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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 405. Hope you guys had a fantastic week. Ready to start a weekend talking about guitars maybe? Well, maybe we'll do guitars a little bit. And anyways, as always, I want to give a big shout out to the patrons who support the channel and the channel members. Their names are in green. If you see them here, that means they're supporting us through YouTube. And if they're supporting on the Patreon Channel, you know, because they're funding this podcast and have for 405 episodes. And as always, thank you to the moderators. You'll see their names in blue with a blue wrench. And they help facilitate links and help us send me questions that I might be missing. All kinds of fun stuff. And I want to thank them, as always, because otherwise it would be. It would suck about that. Without them. It would suck. That's a pretty much easiest, best way to put that. Hockhead418 says, can't wait till episode 420. All right, I know why, right? That was a thing. Is that a thing anymore? I feel like when I was a kid, right on 4 20, you're like, oh, it's 420. And, you know, I think. I think pot had a weirder connotation when it was a different. It was so different. It's like, I don't know how to explain it to people, you know, that are younger. Like, it was this thing and it was. It was illegal and now it's legal and it's just. It's weird. And sometimes I. Everybody's got different beliefs of it. I always just kind of look at it now, like, I kind of understand why, now that it's legal, why it was illegal. But what do I know? All right, thank you. John Little says, watching for years. Thank you. I appreciate you very much. And let's get into some stuff. Let's get into some questions. I will be doing a Guitar of the Week. This one was a highly requested one. And I can't remember if we did this one before. I think we did. I just don't think I did a full Guitar of the Week on it. And it's got a funny story, so it was worth sharing. But it is, I would say, the two guitars that I get the most emails about consistently. Not only from the podcast but just for YouTube videos, without a doubt. If is this guitar and the framus right there behind me. With the P90s today, I didn't know why it's the theme. But today is not all. But it's mostly themed semi hollows day because it's all semi hollows up there, like hollow bodies and semi hollows. Anyways, yeah, the framus gets a lot of questions because it's a very weird, unique guitar, but that is a framus. Anyone who's interested, that's what that guitar is. Okay, so. And then we'll talk about the other guitar today. I hope everybody enjoyed this week's deep Dive. I was able to get it out, and I have a bunch more, I think this week coming up with the first week, we go back to doing two again a week. Obviously, I had some. Some issues going on, and so I had to address them. You know, you got to take care of your health first kind of thing. So that slowed me down. X Masc. I almost feel like just. I start messing up names on purpose, and then maybe by accident I'll get the name right. Anyways. X Mus kapoo C Po Man. I'm sorry, man. Anyways, it says, hey, is it more efficient to adjust your truss rod with the string tension on or not? Yeah, I would say it's more efficient. You know, it's funny is it's a. It's one of those things. I didn't realize until I started doing YouTube that so many weird things were controversial, right? It was like a weird. Like, there was a few things that hit me, like, oh, yeah, of course, you know, like, oh, mahogany is warmer than maple. Like, what? And then the anger started in the Internet. Sure, I can understand why. I guess I can understand why that was a trigger for everybody, but. But the thing that threw me for a loop was when I did some adjustments guitars, and one of them was like, how are you don't adjust the guitar ever with the strings on. And I'm literally. That's how it's done. I mean, you could do it without strings adjusting the truss rod. But I think maybe, and here's why I realize now that part of the problem with guitar talk, just in general, as a society, as a group of musicians, as all of us out there, the nerds, the professionals, all of us. The problem is that this equipment that we love, it didn't outdate. So, like, it's. Imagine if you would. I have no concept of how my car works out in front of my garage right now. I have no Concept of it. I open the hood and it's got a big plastic panel that blocks like 90% of the of the engine from me. When I worked on an engine as a kid, you know, there was a carburetor, right? Then there was fuel injection. Now I'm like, I don't even understand what's going on, right? Like, I talk to my friends that still work on their cars and like, what you got to get, Phil, is this computer thing and it plugs in, it's going to tell you. And I'm like, wow. So what I'm getting at is you can imagine, because car technology changed so much, that someone who gave you some advice on how they fixed their car 30 years ago would probably work for a guitar. A car that's 30 years old, but a new car would be just absolute nonsense, right? And not in a negative way. I'm just like, you'd be like, I'm looking all over this Kia and I don't see a single carburetor anywhere. You'd be like, what, what are you talking about? It's on top of the engine, you dumbass. You know? Right. It would be that kind of experience. I, I figured out over the years of doing guitar and guitar instruction is guitar players tend to focus on when they start a guitar or learning to work on guitars as being. That's the, the way guitars work now. So what I mean by that is there was probably a time when old guitars with old truss rods and old things, especially when the truss rods were basically a coat hanger, right? I mean, the first truss rods weren't adjustable. Think about that very first truss rods ever put in guitars. Not adjustable. Adjustable truss rod was a selling feature that was added. You're like, you could tighten this thing, you could adjust it, right? And now we have, you know, dual action or Biflex trucks, rods, we have carbon fiber rods. So there's just so much more involved. So I would say, and I've said this before, a long time ago when you were talking about modern guitars and modern guitars, I want to say doesn't have to have a dual action truss rod, but just a modern guitar. And I think that's makes sense. I hope somebody, when I say modern, I mean like 10 years ago. I'm still talking about guitars even from the 60s and the 50s, but guitars that are made on the modern platform in which guitars are still made, in other words, having adjustable truss rods and sometimes reinforcements in the neck and stuff like that, you can adjust them with the string tension on no Problems whatsoever. Your major concerns, of course, are you can damage the strings when moving the Allen wrench or the adjustment tool. You know, you can hit the side of the strings. A lot of players like me, we tend to, especially if it's a three on three headstock, we tend to move the two strings, the G and the D, and move them, you know, loosen them a little bit and move them out of the way just so we can get some, you know, get in there and make the adjustment. But for every person has told me that you can't adjust the truss rod with string tension on, I've pointed out yet another guitar tech on the road with a famous rock star or blues player or someone who's literally doing just that. They have to make adjustments like that all the time. Adjustments are very common, especially when traveling. It's just really a common issue with guitars when traveling, you know, especially going from extreme climate changes. So. So yeah, is it. It's more efficient to do it with strings on. It's totally fine to do with the strings on. My guess, and this is my disclaimer, is that if you're looking at the guitar and it's concerning you to do that, then you probably have a reason for thinking that maybe it is what I'm talking about some old guitar with a different kind of truss rod where the truss rod's really not holding the tension. This is back to the same question. It ties in with the questions been asked over the years, which is like, can I leave a guitar without strings on it? Absolutely. It can be done. Especially modern guitars. Everybody's like, yeah, but the neck will bow. No, that truss rod is going to pretty much especially, like said, if it's carbon fiber rods in it, if it's a truss rod in it, Biflex truss rod, odds are that thing is going to make that neck want to do what it wants to do. And then if you added like quarters on, you know, onto the. Onto wood, you know, cortisone wood or multi laminate, next they're even going to take it. Even better things I caution people not to do with the strings off for prolonged periods of time or probably at all that matter, but prolong leaning against things. I wouldn't, I wouldn't take the tension off the neck, like the strings and lean it against the wall, you know, or anything like that. I mean, it's just. It's not a good idea. But in your case, I have personally, not once, but dozens of times I have left my personal expensive guitars. And I only say that because Obviously, you know, I'm trying to tell you that I treat all my guitars the same. Whether they cost me a hundred bucks or you know, $1,000 or whatever, 2,000, 3,000, whatever. I treat them all the same pretty much. What I mean by that is I treat them all like basically on what they think they could take. And I have had a dozen times in my life where I've taken the strings off a guitar left in the case for six months EAS before I go, oh yeah, I should put strings on that and put strings up and it's fine. Now. Can something go wrong? It can. I mean, I'm not telling you that to be willy nilly and just do whatever you want. You know, you got to take your, you know, your mileage may vary. You could have a neck twist, you could have all kinds of issues that could happen. But is it likely happen? It's not likely happen. It's more likely not to happen. But it can happen. And if that concerns you, don't do it. But also don't freak out if it happened. I've had people freak out cause they're like, oh, I haven't had strings on my guitar for three weeks. Do you think I should take it to a tech and have it serviced before I like. No. Put strings on it. It's gonna be fine sometimes. Worst case scenario is the neck has adjusted slightly and you'll notice your action a little higher or lower. Based on whether or not the neck has some relief in it now or if it's backbone a little bit again, you'll just make your adjustments. I'll freely tell you that no one should be concerned turning a truss rod if you're doing it the correct way, which is using the absolute correct tool. That's the most important thing. I've dealt with more stripped truss rods than broken ones. Breaking a truss rod is not very common. It's very hard stripping truss rods all the time. It's like stripping screws. It's just use the wrong screwdriver bit, you're going to screw it up and strip out the screw. Um, same thing with your truss rod. You know, you don't expect somebody to put a small Phillips head screwdriver on a large screw and not have a problem where you stripped out the center. Same thing with a truss rod. You use the. So to me, if you use the correct tool and you just make micro adjustments and that's just the word I like, you know, small adjustments and you, you shouldn't have. Never have a problem. For the most Part it shouldn't be something that, that keeps you up at night is. That's my thought on that. So let's see. Worst case scenario, Chris caught the joke. I didn't even know I was making a joke. Chris, thank you. Dad humor is, it's in your DNA. Stupid, stupid dad humor. Just I think you get to an age or you either, you don't even have to have kids that have dad humor. Just you get to a certain age and all of a sudden it's just built in. This stupid jokes are built in. Okay, so here's a joke. I'm going to tell you guys a joke. So a person goes to a job interview and the interviewer says, hey, can you explain this four year gap in your work history? And they said, yes, I went to Yale. And they go, really? You're hired. He's like, great, when can I start the job? All right, that's a slow burn One. Definitely a dad joke for those of you that get it in a minute. And the rest, enjoy. Okay, so let's. Sometimes I start reading a comment. I'm like, I don't know if it's a. Ah. Somebody said they had dad jokes before. Kid. They had kids. Yeah, that would be me. I was, I was designed to be a dad. It was, I was just so lame that it really, if it didn't happen for me, it would just have been weird. I used to tell everybody. Now my kids are. Of course I don't have kids anymore. I have adults, right? They're all grown up and they're gone. But when my son was born, you know, everybody was like, oh, are you excited to be a dad? I go, I don't know, I'm just excited to go into toy stores and not look like a 30 year old person in a toy store. I have a reason. I have a kid here now. Now I have a reason to be in this toy store. Okay, so here, this message or this subject question came from Jesse. Thank you, Amanda for sending it to me. Says, hey Phil, happy Friday. How hard is it to cut your own pickguard? Is it worth it for me or to just pay someone else to make one? Custom collar pick guard. Okay, so a couple things. Difficulty is not so much the difficulty. You, you know, some people, if you have the time, you can make your own. You know, you get, you just buy the right bit, you'll be fine. You can get that at Stumac. And if you don't want to buy theirs, you just like said, go to St. Mac. Look for the bit I have One, it's got a little roller wheel goes around the. I did a bunch of pick guards. I. I stopped doing pick guards because here's why. If on a budget, the pickard. The markup on pickard is so high, it's probably one of the highest margins there is in. In a part that I can think of. I mean, a, you know, $4 of material, somebody's gonna charge you 30, 40, $60 to custom cut. However, I will tell you what I don't like about doing it. It is messy. It's. It's the equivalent of doing drywall work for. For guitar people. It's messy, messy work. So I did a few as a tech for years. And then essentially, if I wasn't just modding ones, you know, those I wouldn't send out to do because, like, I can just cut my own, you know, pickup. Pickup spot, or do something like that real fast for the customer. Just do that with my router and that'd be fast. But if I was cutting pick arts, I would just source that to somebody because I'm like, you know, it just. It's easier for me. So. But if you want to do it yourself, it's not incredibly hard to do. It's one of those things where, uh, the time does have a dividend because the time it takes you to learn it and do it still, you would save money. Maybe not on one pick guard, but on multiples. I always thought once I. Because I. What I did is I bought a couple jigs and then I bought a. The router bit that stumax sells a hat that's specially specifically made for pick guards. And I thought, oh, I'm gonna always do my pick cards now. And I just. I told you guys, I just hate anything that makes more mess than I hate anything. That the cleanup is longer than doing the actual product project. It just kind of sucks. So, you know, that's what's great about soldering. It's wearing adjustments and even sanding. You know, sanding it. You know, it makes a mess. But I mean, at least it makes sense. You're sanding for a long time. So if I sand for two hours and I clean up for an hour, I don't feel horrible. But, man, I