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The Largest Guitar Retailer Buys A Amp Company / The Used Market Summed up right now
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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast. The Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode 413. That's, uh. That's a good number, I think. 13. Lucky number. Lucky number 13. Hope everybody had a fantastic week. We have a lot of stuff to talk about today. On today's show, maybe Guitar of the Week. We'll see how that goes. And let's see so much things. There's already 400 of you here. Oh, wow. Okay, quick announcements. Super easy. I just want to thank the moderators. They're in blue with the blue wrench. They're the ones that help the. The chat flow happen. I want to thank them for that, obviously. Thank the patrons and the channel members and. And all the new channel members and patrons. We've had a little uptick on those. Very cool. And so we'll. We'll probably talk about that a little bit towards the middle end of the show. We'll see how that goes. And what should we do? Let's get into this. Just get into stuff. Let's just start going. The first question I saw today was from Edgar, who says, hey, Phil, thank you for everything you do. Not getting into politics. That's usually when somebody's going to get into politics, is the right after they disclaim. They're not. But I'm just kidding. I. Not getting into politics, but everything going on with shops closing, is this a good time to buy? Like, should. Should be expected price increases. In other words, should you buy. Look, everybody's gonna have an opinion on this. My opinion has not changed in 413 episodes, which is your money will dry up way before deals ever do. That's just my life experience of what I've learned in this industry, at least. And, you know, you can always find a deal. You can always make something work. Now, granted, that being said, I mean, sure, certain things are going to go up in price. I mean, obviously buying something two years from now is going to be more expensive than buying it now. And buying it now versus 10 years ago is more expensive. So sure, of course. But I don't really live my life that way personally. Just because these aren't needs, they're wants. And when it comes to wants, if I want it and it's the right time, it's the right price and the right, you know, thing, then that makes sense. Hold on a second. Somebody says I sound different. What's funny is my. Let me try something real quick, because properties. Can we. There we go. There we go. Just fixed it. So. So it defaulted off of the. Off the mic sand. There we go. Let's. Let's double check. All right. So. All right. That should be hearing me now in stereo. So before it was mono and I was using a different mic. Okay. So anyway, so I guess my point is, is that, you know, look, if you. If there's something you want right now and you want to get it and you can't find a reason not to get it, you should do it. However, I don't think you should hurry. I've seen a lot of. I've seen, especially on YouTube. And you gotta understand, I might be a little. Not so much biased, but I might be a little sensitive to the fact that I've seen so many YouTube channels kind of fear basing the crap out of everybody. You know, this whole idea, like, hurry up and do it before it's too late. Maybe that's true. But the reality is this. During COVID when prices were all time highs, I still found a deal when I wanted one, you know? You know, I think you can find a deal if you want one. I think if you're patient and you wait and you bide your time, you'll find it. I think that's how I think. That's how I think of it. So I don't ever go, oh, I gotta turn off my phone. Hold on a second. Usually my phone's off. I apologize. Now it's fixed. Okay, for those of you have ring cameras, you're probably thinking your camera went off and nope, that was me. Just funny enough, I was just watching a podcast this week, and their ring camera phone went off. And I thought, oh, my camera's going off. So. All right. So Brian says that I need to sell him that white Parker. Yeah, I know. Is. It does pop, right? That white Parker, to me is the equivalent of owning a white Lamborghini DeLorean. I believe that's the correct one. Right. Like, if you think of Cannonball Run, that was a red one, right? And then the second Cannonball Run was that they had a white one or was it white and they changed? Doesn't matter. When I. For some reason, you. I should think of the Lamborghini as the red Lamborghini, the iconic 80s white Lamborghini. I think of the white one. And to me, that Parker, like, that's the guitar that should be sitting next to a white Lamborghini. So. All right, back on Talk Tap topic. Susan and Arie Holic. Ariellic says Sellers love fomo. Fear of missing out. Absolutely. I, I just. Look, if there's a good reason to buy, you buy. If not, don't let somebody scare you into buying stuff that you don't need when it's just a, you know, a want based thing. So that's my, that's what I, I'm sorry, I took too long just to say that, you know, Edgar, buy what you want when you want, but don't let anybody push you into it. You know, there's no reason to. The next question came up was somebody wanted me to talk, five people actually wanted me to talk about gear news. Did you see what happened with Hughes and Kittner, which is still in the rumor mill? Aspects of it, I believe it's been somewhat confirmed, but it's also rumor mill. It's confirmed. If you haven't heard, Hughes and Kittner Amps has been purchased by Toman. I'm saying it funny because I want to. Toman, Thoman, the German music store, who's the largest music store in the world. You know, everybody said this, everybody says arguably compared to Sweetwater, one is bigger than the other. They're, you know, both of them are very large. And the answer to that is whether it's a rumor, which I believe it's been confirmed or not, it's not shocking to me. We've been talking about this for five years now and definitely in the last three years more so, which is that, you know, the amplifier brands are going away and you know, and when I say going away, he's. And Kidder is not going away, just got acquired by somebody. But it means, it is the fact that, you know, like what we saw with Mesa Boogie buying, bought by Gibson or Saldano being bought by Boutique Amp Distribution or Marshall being sold are bought by a Chinese investment company. Now this is the, this is, this is what's happening. Sorry, I got thrown off. Somebody's like, Thoman is German. Yes, Toman is German. They're in Germany. I've been to Thoman, I spent nine days there. It is very much a German in Germany. So if you didn't know, it's in a little German village. Literally