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The Know youw Gear Podcast. The Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode 431. Feels like it was yesterday. It was 430. I have to have some disclaimers for this one, so I hope you guys will bear with me on this. So one of the questions that came up, I did a couple videos this week, a couple, couple deep dives, if you will, and one of them was on the new Oterra guitar. There's one behind me, if you don't know. The Samurai Guitarist channel, it's a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers, has decided to throw his hat in the ring if you, if you say into the guitar YouTuber building arena. And we've seen this now there is, you know, a half a dozen or more guitar channels that have created their own brand of guitars or other items. And, and they've gotten into this. And then I, Steve, the Samurai guitarist, he reached out to me and he asked me, hey, could I send you one and do a deep dive? And I'll just be honest and tell you, I actually, I didn't think it was a good idea because I thought, well, he's not going to need any promotion. He has a million subscribers and in my experience, he'll sell out the guitars no matter what. The way I would look at this, you know, he could sell out as fast as, you know, 24 hours, and he can sell out as fast as one week, but either way, he will sell out. That's what happens when you have a large following. You know, you only have to convert a hundred people into buying a product. It's not a lot of conversion, especially if you do a lot of affiliate work. You know, that that's no matter what his views are, views like, you know, video views, you're just going to get a hundred sold. You know, it's just, it's just a matter of time. And so anyways, so. But I know that part of it was because we've met in the past and I, I think it was more of a personal favor to say, hey, I would really like to have like an instance, extensive look at the guitar. So I was happy to do it, obviously. And then. So you guys know the backstory. Something funny little. It's not that funny, but it's funny to me, so I hope I'll just share with you. Steve and I had a funny experience the first time I ever met him was at one of these get. You know, get events. You know, there's always these YouTuber events that's called guitar something, right? And I met him, Beautiful person, super kind. And I've said this before, I get along with, you know, I think all the YouTube channels, for the most part. I don't know of anyone. I particularly don't. I have any issues with, especially at the events. But I don't necessarily hang out with a lot of people. First of all, for the longest time, I was a viewer like you guys. So to me, a lot of these channels, it was intimidating to be around them. So I didn't really approach them that way. The other thing that happened, though, is over time, I just. Everybody just has their own thing, right? Their own clicks, their own thing. And so I try to kind of just keep to myself and. And kind of work and do my thing. But Steve was one of the few that I interacted with a lot and enjoyed his company. And funny story that happened to me was a couple years ago, like over five years ago, Steve was in Germany at Frame as Warwick. And they have like a wall of like, famous people, okay. It's like all the famous rock stars, you know, and bass players and all that stuff. And Steve had put his picture up there as like a joke, right? And a couple years, I think went by. It could have been a year. It was at least a year. Could have been years gone by. I just so happened to be there again. I've been there many times, and I don't know if I posted something on Instagram or if I sent out something to a group that. We're all in a group chat. But somehow I mentioned I was there. And Steve said, hey, Phil, if you don't mind, if you get a minute, you know, look to see if they took my picture down, if I'm still there. So I. I went and I found it and I took a picture next to it, and it was. It was kind of funny. And he was really excited. Cause he's like, you know, because that's, you know, they could have took this picture down. He. He was curious to see. You know, they said. I think they told him, and I hope I'm not misstating this, that they would never take it down, right? He. So anyways, what's funny is this. Is. This is the funny part. So Steve told me, hey, I'm starting a guitar. And he kind of said, hey, look, you know, can I send you one of the guitars and do a deep dive? And he's like, I'm having Cortec make it. And I said, oh, funny enough, I'll be at Cortek in a couple months. And when I was at Cortek, I was walking around talking to the owner, June, and I. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple bodies of the. Of the Otero guitars. Just the bodies sitting in racks. And I stopped. We were doing. I stopped all the filming. Everything we're doing, I go, hold on. And I ran and grabbed one and I said, take my picture with it and send it to Steve. And it was just kind of fun to send it to him and like, hey, I saw, you know, here's your guitar body. It's kind of like the thing. Like, here's your picture. So it's a kind of inside thing between him and me. I just thought I'd share with you. Again, I don't know if it's that interesting or funny. I just wanted to. I like it. I like the story, so I want to share it. But the question I got a lot in that video I did. And a lot was, first of all, a lot of people trying to assess things, which is fine. Um, it's always interesting to me how many people who have no clue what they're talking about have hard theories on it. No hard theories, hard opinions. It's always going to confuse me for the rest of my life. It's confused me up to this point. It's nothing. It has nothing to do about being wrong or right. It's just people who literally have no. Like, they have no clue about a subject, but they have a very hard opinion about it. And I always thought that was kind of funny. So let me enlighten you. So the question I got was, how much does it cost to start a guitar brand? Now, this is where the disclaimers come in. Okay, so I'm going to tell you hypothetically, if all of us were to start a guitar brand, much like how a lot of brands have been started, how we would do it, and how much it would cost, this was something I got asked many times. But more importantly, not only did I get asked this a lot, I got a lot of people telling me how it works, and they were absolutely 100% wrong. So, you know, just for a record, every video I saw of somebody talking about it and every person who commented was a hundred percent wrong. And this is where the disclaimer goes. Again, I'm not going to be telling actual data about Steve's business. First of all, I don't know his business. I didn't help him start this brand. I'm not involved. However, I have started or have helped start three guitar companies and obviously built my, my bass company before. Way, way, way before. And my bass company was built a lot like how Steve's was, except for I actually made the, the first initial instruments and then had them made overseas. So I'm very aware of how the process goes. Okay. And so I want to give you guys some insight because a lot of people are curious about it. So. And I'll even talk about the YouTuber side of it a little bit and we'll keep it brief, but we'll keep it fun. So if you wanted to start, and like I said, this is hypothetical. Okay, hypothetically, let's say we wanted to start a brand of guitars like how Samurai Guitarist has done it or how Badlands has done it, or even Ola England or anyone like that. Right. And of course Ola's is a little different, but even Rob Chapman's would be more like this. First of all, especially if you're not building the instruments yourself and you're not going to build a shop and do that, how would you start the process? Well, the process would start immediately with the first thing is you'd have to come up with the company. So whether the company is going to be a dba. In other words, in most cases, the company's not going to be like, I don't know this for sure. So, you know, I'm just giving you a hypothetical. Oterra may be the dba, like he may have an llc, but it's not Otera Guitars. And also, I'd like to also point out that Steve is in Canada. I have no idea how Canada works. Okay, so this again, I'm just giving you the hypothetical how we would do what you're seeing behind me, the Otera brand or one like it. How more importantly, like I said, since I've helped start companies and been paid to help start them as consulting, I would just, I'm giving you some of the insight I would give them and that I got paid for and they all worked out. So the first thing you do is start an LLC if you didn't have one. And then either the LLC would be the near the brand of the company or you would have a DBA as doing business as which is more likely the case. Okay. So, you know, and all the ones I helped do, none of the companies were actually named what the guitar brand was. They were named something else. And the guitar brand was A doing business as then you would, in this case, if you're in like, in Steve's case, if you're not a designer, you would have to hire a designer. That's very important. You have to hire somebody to help you design the stuff. Obviously like, like most of us, you can write stuff on a napkin or come up with a general idea, but then you have somebody that kind of like helps you figure out how it's really going to look, whether that be the logo, whether that be the design of the guitar, or, and, or both. Once you've secured that, the design and you paid for that. So in his case, I believe Steve said in his videos, he paid someone to do the design. So he paid for that. What does that cost? I'll give you some scenarios. So your LLC could cost you as cheap as $500. You could do sweat equity, do it yourself, or you could pay attorneys to do it. They could cause, you know, 2,000 to $5,000 and all. Again, everybody's going to have a hard opinion about this. Depending on where you live, your state, your country, there's different ways to do it. I'm going to tell you right now, I've, I've helped start LLC as low as $250 and I've done it as much as $5,000. So it could be anywhere in between those. Depending on how much of a real attorney's involved versus, you know, not then the, once the designer is done, you're going to pay the designer. That can be all over the place. Again, you could pay somebody $10,000. You could do it for a favor, you could do it for a case of beer, you could do it for $1,000. Again, you know, if you guys don't know famously, the, the lady who made the famous ne Nike swoosh got $30. Right? I mean, I understand that's, you know, way back then, but even today, you know, Even today's standard, $30 even then was silly, right? So you could, you could pay a lot for a design. So he could have paid a designer a couple grand to design the guitar. Once the design of the instrument is done. Most likely in the cases I've done in the past, we never trademarked the guitar bodies. We did trademark the headstocks. In every case, he's probably doing the same thing, I'm assuming, although his body is different enough, he might have trademarked that body and a trademark again, depending on if you want to try to do it yourself, get a how to, you know, some how to paperwork and Kind of do your own trademark or maybe get a, a paralegal to do it a little bit. Or if you're gonna hire a real attorney, I would imagine the more public you are and something else I've experienced, the more you're gonna have a real attorney or have more real doing it for real. For real. Because you know, optically you're right on the radar fast. Right. So there's not a lot of time to fix mistakes that you made. So you would have to trademark at least the headstock, the company, the logo. The logo. Of course, you know, the like, oh, I'm in this case. He's going to trademark Otera guitars. He's going to trademark the logo. Maybe if it's, if it's got a special font and then. And, or he's going to trademark the headstock. I would believe those would be the, at least the three I would do or at the very minimum of the, to