on a screw, and when that cracks, they know that you did something you, you know, or peel. You peel a sticker off truss rod. I mean, yeah, if you stick the wrong allen wrench or hex in a truss rod and stripped it a little bit, I'd be like, yeah, I would imagine an amateur did this with the wrong tool or using the incorrect amount of pressure to do it, but I wouldn't be able to. How to prove other than that that a truss rod had been adjusted. So doing some research, what I found I thought I would share with you is that with Taylor Guitars, at least I was on their website, and they absolutely give you instructions on how to adjust your truss rod detail. It's pretty good instructions, including a video. I have to give them props. And nowhere does it say that if you attempt to do this on your own that it voids your warranty. And I did not, for the disclosure of it, did not look at Martin's website. But I kind of would feel that Martin would be in the same vein. So I thought I'd share that with you. A lot of it. It came up as a question, and it came up as a question on a previous podcast, but of course on the patron thing. And. And so, you know, we'll. We'll. If there's more to. If there's more to the story, I'll give you guys more later. Like, if. As I find more. But something. Nothing new there. Let's see. Dexter says, hey, do all Martins could have the same thin neck profile? No, not to my. Not to my experience. I really don't think a Martin's having thin necks in the hole as a whole. But no, I have not noticed that they're. All of their necks are consistent to where they're all the same. I always think of Taylor's having a thinner neck or smaller neck than a Martin on average. But no, I don't think of it that way. But I haven't played all of them. Maybe I need to. Maybe I need to play every single Martin ever. And then I'll. Okay, so let's go. Let's go to another question. We're gonna go to the antique rocker. He says, hey, Carol K. Is refusing to be inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. Doesn't she hold the record for recording the most top 40 rock hits? I don't know if she holds the record. It's possible. I mean, she was in. She was in the Wrecking crew. She was in everything. So, I mean, Carol K was. Was. Is amazing. You know, I love about Carol K the most. There's a lot of weird things. But as a, as a gear enthusiast, what could you love more? Not more than the fact that a very talented musician like Carol K, who's been on hit after hit after hit, amazing chops, amazing playing. You know, she's not the virtuoso she know, you know, she's not Victor Wooten. She's not slapping, tapping and throwing it around her neck and catching it. She's in the pocket doing the, doing the, you know, she's the Leland Sklar. She's doing the thing, the thing that you want to be done in the studio. And she plays an Ibanez sound gear bass. And as far as I can remember, I mean, Obviously in the 60s, she was probably playing. Oh, she was probably playing Offender or something like that. Because I seen, when I see the old documentaries and old pictures, she had defenders. But, man, she's had an Ibanez bass forever. And by the way, no custom shop, not to mine, what I observed. No custom shop special because, you know, if you're a special artist like Carol K, you can get yourself really nice American made custom shop Ibanez from, you know, Ibanez specifically, or a signature, you know, prestige, you know, made in Japan. That's not what I see her have. She always has like the run of the mill, off the rack looking Ibanez and. Right. I mean, that's, that's. Doesn't that get. You just get your juices going? Doesn't it make you just go, yes, you know, right. Yes. There's, you know, there's. There is nothing more exciting to see talented people with access and privilege to get anything they want. And they're like. It's like when you see a somebody who's like, Worth $20 million and they're like, I'm driving a Corolla. You're like, because it's a good car. You're like, yeah, it's so exciting. That's. I just find that so exciting because you're like, it's good. It makes sense. You know, you sometimes wonder, I don't know about you guys, you sometimes wonder if I've suddenly was infused with, you know, gazillions of dollars, would I all of a sudden, you know, abandon the things that work because they're pedestrian and average, you know, and have to be something, you know, premium and exciting. So Ian's Guitar Shack says she needs a signature bass. Yeah, I mean, you could. Sure, of course. I mean, I don't think she cares. That's the takeaway. There's some artists that just don't you know that's not where her focus is? I don't know. So the answer to your question, I don't know why she's. I just heard it from you that she's not. She doesn't want to be inducted into Rock and Hole hall of Fame. Not sure what the issue is. I'm sure we could do some research and find out, but I don't want to do it on a live show and throw out something that's incorrect just because it's the first thing we googled on something like this. But all we have to say, antique rocker is Carol K. Is amazing and she deserves to be in the Rock and Roll hall of fame. She deserves to be in as many music hall of fames as possible. And, you know, and thank you for playing an amazing bass lines, but also for playing a bass that obviously anybody can get and I still think is one of the best bass out there. I was trying to buy a sound gear last week and the one I wanted, this dealer just. I think they want too much for it. And I threw out what I thought was the reasonable price and they came down a little. But I was like, I don't know. My price is the right price. It's definitely like when I say my price is the right price, my price is the. I really want it. So I'm gonna willing to pay like 100, $200 more than it's worth. But I'm not paying the 4 and $500 you think it's worth. It's more than what I think it's really worth. Let's. All right. This is from Litvae says, hey, greetings from Albania. My biggest reservation with headless is the inevitable thin necks. Yeah, a lot of them do have thin necks. Not all though. I like baseball bats. Thanks for the keisel kit. Heads up. They let me order an ash humbucker humbucker with a thicker roast neck, so that's nice. I find that the keezel headless necks in the regular to thicker neck are where I want to be. I do have a keisel thinner neck and well, first off, a lot of the Keezels that are sent to me are not spec by me. So a lot of times what happens is I'm a victim of Jeff's craziness. A lot of the Kiesels that have been sent to me have been sent to me like, this is how it goes down. I get a text and it's usually Jeff or Brandon from Kiesel and they're like, hey, we have a guitar coming out. We sent you one. I'm like, okay. So I didn't spec it myself. And. And even though sometimes some have been the thin neck, some have been regular necks, what I found is I prefer the medium to thicker necks on the keysles for sure, but. But I usually don't know. I can't tell. So what happened with one guitar is there wasn't a sheet in it because it was just. I think they sent it to me and the sheet didn't get in there. And I played the guitar and I liked it. And then later I found out was the thinner neck and I was like, oh, well, I didn't even notice. And then I have one that has a thinner neck that I do notice. And I have one I think has a thicker neck. I can't tell because there's a small variance in between them. But I agree, I think more headless. I think the headless craze has. It starts from youth. The younger generation is definitely grabbed the headless phase because of the fact that the older generation, like I made jokes in one of my videos, is traumatized by the headless guitars because they popped in the 80s and they were a little silly. And yeah, Eddie Van Halen had a headless, you know, Steinberger and some really cool players had some Steinbergers. Of course, Holdsworth, you know, they were talking about, you know, GMTs, talking about Kiesel's Holdworth. Headless has a nice girthy neck. Yeah, I believe that one's on the thicker side too. And, and so some, some great players obviously had some headless guitars, but then they kind of died off and they went away. And then when they came back, it's kind of like, oh, they're back. But I really like them. And there's some things I don't like about them, but I think that there, there's a lot of companies that are listening right now and trying to expand into some. Some other tastes. Does it make sense? Like, some players who are like, hey, I'm into headless guitars, but maybe I don't need it to look like a puzzle piece and have a crazy thin neck. Right. Kind of like, thing. So I don't know. But congratulations on the Kit Ledvay. You know, it's funny is I don't know if they're sold out. I saw, I was listening to their Wednesday Live thing and he said they were pretty much sold out that day. I don't know. I haven't looked on their website. If there's still some left. All right. Feels F, E E L S feels Trip says. Hey Phil, my ESP clips set next has a back bow. Okay. But the truss rod is loose as it can go. Do I have to just use heavier strings or is there a fix? There is a total easy fix. What you do is you get yourself either a 12 inch or 10 inch miter saw. Just kidding. Okay. No. So that ESP Eclipse, as far as I know, there is no ESP or even if you're talking ltd, I don't know if you're talking about espr ltd, sometimes referred to as the same but slightly different in specs, should both come with a dual action truss rod. How that should work is as you're loosening the truss rod, at some point it'll become totally loose. Okay. And then you'll just keep going. Okay. You can be able to check this on the specs online if you want. But you just keep going and eventually it'll start tightening. And as it tightens you just want to pay attention because very quickly you're going to look at, your neck's going to be not only straight, it's going to be bowed, it's going to have high action because it's going to bow forward as, as it does very easily because the, the truss rods are very strong, much stronger than they probably need to be because of just the fact that it's so easy to make good truss rods now. So you, you should have a dual action truss rod and you should be able to turn it the other way without any concerns. So that should, that should get you there. You could double check that. But I can tell you right now, if you turn from when it's loose, if you turn it more than five times and you don't start feeling tension or something, then maybe you have a single action truss rod. What could then happen is you could just unscrew the end of the truss rod off and then you know, you'll just have to put that back and screw it back on. It's not like it's, it's going to fall off inside the neck or you know it's going to break. But keep the, the Allen wrench, if that's what you have, or if you have a socket wrench, you know, whatever is, I'm not, I don't remember off the top of my head which one they're using. So if it's an LTD, I would guess it's a 4 millimeter hex wrench. That's my guess. The ESP I'm not. I'm not familiar what they use on the Eclipse. I don't remember. Oh, I can look it up, but I'm pretty sure just stick with. Just stick with the tool that they gave you. That'll probably be easiest. Okay, hold on a second. We have this. Came from Madison. Fast. Fast Eddie 3333. Bunch of threes. Fast Eddie 333 says Phil. I have sets of strings still in boxes, individual sets. They gotta be somewhere between 15 to 20 years old. Are they still good? Well, it depends on whether or not the strings were sealed or not and whether or not those strings were sealed with. With air in those bags or not. So for instance, d' Addario claims that they vacuum seal out the bag and they remove a percentage. They might say 100%, but I think it's like 90% of the oxygen is removed. Oxygen is not steel's friend. And. And so the oxygen in there is what's going to let the metal corrode over time. Even though there's nickel, too, the steel and nickel. So my guess is the strings, if they're in envelopes or envelopes, however you want to say that in a box or in a package, not sealed, I would say you'd have to pull them out. My guess is they're going to be crusty. As crusty as they would be if they were sitting on a guitar all those years. So I'm going to say, but check them. But, you know, but if they are sealed, if they're vacuum sealed, but vacuum sealed, if you can squeeze them and you can feel air in there, they're probably better. Better than they would have been if they're not sealed. But it's not going to be perfect. But if they're vacuum sealed, it's possible that they are still perfect, like brand new. I've had D' Addario strings for a year or two. I know it's not no 15 to 20 years, but, you know, year or two or maybe three and no issues. But I. I once bought a set of strings. I learned a lesson the hard, the hardest way you could learn this particular lesson, which is with your pocketbook. I was driving one day. This was. So give you a reference of time. I mean, it's probably 2002. So in 2002, I'm driving and I need a pack