a village. It's like a little village. I mean it's a big giant million square foot building in a little village. Anyways, so this is not to me shocking news. So interesting enough, I have not only been to Tolman, but I've also been to Hughes and Kittner's, Hughes and Kettner. I'm sorry, I get a lot of crap because I always say Kittner and it's Kettner. Keep in mind Hewson, Kettner is a made up name. So there is nobody named Hughes and Kettner. So you know, Hughes and Kettner got their name. I have the history of Hughes and Kettner book. They gave it to me when I was there at their, at their. Which is going to be part of the story that's important right now. Facility notice I'm calling a facility, not a factory in their facility in Germany. The name came from the fact that they wanted to make a name brand of. Well, they started out doing PAs and stuff. But anyways, when they wanted to name the company they, this German based company thought they wanted a name that appealed to Americans and to the British. Right. And so they named the company Hughes and Kettner for that reason. Right. Just like Harley Benton, by the way. Same kind of concept. Harley Benton is named with the same logic. It's two names that they thought appeal, like Harley, like Harley Davidson and Benton would be like the English name. Hughes and Kettner is the same thing. I think the Hughes is the American side idea name and the Kettner is the British name. I'm not really sure. It's been a while since I read the book, at least five years I believe. I got the book in 2019 and read it in 2019. Anyways, so I went to Hughes and Kettner's facility in 2019. I spent, I want to say four days there maybe. Yeah, four days. And there was some signs on the wall then that I didn't like seeing. One of the signs said no, just kidding. It didn't say anything. One of the things that happened there was I asked to film, as you guys know, I've done a lot of factory tours and filmed them. I wanted to film them making the amps. And it was at that time they explained to me they weren't making any amps there. Their flagship amp, which is their six channel hundred watt, you know, amp that's amazing, was being ghost built by another guy that they still had them. They could get them, but they don't build them. They were having them ghost built by something else. All of the amps that they were making at the time and the pedals and you name it, were being made like in China and they had R and D there, they had marketing there, but there was no manufacturing. Now keep in mind I did a review of their acoustic amp at that time, I believe There was a small building which they didn't let me go into, and they claimed at that time that they were making a couple the PA products and the acoustic amps, which my acoustic amp did say made in Germany. So I do believe that. And they were not making anything but those things there. In my experience, going to factories around the world, here's what I've learned. You go to a factory, especially if you go there multiple times, you go to a factory and the first time it's like, this is where we make the products and they show you and they go, and this is where, you know, this is where materials come into the factory. This is where we make the products, and this is where shipping is, you know, where we ship out. Like, okay, and then they always have like. And this is where we warehouse the import version of the product, you know, and keep in mind in this case, you know, the German facilities, like, they make stuff in Germany and then they import from, like, China, Asia, right? Same with the USA manufacturers. You go to a USA manufacturer and they're making stuff in the usa, and then they import stuff from Asia and they go, this is where we import. In my experience, every time I've gone back to a factory, pretty much every factory at some point, when I go there the second time or the third time, they give you the same tour. The warehouse for the import factory is bigger. There's always more import. It's more and more and more and to the point where eventually, and this has happened to me once, and obviously Hughes and Kintner would be kind of second, but this is the ones where you go. And they don't even build anything anymore. They go, yeah, we don't build anything here. We literally just. It's a warehouse now for all the import stuff. So that's what I think happens to a lot of brands. I'm not saying that's what happened to Hughes and Kettner, but I think that's part of the problem is that, you know, once you kind of become just a brand, you know, your, your, your, your value is a name, you know, and some designs which then are made, you know. Cause think with this. That, that reason why I tell you this way is think about this. If Hews and Kettner is a brand that is just having their amps made overseas in China, well, then not only can somebody buy them, like Thoman, Toman can make that brand better because Thoman can increase that volume, right? They can go to that manufacturer overseas and go, what happens if we buy more and we get the Price down even more or they have better manufacturers that they can deal with because again, they have more buying power, more money, muscle, so to speak. And so I believe Thoman will make the Hughes and Kitner brand better. And when I say better, and this is where I want to be very clear about this. I don't mean better as the quality of the product. I don't mean better as what it was when it was at its heyday, when it was making unique and interesting products. There's a lot of different interesting products, I think then better than where it is now. The last four to be safe, I'll say two, but two to be safe. But let's say four products that Hughes and Kettner had come out with, I didn't even review them. I wasn't interested in them at all. As you guys know, their little mini heads and stuff. I literally saw this stuff as, you know, like, look, there's a lot better product on the market for less money. I thought it was a little expensive for what it was. I didn't think it was very unique and interesting. And, you know, and again, it looked like just trying to move units by hitting a price point. So that's what happens. And we're seeing a lot of this. And it's because of a ton of things. It's a ton of things. Today is a perfect example. Something happened to me today. I was going to buy an amplifier today. I was on Reverb. I was looking on a used amplifier, particular amplifier. It's not a very expensive amplifier. I want to say about $600. So again, not maybe four to six hundred dollars. Right? It's the price range I was looking at. And I'm not exaggerating when I say this. There was about, say 20 listings on Reverb out of the 20. 