the brand name of course and the headstock and that again, thousands of dollars. Then the next thing you would do of course is you're going to have to find a builder. Now in Steve's, in Steve's case, I can tell you with some conviction that you and I, you would most likely not be able to get a builder like Cortec to build your guitars. So for those of you reaching out going he, I want to start my brand too. How do I get a hold of Cortech guitars? I just want to let you know that this is not something Cortek guitars, I'm not speaking for them again, I don't work for them. I'm just telling you again that they're not going to really be interested in doing. I mean they build for Fender, Ibanez, Squire, PRs, you know, Strandberg, you know Sterling, they, they GNL. I mean they have a lot of accounts, a lot of big accounts. They're not really looking for your 30 piece order or your 100 piece order. So basically this is where I would believe that Steve, who's smart and what I would suggest in the past too cashed in a little bit of his notoriety, a little bit of his friendships with certain people. Right? You're gonna, you're gonna use those. Hey, hey, I know this person. Hey, I, I have this very large platform to sell guitars. In other words, there's an opportunity maybe Cortech and I'm. I never asked June about this specifically, but I would assum. They were like hey yeah, it's 100 guitars not really worth our time. However, he's got a potential to build this a lot bigger and same with us. So I would, assuming that we would probably, you know, you know, I could take the same kind of angle with it. Hey, I have a YouTube channel. Hey, I can go ahead and you know, I think I can grow this, but I need to figure out what it is first. So basically what I would tell you is usually you would see a small run like this done by a much smaller type company. In fact, a company you guys would never even. No, you know, you've never heard of. You know, smaller builders would take the case with the bigger builders, wouldn't return your, your calls or emails for sure. Then once you've done that, you have you watched us. These video is very good. Talking about how he said back and forth prototypes, you're going to pay for all those prototypes up front. So. Or you're going to pay for those prototypes. That could be $1,000 per prototype, easy. You know, for something like that. It just depends. Again, their individual deals can vary but so if you think about this, we're already talking about, you know, your llc, your trademark, you know, your, if there's a partnership, you're going to have to have a partnership agreement and then of course you're going to have prototypes. So he's already into this in my estimation. Could be as easy as 10, $15,000 right there and as low as a couple thousand, maybe three or $4,000. Either way, that's your upfront investment. You haven't even started a company yet. You don't have anything yet. You just have all the, the, the beginnings. And keep in mind part of the trademark problem and is that you have to have commerce to get his trademark. So he can't even get the trademark until he starts selling a couple of these guitars. He could file for it, but he needs those elements too as well. So anyways, then once he has a final product, he needs a website again. You could get a GoDaddy account, build your own website, or you could hire someone to build your website. Especially because you're gonna have to build like a shoppytron cart or something to sell this and track this. And you're gonna need some, you're gonna need something above the basic, you know, website. And again, that could cost $2,000, that could cost $10,000. And in my experience, and I'm not gonna say this doesn't count, but I mean I have friends in this industry that pay seven figures for their website and I have people that pay, you know, $500 a year. For a website. So all kinds, it runs the gamut. But I would say again, a couple thousand dollars. So again, you're, you're, you're into, he's into it now, like 10, $15,000 minimum. And now here comes the fun part. He's got to have these guitars built, right? So let's say he gets Cortech to do 100 pieces. It's not only just, you gotta understand, it's not only just the hundred pieces he orders. He has to get them to wherever they're going. So whether he shipped them to Canada or the U.S. i don't know. I'm gonna assume he had distribution in U.S. this is because mine came from the U.S. but I'm again, I'm assuming. And again, again, I'm not specifically talking about his business. I'm talking about this hypothetical, right? You have to have a customs broker. Somebody's got to get this through customs. So you hire somebody. You're gonna hire a shipper, you're gonna hire a customs broker to get the shipping done. All that stuff like Cortex not basically taking it, they're gonna take it to the dock and leave it, so to speak. Right? So you're gonna hire somebody to ship all this stuff and get all that in. Again, those are added expenses. Expenses. Guitars, guitars are easy. You could, you could guess what his guitar costs based on what court sells other instruments for. There is of course a scale thing. Obviously the more guitars you build, the lower the scale. But keep in mind, I don't believe he did this. But I could tell you in other instances where I done helped, you know, companies, we used favors. In other words, we traded favors for things. So for instance, like, you know, he probably, my, my guess is he probably paid to have Seymour Duncan pickups put in these guitars. Otherwise he bought the Seymour Duncan pickups. Where. I know that if, if I was negotiating for something like this and he, and it was for a big YouTuber, I could probably easily negotiate. Maybe not Seymour Duncan. Maybe though. So I can negotiate the company to almost give you the pickups or give you such a deal on the pickups. It's silly because of the fact that they're going to get advertising out of this. YouTubers bring advertising. So, you know, the, I don't know how many people saw my video. I'll just use mine. The Oterra guitar got so many eyeballs. But everybody that sell that guitar sell the Seymour Duncan pickup. Seymour Duncan got that advertising too. So they, you could probably get them to co op share in that where a Normal company wouldn't get that option. Right. Because it's. Again, they're. They're. They're not in that same world as usual. And then. So if we take a guitar. This is the guitar I think if we're going to take a guitar and look at. This is the guitar I think we should look at. And again, just because it's going to give us an idea, we're just guessing. And keep in mind, I hope everybody does this with good taste because like I said, a lot of people had some really interesting dumb things to say. Let's go here. So this, this guitar is made at Cortech. It's made in a more. It's made in a different building than. Than where the Otera guitars are. So you understand, I just want to be very clear, just so you guys know, regardless of what happens with my Cortec video in the future, you know, my factory tour video and stuff, I'm just going to tell you right now that the Oterra guitar is not made in the same building as this PRS, which is important to note. However, this PRS is $979. This. And again, because, you know, it's PRS, we can break this down. Let's break this down into something that makes sense for us. So let me go back. That would help. Go here. Give me a second because I need this. Aha. I need it. Okay. All right, so what we're going to do now is we're going to say $979. I'm going to build in a. A dealer cost of 40 points. So $585 is what this guitar would cost a dealer. Now, keep in mind, some dealers are going to pay 30% margin. Some dealers are going to have 40% margin. I actually was a PRS dealer. I was a PRS SE dealer. So SEs are usually a volume buy. The more you buy, the more discounts you get. But I'm just going to give this guitar a dealer cost of 585. And then for kicks and giggles, I'm going to give this guitar a 20 margin for PRS. Okay, now keep in mind, I'm not a very. I'm not aware of PRS's margins. Again, I'm guessing. The only difference is I'm guessing with a lot more information than a lot of people has. So I'm going to say this guitar landed to PRS is $468.48. Right? So that when they sell it to a dealer for 585, they're making a hundred and twenty dollars per guitar. That sounds about right. Remember, manufacturers work in volume. Now keep in mind this guitar could be double margin because they have a large, they're making you know, 800, 500, 500 Ses a day out of that building. That's, these are things I can tell you. So PRS makes 500 SES out of that one building a day in Indonesia. So they're, they're got volume so they could build, they could build in more margin. Also keep in mind when I'm talking their margin, I'm only talking about physical landed margin of like this is the product cost, this is the product sale price. It doesn't incorporate, you know, marketing, you know, repairs, returns, you know, office buildings, all that stuff. Right. We're just trying to give a same thing. So if we used a formula like that with Steve's guitar, right? So we're going to say the guitar is $1300. I'm going to say obviously he's the seller so he doesn't need to build in a margin for dealers. However, I would hope that he did. It's something I advise everyone to do, is have a margin for dealers in case you go that route. So we're going to say in this particular case the same, we're going to build a 30% margin for dealers. So that means he would sell that guitar to a dealer for $910. Again, this is hypotheticals. And then we're going to say he needs a 20% margin to sell it to be profitable. So that means he brings in the guitar for $728. Okay, so again these are hypotheticals. Keep in mind one of the things that is where people got a lot of things wrong with his guitars, they don't understand what really drives up that cost. The low volume is where he's not going to get a huge price break. But having name brand components like Seymour Duncan really drives cost up overseas. The if, if, if Steve Samurai Guitars was to have pse, which is the company who makes pickups for Kortik, if they were to have, if he was to have them make the pickups for the guitar and even spec them similar to Seymour Duncan, he could probably drive the price of that guitar down as much as a hundred dollars minimum. And again, you know, it's my guess so, so you know, just not having to have to pay Seymour Duncan for those pickups. Even if, even if they are paying it at builder's cost, you know, a manufacturing cost versus a retail or a wholesale even. But we're going to go back to this number that I like. So $1300. Should have kept it on my calculator. I apologize, guys. We're going to just say that he built in a dealer margin of 70%. He may not have. Okay. We're going to say that he has a built in margin of 20%. Again, he may not have. So it's at 182, minus 182, minus 910. I don't know why I added it this way. So we're going to say $728. So $728. Okay. And I'm going to break down some numbers for you that could help you better understand this industry. Okay. So at $728 minus $1,300 and again, he's got a profit of $572 per guitar. He sells 100 of them. That's profit, right? Okay. He would make $57,200 on these guitars minus his attorney that he hired for his llc. Keep in mind, he's in Canada. It's as easy to assume because I've assumed a lot of things here today. It's easy to assume that he had a trademark both in Canada and the US. I don't know how that works. Again, I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not in Canada, so I know nothing about that. I've never worked. Well, I have worked with a company in Canada, but not in this kind of capacity. So 57,200 is what you would put in your pocket. And then therefore, let's deduct out some of the things we talked about before first, which is going to be the website being built. We're going to. We still haven't, you know, his. Again, we're not talking about physical shipping costs and tariffs. He had tariffs to deal with as well. He had unscheduled tariffs to deal with. So you know, when he started