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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode 408 on. Was it April 4th? It's April 4th, 2025. I hope everybody had a fantastic week and is ready for some talking about guitars and music and guitars, mostly guitars. We'll probably let a couple bass players have something in the conversation. Anyways, hope everybody had a, like I said, a good week. And before we get started, just want to say a couple of quick announcements. I'll make them quick. Just want to thank the moderators for helping out every week. As always, I want to thank the members and the patron members for sponsoring this 408 episodes of the podcast. If you'd like to become a patron member, you can test. You can do two things. So you know you can. There's four or five ways to help. You can help the channel in so many ways. So let me run them down because I got an actual email about this this week and they were like, what's the. What should I do? So here's your options. You can go to the link in the description of this podcast and become a patron member for absolutely free. You click the free membership. It doesn't ask for any credit cards or nothing. You just become a free member. You will get some announcements, some of my social media posts that I post on Instagram, stuff that'll get there. But more importantly, you'll be notified. Every time a video comes up, you'll be notified of that. So that's a great way to support the channel. It doesn't cost you anything. And you know, if you're a fan of the channel, it lets you know what I'm up to. I also post some personal stuff. If you want to become a $5 member that makes you a supporter of the channel, you can do that on either YouTube or on Patreon. And your benefits are. You get a bonus. I do a bonus podcast every month only for the, for the patron members. And it's more like a private kind of thing. More fun where you, you know, you get more personal interaction with the questions. If you become a $10 member, you get all the benefits I'm saying below. Plus you get my lesson classes. So we put out some lessons for you, like how to, you know, install an input jack or how to, you know, repair a dent or whatever. I'm trying to think what we did last week. Last week was. I have no idea. Swervable. Why do I not know what it was? It was. Oh yeah. How to polish frets with a dremel. So you can do that. And then for $25 tier, if you want to be the premium tier, you get all that stuff down below. Plus you get to join the WhatsApp group and talk to other members and myself. But more importantly, you get to hang out about once or twice a month for a Zoom call, which we pre schedule on Saturday and Sunday mornings. And you get coffee. You don't get coffee, you get your own coffee. And then we hang out and we talk. It's a Zoom call. You can choose to be seen or heard in the Zoom call or not. It's. You can interact or not interact as much as you want. Just letting you know the benefits that we've never really outlined them. That's what they are. Okay, okay, let's. Let's go ahead and get into what we're up to now. We got a lot. We got a guitar of the week, kind of. And a cool thing to kind of keep things exciting. Roy wants to know before we start, what's that top guitar? What's the top. That top guitar behind you on the right. So do you mean my right? So I'm gonna go off the. Okay, so let's. I'll just name all the guitars. Why not? So from my right, I don't. Right, so just his hand. I'm right. Waving at you. Right now to my right you have a American professional two jazz master in sunburst. Then you have a Desolation Charvel, which is a double cut neck through guitar right there. And then you have a Gibson SG standard. I believe you have a heritage Les Paul. They don't call it a Les Paul though. You have an Emerald acoustic, which is a carbon fiber acoustic made in Ireland. You have a Fender Journeyman 60s Strat. You have a Godin Godin. Godin Godin classical multiac guitar in blue. You have a Keisel A2 with a scallop neck. You have a Paul Reed Smith single cut Hollow Body 2, which is just a Hollow Body 2, but they don't make the single cut anymore. So that's an old one. And then you have a Gretch Lime Gold Brian Setzer. And that's. That's the. Oh, and. And I missed one. There's also a Gibson custom shop, a ES339. So that's all the guitars. Should we do that every week? Should we announce the guitars that are what, they're there. That's what we'll do. Okay. Yeah. He says, loving the Charvel desolation. They're beautiful. It's a beautiful guitar, you know. You know, it's funny is those guitars were interesting because I remember when the guy at Charvel, his name was Mike, came up with the idea, came up with the idea to do the Desolations and, and it was post the, you know, the 2008 recession. But it was like kind of like, how are they going to get excitement back up? And at that time, you know, Schecter was killing everybody, you know, and so they came up with this idea, like, let's revive Schecter. Let's make them these, like I said, arch top looking Schecter looking guitars. This one came in red, they came in blue. They were gorgeous. Lots of abalone in them. Active pickups. And I remember we carried them in the store, we got the first load in and that was really an interesting buy in because you had to buy in deep for what that was. Normally you could just buy a few Charvels, but that one was like you got to buy all the models. And so we bought in deep. And I remember selling them like they were water. And I remember the funniest thing ever was everybody was buying them, everybody loved them. And when I say everybody, I mean half of the people, the other half came in that were Charvel fans were uproar in uproar. In 2011, you know, the Internet was a thing and everything was the same as it is now. But it wasn't like it is now. It would probably be more fierce on the Reddit and all that stuff now. But man, so many customers came in and go, that's a Charvel. What are they doing? They're ruining the brand. This is the ugliest thing ever. They were so upset and, and I think I told this story before. We sold them like water. We were super excited. I loaded up again, I loaded up again. And then what happened was I've heard conflicting stories over the years. One story is that Charvel, which is obviously owned by Fender, made a mistake and ordered too much inventory because they ordered it from China. And they just ordered, you know, doubled up and doubled up and they just got too many guitars. That's one story I heard. But doesn't matter. What really happened was they couldn't offload. That being Charvel, Fender couldn't offload these guitars fast enough. So they had a distribution company that they sold them to, which means every single music store who Pretty much bought strings and that's all of them had access to get Charvels. So you would walk in a mom and pop music store like one of my competitors at the time, who probably at the time was lucky to have maybe two brands and one of them you've never heard of. And all of a sudden they loaded up heavy with the Charvels because they could buy them on this clearance. And so we bought a ton on clearance and it didn't matter. Just everybody who came in the shop was like. I was like, oh, you see the new Charvels? Like, yeah, those are everywhere. They're freaking everywhere. So it was like. And we got. We were blowing them out at the end pretty, pretty bad. I remember. So. But great guitars. And of course this happens a lot. It's a story we've talked about many times on this channel on, about, you know, when they blow out a line of instruments, it's very hard for it to ever come back because it's not about the customers, it's about the dealers. You know, you now are going to make the dealers very excited about, oh, this again. Oh, for way more money than we paid last, last time that we lost money on. They're not very excited. So that's why I don't think it ever came back. We'll be curious to see if they ever come back again. Okay, let's, let's get into. What are we gonna get into? Some questions, some stuff. I. Let's see if you do have a question for me. You can put a question mark at the beginning if it's a topic or question. It just helps me catch it faster. Obviously, I see the Super Chats. Two things to understand. One, I see the Super Chats because they're glowing colors. But also I've said this before. Super Chats are contained in. Within YouTube for I think two years. It used to be forever, but a while back it went to two years. So more importantly, I can see them anytime I want during the show. So I pull them up in a little and they're in order. So I mean, I can see all the ones from the last two years. In fact, I am looking at a list of whatever you today until two years ago in order so I can see them. So when you Super Chat, that's how we get bonus time on the show. I try to answer more of them towards the end because they're not going to go anywhere. Steven says, hey Phil, I'm looking to buy a PRSS se. Which one would you suggest? I really like the satin custom 24 that I reviewed. It's probably one of my favorite PRSs that I. That I kind of SES that I've reviewed and thinking like, wow, it's really, really cool. Now, of course, the dgt, there's, you know, whenever you say that, it was like, oh, but the DGT is great. It is great. The 594, that's great too. Custom 24. Yeah. Custom 24 piezo. Right? That's great too. Hollow body two, that's amazing. But I don't know why. I just really like the CE24 satin finish guitar. I think as a prsse goes, I think it's going to have a cult following for a long time. I think it's because when you pick it up, it doesn't feel like a cheaper version. And I'm not saying they do feel like cheaper versions, of course, but it just doesn't feel like a cheaper version of something. It doesn't feel like you're missing out on a more expensive but better party or a better but more expensive party. You know what I mean? You don't feel like. I think that's why it sticks in my head when I think of all the essays I reviewed. It's not that that one's the best one. It just always sticks out as, you know. Yeah, this is. This is like, I can see why I would want this over something else, like why I'd use it a lot. So that would be a good suggestion. The other thing is course is just go out there and look for a great deal. There's tons to be had, so the deals are out there for sure. So, you know, so that's another suggestion. Always nice to try to help. The pocketbook. Let's grab some stuff that Amanda sent me. Amanda sent me this from. Hey, this is from Amanda. It's sent for me. That sounds like cheating. Is that cheating? Manda? Just kidding. Amanda said, how long would you wait before plugging in an amp after it's been in a flooded basement? 8 inches. Asking for a super cool friend. Whoo. I don't know. I'm almost scared to answer that question. So I'm assuming the amp was in the water. I mean, I don't know. I would ha. I would. Well, first of all, here's what. Let me start with. I'm not an amp tech, so I'm not going to give any amp tech knowledge or, you know, information, because I don't have any. But I can give you some. Here's what I would probably suggest. Besides taking it to an actual amp tech. That would be my first and best advice. But I'm also going to assume maybe you're not in that finance, you know, not financially ready to maybe dump some money into an amp or it's a far drive, maybe it's out of the way. I would, if it was me before, I would take it to a tech. I would probably pull it out and clean it. As you, I, you know, this is my limited experience with amps. I built two amps, I took an amp building class. And here's what I can tell you what I learned from those classes. If you're concerned about getting shocked or electrocuted, definitely the trick I liked was sit on one hand. That makes it a lot easier, you know, because you're. It's making double connections where you're gonna get the electricity going through you. So that's one safety measure you can take. But keep in mind, this is a generalized safety measure. This is just something they taught in the class. And then I would go through and clean everything in that amp. I would definitely make sure. Because the problem with water. Let's just start with something about components. Not even amplifiers, just components in general, just guitars is the same way. All components. Components are very delicate and they corrode with water very easily. And once they corrode and oxidize or rust or all of the above, you know, it's no moss, it's no good. So. So you want to get in there and clean as much as that as possible. And you go in there, you can use contact cleaner, you