hate it when I do something for 10 minutes, and then it's an hour cleanup. And then the big thing about the mess, I should tell you, that's specific to pick gu. Mess that's different than dust is it becomes. Really has a static charge to it, so it sticks on everything. Your arm hairs It's. You're caked in it. You're caked in it. So again, it just depends. I would say, like, I have a friend who buffs guitars for a living, and he probably doesn't give a crap because he's used to like that. So he's like, yeah, it's just standard operating because he's here for me, but. But yeah, for you. I'd recommend. Give it a try. Maybe you'll be the opposite of me. Maybe one day you'll message me here and say, hey, Phil, I did it. Now I'm making them all the time. I can tell you, I do have a couple friends across the country that make a killing making pick guards. Most of them use a CNC machine now, but, man, that's how they started just making pick guards. Because they just know people don't want to make them. And some people don't want to inform themselves about how much the margin is on them because, like I said, it's not uncommon to pay 60 bucks for a custom pickguard. And, you know, nowadays, I mean, you can get a piece of material for nothing. There. Let's see. Regan says, hey, Phil, did you hear that scar? My guitar's channel was hacked. Yeah, Sean reached out to me. I gave him some suggestions, and then he got his. I saw his channel back on. So I don't think my suggestions helped so much because I really didn't have anything good to help him with. Just like I told him, here's a YouTuber that I knew happened to it. Maybe you can reach out to him or whatever. But before I could even follow up, I saw that it was back up. Yeah. So, yeah, it gets hacked. It's unfortunate, it happens to YouTube channels quite often. I mean, it's everybody. It's just a reminder to everybody all the time. You don't even have to have a YouTube channel. Just protect yourself as much as you can. Because they're out there. They're out there trying to hack everything. I mean, that's just, you know, it's a sucky time and it's a really scary thing. The. Yeah, just think of last. Last time I had something like that happen. It's when, you know, your credit card gets stolen, and all of a sudden they're like, did you buy flowers in Russia? And you're like, no. And you're like, did you buy gas in Wisconsin the same day? Like, what? Who's this person that's buying gas in Wisconsin and flowers in Russia on the same day? That's a true story. By the way, that's something that a person on a credit card phone call asked me. Did these. Are these your purchases? I'm like, what kind of life do you think I'm leading here? So anyways, Gray Harris says, hey, Phil. This is also from Amanda. Hey, Phil. Just got my first telly and I noticed it has a metallic chime while I'm playing, and it's particularly noticeable when I stop playing. Is that normal? Well, the problem is the term metallic chime. I have a kind of like an idea what I think that might mean to me, but I don't know what it means to you, so I don't know. What a great question. I don't know. You know, I, I, you know, terms like sitar or ringing or buzz, those kind of mean something to me. Metallic chime. It could be just the, the strings on the headstock are ringing. You're not used to that. Or the bridge itself. I, I just don't know. I would say that if it's your first telly, maybe, and if you're not enjoying that particular chime, maybe change the strings to a different brand. You know, one of the things, I know it sounds silly, but I don't have a reference of what guitar you bought. I don't know if it's like, you know, made in USA or whatever, but even my experience is even if you buy a really nice USA Fender, you might get really cheap strings. So always change your strings whenever you get a new guitar. If there's an issue. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to say throw any, you know, every guitar you get, just throw the strings away. That's kind of wasteful. But if I get a guitar and anything doesn't feel right, the first thing I do is restring it. Two reasons. One, new strings. Maybe the problems with the string, maybe the problems with how they restrung it. So that alleviates things. There's a podcast. I have it. We just filmed it this week. It's a bonus podcast and one of. With somebody. I'm not going to tell you who yet or anything. I'm just going to tell you that one of the conversations we had with, which was really interesting, was about strings and how just cutting the string at the end of a string wrong could cause all kinds of problems, you know. And so restringing is what I would recommend, not only to see if that saves you the issue or changes the problem, but also it's a great way to get intimate with the guitar instead of just poking around and Trying to hear things. Restring a guitar. I find every time I restring a guitar. This is from just years of restringing people's guitars. When you restring a guitar, you kind of get a sense of it, if that makes any sense. Like, oh, okay, I see how this wants to sit into the satellite. I see this, you know, and may. And you notice things like, oh, I thought maybe you should have more break angle here. So just a, just a thought there. Hold on. I was Susan. Susan says, hey Phil, I love the PV Haggy vid. Yeah, somebody. You know, you guys. If you guys didn't see it. So it's this, this Hagstrom PV hybrid guitar. I didn't think the video would do that great. Was one of those. In fact, if you notice there was this. It's funny, I kind of feel bad now. It's one of those things. You just don't know what the Internet's gonna like. The original video was 21 minutes long. I think what you guys saw was 16 minutes long. And some of the stuff in the. The middle I chopped out for flow purposes. I was like, ah, no one's gonna care about this. So if I make it a little faster, maybe it'll be more interesting. And nothing, you know, super crazy got cut out. But a couple of the, you know, measurements and couple the deeper dive side of stuff. But what's funny about the guitar was. So how that happened was I was at Zim's Guitars and which is in Mesa and Zims was in there. I just had some pedals to get rid of and my Shauna was out of town. That's just how it works. She. She went down to Tucson and so I was like, okay, I got a couple pedals here in this box. It's in there in my garage. And I'm like, I'll go down and see if there's a pedal I can trade for. And I went down there and I did trade for a pedal. But when I was there, Zim's son was there. Cause Zims wasn't there. And he's like, we're talking. And he said, hey, did you ever get any really junky trades when you had a store? And I said, not really because we didn't buy. We only traded. So most people traded up. So they usually had something pretty good. I go, are you talking about a buy or trade? And he goes, well, this is a buy. We bought this stuff. And so he tells me, yeah, you would never believe it. So the story I told in that video Was obviously you guys heard is that a woman came into their store and sold them some items, saying, hey, I'm cleaning out. I think he said her house. But she might have said her dad's house. I don't remember that part. Anyways, and she's like, I got some stuff to sell. And she had like a little. He said she had a little amp and then she had a. A Fender Telly bullet. So a USA made Fender telly Bullet neck that was in a box. So she had that and then this guitar. And you know, and so they gave her a value for it, essentially hoping to pretty much make a little bit of money off it. Not a lot, obviously. The guitar, they were like, they were. He was saying, he said when he showed to me, he goes, you want to see this crazy thing? He went in the back and grabbed that and he goes, probably won't even sell. So we'll probably just take it apart for parts. And when I was playing it, I just. It was. He was talking and we were talking and maybe two minutes went by and I hadn't sat the guitar back or handed it back. And so you understand, not everybody's the same way. But let me tell you how I work, boy. When I get a guitar and I don't like it, I just can't wait to get rid of it. It's like hot potato. It's like, ah, I'm hating this. Please. Like, I don't even want to touch this guitar anymore. Whatever it is, I just don't like about it. That guitar just kept playing it, playing it. And I was just so impressed that it was working because it was such a mess. And I was like, man, this is a hot mess. But man, it's working. It sounds fine. It's playing great. At the time, I couldn't tell. The intonation was way out. It's just not something I could hear how it was really bad when I got home. And I was like, oh yeah, this intonation is really bad, so we'll have to adjust that. And so anyways, and as I was showing it to my wife and telling her the story, I was like, yeah, maybe it's a video. I go, I was thinking, maybe it could be. I just didn't know. And one of the things I like to do on the channel is I like to do a $3,000 guitar deep dive. And then I like to do a hundred dollar guitar deep dive. And I like to do a, you know, a pedal video. I like to just kind of tap all the corners right, like you know, here's a how to video and you know, just have something for everyone kind of thing, you know, because otherwise it always feels like, look what you can buy, look what you can buy, look what you can buy, look what you can buy. And I always worry because sometimes, you know, it's not even about economic issues. Like maybe you're not in the, you know, you don't have the finances to buy something. So watch somebody saying, hey, you're missing out if you don't buy this thing. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to buy anything. I don't want to buy anything and yet I want to talk about guitar or hear guitar. And I think that's what the podcast he does serves for a lot of people. It's like we get to talk about guitar but instead of, you know, like, hey, are you going to buy the newest pedal and be cool or are you going to be that guy that doesn't have the newest pedal? Not cool. And so anyways, I thought this is fun. And so I did the video and put it out and you guys really responded to it really, really well and so really cool. I love all the feedback. By the way, the best, the best name. So many great names. By the way. Thank you guys so much for trying to name it. The name that just had me in hysterics was the IKEA caster Made in Sweden's Assembled at Home. Somebody put that in the comments, by the way, that was just epically funny. I mean everybody else had great names, but that, that was hilarious, right? Made in Sweden, Assembled at Home was just great. So if you haven't seen the video, you might want to watch it. It was really cool and as you can see, it's right here. I have no intention to get rid of it and or modify it. Somebody's like, are you going to modify it? I may, I just don't know if I can bring myself to do it. I may swap out the Cluson tuners or the style tuners on that for locking Cluzon. It's better for functioning locking Clissons. And I have to be honest, I don't even want to do that. I kind of feel like this guitar needs to live its life as it is forever. And so something I didn't. Something that got clipped out of the video. It just happens for, again, for flow purposes, which I didn't mention, it is a 12 string guitar. So it's got 12 holes in that bridge. And that's why the neck, the neck pocket is bigger. So he shoved that neck in there. And so that was a 12 string guitar at one point. So very interesting. Just really cool. And you know, again, you know, I just, man, you know, I, I try stuff like that to see if it works because deep down I want to see how far I can push the Deep Dive kind of concept series where it's not just, this is the newest thing. Maybe it's like, you know, like, here's, like I did the 1977 vintage Ibanez idea. Like, here's a vintage guitar that's not expensive and not crazy and maybe you should look at this. So I, I'm glad you guys respond to that stuff. It's, it's, it's perfect for me because it's just, it's so much fun to make the video. It's just, I just turn on the camera and I just go and it's great. And I don't have to think about, you know, a lot of stuff. So. Really cool. So, yeah, very, very cool. A very cool guitar. And so, you know, I'm just kind of in the back of my head hoping that somebody reaches out one day and says, here's my pictures of me with it. I'm the original owner. And I'll be like, oh, wow, cool. But, yeah, I want to leave it alone. And like I said, a lot of you are saying we should mod it up. I just, I just don't know if I can. I think, like I said, I think the thing that appeals to me, I really believe that if I modify it, even by changing the tuning keys, I might kill the mojo, whatever that mojo is. But then I'm also like, tuning stability is nice. So it's just. You get the idea. Okay. Fast Freddy, Fast Teddy, Fast Eddie. Geez, so many. Okay, Fast Eddie333 says. What's the purple telly? This is a, There's a video series on this. This is a, this is a GNL ASAT special and purple that they made. And what's funny was it wasn't going to stay here and I kind of fell in love with it recently and it's really tough. Here's why it's been a really emotional thing because as you guys know, I. Something comes in, something's got to go out. You know, you can't keep everything just so. I have another amazing GNLA set that's green. It's amazing. And I thought, okay, well, there's no reason I'm keeping that one. I'm going to keep the green one. So. But I think I've actually decided I like that one better. And so we'll see. I'll let you guys know how it ends out. I'm sure it'll be decided by the end of the month which way I go. But something's got to go. It doesn't have to be a GNL. So maybe I end up keeping both GNL's and something else goes. But again, something has to go. So like, it's just. That's how it works. And then sometimes I try to take as much time as I can to make these decisions because of the fact that, you know, later you look back and go, ah, I should have kept that one and this. Right? So, all right, he's Lee Leith says Phil sounds apologetic for falling in love with the G and L. