Phil McKnight (0:03)

The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 402. And welcome to Friday. What is this? February 21st. There you go. So hope you all had a fantastic Valentine's Day last Friday. And let's get started with some cool guitar stuff. We're gonna have a Guitar of the Week. You know, today's probably gonna be a funny Guitar of the Week. I'm hoping so. You know, I spilled water, so I'm. Right now I'm, I'm. I'm cleaning up the part of the water I forgot I didn't see underneath the keyboard. So that's what happens when you not paying attention and you pour water. So anyways, I hope everybody had a fantastic week. Ready. Ready for talking about guitar stuff. A couple things that just always announces that if you see somebody with a blue name and a wrench, that means our moderator. And they're just kind of field questions, send links, all kinds of cool stuff like that. And also this show, as you heard, is sponsored by Patreon members and channel members. Thank you so much for 400 episodes of sponsoring the channel. All right, what do we want to get into first? I got a lot of stuff. I'm kind of excited about Guitar of the Week this week, but I'm not going to start that. Okay, so let's start with the first question I saw. This is the early Riser question. The first question I seen, which was from Gary, who says, hey, what are manufacturers like Eart, Eart, whatever you want to call them, doing differently with the fret ends? Are they rounded? Are they. Are they rounding them before the frets are pressed in? And why don't other manufacturers do this? So what they're calling them is semi hemispherical frets. And I have a bunch of videos on that. First of all, in almost all of the eart videos of my deep dives, I take a second to show you how they make those frets. But what I did, and I'm just verify, Gary, before I say that I'm pretty sure and if not, I will make sure it's done this week weekend. There is a YouTube short of how to do it. I made a short video how they do hemispherical or semi hemispherical frets. So. And I do know for a fact that it. I don't see it. So Maybe I didn't release that video. At least I'm not seeing the catalog. But that doesn't mean it's not out there. I then I would have definitely released it under Instagram and Facebook for sure. So that's where I. But usually when I post post that, I'll post it here too, so. So I will post that as well. I would show you. It's funny enough, I would show you, but I'm always afraid to run different streaming Internets at the same time. It seems like it crashes things. But yeah, I'm looking. I will make sure I do it. So what they do is, yes, they round off those frets. Like I show you in the videos, what they do is they use a tool. Actually, let me show you the tool because there's a tool they use for that. So let's go to Stu Mac. Like I said, when in doubt, always go to Stu Mac for tools because they're there. Fret something. I have no idea what the tool is. I just know this. If you watch any of my videos, it's in the background on the. On the tool. On the tool rack behind me. So here is a fret crimper now. Nope, this is not the tool. I said fret crimper. That's not the tool. This is it. The stumag fret Tang Nipper. So if you look at any of my videos, any deep dives, you'll see this tool right here hanging. There's a couple of tools. On a side note, just funny, I've had some interesting responses over the years about my tools behind me. And I always love it because people are always curious, like, hey, what tool is that? What is this? But I've had some people, like, try to call me to the mat, like, why do you have garden shears on there? And I'm like, they're not. They're 10 snips. And they'll go, why do you have. And they always think there are the tools? And I'm like, no, that's a. And I'm like, no, I have a fret. It's a fret Tang Nipper. So here you can see, this is how I show it in the video, too. Basically, what this tool does is it takes off. See, right there. If you're looking at the fret, you see, I. You. You're taking off about a quarter inch of the blade from the end of the fret. And then what you do next is you will take. I use a Dremel wheel, but they could be using all kinds of things. My guess is probably some kind of wheel on a Dremel, just because it's pretty easy and they just round over the edge. Like I said, they make them ball ended and then they set them in. There is some. Hold on a second. Refresh this. Okay. There is some other ways to do it, but I'm pretty sure that's the way they're doing it as it's pretty easy to do it that way. And the other thing that's important is some people have said, like, it's not a good idea because the string can roll off the edge. It is possible. You have to do it well. They do it pretty well. But I mean, you're obviously inviting problems sometimes when you're doing it. But that's how they do it, Gary. And. And like I said, I will make sure if you go on Instagram, I promise you, if you scroll through, you'll find the short video of it. And then otherwise I'll put it on YouTube as a short. And then also if you go in to any of the E Art videos, you'll see in the. I think it's in the tech tip sections, it'll show. And like I said I would pull it up, but I just haven't figured out how to pull up dual. Like pull up Internet and show you guys a view of a video without it possibly causing issues. So maybe I'll preload it for next time. Okay, so that's the answer to that question. The other thing I need to do while we're talking about this stuff is pull up the patron page, because the patron submitted questions as well, so I want to be able to pull up their questions. Like I said, we'll try to get to everybody or as many as possible. Okay, I'm gonna answer this question. I'm just going for it like I always do. Let's see what happens. Richard says, hey, not a question, and I don't know why I'm reading it. No, I'm just kidding, Richard. But greatly appreciate your measuring fret height on the deep dive. So many brands say something like medium jumbo frets. Some of them. Some of those, like myheritage, are quite short, whereas my G and L medium jumbos are taller than my fender frets. So I love, I love. That was a suggestion to me by a patron member. I think it was on the coffees things. So if you don't know what the patron deal is, if for $5 a month you become a patron, I do one bonus podcast a month like this. It's just for patrons. And it's pretty much guaranteed you're getting your question in because, like, last last Week's was like 25 people live. So if you come live, you're getting your question in. But. But if you submit it, I'm pretty much going to get to it, too. And then the $25 tier, the highest tier, we about once. And we try to do it twice a month, we have coffee. So I just. It's just we zoom, call, hang, and in that we get a lot of feedback. So I'm just giving them credit for this. And that was one of the things they're like, hey, could you add fret height and fret measurements to the videos? And actually, there was a reason why I didn't want to do it. So let's talk about why I didn't want to add fret measurements to the videos. And then now I do want to do it. I didn't want to do it because it would be confusing because they're never going to be the same measurements almost ever twice, because no frets are usually untouched. What I mean by that is if we take. I just keep life easy. Let's just say I'm making up these numbers for reference. Okay? Let's say a fret is 2 millimeters wide and 1 millimeter tall, and that's the spec. Let's say that's a medium fret. That's just the spec. Okay. Every video I measure it, it's going to be like, this fret is 2 millimeters wide, but it's going to be 0.75 millimeters tall. Right? And the next one's gonna be, you know, point, you know, 50 millimeters tall. Right. What I mean by that is, is they are all gonna start at the same place, but then when you level them, you're taking away material greatly, which is why I'm a big fan of jumbo tall frets. Because if I don't want them, if I think they're. If a fret's too tall for me, I'll just take it down. Right? But if it's too low, I can't bring it up. I have to refresh. But I decided that would cause more questions than answers by giving you those numbers. But then through that feedback, I thought about it going, I noticed something really strange. And it's funny that you mentioned your heritage, and heritage is actually who triggered this when I said, so I have this beautiful heritage behind me. When I got the first heritage, I said the frets were too low and A lot of people said, well, aren't they medium threats? Why are they too low? Well, that's because I believe the plek. The plek machine and the tech who use the plek machine just grinded down the frets so low that the neck, so it would be perfectly level and play great. That I just didn't feel like there was enough fret left. And that's sometimes a trick that manufacturers will do. And we all do it. I mean, techs do it. We all do it. Like, if you came to me and you said you don't have a specific, like, you're not really into fret wire, like, it's like, not important to you. It's just. You just don't want any buzz or you don't want any dead notes. I would level your frets until they were level, even if that meant, you know, I'm taking a pretty good life, a good amount of life out of those frets, lowering them down. Most players would play the guitar next and they wouldn't even care. Some would go, oh, man, now it's too low. I feel like my. My finger is just rubbing on the fretboard. And so that's why I started giving you those numbers, because, you know, let's see if some companies, you know, actually get you closer to an untouched fret wire than others. And, you know, the funny thing about this is you're gonna. You're gonna kill me, you're gonna hate me. I don't care. I don't know what to tell you guys. Like, the facts are the facts. The information I present in the videos is the information I present in the videos. The PRS guys nail it, man. Everything that they kind of spec behind the scenes comes out in my videos almost every time. It's almost like creepily accurate, right? Like, for instance, you know, when I'm doing the nut slots, you can almost guarantee that the PRS nut slots are going to be exactly what they're supposed to be. It's going to be like 20,000ths on the E and the A. It's going to be 18,000. I think I said this already on the D and the G and 16,000 on the B and the E. It's almost like. It's almost like locked in to the point where you can tell they really did obsess about it. And when I say that, here's where it's different. There are brands that I can tell you that I just. I thought were some of the best, amazing guitars ever, to me especially 80s era 90s era. American made Jackson guitars are just phenomenal players. You pick them up in the necks, just there's something almost magical about them. BC rich in the right year, same thing. Magical necks. Okay, Ibanez. Unless you know, you don't like the thin necks. Same thing. Especially the Japanese. Arrogant necks. Especially late 80s, early 90s, mid-90s, man, even more so. Just fantastic, fantastic fretwork, fit and finish work. And of course still to this day with the prestige stuff, however, where it gets really weird with the brands is there's almost like if I said, oh yeah, Ibanez does good work and Jackson does good work and you know, Music man does great work, Music man will keep them separate aside aside for a second. Please give me that for a second. I can't say from top, bottom, it's like that, right? So if I was to tell you that I think that if I. You gave me ten prestige Ibanez guitars. Prestige the brand, not prestige like in prestige condition, Prestige the model. If you gave me 10, I would say, let's just say to be safe, 8, 80%. 8 out of that 10. Going to be perfect. Going to be perfect. Especially if I have to adjust a few things. Going to be perfect. I really feel confident about that premium brand, which is the Indonesian line of Ibanez's. You gave me 10, seven. Seven out of 10. Maybe six, but seven out of 10. I feel like, remember, I'm betting money here on this, all right? I'm saying, you know, that's what I feel like. If you presented that to me as a challenge and I had throw, you know, $1,000 down and go, okay, here's what's gonna happen then when we get to the subsect, in other words, a lower tier price of Ibanez, I would then say, oh, now it's gonna be like 50%, right? Maybe 60%, you know, being nice, which is pretty good. That's pretty good, right? PRs though, I don't think that's the case. I would say USA core PRS guitars when we're talking about fretwork being perfect. Nine out of ten, okay? And I feel pretty confident out of that. In fact, if you gave me 20, I would probably still not even say nine out of 10 out of 20. I would say instead of saying 18 out of 20, say 19 out of the 20. See what I'm saying? S2s not even eight out of 10. I think it's like eight and a half out of 10. I know a half doesn't make sense, but just give it to me, because it's again, not that then when we get to SE7 out of 10, that's pretty good, you know what I mean? So like I said, they seem to really have that focused in. So why I'm talking about that right now is not to praise pure S guitars. Okay? That's not what this is about. What it's about is to say in the videos I thought, well why don't we start including all that information so that when we have discussions every Friday like this or when we want to refer back to the information to see who's doing the most consistency, maybe that will translate to something. Because here's what I've learned. Doing a thousand of these deep dives is doesn't matter how cheap or expensive the guitar. There are some things that are so consistent they transcend every single video to where it's like everyone has that part figured out. And then there are things that you can tell. Like I almost like now I can predict it. Like, you know, like Johnny Carson, like put on my thing. What is Fred Sprout? What is right? Like you just know what you're gonna come across and who's, who's more. Who has more problems with it in high end guitars, expensive guitars. If I was gonna say who's got fret sprout issues? Get this, I would say best. In other words, if you want to guarantee almost no fret sprout on a guitar. And again, I don't know how to bet money on this and I don't know how to just go with my, you know, go with me on this. If I was going to say what high end? Again, we're talking expensive. In other words, expensive meaning we're not even thinking about anything. $1,000, it's got to be above $1,000 in today's market. I would say no fret sprout ever. I mean, okay, let me take it back. There's no such thing as ever best by far Gibson by far. Dealing with fret sprout on a Gibson guitar. Unless of course, like I said, we're talking about high end Gibsons. Once you get to these unfinished, you know, no binding on the side of the necks kind of deals. Yeah, you'll, you'll find fret sprout issues. But on the bound ones and the nice ones, almost non existent. Then after them, I would say for frets about never seeing frets about ever. Which gets tough because this is where it's kind of unfair to some companies and where Gibson Prop gets some credit is you Know the amount of guitars made by Gibson versus the next brand I'm gonna say is like, it's like literally a million to a thousand kind of range. Sir guitars, I would say sir is next for like just never Fretsprout. You're coming across. It's very rare. Then I would say PRs maybe, right? I mean obviously I could pick other brands like Nags and much smaller brands. But again I'm trying to stick to mainstream stuff and sir is already kind of small in that mainstream conversation. Then I would say for Fret Sprout, like maybe main Japan, Gretsch for sure never seen those. What I'm trying to do so you know, is reflect back on all the deep dives I've done and all the repairs I've done for two decades and try to remember like who hasn't come in for