95% of them were local pickup only. No one was shipping. So I couldn't find the amplifier to be shipped. I went to Guitar center used. They didn't have one. I went to Music around, they have one. Sorry, they had three or four. Only one Music around was shipping. The rest were local pickup. And these are the things that are hurting amp sales. You know, you can't get used stuff shipped. You. You can't. You go into music stores. There's not a whole lot of amp selections anymore. A lot of us are using modelers. It's just. It's exactly what we kind of know. So I'm interested to see what Thoman does with it. I know Toman's buying power. You know, do I expect a Harley Bitten version of all the Hughes and Kinder stuff at dirt cheap probably. Right? I mean I don't know. I don't know. This is not the first time something like this has happened. You know, like to me, even though it wasn't a retailer, I think of like when Behringer bought TC Electronics a lot of people are like what's going to happen? Because Behringer was considered a sub brand, in other words an economy brand and TC was a little bit more premium. And what happens when a sub brand buys a premium brand? I know Tolman is not a brand. It's a so so much is it a store. But I think of we connect Toman to Harley Benton and I think as Harley Benton and you know involved with Hewson Kitner it's possible I would be. I would be shocked if they don't make a Harley Bitten Hewson Kittner type version amps and then keep the housing kitten more premium. Who knows what they're going to do to the line. I'm really excited about it though. And the reason I'm excited is because I'm excited to see what they do with it. Obviously they're not going to shelve it. They didn't buy the brand to get rid of it. They're not a competing company. That's where I would be more concerned. Like for instance, if we had heard like if Angle had bought using Kittner, maybe it would be to shelve the brand as a. You know, as a competitor. But in this case I think Tolman has plans for it. And I don't think we're going to see the the end of this anytime soon. As you guys know, we talked about the fact that basically the investors of Fender bought Reverb. And you know, as you guys know, because we talk about on this channel and I believe we're the only channel that ever talked about it. But who knows which is Sweetwater bot gator cases. Which by the way is confirmed to be true. However, no public announcements ever been made other than on this channel. So I'm just letting you know in case you guys google it, you can't find any resource for it other than I can tell you it's 100% true that Sweetwater did buy gator cases. And. And this is gonna be a thing because you're gonna see retailers literally buying some brands. I think that. I don't think this is the end of this. I think it's the beginning of this. The big retailers, I mean buying up the brands. We're gonna see consolidations, that's for sure. Kev says we need to see Sweetwater buy G L I. I don't think that will ever happen. I don't believe Sweetwater, in its current iteration, that I know them as is, would buy any brand that would be so much a competitor to a brand they're trying to carrying. Like, they wouldn't buy something that competes with Fender. I have a video coming out very soon in the next week or so that's kind of, kind of explain something like this, A story like this where I think Sweetwater looked at maybe a Gator is not so much as buying a brand and competing with like, you know, the case companies as so much as just, you know, having an accessory brand of their own. That's really what I think they, they were really focused on. So in other words, Gator wasn't so much just cases what Sweetwater was after. It, it was the idea to have all the accessories too, because there's a large margin in accessories, especially if you're the, if you're. The company owns them. And then Steve Ho says eventually Amazon will own them all. It's possible, isn't it possible? It's. What is it? What is the movie with Arnold. No, what's the movie with Sylvester Stallone where everything is Taco Bell? Why can't I think of that? What is that movie? Everything is Amazon. Everything is Taco Bell. So, yeah, I can't remember. I can't remember the name of that movie. Somebody will put it in the comments anyways. Or maybe no one cares anyways. So, yeah, that's the thing, I think with Hughes and Kettner, I think it'll be interesting. Interesting. Now that Hughes and Kettner is owned by, by Sweetwater, I can tell you guys a crazy story. Now, I was not banned from telling this story. I just was a little nervous. I didn't want any drama from it. But it's such a hilarious story that I'm going to share with you today that it's almost not going to be believable. So I mentioned that I went to Hughes and Kettner and here's how that happened. I was at Thoman for a week as a guest doing content there and doing stuff. And a person who I respect a whole lot, who's in the industry, who no longer works for Hughes and Kettner, and this is before the Kettner got bought by Tolman, asked me if I would come to the Hughes and Kettner event, like in a couple Weeks. And I really respect this person and I like them. And I said, sure, I'll do it. I'll. I'll do it. He said, it would be really, really nice to get you to the event. So I went to the Hughes and Kettner event, and there. What happened was we went there and we made a bunch of content, including we made a commercial for Hughes and Kettner. You can watch that commercial on YouTube for those of you want to see it. It's me and a bunch of real musicians. Like, I say that with quotes like, not to be sarcastic against them, just to kind of dog me as a YouTuber. And then some other YouTubers that you'll know for sure were in the video. We made this commercial for Hughes and Kettner. I don't know why we did that. They just asked us to. They hired a professional company with professional cameras, and we had a big stage, and we did this. We went into a real professional studio and played our parts, and it was my first and only experience making a commercial, so I did that. And then we hung out all week and we made content and learned about Hughes and Catner and did all kinds of stuff. And I did a video that went pretty viral where I showed how loud one of their amps are in the middle of a field. Now, after we did the commercial, they told us that we were going to do a photo shoot. This is absolute true story. And so we go to do the photo shoot, all of us that are there, and. And I've told part of the story, and I've just told the second half. You're going to hear the second half today. So we asked us to do the photo shoot, and the background was black, and all of us were wearing all black, except for one YouTuber who never wears black. He's always brightly