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, maybe it sounds apologetic. You know what it is, is, is. Yes, it's not. Was not intended. That guitar was a. I didn't pick this guitar. I kind of stated this before. GNL approached me and said, hey. They go, hey, how about sending you guitar to do a deep dive? And I said, hey, how about doing a video series? You know, kind of walking every through the steps of building a guitar and stuff. And they asked me, okay, what do we want to build you? And I said, oh, I have an amazing gnl. You guys built that green one? The green. The metallic margarita. Margarita Metallic gnl asat. I said, why don't you just build something and send it as like a loner? And then, you know, and then just to get the videos, you know, for everybody, we'll get. Do something. And so, you know, that's why I'm like this way. Because I'm like, ah, man, who would think I fall in love with that as much as I did? But I, for some reason it's doing something that my other guitars. That's why it's actually there. It was there because I was playing through the Princeton the other morning, like all, all morning. Instead of doing something I was supposed to do, I got caught up doing that. Okay, let's see. DT says, why do you need a custom guitar shop guitar when you can put together your own guitar? Well, the answer is simple. Because you can afford a custom shop guitar. That's the reason why you buy it. There's no other reason. I believe. And I just my philosophy. And it's just whatever it is, it's just I've been stuck on this since the very first episode. So 105. Sorry, 405 episodes, in my opinion, has not wavered from what I'm about to say again, custom guitars, whether you buy custom shop instruments or you put yourself together a custom guitar like a parts of Caster, or you modify your guitar, let's say you buy Harley Ben, you mod it up. They're about having something specific to your desires and needs and something someone else doesn't have. And there. It could be all of those things. It could be a combination of things. So it could be, hey, look, I just want a guitar. You know, I just want a Les Paul, but I want one with a Floyd Rose and P90s, because that's what makes me happy. And maybe that's specific to you. And sometimes it's, no one has this but me. And that's. That's, you know, that's a thing. I participate in all of the things I just said. I like having things that no one has. It's very exciting to me. It has nothing to do with being on YouTube. It's. I've been that way since I can remember having a guitar, since my very first Aria Pro. It's not my first guitar, but my first Aria Pro where I started doing things to it cosmetically. You know, I think it starts even as simple as a strap. Think about when you buy a guitar strap and you're like, you want something personal to you. You know, again, you know, it's not just a tool because it is. It's a fashion accessory. You know, there's players change out components on guitars as much as for looks as they do for tone. It's very common. And there's something about having that thing that no one else has. And what's great about this and this guitar proves it, I think, because the comment section alone proved it. When I say this, I'm pointing at the, the. The Franken Sweet or the, The Ikea Caster. It's the, the idea that, you know, he put that together and made it work. You know, the jealousy you have for this guitar. And that's the word. And the reason I say that is if you read the comment sections in that video, a lot of people are jealous. I was jealous. That's how I knew something was special about the guitar. When I looked at that guitar, I didn't see a cheap guitar. I saw someone who had a great time and that made me like, want this to. Because I don't want the guitar. I do, but I want. I want to have what he had, which is. I want to have the joy. Somebody played the crap out of the thing. That's fun, man. Playing Is fun. So the more somebody plays, I think that's kind of the. The thing, right? And so I, I think that's what's great about modding your own guitars. It's. It's personal to you, and it's cool, and it's different. It's kind of like when you wear out spots, parts on the guitars. I used to freak out, you know, a long time ago when a guitar got dinged and dented. And it was just the thing that would traumatize me because I. All I could think of was like. Like, almost like an accountant. I was like, oh, you know, it's like, I didn't see a ding. I saw a guitar devaluement. $700 Ching, you know, whatever. And I'd be like, oh, this is horrifying. And I. Now I kind of just look at it as like, oh, that happened. That happened. And it's part of the guitar story now, and I'm fine with it. And I, I, I don't know why. It just looks. It's like, it just looks like a lot of fun to have a guitar like that. But back to the custom shops or, you know, parts of casters. Whatever, you know, whatever it is, man, mod your guitars. I'm a fan of both, and I can tell you that people will be envious either way. Isn't that funny? They could look at your $10,000 Murphy lab and go, Wow, I wish I had $10,000. And then some people go, you know, wow, look at your squire all decked out. Like, why don't I deck out my squire like that? So you can have something that inspires people or makes them jealous easily. Either way, one thing I do I did recognize, and I think I. Part of why my philosophy is like, this is I remember one of the. I remember often at the store, one of the things that people would say to you all the time is they would tell you about the one that got away. You know, this guitar that they had that's gone. And I realized for a while, after a while, a lot of them, it's not romance. I thought it was romantic. I thought it was like, I once had a 63 Strat. I'll never have that again. And it's like, oh, I'm like, oh, that's so horrible. You know? Right. You know, and some of those stories are true. You know, it's like, hey, I had a guitar, and it was lost in a fire. Hey, I had a guitar, and it was stolen out of the back of my car. Hey, I had this guitar and, you know, and, you know, something happened to it and. Or, hey, I had this guitar and then life got crappy and I had to sell it. I'm like, hey, I. Come on, that one. I always identify. I go, yeah, I sold all my crap. When I joined the army, I had, like, I had it. No, it had nowhere to stick it. It was no one to put. You know, I could leave it with a friend or I could pay to, you know, store it. So I sold it all when I joined. My point is, I used to think that was romantic, and then I started realizing that a lot of it, I'm say half just because I want to be nice, but I don't feel like it's 80% of the time. But half the time, it wasn't romance. It was money. It'd be like, man, I had a 62 strat. Wish I had it now. I'd sell it. I'm like, well, then you don't want that strat. You want 20 grand. Just wish for 20 grand. Just go, I wish I had 20 grand. I wish I had 20 grand, too. Oh, man, I had a blah, blah. And it's worth 80k now. Wish I still had it. No, you don't. You just wish you had the 80 grand, right? You just. That's. And then I would go, like, that's crazy. And it's. Because. So to me, I, I think of it as it's. I, I. The romance part of it is more appealing to me than the money part, because money. I'm like, just wish for money. You don't need to wish for a thing to sell to get money. That's. That seems like a really randomly weird thing to wish for. You might as well just play the lottery. Lottery and go, I hope I win. You'd be better off for it than wishing to have a thing that you can sell and get money. So there. I don't know. So that's it. Funny enough, we'll go on to the next subject. Okay. What's weird is Amanda sent me a bunch here, and I don't see him. Oh, here it is. Okay. Guitar nut and a baline. Miss. Since I have an old carven horizontal 212 that I'd like to convert to vertical. Will it be top heavy? No, no. It shouldn't matter. Like, whether they're side by side, it's fine. Whether they're offset, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If one speaker has got a bigger magnet than the bottom, there's no reason why the Cabinet should be top heavy. You just want to make sure you put the rubber feet in the right spots and corners. I've never seen anything like that to be an issue. I mean, I guess in a weird world, if you told me you had some kind of weird JBL giant monstrosity magnet 12 inch speaker on one and the other one was like this, you know, crate off brand speaker with a tiny little magnet, maybe you'd want to make sure that the big magnet was on the bottom. But I, I'm just being precautious because I'm giving you the device. But no, there's nothing you should worry about there. Just make sure you have rubber feet on the sides. Okay. This one came from Paul or Amanda sent me. Paul says. Hey Phil, as always, I love the deep dives. Just wondering what the level of Difficulty swapping a 21 fret to 22 fret on a telescope. I've never done that, so I don't know what the difficulty is. I don't know why you would do it. Thank you. I mean, you know, look, as, as the Peb Hagstrom guitar is proven, you could do whatever you want. I mean that guy took a fret off in the neck, but you can, you can do whatever you want. But to me, in today's world, this is why one of my fondness for this crazy Frankenstein guitar is that it's from a time of that doesn't exist. Now you could just get yourself a really nice 22 fret neck and stick it on that Squire, I mean really inexpensively. So, you know, to the point where it shouldn't cost you anything. You could find an aftermarket, nice quality 22 fret, aftermarket neck that will fit in that Squire pocket, put it in and then sell the Squire neck for probably what that neck's gonna cost you with very little effort. So I mean, other than that, you know, adding a fret, it's really just a measurement thing. So as long as there's enough, like sometimes they, they do the overhang on the fretboard. If you can't, if there's enough space on that fretboard, you could slot it and insert a 22nd fret there. That could, that could be a thing. I've never been asked to do that. That's not something that you know. So I've never done it. I've never had anybody ask me to add frets to a guitar. I've actually only had the opposite. I've had people have me remove a fret. I've actually Taken Fender style guitars. Not Fenders, but Fender style guitars that were 22 frets and removed the 22nd fret. And then round off the bottom of the neck so that the fretboard looks like it was never there. I did that about two times over a period of about a decade or so. I had two different scenarios where somebody wanted that. I don't remember exactly what the details, why each one. I remember something to the effect of maybe something was in the way when they were picking and they just wanted it out of the way. Or maybe they wanted to move the pickup forward. I forgot why we did it, but we did it. So yeah, can be done. Let's go to the next one. By the way, I'm looking in the comment section by the way for you guys too. If Amanda misses. Amanda's usually great at grabbing everybody who's grabbing question marks first. So you guys know I don't want you to ever. I realize sometimes that if I don't say things, you might think things. Cause Amanda sends me everything. Let's be very clear. There is no issue with Amanda here ever. What I have here onto my right is a screen. And so, you know, Amanda has to just, you understand what she's going through. She's the screenshot these and then send them to me through WhatsApp, which is a very cumbersome system. I wish YouTube had made a system that's more efficient than what we have here. And I'm. I've been trying to think of a better way to do this that especially for her on her side. But so, you know, she sends me everything. So I just want you guys to know that when I miss stuff, it's just because time, you know, or maybe I read it and I go, that's too, you know, to focus on the one subject. Maybe it doesn't help. A lot of people are. I don't know. There's a ton of reasons why I may make a mistake and miss it. So. Okay, so S. Bootstrap says, hey, for someone who uses alternate tunings on the fly live, how likely is it that the neck will noticeably bow? It's not very problematic. Except for the only one. The only alternate tunings are not the problem because you're almost always tuning down to alternate tunings. Like, right. You're usually dropping, you know, like if you do a dad gad or something like that, you're usually dropping strings down. The only. Only thing I could think of that would be problematic in. In a constant thing done to a neck is maybe if you're doing that, you're tuning down, you're tuning back up, you're tuning down. And then maybe tune, try to tune up to like a baritone, like a B2B kind of thing. And that's a lot of tension on the strings right away and then. But I don't think to me if, if the guitar is quality, it's going to take that abuse. And when I say quality, I don't mean expensive. Don't confuse the two things, right? I, I don't, I don't want you to think I'm like, oh, if you buy yourself a two thousand dollar guitar, you have no problems. A dollar two hundred can do it, two hundred guitar can do it. It just needs to have a really good neck. And what I mean, really good, it means either very quality piece of wood. Maybe it's like I said in quarters on or something like that. Maybe has a better truss rod like we talked about earlier. Or, or maybe it's just thicker, thicker necks just take more abuse. It just, you know, just makes sense. All right. They just, they're, they take more force to move and therefore they stay in the. More likely to stay where they are. But you shouldn't have any issues at all that, that I would see. It's very common for musicians to do this on all kinds of guitars and all kinds of neck. Section 8 Guitarist. It's a good name. It's kind of makes me laugh. There's, there's a joke in there twice. There's two jokes in there in that. Section eight guitarist. Anyways, okay, so anyways, it says is intermittent humidifying worse than none at all? It can be in the idea that like, if I was going to say the thing that's going to affect your instrument the most is going to be going from wet to dry, dry to wet, back and forth. More so than hot to cold, more so than anything else. Because it's wood. It's basically a sponge, right? I mean there's a joke once I think I was told not so much a joke but a funny analogy that I liked which is like, you know, you could argue like, you know, you could take a sponge, a real sponge. You go, okay, there's a sponge. That's how it's absorbed water. And then the next thing is maybe you know, paper. And the next thing is like a piece of wood. You see how this works? And it would eventually get to like brick and then we get to like concrete. And then, right, we just go on maybe piece of steel. And each thing is going to suck Water a little bit less. So essentially, you know, a piece of wood's closer to a sponge than it is, let's say, a piece of steel. Right. That's kind of the takeaway. So my point is, is because it is a sponge, when you expose your instruments to humidity, they're going to suck it up, and then when you dry them out, it's going to come right back out. Right. It's. It's just how it goes. And it's harder to put it in than pull it out, the moisture that is. And so doing it all the time could have problematic effects. Sure. I have never. This is where it gets tough when you do repairs, a lot of repairs, which is why repair people sometimes are flawed. Like me is I'm going off of some of the advice I give and other repair guys gives are flawed in the idea that I'm giving you a fix. I did to a situation somebody told me happened, but I wasn't there. Like, people come in and go, hey, my guitar did this because of this. And then I fix it. And then in my mind, that was caused by the thing I have seen and heard. People bring me instruments and say, hey, look, you know, I went from Florida to Arizona, and I went back, you know, Right. Same thing. Humidity to dry. I was humidifying, and then I stopped for a couple months, and then I started humidifying. This is what happened. I've heard it happen. I fixed it, but I don't know necessarily, I've never seen it. My guitar, specifically, how I humidify is really simple. And this is the way I would recommend most people in dry climates to hunify. Now, keep in mind, if you live in a climate, first of all, if you own a dehumidifier, understand, I have no idea. Your world is as different to me as Mars. Like, I don't even understand dehumidifying. I've never owned one. I don't know a single person where I live that has one. So I just want to be clear that that's where it's important. But if you're like me and you've never owned a dehumidifier, then essentially you have two states that your guitar is in dry, and then you humidify it. Right now in my office is 48% humidity. That's great for me. So 50% is awesome. I add humidity if it breaks down past 30%. So if I come in and it's 28% humidity, I will put on the humidifier. I don't keep it. I don't