Fret Sprout. And everyone has except for like I said, very rarely are you dealing with any bound neck Gibsons with Fret Sprout even if it cracks because they'll, you know, they'll crack. They'll push through and crack the binding. But very rare. Gretsch is the same. Very rare to never Schecter. Very little. Schecter has a really, for some reason just really good control over that. Obviously Framis, which is a small company, like same thing, just masterful at that. High end brands that I think have the problem. I would say Music man, sadly enough. I've. I Fret Sprout. I've done Fret Sprout on a massive amount of music bands. I did one today. So anyways. And then I would say Kiesel and Carvin, right? Same thing. You see those Fret Sprout from time to time for sure. Then you'd see Fender of course, but by the volume. But, but must much more USA and made Mexico. But mostly because of the volume. So yeah, so. So anyways, that's why I want to start including all that information in the sheets. And like I said, we'll, we'll, we'll will go. And then a question that wasn't asked. But I want to tag on since we're talking about the sheets. There was a question that came up on the Patreon side, which maybe you guys are interested in, which was. They wanted to know why I was basically putting in. They wanted to know why I was putting in. Let me share with you. On the sheets, for those that are fans of the Channel and like the sheets, the Kyg scorecards. Why put stuff like not horrible, good, great, they Said, could you put, like a numbering system so it could help like a grade? And the way I've decided to do it, this. This is a lot of stuff. I've just recently made a change to the sheets. Please, guys, keep the suggestions coming. I'm not going to respond to you. I just don't have time. Okay, I'm not going to respond to your stuff, but I'm going to consider it and do it. For instance, this week, a suggestion came in and it was kind of like, just for the record, the person sent it and went, come on, man. Just a little highs and how you doings? And pleasants. But it was kind of like, do this. But I was. All right, fine, I got the point. I. I've been yelled at. I don't. I don't. You're not gonna hurt my feelings. But anyways, on the Bromo video, so, bro. Yeah, we added this based on a suggestion, which was they wanted the weight instead of just in pounds, could we put it in other measurements? And so that's what I did. I added that as well. We added weight not only in pounds, we added it in ounces, just so you have that breakdown. And then we did it in kilograms. So I'm trying to show you on the sheet. Let me show you. Where is it at? It's on the second page. Maybe it's on the second page. Yeah, I know. I added it. Yeah. Guitar weight. See? So there it is. So it gives you the pounds, the ounces, and the kilograms. So again, keep suggestions coming. I'll keep adding them. The one thing I'm not going to change anytime soon, because again, I have a personal reason for it, is on the grading. I'm not going to cite numbers other than the sock test, and here's why. A grade on the sock test, to me, is a provable grade. In other words, if one sock tore, that's horrible. And if it doesn't tear at all, that's good. And if it's kind of scratched a little bit, that's not so good. Right? So that's to 1, to a 5. Makes sense that the other grades. When I say not horrible, great, good. Okay, Those. Those are my opinions, how I feel about the things that I'm looking at. And I don't want you to confuse those with facts. I understand. In today's day and age, when reviewers are like, I don't give opinions. I only review stuff I like. I'm like, no, we're starving for people to give you an opinion, tell me it sucks or it's great. So I can decide if I want to take my hard earned money and put it out there for it. I know you need an opinion or at least not so much because my opinion matters, but at least you feel like you can trust if I say something, you know, you, you have a bearing, you know where to kind of, you know, set your sights. So I, I tend to, tend to, I rather be those terminologies just be like, you know, this is not horrible. This is good. This is, this is, you know, great. This is, you know, whatever. But because again, it's opinion. So I'm just giving you that, giving you that information. We don't have to get too much into it. Let me do this. Amanda sending me questions. Jay, she sent one from Jay says, how do you make 400 episodes? I'm never going to get the concept of just drink. Then read the whole question instead of pause in the middle. Sorry. How do you make wiring in a guitar neat and tidy or is it a lost cause? Just did a two hum, two pot, push, pull and toggle. Looks like Monica's closet. I got that from Friends. It's a Friends reference. Huh. My fun, fun fact. Here's a fun fact. Fun fact is my new office, the room you see me in here is a trick I'm just sharing with you guys. It's funny, I'm kind of picturing my wife going, he's not going to say what I think he's. I'm not saying entirely what I'm saying. This room that looks like the room I've been in for years is not the room I've been in for years. It was decorated and made to look like the room I'd been in for years. I'm actually in a different room. This now room, this office that I now claim is my daughter's old bedroom. She moved away and decided, you know, she's going to be successful and move away. She did that. So I took over her bedroom as my office because she has her own bathroom and, and a bigger closet for all my guitars. So I was like, okay, I'm taking that. So this room, which looks like the old room, is in fact my daughter's room. And to pay homage to my daughter who had the room decorated like friends. Okay. And fun. Another fun fact that you just can't, can't, can't not share. I'm sorry, guys. This wallpaper that my wife did was great. This is to cover up the very purple pink walls because I just, we didn't want to. I didn't want to paint over my daughter's walls. So we wallpapered because of this can come down. Right. I don't know why. But also my daughter had hand painted this friend's ceiling fan and I just couldn't take that, you know. Right. Because I'm. I gotta have a cool ceiling fan. And so what I did is I disassembled on the fan blades. My. What I'm basically trying to get to is my bathroom is friends themed. So I have the friends pictures in there. I have friends Lego sets. I basically took all my daughter's friends stuff that she had decorated for years and didn't want it. So when you said the friends reference, I get friends because my daughter watched it like crazy. And my bathroom is a friends themed bathroom, which is almost kind of fun. So the. Okay, I don't know why I went on the tirade. Let me get back to, back to your problem. Your problem is wiring. Yeah, you know, here's the thing with wiring. I like mini zip ties, little teeny ones. I get them, I don't know, I probably get them from Harbor Freight or you know, whatever, Amazon, Ace Hardware. I do a lot of shopping 80s hardware because I can walk to one. So I just like to bundle, you know, put everything up neat and zip tie everything up and clean it up. I, I like everything to be really clean. I try to give myself because I've worked on so many guitars. I really don't like it when people cut things too short and you can't work on anything later. You know, a lot of times you're like, well, no one's ever gonna work on this. I, I'm sure everybody thought that, that every guitar I've ever had to fix, they thought I was gonna have to work on it. It's really horrible if you can't, you know, get in there. So I like it when everything's just zip tied up and, and nice and neat. And I would use little zip ties. Those are perfect. You can use, you know, twist ties and all that stuff. But I like the little zip ties. That's just how I would do things. It's not going to hurt anything, you know, as you know, I'm not an amp repair guy. I don't know anything about amps. But I took an amp class, a building class, and just for the knowledge of it. And what I learned in amp class was all of my knowledge in guitar repair was actually a hindrance and horrible to amp repair. The first thing being apparently an ample in amp building. Like you don't want any wire longer than it absolutely needs to be. And in guitar repair it's like ah, throw a little extra in there and just throw it in there so you have it right. There's no, like you don't have to worry about, you know, if you leave an extra 2 inches of wire on a, on a pickup wire and just you know, kind of tuck it out of the way. You don't have to worry about that creating any more noise or doing anything harmful. Not even like in a resistance kind of tone thing. It's not even a real big deal. So I learned the hard way that Harry sound says heat shrink. Sure I heat shrink the ends, but I don't heat shrink things together. Here's why Harry. I mean you can do whatever you want. Like I said, whatever's me, I always like, like I said, I want to be able to whatever I make nice and neat, I want to be able to tear it apart and get back in there pretty easy again. So the zip ties are really nice because I'm talking about these really tiny ones, right? Don't think like a big you know like quarter inch wide zip type. These are like, you know, God, probably 2.5 millimeter wide, right? Zip ties. Right 8th inch zip ties. Width wise they're white and they're really short. You can probably get other colors, but I used to get these ones that are like clear white or transparent white. And the reason I like them is I can clip them very easy with some, some wire cutters. The problem with heat shrink is when you heat shrink it on there, it's really hard to get something underneath there and cut it out. So you tend to want to use an X acto knife and slice down. And to me that's like one that's a potential problem to slice your hand open. You know, that could always happen. But more so, you know, anything that can, you know, anytime you put a razor blade next to something you don't want to cut, you're taking a chance, right? Because this is not as accurate as you know, just snipping it and having it separate. So that's why I use that. But again that works too. But I use a lot of heat shrink to make the wires look nice. But to bundle the wires or to cinch up things, I use the, the zip ties. So ah, DJB says can you put a Fender Professional 2 neck on a standard 4 bolt body? Will the extra screw hole compromise the neck at all? No. In fact Fender cheats themselves. What they do to save time and money is you'll find that there's pretty much no like four hole. Next they're five. So Fender pretty much drills the four hole square pattern and then the extra one for the. Or the extra one that's over for the, for the. When they have a contour there. So you should be fine, should be no problem at all. They should almost line up. In fact in most cases they're going to line up so you don't have to dowel and redrill new screws holes. But if worst case scenario that's how you're going to do that. You would just dial in all those holes like drill them out, dial them in, glue them in with wood glue, just type on wood glue and dowels and then re drill your new holes if you want. But my guess is the holes will line up on your four bolt pattern and you'll be fine and you'll have no problems. The only time you worry about any of that stuff on guitars, a lot of guitars that are designed to have kind of more of a rounded neck heel, sometimes they kind of sand and round the corner of the neck itself. And so when you put it on a four bolt it, you know, because instead of where the four bolts like got a straight line, all of a sudden it curves and it rounds it looks a little odd. It doesn't hurt anything. It just looks a little odd. I don't think you're gonna have that problem. But you have to be aware that some guitars will do that because again I don't know every scenario that you're looking at as well. And Vox Guitar rock says Indonesian or Mexican Fender. I don't care. The, the. I, I prefer quality wise from what I've touched. I prefer the made Mexico Fenders because so far that's what's come out best. But the reason I say I don't care is I'm also very aware that Fender did that. You know, like we talked about last week, the Cortech who makes the Indonesian Fender also makes a 3600 off Strandberg. So I don't doubt they can make a really nice Fender. The spec on that Fender that's off that some people don't like, I think it's just Fender did that. They set the specs and the factory built it. So. But workmanship wise I didn't really see anything hugely different in the made in Mexico and made an Indonesia guitar. So I don't really care that way. I mean if we're talking about the current lineup of guitars, what would I pick? I would pick The Fender made in Mexico. Here's why I've tried to. I'm trying to sell the two standards that I bought and no one's even interested. They're just sitting out there in limbo. And I can tell you right now, I could sell a Mexican Strat in five minutes. Like five, Literally five minutes. So it's, it's, you know, people aren't excited about the new ones for sure. I have a thought on that too, by the way. I wonder. I'm wondering if, amongst other things, maybe we'll see a better version of the Indonesian made Fenders in the, in the near future. It was. I don't think this is the case because I kind of know some of the secret stuff behind the behind the scenes stuff I'm not supposed to know. So therefore I can't really all share it. But so I don't leave it kind of like jerky like that. What I'm trying to say is a lot of people are like, oh, the Indonesian Fenders are, you know, made to, you know, because of the tariffs. And that's a great theory. It could be. It could be possible. Although from the sources I have that are pretty accurate, this was what decided way before there was even a thought process that that stuff could even exist. So in fact, this was a process or something they had been working on for a while and then it got canned or shelved or postponed and then pulled back. I'm probably not even supposed to say what I just said. The reason I have to worry is because some of the people I talk to, it's, you know, in confidence, but also I could be vague and not say who it is, but when. Sometimes the information is so finite that somebody can figure out exactly who was telling me stuff. But anyways, I digress. So basically, Basically, what I'm trying to say is, one of the theories I have that's interesting is I wonder if they did this to see how we reacted to a made Indonesian Fender. I don't know about you guys, everybody's got a different opinion. Of course. Me personally, I think that's the last thing I cared about in the negatives of the guitar. I didn't consider that a negative at all. But I like Indonesian made guitars. So, you know, I mean, that's just the evolution of things. But anyways, so either way I don't care. But right now, where it's made, I don't care. In those two instances, Mexico and Indonesia, I don't have a preference is what I want to say. Maybe that's better than say, I don't care. I do care. I just don't have a preference. But of the two models that exist, I prefer the made Mexican model right now because I like the quality of it better and the feature set better. Okay. Oh, I'm going to answer wannabeetle's question just because I haven't answered a wannabeele question in a long time. So he said since. Since the new he man movie is being shot. I. I didn't know there was a new he man movie. I didn't know they had the guts to do a second one. I grew up with He Man. So when the he man movie came out, it was like, oh, that's pretty bad. Okay. So anyway, so, okay, so new he man we says, what guitar would look great with she ra outfit? My guitar of the week. How about that? I'm gonna leave you hanging, everybody. I think you'll have to tell me. I don't know if this is the Shira color, but I definitely think if this guitar was like, she recolored, whatever that means, right? I don't know