of bass strings. And I wanted stainless steel bass strings because I like the stainless steel, brighter strings for bass. And I was like, you know, I shouldn't go to guitar center. I should support some mom and pop store. This is before I had a mom and pop store. And I went into this little music store. Just tell it. It was called Chandler Music. I don't know if they're still there. Anyways, Chandler Music, little music store. You walk in and they had a few off the off brand guitars and they had lessons in band, orchestra rentals stuff. And I walked in and I have it in my head, you know, like I'm doing charity or something, right? That's in my head. I'm like, I'm gonna support small business. And I walked in there and they had a set of bass strings. I think they were roto sounds. So they had some roto sounds. I know roto sounds are good. And they had them listed for like retail. If you guys don't understand how crazy that is. If you've never looked at the price of retail on strings, they're pretty crazy. I don't even know if they have the guts to even post that anymore. Let's go to Sweetwater and see if they post retail for strings. Let's look at Ernie ball strings. I'm just picking on them because it's easy, because they're easy to search. Let's take a look. And yeah, those days are gone. So somebody's out there has got this. So what I mean by that is if you go here, a set of earning ball strings, these are $7.99 for the pack. But if you recall, they used to put like retail and then like the sale price, right? The retail was insane. Like you think retail is going to be like $10. And these are like you're used to the map for musical instruments where if it's a thousand dollar retail, it's like 6.99 map. Retail on strings are like guitar strings that are like 5 bucks are like retail 24.99. I remember when we had the store and you get the retail lists for strings. You would just chuckle with the crazy stupidity of it, right? It would be like bass strings would come in and you'd be like retail on these bass strings. $89. So anyway, so I'm in Chandler Music. They have a set of roto sounds and they have them at retail, which is probably three times what they sell for at the guitar center. And anyways, I was like, this is crazy, right? But I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna support the mom and pop star. So I said, hey, can I get those strings? And the guy hands me the strings and when I look at the box, I just get that vibe. Like, I think these have been here for a while. Like, I'm. I'm like, I'm sure they've been here a while. They look like they've been sitting right? And I'm still going through. I'm still pushing through, you know, look, it was 2003. I was a lot younger. 2002, where I was, you know. You know, the signs were there. Literally, Phil. Like, walk away, walk away. But I'm doing this, and I buy the strings. I go to work, I get off work, I come home, I put. Pull up the strings out of the box, I put them on base, and they are dead and old. I mean, it was like they were worse than the strings on my bass. And I was like, oh. And I think they were 60 bucks. I'm pretty sure there was. I'm not exaggerating. Back in 2002, 60 bucks for strings, something like that. 50 bucks. It was ridiculous. And so I was like, oh, well, I learned my lesson. So what I'm trying to say is strings can sit for a long time. Because I knew stores that would sit on strings for years and years and years. In years, in fact, I used to stress over flipping strings in our store because I used to think about the fact that you should never pick up a pack of strings in a store and see dust on the box. That's not a good sign. But anyways, back to daddario. They seal the string. So you have a choice or a chance. You have a chance is what I'm trying to say to get that to work. Dr. My balls with a Z itch says any benefit to a neck heel truss rod. Got rid of my great made in Japan telecause. I dreaded needing to adjust relief. I got a great squier CV telly with headstock truss rod. The only advantage to a truss rod at the base of the neck, the heel versus the headstock, is if it has a spoke wheel truss rod where it's exposed and it's easy to adjust. Some people think the, you know, the flathead screwdriver. Flathead truss rods are vintage. With the access point, they can kind of cut into the pick. Carter. Okay, I hate them. I hate all of them. You always end up taking off the neck. So for the most part, or scratching something or it's just not worth it. No, I'm not a big proponent for having the truss rod at the base of the neck on an electric guitar. If it. If it's not a spoke wheel truss rod, which is like what sometimes referred to as a Spindle truss rod. And it's the ones where it looks like a. You know what it always looks like. What's that? What's those toys that we had as kids like? Because I know kids grew up with like Legos, but I remember. What's the. What's the. What's the toy that was with the sticks and the wheels? Hold on, let's see if. Ah, it came right up. Tinker toys, man. Tinker toys. That's the. That's what it looks like. Look, I'm gonna go to this. I'm not even gonna show you the right truss rod. I'm gonna show you. Look, it's a Tinker toy. When I see the spoke wheel truss rod, I always see Tinker toys. I see this. So. But for the. For the record, I probably should show you a spoke wheel truss rod. For those listening later. Spoke wheel truss rod. Tinker toys look like a spoke wheel truss rod. And a spoke wheel truss rod looks like a Tinker toy. It's probably no help at all. Here is a spoke wheel truss rod. Here we go. Looks like this. So this sticking out of the back there is a modification. This one is. You can get one of these and modify a Fender neck, but you got to route out a little piece of wood at your neck. And I don't recommend you do that if. Unless you never want to sell that guitar again. If you're going to keep it forever, go ahead and do it. It's going to make life easy. But if you're not gonna keep it forever, well, then you are keeping it forever because no one's gonna want to buy it after you did that to it. So Tinker toy truck, we should just refer to them as Tinker toy truss rods. Now, what kind of truss rod you have? Tinker toy. I have a Tinker toy truss rod. Okay, this is going off the rails. Let's get on back on track. We have updates. Okay, let me go to an update. So I have an update on the nuno in four padauk guitar from three now three. Today is the 21st day, so it's been three weeks. So if you guys have remembered this, I'll pull you in. If you guys missed an episode or two, let me tell you what happened. I bought a nuno bin court n4 made in USA out of Padauk. It was. I got it for like $2,600. In fact, I'll just pull up the exact price. So there's no guessing. The dealer that sold it new had it on a discount they discounted it 10%. I did not ask for the 10%. That's. I don't know if that matters, but I just want to. I'm glad they gave me the 10%. I paid $2,579 for it. Can I. Yeah. Here, I'll show it. Here you go. This is it. This is the guitar. So I bought the guitar. And here, you can't see. See? See, the problem is here. Everything looks fine, but when I got the guitar. Go back to me. Let me show you my picture. Just give me a second. When you change the angle a little bit. Oh, hold on. Here we go. Let's see. There you go. You can see that the locking nut for the Floyd is sticking out about 2 millimeters on the bass side. And over here, about half a millimeter on the treble side. So obviously, different angle, but same guitar, same. It looks like the guitar. They sanded the neck down a little too much, and now that's sticking out. I decided that because it was pretty much the only one I can find that wasn't £10. And it seems to be a cosmetic issue, as I go back to you guys, that I'm okay with it, but I think that the manufacturer. I would like them to know that they have this issue since. Since showing it to you guys. Not dozens. I won't exaggerate, but let's say a half a dozen people sent me emails of guitars that they found that have the same issue, and they're all newer in force. So obviously something's happening at the shop where they're building them, and there's an issue there. And so I wanted to make them aware of it. One, so that no one has to suffer the thing before. But also, I personally think this should be labeled like B stock, or at least explain to me why I'm wrong. And it's supposed to look like that, even though my other infor's don't. And so I sent him a message to the store. And then I didn't really get anywhere with the store. So, you know, I told them not to hurry. But after about two. Two weeks, I was like, okay, well, actually, after two weeks, they responded to me with a resolution that made no sense and confused me because it wasn't what we were talking about. And then I. So I reached out to Washburn and they said they get back to me, and then they haven't got back to me. So that's where I've been, guys. Nowhere. So I'm gonna keep waiting. But I keep. I told you guys, I'd update you how it goes. So this is how it's going. Three weeks in and no one at Washburn or the music store can explain to me one, if that's right, it's supposed to look like that. Two, if it's not supposed to look like that, Three, you know, are there gonna be a discount for it? I asked for it. That's what I asked for. So, you know, my resolution was a 10% discount would be nice from, from the manufacturer side, not from the retailer side. Although the retailer should have caught it. It's not really necessarily the easiest thing to catch air for everybody. Not everybody performs deep dives of every guitar. Even a store. I can't imagine. You know, let's just be clear. The deep dive that I'm used to doing now, which has permeated my brain into every guitar I see now, is a far cry above what a 55 point Sweetwater inspection is. So it's like not. It's not. But for guitar, that's almost $3,000. Can we, can we at least. But. And on a side note, I bought the guitar in the intent to do a deep dive, and I plan to still do the deep dive, but I'm trying to have resolution in that video so that when I show it, we can explain what it is. So I don't know. That's your update. Nothing. Another week of nothing. So there you go. Mike says it's Nuno's fault. You know, it's not Nuno's fault. You know what I'm curious about? I'm curious to see if I don't know the answer. So I don't know about you guys, but I kind of. You dream up scenarios and I'm like, are they not answering or not really taking care of it because they don't care. That's possible, right? I mean, the representative at. So the inside joke, especially with the patrons, is that the representative at Washburn, when they responded to my email, called me Patrick. So that's why, if you notice people calling me Patrick in the comment sections, that's where that came from. Because I said, hey, thanks a lot. And I said, phil. And then the guy said, thanks, Patrick, for emailing me. And I was like. So my joke was like, Washburn's mission statement isn't attention to detail, looking at the guitars. And then that email. But anyways, the point I'm trying to make is I don't know if they're ignoring and they don't care which is possible or, or, or, or or they, they really doing some research and trying to make sure it's right. Well, I'm trying to give them the benefit of doubt. It's possible they want to come back to me without, you know, saying, hey, here's 10% off. Maybe they want to fix it, maybe they. Somebody did mention just you guys stop sending me emails about this. Somebody's like, you know why? Since it's got a bolt on neck, why don't you have them make you a new neck? And as a resolution look, I'm okay with that. But in my experience with new nose, which is a lot of them over the years, a lot of the necks are not interchangeable. So it's very tough because of that way the neck's design. Sometimes they sit in and they're a little lower, a little higher, it gets a little wonky sometimes. But I'm open to all kinds of resolution. And like I've told you guys already, I've let the cat out of the bag. No matter what they decide, I'm keeping it. So I mean obviously I could have returned it through reverb. I've already have the ability to return it as I could claim that it obviously because they didn't take a picture of that, you know, but I really like it. I like the guitar and I'm not really interested in chasing down a new one over that issue. I just know if I ever get rid of it, I'm going to take a bath on it because that's the first thing I have to disclose, look at this problem. And then somebody's going to want to give me a lot, lot less for it. So I gotta keep it. Okay, Joe said, just call Nuno. Yeah, let me, let me tell you a funny Nuno story that. So I've met Nuno a couple times and every time I met him, like a lot of the cool people I've met in my life, I, Chris Farley did really bad. And like a lot of the times I had my jerk friend Ralph with me, which is never the right person to have with you when these things go down. He's not a jerk, he's just a jerk. Anyways, so anyway, so what happened was, this is what happened. It's really cool. So knowing that I'm