keep the Instruments humidified. So, you know, I don't keep it constant. I just. When it dips down too low, I don't let it. So that's my recommendation for most people. Don't think about keeping your guitars in constant temp. Climate, temperature and climate. But keep them away from the extremes is what I. Kind of works for me and it works for me. So that's just how my mileage goes. Let's do. Michael says. Hey Phil, what's your predictions on the next Fender guitar releases? Are we going to see an American Pro 3 released by the end of this year? I have no idea. I'm still excited about the Fender standard acoustic caster guitar. That's probably the. The most excited I've been for offender. I've been pretty. As you guys know, I. I did not review the acoustic caster. Is that what it's called? The acoustic caster? Right. That's what the new one's called. Let's look this up. Just make sure. Sometimes I get 10 minutes into a speech about something and then somebody goes, that's not even what it's called. Acoustic caster. Okay, sure. No acoustasonic. See? Aha. That's why acoustic sonic. That's why it's important. I'm excited about the acoustic sonics. This is why you need to. This is why Google's my friend. Okay, so Sweetwater, let's see if they got them. So this is the most exciting thing I'm excited for. This right here. This guitar right here for. For 5.99. I have a. This is a pre order right now. I have a lead on getting one. I'm supposed to be getting one, hopefully through a sponsorship not from Fender but from a retailer said that they would supply me one. And so if that happens, great. If they don't, I'm just gonna buy one. Either way, I'm doing the video. Why? As you guys know, if you watch the podcast specifically, I was not interested in the Acoustic Sonics when they came out. It's just not something I'm interested in. It's. My opinion has not changed. I've played a bunch and here's what it is. It's not that they're bad. I have a couple friends who have them and they swear by them, they love them. And so, you know, and actually to put things in perspective, and this is probably the best perspective I can give you is I have a bunch of friends who got them for free from Fender for doing videos. And when I declined to do any videos. So here's What I will tell you about those friends, I would say half and I feel pretty safe. Half, they did a video, but trust me, they got rid of the thing as fast as they could. They were like, this is firewood. They hated it. The other half, they love it. They play it all the time. I see it all the time in their videos. They just love it. I've really kind of come to the conclusion this is a love hate relationship instrument. In other words, if it serves your purpose. I've been very upfront with what my issue is. My issue is for the price, especially the USA ones. When they came out, you can get the Godan A six for a lot less, especially used. And I like the Godin A6 as much, if not better. I mean just prefer it and just my preferences. So anyways, but. But what's great is go back here. I always hoped they were gonna come out with a squire for like 399 or something like that. 499. But this is even better offender with 4599. And, and I'm interested in this because this is truly something that makes sense to me. It's $600 is a lot of money, but it's also a entry level price. When I say entry like not entry, entry to barrier price. In other words, it's not entry like you're a beginner. It's a price point that a lot of people will experiment with. For $600, I'm willing. That's. I said if it's great. If one will send me out, I don't have to do it because that'll make. It makes it easier for my income, you know, for make the videos and have the costs. But if, if I have to buy one, I'm curious enough to buy one to see what I think of it. Because I think for $600 is interesting. So I'm interested about that. And especially I think that one's also made in Indonesia. That would be pretty cool. But I wouldn't be surprised if they. When they land. If they're made in China, we'll see. For the cost point and what they are, but also to predict what Fender comes out with next. I have no idea. I don't know. Because a couple things. One, they, you know, obviously they keep that stuff close to the chest. But I could see maybe American professional 3 series. Sure, why not? I don't know really. In my experience with Fender and Fender specifically, they tend to launch based on the economy. They are always been in tune, in my opinion with the market at play. So in other words, when, you know, when the cash is flowing, they got the high end guitars coming out. Every other, you know, every quarter there's something new exciting when the cash is tightening up. All of a sudden they got the entry level price point stuff or like I said, the entry, lower entry to barrier prices. So they seem to always be and be ready for adjustment. In other words, they're ready to do it. So what I mean by that is like you'll see it all the time. Like let's say if they, let's say if the market tightens up and no one's really buying any nice expensive stuff, I could see them coming out with more entry level price point amps and guitars over some more high end stuff. So we'll see. Which is really nice because one thing that tells you sometimes is when Fender releases stuff and you see it kind of tells you almost where the guitar market's at. Because Fender's not, you know, they're, they're not bad at the, they're not bad at the business part. My critiques of Fenders right now is the passion part is lacking like crazy. But the business part's always been dialed in. They know how to get all our money. I just don't like some of the stuff they're putting out. But they, but they, they're still getting our money. So let's see. Richard says, phil, can you do a tease guitar review? I don't know, I don't know what that is. Like if I got something new and tell you guys that some coming, I don't know. I, sadly enough I used to kind of tell you guys on the show, like, hey, I have these videos coming and then half the time the company's backed out and didn't happen. And then I felt done, so I stopped doing that. Or sometimes I'd mention the company and then you guys would buy a bunch of their stuff and they'd be like, well, why do we need to send something to him for? He's already sold a bunch of guitars for us. That actually happened more than once, at least a dozen times now. But the biggest problem I have now is the way we do content now. It's not released. I'm under no obligation to release anything by time, you know, so no company's like, hey, we want this by the date. Every once in a while I have an embargo date. But as you guys know, I very rarely am in those mass marketing campaigns that you see. And so my point is that I tend to release stuff Based on how well or not well the last video did to keep it varied and exciting. So let's do this. Now it's time for guitar of the week. Okay, so I'm gonna do a guitar of the week. It's a good timing for this. I. I've done this guitar before, kinda, but not a full guitar of the week kind of review kind of thing. And this is. This is. Like I said, the two most requested guitars that I get emails from from everybody is like, hey, what's that blue guitar with the P90 semi hollow behind you? Which is the framus? This is the other one. The other one is. What is this metallic guitar. In fact, actually, I should point out, not only do I. This one in particular, not only do I get emails. What is it? I constantly get emails. Is it for sale? It's not for sale. It's never gonna be for sale. I mean, there's no. I mean, never, like never for sale. If it ever was to go, it would be a giveaway and it would probably have to be for a charity. And there's no reason for me right now to do that. I can raise marinating for charities without having to do this. So what is this? This is a Charvel made in Mexico DK24. And that is customed out like crazy. So this is a double blue sparkle finish. So what looks tough? Let me go to the side cams. You can see here. It's very sparkled. We'll get into that. But what throws your eyes off is it is darker blue on the sides than it is towards the center. So it is fading to. It slowly fades out to blue. And yes, that is the know youw Gear logo that you can see. And then it slowly disappears into it. And then if you flip around to the back, which I have the backlight up, there's the other know your gear. This is officially the know your gear podcast logo. And this is the YouTube logo. That's how we discuss, you know, internally. We talk about this. Okay, so the story with the guitar is real, real simple. I've told it before. A couple years back, I did a guitar called the Great Guitar Build off with crimson guitars and a bunch of YouTubers and. And long story short, they're like, hey, you want to do a guitar and raise money for charity? I did. And what happened was I was somewhere. I don't know where I was. I don't remember. I was somewhere, and somebody came up to me and said, hey, Phil, do you remember me? My name's Brian. I'm like Oh, I remember you. And it was. His name is Brian. He owns a company called Painthuffer, and they make flake paint for everybody. Like every cool motorcycle, you know, bass boats, you name it. Like, if you're cool, you got Painthuffer paint or Flake, because they do a lot of this flake. And so he goes, man. So Brian was a customer of my store and he was like, man, I've been watching you on YouTube and I'm so excited to see that take off for you. I kind of miss not going to the store anymore and seeing you anymore. And he's like, do you remember when I went how. What happened was. I don't remember the story I gotta tell you. So I'm telling the story the way he remembers it. You know, it's not for any particular reason. Just sometimes when you're in retail, you just talk to so many people. He's like, do you remember the first time I came your store? And I said, no. And he goes, you came in and I was trying to buy a guitar, and I asked you a question and I made. He. I guess he made the comment that he's like, he's really looking for this one guitar, but he's gonna take this guitar. And so he was gonna buy the guitar I had. And I said, well, just so you know, the guitar you're looking for happens to be in a music store in Phoenix right now. And so he's like, really? And I told him, and I said, this is, you know, go and you know, go and tell them I sent you. I was. He went. And he bought the guitar and. And he's like that, you know, so he's like. And then he goes, I. I kept going back to your story. He goes, trying to give you money and just wouldn't take money. He's like. He's like, I came with it. I guess he had a problem once and I guess I fixed it for free. Anyways, he's telling me stories. And I was like, thank you. It was very kind. And he goes, I want to paint a guitar for you. And so the. The way the story worked out was I said, oh, really? I said, I'm doing this guitar for charity. Would you want to paint the guitar for charity? And he said, sure, sure. So paint hover painted the guitar A1. A once of one only color time. You know, one of the. The only. It's this specific color. It's one of a kind, one of a card and paint job. So he did the guitar for the great guitar build off and we auctioned the guitar, and. And that's in that story. But he came to me afterwards and he said, hey, Phil, I really wanted to make. I want to really paint a guitar for you. He's like, he's ha. He goes. He was more than happy to do charity. In fact, he's more than. He's like, I want to do the charity, and I still want to paint a guitar for you. And I said. He goes. Because I wanted to kind of say, thank you, Dio, or, you know, I was like, wow, that's really. That's really great. What do I. What do I say? No? So I said, well, I have this Charvel that I love, but it's boring, right? It was black. It was just boring. And so I gave it to him. And they did this custom flake finish, which is just crazy. And as you can see kind of there, you see. See how it's like darker blue on the edges? See how it's like it's shadowed in and then a lighter blue. So they did that. And then they didn't even tell, by the way. I didn't pick the color or anything. He's like, what color? You want to go? You're the paint guy. You. You come up with something. And so they did my logos and everything for me, and then when I got it back, I go, well, I gotta do something cool. So I reached out to the guys at Tesi Switch, because they're amazing. And Tesi Switch sent me this kill switch because I had a little. Had a mini switch, and I didn't want the coil split in there anymore because so I have a volume, a tone. They're both 500k, so it's important a second to know three way switch. Nothing fancy, no push pulls or nothing. This is a DiMarzio tone zone. And this is a DiMarzio PAF that fits into a humbucker spot. Now, I. I picked this because I had it. So I stuck it in and go. I have to pick up and stick it in there. So I. I played it. I go, oh, sounds good. And so I had the tone zone and I did that. And so anyways, and then I wired it up. So no coil splitting, no nothing. Just a kill switch. If I want a coil split, obviously it's a P90 in the neck. So I go there. This has a roasted maple neck. It has had fret sprout twice. So I've had it corrected. Now it's perfect. So just to let you know, that's something. And it came to locking Keys. And I've told this story before. I remember because I remember telling you guys this, that it originally had two string trees, but the guitar would not stay in tune. It was driving me crazy. And I am a string tree fan person. In other words, I don't have any like remove your. Lot of players don't like string trees. I actually like them. But for some reason these, the G and the D just were having problems. So I took the string tree out. That solved the problem. So that's why it has one string tree. So that this is it. So made in Mexico. DK24. Let's play it. Let me back up my seat so you guys can hear the pickups and stuff. What am I running through? I'm going to be running through that Morgan PR12amp. I have it mic'd up with a Sennheiser E609. And then I'm running pedals. So first you'll hear clean and I'm running Atlantic delay. And then for distortion I'm running an LPD87. The new version. The new version meaning the surf green looking one, not the black one. So the original ones were black. I have the original one and I have the new one, which to you guys probably is just the one they make. So let's go to the sidecan. You can see. Look at that. Little, little cooler, A little brighter. Let me again, let me move again. Okay, like so. Look at that. Easy enough. So here's some clean. Let's go ahead and switch that over. Neck pickup. This is also important to mention. The guitar is. I like all my guitars to have a purpose. This guitar is tuned a full step down. So essentially D to D. So you know, for the, for the rock. Cuz this is a, you know, it's a rock guitar. Okay, so let's go to clean. And this is the P90 and the humbucker. Okay, let's go ahead and add some gain and we'll show you. This is the bridge. This is the DiMargio tone zone. And here we go. Okay, this is the P90 with the store. Okay, so turn off the game. It's funny now that you guitar a week, it's like a. I feel like the podcasting rig has just gotten more and more and more elaborate over the years. This is so much stuff going on. It's like literally I feel like I'm flying a spaceship now with all the stuff that I have going on. Okay, so unplug that. If you're not familiar with this guitar, it has the output jacks in the back. Look at that. Little unique. And they still make this guitar. They make tons of versions of it. I. I love it. And then. And then, of course, we talked about this the last week. I have the surgical tubing basically here. Stop the springs from making some noise. I always leave the back plates off my guitars just because I'm lazy. Just. And that is it. It's got a spindle truss rod or a wagon wheel spoke wheel, truss rod adjustment right there. 