what color she was outfit is. Is it red? Red and gold? Why do I think it's red and gold? Like red and gold and white, right? It's like a red and gold. I don't know. Anyways, this. This guitar in Shira colors. This is the guitar. You have to tell me later what you think. Shane says, I don't care where Fenders are made as long as they're lefty. That's nice, right? I, like I said, caring about where stuff made. I. I do care and don't care. Does that make sense? I care, obviously. You know, look, pride. You know, country pride is a thing, right? The country you live in, you have pride. I do care because again, as you get older, you know, you think about the economics of things more, which is. But. But my biggest problem, which is why sometimes I'm. Again, I just want to be clear, you know, what the bias is. I've made so many friends around the world that sometimes I'm like, I've. You know, when you see the face when you, you know, shake the hand, when you become the friend of somebody and you hear somebody go, I wouldn't buy a guitar from that country. And I'm like, man, my. My dear friend lives in that country, makes guitars, and he's amazing. And he loves guitar as much as anybody I've met. And he's just trying to build guitars too, you know? It does. People do change, you know, Like I said. People will change your opinion about something. It's so easy to think a thing when the only thing you have to think about is the. Some letters on a headstock or, you know, you know, some politician's viewpoint of something or. Or whatever. Right. It's a lot harder when it's the person. And I'm just saying. And I'm not trying to convince anybody because I think that you should think like that. I'm just telling you why are. My bias is stuck. What do I do with these friends that I have that I care about? And I care about them, too. That's all. That's. I have to. That's. I just want you to know where sometimes the bias comes from. Yeah. Fast Freddy says QA is more important than country of origin. I use this analogy. I used it. I did a. Ask me anything on Reddit years ago on Thanksgiving, which is kind of a funny day. I think I did it. But what's funny is one of the questions I love and I've talked about a long time ago, but I haven't brought up a long time. It was the best question I ever got. They said, do you think they can make a great guitar in China? Like a Fanta, a guitar that can blow away USA Guitars? And I know everyone was probably waiting for me to go, of course. An Eastman, of course. You know, Shiji, of course. And I said this, and I'll regurgitate it. The best of my. I can remember my quote, my own quote. If I took John CER and I locked him in a Chinese factory and told him he couldn't come out until I had a perfect guitar coming, I know he would come out with a perfect guitar. So it's not the factory, right? It's not. It's not that. I mean, I think I could. Right? Think about this. Paul Reed Smith once made a joke about. And I thought it was cool. He said, no, he wanted to do it. He. Paul Reed Smith. Paul Reed Smith himself said this. Some of you guys may have seen this. He said he always thought it'd be cool to take somebody like John Sir. Him and like a couple other. Maybe like Nick Uber, right? Nick Huber, you know, just a bunch of builders and essentially not lock them in Home Depot, but send them to Home Depot and make them make a guitar only using the things they got at the Home Depot. Like everything. He's like, from the pickups, everything. They would have to do everything from Home Depot. And he was like, I'd love to do that. And I was like, oh, man, See, that. That's the argument, right? The argument is, you know, as someone who's like, look, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. I banked on my technical skills to fix guitars. My customer service, my personality was 50% of what I sold, right? The fact that I wasn't kind of harsh or jerky or judgmental, the fact that I was like, hey, man, what do you got? A squire? I love it. Let's put it on the bench. Let's take a look at it. That was part of my skill set. But obviously the skill is also within the repairing in the doing. And you know how many times somebody brought something to me and said, you know, this can't be fixed. And I almost wanted to say, like, after I was looking at going, your guitar tech sucks. It's not. This is fine. This happens, right? I mean, you know, we all sucked at some point, and yours sucks now because here it is fixed. It could be fixed. So it was. Somebody was blaming the guitar when it was really the workmanship of the tech. So Sean says he would love to see Nick on the show. You know, that would be really exciting. I'd be exciting. So you guys know, it is confirmed I'll be meeting with Gabe, the CEO of Guitar center, very soon. When I say very soon, I don't want to tell you exactly when, just to say within 10 days, guaranteed. Within 10 days, I'll be with him. Um, I'm gonna. If you guys don't know, I did a podcast like you're watching right now, and I said this thing that now looks back going, maybe it was a kind of jerky move. I titled the video why Guitar Center's New Plan Is Going to Fail. I don't know why, but that got on Guitar Center's radar. Guitar center reached out and said, which is what we're doing. We're gonna do a actual. He's not dialing in, like, you know, like a phone in podcast. I'm literally going to him. We're going to sit down and we're going to discuss for an hour what I said that day, which I still 100%. Everything I've now experienced with Guitar center hasn't changed any way I feel about any of that stuff. If you guys have any suggestions or questions and comments, you could put that in the permanent comments of this video. I will be glad to read them on the way to California and maybe I'll, you know, I'll see something you guys thought of. I'm like, oh, that's even better than mine. Or Something I can add in if I have some. Some time. But I want to have this discussion with him and he wants to have it with us. And when I say us, I mean he wants you to hear his ideas and the future of Guitar Center. And so we're going to be doing that. You should be seeing the video. I can tell you this. You'll see the video within two weeks. Because I don't plan to edit really anything. So it should be a pretty easy thing to post up. I love that half. You are still talking about she Ra. Just to point out how sometimes you guys get carried away in the wrong way in the comment sections. I have to admit, I don't know what would be interesting about she Ra, but the fact that I seen the name she Ra come up 12 times now on the screen just kind of makes me chuckle. And I want to thank you for. For when you guys are being fun, because it's nice to have fun. Look at me drinking water and then. And reading a question. Dan. This came from Amanda. Said Dan says, hey, got news. First bass ever. Yamaha BB 735. Really excited. What should the neck relief on the string height be? Well, the neck relief. So you're saying ten thousandths of an inch. I have a cheat card right here. I should know, but I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna tell you. Because sometimes bass, you know, guitar is easy. I have it to memory. But bass is a little tricky. I'm gonna say on e, you want 20,000ths. So you said 10 thousands. No, man, no. 20,000ths would be ideal. So if you get it to 10,000ths. Yeah. It would be really, really good on the low E and the A. On the D and the G, you would want it at 18,000. So a little higher. You gotta understand those bigger strings, right? They oscillate much more. By the way, somebody called me out a couple weeks ago because I said spinning. And they go, it's oscillating. And. And then I won't say who because I don't want to embarrass them. But I. When I read your comment, hopefully you're still watching the show. Look. And I don't have any problem with it, but you're like, just to. You know, it's always the same quip. It's always like, phil, just so you know. You know, it's not spinning. It's oscillating. And so what I did was I asked someone who actually watches the show, but I knew they weren't super into guitar. I said, do you know what oscillating means? And they go, no. I'm like, right, that's why I said spinning, because I was trying to illustrate. But sometimes when I'm illustrating with hand gestures and verbiage, you know, just words, it's just a lot faster to picture something, even if that something's a little less accurate. But anyways, yes. Oscillating, yeah. So anyways, the bass string oscillating. Yeah. Sometimes a little bit more is important because the longer scale, which means the. The string is going to be oscillating more in the center. So that's probably why it's a little higher again. By the way, please don't ever take any of that. Is don't criticize me. Please criticize. Keep the criticisms going. Even if you're jerky about it, most of the time reading stuff is not right anyways. You're probably not meaning to be jerky. I'm not saying you were. But jerky reads across jerky. I have a theory doing this for as long as I've done it that most people who think. People think there are trolls in the comments, they. They just think they're funny. I see what some people now see. I mean, don't get me wrong, some of it's just jerky stuff. But some stuff when I read somebody will say, oh, that was jerky to say. And I'm like, no, that was a failed joke. They thought they were funny. Right. It's like a failed attempt at being funny helps. So, but anyways, okay, hold on, let me grab. What time is it? Oh, we're doing good. Oh, we started a little late. So we're not on the same timeline as we normally are. Let me go to a screen that will help me get to supers. Supers are right here. So Litvay was the first super chat today. He said, hey, have you heard of Planet Tone pickups? I have heard of Planet Tone pickups. They say hand built in the US but they are less than half of DiMargio and Seymour Duncan. Is that for real? Planet Tone pickups, there's another company that also is that. Let me see if it's the same. I'm going to put in Planet Tone pickups right now and see if this is the same company. This is a different company. There's a. There's another. So you guys know there's a couple of these. I don't know the story of Planet Tone. So let me look. I'm looking right now. I'm sharing the screen and I Went right to like the DiMaggio style pickup right here. And $69. $69 is. So hold on, hold on. Let me go back. 69, 70 bucks. Okay, that sounds about right. That could be doable in the U.S. that's a doable price in the U.S. obviously, I would have to see how they're doing it. There's another company. Let me go to me. And there's another company that is like this and I did some research on them and I have a theory on how they're doing it. And I just want to make sure before I share it with you guys. Yeah, this is the guy. Okay, so there's a company called Bootstrap Pickups. And if you look the same kind of thing, especially some pickups are a little bit more expensive. But check this out. So you come here and here's a set of. This is a set, right? So let's do Sun City select for series for Strat. This is a set of pickups for 60 bucks. He's claiming these are made in the US now when I say he's claiming, it's like I, I can't prove or disprove anything. However, let me tell you what I figured out. What I figured out from what I could do some research. He's making them, I think, out of his house, like, kind of like how I do, right? And if you think about it, then that would make sense, right? So if you took out, I mean, look, I told you guys how pickup. Anything you guys want to know about pickups and how they cost, I can, I can help you understand that for the most part, especially on the small builder network. So obviously, look, if as soon as somebody wants to do pickups for real and they buy, they rent a building that is in the price of all the pickups that rent every month, right? An employee is in the price of the pickups every month. The insurance is in the trademark. You got to pay lawyers to get your trademarks and stuff. All that stuff is going to be in the price of the pickups. When somebody is just like, I'll do it on my, my, my kitchen table, right? It's no different than Etsy, right? You're like, okay, my costs are my time and then the materials. A. I mean, that's still pretty low. 59 bucks for a set of single walls. But if I looked, I thought when I looked like some things made more sense. Like a humbucker, right? Where's this humbucker at? Let me go to this. And, and I feel bad. Hold on I'll tell you why I feel bad. I feel bad because of why I can't just like, oh, yeah, it's totally. Probably right. Okay, here you go. So here's a set of Skookum Buckers. I like that name. That's funny as hell. So this is $139 was $200. $139 for the set. These are age nickels. And you can pick, right? Look, polished nickel. So pearl chrome. That's funny. The polished chrome. Polished nickel. Raw nickel. So raw nickel. I mean, a set. It says sold out, so I can't order them. Can't work. Probably because he's probably not at home right now to make them. I. I'm assuming. So my point is, look, $139 for two humbuckers. And if you're saying, are they made in the usa, can that be possible? Absolutely. I can tell you for a fact that the materials that are there are less than $139. So if I was going to guess, depending on how much he's buying, $80 into $40 each into a pickup. So $40 each. And that's pretty. I'm being very generous. Generous. $40 is what each one of those cost in materials and then his time. So if I'm doing the math, and you're doing the math with me, what did I say? $140 is. That's what he's saying. This is $140. So he's like 60 bucks. So let me put it to you in a way that makes sense. You can't do it exactly an hour because technically you have to put it in the wax pot. And depending on how you want long, you want the wax pot. You're not standing over the wax pot watching it, by the way. I'll wax pot for 24 hours. I'll let them sit for a while. Just. Just because. But anyways, my point is, if you were sitting at your table and you're like, okay, this week I want to make 10 pickups at 600 bucks. That's net to you, right? You'll pay taxes on that and stuff. But you get the idea. You gotta ship these out. I'm sure he's charging shipping on top of that. It can be done for sure. So I believe it. The problem, though, is where I have to always hold back a little bit is I want to tell you what I'm answering. I'm answering the question, can that price be real? It absolutely can be real. In, yes, taking parts, assembling them, winding them, shipping them and at that price, it could physically done. I could do it right now. I told you guys, I could tell you absolutely I could sell a set of my pickups for that. But I told you I'm not gonna do it because unfortunately it's my time, it's away from another job, right? If I didn't have this job and if I didn't have any other jobs, then yeah, I'd probably do the same thing as him. I'd probably go, hey, why don't I just wind pickups all day and pay myself 60 bucks an hour, right? That's not a bad wage, man. 60 bucks an hour. You, if you, you know, especially if you get the orders. Now the trick is to get the orders. And what he's probably doing and what a lot of them are doing is like, obviously with those price points, a lot of you are willing to take a shot at it, right? That's an impulse buying price point. At that point, you know, I could argue maybe it's a better quality pickup than some of the mass produced ones, depending on how they're doing it. But material wise, it's pretty good. So it can be done. The only thing I always caution about is we've all seen this in this industry where some pickup or not pickup, some pickup companies too, but some pedal guys like, oh, I made this pedal in the US and you're like, oh, it was China repackaged, right? So I'm just saying you have to be weary, but the answer to the important questions is can those prices be real and then actually be doing them