can use rubbing alcohol, but you definitely want to get in there and clean everything out before I would turn that on. And the reason is, is because again, any of that stuff that's oxidized, corroded, crusted, whatever, that's going to make whatever situation worse. So that's what I would do first. Besides, the best advice I can give would just take it to somebody. And you know the other suggestion, I don't know. Is there any amp techs that do zoom calls? That's another suggestion. Getting an amp tech to jump on a zoom call with you. I never thought about that. I never thought, I wonder if there's any kind of thing like that. But that's something I would think about. Really sorry to hear about your friend's basement and that amp. That sucks. So hope it works out. This Amanda sent this one from Bruce as well. Does your new Gretch have a floating bridge? If so, how about a floating bridge setup video? How hard is it and is it a good idea to pin the bridge? So, okay, so the sets are that you're looking at now. Lime gold comes with a pin bridge. The. In fact, all three of my gretches come with pin bridges as part of their, like more of a premium line of gretches. When I say premium, I don't just mean made in Japan. They're the more premium. The setzers a signature model. He requested it. So I guess I would say all of my bridges are pinned. But previous to that, I would pin all my bridges, my personal gretches, just because it's easy. You know, I don't like to think about stuff that I don't have to, you know, if you can do it once, it's why with everything with repair, I template out or I have a jig or I have something like that because to me, it's like, you know, I don't want to start from scratch every time I do something. It's just, it's just, it's a way. It's a. It's a efficiency killer. And I'm not into that because that, that also kills. You know, the one thing I learned real fast in repair in the repair biz, as you, you know, back in the repair biz, in the repair business, is, is that musicians are about as cheap as you can get and they don't want to pay for anything. And I could sit and I can complain about that, which I did, but not publicly, but I did. But what I did was I just like, how do I work within these, you know, with these parameters? And one thing I learned was how do I make the workflow as fast and as easy as I can so that I can keep replicating this level of service over and over again and cut cost. Everything was a cost cutting measure. If you can't raise your price to what the level it should be, you got to cut the cost. It's got to, you know, basically you got to figure it out. It's got to always go to one of the two. The good news is I will tell you that over the years of cutting costs and figuring out the most efficient ways to get stuff done over time, I did was able to keep raising prices to a point where I thought, oh yeah, this is like a fair. Almost a fair rate for charge. And wow, with the cost cutting measures, it's turning into something. So back to Gretchen. Yeah, that'd be a great video. I would do that. I'll put that on the, on the, on the list. So actually I'll do That right now. Hold on a second. Because I'll forget. Even though I'm going to timestamp this still, I'll still forget. Okay, let's go into another. Another question. Somebody, a dead man doggy van. Doggerson says, hey, when the amp gets flooded, call the insurance company. That's a good idea. Okay. Huh. Interesting. So I have a. I have a question for you guys. And I probably know the answer. Uh, in other words, I probably know why you guys. What you're going to answer with. So, Don. Ron Dubs. Sorry, Ron. Ron. Dyslexia is killing me today. Ron Dubs said. And it might be Dobbs. Ron Dobbs said, hey, Phil, you're a pedal guy, right? What can you tell me about the Boss Slow Gear SG1? And what's funny is I'm a boss pedal. I like boss pedals a lot, but I'm not a pedal guy. And I always wonder about that. And I think that's why. I think I've talked about this. Why I purposely stopped putting any pedals in any of my videos was it. Pedals are something I enjoy. It's definitely something I'm into. But they're the least. Like if I. The three elements of guitar for me are like for electric guitars, guitar, amp and pedal. Right? That's the. I mean, we can talk cables and all the other, but I'm talking about the main elements. Like you need a guitar into a pedal into an amp. Of those three, the pedal is the least interesting to me. They're just a functional thing. In fact, pedals the way. If you notice the way I use pedals most of the time I'm just trying to duplicate an amp sound out of my pedals. So I just thought it was. But to answer, I don't know the slow gear SG1, let me look at it. Because I probably owned it because I owned most of the boss pedals. If you guys remember, years and years ago, I had gazillions of them. I had at that time, probably 70, 80%. Oh yeah, I had this slow gear. Slow gear is definitely one of the reasons why I stopped collecting Boss petals. So let me share with you guys. This is actually. Let me just share this why I collect. I think I shared with you guys, but maybe I should. I didn't. So some of you guys remember I had rows and rows and rows of Boss petals. I had at least 80% of all the Boss petals made on the planet Earth, meaning the different models. And I thought it'd be fun. And I was really excited to Collect Boss Petals. And boy, did I learn the hard way about collecting a complete collection of something. And I never had, you know, never thought, you know, as a guitar collector aficionado, never, never collecting like, you know, GI Joes or Star wars or anything like that. Something where you got to complete a collection of things, whatever a collection is. Boss Petals was my first attempt ever to try to collect a collection and have it all. Like a Pokemon. I got to catch them all, going to have all the petals. And it was a very exhausting and very sad experience. And here's why. So as I told you, I got about 80% of the collection of Boss Petals. So I was collecting them all up and I was like, really exciting. And then this is what killed me for Boss Petals. When I got to the last 20% of boss petals, it became the pedals that were the most expensive. So here's the. Here's the pedal he's talking about, the boss SG1 slow gear. This is one of the ones I bought. I did not pay 500 for it. I paid 300 for it. It was. And I could tell you. And again, this is a good pedal. I really liked it. Notice this guy says rare and unique. What a great way to explain this pedal. It's very rare and unique. Amazing. Not what I would call it. Rare and unique. And here's what got really tiring really fast. So all of a sudden, the last 20% of boss petals to collect to have this collection was the super expensive rare ones. And then I would just pony up one after another going, wow, this was a lot funner when it was 50 bucks a whack. Got a little less fun. $100 a whack. It's really not as fun at 150, but once I was paying 2, 3, 4, and $500 a piece for a pedal just so I could say I have all the collection. It was getting really daunting, but was really exhausting, was three super expensive pedals in a row. And just to give you a reference, it was like a 3, a 3, and a 400, right? So. So if you're doing the Math, that's basically $1,000 in Boss pedals. And I played these three pedals and they all sounded rare and unique. That's. That's what they sound like to me. Rare and unique. Not bad. I'm not. I'm not dogging on them. I'm making fun of them because I want to make fun of the situation. They were rare and unique sounding. I would not have necessarily picked them for any reason, they were my least favorite in the collection. And you would look at the wall of Boston as you go, wow, the least exciting pedals are these expensive ones. And then you look at the next, you know, 15. That's about. I think I was down to, like, 10 or 15 petals left to get. I was like, it's going to be like, four grand minimum to get these petals to have this collection, and they're not great. And so I gave up. And then what happened was once you give up, then you look at your pedal collection of Boss petals and going, well, I had them on shelves because that's what we do with petals, apparently. And I put them in order from best petals to the least petals. And really what I want, I was like, six shelves. I'll have to pull up a picture. Six shelves of Boss 7, eight shelves. Some of you guys could see it in the videos in the past. And I was like, wow, the first two rows are like, the best rows, and the rest I could care less about. So I got rid of everything but the first two rows. And then from that, I was like, well, do I need really two rows of Boss petals? And so I got down to my last row of Boss pedals. I love Boss pedals. I like to tell you that it's very rare that a Boss pedal is not on a board that I'm using. Today's board that I'm using has my boss Tremolo TR2, which is one of my favorite tremolo pedals. So, yeah, so anyways, back to your slow gear. You know, $500, I guess, if you really want it, man. You know, my problem with pedals is the same problem I have with guitars and the same problem with amps. When somebody says, you know, oh, that amp is three grand, that's stupid expensive. I agree with you. However, it's usually a clone of something that's $30,000. Same with a guitar. When you see a $3,000 guitar, it's a clone of something that's 30 grand. Same with pedals. When I see expensive pedals, I think, ah, just get the clone. You just get a clone. I get a clone. Most everything I own is a clone, whether it's cheap or expensive. I don't own any real. Well, okay, I own maybe one or two real things. Everything else, even if it's expensive that I own, it's a clone of something. This Amplified Nation is a very expensive amp, but it's a clone of something. It's just an expensive clone. And what I've Learned about clones is the more accurate you want them to be, the more expensive they're going to be. And I, you know, like I said, there's worse things to do with your money. So. Okay. Okay, let's do a. Oh, look at you. I'm gonna give this to you, man. This is a bonus for you guys. I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'm gonna give it to you. Clan of house cats. Which, by the way, clan of house cats. I got it right toy took me 700 tries. He said issue with DiMargio making the new Petrucci covers. So he remembers me saying something about that in the past, that there was an issue with the new John Petrucci covers. Yes. So let me show you those. So we'll go to DiMarzio's website. I don't have permission to discuss this, but I'm going to say Larry's not going to mind this because it's not something I think he's not sharing. Okay, so let me share it. So I did a video of it. If you want to watch the video of the pickups in question, which you can go. I'll put a link at the timestamp right now so you can watch my video on that. So here's the pickups in question. It was the Rainmaker and Dream catcher set for $358. And here are the covers. And there are many prototypes. I have all of the concept art and all the stuff because of all the iterations that came through. So one of the issues they had with the covers was you look at this and this is what's great about. That's why I don't think Larry will mind me sharing. What's great about a show like this is, you know, you guys are of the nature that you're nerdy enough to care. You know, the rest of the Internet would look at this and go, who cares? They had trouble making these. So what you'll notice is, is that this is a three dimensional cut. So obviously use like a laser cutter. And they cut this out. So this is like a chrome casing. And then the inside of the pickup is black. What was happening is, is that when they made the first prototypes, these pieces of metal were cut out of a chrome cover. Right. So it's 3D cut. So imagine they just cut all this out. This whole thing was just cut out of the COVID It is made exactly how you would picture it in your head that they would make it. They took the chrome cover and they cut out. What was happening was the pickups were feeding back like crazy. And they were feeding back because of the metal that they cut out was vibrating. And that's how sensitive pickups are. They was vibrating and was causing feedback issues. It was causing a tonal issue. So they had to rectify this. So one of the ways they did that is they put an under casing, which I believe is plastic. It might be metal, but they adhered that material, the outer casing to it. So when you look at those covers, which we'll look at it one more time. When you're looking at this, whoops, that's me. That's not gonna help you. Let's