this, just doing the timeline, it was obviously started this when it was like 10% tariffs and now he's at like 19% tariffs. So he had a 9% ish tariff expense that he didn't probably anticipate for that. Whatever reason. Obviously we know because everything's in chaos. So we're going to say trademarks, website, llc, design. He also mentioned his video, he had a CAD file. I can tell you that. That's probably the easy part. I hope, I hope for him I know somebody, I know two people in this industry that if I needed a CAD right now made of A guitar. They would do a three dimensional cad for me for about 500 bucks. So just to give you a reference of what that would cost me, but he could pay $5,000. Again, you have to know somebody that was willing to to do the favor because at 250 to $500, that's a really good CAD price. I have a friend who's, who has become a friend because somebody I was consulting, he was being quoted $10,000 for a CAD file. So I mean again, it can get all over the place. I still like this number. $15,000. I think it's a fair number to say. So in other words, he had a cost point of $15,000 up front. Now this is where it gets fun. So we're going to deduct that. So now he's made $42,500. You're like, wow, a lot of you, hey, that's more than a lot of people make in a year in this country. So you're like, wow, he made a year's salary off this transaction. Keep in mind a couple things. First of all, 42,500 is his pre taxed. Okay. And again, I know he's in Canada, but I'm not talking about that again here. What I can tell you is if he already had the next model ready, like let's say he sells out by this weekend, he sold all the guitars and I'm right in this hypothetical that he has $42,500 left in his pocket after expenses and now he can and he's got his initial costs back. Right. So what he's put out of pocket. Keep in mind, we're just talking about the profit, that profit. Unless he can use that as to order the next order and put that right back in the business, he's going to have to take a disbursement for that, which means he'll have to pay taxes on that. So you can imagine 30% of that goes. My guess is unless he's already pre did everything because they were so close to the end of the year, he can't do that. So I think he's going to have to disperse a portion of that. And now keep in mind, he sent me my guitar, so that's an expense too. Okay. I didn't pay for the guitar. Like I said in the video, he sent it. I get to keep this. I assume Ret. Shaw got to keep his and Trogly got to keep his. I'm assuming and I could assume he also sent a couple more out and I just Told you that the guitar has those rod cost numbers that I told you about. You have to take those out of the equation. We'll. We'll cut out. Out of the 42,500. Let's cut out another $2,500 for guitars. So that brings us to $40,000. $40,000 again in the U.S. we'll give him a 30% tax rate. I'm not a tax guy. This is not where I would excel in this area here. So he would then net $28,000. So now keep in mind that is, you know, as you guys know, I helped Badlands and Badlands had a higher profit margin than that for the first year. And they were so. They did better than that first year. This is very uncommon. This is the power of YouTube having. I mean, think about this. He's. He was cashing in favors. I did a video for him. That is because I told you we have a good rapport. He was always nice to me. So when he reached out and said, you know, can I send you guitar and do a video? Of course the answer is yes. That's a. That still has cost because he sent the guitar, but it was much lower than it could have cost him to have a YouTuber like me or Ret Shaw or Trogly do a video for him. So again, favors, you know, are part of this, and I'm happy to do it. I'm sure they were happy to do it too, because he's such a sweet guy. I believe he would do a favor for me if I asked him. And. But again, you know, these are things that not everybody would have the ability to do. The takeaway from this isn't a woe is me. This is a. I can't imagine in any scenario that I can conjure up that he's not profitable first year in business, running this, you know, with his first run to some degree, which is a very impressive and very unique thing to say. Most companies, I told this to Badlands when they were profitable in the first year. I was like, that's not common. You don't just start a guitar brand and then you're profitable. You know, all of your. All of your investments back in your pockets and you have profit the first year. It's very, very unique. However, and then Joshua is saying $28,000 doesn't even pay for the full run. Similarly spec guitars. So this is where. Good. Thank you for saying that. Understand that's not what I'm saying though, because remember, he received his initial investment back. I'm talking about the profit. So for instance, if, if those guitars, let's just say we're going to call it $700 a piece. Again, those are different numbers than what I had before. But again, we want to keep it easy. If it cost him $700 per guitar, let's say he does an average out. Like he says, the initial costs, you know, the, the, all the stuff I told you about, the attorneys, the, you know, all the business expenses, the website, all this stuff. Let's say he did a cost analysis per guitar and says, okay, the cost of the guitar and all those costs, let's say it cost him $700 per guitar. I'm just throwing a generic number. Then he would need $70,000 either in cash or, or credit to pay for that upfront. Right? So it's an initial $70,000 investment. So what I'm saying is whatever the investment was in this scenario, that's back in their pocket, plus $28,000 additional. Because remember, you're not paying taxes on your investment. You get that back. You're only paying the taxes on the profit and only what's dispersed. Well, you have to disperse it. So if it's in the account, it's getting dispersed to the owner. And again, unless he has partners, and he could have partners in this, who knows? And again, we're talking hypothetically in this scenario, what I can tell you is he could make more money if he started a sock business, if he just started selling socks, or if he invested in real estate or stocks. This is not how you decide how you get your most money back. In fact, anyone in the know, and again, sometimes I'm known for saying too much and getting in trouble. But anyone in the know, in the YouTube world knows that lesson programs and stuff that you sell digitally are going to make way more money than any guitar like this. Anything like this is ever going to net the, the, the channel or him or anybody entity, right? You can make way more money selling. You know, it's why when somebody goes, hey, Phil, you want to start a guitar company? No, I did it. It was fun. I had the experience. Luckily, I had it way before YouTube. In fact, it led me down a journey that ended me in my own retail business. Because again, it's profitable. You can have fun doing it. It's your passion. However, it's volatile because it's a lot of competition. It's a small consumer base and it's not a high margin business. It's not something that normally people who care about money go, what a Great idea, right? In fact, in this industry, one of the things that confus so many of, I believe so many of us, but mostly in this case, a lot of people who are like you guys and us that are maybe the hobbyists and stuff that just love this industry, there's always a rich benefactor in a lot of scenarios that you don't understand. What I mean by that is there's a company in this industry doing well, and you're like, look at them, they're doing well. And sometimes because you don't know, behind the scenes, they actually have a rich benefactor. In other words, they have somebody with a lot of money outside of the industry. Because, you know, it's. It's a. It's an old story. It's been told a thousand times. In this industry, people who do well in real estate and other things, they want to get in the rock and roll business. So they basically help start a company like an amp company or a guitar company or a pedal company so that they can go hang out backstage with rock stars and give them free gear and tell them how cool they are because they're, you know, like, hey, James Hetfield, here's a cool pedal man. My company made this. And really, they, they like, you know, they don't care about if the company ever makes any money. There's a sad amount of stories where there's two owners in companies and one's the rich benefactor who makes a lot of money in their outside endeavor, and the other partner is the person making the product and designing it. And they're broke as a joke because the benefactor, rich person doesn't care if the company ever makes any money because they already make money in their other business. So there's, There is scenarios like that. But the reason I thought this. Well, one, I got a lot of these questions and, and a lot of things can be true and a lot of things can be inaccurate at the same time. For instance, I saw people saying, oh, he's probably some like samurai guitars is losing money doing this. It's a horrible idea. No, it's profitable. It's not very profitable. It's definitely profitable. He's a smart guy. Again, he's a smart guy. He's got. He's. He knew exactly how to execute this. I think he did an amazing job. And I don't even know his details. I just know, just looking at it going, this is a person who knew all the, all the things you need to avoid. He seemed like he avoided them. He obviously going after Cortek as the Builder was an ingenious move because it really saves him from one of the biggest problems, which is we haven't got. When we talk about cost and profit, we haven't got to returned guitars and shipping costs and, you know, defects and who's going to service the guitars when they're defective and where are they going to go. And one thing that's nice about that is I'm sure that's all been factored in, of course. But also on a side note, Cortek is going to minimize amount. The amount of those. I do not in the, in any fathom of my mind believe that all 100 people who get the Otero guitar is going to get the most perfect guitar ever and they're going to have a perfect life. It doesn't happen no matter what the guitar is. Even if it was $5,000 PRS, if you send out 100 PRSs, somebody's going to have something, a problem. So it's, it's just a, it's just a factor of it. However, using quality manufacturing minimizes that because obviously they know how to build a guitar and they know how to get around the silly things that are easy. Yeah. David says, hey, you have to be in this business because you love it. I think that's, hopefully that's the takeaway. You know, I, I wrestled with this since Wednesday and the questions started coming in. Do I even want to talk about this? Do I want to share this stuff with you guys? I didn't really guys give you any inside baseball. But this is more importantly. You know, one of the things that's scary about this is I can't because of NDAs, I can't tell you exactly how things work with companies that I know exactly how it works. And in Guitar Samurai Guitar's case, I can't tell you how his work because I wasn't involved with it at all. So it's just all hypothetical for me, looking at this scenario, basing it on scenarios I've executed on with other companies. But, but I, I'm proud of him. I think he did a great job. I'm proud of all of you who supported it. What do I think about this? I think, do I, you know, do I think the world needs. Every YouTube channel needs to be making a guitar brand? No, but I think that as a, as an industry, I don't want to say industry, as a, as a community who loves guitar, I love that somebody's making guitars. I love somebody trying something different. You know, I thought about. This is kind of funny. Thing I kind of said it, and I kind of regret how I said it in the video. I think I said that the guitar doesn't really scream like metal or jazz or blues or anything. What I really wanted to say, and I didn't say it correctly, I'm gonna say it now, is this is the first. In my opinion, this is the first YouTuber guitar brand that isn't metal. All