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The know youw gear podcast. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 451. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. Let's get into some early questions and topics because we have some. Some. We have some. Let's start with. I'll start with an easy one. This is from Trace Roberts, who says. Hey Phil, what are my thoughts on split speaker cabinets? I'm looking at the Bogner 212. I knew it was going to be a Bogner because I think bogner is like the most common for doing this. So it makes sense. The Helios with the vintage 30 and the creamback, he's saying creamback with a C, not the G, not a greenback, but creamback. I'm looking to use this with my 3534 ecstasy 50 watt head. That's a great amp, by the way. Thanks for everything you do and bringing this amazing community together. Most of my cabinets, except for one, so I guess all my cabinets that are 212s except for one are what I would call mixed. I always called it mixed speaker cabinets. You were calling it. What are your thoughts on split speaker cabinets? I'm sure the word split makes sense. Is that what they call them? I always just call them mixed. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, it's when you don't use two uniformly the same speaker. So like in his case, he's using a vintage 30 and a creamback in the Bogner. I'm. That's the combo I use a lot. Michael Nielsen uses in his 412 vintage 30s at the bottom and greenbacks at the top. And there's two reasons you want to do that. Usually the vintage 30s have more low end in my experience. So I'm sure that's what he's feeling is going to feel the low end. Since you can't hear it, you're not going to hear anything above the first two speakers that are pointing at your face. So he's going to hear the green backs. But to fill the V30s is why I believe he does that. You'd have to ask him exactly why he does it, but that's my guess. Another, there's multiple reasons why you do this. Okay, so you know, the, the split speaker cabinets are mixed speaker cabinets. One, it helps with exactly that. Maybe you like the low end frequency of one speaker, but the clarity of another. So they balance out and you get a little bit more, you know, know punch out of the cabinet. But you're also getting the clarity Another reason is, like back to Michael Nielsen. He'll tend to mic up the V30s and not the. I'm sorry, he mics up the greenbacks and not the V30s. At least that's what I think he told me. Yeah, somebody says, Pete Thorns 4:12 like that. It's real common now to do that. There's a ton of benefits. One benefit is like said, think about this. If you have a cream back and a V30 in a cabinet, you can mic each one up and, you know, kind of get a different sound or just only mic one of the speakers, even though the other speakers there, if you're only micing the one speaker, maybe you like this, the mic sound of a creamback, but you like the throatiness or the power of a V30. That could be a reason. Another crazy thing that happens with these speakers is, first of all, they have to be the correct ohms. So you can't mix, match the ohms, or at least I was told you're not supposed to, but you can mix, match the wattages and something that's weird to me, and some of you guys will find this interesting that if you took, let's say a greenback, which is a 25 watt speaker, and you used a V30, which is 75 watt speaker, both speakers will now be capped at 25 watts, which is supposed to also change, in theory, the V30 sound. So for instance, in Michael Nielsen's cabinet, technically you would not use that math like two 75 watt speakers or which is a, you know, which is 150 and then the 225. So you. 200 watts, you wouldn't say his cabinet is 2200 watts, you would say his cabinets 100 watts. That's what I've always been told by amp builders to bank on. Don't, don't try to, don't assume that that works because they're. Although I. I don't know if that's specifically in the order that they're wired, but I think it just, it holds true for anything. And that's another reason I've been told that when you mix like a greenback with a V30, sometimes that V30, the vintage just has a slightly different sound because of the fact that it's restricted. It can't have its full power rating because it's capped at the 25. But anyways, I love the idea. I've been doing it like everybody else. I lean towards creambacks. I've always loved V30s, but I kind of switched to creambacks about three or four years ago. And I find them, you know, more and more. But I'm a Celestian guy. I have green backs, I have red backs, cream backs, and V 30s is most of selections I use. I mix and match them all, all kinds of ways. And I think that's why I fell in love with 112s because I'll use a lot of 112s in the situation where I run two 112 identical shaped Friedman cabinets, and I'll have one with a red back in it and one with a cream back or one with a V30 and one with a cream back or one with a greenback and one with a V30. And I can mix, you know, salt to taste that way, but. But I like that a lot. Lesbury says Texas heat is that Imminence? Yeah, Texas heat is imminent. So Imminence are great speakers too. I do have some imminent speakers. So, you know, I have. I have some Jensens, I have some Eminence. I like all the speakers, but, you know, if I was only getting one, I'm gonna stick with a cream back. I just find that it's does the most diverse sound. And the reason I used to like V30s more than Creambacks was I like the thump that V30s gave me. And I was able to find the Friedman cabinet. The open back 112s give me a little bit of a thump. When I mean thump. I mean, when I hit the note on the guitar, I like to feel a little bit of that, you know, at first, you know, like a bass, almost. Like I want to feel a little bit. Not so much the wind flapping against my leg because the speaker's so loud, but. But just a little bit of that push. You know, I feel like a little like the car's, you know, accelerating right away kind of feeling. And I find that the cream backs give me the clarity, but they, in those cabinets, they still give me a little bit of that push. And that's where I found the compromise for myself. So I guess that's my way of saying, you should buy that cabinet. I like the Bogner cabinets a lot. That's a cabinet that I. The 212 Bogner was definitely on my wish list for a long, long time as a cabinet. Okay, so let's go to the next topic. Question. This one came from one of the moderators, came early, and I thought it was a cool question. I asked him if he wouldn't mind if I read it on the show. It says, hey, Phil, I need some Advice. I live in a retirement community surrounded retire by retirement communities. Okay, that makes sense. In a 55 plus community. I see guys bringing guitars to guitar center to get strings put on and I'm thinking about starting a guitar restringing setup at home business. Part time appointment only. No tech work, in other words. I understand what you're saying. Just basic setups, adjustments and of course restrings. Just keeping it basic. Nothing wrong with that. It's the bread and butter of most tech work anyways. It says just strings and setups. Polish and polish the frets, condition the fretboard, clean up and make it nice and shiny. What would you charge for that? I don't want to be expensive nor waste my time. So I would obviously I would look at Guitar Center's pricing. If that's where they're going, that's who you're going to compete against. So you, you know, and you would expect, I would expect as a consumer that if someone's doing it in my community, they're going to be less than the legitimate, you know, business. The guitar Center. Guitar center is charging about 20 to $25 for a restring is what I understand. Usually you add for 12 strings. You add for Floyd Roses because again, you think of it like time, right? So restringer guitar, classical would be another one where you would upcharge for that. So you would probably want to set a base price for set for restrings, let's say $20. I don't know if that's the fair rate right now. You have to do a little research. We were charging 25 towards the end and that was seven years ago. And no one even flinched at those prices. So I would imagine it's moved since then. But who knows? Anyways, 20, 25 bucks and then you need to come up with a like for 12 string for classical and for Floyd Rose, maybe add a $10 surcharge or a $5 surcharge because it's going to add time, you know, to doing those. So that's what I would charge for that. And then setups, same thing. Try to look. I would imagine their setups are between 50 to $85. Most setups now are running between 50 to $100, depending on your area. Some people still tell me they pay $40 for setups. Every once in a while somebody's gonna shout out I pay $20 for a setup. It's trust me, you're not in a major market and that's not a legitimate business at that point. But. And no matter what anybody says repricing, everyone always has the same response. What if I say it's $10 for a setup? People is gonna. Somebody's gonna say it's ridiculous. But I can tell you that I would. I would think that you want to put, you know, just put some time. What's great about that is you can get Guitar Center's online prizes. I wouldn't go off Sweetwater's prices. That's just because their prices are really, really high. And I just don't think most people are going to compete. Consider that a, you know, comparable pricing. And. But I would definitely use Guitar center because that's who you're trying to go against. So that's what you would do is just as a business, right? You want to scoop some people who want to save a little money and not go to Guitar Center. So you can save a little bit of money and you can make a little side hustle. And so you set your prices accordingly. And of course, you're going to have to put in, like, bring your own strings. My advice for strings is whatever your brand of choice is, if it's Ernie Barr, Daddario or whatever, I would start buying in bulk. You don't have to get crazy with 20 sets or anything like that. But definitely buy in the, you know, when they're on sale, always have at least, you know, five, ten sets of nines and tens there. Because you're going to find a lot of guys are. Players are just going to say, you're like, hey, you bring your own strings. And they go, okay. And they won't. And then you're also going to find that they don't even know what strings they want. So you just want to be able to go, hey, I have D' Addario 10s or 9s. And then you buy them in bulk, so that way you can charge them, you know, the retail for them. You go, hey, they're 5.99 a set or $6.99 a set. And, you know, and you pay $3.99 a set. It's not going to be a windfall of cash, but at least it. It covers the time of sitting on that product. And then make sure that you have some kind of formal way of invoicing them with Venmo and all those ways, that's how you're gonna get paid. But of course, you said a retirement community, it might all be cash. You know, that's one of the beautiful thing about people over 50. They have still have wallets with money in them. Like those Neanderthals walking around with cash they've had in there since 2019 trying to give to somebody. And half the place is like, we don't touch cash anymore. So you might be able to do a cash business, which will be nice. That would be ideal, I would imagine. But definitely want to get some kind of paperwork. So you know that I find that you, especially when you're on a startup business, you want to be able to hand somebody something that says I, you, you, I have your guitar. Here's a piece of paper, right? People get really nervous when it's like, I'll come back tomorrow, okay? And you're like, yeah, okay, I'll still be here. Assume. But. But yeah, that's how I would do it. Keep it simple. And like we talked about last week, always have a menu. You don't have to post it anywhere, but have a menu of things you do so that when they understand. This is another thing we didn't cover last week, not only because you don't want to get into those things, but you definitely want people to understand that if something happens like in the restring process or setup process, you discover a bigger problem. You want them to understand that you're not doing those bigger problems that would then have to go to somebody else and then you can figure out your best way to do instead stuff. And then when I started out, I would just not charge people. I'd say, hey, look, I found the issue. I don't suggest you set this up. You need this addressed. It needs to go to a different tech. And then it's always a great idea to have a tech to refer to. That's what I did for, for when I first started out. I'd always have a step up tech that I can take to. And then as a service, it's sometimes polite to say, hey, look, it needs to go to this tech. Or you know, for their extra service, I'll take it to them if you want. And then, you know, and you can still pick it up from me. I'll just deal with it for you. And then, and then you, you know, and then maybe you can, you know, figure that out. It's just. But it's up to you. It depends on what kind of a headache you want. It sounds to me like you want to keep the headaches to the minimum. So I would keep everything very minimum. Probably focus on restrings. Restrings are. I think I've told this story before. You know, I had no idea about restrings when I opened A music store. I was so lost. What I mean by that is I didn't think that was a thing. When we opened the store, I made a deal with a company called Vinci Strings. I believe Vinci was owned by US Music, which was Washburn and Eden and Randall, and Vinci Strings made me this deal. I bought 100 sets of strings in bulk, and then we had them in tubes, long tubes, so I'd have a hundred sets of strings, and we paid back. Then it could have been more than $2. $2 is rounding up. Because, you know, inflation messes with your head. And