go back here. Look at the covers. You'll see they look like. If you can see shadowing, it looks like they're almost above the bottom piece of black, but they are actually all adhered to it. So the shadowing is probably from the lighting from the side of this. So if you touch one in real life, you'll see that they're all connected to that. So sounds like no big deal. But it's another step in the process of making something. And anyone who's made something for a living, you know that adding one more process is not only costly because it's one more thing to do, it's one more mistake to happen for employees to do. It's one potential other not good thing to happen, no matter how you look at it. So that's what they did. Um, be said, the random audio dubbing is weird. It's because when I switch, I'm supposed to stop talking when I switch camera angles because I'm switching different routing of my microphone. And the reason you're hearing that just because again, if you're curious, is that when you listen to the audio podcast version of this show, that is a separate audio recorder is recording my voice for the audio podcast version. And so it. It gets recorded on a secondary on a device and then sent to you guys. So it says to fix that. I just. I'm supposed to shut up, so I'll. I'll pay attention and stop talking when I'm in the middle of screen transactions because it's too much. It's loading up to two audio signals is what you're hearing. So I apologize for that. But now you know why you hear it. Okay, let's see. What else do we got? Oh, free and fighting says, hey, are bad cat amps and heads a clone of something else? Tim Pierce did a video of them, and he really liked Them. Yeah, Bad cats are clones of amps of Matchless amps for the most part. Now they also which matchless amps are clones of vox amps. That's no, no joke. So a matchless is supposed to be a clone but improved of better than vox amp bad cat amps. Where bad cat gets a little wacky on us is not all the bad cat amps are that so. But essentially Bad Cat was, you know, here's how it works. You have some guys, which, you know, we won't go into detail. We have some guys and they go, hey, I'm going to start making matchless amps because there's these matchless amps started fundamentally off of two, two reasons. And again some people are really into things like there's matchless guys are going to really into. They're going to get upset because just a broad stroke what I'm saying, but trust me, it's just to give you general idea, general idea is you have somebody who goes, hey, there's these players out there and they really like vox amps. But Vox amps 1 are not really reliable. They break a lot. And so what if we make an amp that sounds like a vox but it doesn't break as much. And the second part of this is what if we improve some of the things that people don't like about vox amps? So that's where Matchless comes from. And then of course, like a lot of companies in this industry, you have a partnership separate, okay. Just happens a lot. And so you have the partnership separate. And then essentially somebody, one of the other partners goes hey, I'm gonna start another amp company with another partner and that's called Bad Cat. And then Bad Cat was then later sold to John Thompson, who owns it now, who's kind of I think fixed it all through the before the John Thomps era. Which is funny. I'm gonna have to tell John that He's like the, it's like the Norland era era. You know, Gibson, John Thompson is like an era of bad cat. He's. But anyways, he's the era of bad cat now. And of course in the bad cat amps now you have more than just the matchless style amps. You have in Vox style amps. You have amps that are, you know, not specifically voiced for Marshall, but kind of more Marshallesque and more other amp esque. But for the most part bad caps. Bad cats are matchlesses. Which Matchlesses or Foxes? Everything's something. It's kind of funny. Okay. Hold on a second. Let me go over here. Amanda sent. This is from Paul. Paul says Phil, My Rick and Backer 33012 had its R tailpiece snap spontaneously. They are really known for doing that. It is very common. Not covered under warranty. That sucks.185. I believe that's the euro sign. I always look because the euro sign looks like an E to me. So I'm gonna say that's euros. €185 for a replacement, which felt it was a bit steep. Yeah. Six to eight weeks waiting time. I still love it though. Yeah. So, okay, so just, you know, the RP snapping is very common. I didn't know they still did that as bad. But the vintage ones are like notorious for breaking and stuff. But anyways. And 185 bucks, you know, it's. Look, when you have a captive customer base, you have a captive audience. It's hard to be. And I don't mean ethically, I mean just it's hard, you know, to like, they can do whatever they want. That's how it was. I always remind everybody this story. I love telling the story so much because it's always makes me laugh. I bought a John petrucci music man 7 string. Not the one I have now, the JP13. It was the previous model and it arrived. I bought it brand new. It arrived. And one of the things I didn't like was the bridge was chrome and the knobs were black and the tuners were chrome. And everything was chrome except for the knobs. Like everything. And I thought, that doesn't look right. And I didn't think of it. And then I saw a John Petrucci guitar. Not seven string, just a guitar with chrome knobs. And I go, oh, they make chrome knobs. I go on the Music man website, I contact Music man, and I said, hey, I have a John Petrucci and I'd like to buy some chrome knobs. And they go, we need the serial number. I go, okay, here's the serial number. I'm so dumb. I'm thinking, oh, they're gonna probably warranty these things. What are they gonna do? Is this cool or what? And the guy goes, oh, yeah, yours comes with black knobs. And I go, I know, that's why I'm on the phone with you to get chrome ones. And he goes, we don't sell chrome knobs to people unless they had chrome knobs to be. I'm like, what? What do you mean you don't sell chrome knobs? Like, so I was like, what? I, I, I didn't. He's like, yeah, it's because, you know, it's like, I, he explained it to me. I think it was something like, yeah, you wouldn't like it if you had one with these knobs and then somebody else made theirs look like yours. I don't know what he was saying. I was just like, cotooned it all out. It just, to me, it just sounded like, it sounded like, in fact, this is what it sounded like to me. It sounded like, we're doing so good, we don't give a about your money. That's all I could hear. I'm like, man, they're just killing it. They're, they're doing great. They don't even need my money. And then, sadly enough, I laugh because I told the story basically before, but only just. I couldn't get the knobs. And then you guys, because you guys are awesome. You guys sent me like, 500 links. I'm not kidding. It's just like a ton of emails. It was not 500, but it's like five, five links to get the chrome knobs aftermarket. So I just got the knobs aftermarket that are exactly like them. Then I was like, I'm like, so, so, Paul, I'm basically saying, look, man, I, I, I get it. I just, you know, this is why, you know, I, I, and sadly enough, I could totally understand. Look, deep down, for some reason, I'd pay, I, I would pay more for the knobs, knowing that they came right from Music man, even though I'm pretty sure who I bought them from probably makes them for Music man, which is sad. And I'm sure the same thing with your Artel piece. You could probably get an aftermarket one for less. And it's probably what they're buying, too. But I know what it's like. You just want to keep it original. It's weird. Some people don't understand it. Some do. For me, a lot of stuff has to do with, you know, it took me so long in life to get to own the things that I used to just see people own that. Now I just, I cherish not so much the, not the stuff, just the idea of the stuff. Does that make sense? Like, oh, I want to keep it original if I can, because it's, because it was like, you know, that was the, My whole life, I always had the hodgepodge version of stuff. So it's like almost. I don't want that now. But that's. By the way, the good news, though, is after you get all this stuff, or at least enough out of your system, you realize, like, I'm back to the hodgepodge again. I don't care anymore. Care less now if anything's original or what it is. But anyways, Darren, this one also came from Amanda. Darren says, hey, Phil, I only have an epiphone. I only have epiphone acoustics. Looking to buy a quality one. Gibson Taylor Martin for around $3,000 new. What should I be looking at? Well, you know, acoustic guitars are definitely about the sound. If you're into epiphone acoustics, I would definitely look at Gibson acoustics. Gibson, Martin, Taylor are three totally different vibing sounding acoustics. And I love all three. And here's what I will tell you. To me, Gibson brings the fullness, the bass, and this just this big sound that I just love. And so that if you're, if you're liking that about the epiphones, I got good news for you. The Gibsons bring that with some more. Because again, acoustic guitars are definitely a sum of their parts, the quality put into them. Electric guitars are a percentage of that. But it's not as, it's not as dire need. You could Definitely take a $200 electric and make it sound like a $10,000. A $10,000 electric. I don't believe you can make a $200 acoustic sound like a $10,000 acoustic. You, however close you get, it's fine. But you're not going to get the same way. It's just the physical, the physical of the construction of the acoustic and the quality of the woods. So you're, you're in, you're going to be in heaven. To me. If you like epiphone acoustics, Taylor is going to sound way more, way thinner, way more mid rangy. There's a clarity to them I like. I just like Taylor's a lot. But they're, they're, you know, I'm gonna say no. It's like you're telling me like, I love Les Paul's. What do you think of Strats? I'm thinking not so much for you. And then Martin would be closer in your range. The Martins are going to be more in the vein of the Gibsons, but I, my gut says, man, that's where you want to start. Start with the Gibson acoustics. If you can try them in person, that's always ideal. If you can't, then you just find a good quality dealer. A lot of times, sadly enough, it's got to be the sweet water at the guitar center or, you know, a bigger store that has a good return policy. Especially with acoustics, the worst feeling is when you get an acoustic and it's. You just don't jive with it, and you can't send it back. It's the worst because there's nothing you can do. Electric guitar, you could always find a way to manipulate the guitar into liking it a little bit more, you know, maybe do something to it. Modifications. But acoustics, if you strum an acoustic and it's not happening for you, it's. There's almost very little to do. The modifications to acoustics are minor, and they do not do much. Okay, this came from Jay Frank. He says, hey, Phil, question on setup. Is there a first fret to bottom of the string measurement to shoot for? First fret to bottom? I have a setup. Numbers dialed in. Relief set still first fret, low E rattle. Is there a first fret, like, to bottom, like a measurement off your first fret that you want to. So, okay, Jay Frank, let's. Let's just argue. This is what you're saying. So, like, we're going to measure off the 12th fret. For reference, you're saying, is there a measurement off the first fret? There would not. I. I like to sometimes measure off the third fret to say. So I have a. An idea of how straight the neck is. That's a way to do that. It was a lot easier for me when I was doing it. For customers to kind of explain it that way is like, here's your measurement off your third fret, and here's your measurement off your 12th fret. The way I used to do repair setups, why I would focus on that was because of the fact that I would warranty everything for a year. I would say, hey, look, I'll set up your guitar. You get, you know, I think three days. I used to be seven, and then at some point, I just turned into three days. You. You get three days to take the guitar home, play it, and bring it back for any changes you want me to do, and you can come back as many times as you want. So actually. So, you know, so if you came back within three days and I did the changes, and then you had three more days to come back, Right? But then after that three days, if you didn't need any changes, you were done. And when I say no more changes, then what happens is, let's say six months