in the US Can. So, and I would almost argue great business strategy because at this point, you know, you're who they're going after. They're going after, they want to remember. The trick is if you want to sit and wind pickups all day and you need orders and that's a great way to guarantee orders every week. If you're gonna be able to pay yourself somewhere between 40 to 60 bucks an hour and you wanna work a 40 hour week, those prices will keep you busy, right? We're talking about em. A lot of you are probably like, what if that's. I'm sure a lot of you right now are like, if that's real, I'd order it, right? And so you don't know if it's real, but the real is when you get them and they sound great. They sound great, right? So I don't know. But back to the original one, the Planet Tone pickups you mentioned, I'd heard of them Passively in the past. But again, their prices, like Bootstrap, look really good. Seems to be legit. I don't know why they don't do this. Bootstrap does. Okay, so let me tell you why. Kind of mentioning Brutestrap over Planet Tone. And so, you know, it's not because Planet Tone's not doing this. I just haven't done the research. And Bootstrap pickups, what I did is. Hold on a second. Contact us. Oh, okay. I know what I did. Going back, I went on Bootstrap. I went to just a thing I've learned to do. Okay. And again, not because I'm any kind of expert. I'm just like you guys. I'm just into this, so I know what to look for. What I did on Bootstrap is I went to his social media accounts and I looked for pictures of him making the pickups. I looked for the environments, and I saw physical pictures of him. He might not be doing that way anymore, but he was. At some point, he was at his kitchen table. He was in his house doing it. And I can tell you exactly like, yeah, yeah, then that makes sense. Right? And he's doing it. Right. You can see at least that, you know, we've all seen companies quite a bit. There was a company guitar company that was called Taller than Midgets. There's a lot of controversial stuff about them. I'm not here to talk about any of that right now because as far as I know, they're not even business anymore. But I remember one of the things that I remember that was weird about them because I used to reach out to YouTubers and stuff, was they were like, hey, we build these guitars in the US and then they would have pictures of their facility, but their pictures were like tabletops with boxes. Like, I saw unboxing facilities. I saw packing. I saw setup counters, but I didn't see, like, saws. I didn't see CNC machines. I didn't see templates. I didn't see jigs. Right. You know, it's like, again, you're. You know, I know exactly what, you know, you're looking for. You're looking for the. The something to show how it's built or how they're doing it. So. And in that case, I remember thinking like, oh, this doesn't seem right, and I'll stay away from it. So in this case, Bootstrap, I remember seeing pictures of him on his Facebook of like, oh, when I was researching one night, trying to get the idea of it because. So you know, I think about buying some of those pickups and sharing with you guys. And before I do that, I try to be as informed as possible, because I don't need to be. Look, I don't need to put myself at risk. So you guys, you know, buy a thousand pickups from these people and then find out, like, oh, they were just repackaging. So anyone has information, reach out. And by the way, if Planet Tone pickups or bootstrap pickups ever see this and they want to reach out, reach out. I mean, it's. It's pretty cool. I'm. I. I'm very upfront about how I work with companies. If I want to make the videos, I'm pretty. Pretty easy to deal with. If I don't want to make the videos, you got to figure out how to make me to want to make the videos. Right? It's. I don't think it's really hard. Right. But more importantly, if you guys are bringing up on the show, my guess is you probably want to see it. So I always go to that as a. As the go to. So if you guys are mentioning it's worth doing. All right, there's 1300 of you live right now. Let's do Guitar of the Week. Now it's time for guitar of the Week. Okay, so today's Guitar of the Week is what we call a deep cut, right? I want to be like a dj, right? On the radio station. Let me get my microphone up and be like, all right, everybody, tonight we're doing a deep cut, right? This is the second half of the album people don't know about, so. So I'm going to show you a guitar that's really crazy. It could be she Ra's guitar. And it has a story that you guys have heard before, but unfortunately, I'm going to retell it just because I like it. It's one of my favorite stories. So. And this show today is, I guess, about me. All right, what is today's. Today's guitar, of course. It's a goofy guitar. All right, ready? This is a music Man. What? No, it's a keys all. Of course it's a keys all. No, it's a music Man. It's a music Man. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun Kaizen in kryptonite green. Ah, look at that. Kryptonite. It looks. Look, it's. It's. To some of you, it's probably the ugliest thing you ever seen, which is why we need to share it. This is why I Said I'm trying to pull stuff that's a little bit more different than what you normally see on the wall. Okay. This is a seven string. First of all, let's talk about that. This guitar has a roasted flame maple neck. That looks gorgeous. It's Music man makes this satin and the headstock gloss. It does have these crazy tuning keys. If you haven't seen them before. They turn here, they look like little volume knobs almost and they lock up here. It's kind of like the banjo tuners you've seen on a Firebird. But these are seem different than that. I don't really know if they're that much different, but they seem a little bit different. Very sleek and clean looking. Right. This comes in a ton of different colors. This is the color that I wanted because the problem I have with this thing is it comes in silver. And when it's silver, it looks like the cybertruck. And I'm like, that just looks too weird. Looks like a. You know what it is? If I would. I'm not making this up. This guitar I, I think looks like a Peavey logo came to life as a guitar. Like if Peavey ever wanted to make a guitar that was like the pointy Peavey logo comes to life as a guitar. This is the guitar, right? This is so silly. All right, so we got ebony fretboard, stainless steel, 24 stainless steel frets. These are those Hernie ball pickups that are cryogenically frozen, which is funny. It's a fan fret guitar, I should say, right? Multi scale. I should say multi scale. Actually. They're not fanned. I don't think they're fan. I just think it's multiscale. Multi scale with a multi scale bridge which is a vibrato. It's got a volume tone and then it's got a three way switch. The switch is a humbucker, two single coils and then a humbucker neck. And that's pretty much. It looks like it might have batteries and stuff. It does not. If you want to see detailed ways this looks in this, I have a detailed deep dive of a Kaizen guitar. Um, this guitar was a funny instrument. In 2022, I was invited to go to Sweetwater. So I went and I was there for eight beautiful days in which they let me run amok. A lot of you guys know the story. I'll keep this story quick. One of the things they let me do was whatever I wanted. I had this cool lanyard that said or pass that said I could Go anywhere in the building? Pretty much. And, and so I went in and got into some of your guys accounts and see what you bought. No, I'm just kidding. No. So I ran around and one night I decided since there was a Kaizen like this in White Pearl, I go, I want to check it out. So I did a deep dive video. That's the video that's on the channel right now. The next morning, however, I'd like to point out, so however the story feels or senses, everyone was so cool okay about this. But the next morning somebody stopped me at Sweetwater and said, hey, we got a call last night at like midnight. I go, okay, from security saying there's a guy on the floor, like physically on the floor taking guitars apart and filming them. I go, yeah, it was me, we know it was you. And I was taking apart. One of the guitars I took apart and did a deep dive was the Kaizen, because it just had came out 2022. And I said, is there a problem? And the Sweetwater guys go, no, I just wanted you to like, I didn't know you're going to be doing that. And I, I told security that yeah, he's allowed to do that, so I hope he had fun. I said, I did. So that's what happened. Now what didn't go well though was when I bumped into the music man reps that were there, the representative company, they were like, oh, you took it apart and looked at it and did a video. And I go, yeah. And they go, well that's like the prototype. That's Tosin's like guitar. And you know, we don't want people to see that. And I go, oh well, easy enough. You know, when the production one comes in, if you want to send one out, I'll film that as a deep dive. Or if you just want to film some of the internals of the finished ones, send them to me and I'll put that in the video. And you know, and no one has to, you know, maybe I'll compare the original prototype version to the, to the way they produced and they didn't say yes or no. I don't remember how the conversation went. I thought it went very positive. But long story short, never got them to ever email me back again. Like I reached out to them and reached out to them and over the years, just kidding, not over the years. Over time I thought to myself, I wonder what it is. Like they never responded to my emails. I mean, I saw what happened was I put the video out because I even sent Them the video saying, hey, the video came out great. If you want to add, have me take anything out. You want me to add something to it, let me know. Zero, no response. And I'm like, okay. So I put the video out and you know, it got a lot of views so good, right? I think it did. I think it's like 90,000 views, something like that. It's pretty good. So I really wanted one. And then I was thinking, I'm like, man, I was hoping, you know, maybe I talked to them about, you know, when the production ones come out, I, maybe I'll get one of the production ones. I really liked it. This is one of my favorite seven string necks. I really like this neck. And the guitar is crazy. But you know, hey, crazy guitars are fun. And then I realized, like, maybe I did say something to them because now I think I remember saying, it's a weird guitar. I know I told them that. And because they asked me what I thought, I said, oh, it plays amazing. I love it. I want one. I go, it's. It's ugly though, right? I go, it looks like, like this to me. I think this looks like if they made a jazz guitar and somebody said, hey, let's make a jazz guitar in the future, like an offset in the future. This is what it's gonna look at. Like when you go to car shows and they make a car from the future so ugly. Like I'm like, that's what is. I said stuff like that to them. So. So then I was like, well, maybe that's the stuff that put them off. But I think the thing that I really set them set it off. Which again, I don't think they're mad at me. Just saying maybe that's why they didn't respond to emails or calls is, is I said, oh, you know, are you going to make a lot of these? And they go, oh, not at first. A little. And then we'll make a lot. I'm like, oh, I can't imagine they're going to sell well, right? And I go, which is good, right? I don't know. Not a lot of people want it. But that's okay. It's a small group of people that want a kaizen. So what's funny is when they came out, they didn't sell through very well. And so I, I waited, I bit, I. I bid my time, I waited and I was able to get one. I bought this thing for, oh, probably below dealer cost. I'm not kidding. For a while they were just trying to give away these things, they're still not holding value very well. This is not a. It's a great guitar. So anyone that thinks this is cool looking, this is a guitar for you. Like, if you want, like I always wanted, like a crazy, beast rich guitar. This is crazy. It's BC Richie. The color is great. It looks. It looks neon green, but if you can't tell, there's pearl in this. So it's a pearl. Neon green. They call it kryptonite. Matching headstock. I'm not a big, huge fan of the neck pickup clean sound, but it's. Because it's really tight and sterile kind of sounding, but it's still cool. Um, but. But anyways, the. The cool part is, you know, I. I was able to get one and I thought. I don't know, I thought we should share it. So. So like I said, we pulled it from. I don't have a vault. That wouldn't be a cool thing to say. I pulled it from the vault. We just pulled it from a deeper selection of guitars to show you guys. We're going to start. Somebody made a comment. They said if you're going to do a guitar of the week every week, you're gonna. You're gonna. You're gonna rattle guitars. I'm like, I think I could, but I don't think it's gonna be anytime soon. So we'll see. Anyways, let's. Let's check it out. Let's see how it sounds. So first of all, I'm gonna be running through the Engel Steve Morris amp. I'll run a drum track on the. On the bridge, pick up on the distortion. We'll call, we'll go over that and we'll listen to it. And then if you guys have questions. Amanda, this is an idea I just recently had. I thought it was to do with. If you have questions specifically about the guitar when I'm playing it, ask the question. And if, Amanda, you can grab one or two and I'll answer those right after the playthrough. All right, let's do. Now it's time for guitar of the week. All right, so what we're going to do is run the bridge pickup into the Steve Morris Engel amp and we'll run that with drum track. We'll switch to the neck pickup to give you some cleansing. And the middle position is two single coils. We'll just kind of show you that. So let's start with the drum track. Okay, now we'll go to clean on the neck pickup here. We now it's time for guitar of the week. I need a, when I'm switching, I need a way to say and that's guitar of the week so I can switch stuff. So okay, so if you have. Let me go here, get out of this and let's do this. Okay. So this is great. Ludomatic says. Hey Phil, does it have the same asymmetrical neck like Tosin's own guitars? So I've played the, the, the, the Tosin guitars that were. Because he's had so many different makers of them. I've played the Acacia version. USA made one. I've played the. I think I played one of the Grover Jackson built ones that were USA made and then I played the Made in Korea by World Manufacturing. This neck feels different than that. This thing has a. Like if you watch the deep dive, the neck is crazy. This has some kind of weird fretboard where like it's supposed to be tuned turn turned a certain way. To me it's just the carve I like probably asymmetrical but I mean it's not necessarily what's drawing me to the guitar. I just. When it comes to, when it comes to seven string necks, you know, I just like them really thin but not super thin. And this one's thicker than the, the, than the John Petrucci version. Just a, you know, just a smidge thicker. It feels really nice, but it's really comfortable. But it's probably asymmetrical. But again it's hard to tell when it's seven string. I mean really everything just gets flat and you know, everything's kind of wide and you're kind of jumbling around. And then I go through periods where I play seven strings for just all the time, like every day just because I love them and something I should have told you guys. This is tuned differently which is why I have it over like another seven string. I have this one, the low string is A. So normally this is going to be B. So it's going to be B, E, A, D, G, B, E. So standard. So like a six string guitar, it's A standard and then you have a low B. And this one I have it tuned A. That's how I was able to get those. That's how I was doing that because