24 frets. These are. I believe these are nickel. I don't think these are stainless steel at all. These are 24 jumbo nickel frets. And that's the guitar. The guitar of the week. So. But look at that in the gord. We should do something in the thumbnail. Let's see. I never posed the thumbnails. I always do these random screen grabs. Let's do this. Like, does anyone else make content and have to understand the whole thumbnail? You're always like, what happened? What is this? It's a stupid thing anyways. That's the. That's the guitar. Okay, so that's the guitar of the week. So now I can reference it when people email me and they go, what is that guitar? And I'll send them the link to this. So that's guitar of the week. Beautiful instrument, by the way. Yeah. Okay, so we have the next subject. Does anyone have any specific questions about that guitar? Brian says, I love. I understand the thumbnail deal. Yeah. It's a weird thing. By the way, I make my thumbnails totally against all of YouTube's recommendations. If you wrote a list, which you. You know they did. If you take the list, you could Google it. How YouTube says you should make a thumbnail. Put the list. I do none of those things. Not a single one. Not by any. But I'm not because I'm doing it on purpose. I just. Literally everything you recommend is. Don't do that. Just. I just can't. I can't get my head there. I can't get my head to give a crap. Okay. So soil says. Did you say parallel or series for the guitar? I would say these technically would be in parallel. They're not going to be in series, so they're not going to get. So if they were in series, they would get louder. And they're not. They're in parallel. So. But I don't even remember. It's one of those things, man. But I'm pretty sure I'm right what I'm telling you. But it could be. It could Be absolutely wrong. And I'm gonna be like, maybe. Who knows? So, okay, let's. Let's go to some other questions. Subjects. Let's refresh this. I still have the stuff you Amanda grabbed, but I'm also. I'm gonna grab a couple super chats, kind of keep those flowing. So we have that. This is Scent of a Wheelchair pillow. Says, hey, I can't get my 5th fret harmonic to ring on my PRS to save my life. Are there any adjustments I can make to help this wrap around the tail? So, fifth fret harmonic, Right? Unplug the guitar like an idiot. Let me. Let me get the. See, I didn't think I was gonna need to plug it back in. Okay, so let me plug it back in, because this will probably illustrate better. So I have to run some questions by you. So we're going to talk about the fifth fret harmonic right now. I'd like to point out I'm on the bridge. Okay, so I'm on the bridge pickup. I'm clean. I'm on the amp. Right? So we're going to. Okay, let's do that. Oops. Okay, so we got there. Sorry. Okay, so now what I want to show everybody is when you ask a question like that, it's just tough because, like I said, this is a podcast. It's really hard to do it because we're not interacting in real time, like a zoom call or something. But watch what happens when I do that again. Okay? Watch what happens if I switch to the neck pickup. Okay, so your high ones there. Oh, you know what? This guitar is doing it, which is great. I didn't predict that at all. Probably because it's the P90. I feel like I grab another guitar now. Oh, you know what? You said a prs, right? Hold on a second. Let me get a prs. Okay. Okay. Thank you, guys, for all the. All right, now I have a pure S. This is a 24 fret. Purest Miura. So on the bridge pickup. There you go. There's your fifth fret. Let's do the neck pickup. You see how they're dampened now? Like, this is. Pick this one. That one. Perfect. Well, let's do the B string. Hear that? Now watch what happens if I go to the bridge. See how much brighter that is now. Now, the funny part is without the guitar. In other words, I've turned the volume off. They're all there. You can hear them perfectly. So it could be your. If you're playing your neck pickup, that could do it. The placement of the pickups is very important when it comes to picking up those harmonics because like I just said, they're there no matter what acoustically, but sometimes they are gone when you switch pickups. And I've, I've noticed over the years some pickups are better at picking them up in the next position. And sometimes it's just the placement of that. There's other factors. What I'm trying to say, I don't remember anything specific to a prs, Max. So Phil went and bought a prs. I did. I went and bought a prs. I was going to just grab one off the wall behind me, but I got to tell you, I just know that the ones in the rack are in tune. So I just grabbed one. I knew it was in tune. But anyways, my point is it could be, it could be as simple as that. It could be something your. It could be your strings. You know, sometimes the strings get dull and they're not, they're not working, they're not doing it sometimes. It could be your technique and it could be, it could be your technique with that guitar. Because there are things I can pull out of some guitars tonally wise that I can't on other guitars. And I could argue like, oh, the guitar is better. But Paul Reed Smith himself, when he did the TED Talks, which I still think are some of the best TED Talks. You know what's funny is, is my favorite thing about Paul Reed Smith, Paul Smith himself and his TED Talks, is if you watch both the TED talks now, everything he says there, which I think is amazing and probably should be studied by almost every guitar builder, he doesn't really even do anymore. It's like you think about his arguments. He's literally done the opposite now. Like, right. But anyways, in his argument, he said the instrument at its best is subtractive. It doesn't add anything to your playing. It just takes away. It robs you. It steals you of energy. And so a great guitar steals less energy or robs you of less energy. It takes less from you. I find that amazing analogy and a way of looking at it. But more important, I have found exactly to be true. No guitar pulls anything out of me. But some guitars will not let me do what I can, what I want to do. Does that make sense? And it's not a quality thing. Like I said, it could be. You know, a 3000 RPS just doesn't, doesn't. Just doesn't fit you. Right. Doesn't work right. So that's just something I would Suggest. But like I said, definitely pay attention whether it's the bridge or the neck pickup. Because a lot of times especially you'll see the neck harmonics. The harmonics on the fifth fret disappear in the neck pickup and come back on the bridge pickup. And funny enough, that P90 was picking them up more aggressively, if you notice. And it's probably because where the. Where the P90s set at, set further back. That'd be my guess because it's obviously in the center of that humbucker, which means it's further away from the fretboard, the edge. Aussie English says, hey, Phil, now that many countries are boycotting US Products, I didn't even know. I just got to take a second to go. Had no idea. I'm only laughing because I'm like, man, I sometimes am proud that I don't. There's two things I don't track. The world and sports. Like I told you guys, I just don't. Don't care because of social media stuff's shoved in my feed all the time. But what's shoved in my feed right now isn't that. But anyways. Okay, so how will this impact act? The equity, equity on the market? Are guitar players political enough to care? Okay, so interesting enough, here's my two cents for whatever was. And first of all, it's an informed $0.02. I always tell people, if you're getting your political advice from Guitar Channel, you've really lost your way. So, okay, so. And don't. Like I said, don't take your guitar advice from the political channels. That being said, I don't know. I can tell you the facts. So here are the facts that matter to the guitar market and then the facts that matter to me as a guitar player. The facts of the guitar market is that the guitar market is still predominantly the U.S. in other words, U.S. consumption is the highest consumption. When I work with companies overseas, 90% of the time they're trying to crack the US market. It's a. Like any market. It's not easy. It's different. Every. Every market is different for whatever, for whatever reason, whether it's the Asian market, European market, US Market, whatever you want to call it. Every market's got a different thing. But Americans are very hard to sell to. They are very difficult. They only want basically two things. And if you can achieve these two things, you'll be fine. The best quality, absolutely, with no condition, just no compromise, and the cheapest price. If you can hit those two things, you have a 50, 50 chance to get in the American market, but that it's kind of a joke, but not really. Americans are really known for. In the guitar market, in the guitar industry, they're really known for being difficult to crack the market. So when it comes to the world market, US still is consuming a big chunk of the guitars. So I don't know how that affects US manufacturers. What I will tell you though is that's, that's just my two cents. Like when I'm doing consulting for companies or working with companies, that's something we address and deal with. On a personal note, I have an addiction. Okay, I've said it before. I think people don't understand. Like, I don't, like, I don't have anything else. This is it. I just like guitars. I literally. If you gave me a million dollars, and there's no exaggeration, this, this is absolutely true. And I can, I mean, I really want you to believe this to the core. If you gave me a million dollars tomorrow, other than some guitar crap, I wouldn't know what to do with it. There is no car. I would buy nothing. There's no jet ski or thing. There's no jewelry. There's nothing I'm interested in. I have no other interest. I like I said, my wife, she's into the healthier aspects of life. So because of her, we have E bikes and we do, you know, paddle boarding and we do, we do stuff that's all her. Pets. We have pets. I love the pets. That's all her. Okay. I literally am. If you ever hung out with me. Some people like it. Some people really find it annoying after a while because most people like to break their. Like, hey, you want to go watch a game? No, I don't do anything that's not guitars, guitar, music, guitar. It's just been with my whole life. So that. What I'm saying is I'm truly addicted to it. Like in the idea that, you know, when they talk about addictions, people get overcome with them. They don't do anything else. But so my addiction's always going to win. I said it to the CEO of Guitar Center. I said if I would buy a guitar at a gas station if they sold it. Look, I have patriotism, I've served in the army. I have community, a sense of community because I'm part of one. Right? I have a sense of all kinds of things and I will try to give to those, those. In other words, you know, kind of help an American based company more because I am American. Help a veteran owned company more because I am a veteran help, you know, a local company more because this is my community. Those are things I will focus on. But let's be clear. I am sadly, whatever you want to call it, I am addicted. So I will buy just because of my desires. That's the only thing I desire is not just so much a guitar, just knowing about guitars, doing guitars. And that's just kind of my thought process. So that's why I'm not always the best when it comes to this stuff. What I will tell you is this. And this is the only thing I will say. What am I trying to say? You know, in my circles and this is why maybe it's different for a lot of you. In my circles, I hang out with other addicts. So we just want to talk about guitars. So that is where a lot of my time goes thinking about. So I don't know. That's what I said. So to answer your question and the market, I will. I've said this when you guys asked me about the tariffs before and recessions. And here's what I will tell you. This is my, this is not my guitar experience. This is not my anything experience other than life experience. My life experiences, they're always making it harder for you. They're always. I've been self employed for 20 years. Every quarter, that's just every three months for 20 years someone has decided to try to scare the crap out of me with something. If it's not a recession or you know, a tax, tax burden or a war or anything, there's always something that's just. It's always in terror about something. And which is why I don't like talking about it on the show because I'm trying to give everybody two hours away from it. And, and so, but if it does go into the guitar community, which this does, you know, this like if they're going to buy guitars, where they can buy them from, we're going to talk about it. But ultimately I got to say I'm, I'm just, I'm loyal to my addictions. So that's where I'm at. I think he has a follow up. Let's, let's follow up real quick. He said also. Oh, he was just saying impact on the guitar market. So he's asking what impact will happen to guitar market. The guitar market is impacted by everything. I actually have to tell you a funny story that happened to me a couple days ago. I was scrolling on Instagram as you do the doom scrolling which I tried not to do, but I'm sucked into it like everybody else. You just find myself scrolling from boredom. I saw a music go round ad for music around and it said buy a recession proof business. And this is why maybe it's funny. I laugh so hard that Shawna, my wife goes, what's so funny? She thought I saw like a comedian or something. She's like, what's going on? I go music around saying you should buy a franchise because it's a recession proof business. And look man, no one gets in the guitar market because it's safe. No one gets into this business because it's a good idea. This is the worst idea. I have a friend. I have a friend. I told this story before, but I love telling it because every time he sees me, which is every couple years, he thanks me again. I told you guys I had a story. This is like 15 years ago. I had a friend who was building guitars and he was just so stressed. He was so stressed. He was just like, this isn't working. I can't make any money. He's like, no one wants to pay me to make a guitar. He's like, Phil, how, how do I make it happen? How do I get somebody to pay me $4,000 for a guitar? And I said, I don't know man, if you want money, you should build kitchen cabinets. This is a true story I've told before, I've told twice. This is probably my third time telling on this podcast. And so he quit and started making kitchen cabinets and he bought himself a nice hundred thousand dollar truck and he lives in a nice house and he doesn't care and he's happy and he probably builds guitars for fun on the side. So again, if you're in it for the money, this is the wrong industry. This is the wrong way to do it. But that's my $0.02 for whatever it is. So. But I will tell you and remind everybody that I've said this story before that during the last big recession, what happened was that's when the pedal market boomed because everybody started buying pedals. Why? Because there are more addicts. I have proof. The proof is the. Look at the guitar market. Look at, look at the YouTube market of guitar. You