a huge Nuno Bittencourt fan, Washburn, when I was a dealer, said, hey, Extremes come in town. Do you want to see them? I'm like, yeah, I'm going. And they go, would you want backstage passes? So we went and we got backstage passes and they gave me Some for Ralph, and my other friend was there, and. And me. And we went, and it was at a very small venue, okay. And King's X opened for him, which is like, I don't know about you guys, but, I mean, King's X to me is one of my top favorite live bands of all time. Just amazing. And then, of course, they open for Extreme. The. The. The notes of the night that are interesting to remember is Nuno just came out with his new Randall Nuno amps, and both of them blew up on the stage. They look. Literally smoke came out of them, and he blew one, and then they had to switch to another amp in the show, and then he blew the other one. And then. And then you could see this little Marshall head kind of coming over the top of the cabinets where the roadie was, like, pushing the Marshall that they borrowed from Ty Tabor from King's X. I guess he had one, and, you know, finished off the show with the Marshall, which all of us agreed sounded better. The second half of the show sounded better than the first half. So for that record, the. For the. For the record, the Marshall sounded better than the Nuno. But anyways, at the show, there was. So I'm gonna say this. This is. Please just take it for whatever it is. When we went to the show, there wasn't a lot of people. Okay. And just to show you how nice this is, the manager of Extreme came out and met us in the parking lot, and he's like, hey, you know, you're the VIP guest. And we're like, yeah. And so he let us in, and he told us that they had just played, like, San Francisco the night before, and then. And then they're leaving to, like, like, Europe or somewhere or Japan or something, and they have sold out. Like, huge venue, sold out now. So we're like, oh, okay. He's like, sold out? Shows, like, the Europe show sold out. It's crazy. It's huge. And we're like, wow, that's great. So then we watch the show. When we go into the venue, we felt pretty bad because when Kings X was playing, I said, wow, what is it, like, 60 people here? My friend, who's an ex Marine combat swimmer, goes, yeah. It's like. It's like. It's like 60 people, tops. And I'm like, yeah. And I go, how do you know? And I go. I said, oh. I think I said something like, oh, it's like 100 people. That's what I said. I go, it's like only 100 people. Here he goes, 60, tops. And then I said, are you sure it's not like it looks like 100? He goes, no. I was just thinking about how many, like, clips it would take, right? I was like, what? He was being sarcastic. It's Marine humor. Please understand. I just don't want you to think anything crazy. He's not a crazy person. He just says crazy things from time to time. Anyways, so there wasn't a lot of people, 60 people. So what happened that was great was we see King's X, they're amazing. We see Extreme, they're amazing. The head blows up. That happens. Nuno come. Nuno and the band, they decide, because there's not that many people, they decided everyone gets a backstage pass because they just came out and hung out with the crowd afterwards, which was about 60 people. So we just hung out with Extreme. Gary Sharon was super humble. Nuno was super humble. He was very high, by the way. Nuno was. But that's okay. But I mean, it was very apparent they were super nice. And even though we had been told by their manager that they have sold out shows, booked in much bigger venues in Europe and the album was doing great, they came with the humility. They didn't go, hey, yeah, man, you guys suck. And Phoenix sucks balls. Because, like, literally no one came to the show. They didn't say anything. They came out with. Their attitude is like, that was a. You know, hope you guys enjoyed the show. And, you know, like. And, you know, we're Gary Sharon's, like, we're going to. If we have to take this album to each door in America just to get excited, we'll just do whatever it takes, like, yeah. And we're like, well, we heard you got, like, showed out, you know, sold out venues coming out. And they're like, yeah, yeah, like, no, no, it's good, you know, but so, you know, just the humility there was great. So this is the Chris Farley move. So we're talking, and I said, I'm talking to Nuno Betancourt. And I'm like, I have these questions in my head that I can't wait to ask him. And I'm sitting there in front of Ralph and I'm like, chris Farley, like, remember that time you did that cool thing? Right? That's how I talk to people, because I'm an idiot. So I go, hey, you know how you have a Padauk N4? Oh, no. I go, hey, you know how you have the Nuno rap amps? And he goes, rap amps? And I go, randall Amplifier Project amps. And he's looking at me like he has no idea what I'm talking about. And he's like, yeah, it's the Rand lamps. And I go, yeah. And he goes, yeah. And I go, well, you know, they made the Randall amplifier project guitar. The limited edition one with the colors. He's like, they did? And I'm like, yeah. And I go, do you have one? And he goes, no. And I go, did you not like it? He goes, no, they didn't give me one, so I don't even know anything about it. He's very, very nice, by the way. Don't think of it as jerky talk. He's just confused with this Chris Farley guy talking to him. And then I said, oh. And I said, hey, I noticed you don't play the Padauk guitars anymore. Is it because it's heavy? And he goes, heavy? He goes, dude, just lift it above your head a few times. Maybe work out with it. See my face getting red because I'm sitting there in front of Ralph and Ralph is laughing. I'm like, ralph is just gonna. He's gonna. Ralph. Ralph is gonna love this, right? Every time. Like, every time there's a heavy guitar, Ralph's like, why don't you just lift it? It's, like, above your head a few times and work out with it. So anyways, he goes, no. He goes, the neck got broken in. In the. In shipping, you know, from. From a show overseas. And. And he goes. And I. You know, so he just told me to explain me why he doesn't have an N4 so Paduk anymore. So anyway, so that's the. That's. So. By the way, I like to point out, I. Nuno's never gonna see this, but I. I do lift the Padauk over my head a couple times just for fun. It's like kind of a joke. Inside joke. All right. I don't know why I just told that story. Probably because I just wanted to stop talking about the defective Padauke guitar and spin it the other way. Let's jump to another guitar subject that's probably more important. Cat's music Journey says. Hey, Phil, still haven't finished editing the video on the hp. I think it's the Harley Benton tweed cab build from last week. So much footage, so much voiceover still to do. How do you do it? P.S. what's a good length? Thank you. Well, it depends who you ask. A lot of people have a different. No, I'm just kidding. So footage. How do I do editing? I do it in misery like everybody else. It's a miserable, miserable thing. If you don't love it, I don't love it. But it is how I get to the finished product, which is the video for people. My rule that I follow is every 10 minutes of footage is one hour of editing, minimum. So that's way. So if you have an hour's worth of. If you have, you know, an hour's worth of footage, then you have six hours worth of editing. That's. That's. That's how it works. So I'm very conscious of it. Weirdly enough, you guys don't see them. I don't know how to share them with you. But in all of my rooms that I film in, there are extremely. There's a lot of things in here. There are clocks, there are timers. There's all kinds of things. I'm trying to think how I could show you guys. Anyways, I'll have to show you guys something. So in my rooms, I have what's like a stuff in front of me when you guys see me filming. So when I'm filming anything, whether I'm in the shop room or in this room, there's the camera, behind the cameras, there's a bunch of cameras. And then behind the cameras are a timer, a clock. So I know what time of the day it is, but also how long I've been filming. There's screens that the cameras are feeding into that also have timers that tell me how long I've been filming. And because I understand that the longer I continue the raw footage, the longer the edit is going to take. So I try to keep that condensed down if I can, which is really hard to do on the playing side of it because you're trying to capture something that doesn't suck. And so that's one thing. Editing time, I would say, other than this. There's a YouTube channel named Dovidos. And he came over and did a video, if you remember. And he came and guest starred in a video, and he was in the video. And Dobie saw me in my process and making videos and told me it was absolutely insane. And the. The terror in his face was epic. In fact, it still haunts me this day. He was like, what are you doing? I showed a video that I was working on. It was a deep dive video, and it had 3,900 edits, cuts, edits in it. And he's like, there's 3,000 edits in this video. I said, I know, he's like, this is nuts. I go, I know. So an average deep dive video is two hours of footage total, which doesn't sound like a lot, but I just told you the math for the edit. So edits are about six to eight hours of editing for me. I don't recommend this. One, this process. Two, following me in any way. There's no logic behind it that it's going to help you. The way it's done is the only thing I can tell you, the only secret to YouTube that I can tell you, which I don't like to talk about my secrets because either they're bad and you shouldn't hear them because they're bad, or they're good and I have to worry about competing with people. But I will tell you this. The intro to every video, every video you see me do is usually filmed four different times. Just the intro. So because I film it and then I have people watch it and patrons watch it, and then I get feedback and then I go and change the intro. The intro is where I focus a lot of time. It's where I spend probably a good couple hours on just the intro. Intro, meaning the first 60 seconds of the video is super important to me. What happens there, why it happens there, what the filming is, what the thing is. And so just that process for just the first 60 seconds of video could take me two days of work and editing, of just going and adjusting and refill. Because I refilm, by the way, when I say edit, I shouldn't say edit the first 60 seconds. I don't edit the first seconds. I just keep retake, retake, retake, retake, retake. I don't know why. Just things I focus on. And then for all the people, the advice I'll give you is all the people says you can hire an editor or you can have this edited. I really believe that if there is talent, any talent into what I do at all, I don't know if there is at all, it's in the editing. Because I can take a video and take a video that I think is absolutely horrible and just spend two days editing on it and put it out and it'll get 300,000 views. So obviously, I think the editing did something. And by editing, I mean just keep the flow going, keeping the momentum, which is also for you guys, this is a little fun fact for you guys, because I think this will be cool for you guys to know the epiphany. Not the epiphany. The idea of the deep dive sheets, the Sheet of paper that now tells you all the spec sheets on there. That was because of a hard conflict that I was stuck with that was really problematic for me, which is I want to give you guys detailed information, but sometimes detailed information bores the crap out of people and your eyes gloss over and you stop paying attention. And once you're not paying attention to the video, you're not going to watch the rest the of of the video. Once you, once I've lost you and you're like, what's he talking? What's it, what's the guitar again? Whatever. And so what happens is I have to chop information out to keep the edit moving. And then the problem became in the comment sections, like, hey, Phil, how come you didn't tell me the fret size? Hey, Phil, how come you didn't tell me this? Hey, Phil, how come you didn't tell me that? Because there's people who just like, hey. And they say, and this, there's this two fan base at odds. One saying, longer videos fail, longer make a two hour deep dive. And the other half's like, I'm gonna cut out after three minutes if this is not entertaining. And so somewhere in there I had to make a connection. And what I ended up doing was, okay, cool. When I'm editing now, when I decide to cut something for flow or lack of interest that's not interesting, it's on the sheet for somebody and they can read it. And that was my way of trying to make everybody happy, which I've totally succeeded. I have to say, 100% of the people who watch my videos and watch me on this Internet are happy. Like, I, I don't know if you guys know that, but 100% success. No one's ever mad or says horrible things to me, ever. It's all positive. It's all great. On that note, I want to talk about Guitar of the Week. So let's do Guitar of the Week. Let's take a second. Let's