you think back and you're like, I used to pay a nickel, but I think I paid a dollar a set. I think I remember that six. All six strings would be a dollar. There was no packaging, but that's why we had tubes that sealed them, that kept them. And we had a deal, which was for $2, you can get a set of Vinci strings and you could come in the store and use our. We had a cart and restring your guitar for free, or we would restring your guitar for free, and you could pay for $2. Right? And I thought, you know, that was a great service. And what we found was everyone always had us do it. No one did it themselves, and very few people did it. And I don't know why. And then that went on for a while, and it just wasn't a thing. And then the weirdest thing happened. As time went on and the Internet got bigger. The bigger the Internet got, the more people came into the store for restrings, and it just started choking us. And so I one day came up with this idea I thought was smart and was not. I said, why don't we charge $20 for a restring? Or we point for free. And that's how we would say it to you. You'd walk in the store and you're like, hey, I need a restring. And then, great, it's $20 for the rest the strings, or we point for free. In other words, I'll restring a one of your strings for you in front of you, show you how to do it, and then we'll stand there and help you do it. You know, you'll do it, but we'll. If you have questions, you get nervous. Well, you know, right. For absolutely free. I bet you 1 out of 50 would do it for free. The rest would just go, I'll pay you. I. I purposely put the price to discourage people from paying us. And yet they all did. And then we would get. We would Do. I'd have to ask Shauna now. She probably has a better. I never did the restrings. So, you know, I would do the tech work and then Shauna and Nathan or Warren or Chuck or Ralph would do the restrings. And I mean, they would do them multiples every day. Was a. It was a funny business. And I remember this story. I'll never forget it. I. I had a fold up bike that I would keep in my. In my trunk and a couple of spokes broke and I didn't know how to fix them because, you know, I wasn't savvy that way. And I took it to the bike shop and they said, I think I can't. I'm doing off memory guys. So I think they said it was like $9 a spoke, or maybe it was $2 a spoke. Whatever it was, it was a service, right? They were like, oh, it's this much a spoke. And I go, okay, no problem, and they'll fix them. And they fixed them while I waited. And I was talking to the owner of the bike shop and I just casually mentioned to him, I said, oh, I own the music store down the road. And. And he's like, oh, yeah, I know that store. And I said, yeah. And he goes, hey, I'm sorry I have to charge you for the spokes. We used to do it as a free service. He goes, but, you know, now we just get so many people needing it. And he's like, cause they buy all their bikes from Walmart and they don't know how to do anything. And I said, hey, I bought my bike from Walmart and I don't know how to do anything. So this kind of totally makes sense. And then I told him the same thing. I said, yeah, we used to never restring guitars and now we charge what I think is an insane amount of money for it and we do it as a service. And he said, same thing. We charge for this now. He goes, I think I charge an insane amount for what it is. And he goes, and I can't say no to all the businesses coming in. And I go, yeah, it's just that culture. So. And I was. So think of this. I was supporting it in both ways. I was the idiot that needed the service at a bike shop and I was the guy who was overcharging you at the guitar shop. So that's the. I don't know how I got on that tirade, but there it is. All right. Amanda's grabbed a question for me. This is from David. He Says, hey, Phil, curious what current guitars you think will be the future classics? The future classics? You're not gonna like my answer. What should I buy to own the next 59 burst? I love your show and your positivity. Thanks. Well, I wouldn't trust me for any kind of financial advice. I'd be like, buy low, sell high. Anyways, I believe there is no classics. That's it. It's just Fenders and Gibsons. It's all the things. I don't even think Rickenbackers or Gretsch's, I don't even think those are going to hold the time for classics. I think it will always be Fenders and Gibsons, for the most part. Will PR Become classics? I don't believe so. Now, there's an exception to this, and I'll give you an exception. I think artist guitars, and I've said this before, will always become some kind of classic because of the argument that I've made in the past, which is that, you know, artist guitars by nature end up in two piles. Okay? They end up in the it didn't do so great pile and they stopped making it. Okay. Or it did great and then it stopped. I don't want to, like, be mean to an artist, but you understand what I'm saying? It's. They stopped making it and then it just slowly holds its value or goes up in value. Because my argument is, is that people still fall in love with that musician every day, even if their music, you know, is older. And as they fall in love, then they start wanting to maybe own the instrument they had. And if there's not that many available, they'll go up in value. The other thing that happens is sometimes, like with John Petrucci, the instrument does very good, but they keep changing it because they want to sell new ones to us. They keep coming up with new product constantly. And as they come up with new product, they have to phase out the old product. And as they phase out old colors, old models, old variations, again, driving and holding that price. So I find artist guitars are the quintessential, like, hold the line for pricing for the most part. And when somebody says, well, what is this? Artist guitar is not doing that great. I always say, let's wait because, you know, will it be 50 years from now or what? I think at some point it does find its way back to holding value. So artist guitars tend to be that we all. I. I think everybody here that likes our artist and likes an artist guitar can tell you a story about the current one. That they like is so much more money than, you know, what they used to be. But. But that being said, I think that's the end of the classics. It's not because of what everybody says with. They said that the, you know, kids don't like music like they used to. I don't think that's a first. I don't think it's true. I think they absolutely love the music. I just think they like the same music we do. They like the older classics. And then. And remember, new artists always pay an homage to the old artists. So there's always that gateway drug, as I like to call it. You know, I. I don't know why I'm stuttering, because I'm thinking of. Should I say this out loud? I was. When I was at the Kiesel event talking to Greg Howe, I mentioned to Greg Howe that. That Tony McAlpine was my gateway drug to Greg Howe. And he's like, really?
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And I don't know why I said that. It's this Chris Farley awkward moment. We were both drinking. I was drinking bourbon. He was probably sober anyways. But I told him, I said, yeah. As I discovered guitar players, I don't know why, just Tony McAlpine. And then the next one was Greg Howe. And then I was like, oh, that's how I discover you. And I said, that's just how it works, right? I discovered. It's kind of like saying I discovered the blues through Stevie Ray Vaughan, who I barely consider blues. He's like rock blues. That's why I liked it. Right? Garth Brooks was a gateway to a lot of country for a lot of people my age, because Garth Brooks was first on the MTV Music Awards, where no country artist was. And then all of a sudden, his song was a little rock and roll. And you're like, oh, this is. This is like rock and roll. So rock. Country's like rock and roll. And you. You gateway into that. And so I think new artists will Gateway people always back into the old artists. That's just how that works. You know, who hasn't had a moment where your favorite artist says, my favorite artist is the other person you never heard of. And you're like, oh, now I gotta go find out what inspired them. But I think that for some reason, and I don't know the exact answer, we can all pontificate for hours. And that's what we do here on this show is Gibson and Fender have just captured the multi generational thing. They're not the biggest thing of the 50s or the 60s or the 70s or the 80s. They're the biggest thing of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Like every formative, formative genre of music that is important to the modern world now was on a Gibson and Fender or some variant that's slightly not far from that. And that's always going to be huge. You know, this comes up with the 80s classic shredder guitars. Will they be valuable? I think one of the reasons they're valuable is because they didn't hold up very well. They faded a lot. They, you know, a lot of them weren't very good and they don't hold up. You can say that about Gibson's inventors too, by the way. But. But I think, like, we see a lot of it. But I also find that the older everybody gets, the more they come back to the traditional guitars, which is really strange. And I seen that as a person who had a handshake and sell people guitars one on one. I see that as a YouTube guitar channel. I see that as an. As a. As just a fanatical guitar lover, that all of a sudden, the older somebody gets, the more they just go, oh, I kind of like the original stuff, you know, by the way, I might have to use the cough cam. Hold on. Sorry about that. I've been good this week. I feeling great, by the way. I'm just. I think I got a little bit of sneezing going on. It's just the tail end of something. And it's mostly allergies today, which is funny because I was like, we've been enjoying the great weather here, so we've been having the doors open, and we were just talking today about how we need to humidify the house because it's really dry, because of the fact that it's so dry outside. Okay. But anyway, so that's just my thing. So what classics. Here's the thing, by the way, David, I went on that tirade, I'm just gonna. Because I wanted to talk about that stuff, and it kind of folds into what you were asking me and talking about. But I will tell you this. When it comes to what you should buy, there's a saying, and it says, buy what you love. Absolutely. Buy what you love. You will not keep it if you don't love. Just. I just. The thing I've learned, I've learned it with myself. I've learned it with all the people who told me they weren't like me. I've listened. I've heard more people tell me in a music store about like they got rid of these three things and now they're getting the thing that they loved and. And now they'll be happy and now they'll stick with this forever. And, you know, I just haven't seen very few cases where that's true. What I've kind of realized is if you want to stick with one guitar forever or a guitar forever, that just. There's some people out there, there's a couple probably right now in the audience, they just bought their first guitar and they stuck with it. They bought a guitar ten years ago, and it's just the one they like. They don't even care about this craziness of owning 20 guitars thing, but buy what you love. I find that every single piece of gear that I have that I found a. A real love for, I've held on to. It's not the best playing guitar. It's never any of the things that's supposed to mathematically make sense. Best playing guitar, the guitar that goes up the most in value. You know, it's just this guitar that I'm attached to because it's so special to me for some reason. And I stick with those for some reason. They just can't. I can't find this way. Sean says the people that only have one guitar aren't watching this show. That's actually not true. But I understand what you're saying. It's not the majority, but there's a lot of them. It's kind of really funny. You think about it going, but I see it every day because. So you know, Sean, the people who are not the gear hoarders that are watching this show are fascinated by us. They are truly fascinated with this culture. They find it fascinating. And what's interesting about that is I find that you'd find almost no gear hoarding culture fascinated with somebody with two guitars. You only have two guitars. That's cool. Anyways, I'm going to Guitar center next week to check to see what kind of pedals they have. But. But people are fascinated with the culture that says, hey, I need every guitar ever. A friend of mine said a couple weeks ago, he made me chuckle. He's off the cuff. He just said, all I really want is to own every guitar ever I've ever wanted in my life. At least once I thought, that's the most honest statement I've ever heard in my life. I just want to own every guitar I've ever wanted. Just once. Just, just one time. That's it. Maybe not forever, just for a little while. All right, thank you RC for the super chat and the super sticker. Lord of the nerds. I'm. I love it with the threes instead of the E's. That's cool. I can figure it out with a Z at the end. Says, what is the most serious. What is the most serious. Okay, now we gotta get serious and affordable quality guitar manufacturer, brand. And why is it Reverend? Well, I'll tell you why I think it's always going to be when you talk about affordability and quality. Why it will be companies like Reverend Is because it's not about importing guitars. It's about sticking to one manufacturer of importing guitars. There is a, there is a. You got to understand these companies, they have to, you know, once you get a good overseas manufacturer, like I believe, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. Reverend Is made by Miriam the factory mirror. They're not world, as far as I know. I don't believe that to be