know, people are watching guitar channels like me and stuff and, and, and this is the point I'm making is when you don't have a thousand dollars for guitar, you'll buy a $500 guitar. And if you don't have $500 for a guitar, you'll buy a $200 guitar. And if you don't have that you'll buy a $50 pedal. It's an addiction, I think. That's what I think. But I don't know. Yeah. He says, are you kind? I like that he has a question mark and son. He says guitar shops make about as much sense for a business as a bicycle shop as being recession proof. You know, it's funny, I should also give you guys some, some, some insight. I feel actually bad that I didn't tell you this. So I laughed out loud at the music go round ad on Instagram saying it's recession proof business. I almost lost my business in the last recession because of that advice. So I want to make very clear when I open my store, so I'll tell a store store story. I've told you guys how I got the rent. So you'd have to find that episode where I talk about how I figured that out and stuff. But I want to let you know, when I opened my store, it was a really weird thing because I opened it in boom, which was really hot, which sounds great, but it actually was horrible because what happened was there was no place to rent, so all rents were high. Super, super expensive. So if you can imagine, I didn't build a business and then, you know, get to sit on it for five or 10 years. And there was a recession. I built a business and within two years there was apparently the worst recession in my lifetime. So according to the economics, you know, the economists, I should say. So anyway, so what happened was I paid the highest price you could pay for rent. I paid every. It was horrible, right? And the store killed. It just made so much money. I was like, we're killing. Well, because we're in a boom. And apparently now we know. My wife and I now know from having half a billion views on YouTube and all my, you know, all my platforms, apparently people listen to me talk about guitars. So it sounds stupid now. You'd be like, yeah, what? But in the store, we didn't know that. I didn't know I had a knack for talking up the guitar. But anyways, we have my store and we were just killing. We're making money, we're pumping, pumping high rent, you know, high cost, doesn't matter. Pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping. And this is. Maybe I didn't explain this. So we opened the, the shop we were paying at that time. I don't have a factor for inflation somebody might want to factor in. So say 2004, you're paying $5,000 a month for 1400 square feet. That's what I Was paying. That's a lot in Arizona, by the way. So I was paying $5,000 a month for 1400 square feet. Killing it, just killing it, right? True story. My first Christmas at the store, we sold every single guitar in the store except for one. And we were panicking. We had no guitars. People come in, they thought we were going out of business. We were just selling so much stuff so fast. And so what happened was the landlord, who was much smarter than us, came to us one day and said, hey, do you want to move to 3,000 square feet? So he's got like a 33 or 3,400 square foot pad in the same shopping center. Go up that he goes, I'll give you a smoking deal on it. And the smoking deal was $7,800 a month. So it was almost $8,000 a month. Well, remember I just told you we're killing it. Let's move, let's move. So we moved. Now what he didn't tell me. But now I'm smarter. That's why, you know, that's what happens when you get the benefit of being tortured by somebody. You learn from it. What I didn't know was he was giving me that rent, that $8,000 month rent with, with a three year lease because the city was about to rip up the street for a full year and the 24,000 cars traveling in front of my store was about to be basically cut less than half and be a nightmare to even try to get in the shopping center. So of course he was smart. He saw, he's like, hey, he saw we were killing, he's like, why don't you get into a bigger spot? I'll give you a deal. So we move into the bigger spot. Now what happens is, as you can imagine, the traffic. Then, you know, we move in, we build a new place, we invest every penny. We had, we had made a bunch of money. So we had the investment and then bought all the inventory. Whatever we couldn't, we just, you know, just put it on credit cards. We just filled this store up, right? Built it. And if you haven't done this before, let me tell you a couple things you don't know. Everything has to be redone. So new permits, new signs, new permits for the sign, new all new costs. Okay. You know, new build out everything. Nothing transfers. Okay. Except for the string swing hangers. I ripped those out of the first store and stuck them in the second store. That's why I think I love them to this day, because they took the abuse. I didn't have to buy them twice. So I get the store. And you can imagine as soon as we open the store, killing it now. More inventory, more high end, more doing stuff, doing great. But the, the traffic, you know, we start seeing them ripping up the streets. They're coning everything. They're just like, okay, this is a problem. We talk to the, we go out there, we talk to the. I don't know, maybe it was the foreman, whatever you want to call it, he's like, yeah, this is going to go on for about a year or so. We're like, what? Okay, so that happens. Get this record year that year. Killed it, killed it. Blew numbers out to a number. I don't even explain. We sold everything. Every vendor we dealt with, number one Schecter dealer in the country. Just killing, moving product, trying and moving it so fast that we're like, wow, we're paying the high rent. We're paying everything. We're paying the employees. We're, we're back cataloging some cash so we can, you know, kind of replenish, you know, what we're doing here. And that next year is when everybody said, well, it wasn't even that year, was it? Barely remember the road still ripped up, but we're killed that year. And then that's when we started hearing, oh, there's a recession, there's a recession. And I hadn't owned a business in a recession. The last recession I was in was a minor one before that. And comparatively speaking, and I was in a corporate gig and my corporate gig wasn't affected. So to me, a recession was just like this thing that happens, they go. So anyways, every vendor, everybody in this industry lied through their teeth. They were like, you know, what was the first time, the first person ever told me, I won't name their name, I'll just name the company. I believe they were my, they were my Fender rep. I think they were my specialties, special products rep. So in other words, they did all my accessories, like strings and stuff. And they said, I'm trying to remember. Only I'm trying to remember exactly what he said because I'll probably get it wrong, but I hope I'm close. He said, member Phil, only two things are recession proof. Peanut butter and music stores. And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah. Cause when people get poor, they eat peanut butter. And musicians never stop their addiction. Now I just told you my addiction. So I'm thinking, this guy's got to be right because who the hell, right? Like, I can't stop buying crap. I love everything. I can't. I got to go to concert even if I don't have rent, right? I got to pay to see a band. And boy, the recession came and it was a brutal. Just a brutal beast. And it was. It was nuts. And so, of course, when I saw an ad for music Ron going recession proof business, I'm like, oh, didn't feel so recession proof last time. It felt pretty brutal. To give you a concept of scale, I'll give you a concept of scale. I think the year before the recession took root of the business. I think that year the business made six figures. Okay, so keep that in mind. So that's what it makes all in, right? So it's growing, it's growing, it's growing, which is good because we finally hit six figures. You're like, oh, cool, right? We're in the six figure land. The next year was negative 26,000. So not only did the business not make any money for a whole year, it lost $26,000. I had to loan the business $26,000. And I know what you're thinking, man, well, he had the $26,000 loan. No, I didn't. There's a reason why some of my crap is new and some of my crap's not so new. There's a reason why that's what happens. You just like, oh, I guess we're selling the couch. I mean, you just made it. I don't even know. I guess if I probably wanted to, I could look back and figure out how. All the ways we figured it out, how to make it. But. But anyway, so like I said, and then. And then, luckily for us, like, it didn't. It didn't stay that way. We. We pivoted. That's a big part, is why I believe in myself more than I believe in any of these people out there. That just keeps throwing horrible crap at all of us. If you're watching this show right now, you're probably not the one giving people crap in the world. You're probably like me, one of them, taking crap in the world. And one thing I've learned about taking crap is pivot. So I pivot as much as I can. I just make adjustments. So in the recession, we learned that when no one was buying guitars, but they were coming all the time, we would start emphasizing lessons. I still say this to this day. What saved us during the recession was people didn't go on vacations during summer. So one of the hard things, when you have a music store and you have lessons is in the summertime, everybody goes on vacations. And because they go on vacations, not only are they gone for a period of time, or they send the kids off to grandma and grandpa, their kids are gone either way. They. They. They always come off the lesson schedules. So your lesson revenue goes way down. Okay, and what happened to their session? We noticed that no one was leaving. Everyone was. Started saying the same thing. You start hearing the same speech like, yeah, we're not going to go anywhere this summer. So I'm just. The kids are going to stay, coming to lessons. And so luckily, my wife and I, we. We thought, okay, wait, people aren't leaving for lessons. So then we started pounding lessons. In other words, we. We actually started. We hired more teachers and we started pushing for more lessons. And lessons really sustained for a little while until the retail came back. So that's. I don't know. So that's my very long answer to this question. What are. What's going to happen out there? No one knows what's going to happen out there. I hope it works out for everybody. In fact, I hope almost everybody it works out for. All I can tell you is the two things I know, which is I'll pivot when I can. You do what you can while you can, as much as you can. What's the saying? My mom used to say, do as much as you can for as long as you can. There you go. All right. The. What else? Oh, can I tell you something funny? Since I don't want to end on that donor note, I want to tell you a funny story about that one thing did happen that was funny. So while. While all that was happening, so while the stor. While the recession's pounding us to death, we have this new high rent, right? We're trying to make all this. We Right. Got new employees. Everything's just like trying to make it all work. One of the things that happened was businesses kept going out of business in the shopping center. Like it was just. That's not the funny part, by the way. I'm just telling you this, like, that's the thing that's scaring the crap out of you, right? Like, you know, business. I told you guys a story a couple weeks ago about the record store that left. And then the hair salon came. That's why the record store left. The rent just. They were like, the street's torn up. The recession, like, we gotta go. So they moved down the road and to. And so we lost an anchor that was bringing in the type of customers we wanted. So we started losing all this stuff. And so I went to the landlord, which was a management company. So when I say landlord, don't think of, like, a guy with a cigar. What do you want, Phil? No, you know, right? It was just some indifferent company on a phone because they were from California. The management company managed from California. They weren't even in the state, and they managed, like, five shopping centers. We know because we became friends with the superintendent, who took care of all the stores. And they worked him to death. And Shawna would always make sure she got him drinks and stuff. And so he would tell us that they didn't care. And they always, you know, they worked him to death. So I called him one day because the street signage. We had a small sign on the street, and it was at the bottom because that's all we could afford. And the big sign that was up top, it's like, it was empty because they lost so many anchor stores. So I call them and I go, hey, I want the big sign. And they go, it's $900 a month. And I'm like, $900 a month? I go, why don't you give it to me? Because there's no stores. I'm paying the rent. Like, how about you just help? I go, how about you just give it to me until you find somebody to buy it, and then they can buy it, but I'll have it in the meantime. And they were like, no, it's $900 a month. I'm like, okay. So I'm sitting there and weeks go by, and every time I pulled in the parking lot, I'd see that sign. Just a big empty sign. Like I said, thousands, you know, tens of thousands of cars drive by the sign. Little teeny sign. I go, I can't take it anymore. So I call a friend who makes signs, and I said, make me a sign. And then one night, I just walked out the street. I pulled the blank sign off, I put my sign on. I went back in the store. I told everybody what I did. And I remember, they go, what's gonna happen when the manager comes easy? And they go, they can take it down. They can take it down, right? So I go, I don't care. I don't understand this. Why? Why? I go, I don't understand. I'm putting there. I'm not going out of business. We're putting our sign. It's a big sign. In fact, we changed the sign. Didn't even say his name. His name is Store anymore. Just said Guitars and Big letters on the street did that. And then three years later, three years later, the management company was in the. In the shopping center, and they were talking and they said, hey, I gotta ask you a question about the sign. And I'm like, oh, okay. They said, you know, we have one on the other interest of the parking center. If you want, we'll give you both signs for, like, I think they said $1,000 a month. And I said, oh, that's. Nah, I'm good. I'm good where I'm at. And they're like, okay. Then they left. They didn't even know. They didn't even know. I put the sign there and said they never figured it out. To this day, I feel kind of bad about it. But let me just tell you, man, I. I would. I remember the night I did it. I was just like, I refuse to go out of business. And this place let an empty sign sit there. On principle, I would have paid them anything reasonable. But almost a thousand dollars a month at that time in the market was not reasonable, especially when they were losing tenants like crazy. Just to give you a concept of that shopping center, there is only one store in that 24 pad, including four anchors shopping center, one store that's still there to this day. That's it. They lost all of that, even though some of that stuff had been there 30 years before. Okay, so Ron says, what was the name of store? It was just McKnight. It's my name says put my name on the store. The. The. The name of the store was Funny. Getting on a tirade, but maybe it's funny. I don't know. So I had this idea when