colored. You can probably guess who that is. Doesn't matter anyways. And they. They looked at us and said, okay, tomorrow when you guys go to your hotels tonight, tomorrow when you come in, you can't wear black. And. And all of us said the same thing. That's like, all we own is black. That's all I brought with me is black shirts and black. So they. They couldn't take the picture behind the black background. So they go, okay, so tomorrow we're gonna do different pictures. So the next day we show up, all of us YouTubers and artists, and they had recreated the Last Supper. I'm not joking. This is a 100% true story. It was the table. It was a long table. And. And it had the. All the stuff for Last Supper, including Hughes and Kittner beers on it. And they asked us to stand and they, they had someone with long hair sit in the middle as. As basically as Jesus. And we all stood and made us do the pose of the Last Supper. But instead of a meal or whatever's at the Last Supper in the middle, they had the Hughes and Kitten are like, amp, okay? And we were like, this is kind of weird. And in that picture, if you can find that picture, which I don't know if it's out there on the Internet, you will not see me in it. This is true. But you will know I'm there because I am like this. When they took the picture, I had my hat on and I tipped my head down and I was holding it this time. So this is the only picture. You could probably see my chin or both my chins. I don't know. You can see my chin. And that's all you can see. Okay, that's not the funny part of the story. That's just weird. So after we did that, we went, that was weird. Then they go now to the next picture. The next picture was a giant mountain of rocks and dirt. Like they made a hill right, of dirt and they had, take the Hewson Kidner amplifier and they mounted it to a flagpole and they wanted us to recreate the. The scene of, of Iwo Jima of rising, raising of a flag, but it'd be raising a Houston kidnapp. And we were walking up to this and they're explaining to us what's about to happen. And I go, I'm good, I'm good. I'm out, guys, I'm done. I'm done. And they go, no, no, it's to be good. My German accent's like a half Italian silliness. I don't know what it is, but he's like, it'll be good. It'll be good in picture. It'll be great. I was like, no, no, no, duh. I'm like, no. And then luckily, right then, the dissident started, which in another YouTube channel said, yeah, I don't think this is a good idea, bro. I don't think it's good at all. I don't think we should do this. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing this. I go, I'm a veteran. I'm not. I'm not doing this. And another YouTube channel goes, look, no one said any, by the way, this was in 2019. He goes, no one said anything to Mark Ignisi in the Gibson video. So I'm saying something here is a bad idea. We shouldn't make this video. He goes, I wish somebody told Mark and Nisi that. But I'm telling you guys, this is a bad idea. We're not. We should not make this picture. And so four or five of us had peeled off now and we walked away. And we were walking away and they're like, come back, come back. And we're like, nope, I'm done. I'm done. We. We're out of here. So we walked away. And my understanding, I did not. I did not stay. So I did not see. But I was told later that they instead reenacted the scene from Lion King, I guess is when holding the amp up, like holding Simba. So I don't think there's an actual picture of that, of what I described. I think the picture, if you could find it, is of the Lion King. Yeah, so it was weird. That was a weird, interesting experience, I have to say. That was definitely out there. So I always, always thought that was a crazy story. And yeah, that was good. All right, all right, you know what? That's enough. That's my husband getting her stories. So. And. But yeah, how I thank God that that worked out the way it did. All right, we have more to talk about. There's so many subjects you guys are still into today, so we're gonna talk about this. I see it all over the comment sect. I got a bunch of these emails and I got a couple messages he sent to me sideways asking about all of the Gibson hate going on right now with the. The new Gibson epiphones. So let's pull them up. Let me see what you guys, I've seen this, seen something of this. Let's pull up what we're talking about because I'm really confused by this. So you guys know, I want to just say when I first heard about the issue, I was like, why is this an issue? And okay, so the Epiphone, Gibson Epiphone has released some new instruments and these are more higher end, more premium than before. Let's go to new. We'll just do new newest product right here and it should come right up if it filters correctly. It does. Okay, let's. Let's find a Les Paul, shall we? Okay, so let's go here. All right, so Epone is reissue are issued a bunch of new instruments that are essentially very premium. These are inspired by, I guess, custom shop instruments and they have all kinds of features. That's not the controversy. And you would think watching this, if you don't know what's going on, you're probably your first reaction is, oh, my God, $1300 for, you know, an epiphone. That's not the controversy. I thought that was when everybody was upset. So these are very premium for what the normal epiphone goes for. They have cases you can see real right here. A nice brown case. I reviewed the 59 Epiphone. That was a thousand dollars. So I didn't think $300 was too crazy. They, hey, there's. There's Danish, by the way. If you don't know, Danish is a great guy. Anyways, so. So this recreates the 57 Les Paul. There's all kinds of them that they've done. State our laser scanning technology ensures Most accurate spec 1957 left Les Paul. Do you ever notice every time Fender Gibson reissue a guitar, it's always, this is the most accurate. And then I'm like, can we trust you anymore? Because at this point, you both have now reissued, to my just generic thinking, a dozen inaccurate reissues. Because you seem to not get reissues right. And because you're always getting it more right. I'm like, does it make any sense? Right? Could you imagine? Like, this is so weird. Anyways, back to this. So it's got the long tenyon tenon. I don't know why I said tenyin tenon. Two Gibson USA custom bucker pickups deliver masterful PAF style, fidelity and warm, organic sound. So these are top of the line. Look at this set neck. Now this has a, I think a VOS finish, which is, I think a fancy way to say this is polyurethane, but they make it like a little rough and satiny looking. See if we can see a good picture. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of shine. There is what I'm getting from that to make it look a little bit more like the real deal. So why is everybody upset? Well, let's take a look. This is it. Oh, my goodness. They made the headstock look pretty much like the Gibson headstock. It's the open book headstock. And I thought, well, wait, that's confusing. Somebody's like, yeah, did you hear how horrible this is? I'm like, wait a minute. This is what you guys have been asking for. Like, everybody's been like, why don't they make the epiphone headstock just like the Gibson headstock? And then I'm like, somebody's punking me. And then I saw it again. I Saw it again and I'm like, wait, what is going on here? This is what you're upset because they, you, you're upset because they did the thing that everybody asked them to do. And then I'm like, is that the saying? Right? Don't. Right. What is it? What's the old saying? You know, I don't know, I forget what it is, right. I forget. Hold on. Sean says, didn't they do this two years ago? I believe they had a semi accurate headstock. They had done headstock more like it. This is literally the Gibson headstock now, as I believe. And so it seemed to be an interesting thing to see that some people were a little upset that they did the headstock. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't like I'm talking about the whole world. I'm saying there's just some fuss on the Internet about it. I just thought the interesting thing was I thought it was cool. So my opinion on these ephphones is I think it's cool. I mean, keep in mind, I'm still dealing with the fact that I'm like, when I see $1,300 for an epiphone, I'm like, can I get a Gibson, a real Gibson for 1500 bucks, used somewhere? And I'm pretty sure I can, but you know, I mean, there's cool features. Obviously the 59 that I did a video of that was a thousand bucks was really cool. So I can't imagine these are going to be much different than that. Veteran Vibe says at $1300 I'm buying a used Gibson. You know, I think that's essentially, you know, where I am mentally. But keep in mind, it's also because I'm not specifically wanting or longing for a specific guitar. I think that's what epone fills the need up. It's like you want a specific Gibson. Like you can buy a really good Gibson for 13 to 1800 dollars used, no problem. But you're not going to get like a 57 or 59 reissue style instrument. You're going to get like a stripped down studio of some sort, right? Or maybe you can find a smoking deal on a standard, which would be a really good deal and a good guitar, especially now. But, but you're not going to get, you know, you're not going to get exactly, you know, the look of the exact guitar in the feel. And I think that's what this appeals to. And that makes sense to me. I think sometimes it, you know, there's just, sometimes you just want what you want. So Papa Steve says use Gibsons will go up now? Possibly. Sure, why not? Sure. Aren't they always gonna go up? They're always gonna go up. Is this gonna make them go up? I mean, it's possible, but I mean, I don't know they're gonna go up. You know, the real question to me now is like I look at this and it's not quite there yet. It's not quite in the Eastman Price territory, but it's getting close. I mean, it's pretty close. I mean, the Eastman's I've reviewed have been fantastic instruments. So I mean they're on par with Gibson Custom Shop, so. But they also have the right finishes and stuff. So there's a little bit of that too. So I don't know. I don't know. Okay, hold on, let me go back to the screen to see if I'm not missing something you guys are talking about. Ah, Vox guitars rocks. That's funny. He says now Epiphone sells gypsums. Yeah, at this point I think, you know, this could be, you know, it's an interesting point. This could be a really good attack on the chipsons because the chipsins are getting out of control. The amount of chips coming in the country here in the United States is epic at this point. It's, it's getting really, really crazy because everybody's just importing so many of them and they're just keep coming in and coming in. So maybe this is a good way to combat that by giving somebody exactly what they want. I don't know. So. Oh, anyways, I love it, you guys. A lot of you guys are telly driver says, hey, you suppose Epiphone will ever have a Les Paul with nitro? I was asked this before, years ago, and I think my answer was no. And I stick with my answer still being no. And the main reason is, is that Nitro finishes are take a lot of time and therefore by time, that's expense. If you look at the process in Twitch Gibson and you can do this, just go Google and, or go on YouTube and watch a Gibson factory tour and watch the process, you'll see that they could spend two weeks after you know, finishing a guitar at Gibson. That may not sound like a big deal, but that's a huge deal when you're trying to make a price friendly instrument. It's a really big time suck. And that's why it's interesting that companies like Eastman can do it. I always find it more weird that I think with Eastman maybe Because of the fact that they make so many orchestral instruments and, like, violin stuff, and they have a bigger market than I. They might be a bigger company than I understand they are, because I don't know what their size, but I always think, like, wouldn't that be a great company for Gibson to either work with or acquire and make a premium epiphone line, you know, over there in China? I know they were trying to do a premium epiphone here in the US but that's the real question is like, you know, is. Is would I buy an Eastman, like, take an Eastman at $2,200 and the current features and quality that I know it is now, which is really good. If it said epiphone on it, would I be for the same price? Would I be attracted to it even more? And I kind of would be. There would be something about that that would be interesting to me. So interesting. Yardbird 68 says labor intensive. It is very labor intensive. The. The only company I know that does nitro in a quick way is Paul Reed Smith Guitars. They do it a much faster process than Gibson, and I'm not sure what that entails and how they do that, but they. I do know they have it down to days, but. So maybe there is a version where they could do something like that. Again, I'm not a finished person, so I don't want to come off like, I'm like, oh, I can totally understand this. Even when I go to factories, I'm not really interested in doing finish work. I never have been. So even at the factory, it's never really bugged me that most of the time they don't want to talk about the paint boost because they can't really take you in them for the most part unless they stop them. And so I'm always like, whatever you guys do, I don't really care how you paint stuff. But I'm sure maybe there is a way, because I see some companies will shoot like an acrylic. Something like an acrylic finish, and then they shoot polyurethane. Are not polyurethane nitro lacquer over that or something. So it gives it the feel, but it's not really the same thin finish. And it's not. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, let's. Let's jump subjects again. Let's over quick. Amanda's sending questions and subjects. She sent this from Forest. Hale says, thinking about getting a baritone guitar. Want something that does twang well. Any recommendations you know, I'm not a baritone guy. I've owned a few. I had a Schecter baritone I thought was really good. That was. And I've had a Fender telly baritone telly once. I think I played through, it was nice. And then a baritone, like, jazz master style guitar. That was nice. I don't particularly have any baritones that I could recommend or. Because I don't really play a baritone. If I. If I do need to play a baritone for a minute, I take one of my seven strings and I literally just retune it real fast. So it's like a baritone. And I just ignore the extra high string because I just don't know. Sean Brooks is like the Squire baritone Telecaster. I'm pretty sure that's the one I was playing. But I. I think Dan Electro makes a baritone. There's a lot of great baritones out there. I'm just not a baritone player. It's not something I. I've needed ever. So I don't have any suggestions for that, if that helps timeline, make sure we're doing okay on time. This one is okay. This one was a question that I got, and I thought it was funny because it kind of hit me funny. So this one was basically. Hold on, let me read it. Okay. It says. Okay, hold on a second. So this person said, I know you've probably talked about your biggest buying regret, but have you ever talked about your biggest buying regret at your store? And so the question made me laugh because it didn't take but a second to think of something. So the question was, when I had the store for the, you know, for the over a decade, was I. Did I make any purchases now, one on one with a customer? Like a trade or something? Maybe there's something that, you know, ones or twosies. But yes. And so I'm gonna share the story with you because it's kind of funny, because I was curious. I looked it up. That's why I thought it was funny. And then I was like, oh, wow, this didn't go the way I thought. So when I think of, like a regret, in other words, when I say a buying regret, like, have I. Did I ever bring in a line of instruments into the store and think, oh, this is immediately a bad idea? Or do I ever really have a really bad buying experience with the company? And the answer is yes. And believe it or not, the company was Flea, like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers started with some other people, I'm sure. His own baseline called Fleabase. And as A Flea fan. And as a short scale base fan, he made a 34 inch scale on a short scale base. And they're crazy colors and they look weird. And they made these flea bases. And the buy in was like six pieces 34 inch scale and six pieces, I think 30 inch scale bases. So I bought the, the instruments. There's 12 pieces in a variety of the colors. They had some pretty dramatic colors and all of them were unplayable junk. I remember just like, this is horrible. I was so emotionally devastated just how bad they were. I just remember thinking these were just horrible, horrible, horrible junk. So I called the company and I said, look, these are unplayable. They are horrible. We, I mean, you know, they're not even, you know, 99. At that time, $99 base would be better than this. This is bad. And they said, yes, we're having that problem. We, the factory took advantage of us and basically sent out a bunch of bad stuff. We know that. They said we even had a dealer put all of them outside of his store and just told us to come get them and, and kicked him out physically out of his store. And I was like, wow. And so I go, what do you want me to do with these? And they go, you know what, we're not going to charge you for them and you can just, just keep them. And so I was like, wow, that's really crazy. So what happened to them? We sat on some. We used. I fixed them up over time and I would do fret work and dialed them in and then we would let use them as loaners for students for years. And then attrition out. I don't know if we sold any of them. We probably sold a couple and then I think I gave a couple away, you know, kind of just over time, it just took up forever. So I thought I'd look them up and this is the part that made me laugh. Ready? Okay, so here, looking at some flea bases. This is them. So this is what I say about crazy colors. There was like, this was like the blue with the orange pickard and the pickards were double stick taped on. That's why there's no screws. And then right there you go. And let's go back out of this one. Here's, here's one. This guy wants $2,500 because it's signed by Flea. This one's $600. It's Austria though. This is Italy for $700. Here's one for 79 in the United States. Bizarre guitars that Reno. Yep. So they Have a Flea, boss. This is a 32 inch scale, I believe. Flea base. I believe these were made China. I don't remember. Could have been Indonesia, but I'm pretty sure it was China. And look at that. Should have held on to them. That's what made me laugh, by the way, was I was thinking, like, these were the worst things ever. And. And I remember thinking like, oh, my God. And so when I looked them up after I got the question, I was like, oh, my goodness. People are asking like, 800. Like, here's somebody asking $800 for one. Here's somebody asking seven. I'm like, $700. I mean, maybe if they're fixed up. I still don't get it. I don't get it. But I will tell you a funny tidbit that happened was the following year, we never reordered. We just. I just obviously was like, they didn't reach out back to us, and I never reached back to them. The following year, I was at the NAMM show, and there was Flea. And he was at the Flea bass booth. It was a very small booth. He was standing on a mini stage. He was talking. And I walked up and I remember thinking, like, this will be interesting to watch. And Flea was playing the bass. And then he did a qa. And somebody said. And I gotta give him credit for the guts to say this, they said to Flea, they go, are we really gonna. Are we gonna believe that you're not playing your. You know, your Modulus? Because he was at the time, I think he was with Modulus, you know, your. Your $3,000 modulus basses. You're playing these two $300 flea basses. And he said. He said. And again, I'm remembering off memory, so it'll be not exactly as, you know, this, but the idea is the same. He said, I