true. It could be world manufacturing in Korea, but I'm pretty sure it's mirror. I don't. I would love. Maybe we should have the. I should do a podcast with the owner of Reverend and talk about. And see if he'll be. Talk about this because he's talked openly about when they were a USA company and when he acquired it from the original owner and you know, and how they decided to do the import line and kind of keep a high quality but a more obtainable price point. I mean, I say obtainable because they're 1200 bucks, $1000. They're not, definitely not affordable, but sure, they're not, they're not crazy expensive. Somebody says, yes, it's mirror. Okay, that's what I believed. Okay. So from, from all my research over the years. So the point is, is that I don't think you understand what it takes for these, these, these guys like Reverend to keep their position in these quality factories. You know, high quality factories are sought after. And so brands that can keep them busy. It's just like you and me, right? You get a job and you start getting good at it and you're like, I want a raise and I want two weeks off. And no, I won't do that extra thing you asked me to do because you know, I have value. Look at the value I bring. You know, the more you bring, the more you dictate your, you know what you'll do. This is what happens in the world. So the manufacturers are no different than anyone else. The manufacturer's like, no we make high quality, we hit deadlines, we are the greatest. We're not going to let you, you know, piecemell out some affordable product to a separate factory and you know, so they start having that same, so same kind of attitude. I'm not saying it's an attitude. I should shouldn't say like that. But it's kind of how I picture in my head is saying, no, if you want us to continue to make product for you, we want commitment from you. So Reverend has to commit. And I'm speaking for them in, in this idea that I understand the industry a little bit. I'm not speaking directly for them. They can have a slight difference in what I'm saying, but I believe this is pretty accurate that they have commitments, they have to give the factory and they have to hit and they have to make sure they're selling product. They can't have bad times where they're not selling product. The factory is not going to tolerate that. They're going to go, you know what, we're going to get somebody in here who can order and keep us busy. And so they have to become very good at selling a product and making sure that that product is, is customer satisfied. So they have to be very good at that. But then they also have another customer which is that manufacturer, that factory. So Reverend is very, what I believe is very good at that. And I like Reverend And I wish I used to praise Schecter. I still kind of do. But Schecter is in my opinion falling the way to Ibanez, which is they're still a good product. I still like them. But I would never blanket state say Schecter is a good product anymore. Schecter has turd product now. They just like, hey, we're going to make a fast guitar out of this factory in China. That's not that great. But it hits a price point. Reverend of course is focused on a price point, but they're focused without the compromise of the quality. Reverend Knows like anybody on the planet earth that can do math that if they can make a 399 product, they can sell a lot of them. And in the world of YouTubers where a 299 and a 399 product is an impulse buy for most of you guys, right? So if I say, hey look this, you know, Firefly, right? What is Firefly? Firefly is essentially a guitar shaped guitar pedal in the concept of impulse buying. Right. You know, look at this product. It's exciting and it's within most of yours budget. Of your spend off cash for the month. Right. Most of you are, are, you know, obviously you're in a hobby. Usually, usually people who can't afford hobbies, you know, are working and they're not enjoying two hours watching some guy talk about their hobby. Right. They have some time to spend and they have some time to spend and they might have some extra dough to spend. And so the impulse buy. And so I found on YouTube, absolutely, without a doubt, the impulse buying line stops at $500 just immediately. Okay. So if I bring up a product, I can tell you that because of you make hundreds if not thousands of videos like I have much less the other YouTubers. When I make a video, I can almost tell you how many will convert not by how many views I get on the video, but how much the product is. You know, somebody's willing to take a flyer on 300 bucks or 200 bucks. 200 bucks and Phil says it's pretty good. I'll take a shot. What do I got to lose? And you'll sell a ton. You know, a couple weeks ago or a couple episodes ago, we talked about the Freedman's round blowout for 99 bucks. And you guys all bottom up before the show's over. That's great. That's a testimony of the channel and you guys, that's great. But let me tell you that $100, that does it in the, in the time of the show. At 200 it would have been. It took 24 hours of videos of this video to take place. And at 300 it would have took a week. And at 400 it wouldn't have never sold out anyways because it's just too high. And so you gotta understand there's a lot of desire for the manufacturers, the guitar manufacturers to want to be in those price points. Not only for, not only for beginners so they can start the journey in their product line, but mostly to get the middle aged guys that impulse buy like crazy to buy. And so I respect brands like Reverend who say this is the quality we put out. We know that if the price could dip just 2,$300, it would open up more sales. But we, they have a. I'm sure they value the relationship with that factory. They value the relationship they have with their customer base and their, and they're really good that way. There are a few companies out there that are operating like this and I like them, I've always liked them. And I go to great lengths to one, tell you guys my bias, but two, to hold some of My bias back, especially in a video right where I'm talking about the product. But I think if you watch me for any period of time, you know, I have a lot of respect for anyone who's focused on quality because that's the hardest thing to hold the line on. It's so hard. It's so easy to sell a price point, you know, it's hard, especially if you think about it. And I'm done with this tirade right now, but I just want you to really hear this because I really hope that if there's one thing you hear today that I say, it's this right here. The one thing that I can't show you on YouTube through this, through this screen is quality. So making quality on the Internet is almost a fool's errand because the one thing you guys relate to as a whole is a price point is what it looks like. So if it looks nice and the price is right, you're more apt to make the purchase. In this world of not touching it, quality really comes across in the music store when you pick it up and you go, wow, I really like this. Or wow, that was not nice. And it took you one second to figure it out. So you. So like I said, I respect the companies that hold quality, knowing that we're living in a world where price points and fads really cash in fast. So I. So yeah. So why is it Rev. It's Rev. And it's a few other brands that I think like that, that that hold and make really good quality and. But I would. I agree with you that Reverend's one of the few brands I can blankly say state. Yeah, I don't think there's a. A bad model in the Reverend Reverend line. There's always going to be an example of a bad guitar. I just say that because even though it's funny, a fun fact for this for you guys for the show is Reverend's never had a bad review on the. On the channel. So that sounds like a big deal, but. No, it does. Maybe not sounds like a big deal. It's one of the few brands I've had. Like Emerald had a perfect review, but that was one carbon fiber acoustic in video. Reverend has been consistently. I've never come across a bad Reverend. So very, very cool. I'm sure they're out there. Just the law of averages says that nothing can be perfect. But I highly respect them. Okay, let's go on to the next thing. I don't. Okay, so he's asking about a weird instrument that I okay. Johnny wants to know. Hey. Says hey. Every petal he's ordered from Sweetwater in the last six to eight months has been back ordered for months. What gives? I don't know. I've been seeing the opposite. So I don't know. Like what I see is the exact opposite. I've been buying petals again. I started buying petals again, I want to say, in November. Sounds about right. I'm sure my wife could tell you because she, she notices, she sees all the charges come through. So. And the pedal charges always concern her. So you guys know, because they're smaller purchases and there's more of them. So, you know, fraud usually happens with lots of small purchases. So she'll. She'll get nervous because I can, I can zap out three petals in an afternoon. And then she'll be like, was that you? And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, okay, good. You know. But anyways, I started collecting petals again. And the main reason I'm collecting so you know, is because they're dirt cheap again. I'm finding smoking deals left and right. I just bought. In fact, I'll just tell you what I've bought recently. I mean, I bought a Boss pedal the other day. New and used. By the way, most of the stuff new. I've really not enjoyed a lot of my used experiences on reverb. So I've been mowing more used stuff, buying more stuff used stuff at Guitar Center. But that's a different story for a different day. I'm actually working on something to try to make a video with Guitar center about this used situation thing that they have. But let's go, let's go look at what I've been buying. So pedals I have bought in the last few months. I bought the jrocket PXO Phil X Signature Overdrive. I got that for a substantial discount. It was a substantially discounted pedal. I bought the boss ch1 super chorus. That pedal I bought used and it showed up and it was brand new in box. And it was, I mean, brand new never opened. And it was listed as a used pedal. I thought I was buying used pedal. I thought the price was fair for used. I bought it showed up brand new in box. I bought the Sir Riot Super Distortion. I bought that used because they don't make anymore. And the guy, same thing. I threw an offer and the guy took the offer and it was great deal. I bought the another one. This is. I don't want to. I'm not gonna out the stores. But this one was A the Electroharmonics EH XXO Micro Q Tron inflow filter. I bought that same thing. I bought it used. It was the one of the best used prices I found. I bought it, showed up brand new inbox sealed from again another retailer who was just listing stuff as used. Here's another pedal I bought. I bought the the the way huge green Rhino small series pedal. This was listed as a B stock and it might have some blims. I bought it again, 30, 40% off, maybe 40% off and showed up brand new in the packaging, unopened and mint condition. I bought a way huge used Javelina Germanium. I bought that one even though the prices kind of went up on that one. I got that one on wasn't a smoking deal, but it was a good deal. I bought the Mad Professor Sweet Honey, same thing. Those things had been crazy money for a while and then all of a sudden I got one smoking deal. So I have not experienced that. I bought the Bogner Burnley Rupert Neeb transformer overdrive pedal. Same thing, smoking deal. I bought a made in Japan long chip DD3 digital delay pedal from 1988. And funny story on that I found that pedals through an offer that I, you know, I was like, okay, I throw an offer was really low offer. They took it and then they backed out of it. Which is fine. You know, I get it. It was a little cheap, I'm sure. I thought the low offer was really low. I just threw it because I threw it and then a couple of days later found another one just like it, bought it and got it for almost that same price. So I haven't been experiencing that maybe sweet water. But you gotta understand Sweetwater. You're talking about sweet water. So you're. So maybe the issue is not petals, but it's Sweetwater. Sweetwater buys in bulk. They buy big orders, so they don't get a lot of filler order is what I'm trying to get at. So what me what I mean by that is let's say they run out of a bunch of products in a product line. They don't go, hey, we need 10 of these, two of these, one of these, you know, hey, we need one to replace this one, you know, kind of thing. They tend to put in a big order. Because the reason I know that is because two of the two of my friends who own guitar companies, let's just say guitar companies who deal with Sweetwater, one of them had to basically tell Sweetwater that they need them to put in their orders at the beginning of the year. So he could plant because he couldn't, he couldn't physically. He's like, dude, when they hit you and they go, hey, we need 300 of these, like I, I need five months. So he was like, okay, we gotta better you know, figure this out, you know, figure out how to have a more control over how I'm going to keep you stocked. So a lot of manufacturers have trouble stocking Sweetwater because of the volume. I don't think people get the sheer volume of Sweetwater. As you guys know. I've been there several times and I've reported on it how much the volume is do. The amount of stuff they sell is just constant, constant, constant sales. So they run on stuff. There's so, you know, Sweetwater is so good at selling stuff that anytime a new product comes out, even though I have the, I don't say the hookup, but I could reach out Sweetwater and you know, maybe there's a deal for me as an influencer, right? I don't even try that. I don't even waste my time. They'll never have it. It's sold. It's so sold out. The usually this, the sales