the YouTubers who make guitars, for the most part, either started out or is and, you know, currently a metal brand. So it was kind of cool to see somebody come out with something not so metal that appeals, you know, to a different. Different demographic and trying a radical idea. I can't imagine when I was doing the video of this, I couldn't imagine more than 20% of you actually liking the way this looked guitar looks. It's too radical. I mean, look at it. I. I didn't. Oh, you know, it's funny. I didn't do that on purpose. But for those listening later, I'm actually right next to a Telecaster. And when you see it next to the Telecaster, you can see it's. It's actually more radical than you think. Different from the Telecaster, but. But pretty cool. And then. And then, keep in mind 100 pieces. I think it was a safe bet to go with. I think if he would have done more, I think he could have, you know, good. I think he would do well, I mean, either way. And then, you know, and I think he, like, said, I don't know where he's at with it. So, you know, I kind of like you guys, if you've been watching. I just been observing. I saw on Tuesday, I believe Tuesday or Wednesday, a day after I saw that he had mentioned somewhere, I saw it somewhere on the Internet that 65% of them sold. So I took that as 65 had sold. So that's a good sign that. Oh, and then I got the impression more sold since then, obviously. So to me, I don't even think he has to sell all 100 for it to be a success. I think he has to just. Once he breaks recoups cost, he can sit on them as long as he wants once his money is back in his pocket. Because that's usually the big fear when you send out money, when you spend a lot of money, you really like it to come back. It's. It's the first step in the thing. I mean, obviously you want to make profit, but at the very least, you want to get your money back. And. And then 60 seconds Steve says, I'm surprised they're not sold out. You know, I'm not surprised they're not sold out yet. There was part of me, I was 50, 50 on this, and I think I might have told Steve this in a. In an Instagram chat once before the launch. There's a part of me, it's like, these would sell out in two hours. Okay? And again, this kind of goes to the Herman Lee guitar. When we talked about that guitar, you know, the, the core guitar and stuff, look it, two years ago, he would have sold all 150 seconds. You know, we were all in the mood to buy stuff. The market was different. The world was more certain. Right. I think, you know, given the climate of the market, the world that was all going against him. The algorithms were going against him. Whether he, you know, I'm sure he knows, obviously he's a much bigger, more successful YouTube channel than me. But, you know, I've told you guys this before. If you're a guitar channel, you're competing with everything on YouTube now. Every single thing of videos. And I don't know if I've ever told you guys this, but I'm just going to tell you this. I did a video that was amazing. I'm not gonna tell you what video, but it's a true story. I did a video, and I know for a fact I told my patrons this. I'm gonna tell you. I did. This video was amazing. It was my. One of my favorite videos ever done on the channel. I. It was a lot of work, a lot of preparation. I was very excited about it. I launched the video and it took off like a rocket. I mean, I'm not kidding. Like, one of 10. And it's just troll. It's just shooting up. It's just tracking like crazy. And I was super excited and I went and I cracked open an IPA and I was like, I'm celebrating. And then I go in to look on my phone and on. And I'm sitting in my chair. You know, if you get to, you know, you sit in your chair in your. Your family room, and all of a sudden my feed is Haktua girl steals everyone's bitcoin money. And I'm like, I'm so dumb. Like, I don't know what a hawk to a girl is. I don't know what a bitcoin thing money thing is mining. I don't know what any of this is. All I know is like, it's just in my feed, and within two hours, my video goes from. From 10,000 views every. Every like hour to shuts off. It just shuts off. It's just over. Now some of you gonna say, well, maybe it was something else. No, I know it's not. I did something else. But because here's what we did. We pulled the video down after. After it had ran aground about six hours after Hawk to a Girl. And then we relaunched and when we relaunched, it took off again the next time. It took a day or two. We relaunched it and it. That's. It did. Well, other than some people saying, didn't you relaunch this or launch this video already? So you understand. So, you know, obviously the guitar had that against it. A lot of, A lot of obviously political videos, a lot of stuff. Videos out there that are really pulling a lot of eyeballs and attention right now. So there's against that. And then also the price point at 12.99. I'm glad Steve never asked me for any advice. I probably would have ruined it for him. I'm going to tell you right now, I already cleared this with my wife to say she, she gave me a face, but she agreed. I would have told him 9.99. I would. Here's what I would have told him for about the guitar. I would have told him, every penny above a thousand dollars, you're going to exponentially close the market to what you can sell. So, you know, my instincts would keep it at 999. And actually, as jokingly I would have said at 998, you would sell twice as many. Right. Just every penny under a thousand dollars. That's the, that's the kick. The reason my. I told you my wife, I upset the Badlands guys because I'm one of the reasons why the guitar when it first launched was so low. I really was advocating for the price to be low and it sold out really fast. And their logic, which is rightly so, was it sold out so fast that, you know, kind of like, hey, you listed the house too low and it sold really fast and that just means that it was too low. But I believe differently than some people. Some people believe you put the price as high as you think the customer will pay because you can always bring the price down. That's a great theory. I'm, you know, hey, and there's way more successful business people than me are going to think like that and more power to them. But my theory is you only get one shot for a first impression and that's it. And you know, and so if you can, if you can, stun them for a second when you're first, when you're a new brand, if you can give them the wow of the. This is a great product, this is a great opportunity, this is a great price. And then pull them in. I think, I think, you know, it's a better first impression. But on top of that, I believe that if you then raise the price later, you'll get people to go, oh, I understand. Right, I understand. You can always say how costs went up or something went up. You know, you can justify the price increase. However, to me, the worst first impression is, here's our price. I paid for it. Let's say it's a $3,000 guitar and I pay for it. And then four months later, you drop the price 30%. So really, the people who supported you the hardest, the first, the die hard, they get penalized for paying too much. And so that's why I think like that. So that's another reason. 60 cycle Steve. That's why I think he's not selling as fast, but again, because I don't know his numbers. Keep it in mind. I think I drafted a very realistic scenario where he made $28,000. Maybe he could be making a lot less. So, you know, I mean, so. So keep in mind, that's what I'm trying to say. It's like, it's tough, you know, I could go through all those numbers again, if we just down to 999, it would be. It'd be a lot tougher, you know, so it's. And the argument I could also give is as once he recoups his money, he could be sitting on those guitars, the leftover. So if he's got 20 guitars left over, you wait it out, you know, until people buy them, they're your. Your money. The thing about. And then we'll get off this. Because it was a long subject. The thing about this that I think is sometimes what some people think about is it also depends on how you pay for things. Something I've really preached to people I've worked with in business for many years, which is I look at my cash, my money, when I invested in something, it's just I'm investing into something and then I just wait for my money to come back. So a perfect example that is a friend of mine in this industry has millions and millions of dollars worth of wood inventory. In 2019, he had millions and millions of dollars in wood inventory. He put all his money in his wood inventory as a guitar builder. And a lot of people were like this is crazy. I've never seen this much amassed amount of exotic woods. And I don't know the answer, but I'm curious to know what all that wood is worth now. I mean, talk about, you know, what that, what that. So putting his money into actual exotic woods was a smart play in 2019 for sure. So my point to this is, is when you're on, when it's your money, you can, you can wait. So like guitar, samurai guitarist, he can. If, let's say he had 10 guitars left over, you could argue if he waits, he'll actually get his. He'll sell them and he might even get to sell them for even more because as maybe the next run or something. There's. There's a way there. However, this is why I caution people about credit. In my experience, when your partners or when a business is running everything on credit, it's about flipping as fast as you can to pay your credit. You got to pay your credit off. So that's why I'm not a huge credit proponent. I've never ran a business on credit. I never will. And it's also why I've never been super successful, you know, crazy rich doing any businesses because you need kind of credit to take those extra steps. And I've, I've. I've decided in my life a long time ago and I'm still that way now that I like. I like my shoulders down and relaxed. And I don't like it when I'm like this all the time, stressed about stuff and I. And I don't enjoy it because I don't really enjoy money enough. That's the problem. I don't enjoy the. There's no, like, I want to be stressed out because one day I'll be rich. Because I really just don't. I don't fantasize about that. I really fantasize about being comfortable and enjoying myself. Okay, we really need to jump a topic. I hope you hope that was interesting to some of you. And if it wasn't, I apologize. I guess I just. Again, last. We'll end it with this. I want to say samurai guitarist, I. I'm really proud of you. Again, I really think this is exciting. I'm hoping more YouTubers do this. Another last perspective is like, if you guys were paying attention, I just kind of gave you guys the. The keys to the castle, the secret, which is, you know, for everybody who goes, oh, another guitar, another YouTuber starting a brand, I'm telling you right now that if you. I actually prefer this over the latter which is digital downloads of some sort. Although that. Because it's way more profitable and way easier. And I'm not disparaging that either. I'm just saying it's kind of cool to see that he took his money and energy and time. You know, it was a. It was a big. It was a big swing. I hope you guys understand that. Now, that was a lot of money. And for the. Especially the ones that thought you could just call up Cortek and they would build you all these guitars, like, on credit. Yeah. I'm like, I was laughing, going, oh, that was great. Okay, what do we want to do now? Should we do. We'll do the next topic. Should we do another topic? Let's see. What. Oh, Amanda sent me so many things. Okay. Okay. Brian Coombs says, hey, I just joined in and read on Facebook that GNL is having financial issues. My understanding now, this is where, again, we don't want to start rumors. And I always start with a disclosure. This is a live show. I'm reacting to stuff in a live format. And if I don't know and I'm giving theories, I'm saying that, okay, versus. So there's. I'm sometimes in the know, and I've always been very upfront with you guys. If I'm in the know to say something, I am not in the know on this. Okay. I do not have any information that is official in any capacity, but multiple