never played the Moduluses. Really. Anyways, I always played my Offender jazz bass. He's like, so even. Even when I was touring with Music man and Modulus, I was only playing them, like, a little bit on tour or on tour. And I was always playing the recording with the jazz bass. He goes, so, same with these. I'll be touring with them, but I won't be playing them in the studio. And I was like, oh, that's interesting that he said that. So. But, yeah, now that also brings me. I want to look now that I looked up. So what I haven't looked up was. I thought it was funny because that's not. That's the first thing that came to my Mind. But I actually had immediate second that came to mind. Second biggest regret I had of a gear, a line of instruments or products that I carried my store that I thought was horrible. And it was mod tone pedals. And so I'm going to look them up now. I have not looked them up yet. So mod tone pedals came out right when the pedal boom was happening. And it's like. And. And here's why I remember them. I remember, like, it's a reminder to me to this day of where hype can only take you so far. So if you go back to, you know, the 2007, 2008 era, recession years where everybody's buying pedals, right? And I told you I did a podcast about this where I said the pedal industries literally saved the musical store, the music store industry in the recession because nobody was buying. But you would. People were buying pedals. And. And literally I was buying any kind of pedals I could get. You know, I was like, you know, mxr, you know, if we could carry any brand of pedals, you know, small builders, bigger builders, you know, you name it. We were just loading up pedals in the store and a company came out and they go, oh, we're modtone. And they were affordable, like boutique pedals. And these were them. Let's share them here. And these, this was them. And. And they had funny names. Vertical. So this is the BB Buzzboy power fuzz pedal. So here's the harmonic trimmer. What does that say? Pulsating tremolo. Oh, gotta love pulsating tremolo. And so mod tone. There's not a whole lot. I just remember, look, here's another one. The atomic phaser. $89. So these. So, you know, currently this would be more. This is selling more now than it did when they were new. New. We were trying to get like $59. We had some for as low as $39. I remember because I think I always. I always kind of correlate them to looking like race cars because they had the stripe across the tone. This was mod tone. Where is this made? Made in China. Okay. And horrible sounding pedals. Now again, that's an opinion. Opinions vary. So, you know, saying something is horrible sounding. Oh, y. This is my favorite. This one was a distortion pedal. Yep. That's tire tread over the front of it. It's the dyno drive. And you know it's dyno drive because it's got tire tread marks on it. Like, you don't have to run over your pedal. Somebody pre run over this pedal. 59 bucks. I believe that was probably, like, $49 new at that time. And I just remember what was fun about this, you know, kind of going back in memory lane on this is this really did take me back to remembering when it was a lot easier now for everybody to con you on YouTube than it was in real life. And what I mean by that is, like, YouTube, you can make a video. You know, they make a video of a pedal, and they're like, it sounds amazing, and then everybody buys it. But in a store, you're like, look at these new line of pedals. They're amazing. And people plug in and go, this sounds like crap. And they put it right back. He couldn't sell them, right? It's like, now you can make a pedal. It's not great, but they can hype it on the Internet and sell through, you know, a thousand of them. Like, it's nothing. But in. In the store, the. The problem is, is that literally no one would buy these pedals, and we would just make them cheaper and cheaper. And if I recall one of the peels that had, like, 50% margin, so, you know, if it was 60 bucks, I was paying 30 bucks for it. And I just remember at some point, not only did we put them down to cost, which then couldn't move them, but then we would start throwing them in with things like. And I would make it up because not the rest of the guys in Shauna were much better at it. But I was really funny. Like, somebody will come in and go, yeah, can I get a boss tuner pedal? And I go, sure. And I go, hey, by the way, it comes with a mod tone pedal for free. Just, like, take this pedal. Get it out of my store. Just. I remember now. It's funny is I don't really remember them. I don't have a memory of them sounding bad. I just remember everybody saying they sounded bad. And I remember not thinking much of them. So I just want to make sure. So in case somebody has one, they go, I think it sounds good. Maybe I'm a little off there. I just remember every customer hating them and very few customers buying them. And I believe. And I'm pretty sure I'm right on this, I believe one of the only few we sold, a customer did bring it back because he said it broke and it wouldn't work. And I remember it was under the counter for months because, like, how are we gonna fix this thing? No one's not worth fixing. So those were two lines. And I would say, Then if you were to keep asking me about brands in the store that I had there that I thought were mistakes or bad decisions, usually it was always like a new brand like that. New brands are always a. You know, you're really taking a risk because it's unproven product, and you don't know what kind of service you're gonna get. You don't know what kind of quality you're gonna get. And the whole making everything over in China, in Indonesia, and all this stuff makes things more complicated because anybody can just say, slap a brand on something and they have a brand. So somebody comes in, and next thing you know, everybody has a brand just by, you know, say, stick my name on that too. And then, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean they have a quality product or a product at all. So. So there you go. Anyone has 70 bucks to waste and wants to buy a horrible pedal, get yourself a mod tone. I don't know if mod tone's still around. Should we look to see Mod Tone pedals? What happens? Modtone petals. Oh, my goodness, There's a Modtone website. Look at this. All right. Oh, these look different, but the font's the same. This has got to be the same brand, but these look way different petals, right? Okay, I smack talk Mod Tone. So I'll tell you what. Anyone wants to take the time. I'm not gonna do it right now. Anyone wants to take a time and scroll through this and look, there's Andy. I mean, they got some cool videos with Andy. Anyone wants to find a cool pedal and suggestions? Maybe I'll buy