later. I used to tell everybody this is true, whether they messed with it, whether the moon messed with it, the weather it doesn't matter. You just bring it in. I will warranty 100%, but all I will do is return it to all the measurements. I gave it to you in the first place or the ones we agreed on. Okay? And I never had a problem with that. In fact, a lot of people didn't mind it. And what I did that for, by the way, I never told anybody. Well, I don't say never told anybody, but I did not make it public that what I was really doing was secretly teaching people. Because what happened more times than not, which was my theory, was instead of them bringing it back to me, they would look at it and they go, this doesn't play right. I need to take it back to my tech. They would look at my sheet, and then they would measure and go, oh, it's different than what he measured. And then they would make adjustments. And especially since they knew that if they messed up their adjustments, I would just adjust it back for them. And so I created a. Inadvertently a customer base that was. Started fixing their own guitars after I fixed them. And I. It's just. It was intuitive to me to want to teach. It was just that logic to me. Again, I was looking at, how do I make this efficient? So, to me, what wasn't efficient was when I would watch a guitar tech, which I still hate it to this day. And I say hate it. I don't really hate anything. I just don't. Just don't like it when guitar techs are like, yeah, check out the guitar. And once you leave, it is what it is. And you're like, well, now that person's gonna be hanging out in your shop, taking up your time. I wanted you to go, right? Like, it wasn't because I didn't like people. My logic was, you came in, you're like, let me inspect my guitar. You're like, you have three days to inspect your guitar. Go home. Enjoy it. Get the hell out of here. Let me go back to work, right? Like, I'm trying to keep this, you know, this thing moving. It's. It's a. You know, this job becomes minimum wage real fast if you don't manage your hours really well. And so that was an efficiency thing for me, just to say, look, I'll guarantee it for a year. You have three days, unconditionally. Go. Get out. Look at the guitar at home. And then anytime I came back, it was just easier to come back to that. So that philosophy worked for me. And then I didn't know this, but that's also. I Think what kicked off the YouTube channel was the whole, like, instead of. When I was reviewing, instead of saying something, I would show you something. Maybe that helped a little bit. But. So back to your thing. No, you don't need to measure off the first fret. The only thing we care about off the first fret for is we're going to pay attention sometimes to when you're cutting the nut slots. We're going to use the first fret sometimes as a reference point. I'm going to use that for that, but it's not important that way. Okay, let's. Let's go to a super chat. Okay. Actually, let's derail the whole thing and go on a side thing, because I got a side thing. So somebody. I got a lot. It's my fault. I'm going to apologize for it. I got a lot of messages this week saying, hey, the Blackstock pickup website is gone. It is gone. And you know what? I never even looked. I feel bad. I never even looked to see what it says. Blackstock pickups. Oh, look, that's where it goes. Okay, so let me look at what it goes. So this is the Blackstock website pickups. It says, hey, it's parked free courtesy of GoDaddy. So, you know, a bunch saying, like five or six people reach out and said, hey, that, you know, you can contact GoDaddy and they'll try and sell it to you. They will try and sell it to you because GoDaddy is essentially, they will broker it. So if you go to GoDaddy and you want to buy the Blackstock website, they're just going to email me and go, hey, somebody wants to buy your website. And then I'm gonna make up a number because that's just my way. I think I'm gonna go, what? This is stupid number. And then probably GoDaddy's gonna go, like, it's not worth that. I'm like, I don't care anyways. No one's gonna buy it. But anyways, yeah, so we have the website parked. Why we're moving. We're moving the. So we own the Blackstock website name. We're gonna continue to own it and keep it, and we're just not gonna service the site there. Why? Two reasons. One, I've told you guys that black the pickup line is not a priority for me in. In life. It's. It's another thing I have to do. I have to. I have to. I have to service the Patreon Channel members. You know, in other words, like, take care of, you know, interacting with them. I have to do all these other social media posts. I have to do YouTube. I have to do consulting gigs that I keep seem to be getting more and more intense each week. In other words, more of them each week. And just a lot of things are in the irons, in the fire, and what happens is eventually somebody suffers. You know, I'm not a big fan of diversify your income line. So everybody's gonna say, oh, yeah, diversity is the key. In my experience, the more things you try to do, the more things you screw up. And that's just my way. And that doesn't mean it has to be your way, but it's my way. So anyways, why is this important? Well, it's important for two reasons. One, I should have. I didn't even have to do what I did. I shut down the site. I didn't even have to do it. I had Sean shut down the site. I didn't have to do that. I could have just left it up for a while and then did the transfer over, which would probably made more sense. So the knowyourgearpodcast.com will be where Blackstock pickups will be hosted now. So I'm just trying to get you all to go to one website for everything. So you give a reference of things. The Know youw Gear podcast website gets 30 to 40,000 hits a month, where the Blackstock pickups was getting like 3,000 hits a month. So massive difference in traffic. So it made more sense to put gas on that fire. And so anyone thinking of me or thinks Know your gear, they're going to go to know your gear podcast.com and if they're interested in the pickups, then they can learn about the pickups there. The other thing is we. We obviously, we get backlogged on the pickups a lot. And then we go in blackout times where we don't make the pickups at all because it's just a. Again, every time we make pickups in, we do orders and fulfill pickups. I'm not getting anything else done. And then there's no content for you guys. So you have to pick, you know, your. Your poison, so to speak, as they would say. And at this point, we made so many pickups. So you give a reference of pickups I've made. I thought when I started to Blackstock pickups, I thought I would sell, I don't know, 50, maybe 100. I thought that's what I thought. I thought it was going to be like, I'll sell 50 I'll sell a hundred maybe, and then we'll call it a day. And then every once in a while, like, every year, I'll bring it up and we'll sell maybe another 50 and call it a day. And that's. It'll be just a nice way to, you know, have some. You know, makes the thing I love and do something that's cool. That'd be fun. What it ended up turning into was just people constantly ordering and, of course, in ebb and flows, so just a lot of orders. Like I told you, if it was two or three pickups every day or, you know, four or five pickups every week, I'd be like, oh, I get up every morning, just knock out a couple of sets of pickups, and life will go on. But it was like, all of a sudden, you got 100 pickups, which is 100 orders. You got to get out, like, 100. You're like, okay, well, that's. That's the next couple of days of my. That's my time. And then no orders for, like, a couple of weeks. And then. So it just worked that way. So the fact that we sold thousands of pickups or whatever is crazy to me. And it just. It was a lot. So, again, that's where it's just moving. So I'm just giving you an update. I wasn't planning to update you guys. I never thought anybody would notice or care. Just moved over. But I didn't. I should have moved it and then sent the redirect. And there might be. I might have the godaddy. The know, the. Sorry. The Blackstock pickups have a redirect. So I'll probably put it back up as a site for a little while where you click it and it just redirects you to know your gear. Okay. I don't know what he's. What is he talking about? He goes. Richard Clark says, I doubt Phil has met Esteban. Last show of his I went to was 5k for a meet and greet. You talking about Esteban, the guitar player that does the. The guitars? The Esteban guitars? Is that what we're talking about? If that's who we're talking about, I don't know. All I know about Esteban is two things. I used to go to the Mills Mall in Arizona, and he was always playing in the food court. Not always, but I seen him there playing at the food court. I think I seen him playing twice, and both times it was free, and then he was on QVC selling guitars. And then he was like, Huge. So if we're talking about the same person and then. But that's so. You know, that's a long time ago. We're talking not quite 20 years, but close enough to it. Long time. All right. Okay. I'm all over the place today. Let's go over here and we'll hit this one. This is antique rocker. Says a lot of Epiphone 335 counterfeits on the web lately. Any legal differences between Chinese versus USA made guitars or Gibson lost 335 trademark so, okay, let's get into this. So if you guys didn't see. Gibson won the. The lawsuit against Dean and so they were able to stop Dean from making the. The V and the Explorer shapes. But in that verdict, I guess you'd call it verdict again, I'm not gonna. I don't. I don't speak legalese. I don't know all their jargon in this decision. We'll just call it decision. It was decided. My understanding is that the 335 was now. Is now considered generic. If that is correct, which I believe is correct. From what I read, that would put it in the same position as the Fender Strat body, the Tele body and I believe the P bass. I don't know if the jazz bass is in that, but it's definitely the P bass. Meaning that it's generic. Which means anyone can use the shape. Okay. It doesn't. It's not owned by anybody. It's not protected as you will. This is something that if you notice Gibson has come back and now they're basically petitioning the courts. Again, we're not talking legalese. I'm just giving you the general idea. They're trying to get the court to take away Dean's. Some of Dean's designs. Right. I don't really care which ones. So this is. This here's why I don't care. It's the same thing they're doing to DiMarjo pickups where they're basically trying to say that they're trying to dissolve or get the courts to dissolve DiMargio's trademark on the double cream pickup and the PAF. The name path P, not dot, not A. So you know, DiMargio owns a trademark, so we're not confused on the name paf. Like think of it like the name Ted. Not T E D E dot. Right. It's Ted. He doesn't own. So. So I believe I could be wrong. I never thought to ask Larry on this, but I'm pretty sure that he does not own the trademark. Would not stop you from putting p.a.f.for patent applied for. It's just the name path. I know this sounds silly. It kind of is. I mean I've made my really my personal feelings clear about trademarks and how I feel about them. So there is some silliness to this. But anyways, Gibson's trying to do the same thing they're doing the Dean, which is get them to be to dissolve those trademarks. So again, it's not like Gibson says. It's not like so very, very clear because I've heard it miss already misunderstood on the Internet. It will not stop Dean from making those designs. It just will make it to where anyone can make those designs. Let's be very clear. So Dean cannot make the V and the Explorer shape, but the other Dean designs that Gibson is petitioning or whatever you want to call it to have the trademarks dissolved. That would not mean Dean can't make them. It just means everybody can make them. The same thing with DiMargio, if his trademarks are dissolved, and I'll just use that word because it's easy for understand. It doesn't mean that he can't make cream pickups anymore and he can't call them double creams. He sure can. And it doesn't mean he can't call his pickup the PAF anymore. It means that anybody else can do that too because it would be considered generic. So the 335 is in that vein now it's considered generic. And my whole stance on this. And again, I always kind of bring this up and this is why I've kind of don't talk about it all the time. It's only when it's like, it's just again, this show is based on you guys. You guys think of it this way. I've