people who I trust to not start rumors out of, you know, just pulling out of their ass and being jerks. These are people in the industry that I have respect for. Multiple people told me that the GNL furloughed their entire staff, I believe, in the last 48 hours. Now, the term furlough is important. They have furloughed people before companies do this. So you guys know PRS has furloughed people, I think way back in the day, if I'm mistaken, prs, I apologize. I thought that's what. I remember having a conversation with somebody who I was talking about that, like, having to do that once, basically. This could be a ton of reasons for that. As we've talked about the industry, you know, we talked about this since last year. That, this, that it's. It's going to be financially tough this year for a ton of reasons. And. And I can tell you that if that's the case, my first thought always is, I. I'm really sorry to the employees. I really feel bad for them. You know, worst. Everybody knows, it's. It's a You know, besides actual, you know, medical things in life, it's one of the worst things that you can, you can experience as an employee is, you know, it's different if you've never been laid off or furloughed before. If you haven't, first of, I hope you never have. How about that? I've done it on both sides. Think of this. I've been kind of furloughed and I've had to lay off people. So I mean, I've done both sides a little bit. It's absolutely horrifying. And my guess is again, my guess is if whatever they're doing, it's to adjust so that they can continue to go. I we talked about GNL the other week and I told, told you guys then I stand by what I said, which is I think a lot of people don't really understand that the GNL is a small company. You know, it's not the company that people think it is. It's a small builder there, you know, I hear it all the time. You should smart support small builders. G and L is a small builder. They're like as small companies go there by definition in the US of what small companies are. They are a very small company, employee size, everything. So I hope it all gets worked out and I hope people also, this is where it gets a little scary because one of the things that can happen from us even talking about it here is dealers could get nervous and maybe start canceling orders with G and L and stuff. I would caution you, if you're a dealer, maybe you should reach out and talk to them and see what's going on before you make any kind of random decisions about what you're hearing on the Internet. I am also just trying to point out that I'm not reacting to what the Internet is saying. Like I said, I was getting texts, I got a lot of texts in a very short period of time saying, hey, did you hear the news? And so I even thought about reaching out to G and L, seeing if there's anything I can do to help. I might do that. So, you know, I really like gnl. As you guys know, I'm a huge proponent of gnl. I have a lot of good things about to say about this company and I don't think I, I know this. I, I want G L to, to survive. I want them to do well and I do not want them to be acquired by a different company, especially like an FMIC type brand. So yeah, that's my thoughts on that. So hopefully like I said, hopefully this just is a financial strategy and this will help them. Because sometimes that's exactly what it is. Maybe they need. For instance, let me give you a total hypothetical pulling it from my ass maybe, because obviously they're having trouble making payroll in theory, but they might have a huge inventory of the import guitars. They might need to pay the import guitar bill or, and, or tariffs and, or, you know, shipping, whatever, because it's like a bill of lading sometimes. Sometimes the stuff is just like it's here and here's a big bill and you need your money, you know, and maybe that's what they need to do is get that inventory in. Because once they can get that inventory in, they could probably do that with a short, with a small crew of people. Just go through the guitars, make sure they're all right, get them on a truck and get them to, like, places like Sweetwater and stuff and get them sold and get, get, get, get those pos. You know, maybe they need to get some POS and stuff. So hopefully it's something like that. So Eric says one of the GL Master builders posted on Instagram story the other day that all of his supplies packed up in his car and with a text. Oh, well, yeah. So, yeah, like I said, I don't think there's any question that they furloughed their staff. I think that's. Again, we're not here to start rumors, but I think that's for certain of some degree because like I said, the people who told me this, they wouldn't, they wouldn't pull that from their ass and send that to me. These especially since they know I have a public, you know, I can talk publicly about this stuff. They. These are people I trust to have more tact than that. And when they all reached out to me, so, you know, they were reaching out in hopes that I would have more information than they did. And in that case, I was like, no, I don't. So like I said, so like I said, hopefully, like I said, it'll get rectified and people get back. And I'd really hate to see them go. It's just, you know, and. And then of course, you know, people are going to start talking about, you know, will they get bought and how all that stuff and, and again, all of that, that actually, like I said, if you knew the gnl, if you knew the Gnome company, you know, we don't want to see. I don't know. Like I said, also, if you guys know stuff, cool, share it. If you guys don't know anything. Please don't try to share anything more than the rumors because again, the importance of this is that you don't realize it. But again, because GNL has a dealer network, if the dealer network is getting shocked right now by information like that, it could really have a ripple effect that could hurt GNL even more. So let's be all cautious. Like I said. Please, anyone who deals with GNL on a business aspect, please contact them. I like said I know some GNL employees and yeah, it's bad stuff, man. It's all bad. Yeah, let's. Let's try and find something else. We can jump subjects again. We need something. Where are we gonna. Where are we gonna go next? I don't want to go right to the product the week or guitar of the week. Let's. Let's see if we can find. Oh, okay. This is just guitar fun. Hey. What, What? Hey, Phil. What type of fretboard material do you prefer? Recently returned to the Valley Mesa. Any upcoming meet and greet events. My favorite fretboard material is rosewood for no reason. You know, I've heard all the reasons of sonic, you know, maple versus rosewood versus ebony. I just like the way it looks, so that's why I pick it. You can look behind me, you can always see that the least amount of guitars I have is maple fretboards. I do have a few. I do like them. I just don't prefer the way they look as much, that's all. A lot of it has to do with the headstocks. So, like, for instance, a perfect example would be if the headstock is the same color as the guitar or black. I really just don't like the bright white fretboard against that. It's an aesthetic choice more than anything else. I like the feel of the rosewood. You know, when it's smooth and it's like my finger rubs it, I don't mind it. But that's it. Meet and greet events. I have nothing planned. Nothing like that. We've thought about doing clinics, stuff like that. We'll see. You know, the issue always is what to do, how to do it, what. What's the benefit to everyone kind of thing. So. But. But thank you for bringing that up because every time you. Somebody brings up some kind of meet and greet or a clinic or something like that, I always think, oh, yeah, well, then people are interested. You gotta understand, my default position is no one would want to come. That's my first thought. It's. It's just me. I always picture whatever thing I. I think of. Or we talk about. I pictured as me and the person hosting the event with me just standing there sad, going, I don't know why no one showed up. So. And I know some of you guys, you guys are great because you'll go, no, what are you talking about? You have like 400,000 subscribers or something. I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. I don't know. It doesn't mean anything. But maybe it does. I don't. A little bit. I don't know. Let's. Oh, G Falcon. Hey, Phil. Do capos damage frets. You know, I have seen once or twice where a capo has damaged frets. Kind of like a zero fret issue on players who especially they're always singing play. You know, capo's usually about singers, right? So sing and play. Like so somebody's got to go guitar. And they sing and play and they got a capo on the guitar. And it usually comes from just consistently having the capo there all the time. You know, you understand these people are playing, you know, two hour sets, three, four nights a week and also having the capos more clamping more aggressively. So it's very important that you get the correct capo for your guitar. Or if you have a capo that has adjustable tension, you understand, kind of like we were talking about last week about pushing down your finger, you know, you don't need to push that hard. Same with capos. People like, I watch people like they have an adjuster on the capo and they'll just crank the thing up and squeeze it. And like, you don't need to do that. The capo just needs to make the note fret. So sometimes, you know, there's capos that have different springs, whether you know it or not. Like the kaisers, they have different rated springs. Like they have a stronger spring for a 12 string guitar than they do for a 6 string guitar. So keep in mind. And there's a different spring, I believe, at least they used to. I don't know if they still do it for a six string electric versus six string acoustic. So there's things like you can do that. The other thing you can really do is that don't leave it on all the time, even if the guitar is not being played, because again, it's just pressure down there. But more importantly, the other thing I would recommend if you use a capo a lot is there's two things you could do. One, make sure you polish your frets when you do restrings. Again, don't crown them, don't level them, just polish them. Because part of the reason your. Your frets are getting worn in is not only is the string on there and the vibrations is chewing into the fret, but also keep in mind that the two pieces of metal are oxidizing a little bit, and that. That oxidation, it's just bringing in, you know, it's gonna cause more damage because More friction, more damage. Right. So polishing sometimes keeps it easier. The other thing you can do is you can use like a coated guitar string. Kodi guitar strings on a capo is. Is good because, again, it minimizes friction. They have a coating on there, and that coating does stop. Puts a barrier in between the two pieces of metal. They're in contact all the time. So that does help. And then keep in mind, if you're doing that, then you have to just pay attention to make sure you replace your strings on a regular level. Regular level, on a regular interval. Even though they're coated, they're going to last longer. That's fine. So think about. They should last about three times longer than a standard string. They still need to be changed. Because even though the coding lasts, what ends up happening is the coding wears off between the string and the fret, and then eventually you're back down to metal on metal. Those are some things you can do. I will tell you that everything I just told you is more in the extreme of it. I mean, to have the average player have this issue is not something. So, in other words, don't freak out. I used a capo once. What happened? It's like, no, you're fine, you're fine. We're talking about, again, players who are using them a lot and all the things you can do. And that's, you know. Does flat wounds make a difference? I mean, first, I don't think you'd want them on there, technically. I mean, again, this would be a theory. Yeah. Could they make a difference? Yeah, probably. Because the flat wounds, usually flat wounds are