guys, they have their, you know, they tell you they'll go, you know, they'll go, hey, just, you know, next Thursday the new wampler comes out and then they're all pre sold before they landed. You know, so, so yeah, so I would say for you, my buddy Johnny, I would say look elsewhere besides Sweetwater. So mom and pops are sitting on pedals for sure and they want to make deals. So it's a good time, It's a win win. They need the inventory churned. My wife said it best. Absolutely. A pedal came in and it was one of the boss ones. And I opened it and I said, huh, it's like brand, brand new, it never been open. Sealed packaging, whole nine yards. And I said, I'm pretty sure I bought that used. And she goes, they just needed a churn. Probably get ready for the next boss order in January. And I'm like, well it makes sense. I bought it in December. And I'm sure the company, the, the dealer was like, yeah, I gotta do my buy ins in January, so let's get rid of this product. And even if we call it Churn, even if it meant selling it to me for cost. Although that sucks as a retailer because you're obviously not even making money, you're losing money in fact. So you know, I did the math as I was a boss dealer. For 11 years, the pedal that they sold me, I am very sure that if they bought it at the top buy in, that you can do as a small dealer for boss after fees, they. They lost money. Like it wasn't even. They got their money back. They were probably in the hole a few bucks. And then I sent it to Shawna, and Shawna said, oh, well, you know, they probably wanted to churn the cash to pay the bill, the boss bill, or to order the next boss stuff. So they. Or pay, you know, you pay the bill. So you. They'll open up your account so they'll ship you more new product, or you're just. You've paid it and now you just want to get the new product either way. So I would say go out there and find those small dealers. Right now, a lot of dealers are sending some product and they'd like to. In a market like this, which is a soft market. Something to point out to you guys is markets like this right now are a little confusing. The people who throw out blanket statements, they're just pulling it from their ass. This whole like, oh, the market's. Everyone's broke. No one has any money. And then everybody's like, it's booming. Both are not. Both are incorrect. What happens now is people scrutinize their purchases. So good things still sell. That's why you can't find certain things that you're like, hey, everybody wants this thing, and we can't find one in stock. But in the other hand, people are not throwing money away because they're scrutinizing it. So there's product that was less desirable is sticking. And so there's deals to be had if you're interested in that product that's sticking. Okay, so next subject. This came from Mike. I just saw it right now. It says, Mike says, what do you think offender's new CEO will he folk will focus most on? What do I think the new CEO will focus on most this year? You know, I don't know. What I'm hoping for is. Is maybe I'll be on finder's good side now. I always feel like I. I don't know this to be 100% true, but we always found that our. Our disconnect. The channel disconnect from Fender really came about when I started criticizing Fender openly on the podcast about some of the things that happened. You guys, you could go back and look at the titles. That's the problem with YouTube, is it? It lives forever, right? So the things I said, you know, five years ago are still ringing true because that video still comes in feed. Obviously. I had, I had some, I had some things to say about when they did layoffs. I had some things to say about some of the judgment calls they made. And, and, and then we started noticing like, you know, wow, that was the end of them talking to us about anything. So maybe with news, new regime change, maybe they'll reach out to the channel. You know, it would sure help me considering I, I buy a lot of Fenders and, and Squires and put them on this channel. So it'd be really nice if I could get into a situation where, you know, we could borrow some gear sometime or get, or get access to the newest stuff when it comes out because I think you guys would be interested in that. But, but on that note, I don't know what to expect from Fender. I'm hoping a more focus on quality. I think that's what they've lost. And again, this is, well, these are the things that got me in trouble back then. I think Fenders totally lost the focus on quality and just focusing on market optimization. I think that's all I ever see from Fender anymore is they're really good at figuring out how to raise a price quickly. Really good at how to, you know, put out the hot topic product out at the moment, you know, but not so much necessarily make stuff that we really, really need or want and, or better yet, focus on making sure that we as consumers are taken care of. And I still think they are good at the back end, which is when you have a problem with a product. I think Fender's still one of the best companies at getting your problem solved. So if you have a defective product, getting it warrantied, getting it taken care of. But I just think a company that big and that great should have a lot less quality control issues. And to the point where, like I said, I think as when I'm talking around to people in the industry or even you guys who just love guitars, man, you know, immensely, it comes up more than ever before that basically, you know, we'll say seven years ago, seven years ago, everyone say, well, Gibson quality was shite and Fenders was great. And now we all say Gibson quality is better and Fenders is shite. So I'd love to see him focus on quality. I'm sure he's going to focus on exciting new things that get us exciting. But I would really wish they would just focus on making a great guitar because ultimately that ensures more people playing guitars whether they've been playing new or As a new player or somebody who's, who's. I also, also I think I want to trust Fender for quality. I've always, I, you know, we were talking about Reverend Earlier. There was a time not long ago, but on this show. So I know the show's been around for eight, nine years, but not that long ago where I could blindly say, blanketly say, you want quality. Mexican made Fender price point, you can afford quality you can rely on. Bam. Show me the flaw in that. And now it's a little gray. The price point is barely affordable and the quality gets dodgy here and there. And so but to be able to, I would love to be able to speak. I know American Fender is just going to be too impossible. It's too expensive. Okay, when. I mean, when I'm saying what I'm going to say right now, I would like to speak about Mexican made Fender the way I spoke earlier about Reverend with conviction to say the quality is amazing and the price is great. I think the quality is good and the prices are somewhat, you know, reasonable. But I think the prices have definitely been, like I said, as the pro. As the price of Mexican made stuff's gone up, the quality has not held the line. It's actually gone the other way. That's just my, my two cents. And so that's what I think of that. All right, let's. Let me grab this. This comes from Reuben. Ruben says, hey bud, you think it's worth upgrading from a Tone King Imperial preamp to. Oh, the Tone King Imperial preamp to the. To a U synergy 20 and the tone King module. I'm craving versatility and I already have a nice 112. Well, they're, they're totally different animals. I understand what you're asking. So basically, keep in mind those are two products that I absolutely am in love with right now, the Synergy. And I'd like to point out I like the Synergy 50 watt head, but I'm in love with the Synergy 20 watt head as a product. I get so much use out of it as. And I can trust it. You know, I didn't tell you guys, but the reason why you were listening to the Synergy 20 today for the guitar of the week, even though I was running pedals is I'm running the IRS right into my Rodecaster. So I'm just running the XLR out into the Rodecaster. You were not hearing an actual speaker in the room? I could hear the speaker in the room because it's running into my cabinet. So I heard the speaker, but I didn't have to mic up the cabinet. And for me today, it was just a nice, like, hey, I don't want to think about it. Right? So. And for those that curious, I'm using the Michael Nielsen impulse response. It's his 412 with the two greenbacks and two vintage 30s. And it's because I bought his pack and it was like 20 bucks and I just grabbed it through and bunch and threw in there. And that's the one that just kind of caught my ear. And I think it actually says in his pack, it's his favorite. So I grabbed that one, I grabbed a couple others. I grabbed that one and that's the one I went with. But so versatility. So back to your question. You know, they're different animals. If I could only have one, and I really like the Tone King Imperial, I would probably get this, the, the synergy in the Tone King pream. But I will tell you, and I've been telling everybody, I just want to warn everybody. Okay, Just want to. Because I heard even another YouTuber talking about synergy the other day and I, I liked what they had to say, except for one thing I disagreed with them about. So I'm going to tell you what I disagree with. With the Synergy 20 head. I would recommend if you get a Synergy 20 head to wait on. I mean, the Tone King module is amazing. The Dr. Z module is great. I would actually try to get like a higher mid gain or gain. If you, whatever you gain module, get a gain module. The clean on the Synergy 20 is totally usable. That's what I was using just now. I know it's weird because it's just a volume and tone. I was so. I did not want to like it because I was like, oh, they only did a volume and tone. This is a joke. It. Between the volume and tone and the. I don't know what they call it, but the little modeling thing that you can model, there's another button. And between those three buttons, that button and those two knobs, I can get whatever clean. I mean, you were hearing the clean tone of that amp today. That amp and reverb off the Atlantic. Then, you know, that's $150 reverb delay pedal. Not like I'm running Stryman here. It sounds great. I would maybe get the synergy 20 and then if you want the Tone King module, great. But you know, you know, but I, I actually like having a better gain module, so. And it's not even for High gain. I just like to have, you know, something like that. But that's my. My 2 cents. By the way, last week we hit a record on the channel for the show. We had 1590. 1590 people. We have 1500 people again. That's pretty crazy to see that number. We've always had a pretty good number, and it's been close to this number before, but these never. We thought last week was a fluke. In fact, the moderators and I were talking about it, and I even told them, they said, you see that number? I said, it's a fluke. We'll see what happens next week. And I go, that's pretty crazy. So thank you guys for joining live. That's pretty fun. It's pretty exciting. It feels like I kind of picture, is this what Rick Beato gets when he goes live? I figure this should be like Rick Beato numbers now. Okay, Lemon lust says, hey, I'm about to do my own fretwork. I've noticed that there is a trend for hemispherical fret ends. Yes. Is this skill necessary to learn? No. I have a video, a short video showing you how to do hemispherical ends with Dremel and, you know, a polishing wheel. And first of all, I can tell you right now it's almost impossible to do the hemispherical frets with the fret in the fretboard. So when you say you're gonna do your own fret work, I don't know if that means you're gonna level, crown and then, you know, you know, a crown. I should say crown and then level. No, level, level. And then crown your frets. You can round the edges of the frets, but to get true hemispherical frets, you know, it's almost. You have to have them out of the. The of the fretboard. In other words, you know, new fret before it's been set in. If you're doing new fret ends, you can do it. There is definitely a good and bad. Some players do not like the semi hemispherical frets because they believe that because they run shallow of the fretboard edge, that sometimes when you're playing the high, never really so much the low E, but the high, it rolls off. You know, you do a light bend and it rolls off the side of your fretboard and you get upset about that. It absolutely can happen. One of the things I have to do when I'm looking at guitars that have semi hemisphere hemi, semi hemispherical Frets is, you know, you look at the edge to make sure they all touch the edge because sometimes one or two are shallow and that's a problem. I don't think you necessarily need it. I think as long as you take and make sure you, you use a nice fret and dress file and you, you round the edge so that those burp, you know, those burbs aren't. Burbs. Burps. The burbs aren't there. The bur. Burs aren't there. It's like it's just the burbs anyways. The burrs. Just make sure the burrs aren't there. I don't think you need semi hemispherical frets. I find that most high end guitar companies don't want to do them and it's not because it's a cost thing, it's just because they don't want to do them. I find that companies like Eart and stuff really kind of found a niche because what a great way to guarantee that a lower, fastly made guitar, lower price, fast made guitar isn't gonna have fret sprout issues because the frets can't, you know, they don't touch the end, the blades can't pop. So. But I don't necessarily think you should do it. I wouldn't really worry about it. If you watched my video this week I, I talked about the new Taylor guitars. I was very excited about that. I love anytime where somebody's trying something new, especially something that's I think is. Could ruin the entire lineup. I