said this before. You're the guest. I'm just picking the stuff you guys are talking about. I don't have an agenda when I start the show. In fact, I'm usually late and as you know, barely figured out what I'm gonna even do today. But the point is, I believe trademarks. In my personal opinion, I don't care what the law says. It's just how I feel should be to protect consumers, not companies. I don't give a rat's ass about a company protecting anything. I hate the idea. I hate anything that doesn't support my favorite idea, which is survival of the fittest or the hardest. You know, the fastest runner, the fastest worker. The hard worker wins. The one who innovates wins. Keep going, keep going. Somebody's got a better idea. Give it, do it. Somebody wants to copy your idea, but make it cooler, cheaper, faster, better. Do it. Go. As long as it's good for the customer. I believe in consumer protection. I really think that's the way it works. And the reason I think that is to break it down in the easiest way is if you're a musician like me, you know that the women have to go to the bar to get the guys. It works that way. You get the win the bands to get the women to go to the bar, and then the guys go to the bar for the women. Now, for those women watching, flip it. I don't care, I guess, but I don't know. I don't know. A lot of you women care about the dudes being there because I think the dudes are built in there, right? They're just there. My point is, is that you want to draw the right thing, right? So you want to draw a bigger consumer base. So to me, anything that protects the consumer makes the consumer more. More apt to. To purchase. Right. You know, the less I have to worry about fraud, the more likely I am to purchase the. You know, getting duped really puts a foul taste in your mouth. Having food poisoning makes you not want to eat a certain type of food, you know, so that's why I believe in consumer protection. And so trademarks are to. In my mind, it's like, as long as no one's confusing you that you don't. That if you think that somebody's tricking you to think you're buying a Gibson and you're not. I do not agree with that. That's why I have a whole hardcore feeling about, you know, chipsons, you know, I think so. You know, let's be very clear. I love the idea. I mean, epically so. You know, I love the idea of people going on AliExpress and buying the latest Joe Bonamassa guitar, detailed in every way and then putting chips in on it. Or their name. Maybe the guy's name's Larry. Larry, right. I love that. Why not? Because to me, that's like an homage now, right? It's like you're not trying to convince. You're not going to trick somebody into thinking this is a real Gibson and therefore they might get duped and pay more money for it. You're. You just have a guitar that looks exactly like it. I don't care if things look exactly alike. I just care that people are not being tricked out of money and screwed over. So that's why a lot of these cases, I'm like, I really don't care. Right? And ultimately, you know, I also. And so, you know, and because a lot of businesses watch the show and I know I'll get some emails from some of my friends and maybe a couple of texts, and they're like, but Phil, you're missing the point of this. I worked really hard like this. I understand that. And I want you to be protected. But that's not my focus. In my brain, my focus is if you're protected, that doesn't mean customers are coming. But if the customers are protected, they will come. That's basically what I'm trying to say. It's like, if I'm trying to get my friends, my dude friends to come to the club, they might come. But if I get the girls to come to the club, my dude friends are coming. That's what I'm basically trying to say. Take care of the customers. And it all kind of works out. That's my philosophy. If it's wrong, it's wrong, but it's mine. And I share with you that way. So back to this point. So 335. So to get to the core of what you're saying. Cause there's a second part to this question, is basically you're saying with these Epiphone 335 counterfeits on the web lately, Is there a legal difference between a Chinese versus USA Guitars? I don't know. You know what the legal differences are? What I do know is that if you have a trademark, you can. You can pay to stop somebody from infringing on it. In other words, you could pay attorneys to stop them from doing it. And obviously most logos are trademark. I think a logo is more than enough. And the reason I think that is. Here's why you can't make this crap up. I told this story before. I actually, the last time I told this, I think it was probably a few months ago, maybe a half a year, a year ago. And I have a new story version of it. I was at a restaurant with my wife last week looking at a car. I was in the parking lot. There was a car. It looked really cool. I was like, oh, that car looks cool. Now when I say really cool, it looked like every other car, but it was nicer looking. It looked new, and it was a different shape. And the person did the emblem removal, right? Which is easy, right? You remove the emblems, they took the logos off the car. And we stared at it and I looked around, I was like, I don't know what it is. You know what it is? And she's like, I don't know what it is. I'm like, we couldn't tell what it is. That's because, although I thought it was cool looking, that's how generic cars look now without the logo. You can't even tell if I took the logo. I know some of you guys gonna be like, no, the grill's different. I don't give a crap if I took the Cadillac logo off the Escalade and the GMC logo off the Yukon and then the Chevy logo off the Tahoe. Are you kidding me? I'm like, I don't. That's the same truck. I knew it's the same company, so to speak. That's why I think logos are important. Because logos are essentially. That's. That's the identifier of that car. I think it's boring that it works that way. I would really like it if there was more interesting looking trucks than those three trucks. But. Hold on. Get some water. But ultimately, I think the consumer knows, right? Oh, that's a Cadillac. That's expensive. That's a Chevy. That's less expensive. I think that's pretty much an easy thing to figure out. I don't know. So that's why I think the way I do. Let's see what else. I don't know if I'm trying to. I'm gonna try to understand. Bart says, know your gear protection is by use of trademark. So know your gear is. I've said this before. Anyone wants to steal the logo and use it, I don't want you to make money off it. I don't think that's right or fair. I think that would be fraud because you don't own it, so you shouldn't use it. But I've said this before. If you don't want to buy a shirt that says Know youw Gear for me and you just want to put Know youw gear on a shirt, then do it. I don't care. Because again, you know, now the reason I. I don't even know. It's a really hard. It's really hard argument for me because here's why I. I really don't care. Essentially, you're just using a T shirt and putting a logo on it. That's all I'm doing too. It's not like I'm actually making know your gear product. Now. The know your Gear show trademark. Same thing I Mean is. Is if you used some of my ideas and made videos, I mean, that's what makes the world goes around. If you AI copied me and made a. AI copy of me, I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't like that. But here's why not. Because I'm like, that's wrong. And you're infringing on my trademark and my business is because again, you'd be confusing the customer. You would be having me say things that I didn't say, and that would confuse people. And I don't think that's right. Again, my, My. My focus is always on the customer, so. Oh, Susan says, speaking of logos, where's the PB Haggie? It is. I don't know if I can tilt it this far. Can I? Oh, and is it. Yeah, yeah. Here, tilt it right there. So just out of frame. No particular reason why. Just happened to be that way today. So for those of you listening later, it's. Yeah, just out. They just saw it. Okay, let's refresh this. Oh, can I refresh this? Interesting, huh? How do I. That's a new one on me. So my screen won't refresh. So I have to open it, reopen it again. I apologize, guys. Okay, let's do this. All right, that's much better. We have Jeff. Jeff says, hey, Phil, I'm wanting to get a Plexi style Marshall sound without purchasing a new amp. Okay, then I'm looking at the Marshall pedals and the pedal pal effects pedals. The PPFX only show two pedals on reverb the pedal paddle. Okay, thoughts? I have not tried the Marshall pedals. The new ones, I haven't tried them. I don't know much about them. I really, really love the pedal pal effects for the Plexi sounding pedal and the 800. I have tried vaguely, and I mean very vaguely, the UA Audio lion pedal, and it sounded really good. But I was not in an environment where it was with my own gear. I was literally. I was. Another friend was doing a gig, and I. I literally go, oh, that's that new pedal. He goes, hey, you want to try it on his guitar through his rig? I played it and I thought, oh, that sounds really good. And he's like, yeah. And I go, I mean, it's really impressive. So that would be, to me, that in the pedal pal. But I mean, the pedal pals are less expensive for sure. But I will tell you what might help you is. And I really feel bad because I really want you to buy pedal pal pedal from Those guys. But also I just something I saw. See I'm looking on. I'm gonna share with you right now. Oh it's 800. Oh wait maybe. Yeah, here you go. So let's share this with you. So this is Guitar center used and see there they have the 800 right here and they have. That's the 800. That's the Plexi emulator right there. So they got it for 2 79, 224. Is that the same one? That's the gold overdrive. That's 800. 800, 800, 800. They got a lot of eight hundreds. Oh here's one. Oh 199. So it's just in silver so you'd save 25 bucks. Now here's its great buddy. If you get that at Guitar center and well one if you use my link they pay me like a million dollars. I'm not exaggerating. No sarcasm, sarcasm. I like sarcasm but no sarcasm. If they use my Guitar center link they pay me two and a half to three times what Sweetwater pays me for stuff. So even on use gear. So that'd be nice but you don't have to do that. What I will tell you is that you can buy that off of guitarcenter.com and you can have it shipped to your house and you can try it and if you don't like it you just go and return it to any Guitar center store or ship it back to them no questions asked. If you ship it back to them I think think they're going to make you pay the shipping back but if you walk it in the store they just refund it to you right there. The only requirement is that they're going to only refund it on this payment source. So one of the nice things about doing the interview with Gabe at Guitar center and doing some Guitar center stuff was I learned a little bit about Guitar center which I already knew a lot but I learned some more. But more importantly the employees I have some experiences now at the Guitar Centers where the employees recognize me from the hey you talked to my boss's boss's boss's boss and I'm like yeah. And so I don't know if that means that like don't tell them right. But anyways they they been really helpful for with me and I've been learning a lot of stuff like I told you like that you can buy stuff on musicians friend and you can return it at Guitar center stores which I thought was really cool. The only caveat is they will only do a refund. They won't do an exchange. So if you buy something, Mrs. Friend, you can walk it right into Guitar center, get a full refund. However, it's going to only refund to the payment source you used and you can't do an exchange. But still, that's pretty easy. So I would check out that pedal pal. Use Plexi. Buy it off guitarcenter.com and, and you know, if you don't like it, just walk it back. It's easy enough. That's why it's. Why it's. It's why it's good. I have. I've had a couple good experiences buying some used stuff from Guitar center and it not connected to me as a YouTuber. So it's been really nice. Although, like I said, we all know what their shortcomings are, but that's. I think this is one of their better things they do is their use stuff when it comes to return policies. Why am I having trouble pulling up the screen again? Did I lose it again? I did. Oh, there it is. Okay, T size. Any thoughts on the S series Ibanez? I have an Ibanez RG550 and I wanted an S570 for years, but it couldn't get past the slim body. Is it basically the same thing but thinner? Usually there's different. Different models. But the