made one of two different ways. They're used with a ribbon instead of a wire. So when they wrap the core string. The core wire, when they wrap it, they wrap it with what looks like ribbon, like. Like bow tie ribbon. It's flat. So the ribbons line up on each other and they seam together like this. You know, they make a seam and they kind of. They're smooth. So there's nothing to really kind of chew into the fret a little bit. In other words, reducing friction. Some flat wounds are, I believe, ground flat. Like they use it like, I don't know if they smush them or whatever they do, but they run them through a machine. I don't think they do a whole lot of anymore. But, but the answer would it make a difference? I'm sure it would because anything that reduces friction would make a difference, but I don't know if I would go to that extreme. Unless again, you're just chewing through frets like crazy and you're looking for anything. So Sean says flat rounds are still wound. Yes. Flat ones are still round. They're round with ribbon. Yes. So, and, but the ribbon, it's. I don't know if you ever actually, you know, the best way to explain a flat wound string is if you've ever taken apart a paper towel roll, like the cardboard roll, and watch it like spiral and then you pull it out and it gets smaller, the circumference gets smaller and gets tighter. That's essentially what it is. It looks like that. That's what the metal looks like. It's a spool like that and then it's pulled and then it's around the wire, it's wrapped around the wire and it's tight. So that's how the flat ones work. And so just keep in mind that only ma. That only matters on the. The flat wound strings, the round. Round. The wound strings. So flat ones would be for four strings only. Your two core, your core wire strings, your, your high E, your high, your B string, they will still be normal wire strings. This is the topic. Why can no name brands Amazon guitars give you nice specs, thick bodies, rosewood etc and squire epiphone PRs, etc give you less specs than bodies, no rosewood, etc. So the interesting part of that is we've discussed that. I think until it's, you know, dead. It's a dead topic at this point. But the. We know that part of that is their agenda is different than someone who's just trying to sell you a guitar. These, you know, the better thing is like I constantly am doing these videos where it's like, hey, look at this. Like we did the Jet guitar this week, right? That was a really. That when I did artists guitars, man, I got inundated with people going, oh, if you like artists, you got to do Jet. I'm like, okay. And that's how it seems to work with every one of these off brand guitars. And I say off brand respectfully every time I do one of these brands where it's like, like I said, a really nice specifications at a really low Price, whatever. When I do, I get in a day with people going, you got to do this one. This is the one you're missing, right? So there's always another one. And I, I am very interested in, in expensive guitars at this point for a ton of reasons. One, the, the idea that, you know, that Squier and Epiphone and all them, you know, have great quality instruments at low prices is just not true. Their guitars are, are very good at a certain price point and then very lacking at. Under a certain price point. I hear it all the time. I'll hear people go, well wouldn't you trust Squier and Epic Phone more than some off brand? I trust them if you have the right money and the, and the money is minimum double. So that's the way I would think of this. So for instance, if you look at a brand like you know, Firefly or Jet or Artist or you know, you, you pick your brand, right? There's a ton of them, right? You know, er, to all that stuff. What I'm telling you is that if you want to compare, you know, if you want a comparable or better product from a, a premium brand like Squire and Epiphone and let's be very clear now, because of so many off brands, Squire and Epiphone are now premium brands. They're premium economy brands, but they're premium brands, right? It's, it's, oh, I'm gonna probably get in trouble for this. But it's just how I feel. It's kind of like growing up as a kid, Toyota was an economy brand, right? See, I'm laughing because we get killed now, but it's, it's true. Like Honda's and Toyota's were economy cars, right? Like economy cars. Nissan economy car for sure. You know, every kid that I knew that had a new ish car, meaning a car that was like five years old, they had a Nissan Sentra. Like that was the go to car, right? Like if, if when I was growing up, if you had a friend who had a truck, they had a Datsun truck and if they had a car, they had a Nissan Sentra. If it was not just an old 70s like Buick, you know, that was huge, right? Like if they didn't have some old American car, they, they had these what I would. Economy brand cars now I think, you know, and by the way, I've owned Kias, I like them. But I'm just saying Kia's and Hyundai's and stuff like that, they become the new economy brands, right? To, to, to. Now Toyota Because Toyota and Honda, especially Toyota. But Toyota, Honda, Datsun's gone, of course and Nissan is probably the least expensive of course of those. But what I'm saying is this Toyota, Honda, now they're premium priced brands. You don't go to Toyota and Honda dealerships thinking you're going to buy a car cheaper than a Ford or a Chevy. Now that's just not, it's not, you know, it's not how it's done. So what I mean by that is the same thing as is that happens in all kinds of markets and all kinds of companies. And if I've did a bad analogy, I apologize. But what I mean by that is I think at this point, you know, Epiphone and Squire are the level up, you know, you look at those as more premium now than to all these off brands or newer brands that are good quality because they're going to give you a lot of quality for the price because that's, that's the only way you're buying them. You know, they have to, they have to shock you with you know, bone nuts, stainless steel frets, roasted me. Like it has to, it has to be shocking. Which is why they do great as a video platform on YouTube. It's why all the YouTubers do these videos. It's because it is a platform, it's an exciting video, right? You're like it, it just when you're doing it you're like, look, it's, you know, it's all these things for a very little amount of money. So I think now if you want a Squire and Epiphone, if you double the price of whatever those off brands are, minimum, then you're probably getting a really good Squire and Epiphone and maybe better than those. But when I look at entry level Squires and Epiphones, I just see, I see junk. So you know, I see stay the hell away from it junk. And, and especially in comparative to what's out there in brands. So that's how they do it. There's no incentive for those brands. I kind of have talked about this is why I talked to the CEO of Guitar center in Sweetwater about this because I thought it was interesting, you know, that neither one of those stores, the two largest, you know, retailers in the country and we could also say AMS and Zounds, which is the third largest retailer guitar retailer in the country, they don't take any of those off brands. You know, think about how well you think they would do as, as, you know, have E Art or something in There, you know, you go in their website and you're scrolling down and looking and you're like, oh wow. This is because again, think of it like customer reviews. They would get higher customer reviews because they have better sense of quality. They'd have a retailer behind them, their price would come up because there's a retailer now instead of, you know, instead of going direct to consumer in a lot of ways. But I think, you know, I asked them both, I asked Gabe and I asked Mike Clem those questions. They both gave you guys answers. It's up to you guys. You have to decide what you think of their answers. To remind you again, Gabe said that he essentially thinks those guitars are toys. Mike Clem basically said that he does. They, they're looking at the long game. In other words, they, they think there's no support for those kind of brands because those brands are going to be fly by night. In other words, in 10 years will er, even be here? Will Firefly be here? You know they're not really real brands, right? They're just people buying guitars overseas and then selling them direct on the Internet. And you know, but Squire and Epiphone and are legitimate, you know, brands that they can trust and work with. I think there's truth in both the things they said but I also think there's also some other truth that is I think Squire and Epiphone don't want those brands in their stores. You know, I think that's, I think that's just how it works. It's why I think Toman has Harley Benton, I think Tolman Thoman basically got Harley Bennett and told all the manufacturers to suck it. And so now you have a affordable, better quality, lower price product for your consumer. And although I agree with both things, like I said, both CEO said, I think Mike Klim's comment about, you know, you know, yeah, it looks good on paper but it's a really good quality guitar kind of logic. There's some truth to that for sure. But yeah, so at the core of this topic, you know, why are the Amazon style, we call them Amazon Guitars is a loose term, right? We mean that most of those brands, they always start on Amazon even if they're not on there anymore, they always start on Amazon because that's their way of distribution. They give you more because they have to, they need to wow you, you know, and that's what they do. And they all notoriously raise their prices as fast as they can and they also start removing some of the quality. So you know, there's some Truth to all of that, but I still like Squire and I still like Epiphone. I still highly recommend them, but I definitely think at a certain price point, mid tier products and above for both those brands, I just absolutely do not like any of their entry level offerings anymore. Steve says, how about an interview with Thoman? Well, you gotta understand, I don't solicit anything. I don't solicit manufacturers for review. I don't solicit interviews either. I've never done an interview. Every time you say something, you go, I don't want to get caught. You know, like, oh, no, did I say a lie? Did I not realize I'm lying? Let me think for a second. As far as I know, I'm just double checking. I might have. Okay, so there's a couple times where I might have talked to somebody like Ola Strandberg. I think I asked him to do a video because he, I was talking to him one day and I said, do it. And I think, I'm pretty sure John at Throwback, I asked him to do a podcast. So there is a couple times where like I said, I'm interacting with somebody and said, hey, you should come on and do a podcast. So I want to be clear there. So those are very rare. Like I said to come up with two or three examples maybe, but other than that, I don't actually solicit podcasts. The Sweetwater guys, they were very willing for it. They were like, hey, let's do some stuff. And same thing. I was like, hey, you want to do a podcast? And they're like, sure. And also, just keep in mind, they wanted me to talk to Mike and do something, but I suggested the podcast. So. So Toman, same thing. If they were to reach out, I. Somebody's reached out right now. Another big entity wants me to interview their, their big CEO. The answer is going to be yes. I just need to work out the logistics of it, how I'm going to do it and stuff. But same with Toman. If Toman reached out, you know, I'd be willing to do it for sure. Mostly at this point, I think I've created the, you know, you made your bed, you got to, you know, live in it, whatever. Is that a saying? You're to sleep in it? I don't know what the saying is. You understand what I'm saying? I created this mess. I said some stuff openly that made Guitar center say, come talk to him. I talked to him that created the next one. So this is where I am now. And obviously I Won't say no to anybody, but I'm not going to actively go out there and solicit anybody. But I would