do Guitar Week. This Guitar of the Week is special to me. It's super special. And I want to share it because it is a example of our community and the world we live in that sometimes people forget we live in this other world then that social media likes to tell you we live in, which is this. Everything sucks and everything's horrible. So I'm going to tell the story. I don't really have permission to tell this story, so I'm going to be delicate with it. Okay. I didn't want to ask permission if that makes any Sense. Not because I thought somebody would say no, but also because you'll just trust me. Everybody will understand in the next 30 seconds to a minute when I get into the guitar. So we have a lot of viewers. They're very passionate, they're very amazing, and they like to. They like to congregate here on Fridays. Friday has been great, you know, as an avenue for me as a YouTuber. Sure. Do I get views and clicks and yeah, some of the questions you asked create really sensationalized titles. And of course, it draws in a lot of people who then click right out of the video. But that's okay, right? But we do have a community here. You guys show up every Friday. You guys are very nice to each other. There's always a couple people that are just like, I don't know why you have to act that way, but hey, you're the minority and the majority is great. So I had a viewer reach out to me, as sometimes viewers do, and he had an issue, a small issue, and here's his issue. So his name is Gene and he has a guitar. And here's the. The issue with the guitar. It's a beautiful instrument, and it belonged. It belonged to his son Nate, who has passed away. Now, as someone, as you know, and this is something I identify with because I've told the story about how, like, my mother and my father passed away and Shawna lost her sister, and we've had losses. And when people pass on, one of the things that you. You deal with is. Which isn't the important thing, but it's the thing that you deal with is what to do with their stuff. I don't want to make this dark. I promise you this has an uplifting side to it. But you want the stuff that they care about. Even though it's stuff, you want it to go to people who care about it. So here's what happened. He plays guitar, his son plays guitar. And so his son has this guitar that he's left behind, but it's a seven string. And Gene does not play seven string guitar. So he reached out to me and said, hey, I'd like to send you this seven string guitar. Now, I know what you're thinking because I told him the same thing you're thinking. A YouTuber that gets guitars all the time doesn't need another guitar from somebody. But I also understand as someone who's had to physically deal with what to do with these things that someone I care about has left behind, and it's important that these things aren't A value proposal proposition. Like dollars. They're a emotional value, which is an intangible thing. I'm like, I'll tell you what I like to do. So he sent me the guitar. I said, send me the guitar. And this is what I told him I'm gonna do with it. So please, I'm gonna tell you, please don't email me, okay? I will keep you guys posted, just like with the Baduk in four. But don't email me, okay? Because I'm not gonna read it. So his son has this beautiful Kiesel 7 string Vader. He's a very talented musician. I got to watch some of his stuff on Instagram. Very amazing player, 7 stringy. Put the abalone knobs. He doesn't have a switch tip there. I'll eventually probably put a switch trip. This has the tremolo. This is in the raw tone finish. If you don't know what that means, that means the guitar is ash. In fact, I'm gonna switch to a camera that's really bright. There you go. Look how bright I look. This is a brighter camera angle. You can see here. You can see the ash through. It has the ebony back plate. This is a beautiful instrument. This is neck through. You have maple, walnut, maple, walnut, maple on this Vader 7 string. And. And then of course, the fretboard has been stained so it's, it's stained brown, obviously with black diamond inlays. But then he did two mother of pearls on the 12th fret. Isn't that gorgeous? It's a beautiful instrument. I understand, like, this is a beautiful instrument. And I can understand the, the issue with. Let me go back to the, this camera angle. I know they're dramatically different cameras. I know, I can imagine. The issue is, look as if, if I had, you know, if I had a, a, somebody leave me an eight string guitar, I can't really play the eight string. I'd understand, you know, I understand the issue. So I, I said, hey, yes, send me the guitar. So here's what we're gonna do with the guitar. There's two, three things that are happening. The guitar first, I'm sharing with you for guitar of the week. I want you guys to see it. I've had it for a while. I want to share it. I'm gonna play it. We're gonna, I'm gonna show it off to you how great this guitar is. And, and then I'm gonna tell you. So as you know, I've been recording an album. When I say recording album, I'm just Recording tracks that I can copyright so I can play on my videos without getting copyright strikes. And I was already planning to do one with a seven string. And I told him. I. I think I told him. Not sure. I know I told him some of what I'm telling you. And the rest is not. Maybe not so much. I'm going to play this on the actual recording of the song I'm doing on my. I'm doing a record, I guess whatever you call that, because again, that's how I have to copyright it. And I've already written the song with the seven string and I'm gonna play this guitar on it. And then what I told him, which he's totally fine with. So you guys know, I don't need another seven string. And I may end up keeping this. I don't think I will. The reason is, is because as you guys know, I have a universe that my wife gave me. I just don't know. But I did tell him. I said, if I will, I want to pass it on to somebody who will play it. That's why I'm saying, don't email me and say, hey, I would love that guitar. Look, I'm going to find somebody. I'll let you know. I'll know when it's right. The right person, the person who's going to play this. I want to find someone who would love to own like a, you know, an amazing guitar with a huge amazing story, but also an amazing playing guitar. The value proposition doesn't matter. Even though it is an expensive instrument, but anyways, it'll go to somebody, maybe a younger player. I don't know yet. I keep kind of putting my feelers out there. I'm sure I'll come across guitar player one day and be like, that's the guitar player. This is the person. This guitar needs this. I believe in the romance of guitars. I believe this. Really, I do. As silly as it sounds, I believe that, that, you know, that, you know, guitars find you, you find guitars. Things work out that way. I think somebody's gonna. It's gonna work on out. Let me play it and then we'll go. When we'll talk about some more. Let me go ahead. I gotta switch cameras. We'll switch over. I have a little bump thing that plays that. Shawna says something so I can change my seat position. And then we'll play. Here we go. Now it's time for guitar of the Week. Okay, so we're gonna be running this guitar through a Engel Steve Morris 20 watt. All tube amp with delay and reverb that's built into the amp that runs through a 112 cabinet with a red back selection mic'd up with a Sennheiser E609 and a room mic. I'll be playing a backing track from the max backing track YouTube channel, which I think are the best backing tracks drum tracks on YouTube. I just like how aggressive they sound. And we'll go ahead and let's get started. Alrighty. Okay, so. Oh, okay. Did I hit the right button? You know, every time I transition I'm like, did I hit the right button? Did I not hit the right button? I put my foot switch down. Okay. So obviously the guitar sounds amazing and it plays great. I actually think this is the thicker seven string neck. I don't know if this is the thinner one. I'm really not 100% sure. It is tongue oiled. You can see they painted it here. And then it's. It's natural fast. Then it's all tongue oiled. And then I'm not 100 sure on the pickups, what model pickups they are. I could probably easily look them up because they are the dual screw head size. So each side let me switch to the brighter camera. Again, each side of the pickup. So there's no slugs and screws. It's just both lines of screws. So if anyone knows which key easel pickup is both rows of screws, flathead screws, that would help me know which models are in these, these pickups. And then weight wise, it's pretty good, I'd say. I mean, it's on the heavier side probably because the neck through because it's got big strips of walnut and maple going all the way to the bottom. But I would say weight wise, 7ish pounds, which is heavy for a Vader, but not heavy at all for a guitar. And like I said, I will keep you guys updated on this. You know, it's one of those things. The downfall of headless guitars is I can't hang them on the wall behind us. Maybe I'll get some sideways hangers one day. And like I said, it'll eventually find a home. It'll find the right home, even if that means staying here. But if it stays here, obviously I. I will have. I'll let go of a seven string. But like I said, I. I just, I thought, I didn't know. I kept telling myself, like, do I talk about this? Do I bring it up as well as guitar of the week? What do I do with it? And, you know, I don't know. I just wanted to put out some more energy out in the world. So this, this energy, whatever this is, I know it's one of those things like, this is a negative situation, but it's not a negative energy thing. Does it make sense, the idea that somebody's like, hey, I just want to find a beautiful home from this beautiful instrument, you know, is the best thing you can do from situations like that. And, and also, hey, we get to see a new guitar this week. I know that's like, sometimes not the big thing of this thing, but anyways, anyways, anyways, we'll find out how it goes. I. I think. I think if there's one thing for sure is I know something will happen positive with this guitar. I just can feel it from the. From the minute I opened the gig bag when it got here, because I wasn't sure how to handle the situation when he sent me the message. But I was like, I just all of a sudden just hit me. I'm like, you know, I think I told you this. We'll end on this story. I think you told this. I told you this story once, that when my father passed away, my sister's like, he had this bass boat. He was super into fishing. I wasn't into fishing. In fact, something I've. Since I, you know, I'm bringing up somebody else's stuff, I'll bring up something sensitive to me, you know, because it's just. You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you. That's sarcasm, by the way. My father hated taking me fishing because I wouldn't shut up. Me and my father didn't get along. So you can imagine, like, the one few things we could get along with because he wasn't around much of my life. But when he was around, you know, it's like we didn't fight, we just didn't get along. And he hated me. He would take me fishing, like, because my mom would ask him, because he hated it, because I just. I didn't know that you're supposed to. Well, I knew you're supposed to shut up when you're fishing. But you can imagine just sitting on a boat or on the shore with me when all you want is peace and quiet. It was not a pleasurable experience for him. So anyways, so when he passed away, we had this boat and we had all these fishing poles and all this fishing gear, and it was probably worth thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars because the boat was worth the both was the boat was worth a good amount of money for a fishing boat, right? Because I mean, it was a little fishing boat and it was worth like $15,000 used, which is a lot of money for a little fishing boat. At least back in 2004, maybe 2005. 