general rule for those that are not Ibanez fanatics is that the S series, which originally was called the Saber series, but now S series. The S series guitars are typically mahogany bodies instead of basswood. So the RGS are typically basswood bodies. The Sabers. Sorry, S series are typically mahogany bodies. Typically. And they might have maple caps and stuff like that, but I'm just typically. That's a big difference right there. And also a lot of the S series will be 22 frets versus 24. Is that true? Am I confusing the Joe Satrani guitar now? Now I'm even like, is that true? I gotta look. Series Ebenez. Because I remember a lot of them were the 22 fretters, but they might. Let's. Here's one. Oh, my goodness. You can't make that picture any bigger. It's funny, I feel like as guitar singers trying to make their pictures better, it's not working entirely, but they're trying. And I feel like everybody's making their pictures worse. Yeah. So a lot of them I'm pulling up, the s series are 22 fretters. They're not all 22 frets, but there'll be more versions that are 22 frets. Also, in my experience, the S series will have a slightly thicker neck. Would be considered super thin by most, but not like the RG players where it's like a paper thin, you know, wheat thin cracker. How often do you use a capo? And do you use one more for acoustic than you do electric or vice versa? I don't use a capo for anything. If I use a capo, there's. Okay, so there's a real reason why I would use a capo. And then there's the. Sometimes, every once in a while, I probably learned a song where I go, oh, you capo this fret and you do that. That's very rare. So unless I'm learning a song specifically, which once every two years, I probably use the capo for a song maybe once a year to be nice. Other than that, I use a capo mostly for doing setups on guitars and stuff. I use the capos for restrings. And when I say restrings, like if I'm taking strings off the bridge. You've seen videos where I've used capos for repair work. I'll use capos more for repair work. I don't use a capo very much. No personal opinions about capos. Don't consider them cheating. I don't consider it anything. I don't have an opinion for or against the capo. I just don't use it myself because I don't play a whole lot of things that need capo. If I'm using. I can tell you right now, 90% of time if I'm using a capo song, I'm learning some kind of country song. And the country songs, they always seem to capo the guitar up. So that's kind of when I use it. Alex says, hey, can you recommend a tone bender mk2 clone? No, I'm sorry. I'm laughing just because I'm like, I'm going to now look up a tone Bender clone. MK2 clone says, Keely makes a Fuzzbender. So I have. No, no, not. I'm looking, like, literally not. I mean, I don't know of any. Does Warm Audio make one? Hold on a second. Tone Bender Mk2 clone warm audio. Because I bet you they make a great one. Oh, is this. Yeah, I don't know if this is it. This is probably not it. Here's something. This is the Warm Audio Warm Bender fuzz pedal. Is that a. So something like this? For $199, I tried warm Pedals. Warm audio pedals. And I really like them. They were definitely one of those pedals. I thought punched them in above their grade. And then it looks like JHS has one as well. I'm just not versed in them. I haven't reviewed them. You know, the sad thing is, for a short time, companies. Pedal companies reached out to me to do pedal videos, and then I would do pedal videos. And I. I knew. I knew about pedals like most people know about fuzzes and I know about delays. I mean, I know all the stuff. I just don't. I'm not hip to all the, you know, like when they retro make reissues and stuff, all this stuff, because I'm not buying them all the time. And companies don't send them anymore. I don't really get talked to by too many pedal companies anymore. So the pedal companies usually have their. Go to guys on YouTube now for pedal videos. And it doesn't. It doesn't. It's not something. Think of this. Wow. I don't. I haven't had a pedal company talk to me in a year now. It could be two years, but it's about a year. About a year, so. And yeah, so that's how little it happens. Now, I. I know what you're thinking, what I've done. You've done a couple pedal videos. I have, but that's because I contacted them. But I'm talking about reaching out to me. I haven't had a pedal company reach out to me in a year and then I can back from that company. I probably was a year before another company like that. So just doesn't. I don't know. It's not something I just got following people's radars for, and then it falls off. So one thing I could tell you is nice is that. Thank you guys. When you guys bring this up. I am doing a pedal video right now as we speak. But I hate to say it, it's. Again, it's not a company came to me. It's a. I'm trying to finish out my 10 favorite pedals of all time video series, which I started a year ago, and I've been putting them out, and they're just pedals. I've had this particular pedal I've had for almost 20 years that I'm gonna be showing you guys in the video and why I still like it. Phil did a super chat. I appreciate that very much. And then Truffle Buffalo says, hey, sending the. Oh, sending a previous super chat that Amanda miss. She missed one oh, let's see if it says. It says, hey, I see. Think I see. Thank you. I was asking how to price parts casters. Mexican American next. And mix of parts also another one. Just regarding no mentions about the tone jar in recent times. Yeah, I don't always read the whole clips of everybody's comments or questions. Grumpy Mike guitar. I sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. It's just however I float. So, you know, it's a habit to just try to start at the meat of the question is why you do it. And then when it thinks to pricing parts casters, I always think the best way to do is take them back apart and sell them as parts. If you're trying to get the most for them, very rarely do they command enough money, you know. Oh my goodness. Hold on. So that's my advice. Vim69 says, how does the new Brian sets or Gretch compare to the Billy Duffy Gretch you had? I'm more. I like the hot rod, the Setzer. It's my favorite, favorite Gretsch because it's one knob, one switch, bare bones. It's. It's just easy. It sounds good to me. It's a modern, you know, kind of look at the Gretch, you know, because they do the hot pink and they do the purple and they do the lime gold. But Cesar does like normal colors too. He does a metallic orange and a black. And then I think he's got some other traditional colors too. But it's not that I like it better or anything. I'm just, you know, I always love the sets are lime gold. And the opportunity came up, you know, to buy that collection of guitars and get it and make sense. The collection video has been my absolute favorite video in a while because the comment section is outrageously awesome. So very rarely am I entertained by the comment section of a video. And it's one of those things where, you know, when I. When I do a video, you know, you have to edit and you have to decide what goes in the video and what comes out for flow purposes. And I tend to trust, I tend to believe, I believe in myself. I tend to trust my instincts in videos because whenever I feel strongly about something, the video does really well. Whenever I guess what I think and what I should do, the video does not do as well. So that video, how many views it got? It got 152,000 views. So to me, anything in my world of YouTube, anytime I hit a hundred thousand views, that's like, that's That's a B, C plus B for me. That's good, right? You know, it kind of like. So, you know, YouTube grades you kind of too. And they tell you, like, that video did bad, this video does good, and this video is doing okay. And YouTube basically tells me all the time when I do a hundred thousand views, it's like, it did good. It's not great. It's good. But that's good for me. It's really good. And it's where I want to hit, if I can, you know, is for paying myself for doing the videos and stuff. That's usually where I, my. My break even hit hits for me. And in that video, obviously, there was no breaking on that because I was a lot of money for that gear. But what's funny was I was like, ah, I think I'm gonna work it and work the flow. And because of that editing, there's some piece of information they're missing from the video. And I've really enjoyed how people have guessed all the. All the numbers, all the things. And I thought, um. I never. I never thought it would be so extreme. Everybody's opinions. Some people absolutely hate those guitars. Some people love the guitars, the sets. So the sets are. Was like I said, it was an opportunity. Just like some other ones I've done where I'm like. Like I've explained before, it's just I. I can't at this point, I don't know how to justify buying anything anymore. It's tough. I got to come up with a good reason. I got to really want it really, really bad. You know, you hear it all the time. The cliche. My dream guitar. My dream guitar. I bought my dream guitar. My wife bought it for me. The Ibanez universe. That was the guitar that I always thought I wanted more than anything. And it's very nice. I'm very excited to have it. And I think about making a video about it, talking about the highs and lows of wherever it is. But the point is, that's the Holy Grail guitar. Once you get the Holy Grail guitar, you think, oh, no, you'll just go on your next dream guitar. No, I kind of realized, like, now I don't have dream guitars. There's just guitars I really like and I want to play them. And guitars I don't care as much for. And that's where it comes down to. It was very therapeutic to get that out of my system. I think. Red Eye Bloom says new Guitar Day. Breathe Love Eco Acoustic. Do you have any recommendations for humidity Dry weather, fluctu fluctuations while stored in a hardshell case. I live in Ohio so for humidifier packs there's a bunch I like. I like. Personally I like the D'Addario ones, the jail packs. I think they still make those. Let's double check that as I've told you and it would be helpful if I could show you Humidipak. There it is. Humidipack. They still make them. There's a lot of great ones out there. These are the ones I've used and I've had great success with over the years. Something like this. Here's a humidipack and maintains automatic community control for $24.99. I like this. I like them. This is what I use when I use a pack like that. If I don't use that, I use the cheap little clay cup looking things. But I don't really use those very often. I use the D'Artagio ones. That's it. Nothing really super exciting. I don't use anything and it's more of a. In silver to be honest and clear. It's more of just I like the Dario products and I started buying those and then I started using them and I'm just. That's what I've used so that's what I recommend. But I don't have any strong feelings. So if somebody has some other thing, they're like, oh, Phil's missing the great, latest, greatest, coolest thing. They, they might, you know, that might be good advice too. I just like said this is what I've used and I tend to when it comes to things like I said, like wall hangers, guitar stands, cables like that, I tend to find something I like and stick with that. And it's not like guitars and pedals and amps where I'm always looking for the newer, shinier object. I really don't want to be messing with that kind of stuff. Guitar polish is not something I want to change all the time because again it's, it's to me, it's not something that's super important to me that I try the newest thing. And I really want to make sure that what I'm using is something I trust. Shane says, hey, when I roll back the tone on my charvel pro mod DK24, I lose heaps of output volume. What can I do to make that more like my Les Paul where I can roll the tone right back and the volume isn't affected. So one of the things you can do is definitely, I mean besides assuming that you don't have any wiring issues with that tone control. A capacitor would make a massive difference in that. I highly recommend just going with an orange drop. It's my absolute favorite capacitor. For the opposite reasons of what usually the Internet says. Everybody on the Internet's like, capacitors are capacitors. And then some of them are like, buy these expensive, crazy ones. I like orange drops because I think they're good quality, and I think they're relatively inexpensive. What they are, although they're like six bucks, I think that's what an orange drop goes for, right? So orange drop cap and Stumac's gonna be on the high side, and they're charging $5 and 25 cents. And you can go here, right? So. And you don't have to buy it from Sumac. You can get it from Amazon or wherever. This is what I use. This is what I swear by. I like it. I've tried all the other super duper ones. I have lots of those crazy, you know, bumblebee ones and all the. All the. All the ones. Sorry, I'm getting situated. All the ones. There's all the amazing ones, and they're all, you know, cool. But I ultimately, I just use orange drops. You can use cheap ones that probably work just as good. I just like orange drops. To me, five bucks isn't the biggest investment in the world to put into a guitar, to know that's going to sound good and work good. And that's why I do it. But it's still this day. It's. Capacitors are one of the things that always remind me how crazy the Internet is and the guitar community is as a whole. It's one of those things where it's like, you know, so I've watched people lose their mind over $3. I'm like, yeah, it's a capacitor. How much? $2.993. That's ridiculous. I can get a bag of a hundred of those or $3, and they lose their mind. I'm like, really? Is that a thing to be upset about? And then, literally, the next person you come across, you're like, these $3. Like, oh, that's cheap junk. You got to get this one. It was literally only made from 1945 to 1945 and a half by three Russian defectors. And it was. And they don't. They can't even make it anymore because it gives everybod answer and literally, you. Right? So it's always funny how it goes to the extreme, right? But so that's why I, I just decided I like orange drops. And I. So, you know, it's. My information is now very dated. It's been about eight, 10 years since I did a capacitor shootout. I did a whole capacitor shootout. And that's what I learned from that was like, yeah, I like the orange drops. They're fine. So Damian wants to know, hey Phil, we're going to solve Damien's the Internet's question right now. The whole question, it says, hey Phil, there's a big difference between. Is there? Let's be clear. He's not telling, he's asking. Is there a big difference between a hand wired amp for a Princeton reverb and a normal 65 Princeton reverb? So I have the hand wired 64 right there that I'm pointing right now. That's the hand wired fender prints. And I have the 68 and the 65. I have a, a problem. It happens. It could be worse. Like I said, there's worse things you do with your time and your money. Of the three, which one do I think is best? The 64 sounds best. What's interesting is somebody's going to say it's the speaker. That's probably true. Keeping in mind that I like that speaker the least. The 64 speaker the least. The one that comes with it, the Jensen. I did some swapping of speakers in the amps and you know, it's funny, I'm like the 64. I like the best, but I like the speaker the least. If that. I know I just said that, but. But here's the, here's the real thing. From my experience, if you told me I could only have one Princeton, I'd probably pick the 64. As you know, I'm a huge fan of my 68 because it's a little bit more compressed and a little darker sounding and just a lot of things appeal to me. But I kind of feel like the PR12, the Morgan now solves a lot of that. It's just the way it sounds. It does a lot of the bigger, boomier, compressed sound. So if I only keep one Princeton, it'd be the 64. Now if you said, no, Phil, you can only keep your 65, would I be upset? Not at all. I wouldn't even care there. The 64 is better. And it's better in the way that I've talked about in the past, which is I bought the 64 and then I go, this is better. But I would have never missed the 64 if I didn't buy it. And that's the thing with high end gear. High end gear, people go, oh, it's over. You know, it's, it's B.S. it's not real. And some people are like, no, it's amazing. You don't know. And what I've kind of really come to, to the conclusion is I could argue, or I'm going to argue that a lot of high end gear is, is better. It's, it sounds better, it does something a little better, there's a little bit more something there. A lot of times, you know, some players can't hear it, that's fine. But we're talking about the players that can hear it or feel it, or at least they think they can hear it, feel it, doesn't matter, it's there. And, and here's, and here's the proof in that. Or not so much proof, but here's the validation of why I tell you this. It'd be one thing if somebody said it and then everybody regurgitate what they said. But a lot of players come to the same conclusion. Never, never interacting with anybody else. They go, wow, that thing has a lot of fuller sound or the harmonics are a lot richer. They didn't have to hear anybody to say that. They just hear it. But here's where it gets interesting. Not only could I argue again, I will, because I'm going to. That the 64 in my mind is, to me, to my ears, I prefer it over the 65 Princeton. Just using those two because they're more alike than the 68. I would say honestly that if I never heard the 64, I would have never wanted for anything more than the 65 Princeton. And then funny enough, I think the 65 Princeton reissue, in my opinion, sounds a little better, feels a little better. And again, better is a hard word to use. I prefer it, I like it, whatever. It does something for me. I like to talk about the romance of sometimes of a gear. You know, some people like to talk only about the science. The science is important to understand the romance. But the romance is still, still the number one thing, guys. It's like it's got to be the romance. So the 65, I don't, I don't like as much as 64, but I'd be fine with it. But funny enough is this. I don't like the Blues Jr. As much as the 65 Princeton ratio. But again, if I never heard the plate of 65 Princeton, I would. I had a Blues Junior before my 65 Princeton and my 68. And I thought the Blues Junior was amazing. And it wasn't. It was never a case of I hate this Blues Junior. I wish it was better. I'm gonna find something better and then I get something better. It was always like this is great. And then one day you plug into something else, you go, this is better, this is better. And then if you buy better, it's hard to go back down, right? It doesn't make any sense. The 64 is a good example. I bought this used and I paid for it. And if I sold it right now, well, I get what I paid for it. But why? I already, I already like it better. So to answer your question, the hand wired thing, I always say this, and I love saying this. I like really good amps. You know, amps that I like, I like the really good ones. And that just so happens that most good ones are tube amps. It doesn't mean tube amps are good. Just means most of the amps that I've experienced that are good that I like happen to be tube amps. It also happens to be that most of the amps that I really, really like happen to be hand wired tube amps. Does an amp have to be hand wired? Nope. It just so happens that just more of the hand wires are really good. And that's doesn't mean again in fact, if you take a crappy amp design and do it by hand, that doesn't mean it's going to be good all of a sudden. So. And a lot of people focus on. And again, just because I can. I'm trying to think of the arguments you're going to hear. A lot of players focus on this like durability, like you know, don't get the PC board ones are junk. If one more guy. I don't care if you put in the comments, they're gonna do that. But I'm talking about personally tells me. Oh, Phil, porcelain tube sockets. Oh, that thing only had plastic, dude. Every time I say I like an amp, somebody has to tell me about the thing that's in my amp that they don't like. And I'm like, you know, not like the quality or not the tone, just the component that's somehow going to fill, right? And I have to tell you guys, I liken this to like car purchases, right? It's like this, this happened to me. It's a true story. When I bought, I bought a Dodge truck a while back. Like a big Dodge truck. Literally no thought into it. This is such a bad thing to admit. Embarrassing. I was driving. Oh, actually, let me back up. I had an suv, a big suv, and I was driving it. And then my wife and I worked at the same place. Because me and my wife have been around each other since pretty much since we were 13, which is really crazy, right? Friends than dating, than marriage. But we also been co workers, which is really strange. So I always tell people, like, we've been married for 26, 27 years. We've been married for 27 years, but technically, I think it's like more like 50 years, because if you go by hours instead of days because we spend more hours together. But anyways, the important part is I had a big suv. My wife kept taking it. And my wife had a little pickup truck, and I didn't like her truck. And I was always driving her truck and not my car. She always took it, and she always said, like, oh, I'm going to lunch with the girls and I need your car. And I'm like, oh. And then I was driving this truck, and I'm like, so one day, driving home from work in this little truck, I saw this dealership, and I saw this giant. I'm not exaggerating. V10. What a dumb person I am. Dodge truck that reminded me of the movie Twister. It was a red one. It was like, just look like that. It was huge and had big tires, right? And I saw it on the side of the road, and I just pulled in to look at it, and I went and looked at it, and then I bought it. I remember I bought it. And then the worst part is I had to call my wife, and I know what you're thinking, and tell her that, no, I had to call her and go, hey, I need you to bring the title of your truck to the dealership. Because I just traded it for this Dodge. Now I feel like. I'm sorry I went on a tangent roll. But I gotta tell you why this connects to amps. Cause it's the same experience. I bought the Dodge truck, and every person I know, all my dude friends that saw my truck, they were like, oh, your new truck? And I go, yeah. And they go, oh, transmissions. They're transmissions. Oh, no, it was always about transmissions. And I'm like, oh, transmissions are bad. And then I had a Jeep, same thing. Oh, the engines, they're bad. They always want to tell you about the bad components in your car and your truck. And I'm like, okay. And amps are the same thing. It seems to be the thing that they say. But what's funny Is I don't keep cars very long. And amps. I've never had any amps break either. I've had two amps kind of break. And actually, that's not true. So, you know, I've had 2amps break in my life, and both times it wasn't me. I didn't. I didn't. They didn't break when I had them. Somebody else had them and they broke. So I don't know if somebody did something or if it was me. So I guess my point is, I hear what you guys are saying about PC boards and durability and stuff, but I'm not taking this stuff on tour. Just sits in the office room and I use it even for videos. I don't. They don't run all day. So I'm just saying it's not something I overly concern myself about. I don't buy AMS investments. In my experience, amps are the worst thing to do with your money for guitar gear. They are horrible to ship. They break, not break in, like what I was about break. When you ship them, they get damaged in shipping. It's so I. Every time I get an amp, I already kind of know. It's just. It's like I actually. So, you know, I buy an amp with the same attitude of buying an iPhone. It's like, this is just the thing I have to spend to get this thing. And it's just junk. So. I don't know. Beavis says people are always eager to shit on somebody's happiness. Yeah, they call it. I call. There's a ze. Frank used to call it Yuck. My yum. It's not that. And so, you know, some people, I think the intention is always good. Seriously, in most of those cases, it's like, oh, they're just warning you about the, you know, catastrophic thing. But what's funny is, is, is this. I don't fix amps. And I've warned you guys, as someone who repairs guitars, I'm going to have a little bit like an amp tech vibe where an amp tech says, these amps suck. And I always remind you. Yeah, they think they suck because they only see the broken ones. I only saw the broken guitars. So I have a lot of, like, feelings about guitars that I don't like, you know, because. Because I'm like. But because I always worked on them doesn't mean they were bad. Just. It means those are the ones I saw the most. I don't know. Yeah. Dave TV says once you get past the hocus pocus of A gear you can start playing. I don't. Yeah, I agree with that. But I also think, and I've always said this, I don't think the. I don't think they're. They're in my. And for me, I can't tell. I mean, there's a thousand