it's essentially drop D in the same kind of concept if you're familiar. Drop D. It's just I took the, the look. I think that's the way Tosin tunes his as well maybe. But Gary wants to know is that A blues guitar. This guitar definitely has a one trick sound. But if you're playing seven string, I think that's the, the main sound, right. That you're going for. The. And then green. Greeny. Meanie says, did someone remove the gloss on the back of the neck? Nope. That's how Music man does it. So Music Man, I don't know if they, I don't remember if they tape it off and they shoot the clear and then they leave it off on the neck or if they shoot the whole neck clear, tape it off and then sand the clear off to make it satin. I'm not, I don't remember specifically, but no, it's done like that on purpose. And yeah, so that's because they want it to be a natural neck, but a natural feel. But then they want the, the neck to, to be shiny. So I don't really have an opinion about that. I don't know about you guys. Like, to me it's like I, you know, I remember the first time I ever saw it with Music Man. I thought that's weird. But over the time I'm just like, it's whatever. And then gloss weight wise. So you guys know this is 6lbs 7oz. It is as far as I. It's not chambered, but you got understand like all that's missing. Right? Right. If you watch the Deep Dive, you'll see I put the. Pull the plate off. And this is aluminum plate. It's not plastic. And they have to bend it to the shape of the guitar. I mean, this has a lot of carbs. This is a very. I remember, I think one of the reasons I found fell in love with it, right, was when I reviewed it, when I did the Deep Dive. I remember saying this and I probably said it in that video. And if I didn't, I really feel bad because I should have. I definitely said it later. This guitar feels $6,000 to me. Like, it like what I've seen in factories, what I've learned about guitars over the years. $6,000 made in USA look, this is a lot of carves. This is a lot of work. Even a cnc, you're like, oh, a CNC machine does. This is a lot of time. This. Look at all these cars, look at all this stuff. And so this, I gotta tell you, like, I, I. When they started dropping in price, the first thing I thought, this is about a year ago, I thought, you know, if what happens with guitars like this is they make them and they find out they just don't do so, well, and then maybe they stop. When they stop, they go up crazy in value. And again, I'm not looking at it as an investment. I'm just looking at it as like, you know, I get to play it, enjoy it. One day if I sell it, you know, I'll get my money back. And it was my time, you know, with the guitar. It was cool. This is also to point out, I love that they put on the back plate, it says, in collaboration with Toast and Abbasi. This is not a signature guitar. This is. This is essentially kind of like my Kiesel film Ignite. It's like, it's not my signature. He's not claiming, like, his name's not on this. He's not like, this is my guitar. He's just like, I worked with Music man and they made this guitar and. And maybe that's where I changed a little bit. My insights when I started working with keys on the. On the PM Delos. Like, yeah, I guess it's not a signature guitar. It's just. Yeah, this is how I would want the guitar, you know, so pretty cool. So John says, what I would not play 5000 rupees. Is that supposed to be rubles or rupees? Ours? Rupee. Is that a currency too? Probably, yeah. Well, here's the cool thing. That's what I think. These, you know, should cost. Not cost, but, you know, understand. Like, I could see these being $6,000 with this much work and this, you know, stand still, frets this much stuff. However, if you're looking up online, because sometimes you guys do that, these sell, this one in particular, but some of them sell for about $3,600 to $3,900 new. So $4,000, right? Okay, $4,000. Keep this in mind that this is what makes me laugh. And everybody's going to have a different opinion. And it's not. It's not to say anything negative. This guitar currently. In fact, you know what? Let's play a game. Da da da da da. Let's play a game. I need theme music for all the stuff I want to do. Theme music. Da da da da da. Let's Play. I have $5,000. Let's go shopping. Now. I know what you're going to say this is. Guitar is ugly or weird. It is. I'm not trying to justify anything. I'm trying to point out something that I find humorous. And maybe the way I look at things is slightly different the way than some of you look at them. Okay, so what I want to do is go to Sweetwater. I'm going to solid body guitars and I'm doing a price range of $3,600 to $4,600. That's our theme music. Maybe not. Does it not? Come on. Do I have to push the actual button? I can't just hit enter. I did. All right, now here we go. Here is Sweetwater. So, okay, so here is a. Essentially a Stevie gem. This is the PIA. This is $3,700. And this is made in Japan. It's a. Right. It's nice. You have here this gorgeous Les Paul here. Look at this guitar. This Gibson custom 1950. This is a. Basically a flat hunk of mahogany with 1P90 wraparound bridge. And it's $4,000, by the way. I love all these guitars. I'm not making fun of any guitar. In fact, a lot of guitars I own. But I want to show you what I see and maybe see how you guys react to that. Here's the Tosin guitar. That's the one in the metal finish which a lot of you probably maybe like better or worse. I don't know. See, look, it looks like rusted metal and stuff, right? To me, this looks like the Cybertruck. It's just too weird to me. Okay, so $3,800. Okay. We have a PRS for 44. The thing that makes me laugh, like, look here is essentially, here's a Phil Collin, which I love Phil Collin, but essentially this is just a, you know, a dinky, right? Like it's a DK24. Right? Here's a majesty, a little different. $4,000. These are a lot of money. There's there. Then I look at the Friedman. Here's a beat up Strat. Here is a Fender custom shop for $4,200. I'd like to point out that I, I think that's where my appeal to certain guitars come from is like, look, I love Strats. As you know. I'm Strat fan. I have a custom shop Strat. It's all right. $4,200 for a Strat. I know a lot of you are like, but I way, way own that more than the bossy guitar. And I don't disagree. I'm not a huge fan of what if you weren't playing what I was playing. Chugga chugga, seven string stuff. I don't know why you'd want the Abbasi guitar. But my, my, my point is that think about a strat for $4,000 is just an Alder body, right? Simply Cut. You know, pretty easy to make a one piece slab neck. So it's a 2 inch by 2, 2 inch neck, right? Maybe 1 inch by 2 inch neck. So probably 2 inches wide, 1 inches deep. Cut. And then you see this tosin guitar and you go, man, that's a lot of work and materials and time to have to come out of the same price. I almost find it laughable. So, you know, I. I just don't understand it. And I. And I love them. So because I'm addicted to this, I like, oh, I have to do it. But there's something about guitars like this. Kind of like when I talk about the Parkers, all this stuff. Look, those aren't the guitars I play. I don't play the Parker. I play my delos. I don't play, you know, this so much, right? I play when I'm playing seven string stuff. But to me, this stuff I think is just being an aficionado of guitars. Someone who loves guitar, someone who's loves factories, who loves the builders, who's worked on this stuff. When I look at this stuff, when I work on this stuff, there's. There's just a. There's just a beauty to this that even though if you go, this is ugly, the beauty I see is in. Not in the. I get. Like me personally, just on a personal note, this ES339 behind me, that's more my speed that I will. I've played that ES339 a thousand times more than I play this. And if I had to get rid of one of these, it's definitely this one. But that's because of my style. I'd rather just play pentatonic blues licks on ES339 through my 65 Deluxe. And I plunk on it and I just enjoy myself. And I don't do a whole lot of the chugga chugga stuff on this. But it doesn't mean I don't appreciate this craziness. Like to me, this is this pearl, this pearl green. When I saw it, reminded me of where I live in Arizona. There is a. I told you guys, I don't know anything about sports. Like nothing, okay? Like literally nothing. So anyone can help me with this. Where I live, around me is a training facility for baseball players. Apparently they come here and they train here. Like the professional baseball players, right? I don't know. Like I couldn't tell you when baseball is it a season. I don't even. Seriously, I don't know. I'm not exaggerating. Like, I Know, football's over because the super bowl, like, I don't know when baseball happens. Right? Okay. But I know when the baseball players are here in town training at the facility, because all of a sudden, Lamborghinis pull up to the sushi restaurant that I like with, like this, like, all of a sudden, there's just a crap ton of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, like, at the restaurants that I like to go to. And that's where they come from. Those. Those guys, they're in town and they just have those cars. So this is the same pearl green, like, Lamborghini kind of color. So, again, that's why I appreciate it. And look at that. Look at top carve, too. So. And this also satisfied my, you know, my want for a crazy BC rich shape. And when somebody goes, how come all your guitars are basically Strats or Les Paul's shapes? I go, I got a couple of those weird things, but I don't pull this stuff out. So let me know if you enjoyed the deeper cuts. If I should pull from. I usually pull from the wall here or this closet, but never think to go into my. More. And the other part. More, more personal area. All right, let's see. Oh, somebody says the Dodgers played the Cubs today. Damn. Do you guys want to hear a baseball story? Let me know. Seriously. I have one baseball story. I only. I don't know anything about sports, but I do have one baseball story, and it's crazy. It's a crazy story. So if anyone says yes, I'm going to do it. Otherwise, I'm moving on. Somebody says yes, do the deeper cuts. Cool. Anyone want a crazy baseball story? Last chance. Moving on. Okay, we're going to stick with guitars. No. Baseball Joe's Average Joe says no to the baseball story. Okay. Somebody says, do it. All right, I'm gonna do it. So here's a funny, crazy story. All right. I told you. I grew up kind of lower middle class, poor. That's the best way to put it. Just for reference. My mother, however, did not grow up lower middle class, poor. She grew up upper class. Well off, I would say. Right? Okay. This is important to the story. So my grandfather was mayor, okay. Of. Of a town in a small town. Doesn't matter. Small town in California. Don't want to give too many details. You guys can figure out stuff. The important part is his grandfather was mayor of a small town in California and his Last name was McKnight. And funny thing happened, was apparently the owner of the Dodgers. Apparently, like, I don't Know this stuff, but I'll tell you why it's funny. Um, apparently the owner of the Dodgers at the time when my grandfather was mayor was Irish. Now, none of this means anything to us until my grandfather passed away when I was 17 years old. So. When I was 17 years old, yeah, I'd show. I have his mirror badge on one of the. On the other wall. I'd show it to you, but it will tell you what city, and I don't want you to know that yet, okay? So anyways, here's why the story's fun. So when my grandfather passed away, we had to go through his belongings, and in his chest, I don't know what you call it. Like, the foot chest at the end of the bed. My grandfather had, like, a dozen old baseballs, all signed by the Dodgers. Like, I'm like, okay, keep in mind, like, you know, you think I'm not into sports. My grandfather was not into sports. So he has, like, a chest full of all, like, a dozen. Not quite a dozen, just a lot. Okay? Like a lot of signed Dodger baseballs, all signed by the Dodgers. Which is weird, right? Weird thing to find in your grandfather's chest. Then we found a newspaper, right? Okay, so, like, LA Times. And it says, Mayor McKnight throws first ball at the Dodger Stadium. And we're like, what? Now, keep in mind, I'm 17. I never heard of this. My mother's like, what? Right? This is 100% true. I have the ball, I have the badge. I have the article in the paper. So apparently one day, the governor of California was supposed to throw this ball at the Dodger Stadium. This is the story we found out when he. On the. On the article. We found out in the article. We didn't know. My whole life growing up, didn't know. No one knew in the family. Grandfather, the governor's gonna throw the ball. Governor can't do it, so they needed another person. The owner of the Dodgers. Scrolling down all the politicians, sees McKnight, thinks, oh, that's an Irish lad, I guess, right? Sees McKnight, they call my grandfather. My grandfather apparently must have just left, got in a car and drove right to the Dodge Dam. Didn't tell anyone, right? And through the. Threw the ball at the Dodge Stadium. Like, the first ball, the first pitch, whatever, okay? Now we were like, why would he not tell us this story? How is it possible this man could do something so cool? Mayor of a town throws first ball at Dodger Stadium. Well, we also read the article and found out why there's like a dozen balls. It. That's how many it took to get over the plate before he finally got one over the plate. So he was a little embarrassed by it, we think, because he never talked about it. But the good news in the story is everyone in my family has a signed Dodger ball because there was enough for all the cousins. Everybody got one, basically. So we all have a signed ball from the Dodgers, from my grandfather's first pitch that apparently took a bunch before it got over the plate. And he never told anyone ever. So I. I sometimes think about the fact that he threw this pitch and then drove home, kept all the balls right, put them in the chest, and then that was the end of that. So there. That's my Dodgers. That's my only baseball story. I can. I have no other baseball stories, but that one's a crazy, crazy one. I can tell you for sure. And so to this day, I have his badge and my son actually has the ball. So I gave the ball to my son, so. So the McKnight's not so great at sports, is what I'm trying to say. This. All right, I gotta get back to guitar stuff. I'm sorry. Let's do shadow. Animal says. Hey, I own a PRSS2. The finish is flaking. So, yeah, it's an older one. PRS warranty department said they have to sand off the finish and may remove some of the wood. I. I get hand pain if the neck shape is wrong for my hand eating advice, you know, so they're probably talking about sending to the PT sheet. PTC shop is there. I think what's around, I would imagine they're not gonna reshape the neck very much. The worst case is, yeah, the neck might be thinner. Especially if they're gonna do this under warranty. I would say to do it, but be prepared that when you get it back, if you don't like it, yeah, it's gonna have to move on. There's nothing they can do. So, you know, my. I've said this before. My PRSS2, the one I love, has a chipped fretboard. Same thing. The fret sprout occurred, and it pushed the material away from the fret and it chipped off. If in my case, it chips off, I was able to super glue them back in. That's what they would do, too. They inject super glue and kind of press it and clean it all up. But in a couple. A couple of mine, it just chipped right off. And then I just. I just sanded it smooth because I decided at that point it's just gonna be a workhorse, workhorse guitar. And I just don't care about how it looks at that point. It's not a great feeling. But you know, also I like to point out again because it's always nice to have reference, I paid $700 for that guitar. So although $700, a lot of