2005 is when no one wanted the boat because no one fished, including me. And so my sister's like, could you please sell the boat for us? So we sold the boat and I told you the story. The kid. The kid was like 20 something years old. He drove up from Yuma, Arizona to buy this boat and he was so excited about this boat. I've never. He. He was like. He was the one. Like I wasn't looking for the bright person to sell his boat to because I really just, you know, I was just doing the thing that I was asked to do for by the family, but you know, my family. So anyways, and man, he was so excited and he was like, you know, he's like, yeah, I'll take the boat. It's great. And he's, you know, giving Sean of the money and he's like going on about this boat. And Sean is like, yeah, it was Phil's dad and he was in the fishing. He's like, man, he took perfect spot's like brand new. It's like amazing. And he's like, all the things I guess my dad added to the boat were really cool. And he was like, look at all this stuff. And I don't know, that's why I said, I don't know how much all the fishing gear was worth, you know, But I know this, that guy, the guy, the kid, 20 year old something. And by the way, a boat in Arizona. Yeah, there's a lot of lakes in Arizona, by the way. Arizona is mostly not desert. It's like the second half Arizona is trees and pine and you know, stuff like that. So anyways, and this is where it gets funny. I looked at him and I was like, shawna's taking his money, you know, and they're doing the transaction in our garage of our house. And I'm like, I'm gonna give this kid all this my dad's stuff. Cause like I'm. I'm not gonna sell this stuff. I'd rather this guy's so excited about it. He knows what it all is. Like, I don't know anything about fishing, but I know guitar and I know what it looks like when somebody's like, yeah, your dad's Les Paul was immaculate and amazing. And I'M like, oh, by the way, I have all this other guitar stuff. You want it? And I said, hey, my dad has this other fishing gear. You want to see it? And he's like, sure. And he goes and looks at it, and his face just like, probably what I. What I would describe my face would look like if I was at somebody's house buying somebody's stuff. And they said, hey, you want to see all this guitar stuff? And it was like a vintage Marshall and a vintage Fender. Whatever. All this cool stuff. Whatever you think is cool. And he goes, oh, my goodness. And before he could say a thing, and I go, you can have all that. And he's like, are you. Are you kidding me? And I'm like, no, you can just have that. And he's like, I don't. Are you sure? I'm like, yeah. And then that's how I knew it was worth a lot, because he was like, I don't. I don't think I should take it. I think if you want, I can. I can buy it from you. And I'm like, no, you can just have it. Because I go, you seem to really know what it is. It was all in the boat. So he took it. And the point of the story is, you know, there's just something about. Even though this stuff is just stuff, right, sometimes we can imprint some magic onto that stuff, and maybe that goes on to the next person. That's just my way of saying it. That's my. My thing for today. I've taken you guys a little bit away from the guitar stuff, so with the fishing stuff. So let's go back to guitar stuff. Let's. Let's go back to some. What T size wants to talk about T Size. What do you. What do you want to talk about? TSI says, hey, Phil, any plans on checking out the Supro Airwave 25amp? No, not. Not specifically, but let me keep reading, and then I'll give you my feedback on that. Says, also, after watching your last show on the Keys, last qa, I ended up buying the kit. I think that's a great move. And he goes, I can't wait for it to come in. Just wish it had stainless steel frets. I thought there was an option where you can add stainless steel frets. I don't remember, but if not, I don't think it matters. Like I told you guys, I prefer. Prefer stainless steel frets for the longevity. Longevity and maintenance of them. But I don't care. Like, it's not something. So I thought about this. This is actually so perfectly asked question, by the way, with the stainless frets. I have a way of answering the question now. If I was given the choice, okay? So if. And I mean any company, okay, Fender, Gibson, Paul, Ridd, Smith, obviously Kiesel, you know, Washburn, Ivan is if any company said, hey, you could have stainless steel frets, it's just an option. I would pick stainless steel frets every single time, no questions asked. So. So, you know, there's no scenario, even if it was a vintage Strat, you know, vintage reissue Strat, I'd be like, yeah, stainless steel frets. Stainless steel frets. That would be my choice. That's just my personal choice. But it's my personal choice. However, if you said it's a hundred dollars more for stainless stefrets, I'll be like, and I'm gonna pick stainless. I'm gonna pick nickel silver. I'm not gonna pay for them. So, like Kiesel, they include them in the price. So I'm like, yeah, for the price of a guitar, when you do a build, I'm like, yeah, I do stand still frets. If they said, if Kiesel made a decision tomorrow, that's like, it's a hundred dollars or $100 more for Stain Steelbook, then I'm fine with nickel silver. To me. Although a lot of people have the issue with the sound of stainless steel frets. They're like, oh, this way it sounds. I have found that certain guitars are just brighter, and that's probably what's the bigger thing. The frets aren't as huge of a proponent of the sound to me, for that. It's not. Not like I said, it's like everything I said when it comes to the components of a guitar, you know, just tone wouldn't matter. Yeah, 1 or 2% stainless or frets matter 1 or 2%. You know, it's like, literally, how much can you really weigh into this stuff over, like a speaker versus a pickup versus the strings themselves? You know, I think that's those three things I just mentioned have more weight and sound than. Than the. The. The. Than the frets. To me, it's just like I said, if I have a single fret guitar, I know I have a guitar that I'll never have to worry about doing anything to. I don't have any maintenance to do, which is great, as long as the neck doesn't shrink or have any issues. So. So that's my way of saying that on the headless kit builds, I. I don't think it matters that they don't have Salem silver hats. I don't care, because I can tell you right now. The second, because it will happen. All. All custom build, semi custom builders eventually. Eventually itemize everything on a guitar. I've been saying this for years. People attribute two things that are, I think, misplaced. They always think I'm a fanboy of Sweetwater because I talk about Sweetwater and how well they do all the time. Nope, I'm just telling you how they do. And it just sounds like I appreciate or I like them because I appreciate how well they're doing. I recognize success, they're succeeding, so I share. Talking about their success, Kiesel. It's not so much that I'm a fanboy of Kiesel by any means. It's just Kiezle does a business model that I think is unique, and it's not going to last. That's what I feel. By the way, Jeff and I, I think, are friends at this point, and I think he disagrees with me. And he's the owner of the company, so he might be right. But my son, skepticism, cynicism, says it never lasts. I've told you the story about how PRs used to have a business model almost like Kiesel, where it was semi custom when I was a dealer. So I eventually think that everything gets itemized when you do custom. So there will be a point or not. I wouldn't say so affirm like that. I think there will be a point one day where Kiesel's, like, stainless steel frets are an upcharge and nickel silver is included for free. And the day that happens, I'm just getting nickel silver. So I won't. I won't care. But I prefer a world where I get the standstill for free. It's the. That's. That's what I hope. I hope. But anyways. Okay, let's refresh this. And by the way, anyone hangs out the end of the show today, I have a crazy announcement to announce. Don't crazy. Maybe pushing it. It'll be interesting. Announcement. The slick Nick says, as a master luthier, I have an important question. I'm not impressed unless you're a master, master luthier, but I understand says you hate gravy. Do you like grits? Oh, my God, this show is off the rails. Thank you for your hard work. Okay, so first of all, I want to think this is thank you for the segue into telling everybody thank you for supporting the channel, buying the no gravy Please. This tone is pure shirt. And we sold 46 of these shirts. That is epic. I told Shawna, like, I was like, we could probably sell 60 shirts. That's crazy. Like, I was thinking, like, that's crazy. But seriously, I was thinking 20 shirts, maybe 10. I don't know. Right. We make about $7 a shirt, so you can understand it's not a huge windfall, but it's a nice chunk of change to get to the channel, you know? Right. And I get a cool gravy shirt because I'm getting a gravy shirt. No gravy shirt. I love the fact that a lot of you had to make the point that, like, I bought the shirt, but I. I like gravy. Like, okay, noted, noted. But anyways, so that's. Thank you. I just want to say thank you. And also, anybody wants to do one last. They're done next Friday. We have one more week. I told you two weeks on this shirt. And I don't plan to do it again. Not for any other reason than. I just don't think it would ever sell any much again. So anybody interested in one? Check it out. But back to your question, master luthier about Do I like grits? So I am a west coaster. I told you that. I have a strange thing that my mother is. Her parents were southern. Shawna's parents are southern, but they're Southern. And we all grew up on the west coast, which is. I was born in California, but I grew up in Arizona. Shauna basically grew up in Arizona and was pretty much born in Arizona. Pretty much. She was born somewhere else, but she moved here when she was, like, six months old. So that's Arizona. So to. To. To tell you this, I just. I just know the backlash is gonna get stupid. Not only you guys gonna be upset about gravy. Look, I understand. I'm not dumb, okay? I had. I walked into the gravy problem not really knowing what was going on. Grits. I'm totally aware of grits because I served in the United States military and in the army. I was stationed. My first. My basic training was in Fort Knox. So you understand, as a west coast kid, I'd never seen a grit in my life. I had never. I didn't know what grits were. I probably had a little bit of taste of the idea of them on the movie my cousin Vinnie, when they talked about grits, but I didn't know what a grit was. Didn't ask. Nowhere to Google back then. But I did join the army, and when I went to basic training. I was very. Made very aware in very short amount of time that there is. My approximation is somewhere between 1.6 to 1.7 million ways to eat grits is what I saw. What I saw was every private had a different way to eat grits. Some put pancake syrup in them, some put Tabasco sauce in them, some mixed them with their eggs, some made them, like, sweet. Some put butter in them. I didn't know what a grit was. I thought it was gross. Okay? It looked like slop to me, not being from anywhere that had grits. No one ever gave me grits growing up. I was afraid of them. I thought maybe. And I'm. I'm not exaggerating, but keep in mind it was the early 90s, so it's like, you know, what are you get to know things. I thought maybe it was maggots. I didn't know. I thought it was. It's called grits. I was like, I don't know. Maybe it's like, comes from maggots. Maybe people eat maggots. I'm like, I don't know what this is. I'm not asking, by the way. First of all, you can't talk in the chow hall. And I'm not going to ask some random guy I'm. I'm in basic training with, which is just survival at the finished, at the ultimate level, what the hell a grit is. But luckily for me, somebody saved my ass and said, do you grits? And I think we're polishing our boots. I said, no. And they go, oh, I had some yesterday. First time, they're really good. And I said, oh, what are they? And he goes, you know what Cream of Wheat is? I'm like, I eat Cream of Wheat all the time. He's like, it's like Cream of Wheat. That, by the way, probably offended some of you people who love grits. This is what I'm saying. I'm very aware that people love grits. This is what I'm trying to say. I don't have a taste for them, but I didn't really have a taste for a cream wheat. Cream of wheat was something that might again, we ate because it was in the. It could be put on a shelf in a pantry and slopped out and had some water to it kind of thing. So my answer to your grits is, yes, I have had grits. They're fine. I don't necessarily seek them out. I have tasted throughout my time in the service. I tried a different. About a dozen different Ways to eat grits and found no particular way that, like, you know, was like, oh, this is the way. But, yeah, I like it. Of course, grits are good. They're good. That's what I'm trying to say. They're good. We don't have to. We don't have to make a shirt. We don't have to divide the lines between us all. We're all fans of the grits. And if you're not fans of grits, I would keep it to yourself, because if you think people are passionate about gravy, you're gonna watch people flip their crap over grits. And it goes both ways. Some people hate grits with a passion too. Those people are very. They're a very small amount of people, and they probably should not talk either, because people who love grits love them. All right, Seth, we'll switch to Seth. Seth says. Hey, Happy Friday. I'm gassing for a Sir Modern. I had a Sir Modern. It was a good guitar as it's a huge investment. What is your opinion on high end Super Strats? Anderson, Tyler Kiesel? Sir. I. I had. I've owned two sir moderns. I sold them and got myself Ibanez AZs, which I like just as much, maybe slightly better, because I just like the az neck, the AZS. The only reason I got rid of my Ebenez AZ's is I kept buying ones. I didn't like the colors. Like, I bought the colors I could find. I always wanted the blue one. There was a blue Ibanez AZ Prestige, and I just could never find one, you know? And