think Taylor, I think they knocked it out of the park and I think they could have just as easily crapped the bed with the new lineup of Taylor's. And I'm sure some die hard Taylor fans are not going to be happy with some of the changes in the new guitars. I absolutely am a huge fan and I, for the first time ever I'm. I feel safe going up the line of Taylor's. You know, I, I love like the Martin T28, I love you know, the J45 and I love the Taylor 814 cell. Those are holy grail acoustics. And you know, one of the things you worry about when you own expensive acoustic guitars for those that just mostly live in the electric guitar world, you worry about things like neck resets not only because it's expensive, but even in my case where I would do it myself, it's time consuming. But anytime you take, you do stuff like that, you're taking the chance. The guitar Will never vibe the same again. And so. And it's an expensive guitar, so I really feel more safe with this. Taylor. I feel like this is the first high end acoustic that I feel really, really safe with in this price point. Somebody asked me in the comments. Some of the comments was what do I think? Versus the, the emerald acoustic. And they're just different animals. The emerald acoustic is a fantastic instrument, but I would, I would. I obviously look, there's my two acoustics. So there's the two. I mean that's what I'm down to. I got two acoustics. I love them both for different reasons. Obviously the carbon fiber acoustic is bulletproof and it's amazing for that. It sounds really, really good, but it sounds really good for a carbon fiber acoustic. It's just not the same thing as a real wood acoustic. It just doesn't breathe and it doesn't project in the room like it does. But. And you know, if you've been watching for the last few years, I've been trying to get my hands on some of these. But you know, if you've been watching Martin guitars, the Martin's been scrutinized really badly for the last few years with a lot of defective guitars with a lot of lamb molding coming off. You know, the, the, you know, just a lot of stuff happening. So I like that. To seeing acoustic companies taking. Taking the. The money and the time to make something a little better. So a little better. Let's go to the next thing you guys got. Let me refresh this and let's see what. What we have. We have. Oh, tone Shield. Thank you. He just did a super chat to tell me he loves the videos and keep up the great work. I appreciate that. Especially weeks like this, you know, I really want to do more bass content and more acoustic content. And as you guys don't know, it's a good reminder to tell you that there is a second channel now. There's the Know youw Gear Channel and the Film Ignite Channel. The Film Ignite Channel, we only do deep dives and we only do this podcast. That's all we do on this channel now. So the two essentially long form type videos I do that people really gravitate towards the Know your Gear Channel. We do the clips of this podcast, plus unique extra bonus clips that you guys don't see. Extra content, like extra interviews and stuff and an amp and pedal videos and stuff like that. It's all there and it's been working great. We love it this way. It's twice as Much work because it's twice channels, but it's been working and you guys seem to like it. And. But there was a last minute decision. I was gonna go, okay, bass and acoustic guitars will go on the second channel. And then it was like, but they're deep dives and deep dive should go on the main channel. And I made the decision. I go, I'm okay, fine. Then deep dives go on the main channel, even if they're acoustics and basses and acoustics. I'm lucky if I get half the views on an acoustic video and a quarter of the views on a bass channel. And I made the decision and I'm happy I did because, yeah, it didn't do the. It doesn't do the same views. But you guys, I only care about this. It's how much you watch of it. You know, if you click in, do you actually care? And the retention on that video is fantastic. You know, and that's all you really care about. When you're making. When you're spending days making something, all you want to know is it doesn't matter if two people, 20 people, 20,000 or 200,000 people, like, just matters that someone likes it. The worst feeling is that, you know, it's doing poorly because the fact that people clicked in and thought it was boring or stupid. And so the fact you guys didn't find it boring is great. Thank you for that. The convert says, hey, Phil, what do you think of the trend of YouTubers using guitars only as set dressing? I don't know. All my best. I don't know what that means. Is that like this where we just put them in background set dressing.
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Okay, so the convert. I gotta, you know, the question is kind of vague, so. And I watch a lot of YouTubers, so, you know, so I think, I think that, that, that I told you guys this before. If I didn't have a YouTube channel, this is not what my office would look like. This is. Is. This is. I've been battling over the years the, you know, kind of what my wife says. She goes, the viewers put in the comments, they like seeing different guitars each week and different stuff to see. And I go, oh, okay. I like everything to be less cluttered. So this is the most cluttered I can take. At one point, if you go back in the old enough videos, I had like the row of amps and then a row of pedals and a row of guitars, and I was trying to make it not cluttered, but it still felt too cluttered to me. I Love it when everyone else's videos are cluttered because I want to see what they have. But for me personally, I just want things to look more professionally set. Right? And I'll just be, again, always frank with you guys about this. Main reason I like my backgrounds to be certain ways is because I really don't want you guys to know every personal detail about me. I love you guys. I hang out with you guys all the time. Viewers. I meet viewers everywhere. As you guys know, I walk into a guitar center and I talk to you guys. I'll talk to any viewer in a parking lot for two, three hours. I'm sure a dozen of you can comment on that right now. But obviously, I like to keep some of my life private because not all of you are the same people. Some of you are crazy. Very few of you, but some of you are crazy. And also, you know, I just like to have some of my personal life. So believe it or not, this is me showing you my gear life and then keeping as much in my personal life as. And I'll just tell you how it happened. I used to put more personal things in the video. Not on purpose. They just happened to be there. And then I learned over time, people would go, oh, you know, and they would know things about me that were less about guitar. They were more about like, you know, oh, I know you like, you know, flowers, because there was a flower in the background, right? And then I'm like, okay, look, I want you to know me as the Gear channel and as a Gear person, but I don't really need the whole world to know, you know, that I. Whatever. I like flowers. I'm just making that up. But you get the idea. So. So set dressing. I would imagine that most channels are going to try to put their best foot forward and their most pretty guitars forward and the pretty gear. But to be honest, in that regard, I would imagine that a lot of channels aren't doing that. If they're professional channels with professional meaning they're actually making a living at it, which is a small amount, but they are. You're usually propping up the gear that's been sent to you because one, sometimes a company wants it. But that's actually not that common, believe it or not. I know you guys think like, oh, the companies want us. They want them to be in the background, like product placement. The companies don't even watch the content. Most of them, you make the video and you send them notification. I have not one, not 10, not 20, but more than that, Embarrassing stories of Companies sending me an email that I thought was kind of nasty, saying, like, hey, when are you going to make that video? And I'm like, made it three months ago. It got like 400,000 views. You didn't see it? You know, I don't say that, but I'm like, you didn't even look. I once. I'll just say it was Carbon. Carbon once contacted me and basically said, hey, are you ever gonna make that video on our pedal? And I go, not only did I make it four months ago, it's the most viewed video of your product on the Internet. So I said, you know, I think I. They called me while I was on vacation with my family. I was in the car on vacation. I was like. And they're like, o you're gonna give me. And I was like, ah. So just trust me when I tell you that most of the companies don't care if this stuff's here. However, I find that being friends with so many YouTubers and knowing them because they do what I do and vice versa, and that's our commonality, is that they do it. A lot of them feel this obligation, you know, I should promote the companies who are good to me or work with me, because so many companies won't even return your email. Right. That's the irony of. You know, the irony is I don't care how many views Rick Beato gets. For every person that would probably beg to be on Rick Beato's channel, I'm sure there's people who wouldn't return his call or email. And that's just how everything works in life. There is no, like, oh, at your level, you're obviously, everyone's begging to be, you know, on your channel. And I'm like, I would say 80% of the industry doesn't know my channel or want me, you know, would be interested in any of my content. And the other 20% is the opposite. They would really. They really want me, and they really want me to use their content, their product, my. My content. And that's about the right number. And I'm not being humble. That's about the right number. I'm just being transparent about that. But anyways, with dressing, I would say that's what I understand the question is about. But yeah, so you know what? It's a good segue because I think it's gonna be fun. Okay, so I've been thinking about the guitar of the week and the gear of the week, and I like doing those things. And as you guys know, just like, how I do instructional videos and then I do, you know, you know, deep dives or I do like, here's a gear piece of gear. I try to keep the channel to the point where it's like, yeah, not everything is what can you buy this week kind of attitude. You know, what can you, you know, like, you know, what is there for you to spend? And I go, how can I add another segment that isn't just, hey, look at more gear for you to buy and more crap for you to buy. Or, you know, even though I think lessons are a good thing, you know, Breakaway, where it's about investing in yourself, it's still about financial investing. And I decided I. Today is the inaugural segment. So I'm looking right here. We're all set up a queue. We're going to do know your gear meets. And so this is where I'm going to introduce you to another YouTube channel. This is so the requirements for this is super easy. I'm going to do one a month. Here are the requirements. I gotta not know this channel, okay? I mean, obviously I can, I can be aware of them because they're a channel I like. That's how I found them. But it's not like one of my buddies, you know, we're not hanging out every Saturday and I'm just like, hey, check out my buddy stuff. This is a channel that I just know the channel. Like, you know the channel or maybe you don't, which is the whole point. The channel has to have less subscribers than me, which I granted that's not going to be the hardest thing. I have luckily enough to have a good amount of subscribers. But first thing has to be a smaller channel. I'm looking for channels especially sub 100,000. If they don't have that little plaque, I have a plaque. There's a plaque. Okay, so, so no plaque, you know, right. Something I and somebody I, I, I like. And so today we're gonna meet Buddy Buddy Blues. And I like his channel. I like him and I, we're gonna meet him together. This is a short segment, but guess what? We're gonna put a longer segment segment on the second channel. So let's, let's meet Buddy Blues. My wife did an intro piece for it. So let's do the intro piece.
- [66:46]
B
And now let's meet Buddy Blues.
- [66:50]
A
Today we're gonna meet Buddy Blues. A lot of you already know Buddy Blues channel. I know it because you're all gear freaks and he's a gear channel. But I thought it'd be fun to actually formally Meet some of the channels out there. Instead of just giving him a shout out, do a literal meetup. So. So I got questions for Buddy. We're going to start.
- [67:13]
B
I'm ready. And thank you for having me. This is. This is. This is going to be fun.
- [67:17]
A
I can't wait. This is where I going to be.
- [67:19]
B
Downhill from here for you.
- [67:20]
A
It's. It's like this is where I go, oh, was I supposed to let you talk, too?
- [67:25]
B
I'm going to be the one to bring down Phil McKnight to ruin his channel.
- [67:30]
A
Here we are. All right, here we go. Here's my favorite one. All right. It's not my favorite one. Last one's my favorite one. First one is what gear channel inspired you?
- [67:41]
B
RJ Ronquilio, and All day every day. And I can pinpoint to you exactly which video it was. The video of the Kingtone Duelist, if you know that pedal.
- [67:52]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [67:53]
B
It was when it first came out. And demos were newish at the time. I think this was 20, 18, 19.
- [68:01]
A
Sure.
- [68:02]
B
So demos were. I mean, you had Andy, but I remember I was looking forward to do. Listen, I wanted to hear it being played. And then I saw RJ's channel. I'm like, ah, I want that to be the rest of my life. It was that video, and it was rj Arn Kilio the Goat.
- [68:17]
A
When I watch channels now that I like, like your channel.
- [68:21]
B
Thank you.