imagine. I don't know. I don't think Toman would want me to interview them, but I guess I would have said that about Guitar center and Sweetwater, too. So who knows? Who knows? But I'm open. Yes. Who says you got a lie in it? Yeah, you made your bed, now you're allowed to lie in it. Okay, see, I knew it was something like that. You got to take a nap. What does she come up with? Her own saying? But I would like to interview more people in this industry. I think it's insightful because again, compare contrast. I think it's because, you know, interesting to see the. I feel like we had a lot of Fender discussion today, but we have one more Fender topic. This is a topic that was sent to me. This is via email. And actually it was. I got two of these emails from two different people. I'm not going to disclose the names of either one of the businesses, so that makes sense. But I'm going to kind of read on one more. So I had two small businesses reach out. They were really upset, one more so than another, but both were distraught about something that had taken place, which is they're both Fender dealers. In this case, we're talking about fmic. So Specialty. So if you guys didn't see. Let me share with you this. Let me pull it up on my own screen. And this is a little bit of like, hopefully I can give you some. I don't know. I don't know if I can give you insight. But let's go here. We'll go to new. We want newest arrivals. Oh, it doesn't come up. It's the newest arrival. So if you didn't see. How weird. Let me try this. If you didn't see. Fender obviously came out with the. The Ventura 2, but also they came out with the new USA Jackson Randy Rhodes guitars. Those were really interesting. And FMIC, which is specialty. Specialty also came out with a. Which we Talked about this. Vim69 had brought this up once about, I don't know, half a dozen episodes ago. So Gretch has come out with a synchromatic, which means it's made in China, not Japan, Falcon. So they're not calling it the White Falcon, they're just calling it the Synchromatic Falcon. Electric guitar Snow Crest white. This is 14.99. And again, like I said, let's verify this. I'm 99 sure. It is crafted in China, which instead of Japan, which is why it's not. And then for those of you, because some of you guys not maybe super informed on these guitars, you understand the main Japan ones are 3,000, $4,000. Yeah, $4,000. So I mean obviously it's, it's a lot less expensive. As we've talked about before, you know, $1500 sounds like a really good deal versus $4000, so. Oh, do they have a black one too? Oh, look at that. That's pretty cool. That's cool. So they have a black Falcon as well. I'm gonna double check that. Yep, it's pretty cool. Let's go back to the White Falcon. So if you've been thinking about getting a White Falcon and you did not want to spend $3,000, keep in mind you can find one for about $2,500 used, no problem. So still this puts it at a thousand dollars less than that. You can get yourself a made in China white Falcon. One thing to notice that's cool is it comes with a case. This is going to be the new price for hollow body guitars. I told you guys that fourth quarter there's a ton of new gear coming out. I have piles of it here for lots of videos to come out. And I can tell you that the price increases that I've seen have been significant. And this is the new norm. You know, $1500 for, you know, Indonesian Chinese guitars, $2000 for Indonesian guitars. You, you know, for those, for those that have heart conditions and haven't had their, had their pills yet. Let me just tell you that in the fourth quarter this year you're going to see multiple, multiple, multiple guitar launches from multiple companies with guitars made in China, Indonesia in the 1500, $1800, 2000 and higher price points, $2500 multiple ones from multiple brands. I'm just preparing you right now in case that's something that's gonna make you snap. Okay, then just be aware it's coming. So when you see the, the YouTubers launching all the videos, just be prepared. That's coming down the pike. I, the first time I saw, I thought it was interesting. I would say I have at least, I have, I have at least 12 videos to launch for new product between now and the end of year. And out of the 12 products that are not made in USA that are actually made in Indonesia and China, I don't think a single solitary one of them is under $1500. Ish. So 14 and change. So just be prepared. That's the new. That's the new price they're all shooting for. So this is new. The new normal, as we would say. So this guitar. So why are we talking about this? Well, one, I think this is cool. Obviously, I'm a Gretsch fan. I want a wife, and I just don't want to spend $3,000 off for one. So is this something I would check out maybe? I don't know. Like, part of me is like, I don't know, I can get a used one for a little bit more, but also, like I said, even used a thousand dollars more. But that's not what I was getting a message about. I was getting messages from dealers saying that. That basically they're not getting their inventory and that the inventory is going to Sweetwater. So in the past, and. And if one dealer sent that, I think I probably wouldn't say anything. I'd be like, well, maybe you should have put your order in on time. But to have multiple dealers reach out and say, hey, man, you know, this isn't right. You know, I feel like Fenders snubbing us small guys. We're, you know, we're not getting our inventory. The bigger guys are. You know, it's funny, is. Is I. I'm with you because I feel for you. Because I obviously, I side with a small business every time I was a small business. I still am a small business. So I'm gonna side with you. However, you know, I've said this before, and it's. It's just this. Let me just get this out, and then we'll go down the road a little bit. I think if you're a small dealer, you should stay the hell away from Fender. And, you know, I've said this many times, probably why they don't like to send me stuff. I think, stay the hell away from Gibson. Stay held away from Fender. It's not because they're evil corporations. It's just. It's. They're too big to care about you. And there used to be some truth, more so, and there's less so now. And it's going to be less next year and less next year and less. There used to be a time where even though, you know, you could argue the big companies didn't care about the small dealers, collectively, small dealers were bigger than the big dealers. So, yeah, Guitar center was a big problem. However. However, you know, all the mom and pops collectively were way more dominant than Guitar Center. The stats are definitely shifting the other way every single day. Sweetwater, Amazon, Guitar Center, Tolman, AMS and Zounds, which is also Musician Frame. With Guitar center, they are dominating the markets. And the thing that you need to understand is one company is showing it to you, right? They're showing you the information that would be Guitar Center. Go into Guitar center if you're in the know, if you're in this industry. If you don't know, just. You can. You can ask AI. AI. You know, some AI search will tell you. Just understand that fmic, Fender is Fender, Squire, Jackson, Charvel, Gretsch, evh, Groove, Tubes and something else. Right? Bunch of other brands. I think the rest are all shelf. Those are the main ones. Seven brands. Seven main brands. Okay, so when you go into Guitar center and you see those seven brands, that's just Fender. So think about that just for a second. Okay, so you go into Guitar center and then you look at the other brand. That's Gibson, Epiphone and Kramer. Right? Well, that's three brands. That's 10 brands that you think you see on a wall. But that's two accounts. It's two companies. So I would ask you the next time you go into any Guitar center and you look on the walls, not used. Just look at new. And you count brands. Count, you know, the main companies, not just the individual. Don't go, those are 10 brands. Go, those are two brands. Two companies, right? So two companies. And then now I want you to think about mentally how many. How much of the wall is occupied by them. It's most. The wall. I mean, in most Guitar Centers, what else would you see? A few Schecters, a few Ibanezes, maybe a few ltds, A few Sterling Music man, you know, products. Right? Okay, there's four. I mean, can you even come up with half? That's four. We're trying to cut. I just told you, that's 10 brands as two companies. Try to think of five alternative brands. What's another one that's on the walls? Maybe Yamaha. Okay, so there's five. Five brands. So if there was 15 electric guitar brands on the walls dominating the pegs, Fender and Gibson, or what is it? 75% of that? Whatever the number is, it's a huge part of that. Sweetwater is no different. So they're a little harder to detect because you go to their website and it's just an affinity of brands. But what you would do is this time, if you wanted to, you wouldn't go by the variety of brands, you would go by a variety of SKUs. In other words, how many different products does Sweetwater have? I would argue thousands of different SKUs between FMIC and Gibson versus the other brands. Right. A little bit more diverse than Gibson or than Guitar center, but still. So what I'm trying to tell you as a small dealer is it's not even that you can't compete with the bigger companies. It's that you are carrying the thing that they're carrying and they're carrying it heavy. And so that's what I'm trying to tell you is I feel for you. I get that this is traumatic for you, that you're like, hey man, this is unfair. And it's right to call it out for being unfair. Hey, these companies, like Fender, they're shipping the bigger companies. Like obviously we just looked. I mean, you gotta understand what I'm just saying. Think about this. I just told you two different music stores in this country were like, hey, we can't even get this guitar in stock. And to say Sweetwater has six is not true. Because if you haven't seen how Sweetwater works. If we were to buy one of these right now, most likely within seconds of the purchase, it would still show six because they would load in another one. They have other ones preloaded. They only show you so many at a time. Okay? And so they could have 20 of these, they can have 50 of these. They could have a lot. And you know, used to be. And it still kind of works out. It used to be by demographic and that's a really pro. That's problematic now because think about how the business model's broken. When I was a Fender dealer, it was broken down by your demographic where you were. So in the Phoenix area, where I am, which there would be me, Milano's Bizarre Guitar, Rainbow in Tucson, Guitars Etc in Tucson, which I think is now Chicago or Chicago Music Exchange. Okay, I don't know why I'm doing this. Five, that's five Fender dealers. I'm probably missing somebody. Somebody maybe. I'm trying to think of high level tier Fender dealers, like all of us were in their top tiers for carrying all the products. So five dealers in the area. And so like I said, if you opened a store and you go, hey, I want to carry, you know, Fender, they would go, no, no, no, you're too close to Milano's or, or you know, a bizarre guitar or whatever. But now, I mean, Guitar center. And of course that never accounted for Guitar center because when I said all those stores, keep in mind there was five guitar centers and Phoenix and two and Tucson. But now when you think about something like Sweetwater. Well, they're. I gave my piece of advice to a friend early on when it came to Sweetwater. And I said. He said he was dealing with Guitar Center. He was not happy with the way it was working. And he said, you know, I don't know if I should leave them and double up with Sweetwater. And he says, you know, guitar center's got 300 stores. And I said, yeah, and Sweetwater's got 3 million phones that they're on. So, I mean, where do you want to be in 300 different locations or 3 million phones? Kind of the argument, right? So I would say I understand your stress. We feel for you. I think as a community, we feel for the small dealer. We see it all the time. And I will