so I got a sunburst one and then I got like a. A surf green one. And I had all these ones, and I just didn't love those colors. And they're not cheap either. You know, for that kind of money, you're just like, man, I have a guitar, I don't even like the color. It's not that I. The color was bad. It's just not the color I wanted. So. And then. And then, you know, obviously stop making the procedure in that blue. So that I preferred the Prestige AZ over the Sir. And by the way, I think I like the premium AZ more than the Prestige, but whatever. The Tyler, I played some Tyler's. They're great. Like I said, they're some of the best playing guitars ever. I'm never probably going to own a Tyler. No, no. No particular reason. Just not on my list of things I want to get. I. I like my keisels, like the A2s. I got a Theos. I sold the Theos. I had a Theos in again. That's how I kind of evolved. I actually started at Sir Modern. I went through two of those. I wasn't jiving, got two or three. Ivanhaz wasn't jiving with the colors, but I did like the neck. And then I switched to this Kiesel Theos, which I like better than all of them, but didn't love that because of the fact that I actually like my keyzel a tube more. That's kind of where I just like the comfort of it and stuff. And I was like, okay. That's when. That's where I landed. The outlier in that. So, you know, is the guitar that I have not found the one to love yet, which is the Tom Anderson. I eventually wanted Tom Anderson. But my problem with Tom Anderson, and I just want to be very clear, my problem with Tom Anderson is the same problem. I have a Sir and really James Tyler, but. But mostly the sir and the Tom Anderson. The quality is fine. Obviously. They're amazing guitars. They're crazy expensive, and you don't get what you want. That's where I have trouble. That's why I haven't. You haven't seen one on the channel because I go on looking at line online and I see price tags that really, like, will choke you to death because they're just crazy expensive. We're talking five, $6,000 price points. Points used. You can find them for some as three. 3,000 maybe. You know, maybe sometimes you find that smoking deal for 2, 800 if you're lucky. But most time, 3 or $4,000, the price is enough to make you crazy. But the really thing is I'm like, oh, I'm not. I'm not really jiving that color. I'm not driving that one. That's where I found my love of Kiesel was kind of like the. Not so much. It's cheaper, but it's nice that it is cheaper, but it's kind of like, oh, I can order it exactly the way I want. I was like, oh, well, that's kind of what I want from sir and Tom Anderson. And what I remind everybody is you can do that. It's just really crazy expensive then. So that's all. It's holding me back. If you got the money, you know, hey, you know what the saying, if you got the money, honey, I got the time. If you got the money, buy a Sir, buy Tom Anderson. Just do it. Like I said, I've Kind of. I'm on the, I'm on the back side of the mountain now. I've, I've made it to the top. I've bought all the crazy expensive guitars. I'm not going to tell you that they're not great. I'm just going to tell you that at the top it got to the point where I'm like, this gets really crazy expensive and I just don't feel like I'm ga naturally. No, I don't want to go down any of the, like the, you know, the law, diminishing returns and they're not valuable. What it is is this. I just know what I love and what I tend to love sits in a different price bracket, a much less expensive price bracket. And I, I don't really have to like quantify it with like, oh, but it's just as good or anything. It's not about that. I just like it. When I play a guitar that I really, really like, it sends. Seems to always sit into a certain price point. And I'm fine with that. So, you know, because I, my problem is I'm always going to be anchored to the concept of this. I love Fender Strats, I just do. And I can buy a Fender Strat to me all day long for $1,000 that I absolutely love in the high end. American made. I find used ones all the time. For a thousand bucks. I have three American Strats. I have not paid over a thousand dollars for any one of them. I love them. I love them as much as that anything else I can find. So when I find a guitar that's 3, 4, 5 times 6 times 7 times the price, it's not that the guitar is not great. It's great. It's just like, I don't know, I'm just not feeling that love over that price point. That's where I landed. You have to get there on your own somehow too. But I can tell you the easy part. All the guitars you named are amazing. They are. But ultimately the Anderson, the Tyler, the keys on the sir, what really will affect you the most is the neck carve. Some people just don't like the Kiesel neck carve. Some people love the sir, some people don't like the Cernick carve, but they love the Tom Anderson. Me personally, I like the Tom Anderson one and I like some of the keys of ones and some of the other keys ones, not so much. Most of the keys though, I like just a couple of the really super thin ones. I'm not super huge on for me. Co Heat cast Andy says, ever tried an old Dane Electro food series pedals? Oh, of course, of course. At some point I own them all. I bought them from music around when they started popping out. That was the first time ever saw music around was mostly used and now it's mostly used in use. But they would buy new, some new stuff and you would go in and they had all those and you get the pastrami pedal and the, you know, and all the pedals were named after food. I thought they were great. And they were super cheap at the time. They were like mind blowingly cheap. You know, at the time you're just like, how do they make a pedal this. This affordable? So I owned a bunch of, you know, and then. But they were good. They're probably collectible now. Let's see, we have Bubbly juice says thanks for the. Your focus on the instrument and not only on the logo and the price tag of the headstock. Yeah, I mean I appreciate that and I try to come from that point. You know, somebody put a comment on a video the other day on one of the inexpensive videos and they're like, they said that, you know, inexpensive Chinese guitars don't do anything for them. I'm trying to quote them semi as accurate as I can. They said, look, they said inexpensive guitar, inexpensive Chinese made guitars don't do anything for them. And they go, do they really do anything for you, Phil? You know, kind of like, am I lying out there? And I'm like, well, the thing about the deep dive is not really so much. It means a lot of my opinion in there too. But it's an assessment from my experience as a tech. Not that that makes me authority of anything. It's just where the experience is coming from. But the reality is this, the guitars that I own are, are not a. They're not financially based. There's not like a. This guitar is expensive and therefore it's good. And this guitar is inexpensive, therefore it's bad. It's just I find things and I can tell you this, which is why I think vintage guitars are worth so much money. And it's not because I think they're great. What I mean, I don't think they're great. One, two. I don't think people who buy them, I'm talking about not talking about investors, I'm talking about the people that really are drawn to vintage guitars. I don't think it's when they say oh, that they make them so great and they don't make anything like this anymore. And I'm like, I don't really think. Think that's true. What I really think that they're. But I don't think they're lying, and I don't think they're wrong. What I think you're really buy. What you're buying. What you're buying into is a story. Look, I had the store for 13 years. I sold a lot of guitars to a lot of people. What I learned is a guitar with a story is a magical thing. It's a weird thing. It's. I don't know how to explain it. If you could have. When you come across a guitar with a cool story and it's different every time, you know, it could be that the company stopped making this because they ran out of this color or whatever. Whatever the story is, or this was owned by a famous person, or this was made. Then it's just. There's something emotional that connects the player to it in a different way than just, oh, wow, this neck feels really fast. Right? Or this is a really good deal. Why I tell you guys, look, it's important to save your money and keep your money in your pocket. It's important. But I tell you, if you focus on always getting the deal, you will flip guitars continually. Because what you'll find is if you buy a guitar for a deal, that's not enough to fall in love with it. The fact that it was affordable doesn't make it magical. What makes it magical? Actually, I actually. If I was gonna presume to think I actually know the answer to what makes a guitar magical, I would say that the answer is how many hours you play it. I don't mean a guitar that's magical. You'll play a lot of hours. I mean, if you can put in a crap ton of time on one guitar, it gets really intimately close to you. Which is why when I talk over the years, if you notice, like, since I started my channel, think of the. I have thousands of guitars. I've been through thousands of guitars on this channel. Thousands. You know, almost a decade on the. On the YouTube platform, cycling through guitars. I had a store cycling through guitars. But if you watch the very first video, the very first one I ever put out, the very first one you ever could see of me anywhere. Look on the back wall. Out of all those guitars, probably six or seven guitars in the wall. I think I have, like, all but one because. Because. Not because I bought them and they were magical, then it's because I already been playing them so many hours. The Mira. I played so many hours. The Copper Strat, I played so many hours, they just. You connect with them. The Kiesel Delos, my Copper Delos, I just kept playing it all the time. By the time Kiesel came to me and said, hey, why don't we make a model of this? I'm like, yeah. They're like, you're always playing it. I'm like, right? I'm always playing it because I just went to always play it because it was easy. I knew it'd be in tune and had two humbuckers, and it was just readily easily available to grab and play. And then next thing I know, it's like, I have a thousand hours on this guitar, and I know it. Like, I can play it in the dark. I can play it. You know, I can play it anywhere. And I just know where the bridge is. I know. I know where the 12th fret is just from. From a movement, not looking, just because I just know it. And then that doesn't mean it's the only guitar I want to play, because, I mean, there's no fun in that. But you can really connect to an instrument by just putting lots of time into it. And. And that's what I think sometimes makes guitars more magical than what you can just buy magic. But. But the truth is, we try to buy the magic, too, but the truth is, I think when you put all that time into it and bubble juice, yeah, I try not to focus on the price tag and the. And the headstock logos, but I also try to acknowledge those are things. Those are also things. I am a Fender freak. I am a Gibson freak. You know, look, I. Here I am going. Let's be very clear. Let's put it in perspective here. I am telling you a story earlier today about how I bought a Nunobin Court Paduk guitar for this crazy expensive price. And there's this issue with it, and I love it still, and I want to keep it. That is because it's a Nuno guitar and because I idolized Nuno and that guitar. And there's a. There's decades and decades of me loving that artist and that guitar and wanting this situation in this guitar. If you change that logo in the way that that guitar looks, if you made that guitar just a Keisel, if you made that guitar Ace, or if you made the guitar a Animus, if you made the guitar something else, I'd immediately go, I'm not keeping this. This is going back. This is a zone. This is unreal. You know, this is Unacceptable. Because again, there's other things that are tangible. So, yeah, I. I think. Thank you for acknowledging that. I don't focus on the price tags and the headstocks, but I do acknowledge them, and I think that's important to the story too. Randy Cook says, hey, I'm really digging the Sire T7 that I have. I have a lot of guitar for not a lot of money. I love the sires. So, you know, this Friday. No, this Friday. This Sunday is the Coffee with Phil hang, which is the premium subscribers hang out with. And sometimes we talk about some subjects, sometimes we talk about nonsense or I talk about nonsense, sometimes we talk about important stuff. This Sunday is we're gonna buy some guitars. I'm hoping a sire gets in the list. I don't know. We're gonna be picking some guitars to you on the channel. As you guys know, some companies send guitars for sponsored videos. Some guitars, you know, I just buy because I bought them personally. But most of it, it's just. Like I said, it's stuff. I think it might be interesting to you guys. And from this, obviously from the show each week, I have a sense of what it is that you guys are generally interested