- [68:21]
A
I. I take it in and I like it, but I also try to figure out where the lineage is. Yeah. You know, where they. Where that ism came from or that, you know, like. Or the. You know, because there are certain things that are just in, you know, like, my favorite joke ever is all gear channels. I call them Sanford Sun. It's like all our crap. It's right behind. This is our crap. Like. Like every channel I love, it's like, hey, you want to see my stuff? My stuff. And. And we know it started because that's what we all saw first. Oh, yeah. Somebody had a bunch of stuff and we're like, oh, and you were just looking at their stuff and then. Right.
- [69:01]
B
Oh, yeah, look at all my toys. Come over.
- [69:03]
A
Look at all my toys.
- [69:06]
B
Blue lights and stuff. Like, God, we're so conceited.
- [69:09]
A
Right? And. And yeah, I would honestly say on a side note that without gear channels, like, because every once we get those, you know, prolific questions like, what would the world be like about gear channels? And I'd be like, well, first of all, no one would know what to do with their pedals. Right. They would not know that they belong on the wall.
- [69:26]
B
Yeah, definitely. On a. On a floating shelf. Excuse me. Ikea floating shelf exclusive.
- [69:33]
A
Yes. We single handedly probably sold more IKEA product than gear product.
- [69:37]
B
Oh yeah, I think so. Oh, certainly.
- [69:40]
A
Now here comes the next one. Ready? Now that you do it, why do you do it?
- [69:44]
B
It started out as. See, the channel is. I'll try to keep this answer short, I promise. But the channel started as me discovering pedals. I never played pedals before. Throughout my whole music career, I never played pedals. It was always guitar through an amp. Usually either a Supersonic or a Fender Supersonic or a Fender basement. So lockdown happened in 2020 and I thought, let me, let me start getting pedals. The only people that were shipping were Guitar center and Sweetwater. So I started getting into pedals. I started getting heavily into Hendrix. So I wanted a univibe, I wanted a fuzz pedal. And I thought, what if there's someone out there that's just like me, been playing guitar for 15, 20 years and has never had a single interest in pedals? Would I be able to A, change their mind, B, show them how I'm using it and maybe that'll inspire someone to. I guess I do need a compressor in my. In my rig, for example, because I can't hear that high E. Whatever. I do need a fuzz pedal to sound like Hendrix and stuff like that. So that's how the channel started. Why I keep doing it now is because this has become the funnest thing and the most fulfilling thing I've done for a while. I do this segment called Small Business. Susie on the channel with small business Suzy. I basically put a spotlight on a brand that you've never heard of. A brand that had maybe has been in business for five years and has never gotten really distraction. And they make the coolest stuff. And then I put the spotlight on them and hopefully they're. They get known and translates into sales and whatnot. And people now start talking about whatever company it is. And it's. I like that it does. It brings me joy.
- [71:28]
A
Also pedals, you know, it's like asking anybody like, hey, I have a job. Why do you do it? You're like, well, that's why I pay my rent, you know, that's how I pay the bills, you know, and there's a little. Yeah, but I have learned that the pushback against you is so extreme. There's a bigger driver than money because money's not consistent in this.
- [71:47]
B
Yep.
- [71:48]
A
At first you don't know why you're doing it or what you're doing, but then you discover a joy of it, and then that oops. And that joy really does push it. So that's why. Yeah, all the time. Yeah. Okay, last one. This is the hardest one. I'm ready. Okay. What is your favorite piece of gear right now?
- [72:05]
B
Oh, that is a really hard one.
- [72:06]
A
I know. Because it's got to be now, like, the current piece of gear that you love right now.
- [72:12]
B
Victory mkx, the newest amp. Victory amps released Victory amp.
- [72:17]
A
Okay, so the new Victory amp, I saw the launch of that. It's. Yeah, two channels with reverb.
- [72:23]
B
Yeah, three channels.
- [72:24]
A
Three channels, right?
- [72:25]
B
Two channels with two reverbs.
- [72:27]
A
Two reverbs. Yeah.
- [72:28]
B
Man, you would love that amp. You would love that amp.
- [72:32]
A
I watched. Yeah, I watched a lot when they released it.
- [72:34]
B
That is that one they sent me, and I ended up buying it. There was a whole. You know how YouTube works.
- [72:39]
A
I know.
- [72:39]
B
There was a whole. You know. We can send it to you. Just send me it. Let's see. Well, we'll discuss the price later. We'll see.
- [72:46]
A
I got it.
- [72:47]
B
I'm like, nope, keeping it. So let me discuss a price with you now. So I ended up paying to make. To make the video. I that are paying Victory. And I'll do it again. Yeah, man. Remarkable cleans. Remarkable overdrive. Heavy drive reverbs. Heavenly reverbs. I'm in love with. I can't stop playing that amp.
- [73:07]
A
I. Have you done this one yet? Have you had a company send you a guitar? And then you're like, okay, I gotta buy this guitar. And they go. And then they go, this. They go, no problem. Send that one back because that's our promotional one. And we'll see replacement. Like, no, Frank Brothers have to have this one. 100. Everybody says. I go, no, no, you don't understand. Yeah, like, if I send this back and you send me another one. Yeah. I'm not gonna love it. Like, it has to be this one. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so now you guys have met. Buddy Blues, by the way. I have. I have confirmed that his real name is Buddy.
- [73:40]
B
It is on my id. He checked my id. Phil checked my idea before we started this.
- [73:44]
A
Yeah. And so just. You guys know. I only say that because sometimes, you know, channels have names, and then, you know, like, that their name isn't the name. You know, like, they have. Trying to think of a perfect example that now all I'm thinking is the channels that have their names. AGU Fish isn't agu Fish, right. He's, you know, his hunter. So I just thought that'd be interesting. So in case you're curious why I called him Buddy, it's because his name's Buddy at the beginning and his channel is Buddy Blues. So check out Buddy Blues, his channel as the first. This is the first meet. If you guys like this, put in the comments right now that you like doing these quick little shout outs. I think it's a great way instead of just mentioning a channel to get to know them for a second. And I want to thank Buddy for, for doing it.
- [74:25]
B
Thank you so much for having me, man. It's a pleasure.
- [74:28]
A
You're welcome. Did I push the button?
- [74:33]
B
No. Let's just stare awkwardly at the people that are still watching us.
- [74:35]
A
That'll be great. Stop it. All right, so we're back. We're back to just us. I hope you guys enjoyed that. It's a little tricky to pull it off, but I, I thought it'd be fun and something different. And again, I'm just going to tell you guys, just so you guys know, I don't have any official rules for this segment other than I'd like to do it once a month. It will keep it to like five, six minutes like that. We'll do a little bit longer form with them for the second channel. So in case you want to see more. But of course you can see more of Buddy Blues if you go to his channel. We'll put links. I already have links, links in the description. You can check it out if you haven't figured out how did I get Buddy Blues on my, on my radar. Well, two things. One, I saw something in his years ago where he was Talking about the Supersonic 22 and his love hate of it. I have a love hate of the Supersonic 22. Like, I love it. And then I'm like, ah, I don't know. I don't know if I love it anymore. And then I love it. And I just, it's an amp that always calls back to me. But also, as you can, earlier when I was talking about buying pedals, I'm like, oh. And I was like, I'm looking for a pedal. I go, I should, oh, I'll check out Buddy Blues because he had great, has great pedal demos. I think he does like some of the best Lawrence Petros pedal demos out there too, by the way. But, but anyways, I just thought it'd be fun to share and show you this. And I, I, I, you know, I'm sure It's weird for him because I reached out to him, you know, and I said, hey, I want you to come on my live show. I want you to. I want you to. I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. It's just, you know, and he was like, let's do it. And so I'll be reaching out to more channels. You know, if you're a channel out there, I do. Don't reach out to me because I. Trust me, I have lots of channels. I'll probably come across yours, because if you make good content, I'll find you, I promise. That's really what I'm interested in. This isn't like. Like I said, this isn't. I met him somewhere and, you know, in Germany or I met him in Indiana. And I just like him as a person because there's a lot of that too. These are. I just liked his content. And I thought, you know, what? You should know about his content. And just, like, when I recommend other channels, I thought instead of just doing a. Hey, check them out. I thought, let's meet them. We can do it. We got the technology. It's here. I'm sure I messed everything up for going through it, but still, it worked. Okay, so we're gonna finish up our regularly, regular programmed content. Let's. Let's finish out some questions and topics. And Amanda's grabbed some for me. I want. This one is from. I guess it's too gooey. I have no idea. T U E. It's like Tuesday, but I have no idea. It says, any experience running compatible pedals, 18 volt. Does it make a big difference? It does make a difference. I don't want it to. So, you know, I. For years, I refused and I. And I had no excuse because I have, you know, I have a chuck power supply. So it's just, you know, you go in there and go, 18 volts or you go, you know, 9 volts. It's easy enough. And I. I'd never. I never really put it. You know, Lawrence Petros pedals will do that. He'll take 18 volts or 9 volts. And he would say something in to me because he's smart. So he says smart things, you know, like, just so you know, you get more headroom if you go 18 volts or something like that. Right. I. I gotta tell you, sometimes I'm the worst. I have the worst attention. Spanish for stuff, right? And I have to be. Once I'm in the mood, I'm like, I'm focused. I won't Stop researching something until I can tell you everything I think about it. But until then, it's almost like you can't get my brain to. To hold any information. And this went on for years and. And it wasn't until the. Until the. What was it? I'll grab it. I can't. I'm gonna. I. I don't know why. I have trouble with his name every time. Okay, so one of my favorite boost pedals, as you guys know, is the Enhancifier, and it's rather expensive. And the owner of the enhancifier, I don't know why I can there. I always want to say the emphasizer, but it's the enhanceifier. This pedal is very expensive. And as you guys know, he sent out the big one, then he sent out this one, which is a smaller version of it. And this one is another where it does 9 volts or 18 volts. And he was the first person to ever do this to me. He sent it to me and then he sent me an 18 volt power supply for it. And I was like, I wasn't offended in the way you're thinking, but I was like, I have a power supply, dude. You know, it's called the new gear channel. I have power supplies. Like, I didn't, you know, I was telling you, my wife, she's like, yeah, he gave you a power supply with it. And I go, I have power supplies. And then he wrote a little note and he said, this thing sounds a lot better with 18 volts. And I'm like, okay. And he's right. And what I found is it sounds great at nine volts. And you're not, you know, it's not like you're missing out on anything. But I did hear exactly what he said, which is what Lawrence had told me in the past too, that when things can run 18 or 9 volts. When you run 18 volts, man, you really get. When they. He said, Lauren said headroom. I didn't understand what that meant in his context of it. He was explaining it correctly, of