say this just as a thought. There's a great article. If I can find it, I will try and find it. It's from at least. At least 10 years ago. Could be 15 years ago. It was a larger small dealer. In other words, this dealer had like 10 stores in the country. And they got rid of Fender. And they made a famous article, had a famous quote which is, we got rid of Fender. But you can't even tell because we have so much used Fender. Like, that's basically the takeaway, right? They were like, basically, you know, you'll. You can always have. You'll always have Fender on the walls because there's so much used Fender that you'll have it. That. That's my argument. You know, think about this. And I mean this. And I'm not telling you to do this because obviously reasons. But what I'm saying is to the dealers that reach out to me and said, hey, look at the problem we're having with Fender or Gretch or whatever. I just told you, you know, we just talked about G L and their. Their current situation. And I'm like, that's what's sad is that, you know, yeah, Sweetwater and I guess Guitar center carry gnl, but they don't focus on it. They focus on Fender. So. And I believe that G L, if they could have got the dealer, the smaller dealer market to kind of get, you know, kind of get behind them, maybe they wouldn't have had to go with the bigger dealers. So I just think. I said, I think that's the way you kind of think now is in the future, if you're a small dealer, definitely go use products. Because it's always a new store every day with new products. But I would definitely look for products that, you know, that are more exciting and different than those 10 brands that are in every one of the big chains and not every one of the websites. That's just my, that's my, that's my thought on it. You know, I told you guys this before. There was an old saying and I, and I believe this is now the true, the case. There used to be a sign that said or saying that said the brands make the store. And I don't believe that's true anymore. I believe it was true then. That's not true anymore. I believe brands don't make your store. That people walk in. I know you think it does because I hear it from small dealers all the time. People walk in, they go, do you guys have Fender? Do you have Gibson? Do you have this stuff? And you go, no, we have Godin. And we have, you know, you know, you know, whatever, pick another brand, right? G and L, we have GNL and Godin. And you think you're losing a sale, the customer's walking out. But the reality is that I think that in today's market it's really about the experience and the information, right? So in other words, like you can you have a one on one experience with a customer that no one else can have that experience in a big corporation on a website. And also you can teach those customers something. It's a lot more work, but I think it's just a way to think of it. I think it's the only way you guys survive in my, in, in my two cents. When I look at dealers, if you're not doing service, if you're not doing used, I just don't know how you combat that. And that's why I made it a point to highlight. Look, if you thought I took the Sweetwater test and sat at Sweetwater for eight days and went through all their stuff because I was going to get a lot of clicks. You really do not understand the Internet. You look back at those videos. Those are not high performing videos for me. You know, there's a reason why every time I went to Sweetwater, there was a reason why I went to. When I went to Tolman, there was a reason why I went, when I went to Guitar Center, I always made a. What guitar would I buy video in a store that got a million views or half a million views because that's how I was paying for my time and trip is because I'm like, oh, if I make this video, people like to watch you shop in a store. I guess that's just something I learned. So I did it, you know, I would make that video to pay for the trip, but to take the Sweetwater test, which, by the way, six cycle. Steve sometimes here, he took it with me. And to share that with you and share these other things and share some of the insights of these CEOs and stuff, the thought for me was I had the opportunity to share that with you. No one else would do that. No one else would, like, besides me would do it. They wouldn't do that with anyone else. They wouldn't let a lot of people just go, hey, what is your test like? Hey, let me see the back end of your 55 point inspection. They let me do it. Maybe they respected the channel. I don't know. Maybe they're a little afraid of the channel. I don't know. I really don't care. The point is, I shared the information and I hope that you guys, if you're dealers out there, and I know a lot of small dealers, watch this on Fridays and listen to it in the background of their stores. I get told every time I go in stores, I hope that you guys are paying attention to all the stuff I'm sharing with you and you make some kind of decision with that. Because it's not that I think you're gonna die and you can't survive against the big chains and the biggest Internets. I'm just saying that you need to be something different than them. So do. Just stay away from them. Do something different. I don't know. That's. I don't know. I think we covered everything. Did we cover everything? Did we talk about everything? I kind of feel like, let me go through my stuff. I'm trying to see if there was one more exciting thing, a fun thing. Try to end on a fun. Oh, here's a good one. Because it means it's nothing. It's just fun. This one says, hey, Phil, have you noticed that many amp makers are not using actual spring reverb now? Like from Bad Cat or Orange and Victory? Laney, question mark. I love springs, but I guess it's not popular anymore. What do you think? So this is a fun one, because first of all, I'm not an amp guy. I'm a. I'm a guitar guy. So, like I said, I love amps, but I. You wouldn't want me to make you one. So the way I understood it is I'm an. I'm a reverb person. Every amp I think should have reverb. So unless, of course, that amp doesn't have a clean sound. Right. Then I guess I don't know why I want reverb, but I think. I think every amp should have reverb. And that's for me. I like reverb in any amp, especially since I don't play in big arenas and I don't play on stages and I, you know, I need reverb. To me, without the reverb, it just sounds dry. It's like. It's like ribs without barbecue sauce. It's like, just can't do. I can't do dry rub, rub ribs. Sorry for those that offend you. I need some sauce. I need the reverb I needed, right? And so when I talk to amp makers sometimes and I go, man, I wish your amp had reverb. So many amp builders would tell me like, oh, but reverb ruins. Ruins the sound of the amp. Somehow putting it in the circuit changes the. What the amp does. This has come up a lot. The Samson era, Bad Cat. That's why that amp doesn't have reverb is because John from Bad Cat was saying that Mark was like, you know, yeah, if you put reverb in it, you know, the. The amp suffers, so to speak, in the tone qualities of it. And I'm like, oh. And so I was like, and I'm a big proponent for this. Put digital reverb in it. I don't care. Right. So, you know, a little fun fact, because you mentioned the Bad Cat amps have digital reverb. The other companies, I don't know. I don't know much about them. I don't know about the Victory and Laney and Orange. In other words, I don't know the specifications. But I can tell you that it's not that Bad Cat has digital reverb. It's that digital reverb does not run in the signal chain. It runs parallel to. To the signal chain. And what that means is it has no effect. Effect, effect on the sound in any negative way. Like there's. That literally adds reverb to a secondary. John Thompson explains this. You can. He's explained it to me many times. He's got a ton of videos where you can watch him explain it. All I really care about is I got reverb in an amp and I didn't ruin the sound. And I was like, oh, cool. So that means other people can do it too. So to me, that's why, like, sometimes the effects loops. The effects loops are another problem. That's why some amps don't have effects loops and some amps have effects loops that are true bypass or whatever. And some are buffered and some are not. So to me, I like the idea that every amp should just have digital reverb now. And it should be. It's kind of like in my mind, you know, because again, as a guitar tech, I think about the no load tone controls on guitars. You know, the. You know, it's a tone control where you can feel it click. And when it clicks, it removes itself from the circuits like it was never there. So it's not changing your tone in any positive or negative way. It doesn't have any effect. I kind of feel like I would really like a world where the majority amps. Unless of course, it's really specific. Like there's certain Fender amps. I'm sure there's certain amps that you really want a spring reverb to. I'm not saying take the spring reverbs out. I'm saying if you have any amp and it doesn't have spring reverb in it, I think sticking digital delay in there in a way that if you don't want it, you just kind of bypass it and it's just never there. I think, what a great way, you know, what a great way to make me happy. And that's really what I care about, is making me happy when it comes to amps and having reverb. And I think that's one way they're trying to address the problem because that's an easy thing to do. It think of it this way. I don't know if it's cheaper. I would imagine it's cheaper to put digital reverb than spring reverb, But I don't really care if it's cheaper or not. I just really think it's a great way to make more players happy. My argument. Let's. Let's pick on synergy for a second. My big argument with synergy is they need reverb in their amps. First of all, why clone offender module and then not have reverb synergy? I mean, they even. They did the tone king module and they put the tremolo, but they didn't put the reverb synergy. And when I would talk to this with synergy, they'd go, well, some players don't like reverb. And I'm like, yeah, but the biggest selling amp in the world is a Fender, and they mostly come with reverb. So players buy. Look to say 50% of all the amps in the world, like the Vox and the Fenders have reverb is silly. It's more than that. Is it 55, 52, 60? I don't know, but it's more than 50. So when you think of amp sales, dominant amp sales, the amps that sell in the world, I would argue 51% of all the amps sold in the world have reverb. So you could almost argue that more players want reverb than don't. You could almost argue, especially in certain formats, form factors. So, yeah, maybe less so in a 412 Marshall half stack or 412 Ingo or 412 diesel or whatever. Yeah, yeah, maybe if you're a metal player. But I'm saying if you're making a combo, you don't have a reverb. What the hell, man? What the hell? So I think digital reverb is a way to fix that problem. I would love it if, like, if Freeman came up with a digital reverb in the small box, I would sell my small box in literally seconds to get that. Just to have a little reverb on the cleaner channel would be really great, Just really cool. And for those that say, hey, you can stick a reverb pedal in your effects loop, you're absolutely right. But you forget I'm lazy and dumb, and therefore I don't want to do either one of those things. All right, on that note, I want to thank everybody for hanging out for today's show. Hope everybody has a fantastic weekend. We have a lot of deep dives. You guys saw we did two this week. We're going to probably have two a week for the rest of the year, plus other fun videos. And thank you all for supporting the channel every week and hanging out for the podcast. And I hope you guys enjoyed some of this. And you guys go play guitar now and have some fun. All right, guys, on that note, thank you for your time and know your gear. If you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget, you can subscribe for free and help this channel. Or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patron for live clinics where you can ask questions.