in. I try to grab those. So trust me, I'm very aware that sire's been brought up a lot lately. So they're all guitar on my radar. Mr. S says, hey, taking zoom lessons with an Aussie teacher. His newbie students are artist guitars, and they are terrific. So unlike the crappy guitars we start on. Yeah, well, that's. That's the. The biggest crazy thing ever is there's everyone. Everyone on the Internet, the guitar playing communities on the Internet, which are all segregated all over the place. But as a whole, we get half of it right and half of it wrong. We obviously admit that all new guitars are better than what you started with 30, 40 years ago, much less 50 years ago, which was really horrible, I'm sure. But then don't acknowledge the next part, which is really what it is. Is there. There are. There are. There is a world. Let's take a. A typical, affordable, good guitar now. A $300 guitar that's made well and it plays great and it has very little issues, and it's a very nice instrument. The bar to that has been set so high that it's funny. We all go, wow. We love to start on that. But the reality is, is that when the what. When we think about when you idolize all the great amps we idolize now, and all the great guitars, we idolize now and all the boutique great pedals we idolize now, it's because there was a time, for a long time, okay, there was crap. I mean literally just crap pedals. Sounds like farts. Amp isn't loud enough to play at a gig and sounds horrible. And a guitar that won't stay in tune, that was an, A thing that we paid for. That's what we got and then yearned for. The guitar that would stay in tune, the, the pedal that would actually sound good, like our heroes sounded like on albums. And an amp that was actually loud enough to get over the drummer clearly and sound great, you know, in most situations. And then over time the bar was raised to a point where that's where it is now. All the amps sound good. Pretty much all the. And when I say pretty much, I love it. If you haven't done. So I just done some. In the last week I've done this. Go to an old music store, go into a music store, like maybe the guitar center, wherever you can grab all those small amps, those old amps, grab the old amps, plug into them. Most of them not great, most of them really bad, okay? I'm talking about amps that you adored. Plug into them, hear them. They weren't that great. A lot of them weren't. The tube amps weren't great. I'm not Talking about the 65 Deluxe in the market. I'm talking about all the stuff that, all the rando brands, all the random, you know, models of even the brand new ones with the offshoot models that, you know, there's a lot of bad sounding product for a long time and then almost like if somebody hit a light switch, it's not really that easy. It took, you know, decades. Things just got really good. Really good. Try to now try and look at guitars in the affordable price, student grade amplifiers, in this smaller amplifiers, you know, just mid sized amplifiers and pedals. And you can find great sounding stuff, stuff that would blow away, stuff that you got 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and that's the bass now. And so now we still, we're. But we still, we acknowledge that as a guitar community. But then we don't acknowledge that really the expensive stuff, that's the, that it doesn't, it's not needed like it was before. It's not like, oh man, if I could get out of this Squire Strat and into an American Strat, oh my God, this is amazing. I'll stay in tune. Like, no, no, no. Now it's just about owning that 2% better sounding, 1% better playing instrument with 50% more credibility to it. And of course, as we get older as players, and I don't care who you are, it's like, it's like I saw a YouTuber once, a couple was like two years ago, and they were making fun of YouTubers having guitars on their walls behind them, like, oh, these collectors. And I'm like, dude, have you seen any interviews with any rock stars? That's what their rooms look like too. Steve I's room looks like this on it. Steroids. Every guitar player, not every, the majority guitar players, even the real ones that can really play and that really write songs and really have Grammys and all that stuff, they're collectors too. That's what happens. You become passionate about the instrument. You're passionate about music. It's like, why you have a huge album collection is why you have a huge guitar collection. You're like, I. I just. You love it so much. You want a lot of it. But there is a point and I, and I feel like sometimes I'm the only one admitting it. I'm not saying I'm never gonna tell you, like, oh, yeah, this, you know, E art guitar or this, you know, this, you know, Firefly, whatever. Oh, man, it's nowhere close to a Gibson. And I'm never going to tell you, like, oh, it's just as good as a custom shop Gibson Les Paul. I'm not going to say that. I'm just going to say like, this guitar is really good. This is good enough. And if you want to Gibson Les Paul, a real one, and you make the money and you, you're happy, you should do it because it's a beautiful instrument and it's a nice thing to own, man. It's like, it's a collector's piece and it's beautiful and it's going to be better, but it is not the jump in quality that we had 20 years ago, 30 years ago. It's just not anymore, right? It's like I said, we went from crap to maybe good to great. Now we go good, right? To slightly better. So I don't know. That's just my opinion. But that opinion is not based on like, just me pontificating here. It's based on just all of my Deep Diver video reviews and looking at the stuff I'm to the point now where. And I like it because it makes it easier for videos. I don't think you guys realize on a side note, and I just want to be clear, you know, I'VE done dozens now of deep dives. I'm doing two right now, as we speak, of guitars that have been sent to me before they're coming out, and I have no information on these guitars. And I have to go through and discover all the information. Now, I know what you're thinking, like, well, well, why do you have to do it? Well, because when they usually send them to other channels, the other channels just go, hey, man, this just came out. Check it out. Looks like, oh, good. You know, and they got, like, five things that they know about it, right? Because that's what the marketing people send you, is the cheat sheet, right? But on my videos, you guys want to know everything. You want to know the specs on the fret, the specs on the pickups. You want all the specs. And if they don't tell me that. But to release the video, I have to, like, research and figure it out through diagnostics. So what I'm telling you is, as someone who's diagnosed all these guitars over the years, what I'm starting to learn is. Are not starting to learn. What I've learned over the last few years is cheap ones are good, Expensive ones are slightly better. That's where the market is today. But people keep judging equipment with ideology. They have from a decade or two decades ago. They're like, oh, well, I see it all the time, all the time. And I'm not. And I'm not saying anyone can't be right in that one instance. What I'm saying is. And what I mean by that is people say it all the time, like, I got one of two guitars and it was crap. And I'm like, yeah, you got one guitar and decided it was crap. Maybe you got two. Okay, maybe that's a little bit more substantial. I'm telling you, I've gone through thousands of guitars over thousands of guitars. Here's what I can tell you. In fact, I don't know how interesting a video is this. I can almost tell you if you name a brand, I can tell you what they always f up. I was about to curse. I just know it. I know exactly what to go to now. I don't care who the brand is. Kiesel. I know exactly what Kiesel does wrong. Prs, I know exactly what they do wrong. Firefly, I know exactly what he does wrong. After you get a sense of what companies focus on and don't focus on in their build, right? And no one makes 100 perfect guitar. That would be insane. It just doesn't make it's at any price point, like I said, you just can't make perfect. It's. I think that's the goal is to try, but you can't do it right. It's just silly. But you get a sense of it. You get a sense of, like, I know what Schecter messes up. I know what everybody kind of messes up a little bit. And. And you just get a sense of what they focus on and who they all of a sudden paid attention to. So it's really interesting. You can see who. Who's not so much copying each other, but who they're paying attention to. Right now you're like, oh, I only saw this for a while on this brand, but now I'm seeing on these two brands. Interesting that they're shifting. So that's just my take on that situation. But, you know, for. For whatever. Whatever that helps. But I. I don't think the. I think now crappy guitars are becoming a ra. I mean, they're out there. Don't get me wrong. Some people, you know, are making cheap stuff, but it's becoming a rarity. It's just like cheap pedals and cheap amps. They're just getting so good. So I don't know. All right, let's. Let's button up this show, and we're gonna talk about Randy. Nope. Well, we did. We do Randy or we did Randy. We're gonna do. This is the last super chat. This is Clan of House Cats says, worth buying a rare guitar to preserve its existence. I mean, if it matters to you, I have. I have guitars that I can't justify owning anymore because I don't really don't play them. But I know I'll never come across them very readily anymore. So I'm. I'm a little more apprehensive about getting rid of them. But I can tell you in my. My thinking process, if a guitar does not get played, you know, I can't say daily. That's just dumb. But if I don't find a use for guitar, if I don't consistently use it, just like an amplifier, it's gotta go. It's. It's got to. I got to find use for this stuff. It's. You know, and so, I mean, it's up to you. Let me grab. Oh, I have a question. I keep missing every week, and I tell myself every week, I'm gonna get it today. I'm gonna get it. Let me just do. Let me do one from one last one from Amanda because she sent me A bunch. And I didn't get to a lot of them today. I apologize. Okay, let's try this one. Dale. Dale Gribble says, hey, Phil, I've been selling off guitars because I don't have time to play them all. The more I sell, the more attached I become to them. And when they sell, why is that? I am making mistakes selling. I'm going through the same thing. I have to downsize as always. And some of the stuff is easy because it's just company sent a bunch of guitars and, and amps and stuff. And over time, this stuff just skunks up. You know, there was a time again, I, I used to play this game of, you know, with the. As a YouTube channel. Like, though a company sent this and I should keep it for a period of time and therefore, you know, help promote it over and over again because they were nice enough to send it out to, to make content. But now I'm almost in the mood now where I'm like, as soon as we do the content, like, I'm like, it's better off just going to somebody that can use it. The problem is that I want to increase the amount of videos I'm making. And I didn't think about that in the long term of like, oh, if I increase the amount of videos, I'm increasing the amount of gear that's going to be sticking around. And you can only have this. I mean, it's occupying with every room in your house. It gets to the point where it gets exhausting. And I don't want it to ever be that way. I don't want it to ever be a negative experience. But anyways, on a personal note, on the personal collection, I've been selling off a lot of personal guitars. And like, you same thing. I'm like, I don't use them, I get rid of them. And then I go to sell it. And right when I'm. Usually for me, it's like, I'm always making sure it's set up right and plays right before I ship it out. And then I'm like, oh, what am I doing? This is so great. But, you know, I don't think it's. You should keep your collection if you're, you know, if, if it's, if it's not making you happy, it's got to go. It's. That's where it comes from. For me, guitars make me joyful, but sometimes a pile of things that I have to deal with daily is not making me joyful, if that helps. And then I'LL do this out of order. So we'll end on another note. I'll segue into this. I came up with this idea. I pitched it to Sweetwater. They like the idea, so we're gonna do it. So the month of July, I'm giving you guys a heads up. Since you're at the end of the show, I'm giving you guys a heads up right now in the month of July, which will be the four episodes, the, the four podcast episodes in July, which are the fourth, the 11th, the 18th and the 25th. So all the Fridays I am going to be listing my personal guitars on the Gear exchange on Sweetwater. So you can imagine what this is about. Sweetwater really wants to promote Gear Exchange, which is their reverb. And, and they said, hey, are you interested in doing a video? They had me try it a few years ago. If you guys watch that video. I documented what it was like to interact on Gear