I, I came over the store. I thought this was. I had this cool idea. I was so excited about it. When does anyone remember the big trend where everybody was getting bracelets and necklaces from Tiffany's? Like, that was the big thing, right? You could get a silver necklace and a silver bracelet from Tiffany's and, like, you bought from Tiffany's, right? And that was like a big deal. Like, all my wife's friends were into it. Everybody was into it. Like this new. You get a keychain from Tiffany, like a big thing. And so one, I don't know, birthday slash anniversary, something I did, I went to Tiffany's and I got my wife one of these things, right? One of these items. And I was walking through the mall, and I remember, like, some lady's like, oh, Tiffany's, right? Because it's like this little turquoise little bag, right? And I'm like, oh, yeah, Tiffany's. Oh, Tiffany. Somebody's so lucky. And I was like, oh, man, these are like catnip for women. What is this? So I go. And I just had that in my head. I'm like, wow, it must be prestigious. You know, Tiffany's is prestigious. So. So Tiffany's is called Tiffany and Company. So when we. We were coming up with a business, you know, we're going to do open the store. I said, I want to call it the Guitar Company. I go, that's going to be great. Like, Tiffany, the guitar company. And because I have no imagination, sometimes I bought all turquoise. Like, turquoise stuff. So our bags are turquoise. Everything was turquoise. Our receipts, our paper receipts are turquoise. Like, we're gonna be like the Tiffany's. The guitar world. And, you know, sometimes I don't. I don't ever claim to be smart guys. So anyway, so I'm. I. I come with this idea and I'm so excited about it. We register the name and I. And I. Of course, you know, you have delusions when you're opening business. Like, I'm gonna have it the. The good. The guitar company, Then I'm gonna have the Chandler Guitar Company, then the Phoenix Guitar, then the LA Guitar Company. Like, I'm just gonna name. Like when I have a chain of 50 stores, I'm gonna name them all different, you know, guitar companies from the cities. And so anyways, so this is why the story gets funny. So a week. I don't know. Sometimes I wish my wife was here because she'd help me with this. Maybe it was a month, but it was. Let me just tell you, it was not that very long before the store opened. It was before the store opened, but not very long before it store opened. So we're still ripping stuff and building the store out. I watch a thing on tv, a news broadcast. And it's a news show. And it's talking about trademark names and stuff. And it talked about this lady who's a teacher, and her name was Sam Buck. And she opened a coffee shop in Rhode island in this small town of like 4,000 people. It could have been 400 people, but it was definitely, like, small, right? And anyway, she had this coffee shop. It was not even 800 square feet. The whole coffee shop, right? Like the whole thing. And it was called Sandbox. And Starbucks sued her for trademark infringement. And so they had. They were interviewing the corporate attorney for Starbucks or the representative for Starbucks. And this was on the news. And I'm watching this and they go, you know, Sam, Bucks, a teacher. That's her real name. She named her. You know, obviously she didn't know, you know, Starbucks back then. When she opened it, she's a Sam Bucks. Her request was she asked Starbucks to pay for her sign. She just. Basically, she's like, I'm broke, right? She's like, I'm a teacher, and I got this coffee shop for the community, and it's just like, there's no money in this. And like, hey, you know, if you could, you know, like, help me change the name, I'll change the name. I just can't afford to do it. And Starbucks is like, no, we're not doing it. And then they ask the corporate person why? And they go, cause she's a leech. You could find it. Go find the thing. It's a whole story. They called her a leech. They basically said, kleenex is not tissue, Jello is not gelatin. That basically, if you let people steal your trademarks and your branding, right, that basically they're stealing from you. And I'm watching this and I. I go. I'm just like. All of a sudden, I go, do you think the Guitar center will sue me for being the guitar company? I'm like, they're gonna sue me. They're gonna, like, I'm. They're gonna kill me, right? Say at the last minute, I go, I gotta name something. Well, the problem is you only have, like, a couple weeks to name it, right? I mean, I literally, like, we had a sign that's being built. I'm like, better change the name of the sign before the guy starts on the sign. And so I tell my wife, I go, mcknight. I go, that's my name. They can't sue me for my name, can they? And so that's how we ended up being McKnight's. And it wasn't my choice. There. That's. There's the story. All right, I gotta get back to the regular guitar stuff. I'm sorry, guys. All right. Anyways, clan of housecast says, hey, Fender custom parts versus Fender replacement parts. Sometimes they can be one in the same. So in other words, Fender could be rebranding parts that they're having outsourced somewhere else. And they kind of just like, mark it up, and it's not really real. And sometimes it's legit. Part of that is easy to figure out because you can figure out what. In what they actually make in that factory versus what they don't make in that factory. For instance, I don't believe, because I'VE been to the factory twice to the US Factory. I don't remember seeing anywhere. And I've been to the. I never took in like a, you know, one of those typical tours. I took a real tour where they let me go through the whole thing. I don't remember them building any potentiometers at all. So I would say the potentiometers are not, not theirs. So anything offenders claiming like. So I would say stuff like that. I would, I would say, you know, you just buy whatever you want. You don't have to necessarily go for Fender parts. But like obviously name necks, bodies, I don't care. Me personally, I'd buy a. If I had given the choice. If you said, hey, let's build a parts of caster and you want to make a Fender. I would rather have a Fender neck for the branded logo and a non fender body than a Fender body with an off branded neck. That's just my logic because, you know, if I'm trying to make it feel like a Fender or be a Fender. So it's, it's not so much that it's like I said, I guess I'll stick with where I'm putting it. Sometimes it could be real, sometimes it's not. That's, that's the way that that is. Me personally, I never seek out any fender specific parts as long as you find credible parts. The only time sometimes it's a. It's a little iffy is like sometimes with pick guards, you don't know if so many people drill them in the wrong holes. You know, they drill their holes in the wrong spots and stuff. And then you're. When you put down your pick guard, you know, like 11 hole pick guard versus like an eight hole or something like that. The. It's really tough when you're looking at your real Fender body going, I gotta drill four holes because they don't line up. These four holes don't line up. And if that's something that bugs you, you know, you may want to get the official fender one or just make sure that the parts line up. To me, if you got. If you buy quality parts from somebody, it's pretty easy. And that's pretty easy. I found quality parts are not so much about anything other than good return policy. A lot of parts companies won't take any returns. And some companies will take returns. But here's what the secret sauce is. What I've learned. If a parts company does not take returns, which is fine, totally understandable, I understand they don't know what you do with the part, but they don't answer questions about their parts. They, they can walk, they're done. So if I reach out, if I send a message, I mean, look, if their business is selling parts and I send a message going, this is what I have, will it fit? And they don't respond to you, don't buy from them, you know, unless they have a great return policy. If they have a return policy, like 15 day return policy, then buy. Because I'll, I'll figure it out. But if they don't return, that I understand. But I'm not going to like take a chance on a non returnable item on something I don't know because they're not giving me the correct information. NM 1122 09. I was kind of like, I don't know. You know what? At least I can pronounce it. It says, last week I asked about the Gretsch Helotrons. I've since bought my first Gretch. I used a G6117HT, which, that has Helotron's amazing guitar. But my first Bigsby Restring was fun. Yeah. Do you have a video for that? I don't have a video on the Bigsby Restring. There is. I've seen channels, people out there on the Internet give you little tricks and tips and stuff on it. I've used, you know, I got my own trick, which is I just bend the string like everybody else. But I know somebody's like, oh, here's the best way to do it. I can tell you this. When it comes to restringing a Bixby, if you have a friend, it's an easy process. It's like every time I restring my Bixby, I just ask my wife, I go, can you just hold that string right there for a second until I tune it up? Now you can hold that one. It's like, that's the thing. I feel like with the Bixby, it would be really nice to have a third hand to hold the strings on. I've seen people use a piece of foam pad. I've seen all kinds of stuff. Somebody says, use a cable. That's not the problem. So, you know, local rigs, the capo is cool. But the problem with Bixby is that when the string goes under, the ring goes through a post. And then as you're tightening up, sometimes it pops off. It needs to be held underneath there. And again, I've seen all kinds of tricks for it. Nothing beats just having a friend hold it For a second. So it's not that hard. Just do them all real fast and then call it a day. That's the easy way. And then if you're worried about your bridge falling off, well then you can. Painters tape that down. In my experience, unless a customer, I always ask every customer ever that I've ever done any kind of work on a Bigsby style guitar. A hollow body guitar. I shouldn't say Bigsby style because you could be tellies too. Hollow body guitars with a bridge that's not pinned. Do you want me to pin it or do you want me to double stick it? Double stick? Tape it down. I prefer to put pins in it but I will double stick tape it down fine. And if they say no? I say I understand. But just so you know, it's just, it's just in the long term, it's a better way to go. Just have it there. Refresh this. Jay says, hey, what are your thoughts on the Norland Aero Les Paul's? I love the next like ESP Eclipse, but I want a Gibson custom Les Paul and I feel it's the closest way to get to that neck profile. You know, I'm not really particular as you know on the. When I say particular, I'm not really focused on all the different ages of Gibson. Gibson is a company probably more so than any other guitar company. I mean don't get me wrong, there are definitely other guitar companies that are close, but Gibson in itself is probably the most I can think of where you need. You almost benefits from somebody like Trogly where you just have him. He's an expert on one thing, right? Trogly is a really cool, interesting thing because I've not really seen a lot of his videos over the years but I've talked to him once on the phone I think or like emailed him, whatever. And he seemed really nice and, and. But I don't, you know, I'm not really super, super into all the Gibson era guitars, right? So I'm into Gibson's but I'm into a Gibson's superficially in other words. Like I like Gibsons and I know a lot about some Gibsons but I'm not. Some people are hyper focused in learning all of the things that's happened in Gibson's history. It's so crazy all over the place with different things, so it's not really my, my forte. That being said, as you heard me say, for me personally, I like the gibson necks from 2004 to 2008 for some reason. But that was obviously they just, you know, they had, they had made adjustments to the neck. Profiling of those years on certain models for some reason. But I think the best thing I ever heard ever is it's almost impossible to play the same Gibson neck. Like a feel two necks of Gibsons that are exactly the same. And I feel that to be true. It's almost like the, One of the, it's one of the few brands where I feel like if you said, you know, if you're asking me about a Gibson, I go, you almost got to touch it to know if it's any good. I have never kept a Gibson, except for maybe this Firebird. And I'm trying to think if that's true too. But it might. So give me my. As a caveat, I've never bought a Gibson that I didn't physically touch or have already touched one just like it, the exact same one, and bought it. It's one of the few guitars I won't buy online going, okay, this will probably work out. It's most of the time I've, I've, I've owned it, or I've played that exact model before, that exact one, same year, same everything. And I go, okay, I'm familiar with the neck. And even then, it's a toss to get, you know, I, I what? I, I even have a problem where, like, I have a Gibson I love and I'm trying to find a duplicate. You guys know, think about this. You guys seen the channel? I have. I have this Gibson SG I love. I bought three. You guys have seen them. I had a black one and a green one. They were fantastic, but none of them were exactly like that one. I just wanted two. I want two of the same Gibson sg. Same feeling, neck, same everything, just kind of same. Like, just finding two the same is almost impossible. So it's not going to probably help you, but at least it gives you. That's where I'm at with it. Harmonic caster, what's up? He says Gibson may be reviving the Slab series brand of solid state amps. They filed for the trademark last July. That may mean something and not something. Gibson is nasty aggressive when filing trademarks. If you go through all the trademarks, they constantly have trademarks, so they are notorious for just doing that. It doesn't mean necessarily something's coming back, but it could be. Obviously, they want to make bring back their amp line. They want to revive the amp line. I have no love for the Gibson amp line because I have no experience with it as a kid. There's nothing, there's no artist that I followed that I personally like attached the Gibson amp line to. I have no desire for Gibson amp. Let me put it this way. I don't know that I've ever even played one. I've walked into stores and seen them and just my first, and my first impression, not in my. Yeah, I guess maybe my impression of a Gibson amp was I walked in a store and I was like, oh, Gibson amp. Somebody goes, yeah, they suck. And I go, oh. And then like I was probably 17 years old or something and then, and then maybe five years later I saw another one. It's another one. It's like just no one, no one I knew were into them. So that maybe I'm missing out because they're probably, maybe they're amazing in some ways, but it's just not something I've ever gravitated towards. When they started bringing back the line using the Mesa Boogie guys, I was like everybody, you know, a lot of people, I was like, oh really? This is where you're going to put your time into? Okay. You know, to me, very few companies get to have everything like Fender. You know, the best bass line, the best guitar line, the best amp line. You know, it's, it's just not common. You know, Fender is a perfect example. Even they can't have it all Their acoustics are do well sales wise, but they're not known for being great. Although