course, but I wasn't understanding it. Now, the way I would explain it is it's not that it's fuller sounding. It's. It's like, yeah, it's more headroom. If that doesn't help you, it didn't help me either until you try it. So basically, you should definitely try it, especially if you have a good power supply, like chucks or something like that. Just do it. If it runs 18 volts, just make sure you're Reading all the manuals and stuff. Somebody put in the comment funky funky boy boss. Funky boss said small. Yeah, this is the small one. So I mean see the original one, it was huge. Yes. The enhanceifier is one of my favorite pedals in, in all of time. And the only thing I can say is that's negative is it's expensive and because it's handmade and it's by made by one person, like kind of like how Lawrence does. And it's not small. Right. This is big. It's a big pedal. And so. And whenever I want something to sound really good, I'll run just this into a good tube amp and I can play for hours and never feel like I need anything. This pedal into my Prince and is probably like my desert island rig. It's so great and it doesn't, it's not even that dramatic what it does the sound. But what it does, man, it makes the. Makes the guitar to sound so good. So that's, that's, that's. That's my answer on 18 volts. So try it. If you haven't tried it and you have the opportunity, try it. It does make a difference. Will you find? I find laziness wins with me. So if, you know, if I have the option to go 9v, I'll take it every time because I'm just lazy and I can just use it faster, you know, not have to get underneath the pedal board and do all that stuff. But like if I was recording, I would definitely switch to the 18 volts and get that improved sound, higher headroom and clarity. Rex O Matic says. Hey Phil, I know you like Parker guitars. What do you think about the Korean P38 model with the piezo humbucker single? Picked up a 2001 P38. Need to clean. Check out the piezo. Any tips? Yes, the Piezo sist. Piezo. The piezo systems and those guitars are delicate. It's just Piezo systems are delicate by nature and they get crusty, they get dirty and yeah, they need to be cleaned and serviced and you can do some research online and it can go on a Parker forum and learn all about that when you're ready for that. But I like the Korean made Parkers. You know, Parker's a brand that I just wish could have stayed forever. I like the guitars and I think there's a small following for them and I think if they made different decisions it would still be around today. But unfortunately, you know, I think that's if there's a lesson to learn about Parker guitars. It's the lesson that not everyone needs to be Fender, not everyone needs to be big. And I think that's, you know, that's. Sometimes I hate to say it, that's part of what the 80s brought us. The bigger is better mentality. And it killed a lot of things. It killed a lot of artists, it killed a lot of companies. You know, the reality is sometimes, you know, you should be, you should, you should figure out what it is that's going to make you happy and then aim for that and not just go, okay, well then I, you know, and what I mean by that is if you don't have a goal of what's going to make you happy, you won't know when you get there. You know, when people go, do you want a million subscribers? I don't. Nope. No, no. And here's why. I, I don't have a goal that would connect that to anything that would make me happy. It's just, it's, to me, it's just more people watching, I guess would be fine, but I'm happy where I've, I've been happy for the last few years with the channel size and like I said, it's, it could be smaller and it'd be fine. It's, it's, you know, I, I get out of it what I love, which is I get to hang out with people on Friday, we get to talk about guitars. I get to make content. It's great. You know, I don't want to be this tick tock influencer person. It's just not something I'm interested in. And, and, and I think the only thing that helps me with that is the fact that I knew that going in. Once I figured out what this was probably going to be, I said, this is where I need to be to be happy. And, and I think chasing the bigger will sometimes. First of all, I don't know what that's going to be like. So how could I decide, how could I say a million subscribers gonna make me happy when I don't even know what that's like? And I think that's with Parker. I wish Parker would have stayed a small business. And I think some, some companies should stay small businesses and last a long time and enjoy it. So. But I don't know. This next one came from Jay J's Mori Music says, I got a neck with a vintage tuner. Okay. It says toner. I think it's toner. And I need to strip it and redo it. I have an HLPV spray. This is like a finish question. I don't do finish work. What finish would you recommend? I don't do finish work. So that's. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people ask that. We keep talking about having a guest on. We'll have a guest for finish work, but I just don't do finish work. It's not something I, I've ever, I've ever did. It's not where my, my skill sets lie. I've always relied on somebody else to do it. Okay, let's go to. I, I'm gonna say KV Prod. KV Prod says, hey, I have an Ibanez blazer. Oh, that's a cool guitar with a maxed out truss rod. Oh, okay. I knew where this was going. And the neck is badly bowed. The neck needs more tightening. How can I save it? So at this point you have a very few options. First of all, because of the Ibanez blazer is older, I'm going to assume that it's not a dual action truss rod. But you need to confirm that because dual action truss rods have existed a little bit longer than most people remember them to. Why? I mean, that is because you've maxed it out and it's, it's bowed like a banana. It could be the dual action truss rod forcing it into that. So you may want to return the truss rod. So go the other way until it goes loose and then once it goes loose, go the other way and just be. Pay attention because if it doesn't have a dual action truss rod in it, the other way. Eventually as it goes loose, you're just going to unscrew, unscrew the nut off the top, which isn't the end of the world. But just don't do that. So confirm that. So first confirm that. If that's not the case, how would I fix it? There's two ways I would come approach it. First of all is I might go ahead and put tension on the neck. I have a neck tensioner, but you can make something makeshift. I use makeshift stuff all the time. And make the neck force the neck into being straight and then let it sit for weeks and hopefully forcing the neck into being straight. And the truss rod, sometimes you'll notice. What happens is because you understand the truss rod's maxed out. It may not be maxed out like at the end of its threading. It just might be with the, the neck is so strong, especially back in the day when using really old dry wood. And the wood's old now the Truss rod just can't physically get it to go that last way. And so sometimes if you force the neck to be straight for a period of time, you might go to turn the truss rod and go, oh, wait, it's gonna. It's turning more and you get more out of it. And then you get their last bit of trust. Yeah. You know, last bit of that trust rod adjustment. I don't think that's going to happen. Somebody's saying heat press. Yep. You can actually use steam and heat to do that as well. But it's up to you. Again, I'm not looking at it. So I. I'm. What I'm giving you is my safe verbal answer. Yes, we would steam it. Yes, we would use a heat press. However, I'm not looking at your neck. I don't know what finishes on it. I don't know what cracks are in the neck. I don't know what's going on. And putting pressure on the neck isn't going to hurt the neck more than where it's at now. So that's why I'm giving you a safe answer. If that doesn't work, well, then what we would do next is we would delaminate your fretboard, take it off and put a new truss rod in. So. So there you go. That's what I would suggest as a starting point. That's just a starting point, but that's where I would start. The real RD says you'll hit 500,000 by summer. Do you know, we actually have, you know, analytics. You know, YouTube gives us analytics. I can tell you exactly when I'm hit 500, 000 subscribers. For those that want to know, because I know you guys really want to know. And when will Phil McKnight hit 500, 000 subscrib. In 2020 Oh7? Oh8, 2008. 2028. So we'll head it in 2028. It's possible because we had. See, here's what happened. We had an upswing of subscribers the last six months. So it's saying 2027 now. So basically a year and a half to two years. But it's saying it could be as fast as a year and a half. So to give you an idea, that's how fast it moves. But so, you know, that's. We're on track. That's what we were. It was in 2024. They said we're gonna hit it in 2028. So we're looking like we could hit it by 2000. The end of two end it would be the end of 2027. So two years basically from now is when we will hit 500000 subscribers if things don't change. So in other words we don't slow down and most likely never going to speed up. Just not going to slow down. I just said I only tell you that just to give you guys how hard it is to hit subs. It just. It's really nuts. This one's a tough one. I'm just going to hit it real quick. J biz55 says would it be okay to mention a gofundme for a local Arizona skateboard hero that passed. It's Chris Gobber passed away and there's a GoFundMe for to save his house for his kids. If you want to post stuff like that in the comments and stuff, obviously I'm mentioning it right now. I. I just don't. I don't know anything about it. So it's hard for me to vet it and stuff like that. But. But no look, it's a community. Think of your. Think of your comment section as a community posting board. When you post links to videos, I'll just give you guys. I'm just giving you guys some YouTube etiquette so you know how it works. When you post links to videos or links to anything. YouTube has a filter to filter that. And so I usually have to release it and I. And I'm pretty good at releasing them daily if not bi daily. I'll go and check to see if anyone's links A lot of times what it's what's you guys are posting. People are posting as opposed to their video. It's a old. There's YouTubers out there that teach you how to be YouTubers and they'll say what you do is you find a big YouTuber and then you post your links to your video to their fans and then they'll find your videos. I don't know if that works. I just seen people say that and I see all people all the time. I will release those kind of links. So basically what I'm trying to tell you is if you post a GoFundMe for someone who's passed away to raise money for their family, I'm not gonna block it is what I'm telling you. You if it doesn't filter through it's because YouTube automatically grabs it and I have to approve it. Only thing I'm looking for is the reason YouTube does this in the first place is I'm looking for what essentially YouTube doesn't, doesn't scan it for me. Otherwise it'd be easy and I wouldn't have to have them filter. I'm looking for scams, cons, you know, like, hey, contact me. You know, hey, you won a prize, contact me, stuff like that. Or hey, you're handsome, come check out my only fans or whatever. I don't know, I'm just. There is stuff like that. I'm just saying. But, but anyways, that's. I'm just saying, I don't filter that stuff. It to me, I look at your guys's comment section like a community board. We keep the. We do have a code of conduct, but the code of conduct that the, the moderators tend to follow is they have a sense because they've been here for years in this community or what's in the community. Like I don't have heart stead rules. Like I don't tell them, like if they say this, they go, you know. Right. It's just obviously, you know, unwarranted mean commentary, you know, stuff like that. It's a little much. You know, we try to minimize that. We try to keep everything flowing, but we try not to actually quash the community voice because I think that's a value of this, this podcast platform is that there's a. Is that there's a community that can talk to each other.