money, on its worst day it's worth $700. So at no point was I am I worried about it because one day if I ever go, I'm get rid of it. It's what I paid is. I mean even in its condition, I would expect to get six seven hundred dollars for it. As a used guitar especially, they don't make anymore. You're not probably in that same scenario. So I would imagine why this is a little bit more upsetting to you. I would. However, if they're willing to do it as a warranty, I would, I would suggest doing it and then I would also put in a request that they understand that you know, you have hand pain. If the neck, it's really small and you can. Look, I don't know what they're willing to do or not just make the request is what I'm trying to say. Make the request. Let them be the assholes that don't want to do it right, but just go, hey, look, I appreciate you taking care of this but you know, I have hand pain if you know, because the neck shape's really important to me and I don't want you really changing the neck shape or making it thinner because again they can't make it thicker, but they can make it thinner. Put that note, make sure that it's a notation to the tech who's doing it, the person at the factory doing it, and they can. There's a. They could go a little lighter and not go so deep. My guess is that they're not going to do. It's not that they're going to make it right for you, it's just it lets them know not to go heavy handed and that's all you really want. In my, in my opinion, if they sand that material off and reshoot it and get it back to you, unless they go to town and just sand too much material away, you should be fine. So I wouldn't worry about it. But it's. But if, oh but, but especially if you can make a notation and if they have a place for you. Notation, do that. If they don't write a note, stick it in the strings for the Person that's getting the guitar, say, hey, you know, please read. And then just write short. Keep it simple, right? Two sentences, right hand pain. Please try to make the next day as original as possible. Like, don't tell a story, don't talk about your dog. Just keep it simple, right? Because people who have to work all day, you know how it works, right? They don't have time for that stuff. They're just going to go. But even if they do have a place for you to do it, stick that letter in there, too. Send it to the tech. In my experience, most of the people at prs, the employees are really cool. They're some of the best people I've met in this industry as a whole, you know, as employees. And it's not to take away from any other factories I've been to, but a lot of the factory workers at a factory are. You could just tell they're just there and they're just punching their clock and they want to get the hell out of there. A lot of the PRS employees are passionate because of the fact that one thing that PRS has that not. Not. I'm not saying not all factories have, but one thing that PRS has is, look, the CEO, Jack coo, Jack Higginbotham, he was a sander. Like, a lot of the people in the executive team, a lot of people who run PRs started their sanding guitar. So there's a lot of, like, working, you know, working towards something kind of feel there. You can tell with the employees, like, you know, they care a little bit because there's a. You know, the only thing in my experience, the only thing better than, well, nothing's technically better than a pay raise is an opportunity. So even though they're like, hey, if I work here five more years, I get another $50 an hour, that's not as exciting as if I work here five more years. I can be my boss, you know, I can be his position, and he'll be in, you know, the next position kind of thing. So that's my suggestion to you. And. But yeah, it sucks. My. My guess is, if you notice, I guess that you have the old finish, I have not seen any of the new nitro do anything, have any issues whatsoever. Which is why Paul Reed Smith Guitars says that they switched to nitro in technically all models us, July, June, July of 2020. It's when they came back from COVID is when they went all 100 nitro on all the guitars. They said it was for tone, I believe, and I Have no facts, just discussions like you. And my experience working on them is that's what they were trying to prevent, is guitars doing that. Because the guitars were doing that. They, they, the. The chip, the finish pulls away from the bodies or the necks, and then you get this milkiness. And it was just something that, you know, that they corrected. I'm just glad to hear that they're gonna take care of it. You didn't say they're gonna take care of it. Because sometimes what they've said is just like, send it to us and you can pay us to fix it. So I'm glad that you're actually taking care of it. If they're paying for it, I think that's the right thing to do. I'm not really a big fan of their whole, like, yeah, we could fix it, but you got to pay us kind of vibes. But so let me know if they. Let me know how it goes. That's my advice. Shadow Animal, please. Stuff like this. Just put in the text to email to us, you know, something in subject that lets me know that you're responding to this. Later. Let me know. That way you don't have to super chat me again to tell me so I can tell everybody. I'll cue it up and have it ready. On a show, Mr. S says. Hey, Harley. Ben. Keith Richards tribute. Should I one, put a snake bite in the bridge and Northern Lights in the neck or two different single coil in the bridge. Bridge for the Keith like tone over the snake bite. Oh, that's tough. Easy snake bite. Not easy. I don't know. I want to say snake bite just because it's. I think it's gonna be fine. Depends on how accurate you want it to be. It. You know, I will. I. I'll put. Put it this way. Obviously, you know, look, you're asking, so you're on the fence. Let me see if I can help you. In my experience with artist guitars, I always think, you know, oh, if I get this artist guitar, I'll have their sound or their tone. And a lot of them are that their way their. Their instruments play sound and feel is unintuitive to their tone. And not every scenario, but a lot of them. And so I would say do the snake bite over the two single coils because like I said, a lot of times when I get the exact same thing the artist has, it just doesn't vibe because again, it's made for their playing sound and style and technique and not yours. Even if you're trying to emulate what they're doing. You're going to emulate what they play, but not how they play it. Not exactly. That's why. You know, one of my favorite sayings I ever heard, and he probably got it from somewhere. I don't know. But Tim Pierce once said to me on a video, so you guys say, I guess he said it to you guys, too, that all guitar players have a DNA. You know, their DNA of how they play and how. How their rhythm and their rights, all in their DNA. They're playing DNA. And that's the part that you can't. You know, you're going to be missing that. So when you go too exact on their. The gear, it's not. It's not going to help because you're missing still a part of the DNA. Okay. Ian says, hey, what US Gear should I get before things potentially get too tariffed in the uk? Go big or scoop up the small stuff. Real question, not a dig. So, well, besides that potential tariff issue, which hopefully will get resolved, right. You know, they all out there fighting it out, if you notice. I. It's not. It's. It's not that I want to talk about those subjects. We'll talk about those subjects. I just don't want to talk politics, just like I don't want to talk religion because it takes us into a place where we're not talking about guitars. If it's specific to guitar, we'll stick with it a little bit. I don't know. Because I don't have anything in me that says I need to hurry up and get anything before tariffs start on this side. Kind of the thing. I would say, regardless of what the world is doing, everything's gonna get more expensive because that's the way it's always gone. Does it make sense? So right now I would say buy whatever you want. Not because of the governments and stuff. I'm getting water. Hold on. But because this is a good time to buy. The market's soft, right? And the fact that it's soft is. It's a buyer's market. There's a reason why it's called a seller's market. In a buyer's market, we were in a seller's market during the boom. Now we're in a buyer's market. And this is when you want to buy stuff. If you want to buy, if you have the money, right? Don't put yourself into debt for anything. But if you have the money, buy something. Buy something because it's a good time. And then big stuff or small stuff, just Buy what you want. Don't try to predict again. I'm not here. I can't give political advice. I can't give finance advice. I can't give any of that stuff. I'm just going to give you gear friend advice, right? I treat you like I was talking to my buddy Joe or Matt or Ralph. Buy what you love, buy it when it's the right price. So if you find a deal on something you love, buy it. Don't freak. Buy anything. You'll always be sorry, right? You know, there's a reason why this is gear and not stocks. This is a reason why it's gear and not gold. This is the reason why it's gear and not the housing market, right? There are people who are professionals at buying and selling. And I know you're not talking about buying and selling and flipping guitars, but I'm just saying if you're trying to find a deal, look for the deal. Don't worry about, like, how much do I get before it's too late. There's always going to be a deal. Even if they tear up the hell everything. Trust me, there always will be a deal. Everything keeps happening, and there's always a deal. Even during COVID I bought a bunch of guitars and I never. I never paid top dollar for guitars. I never. Because during COVID if you watched during COVID what I did, and it's just the way I. Because again, I'm not buying and selling for a strategy to make money. I'm buying because I have this addiction. I love guitars and I want one. During COVID if you watch, I only bought new, and I told you this because the dealers were more apt to give you a deal than the individual sellers. So used prices skyrocketed. So I'm like, right, but there's always a dealer who's willing to move a unit. So anything I wanted, I would normally look at used. I was looking at new. And I bought a lot of new stuff less than used. And one of the things I still laugh about is there's two guitars I bought during COVID that I bought new during the biggest part of the boom, and I bought them. And now, even with the crash, they're still worth more used than I paid new for them now because, you know, again, it was just the right time. So you just gotta wait. So I don't think, oh, you know what I love. I know I ramble, but sometimes you get a clear moment of intelligence out of me. Here's what it is. You don't hurry for A deal. You wait for a deal. That's how it works. So you don't hurry up and do stuff. You wait. Don't worry about what the world's going to do. You wait when it's when you'll know when it's right to buy. It's the right price. It's the right thing. You just trust your instinct to do what you want. You love it. It's a good price. You just go notice. Like, same thing with the Kaizen. I was like, I knew eventually the prices would come down. If I was wrong. What is I going to lose? I wasn't going to pay the crazy. I wasn't going to pay $4,000 for this guitar. Like, I was going to pay $3,500 for this guitar. So I just waited. Same thing. Buy what you love if there's an opportunity. If not, wait. It'll eventually come down or you'll find the deal. The prices overall don't come down. The opportunities come. Does that make sense? So, like, if I said, oh, all Fender Strats are going to be more in five years new than they are now. That's an absolute fact. But you'll still find a deal in five years, just like you'll find now. That's my thought because I. I found a deal 10 years ago, 20 years ago, five years ago, and now. So there you go. Don't hurry for a deal. Wait for one. That's my advice. Okay. Tsize says, hey, Happy Friday. New Guitar Week. I'm assuming that's what W stands for. I received a PRS DW CE 24 oh Dusty Warren and A. McCarty S2594 10th anniversary. Both beautiful and play and feel amazing. And the cost, between 35 to 40% of their MSRP. See what I'm saying? The deals and says is if anyone is in the market for a ps, now is the time. It seems. I agree. It's a good time if you're so inclined to want something. I've been. I told you I can't even look at anything on Reaver without somebody sending me an offer or deal. And I told you guys, you just wait. You know, I told you. I just recently I bought a pedal where I told you the story that I sent a guy an offer and he like, immediately, like, he was offended with my offer. And it's. This is what's funny. And I found one of the guitar singer I used for half of what he was asking and of $50 less than what I offered him. And he And I looked the other day. I don't know why. And it's still for sale. And he's waiting. Somebody will eventually probably pay him his price. But obviously, you know, I waited and I found the deal and I got what I wanted, which is, you know, and it keeps money in your pocket, which is nice. Moreloud.com says hey Phil, could my heavy gauge strings damage my guitar? 16, 18, 20, plain 38, 48, 60. Standard tuning on my Fender custom shop. Dick Dale man, you're a beast. You're playing a bass that's not a guitar anymore. 16 to 60, could it damage it? I wish I remember what Dick Dale. I thought Dick Dale used 13s. Why are you using 16s? What the hell's wrong with you? He's like, here's my problem, Phil. I can. I crush skulls for a living. Like your hand. You have gorilla paws. That's crazy. That's nuts. Sixteen to 60, never seen that. I'm trying to think now. I've done some crazy setups on guitars. If I, if I've done anything close to those gauge 60, I've definitely done 62 gauge on, on a string easy. Especially like a seven string, a baritone. But 16, it's usually down tuned. Holy hell. Your standard tuning, I would say. I mean me personally, I would like a more modern neck with a stronger truss rod and carbon fiber rods behind all that tension. But I'm gonna say I don't know of any reason why it would hurt your neck. What's nice is maple's really strong. It's coming from the custom shop, so depending on the model. Well, it's a Dick Dale model, so depending on the year, it could be quarters on, it could be flat. Sond I would again if it was quarters on and it was from the custom shop, I'd say trust it. If it's flat sun. Ah, you know what, either way, trust it. I mean that's the whole point. I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's just. That's a lot of tension. Yeah. And I don't worry about like lowering the tension because that could be worse. Just keep the tension on it. I, I hate hate this kind of advice because I, I just never have seen that exact gauge set that much tension on full standard. I just can't imagine it's that bad. Moreloud.com says I'm a dick Dale tribute artist. Well, friggin that's awesome. Dick Dale was the man. So ferocious as a player. You know, I have this great picture. I always Remember of Dick Dale. It's. Me and Ralph were walking the NAMM show. It was one of the first NAMM shows. We went, and Dick Dale was standing there, and we're like, we gotta get a picture with Dick Dale. Which we did. He was really kind, and he did a picture with me and Ralph. And what we remember was we had to stand there. We're waiting for him. And the whole time he was talking to this young lady. And he was like. It was amazing. I can't remember. I can't remember his age. I thought he was in 70 something. Just remember, like, he was talking to his girl and we were waiting. But he was super nice. But, man, he is. He massive, awesome player. So I would say you're fine. I just. Because 60. I can't imagine 60 is the problem. It's just the 16, the 18, the 20 plane is a little thick too, but 3848. Yeah. I say, okay, you know what? It's the same neck construction for a seven string. And the seven string would be at standard worst case if you went 11s. 11 to 62 is where I think you would end up. And they wouldn't change any design for the seven string. So I feel pretty confident you're safe. I can't imagine. But again, you know, this is where no one really knows until they do it. But I think you're relatively safe. I'd say you have an 80% chance of being successful and not having issues. So if I'm. I feel pretty confident that Russell says. Hey, Phil. Thoughts on Fenders Meteora or guitars with similar body shapes? I fell in love with the angular offset shape. And the reviews look good. I love the Meteora. To me, it's. It's the offender's attempt at a Novo, right? So when I see the Fender Meteora. Let's go here. Meteora for those that. Okay. There you go. When I see this shape. So let's. Hold on. Let's back up. Oh, I pulled up a bass one more time and a guitar. Let's do this. I just want to share with everybody. Here's a guitar. So here's a $2,200 one. This is an Ultra. So this is the Meteora guitar that we're talking about. And then what I'd like to do, if you guys all see the shape, which is. It's kind of out there and crazy, right? Coming from someone who just showed you the. The Shera guitar. Let's look at a Novo. And I know they're not the same, but to me, I feel like. I feel like it's got that same kind of vibe. So here's a novo. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I am wrong. I mean, they're different, right? No, they're different. I don't know why I thought it was like a novo. It just had a weird vibe. I like it, so. I like it. I'm for all the weird shapes. What I. What I've learned about Fender is. And weirdness and all the weird stuff they do. The most part, those actually go up in value. So what? Again, I know we talk about that. It's not always about, like, the stock market. Buy low, sell high. But I'm just saying, sometimes when you take chances on things, you know, that's what you're doing all the time. You're doing an approximation of, like, what. What it is you're gonna love. It's a lot nicer knowing you can, you know, sell it and get rid of it and not lose any money. Because so many times you buy stuff and you lose money. And that's the whole point of collecting and buying and trying and playing is, you know, trying things. But I've learned with offenders and their weird stuff, they always seem to never do well in the. In the short term. And then they stop making it, and then the prices go up, and then they bring them back. So I like it. I. I like the guitar. I think it's cool. So I. I can. I'm. I'm a fan. I would love to do a deep dive of one of those. I'd like to put them on the channel. I'm sure it's gonna happen. I have a bunch of guitars, obviously, for the channel, queued up. We have at least 2, 3 months worth of guitars. So I'm pretty excited about what's coming. But a meteor would be one. Something I'd like to add, Mike. Okay. How are we doing time? We're good, Mike. Coffee says, oh, by the way, no more super chats. My coffee, Kofi. Kofi says, I'm messing up your name. Mike. How about Mike? Mike says, hey, Phil, have you tried a warm audio Centavo pedal? Okay, so that's their clawn. Yep. You said right there. It's a replica of their clone pedal. I have not. I tried their other pedals. They sent me some pedals. I did the videos. And then, you know, they never reached out again. I didn't. Of course, I didn't reach out to them, but they didn't reach out to me again. And I love those pedals. The ones I did, which was like, ocd. And the other pedal, I did the. But, yeah, that was a pedal I was really considering looking at getting. So, again, if you guys don't know, let's look. They're carried by Sweetwater Warm Audio. They do microphones. I. I like the warm audio stuff. They're. They're kind of like a Behringer kind of thing where they're making. Here's the red one. I know they have a gold one. Oh, there's the gold one. Oh, wow. Well, man, the red one seems like a better deal because the gold one's like 179. Yeah, I haven't tried it. Oh, here's the red one. You can get the red one for 149. What's the silver one? So 149. Nope, it's 179. So weird. So guess red's discounted. But anyways. Oh, it's a Sweetwater exclusive. Yeah, I'd rather have red just because I don't care about the color for a few bucks. But anyways, I haven't tried it. Imagine. It's good. Everything I've tried from them has been really, really good. I know, like a lot of you, I'm really curious about the new Behringer one. You know, that's 69 bucks. But. But to answer your question, I haven't tried it. But I like warm audio. If you're thinking about getting one, I. Oh, you said it's a great pedal. You're telling me that it's great pedal. I have no doubt about that. Every. I've tried, like, four or five warm pedals. And everything I've tried, I've been very pleased with. Sam says, why don't all new guitar brands use contoured heels? So there's a. There's a lot of reasons for that. First of all, tradition. Tradition. Right. A lot of guitar companies like Fender and Gibson live in a hell of, like, if they modify their guitar or we don't like it. Notice I said we. It's not like I'm like, I would love it if they do it. I don't own any of the contoured Gibson Les Pauls. Cause I. You know, as much as I think they're cool, just like, nah, If I want a Les Paul, I want a traditional feel. If I want a Fender, I want a traditional feel. So I think that's why most of it don't do that. Other than that, I don't know why companies don't drive towards it. Because, again, you Know, at the end, they make what the consumer wants. And we tend to, you know, like, things traditional. You know, we want traditional guitars, traditional stuff. When we want modern guitars, modern stuff. Clan of house cats says, hey, as a long, as long as music man, fretboards get hydrated regularly, like most guitars, they tend not to fret sprout. Hydrating new guitars is good to do, too. No, so here's where we're going to disagree. No, look, hydrating your fretboard is not going to stop fret sprout. In my experience, humidifying the room isn't going to stop a fret sprout. So the next shrinking the neck shrinks. Because here's why you can't control those things all the time. It's impossible. And when I say impossible, so you don't challenge me. Yeah, if you keep it in a case, hydrated and conditioned on a regular basis. But that's not what a guitar is for. A guitar is for travel. It's an instrument that's portable. You might say, like, think about this. If you had a choice as a guitar player to show up at a gig tomorrow and you could either load in the grand piano, the drum set, or the guitar, which one would you pick? The guitar. It's a portable instrument. The funny part is we make guitars called travel guitars. Literally all guitars are travel guitars. Travel guitars now are about the airlines, right? I don't use a travel guitar for my truck. I just take a guitar with me. I take a travel guitar because the airline has decided to be a pain in the ass to and say, here's how much space you have and here much how much weight you have. And this is how it is always, I lose my voice. So my point is, in my experience, and I have a lot of it around now, especially not as just a guitar tech, but just as this YouTube gig has taken me all over the world and had me interact with so many people. It just. You can't. You can't stop it. You know, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. So that's what I've learned. You, you know, you're gonna play in a dry place. You're gonna. Your guitar is going to be in a dry environment. It's going to get, you know, it's going to be in a hot climate, it's going to be in a cold climate. It's literally unless you don't take it anywhere. And that's. So you're. You're technically correct. But in my experience, the way to Secure that that fret sprout never happens is essentially to stop the guitar from doing the one thing it should do, which is be played and taken places to be played. So the good news, though is, is that fret sprout is a relatively easy fix. And once the neck shrinks and I live in a dry climate, so, like, there's things like I just can't tell you guys. Like, you know, when you guys talk about dehumidifiers, like, I have no idea why, what to tell you about a dehumidifier. I can tell you, though, that currently in the office, it's 45% humidity right now. I do have a humidifier going right now because it was down to 38. Again, I don't like it to get under 40, and only. Only until recently when I'm going to open the window. Lately I've been telling you guys, I usually don't do humidification, but I've been running the window open a lot because the weather's been so nice. So my point is, is that usually I have. I don't recall ever having to correct fret sprout on a single, like, one single guitar more than two times. So I have done like a. A fret treatment on a personal guitar, on a customer's guitar, and then seen that guitar need it one more time, like, it shrank again a little bit more. But I've never seen it shrink a third time. Does it make sense? Because pretty much once it's dried, it's dried, and it's not going to expand back out as much as people say, oh, you can humidify back. You can trust me. Because there's a lot of things that repairs that you do. You humidify a guitar. So there's a lot of stuff. I did a repair this week on an acoustic guitar, and that's the first thing I did, was humidify it because of the repair I was doing. That's the first thing you want to do, is humidify it for 24 to 40 hours. But in my experience, you cannot make the neck go back to where it was. That's the whole point of the wood. The wood is just not really. It doesn't want to. It doesn't want to expand back out. It just doesn't want to do it. So, you know, I said that's the whole thing. It's not a bad thing. If your response is more about the whole, like, who's fret sprouts more than others. It has to do with just, again, the precautions they take to Prevent it. And how well they do that, I think PRS has done a pretty good way to do that precautionary wise. Gibson, I don't think it's necessarily how they treat their wood. I think it's just the design of having really thick binding, you know, because again, the neck is essentially glued. You know, the wood is glued to this plastic binding that's pretty thick. And then the frets are cut short for the nibs to go. For the plastic nibs to go over. And it just again, just the wood doesn't shrink enough. And when it shrinks, it's the glue is holding it to that plastic. And the plastic really doesn't want to move from because the plastic is not affected by the moisture, it's just affected by the temperature. So again, if I put it in a room, it's 70 degrees, 72 degrees. If I put a Gibson in a room at 72 degrees and I dry it, you know, I take all the moisture out of the room. Yeah, the neck's going to shrink, but it's just the fretboard is going to hold it. It's going to like be pulling on it almost. And that's just my theory based on what I've seen all over the years. But the kaizen, when I got it out to show you guys today, it had fret sprouted for the first time. So it's fret sprout. It happens. So my guess is it's because of ebony fretboard. So. But I'll concede to you're partially right and I'm partially right. But I really like said, I think the, the idea of like to have a guitar not do a fret sprout is just not realistic for most players. They're just not gonna do it. The ones that obsess about it and try not to have it happen, I always just noticed that eventually it just happens. Like, you know, like I said, you can't control the environment around you. It's just too hard. Djb, thank you for the super chat. Parker says. Hey, Phil, when you've been recording your new instrument ep, are you miking or micing amp or just going straight into your interface with amp modeling on a box. So I've been doing both. So what I've been doing is micing the amp and I also use the aux box. So they amp into the aux box. Interesting enough. I'm not using the Kemper. All the people who've guest played on it have. I think they've used plugins because I send Them a file and then they. They tend to use plugins, I think. But I've been either miking or using the Oxbox. I've been mostly using the aux box because I like the Oxbox a lot, so it's pretty easy. But. Yeah. Why? No particular reason. No, no, no. I. I don't have an agenda with the songs. Right. So there's nothing that's saying, like, you know, I want it to be a, you know, an Axe Effects or a Kemper kind of album, or I want it to be a real album. Real album with real mics. There's gonna be none of that stuff. I. I know because I'm a gear channel that if I, as I put this stuff out, obviously you've been hearing the stuff played the song I. The song. The backing track I played for you today is off. You know, the EP thing. I'm doing a lot of stuff I've been hearing lately, the riffs and songs I've been doing for that. Again, keep in mind, most of this is just because I just want to. I'm not trying to record an album and play have an album so much to like, oh, I have an album and buy my album. It's. It's because I'm just. I think the future is they're going to copyright strike anyone and everyone for anything. And so you want to have as much as your own IP as possible so that they don't hinder your livelihood. You know, I feel like I'm one of the very few, especially, especially in the gear channel world. I'm one of the very few channels that can make a living off of YouTube. When I say that, keep in mind what I mean. Most channels that do gear reviews, they make their living off the sponsorships they need. Company sponsoring our videos. My last five videos, two were sponsored and three weren't. Right. And, and there's. And I like, look, in a perfect world, I wouldn't do any sponsorships, but it's a little hard, right? It's a little hard to do that, you know, because again, you. I can. If. If I only had to, if I didn't have any costs of doing YouTube, I definitely make more than enough money that I need. There's just no. No questions. I would zero sponsorships at this level as long as I maintained it. And that's been the way for the last few years. The problem is, is there is a lot of costs to do YouTube and more importantly and probably more accurately, there's a lot of failures on YouTube. In other words, I Make a video, and that video doesn't pan out. And so ultimately that starts your mind down a spiraling. You know, if anyone lives off of a commission kind of structure, you understand what I'm saying? It's like when you, all of a sudden, you have a bad week or a month, even though you're like, I'm fine. Bills are paid, your brain goes, but what if I keep having a, a bad month next month, right? And then that spirals you down in a world and your creativity is hindered from that. So I like having a little backup plan, like the patrons and, and of course, having a couple company sponsors come in. But my point is the album, it's, it's more about protecting that. Because what happens is when I make $1,000 or I make a hundred bucks on a video, the last thing I need is YouTube to send me a message saying, hey, so and so has claimed your video profits. And I'm like, well, that's literally what I live on, right? And so I, I, I'm like, I better have music that. So, you know, you can't stop them from doing it. Just because I'm playing my own songs doesn't mean that they won't copyright strike me. What I'm saying is it's a lot, it's a, A lot easier fight to respond back with. This is my song. It is copyright. I own it. You know, I have the copyright on it, and then that helps me with the fight. So that's why I've decided to do that. It's just how I do things, if you notice. It's also why I try to limit as many logos as you see. As I wear a Vans hat today normally, so a lot of you were like, man, he wears a lot of know your gear stuff all the time. Well, if you pay really close attention, I'm really