Exchange and at the time it was okay. I put an okay out review. I didn't say it was great and I didn't say it was bad. They said, hey, would you actually be interested in doing another video? And I said, no, I'm not interested in doing a video, but I do have an idea that might help everyone and I like win, win, win scenarios. So here's what I said. I said, how about this? Why don't I come up with a bunch of guitars that I think are cool that I'd to like to sell and I'll list them on the Gear exchange and we'll and, and talk to you guys about them. Hey, they're available there on the gear exchange. And those you want to buy them from me, you can buy them from me. And I'll, you know, and then we'll discuss weekly the experiences I'm having. Right. You know, and experience, you know, and stuff like that. So basically that's a very short, long way to tell you that I'm selling a bunch of guitars. What I will tell you is, is that a lot of guitars I'm selling are hanging on behind me right now. And these aren't all of them. I'm probably going to try to do two a week, so eight guitars for the month. And I'm trying to variate the pricing because some of them could, you know, are going to be crazy expensive, thousands of dollars. But I'm trying to make some like a couple hundred bucks. That makes sense all in the thing. And, and also I, I pitched the, in the idea to pitch the Sweetwater is so so let me tell you what's so, so let me tell you what Sweetwater is giving me for doing this. They gave me somewhere between 60 to 100 million dollars. I'm just kidding. No, they're gonna cover my expenses. So boxes, bubble wrap, all that stuff. Because I'm also going to be sharing here and on videos and on Instagram and on my second channel, boxing the, you know what? I do double boxing all this stuff. Some of this stuff. It's just, again, it's just you're going to see me, you're going to see through the experience of next month. Me selling a bunch of guitars and what you can learn from that, maybe, I don't know. Obviously, the. What I get out of it, I, I need to sell off a bunch of guitars and I'm like, and I keep pushing it back is stuff I can't get to. And of course, for some reason, if you make things work, then you find time for it. So, like make it part of your job. You're like, oh, got a time for a job? So we're doing that. So, like, I haven't fully decided. I might even have you guys like ask, ask you guys on the show is like, should I really get rid of this prs over here or this Ibanez or this side? You know, I'm pointing at random things. So stuff like that. And so I just want you guys to give a heads up. So I will give you guys all that information starting next week. Starting next week, you guys all get on the information on the last question. This is the one that I kept. I, I feel bad. I don't even have the email or the, the early riser question that they posted, so I don't know your name anymore. I apologize to you. You're probably a patron, which makes it even worse. But it kept coming up and for some reason I just, you know, as Amanda can tell you, she can send me 400 you guys questions and she's lucky if I can grab one or two. My attention is. I'm pretty, pretty lost. The question somebody asked me was, what strap locks do I use? And they were like, I know you use the DiMarcios, but do you use any others? And I'm really curious and, and actually do. So I want to share with you the strap locks I use. These are the ones I have. And, and this is why it's good, because these are the ones I've used forever and ever and ever and ever. And this isn't about the best and this isn't I'm saying anything else is not great. It's kind of like the string swings, hangers. It's just what I've used. It's what I decided to use. It's what I stick with because my. I care about my guitars and I don't want them falling off the walls, and I don't want them falling off my strap. So I use DiMaggio clip lock straps. As I've told this story before, I just briefly tell you guys again, these are the clip lock straps. So if you see like that prs see the strap hanging off that, that goes to this unit. These are called DiMarzio Clip Lock. This one's in the Steve I flower, which is the one I use the most because I like it, but I have all the colors. I've told you this story that in 91, I bought one of these and put on my guitar. And what I learned is once you stick these on your guitar, that's all that will go on your guitar is the DiMarzio strap lock. So I have them on most my guitars. John Mayer uses them now. I think it's because of me. Just kidding. But he is using him now. Larry DeMarcio goes, yeah, John Mayer's user now. And I go, because of me. He's like, no, I'm always talking about him. You sure John Mayer is not watching the podcast? He's like, no. Okay, so this is what I use. I would say 50, 60% of my guitars have them. Not all my guitars. No particular reason. There's no rhyme or reason. Sometimes I think it's because I just don't maybe want. Want something dangling off the, you know, guitar. When I don't use those, I use the Dunlop strap locks. This is a strap look. This is also DiMargio strap that looks like the other one, but it's the regular leather end. And I have Dunlop Schaller makes some too. But I've had issues with Schaller personally throughout the years with the quality going up and down. And there's fake Schallers and real showers and there's Schaller like ones. And you know what? It was nothing bad to say about them, per se. I just bought some Dunlops. The Dunlop ones. I want to share this to you so you guys know. Because I like sharing this stuff with you because, you know, look, I always tell you guys, some of you are very distrusting of YouTubers. I totally think you should be, which is why I don't mind having to, like, always show you guys what I do stuff I'm like, I get it. I don't trust half the crap I see on YouTube either. Stop it. Just let me in my account. Try this. See, just when I thought the show was going to end on time. And I'm used to pass. Come on, let me in my account. I should have logged in this week. I just, you know, like I said, I keep forgetting this question. Okay, so I. I want to get into my Sweetwater account and I want to go because I want to show you this because I actually. My order history. How I buy the Dunlop strap locks is important. I just recently bought some. Apparently not so recently because I'm going back a little deep on these. Huh? It's not in my history. Hold on. I'll find them. Because I buy them about once a year, I buy more. So if they're not my recent history, they're going to be further back in my purchasing history of Sweetwater. Man, Sweetwater. I buy a lot of crap from you. Wow. This is ridiculous. Okay, this one, I bought some straps. Oh, look. Oh, look at. Okay, look. Okay, so I'll share this with you. This was in 2022, but I have bought them as recent as this year. So here we go, 2022. Here's my purchase order. You can see what I bought. It's funny. I bought this strap, but I have a couple of these. But I'm gonna be showing you that strap in a second. And I bought some Temple audio blocks. And this is what I do. I buy these. Buy only a couple of. Oh, look. Buy it again. Will it take me to the actual product? Okay, so I don't buy. These are $19 a set. I just wanna let you know, I buy like I own. Like, I don't know, maybe. Well, I think I have about four guitar straps, So I have four of these. Okay, so this is the important part. So go back to the web. So I bought four sets of this. The. The strap retainer system. So this is the mechanism that attaches to the strap and the. Oh, wrong strap. The mechanism. I'll get to the strap in a second, too. This is the mechanism that attaches to the strap, right? And. And then they have the. The unit that goes on the guitar itself. And they don't seem to have an isolated picture of that. Oh, here it is. So if we go here, this is the end pin that goes on the strap. And if you notice, it's set up to where you can actually put a regular strap on it, which is why I like this one. And then if you look After I buy, I bought about four of those. Let me go back. Then I just buy these which are just the ends. So you can see this half the price. So I buy tons of these and I can put on guitars. So if you look at my guitars, if you see a dimargio strap hanging, it's dimargio. That's dimargio. But like that guitar has the Dunlop inpin on it. Okay. Or if you see another guitar, like that guitar has a dimargio in pin on it. Okay. And then I just have a couple of them attach the straps and that way they universally lock on that. And then what I like is I have a couple of these straps. So this is my third strap that I use. This is the d' Addario strap that if I go back, I want to go. Since I obviously looking at what I just purchased, I can show it to you. It's $25. I own obviously this gray one. Because this is the gray one. Whoops. Okay, obviously I have this gray one but I. And this is obviously for when I bought it in 2022. But I also have a black one I think and another color one. And this has a built in locking system in it. And I will use that beautiful keisel guitar to show you guys. So this has a plastic thing on it and you just. And it locks. I don't know if you saw that. So let me go to the brighter camera. Woo. Bright camera and I'll show you one more time. So here, this is how it looks, right? It just has you push in and then it locks and then you lift up and unlock it. So it's a plastic system. I do not trust plastic as much. Even though I use my dimargio strap locks that are plastic, I just don't trust the plastic as much. So I don't try to use these all the time. This is what I have, you know, in case I'm like if I'm going to a friend's house, I'll bring the strap because I can use this strap with all their guitars because they usually have regular strap ends. This will also work with all my Dunlop ones. So I would say those are the three strap lock systems I use. That's what I use. So mostly the DiMarjio clip locks. And then when I don't use clip locks, I use the Dunlop strap button and then I'll sometimes use that D'Daria one. And that's what I use for strap locks. So that's. That's my answer. Okay. So that's the Show. We did it. You made it. You all made it. Congratulations. I don't you win a prize. Anyways, I want to thank all of you for hanging out on the show, as always. And we have some exciting deep dives. I'd probably say this all the time. I feel like, you know, is this what people are supposed to do? It's like, sell their stuff. Like, I have some exciting deep dives for you, but I actually do. I have an exciting deep. I have a deep dive. Let me just tell you the deep dive title. And this is not clickbait. I got a clickbait title. That's not clickbait. Ready? You ready for this title for next week? Okay. It's called oh, and it's not the N4, so don't think that's it. It says this expensive guitar has a huge design flaw, not a defect. I'm not talking about defect. There's a. I'm gonna tease it. Let's tease it. This week, there's a video of a guitar that's very expensive. So a lot of you are like, who cares? I'm not gonna buy that. But it has a serious design flaw. And I don't know if the company knows yet, but they're finding out the hard way because I figured it out, what the design flaw is, and I'm gonna share it with you because it's problematic. Okay, on that note, now I'm gonna let you go. And so if you guys want to join me on the patron side, remember, you can join Patreon for free. And if it's free, you get to see previews of the videos, or not previews, but you get to notify when the videos come out. And I do a little bit extra, extra social media on there. It's not a lot don't get. You won't be blown away by it, but at least you're part of the patron community, and I appreciate that. For $5, you get the bonus podcast, you get the ad free podcast. And for $10, you get that all of the things I just said. Plus you get the weekly clinics, which, by the way, somebody told me, and I told. I just told my wife, I wouldn't say this, but I'm gonna say it anyways. She knows I'm. She knew I was gonna snap. Some guy told me, I feel so bad. Good for you for making me feel bad. He told me my clinics were outrageously priced. He's like $10 a month. I do a one to two hour clinic every week, 50 weeks a year. So it's obviously not every week, but technically every week for $10. I was like, that's $2.16 a clinic for two hours instruction. I was like, all right, fine. Anyways, so two hours, $2.16 a clinic. You can join for either the year and save the 10%, or you can join monthly and. Or do none of the above. I don't know. I'm just telling you. What? Just telling you the stuff. I find that every time I mention it, we get somebody new. And that's why I'm doing it, because it seems to be. It seems to work. So that's why I'm doing it. On that. I'm going to let you guys go. Thank you guys for the podcast and I'll see you next week. If you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget you can subscribe for free and help this channel or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patreon for live clinics where you can ask questions single week.