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Absolutely. By the way, as far as I know, I'm also have it set up to where when the video replays, you can see all the comments and stuff. If it's not happening, I don't know what to tell you, but I go through and I make sure all those settings are set correctly and adhere to all of YouTube rule. I'm not holding back anything. Like I said, if anything's being blocked or not seen, it's, it's, it's maybe every once in a blue moon an accident because it got trapped up in something. But the only thing we're really, really focused on removing is, you know, inappropriate scammers, people trying to take advantage of people with scams, or people saying extremely harsh or really just inappropriate conduct, you know, because again, it's. No one needs to see that. Not when you're just trying to have some fun, you know, talk about guitars. So. Okay, let's button up the show. Let's do one last, one last comment question topic first. Let's just make sure that there's not a. Okay, let's. This one is, I believe the last two. There's this last two. Okay, ready it says from Contra Nate says, hey, did you have a chance to check out McGrath guitars at NAMM? I didn't physically go in the NAMM building. I went to the Keisel Connect event, and that's how I did that. Because, like I said, I would rather. I. I think I, you know, think thank the Keisel Connect event for helping me clarify my issues with namm. And I figured out what it is I don't like about namm. I would appreciate NAMM if you could go. You know what I find is, I go to NAMM, and, you know, it would be if it was Nam was like Comic Con. I wouldn't mind being a YouTuber there. And you guys going, hey, it's that guy on YouTube, right? And I'd be like, yeah, that's me. I'm on YouTube. And we talked, and we. We could talk guitars. And as you guys know, when I meet you guys, a lot of times I'll just ask, like, what's your favorite guitar? You know, because I'm curious, you know, And I like that about the Kiesel Connect. I like the idea that anybody could go to it. And. And if you, like, keys was great. And if you liked, you know, me, or if you, like, somebody was there, you could do that. You could talk about whatever, right? There wasn't any rules. We didn't all talk about Keyzels. The whole there. The NAMM thing is. Is different. It's isolated to the industry, which is fine, except for the fact that it's just not. Cannot conducive for what I'm doing now in my life. So I didn't get to check out that stuff. I looked at all the videos, and we talked about the highlighted products. But there is a little bit of benefit to where I can see brands there. But I can tell you right now, at this point, when it comes to brands, like, I don't know the McGrath guitars, but I'll check them out. That's what's great. You. This is my perfect example. I could have walked by the booth and not cared. Contra Nate, you have more power with me than McGrath guitars. Because how it works in my world is. Is a company reaches out to me, and their whole instinct is to get me to sell their product. And that's a byproduct of what I do, okay? That's what reviewing does. You know, hey, but that's not my goal. My goal is to make money making content for you guys. That's how I've made my money over the years. That's the way I've enjoyed it and that's definitely where I've hyper focused it to the point where I'm doing very little to no sponsored content at all in any way, shape or form. Because of the fact of this. If you're interested in it, you'll watch it. If you'll watch it, I can make a living and I can continue to do it. I find that. I think the death of social media for YouTube on the YouTube platform is that if everyone is making a video because a company wants them to, then eventually we'll all stop watching. Because I don't want to watch your infomercial on whatever products being pushed. And I'm. I. And again, I'm not saying that's bad. You got to sprinkle it a little bit. Okay. I think all of us understand. I understand. If you guys, I want you to. I want you to know, when I watch a YouTube channel that I like and I know this is a really promoted product that they're pushing, I go, you know, they gotta make the bills. Okay, cool. But I would hope the next video is gonna be for more for me. Like, here's the video I know you wanted to see. Here's the company, the video that the company wanted me to do. So I would rather have you guys suggest me brands than brands. Reach out. First of all, when you suggest me a brand, here's what's different. I'll go look at that brand if I'm interested. Now that you've showed it to me, maybe I'll pick an instrument and we'll talk about it. What I'm not interested in is them telling me what exact model. And here's the biggest problem I have, and this is a dig at companies, and this is probably why I don't get along with all of them all the time. I don't have a problem promoting the product, but they always tend now to want me to promote the product they can't sell. And I'm like, well, right, Nobody wants to buy it. And now you. You're hoping that if I'm super McKnight influencer extraordinaire, I'm like, I use it. It's like, I'm like hair care for products. Like, hey, you want to have a nice shiny bald head, right? I don't know that, you know, hey, you want to be cool? Get this guitar. I don't think it works like that. I don't think it's ever worked like that. I don't think a single one of you ever bought a product Because I said to do it. I think that the product was presented to you and you guys made a decision because I gave you some information and you were now more informed. And so, so to contra. Contra Nate, thank you for mentioning the brand. I will definitely check them out this weekend. And. And like I said, I think that's how it should work. And that's where I'm at. Especially for 2026. Doctor is my ball zich with a Z. Haven't seen you in a while, man. He says selling and buying inexpensive used guitars on reverb like the Ibanez AZ ES31 for 349 new seems tricky after tax and shipping. You might as well buy new. I totally agree with you. I think people have lost their freaking mind. We'll end on this. I. Lately I've been looking at used gear and going after. I factor in, they want to add 20, 30, 50, $100 in shipping. A lot of them. $125 in shipping. It's like this guitar, $500 to $150 in shipping. I'm like, okay, I get it. Shipping's expensive. And then sales tax. And I'm like, dude, you're 10% below new. I can get a retailer to go 10% for new. I think you've lost your damn minds. I, you know, here's the reality of stuff. You know, there's a reason why it used to be the retailers got more for use than us because they were backing the product with somebody. I can go back to. I'm gonna tell you right now, everybody's got different opinions. Here's mine. Take it for whatever it's worth. If I look at a product on reverb, somebody's selling a product reverb on a Reaver for 500 and I go on Guitar center and they want 454. You're out of your goddamn mind. I go, Guitar center has a 30 day or 45 day unconditional return policy. And yet you're just a guy selling out of your house. And I don't even know what's going to happen after I get this guitar. The whole, I think people have lost it. I think if you're selling your gear used, you need to be more reasonable. Look, I get it, it sucks. But I have never told anyone on this show 451 episodes to do anything. I wouldn't do you. I literally have sold many of you my used product. And you guys know, you guys got a deal. I knew exactly what it sold for. I knew the Max I could get. And sometimes if I thought it was really that great, I'd get the max. I'd try to get the max. But the fact that everyone's kind of turned. That they want. Everyone wants to get their max amount back out of their product. I get it. It sucks to lose money, but if you didn't go into it with a little bit of a. You knew you're gonna lose a little bit, I don't think you're having a realistic expectation. And it's really turning. Some of these selling platforms like Craigslist is just over for me because it's just full of people who have lost their mind to the point where everything used is like, I wouldn't pay. I don't even have to talk to you. You're like, 300 bucks. Like, $300. 150. How do I send you 150 without pissing you off? But also, you know, look, I might go, too, but you're so out of touch. I think it's. It's. And. And. And it's. And I know part of it sucks because I've sold on these platforms, as you know, and I know what it feels like. You get that. You know how many times I thought they made a mistake? That you get the deposit and you go, wait, wait, $613? No, it was more like eight. Let me. Let me. And then you go fees, and you're like, yeah, I guess that total number is the taxes. And, yeah, I don't get the shipping. And heck, half the time, whatever I charge in shipping isn't enough. Like, I'll charge. I told you. I just kind of come to the conclusion that I'm like, yeah, I get it. And shipping is crazy. Like, I'll go with $75 in shipping, but I'll charge 50. And then. And sometimes it works the other way. Sometimes I've actually charged shipping, like, $25. And then the shipping was 12. And I go, well, that worked in my favor for once. But I think. I think people out there should have more reasonable expectations if they want to sell stuff. And I don't know. I just don't know. But to answer your question, yeah, I think people have. I think it sucks because now we have the sales tax on used gear and on the Internet. And I think because shipping has gotten high, I think those two factors have made it really hard, and the fees have gotten hard. It's really hard for anybody to recoup their money. But here's what really bums me out. And this is the Thing that makes me kind of nauseous. And it's happened to me this last week, okay? I have an insane amount of nice guitars to get rid of from the channel, okay? I do about a hundred reviews a year. That's 100 guitars, okay? So you gotta understand, and there's all kinds of environments why those guitars are here. Either I bought them, we got them on a deal, a company sent them as like a condition of like they let us keep the guitar because we made them a video or we made a video and I was, I'll tell you how nuts this is. I had sold a bunch of guitars to Guitar center and I know some people at Guitar center and they give me a good deal. But I was looking and I want to just be clear what I'm talking about. American made Strat, American made Jazz Master. American made Telecaster, American Deluxe, Strat. High end epiphone, Gibson, like on the higher end, right? Not Gibson, sorry. High end epiphone, Les Paul, high end stuff. And I was looking at what I would get on trade and how just crazy that was. And I thought, wow. I mean I'm looking at something that Guitarson will sell for fourteen hundred dollars and they're gonna give me seven. And I'm like seven. I think it's worth, I think American Made a US Professional two Jazz Master. Like it's got to be a thousand bucks, right? Somebody would love to pay me a thousand dollars cash of this guitar. But here's what's happened. They ruined in my area at least, they ruined Craigslist, they ruined Facebook offerup. And I, I just want to put something like, hey, American Strat, 800 bucks. You know, USA made Strat with case, perfect condition, custom shop, 50 pickups in it. 800 bucks. I take 800 bucks cash. But between the shipping, like they talked about sales tax. See, it's not 800 bucks to somebody else. It's going to be 1200 bucks by time they time you add the shipping and the tax. And then I'm like, okay, so I got to take six. I'm like $600. So you know what I did? So if you guys are local in Arizona, I would check out Zim's guitars in Mesa, Arizona. I didn't talk to Zim this week. I took them. I, I don't know, a dozen guitars, maybe more. High end, all great. I gave them to his son and I told him I strategically priced them aggressively. Better than you could find them anywhere online by far. And I'm gonna take a bath on them. But not as much as the bath if I was going to straight trade to Guitar center because they're on consignment and stuff. But the sad thing the whole time thinking is I'm glad it's going to help Zim's business and I'm glad he's going to make some money and I'm glad people are going to get some good deals on swing guitars. But I was thinking in my head going, how crazy is it that you can't just throw this on Craigslist? You can't put an American Deluxe Stratocaster with a hard shell case, you know, and you're like, hey, I'll take you know, 800 bucks or a thousand bucks or whatever. Because the customers have gone from those places because we've all been burnt out on all the craziness that's there and reverb between the fees and the shipping and stuff. Even if I give somebody smoking deal, it's not a smoking deal to them. So you got to get even more aggressive with the deals. So yeah, it's a little bit of a, it's a little bit of a mess just to say the least. I don't have an answer for it. You know, I'm hoping that we can build back community purchasing again. You know, I don't know what the answer for Craigslist is, but I would really nice if you guys have suggestions. This is why I like our rant like this. Put in the comments, let me know. Is there a place that you guys likes local? Is there a forum you like to go to? You know, and I know some of you are going to say, and you always say this but yeah, you could sell it to us. I can, I can. But you know, at this point I also could take it down to them. They can make a little money. I'll take the, the, the, the lumps I was going to take anyways. And yeah, and it's nuts. And so Casey's saying Craigslist is the wrong site to sell a guitar on. I believe so. And that's why I said then there was offer up. But I think it's the same problem you post it on there. And here's the sad part. It's so bad that even if you post a great product, a great guitar, a great amp at a good deal, they don't believe it because I think it's a scam because that's all it's left on there is people who are out of their mind with prices and scams. So I think the lesson There is, I think if you really want to get rid of your stuff, you need to be more realistic about stuff. And, and I don't know, maybe we'll figure out something from there. On that note, I'm gonna go. I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. Don't forget to check out Buddy Blues his channel and check out our second channel because we'll put a longer hangout version. You know, we'll hang out and I'll have a longer hang with Buddy on there. And on that note, thank you guys for your time. If you're a patreon, don't forget tomorrow is the live clinic. And if you're a top tier patron, the coffee hang is on Sunday. So just reminder for those that are doing that. If you're not a patron, you can always check out and the information below to see if you want to be one. Otherwise, just thank you for supporting the channel in every way you have and know your gear. I want to take a second and thank everyone who's been sponsoring this podcast for all the these years. You can become a patron member as well for $5 a month or get a 10 discount. If you sign up for the year, you get access to the show ad free and you get a bonus podcast every month. It's just like this podcast is just more in an intimate setting with just us. But did you know that for $10 a month or 120 a year, you could also get all that but also get a clinic every month. And that is live where I answer questions in real time. Kind of like what doing here on the show except for I have all the tools, all the equipment parts, you name it. And more importantly, you get to put your questions or your issues ahead of time so I can see and even look at your own pictures. So I hope you guys will check out the options. And thank you for keeping this podcast independent for over 450 episodes.