actually blocking a lot of stuff. What you think you see, you don't see. A lot of you don't understand is that a lot of these headstocks, I keep some of them out of range. You can't see. And as they get farther, that's tilt. I tilt the camera purposely for this. The Ibanez is slightly out of focus right there that I'm pointing at. That's on purpose. We set the camera correctly so that the logos are. You can tell that's a Fender logo. Unless Fender says they have a problem with it. Then no one can tell it's Fender logo. But a bot shouldn't be able to read that. Not from a. Not, not That I can tell. So the vans thing was a weird thing today. I just grabbed a hat and here for everybody. It's too late in the show, but there I just haven't. I don't wear my. My. My garb in public. So I was in public today, so I was wearing my vans hat. My point is. What's my point? My point is, is that's why I have all my own stuff. I'm just trying to predict the future, and I'm trying to predict the fact that in five years, in theory, if they were to go back through my catalog with some kind of AI and scan all the music and scan all the visuals and somebody say, hey, you used a Fender amp in a video, and Fender wants a portion of this. You know, whatever the copyright strike, I just don't want to deal with any of that stuff. And since I don't know the future, I'm just preparing the best I can for it like everybody else, and that's why I do that stuff. So everything's about just having some kind of copyright that I know they can't. They can't hit me for. So that's the point of the music. So. But as a gear channel, I will disclose on all this stuff what I used in each track. For those that are curious, what I can't disclose is, like, what Larry Mitchell used or what, you know, Michael Nielsen used. I'll ask them, but, I mean, I'm assuming they use some kind of axe effects or plugins or something. And. And I'm sure you can tell when you listen to it, when you hear them playing and they sound better, and you're like, oh, that's the best. They use the better stuff. So. Yeah. All right. Okay. Let's do one more subject slash question before we go. I didn't really get a lot. Take a lot of Amanda's ones. Let's see. Let's do this one. I'll do two from Amanda's pile real quick. So this is. Oh, I don't know how to say her name, buddy. Talonso. Talonso Tulanso. I'm. I'm sorry if I'm doing it wrong, but it sounds. Sounds like that. He says looking for guitar cabinets. Recently bought a cheap Pajero head amp, and I don't have a cab. Any suggestions to where to look? Yeah, local. Now, I don't know where you are, but local is always best. No one wants to ship any amps. Yeah, we notice amps are, like, almost. Have you guys been on reverb? I feel like half of the people selling amps, it's like, it's just local pickup only. No one wants to ship amps. And definitely not cabinets. There's no money in that. So definitely local. And sadly enough, I'm not real big, like work them for a deal. But you kind of like local cabinets. Oh man, you should be able to get a cabinet for that amp dirt cheap. Get yourself go on Craigslist or if you have an offer up or whatever, right? Or if not, go to a local music store. Trust me, they're sitting on it. They're all sitting somewhere. Cabinets. And then just find yourself a good cabinet with some good speakers, right? I focus on speakers more than cabinet. That's just my preference. You know, in my experience, I focus on like, I would rather, me personally, I'd rather have a Line 6 cabinet with vintage 30s than a Marshall cabinet with GT75s, right? That's just my preference. I'd rather have a Bajera cabinet with cream backs than a Mesa Boogie cabinet with, you know, crate speakers. Right? Because I don't know why that would exist, but you know, right. Just saying, I, I buy the speakers in the cabinets. When I say I don't literally take them out. That's what I value, right? Is the speakers. Good cabinets with cheap speakers to me sound like crap. And good, crappy speakers or crappy cabinets with good speakers sound good because the mic usually hears the speaker way more than the cabinet. I understand if you're not miking stuff and recording stuff, but in my world, for a long time, you know, the speaker dictates the quality more so than the cabinet. So that's where I kind of focus my, my money. So same thing. If I saw a crate cabinet with vintage 30s, I'd buy that in a second over, you know, again, a. And I know you're like, well, what if I get a good cabinet and put good speakers? That's a suckers game. You'll lose your ass. So it's just, it's not a good idea. So. So like I said, go out and find a deal. Bigger cabinets, cheaper. The bigger the cabinet, the cheaper is to get. That's what you do. Just go out there and throw offers. Politely throw them out, right? Just do it. Say, hey, look, I'll give you 200 for the thing you're asking for. Just throw out some nice offers because of the fact that, you know, they might not respond right away, but in three, four weeks when it's still sitting there. But I can tell you right now, like, I don't know why. If this would be a good video, I don't think it'd be a good video. But like if you guys challenged me, said hey Phil, what's the best cabinet you could get? Dirt cheap. I pretty sure I could probably take $200 cash right now and find a cabinet somewhere. 1 12, 212 or 412 without a doubt. I don't think I have any trouble finding that. In fact, I can't even do that deal. Here's why. I knew exactly where a bunch are right now, so it'd be an easy video to make. I know what music stores I would drive through. I would drive right to them. If you are also in the states, I would also look at Guitar center used. Man, they are crazy in where they ship amps. They ship amps for like a nickel. It's crazy. You can go on Guitar center used and find like a 412. They'll ship it to you for 23 bucks. Is nuts. So do that. That's. That's funny story I told you guys. Funny haha story. I needed some speakers recently and I went on Sweetwater and I was like 179 speaker. I'm like holy crap. So you know what I did? I went out looking and I found it. I found a 212. I only need one. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna so $200. 195 with tax. 200 bucks for one speaker. Let's see what I can do. Took me no time at all. I found a 212 with the speaker I wanted the one. I wanted two of them in the ohms I needed. Right? 16 ohms for 200 bucks. So now I have an extra speaker for free, which I figure I'll sell it for 50 to $100 and see and then the cabinet for 20, 30 bucks. Because just it's funny, like even though the cabinet was a boat anchor to somebody, the speaker is definitely valuable. So. Yeah, always. Yeah. 62nd home saying Craigslist is full of cabinets. Easy to buy, impossible sell. Yeah. Like buying a vacation cabin. Yeah, cabin. Yeah, I agree. It's. I. I mean it's nuts. I. I think I told you guys a few months ago I was in the kick. I wanted to get a 59 basement. And I was like, they're so cheap, right? They want 20. 20. I think it's $2,100 new for a Fender 59 basement. Right. I know a lot of you like probably having shock right now. I'm not making this up. I Need to look. I'm Pretty sure they're $2,100. $2,100. Look at this. Bam. $2,100. You can find this amp used right now for 1,000 bucks. No exaggeration. I can find it for a thousand bucks. I just can't find it next to my house right now. So everywhere I find them for a thousand bucks. There was like, local pickup. I'm like, I'm not near you. But it's so cheap that I've thought about, like, it's just. It costs so much. I'm like, I feel like calling them and going, hey, will you just drop it off at a UPS store? And I'll just pay them to ship it to me. But I'm like, that'd probably three, 400 bucks. And I'm like, I guess that's still a deal. But I'm like, again, like I said, you wait for the deals. You don't rush to them. Now that it's our new saying. And I'm. I just know somebody's gonna pop on Craigslist with a 59 baseman and I'll get it for a thousand bucks, which is half off because no one wants to ship that beast. So, yeah, amps are. Amps are. They're the things that you just look around and wait and find the deal and you'll get it. All right. Is there anything else that I missed? I think we talked about all the stuff. Like I said, I'll be doing the thing with the Guitar Center. I don't know if you saw Guitar Center's close to stores. I saw that. I was going to talk about that in depth and do some research on that. And I thought, well, I'm going to be talking to Guitar center next week, so I'll try to get the skinny on what that is. I read a little bit. If you guys didn't see Guitar center closed two stores in California. And I read a couple of things about it. They kind of thought the stores were redundant and all these other things. But I figured, you know what? This is a good. That's a good topic to bring up to the CEO of Guitar center is like, hey, I heard you're closing stores. Ironically, that literally within. It was within one week or my prediction that they were closing stores. So I kind of feel a little weird about that. If you guys recall, in December, I said that Guitar Synovial will close some stores right. Literally right after Nam Show. But it was three weeks after Nam show, so I guess it wasn't literally after Nam show. It was three weeks later, but so I was a little. Obviously I wasn't shocked to hear what's going on, but I would like to know more before we talk about it. Okay. Hold on a second. Oh, Terry says, hey, Phil, I used to take lessons at your place in Chandler. Hope all is well. Nah, it is. Thanks for popping in. I wanted to see. I saw that. I wanted to read. Thank you, Amanda, for grabbing that. It's good to hear from you. You know, it's. It's especially for me, so you know, Terry. And then we'll end on this note. I like it when somebody says, hey, I used to take lessons. And, you know, and they say hi, because they never do that to me. They always do that to Shauna. Everybody always says hi to Shauna. They see her in the. I'll be in the grocery store. If you're a gear person, you'll stop me and be like, hey, I seen your channel, whatever. We talk about some gear stuff. But anytime anybody walks up to Shauna, I go, oh, students. And it's always like, hey, we took lessons there. They always know Shauna, because Shauna handled all that. But, yeah, that's great. Thank you for the shout out. And then. Okay, hold on a second. Hold on. Richard White says, hey, I was trying to find the headstock that mounts magnetically on the back of an inline six. Headstock, I think it was called. Called the tuner Ninja. I can't find one online anywhere. Was it discontinued? Funny thing about that. I don't know why I keep saying funny thing. Odd thing. I'm pretty sure I should just tell you. See, so if I'm wrong, I just look stupid. Oh, it's gone. Yeah, so it's gone. So the funny, odd thing was usually on Reverb, if you would type in McKnight. It came up because he was tagging me in it. But now. Now it's Cotton States rag by Annie Ford. But yes, that's the McKnight. Hey, are you searching for Midnight? No. So I'm gonna say, yeah, he's not making them because that's where. I mean, I'll try Ninja. Did you try Reverb? Because that's where he was selling them. No, he's not making them any because they're not coming up. Let me try one last and. Nope, Nope, not coming up. So sorry. I guess he's done. I guess he sold through and he's done. So it happens, you know, it's one of those things, you know, all the companies that come and Go. So. Oh, Amanda said another customer dropped in too, and I'm sending to you. Let me go back and. Okay. This is from Zachary. Says, hey, Phil, big fan. Used to go out to your guitar store as a kid and then into the Zia. Oh, yeah, the Zia. And to get some punk records. Thanks for your small role shaping me into a musician. Hey, thanks for giving me any credit for that, Zachary. What's funny is, yeah, I remember the Zia before they closed and it was the hair salon, which is a kind of funny thing. That was them. I want to end on a funny story, so since you were nice enough to bring that up, I'll end on this funny story. It's not that funny, so don't get excited, but this part makes me laugh. There was a Zia records. So next to my guitar shop was a record store, which is amazing, right? You're like, that's the perfect thing, right? Record store, Guitar store is perfect. And then what happened was the shopping center started dying. And that's just how things go in retail world. And dying mean there's less traffic. And some of the anchor stores left, and the landlord lost the lease. He lost the lease. I'm sorry. He lost the building to the bank. And then the bank wouldn't negotiate with any of the tenants because they want to sell it, and they want as high as rent values as possible when they sell the property. So it was really tough towards the end, right? Because you're like, ah, man, I'm paying top rent and I want to reduce it, and I can't negotiate with them even though if your lease is up. And so the Zia guys were the first people next to us. They left. And I remember I'm sitting in my store. I'm gonna do this for you. I'm sitting in my store and I don't have my hat on. This is important to the story. And I pride myself on being a pleasant person as much as I can. But sometimes, you know, dumb people just still get under your skin, and they can do it really quickly. And I don't mean to call them dumb, but this was funny. You'll see why in a second. And this person came in our store. It was. I remember it was a woman and a man that came in the store. Very well dressed, presented really well. I'm look. I was probably looking. Imagine my store name on this shirt. This is exactly what it looked like, right? So I'm standing there, and they come in. Now, remember, the store is full of people. Not full, but you understand there's my wife. There's people in the store. I'm not the only person standing there. They walk up and they said, hey, my name is so and so. I'm like, cool. And they go, we own so and so salons. And I go, huh? And they go, they go, we're going to be building. We're going to be building hair salon in the bill. And you know, the shop next to you. I'm like, oh. And they go, is there a lot of good hair salons in this area? And I go, how the fuck would I know? There you go. There's my curse word and everything. I was like. And I started laughing. I'm like. And then they laugh. They're like, okay. And then they walked over to my wife. But I was like, I just remember. And I just had to react because I remember just going. It's the weirdest thing. Everybody came up to me and said anyways, by the way. And they're. They're still there to this day, I think the hair salon. So okay, so you can know if you need a good hair salon. That's the only one I know. All right, on that note, you guys have an amazing weekend. Play some guitar. I will see you guys next Friday. Please look for more deep dives as there's more coming. And like I said, any suggestions or comments you guys want to put in the permanent comments, this video on things you think I should bring up or talk to with the CEO of Guitar center and their mission to improve and do better. I would love to let them know because like I said, I think it's an interesting conversation and I'm really happy they're doing it. By the way. There's nothing off the table. They're going to let me talk about whatever we want. So obviously I'm not a rude person by any means, but obviously I have opinions, so I'm sure they're going to hear them. So I'd like to hear your parents opinions too because I might want to give them. Give them your opinions. All right, on that note, thank you guys so much and have a great weekend. And Know youw Gear. And now awkwardly look for the screen that lets me turn off the show. Like I haven't done this 400 times. Bye, guys. The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon Members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe, thank you for making this possible.