of you. I don't know what all you guys are doing and thinking, but I just want you to understand my thought process. I don't take my playing time and. And then go, oh, I'm tweaking knobs and pedals. That's what I do. When I'm done, I'm like, only play so much. Yesterday I played for four hours straight because it was a crazy week. And I just had enough. And I just sat and played. It had nothing to do with a video or anything. I was just playing for my own enjoyment. And I decided. I even told my wife, I go, yeah, I didn't get a lot of stuff. I was supposed to get this afternoon done. I just play guitar for four hours. She's like, I understand. But then after I play guitar 4 hours, let me just say exactly. This is not exaggeration. Four hours of playing guitar. And then when I was done, I shut down my rig and went downstairs. Cause it was afternoon now. And my wife's like, you wanna watch this movie? We had a movie. We wanna watch. And she turned on the movie. And I sat and looked at guitars online on my phone while I watched this movie. So I was looking at gear, but it wasn't like taking the place of anything. It was just. That's the addiction. It's like I was playing guitar all day and now I'm gonna look at guitars all night. So let's see. Okay, let's get through the last of these super chats. Let's. Let's polish out the rest of the show. Or maybe I don't have any. Let's refresh. I do. I have. Glenn, thank you so much for the super chat. Alex says, hey, do you have a recommendation for a Les Paul Axis Varian? I have an Edwards 59 copy that's almost perfect. My only complaint is the upper fret access. I mean, you have an Edwards. I always think of the Eclipse as being, to me, the better Les Paul. Les Paul. I want to say better. I mean, just by design, I think it's a better design Les Paul. I like the slightly thinner body. I like the carve away. I like a lot of things about it. Of course, it's just not very traditional. And for me, a lot of Times the Les Paul is about the traditional part, you know, the look and the feel of that. But I would say if you got the Edwards, unless the Edwards is different than the. Because some of the Edwards look exactly like Gibsons and some don't. I'd say the, the access by Ltd SP are fantastic. Or E2 if you so wish to go that route. I really, really like them. It's one of the few guitars I don't own and I don't know why. I mean, I've done videos of them but I've not found the one, so. And I'm not really actively looking, but if one came in, I can, you know, as I told you guys, if a guitar comes in, something goes out. I could think of a couple guitars that could go out for an access that I want Glenn did. Hey, Phil, I'm playing a guitar with a pair of Lawler P90s. What's the best way to get rid of the hum when using just one pickup? Well, unfortunately they're not noiseless. So you're going to have the 60 cycle hum just because of the way it works. You could, you could insulate the cavity. You can insulate the, the, the route where the pickup goes with some painters tape or not painter's tape, I'm so sorry, with some shielding paint. But that's not going to do much. It's going to do very little. If anything. You can use a noise gate. That's a big part of it. I mean, that's the biggest part of it. The one thing you have to do. You know, I did an interview with Phil X and I asked him about that because I said, you know, he uses, he loves P90s. And I said, do you use a noiseless one? He said no. I said, do you use noise gate? He said no. I said, well, what are you doing on stage when you're playing with Bon Jovi? And he goes, I just turned the volume off. And he's like, just real fast. And so what I would say is you could get a noise gate pedal. But also keep in mind you get a volume pedal. It's a very effective tool or a mute switch. But volume pedal is a very practical pedal to get. You get that volume pedal and you just noise off the noise. You won't hear the noise when you're playing. You're only going to hear it in between when you have stops or, or, you know, when stops in between songs or if you have a piece where you're not playing for a moment when you're. You Know, and you know, so that's just my thing. I play P90s a lot. I also don't usually play enough gain that the P90s get too overly out of control. And then also you have to be very conscious of the fact that you have essentially this antenna which is this P90, so you can't face your amp. Okay? So that's the first thing. So if you're sitting at home playing with the amp, don't, don't face the amp. That's a bad thing. Okay. You need to be, I would say, if you want to make your at home P90 life, very good, get six feet from the amp and face away from it. That's going to be a massive difference. Because what I want you to think about is 60 cycle hum is not the thing. It's not just the answer. Okay. What I mean by that is that's like saying buzz. And then there's louder buzz and quieter buzz. Right? That's the success. So the pickup is going to buzz. How loud it is, is going to be. It could be a low quality guitar cable. So keep in mind that could be a factor. Added to that, you're, you're enhancing the problem. Does it make sense being close to your amp? Again, enhancing the problem. Facing ramp, enhancing the problem. So I would say first, start there, get away from the amp. Get, don't face the amp. And make sure you're using a quality guitar cable. That's first. And notice that because again, if you're saying it's bothering you, you're running a lot of gain. And sometimes had this conversation over the years with the podcast and then the person goes, no, I'm just running a light overdrive. And I'm like, oh, well, you shouldn't be hearing a ton of noise. The other thing I can tell you is keep in mind, again, I want you to think of the P90 as an antenna for me personally, I'll tell you what I go through, it has nothing to do with P90s, has to do with humbuckers will do it. Single coils. Because I'm sitting right here, my computer and the lights, man, they just, oh, I got to get away from that. So that's the other thing too. You have to get away from the sources because it's essentially, I don't want to say it's a microphone, but it is. It's essentially you're just making. The closer you get those sources, the louder it gets. So today, to give you an example, today, to make my life easier for making this video, I had a huge problem. It was a massive problem. And so this was. Obviously, I was playing a guitar with humbuckers, and it has insulation in the guitar. But here's what was happening. Because I wanted the pedal board on this side of the room because I wanted to use the looper. So it was very important that I was comfortable when I was using the pedals. I put it over here to my left. Okay. And the amp is to my right, over here. And so what happened was I ran the power cable from the pedal board and I plugged it into the power strip that powers these lights, the side lights, and all these cameras and the mixers. And I ran the output cable of the pedal board through the back of my desk to the amp. And it was buzzing like crazy. It was so loud. It was humming and buzzing, which is, you know, humming. That was buzzing. And so what I had to do is unplug it and plug into a power supply that was over on this side of the room. So separate the power supply from all the equipment that was here and that cable that had to reroute, which is why I have a rug now here. I put a rug in this room. It doesn't make any sense. I have carpet, but I put a rug in this room because I'm running cables all the time, like that light. And I didn't want the look of the cables, so I just run them on this rug. So the cable that you see today is running underneath this car, this rug, to the amp. So I had to get the cable away. So I want you to think like that. Get your. Get this. This microphone, this antenna of yours away from sources and see if that fixes it. And then if that doesn't do it, noise gate, volume control, pedal volume. You know, those things will help too. So. And you'll see that's. I mean, it's. It's tough when you're doing content because I need so much lighting and so many things, and all this stuff is led. It's all digital and everything digital is just even louder. All these mixers and things. So. Okay, so let's do one last one. We're gonna do one last one. It'll be fun. This is from Javier, and it says, what do you think of the Strandberg Endure neck? I love the Endure neck. When I say I love it, I love the concept of it. I love the idea of it. I love Ola Strandberg. I think he's just a amazing and fun, and I think it's crazy that he made such A crazy thing that people like. I have an endor neck on my Strandberg guitar. Have it with the true temperament frets. It's very fun. It's different. Some people don't like it. That's fine. I like it, but I don't love it. And the reason I don't, I know I don't love it is because that's not the thing I play the most. It doesn't, it doesn't make me, when I play it, all of a sudden, pick up those guitars going, this is too different. To me, it's just a different, you know, different feeling thing. I like it. But that being said, I'd prefer this. That's why I play Kiesel headless, is because I'd prefer a Strandberg with a regular neck. I just prefer it that way. I think the endor neck is like my buddy Matt. If you've seen Matt on the channel, he's been on the show, hasn't been in years. But he did the video where he played his Strandberg versus my Kiesel, because I bought a Kiesel and he bought a Strandberg, and we, we did a video where to compared them. And he's a masterful player. He plays exactly. He can play Yngwie like, it's no problem. But he mostly plays like, Eric Johnson kind of stuff. And he loves indoor necks. And he's what he most. He plays and he plays the eight string. He plays jazz on an eight string endure neck. And he loves them to the point where that's like literally almost all he plays now. And I think that's what I learned from it was if you can play like that, you should have that neck. But for me to do, you know, some open chords and then Pentatonix, which I absolutely love to play, you know, I, I, this is the best way to end the show. I wish, I wish I wanted and more. You know, I have a buddy that no matter what we, wherever we go, he only eats three things. And he's thin, which drives me nuts. He's skinny as a rail, and he only eats three things like hamburgers, pizza, right? And like, I don't even know what the third thing is. I want to say blowing or blowing. It's not even that. It's like three. He just eats the basic boring foods. So if you take him to it. Well, I think he eats steaks. So if you take him to a sushi place, he's gonna like, do they serve hamburgers there? And then he gets a hamburger and it's so boring, but he's so blissfully happy, right? He just loves it. And so the reason I say that is that's how I feel about the music I play. I feel like I play stuff and people go, oh, why don't you play this? Why don't you that? And I go, I learned it. And then I forgot it because I never used it. Some guitar playing for me, it's. I. I used to play if you. If I show old videos of me. I used to play way more technical than I do now. Way, way more technical back 20 years ago because I was keeping up on it all the time. I was playing it all the time. I used to be in a very, very technical band as a guitar player, and it was very stressful. I did not enjoy it at all. In fact, what happened with that band, I love the band, but I left the band and then one of my best friends, who was a better guitar player, me, I convinced him he should join the band and replace me. So when I left that day, I said, I am leaving. You should audition, my friend. And they. They were like, oh, he's amazing. And. And when I left, he said, he goes, these guys are great. I said, oh, so great. I said, it's just. It's too much for me every day. I used to have to. I used to have to warm up an hour every day just to go to band practice to be on top of those guys. And I was the rhythm guy, the lead. It was so. So I'm just saying I like how I like playing it. I like it. I like it. Keeping it dumb and simple. It's fun for me. I think that's what 20 years as a bass player did. All right, note. I want to thank you guys for hanging out this Friday, and I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. Play some guitar, maybe look at some guitars, and then play some guitar again. And I just want to thank you guys for joining me this Friday. And as always, have a great weekend and Know youw Gear. The Know youw Gear Podcast Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon Members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you.