they do make a lot of good affordable acoustics there. But they're, you know, it's, they're not revered as being a great acoustic brand, but they're revered as a bass builder, as a guitar builder and as an amp builder. Gibson, same thing. They're revered as a, as a thing with this, as an electric guitar builder, revered highly. As a acoustic builder, highly revered. But as a base, it's a niche thing. They do have some bases that people like. And again, you know, it doesn't mean they're good or bad, just means they're not. They're not a huge mainstream instrument for everybody. And then amps again, it's just, you know, I always wonder when companies just keep coming at this. This is just something they want to revive. I never really quite. I understand it. I'll tell you what I understand on one level is the marketing level. So Gibson wanting to own Mesa Boogie or have a Gibson line of amps makes sense on a marketing level. What I mean by that is, you know, every time you saw a Gibson, you saw a Marshall and to the point where they Become, you know, synonymous with each other. It's like a Gibson and a Marshall. And so I could see where Gibson could be sitting, you know, in a corporate vibe because they're very corporate company, right? They, they could be sitting in a meeting one day and going, why are we helping sell marsh lamps? Why are we help. You know, because think of this, they put an ad out and that whatever's in the ads, what we see, whatever's on stage, what we see, what you know, that's they're helping, you know, look, I, I, you know, one of the ironies of my life is there's companies I really don't like, but I like their guitars. And I have to reconcile, which is true, the fact that because I use them and have them, you guys are going to buy them and I'm helping a company I don't really like, but I don't really care because it's not really, it's not a financial thing to me. It's just a personal thing. Maybe I'm like, I wish somebody wouldn't buy their stuff, but I like the one I have, right? But Gibson in their, their wing is, is a financial thing. It's like, why spend marketing dollars to promote a brand we don't own? So you could see why it's like, no, every time you see a Gibson, you see a Mesa Boogie or a Gibson amp. And, and I could see why maybe the Gibson amp line is a smart move in the concept of Mesa Boogies just not known for being vintage, you know, I mean, they're old enough now that we think of some of their amps as like being in the vintage. But you understand what I'm saying? Like the 50s, 60s market, it's just not that. So I think that's the big push for it. But I just, I don't know, I'd be really interested, you know. Here's a thought for you, Harmonicaster. You know, if they were to do a Lab series brand solid state amps, they could try to revive it as a, you know, as what it was like for jazz players and some blues players and stuff. Or maybe they'll throw it under the Epiphone brand, you know, I don't know. Okay, we have. Okay, here's one. It says, hey Phil, love the show. Quick question. Why do you think Schaller doesn't make flip out tuners for Gibson anymore? Always found them very useful on my old Gibson custom. Thanks for your time. So I can tell you that there was a pro, there's a problem with Schaller and the idea now, again, this is rumor mill talk. So it's very important. I always try to make choice, try to tell you guys when I'm giving you something that I know and the versus something I hear. This is something I heard. And it's. I've heard it enough from enough people that that's the rumor is valid in the fact that it's a rumor. That's all. Which is, I guess the sun took over Schaller, somebody took over Schaller and something happened. Now here's the facts from the potential fiction. I know something happened because all of a sudden there was distribution issues and all of a sudden there's companies not dealing with Schaller that were dealing with Schaller anymore. A lot of the companies told me it was because of the quality had gone down. The reason I tell you that that way, see how my tone change? Because in my experience, sometimes that's just something companies say. You know, I've heard companies say like, oh, we moved our factory from Korea to Indonesia because the quality went down in Korea, but really the price went up. And it just sounds better to tell your customers, like, oh, the quality went down. And so we're. We're looking out for you with better quality, but really it's less, Less expensive. A perfect example of that. If you watch on my second channel, I did a. It might be on this channel too. I did a podcast with Jack Higginbotham, who runs Paul Reesmith se. He was very frank. So, you know, the comment section ripped him to shreds, in my opinion. So when I say ripped the shreds, I mean more. He got more grief than I think he should for being honest. He said, Korea got expensive. So we went to Indonesia. We went to Indonesia because not only because it was less money, but a long term. We thought we could stay there, which is what they want to do, which is why they invested in having an actual building at the Cortex factory to build Sesame. He didn't sugarcoat it. He didn't go, man, they can't make crap good in Korea anymore, right? So. But I hear this all the time from companies where like, oh, this component's crap. Or their quality always it's their quality went down. And I'm like, right, but their price went up. So it could be two. Both could be true or one. It could just be the price go. So whatever happened, everybody kind of pushed away from Schaller and it created a problem. So, you know, it became problematic to get Floyd Rose Bridges made right now. I think they're still. There's probably somebody who's super into Floyd Roses and probably up to date with what's going on. But last I heard, it's like sourcing a Floyd Rose. You can't get the German ones because they're not making Schallers anymore. And then like, then I guess somebody was saying they're making them in the US And I. So I went out, I did a little bit of light online research reading and you know, gave me a headache too quick, which was like, you know, somebody. Some official statements from Floyd Rose going, no, we're sourcing it here, but we're seeing about this. And I was like, ah, this is too much work. So it could be something to do with that. You know, this happens a lot in all industries, but the guitar industry is specifically is that, you know, sourcing components becomes problematic for all kinds of reasons. So it obviously changed. Max. Max says it's all B.S. marketing. Oh, it's all marketing B.S. yeah. I mean, that's. The. Marketing is lying. Somebody just told. You know, actually, I know who said that to me the other day. Marketing is lying. It is lying. It's kind of how it works, right? It's. It's just, it's. It's, you know, it's. I think why we actually covet great marketing because we're like. It's almost like a great lie. You're like, wow, that was impressive. I fell for it. To me, the best marketing is when you know it's full of crap, but you go for it anyways. It's amazing. I praise it in the concept of, like, I. Like I said, I just. My belief. No one lies as much as you to yourself. So the things I've convinced myself of has been way worse than anything anyone's ever convinced me of. Externally. I'm my worst enemy. So let's see our Pad TV video said. Hey, did Phil discuss vendors credit rating downgrade already? I just read what a lot of people read that, you know, their credit rating for Fender got downgraded. You know, you could look into it however you want there. There's a lot of things going on right now and. And obviously like we were talking about earlier, there's like world events and all this stuff going on. But keep in mind just the market. The first two months in, in January and February were down for a lot of. A lot of retail period. Just retail period was down. I don't care where you are, just in the world. Right? That has. Okay, so that. That goes down, but also Just in the guitar universe, talking to companies, they're like. They're seeing it, but this is where it gets. This is where it gets tricky. And this is where someone who has a piece of information can really cause a problem for themselves and others. Down isn't dead. We were in this crazy boom, which I've talked about. Some companies, of course, made some bad decisions during the boom. That happens. Like I said, maybe they shouldn't have bought themselves a, you know, second house in Malibu, whatever their deal is. But some companies, you got to stand. They. They were killing it. You know, I've said this before. I physically. I helped two companies become millionaires during the COVID boom. I mean, like. Like, that happened. Like, that's a crazy thing for me to say. Not. It's not a brag. It's more of like, I can't believe that happened. Like, here's a guy, and he was making, like, $20,000 a year, and then in the middle of COVID he's like, yeah, I just did 1.3 million. I'm like, holy crap. And he's like, thanks for those ideas. And I'm like, you're welcome. By the way. They took care of me really nicely. But anyways, my point is, is that, you know, that boom was crazy to see in the guitar industry. I had never seen anything like it. I mean, it was the first time, obviously. Just took up my YouTube life. All right before COVID post Covid boom, the boom, the guitar boom, man. Companies never told you, like, you could reach out to a company. You know, a channel's like, almost got half a million subscribers. I could go to a company and say, hey, I'd like to do a video of your product. Would you send one out? Let me borrow it. You know, during the boom, the answer was always, no. No, I don't want to have anything to give you. You know how many times I heard, phil, even if we sent you one, we have none to sell. We sell them so fast, it's just not even worth our time. And so the. So the boom was a big deal. So there is this slowdown. So we see that now. Could it become bad? It could. It could obviously become bad. That's just how the world works. But the slowdown is really just as it's been keying off, and it's been slowing down since mid 2023. So it's not something happened. 2024 happened about mid 23. It's like everybody kind of remembers it. Say, if you go back in my podcast, you can almost See, See how I was talking about everything and how I still talk about everything when mid 2023 is when Fender was saying, oh, we got stuck with what they said. $100 million worth of product by the dealers. Remember that article? And then that's one of the things they said about vendor. You know, it was like. Like I didn't agree with that statement, the way they. They laid it out. But my point is, you know, I have been harsh on Fender's decisions for the last couple years. Since COVID since the quality, in my opinion, here's Fender. The quality has gone down, the prices. I feel like Fender. This is how I feel, okay? Just how I feel as a customer. Not as a, you know, whatever. Just as a customer. Because I still buy a lot of Fender stuff on the regular. It's my favorite brand. It's just. Is. I don't know what it is. It's attached to me. It's mentally. I'm just. I'm a Fender person. I feel like their quality went down probably the hardest of anyone's during the boom. Like, I just noticed it time after time. Again, just the quality's down. I feel like their price increases were more aggressive than everyone else's. So I feel like they were asking for more product or more for their product. That's how I feel. And I feel like some of the business decisions they made were just based on. I mean, you could say greed. If that makes you happier, I'm gonna say just on a singular. Singular focused to drive revenue. Like, that's how I feel. Like the whole plan is to drive revenue. And somebody's going to say. Because that's what everybody says. That's what all businesses are. Well, not in this industry. Some businesses are still stuck to. I told you, it's a passion business as much as is a business. And there's a mix of that. You know, I see it every day. I talk to people in this industry every day. Where their passion is, is part of their business model. It's like, I care, so I just care. So. So that being said, I'm not shocked to hear their credit rating got downgraded. Obviously, you saw I did the interview with Gabe from Guitar Center. That was because I said I didn't think their plan was going to work. You know, I told you it was a tough interview for you to do. Think about this. Most people don't understand. Most people think the tough part was maybe because I said their hands are going to fail in November, December of last year. I said, oh, they're Going to close a couple stores right after NAMM show. That was my prediction on this show. And then right two weeks after namm, they closed two stores. Now, he explained in that po. In that interview podcast why he closed the stores. But still my prediction was they were going to analyze stores and figure out what stores are not profitable and close them. I think they'll continue to do it. He said in the, in the interview. I have no reason not to believe him. But he said in the interview, all the stores, all stores that are existing now are profitable and you're gonna keep them. We'll see happens in a year. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know. So Fender is the biggest guitar company in this industry. They're owned by Hawaiian car dealership. And you know, I don't know. So I guess their credit rating got downrated. Downgraded. I'd like to know in the comments. Let me know what you guys think that means. I mean, it's like I said, I think, I think maybe I would imagine a company like that, like Guitar center, like Gibson, they'll probably renegotiate. In other words, you know, re navigate, I guess whatever you want to call it, they'll navigate this. They'll figure out their adjustments and go. I don't know. So there's a lot of things that I think that if you want to, we'll. We'll keep for another podcast another time. But there's a lot of things I think in this industry that a lot of the big companies aren't paying attention to, I think are much worse than all the problems they have now. And that's just from the fact that. And it has nothing to do with me. It has to do with, I would say any of the larger YouTube channels that do gear reviews will probably. Could probably tell you what I, what I'm talking about, which is when you review a thousand guitars, when you review everyone's guitars and I'm gonna get some water, guys. Hold on. So when you. Sorry to do it next to microphone. So when you review everybody's guitars, it's essentially you kind of, you kind of get. You kind of see what. What not so much what they're doing right and wrong, but you kind of start seeing things like, oh, this is going to be a problem in the future. You can see where I guess I want to try to say is you can see where custom, what customers care about and what they make money on. And they're not aligning. I don't think that's the best way to put it. I'll leave you with that. Okay, on that note, I'm gonna let you guys go if I missed any super chats or any of the great questions Amanda sent me, which I always do. Unfortunately, I will try to scoop them up for next week as well. I hope everybody has a fantastic weekend playing guitar and also look forward to this week's videos. There's actually two that I'm pretty excited about I think you'll like. And like I said, anything else, we'll talk about this next next Friday. All right, guys, as always, I want to thank you for your time to the next time. 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 for making this possible.