one. Maybe we'll try it out. But I'd like to point out that all my smack talking about mod tone was about the pedals that it seemed to not be making. So maybe they knew. What do they go for now? Let's see what one goes for. Buy a mod tone. Buy direct online. Okay, so. Oh, what? This is Aleka. Interesting. So Aleka makes these. I think I remember that. I think that's why I bought them. So if you guys don't know, Aleka is a brand that's made other stuff in the past too. So I won. I think that's why I bought them. I think I remember because they were like, oh, yeah, Lekka is making a new, affordable brand of pedals, so. Oh, my goodness. Can we go back here for a second? Yep. Folks, that's 29.95 new. What? Okay, so somebody's. Somebody's buying a mod tone used pedal for $89 when you can buy the new one for 20. Can we go 20 or best offer or best offer? Should we put an offer? There's two available. Hold on a second. I'm making offer. Wait, hold on. Let me go back. I don't want to buy this pedal. Let me go back to the comment section. Should I buy a pedal? Should it be a delay? See, the problem is if I say, should I buy it? You're going to say yes. Because what do you guys care? It's my money. You're going to be like, do whatever. I don't know. You know what? I think this is a waste of time. We'll just. I'll end up buying a pedal that sounds. Best case scenario. It just sounds boring. Boring and average. Everybody's like, do it. Of course everybody's gonna be like, yeah, buy it. Yeah, you know what? But I still have to make the video and stuff. Maybe we do pedal of the week. Maybe. You know what? Maybe I'll do a pedal of the week with one. I'll buy one. We'll have to see $29. So now you know. 29 bucks. Anyone wants to know about Modtone? 29 bucks. Crazy. All right, I'm glad to see that there seem to be improved in not making the same pedals anymore. Although owning a pedal with a tire print on it just kind of seems cool. Okay, you know what it's time now for? It's time for guitar of the week. Now it's time for guitar. There you go. Guitar of the week. All right. Let me drink some water. Do I have a side camera? I don't. Look at that. All right. Guitar of the week. This one was fun. This one was by request. And I was like, I would have never thought to share this guitar because it's a guitar I've done a video of and everything. But it. The somebody asked about it, and when they asked about it, I have to admit I was like, what? How do you not know what this is? It's like my most famous guitar. So today's guitar is a one of a kind. It's a Keasel. It's a one of a kind Keezel. I'm just kidding. It's a one of a kind. Literally, there's only one. It's the only one. In fact, I'm trying to think, is that. Is that the only thing I can say? Yeah, that's the only guitar I think I could say it's like only one of. Right. It's a Paul Reed Smith custom guitar. And a lot of you obviously Know what this guitar is? For those that don't, because some seem to don't know what this is. This is a guitar that was custom made for me by my friend Nathan. So I'll tell you the quick story. There's a whole video about that. But I love this story because it's. It's just. It's just a. Obviously, it's the most. It's a heartwarming gift that I got this guitar. So let me just tell you what this is. So this started out its Life as a 2001 Paul Reed Smith Core Custom 24 with a hardtail, which is a very rare guitar. They only made them for a few years as a production. It's just a custom 24 with a hardtail. And my buddy Nathan, who worked for me for many years repairing guitars and worked at the store, went to work for PRS and at PRS Guitars. If you don't know this, still true this day, the employees are allowed to work off time, off their hours at their station on their own personal stuff because they believe that's building their skills and they're allowed to trade with each other's services. So in other words, Nathan does buffing and stuff. So. So, like, if an employee wants to, like, fix a scratch on their guitar and take it to Nathan, Nathan can work off his hours and buff the guitar. So Nathan spent two years soliciting 17 other employees to basically make this guitar for me. So he took. And you watch the whole video, if you want to watch the whole video on it. He took this 2001 guitar, they sanded it down, they put this one of a kind finish on it called Desert Sandstorm. I say one of a kind because it's each one's unique, which I love saying Desert Sandstorm because I live in Arizona and we actually have sandstorms. And so it's a unique finish. But not only do that, they actually put a maple veneer on the top and did the finish on top. And they did the PRS logo in black, which is very rare, and then black PRS tuning keys. They sanded the neck so the neck is natural finish. Now it looks shiny. And that's because that's the oils from my hands over the years of playing this guitar because I've had it for a few years now, and I actually play it a lot. And it's kind of like Eddie Van Halen treatment. Now it's been glossed with the oils from your hand. This is a pattern thin neck. Originally he had a truss rod cover on it. That was purple and it was a piece of his employee guitar. I took that off and I didn't want to get damaged because sometimes when you have string stuff, you can poke and scratch the truss rod cover. So I have it in a special drawer now with my little keepsakes. They put a bone nut on it. Something that it didn't say in the video and I should have is that something really unique about this guitar is that it has. On the 12th marker, it has one dot. I don't know why they did that. I did. I've never asked Nathan. And I'm like, yeah, it's one dot. And see it? It gets here and there's just one dot. So it has abalone dots on the side. It looks like. Or maybe it's nails. I think they're nails. Metal nails. And one dot on the 12 marker. And then they put a PRS metal pickup, which is basically a JB, and then a PRS 5708 pickup in the neck. And then he wired it the way I had a special prs. I wired up one. One like this. And I like it where you put a three way switch right here. This is volume and tone. Whoops. No coil split. You just pull off the knob. I was like, even I didn't remember that. No coil split. And originally had an adjustable tail piece. But I put a one piece on there and I did change a couple things since then. So it's like update video. I added the one piece instead of the adjustable. Why? I just wanted to try it. One night I was restringing and had it and I did it. And I also. He originally gave me black covers and I switched this to ivory. And the reason I did that is because I switched the switch tip to ivory so I could see it better when I'm playing. A lot of times I'm filming and it's dark as I told you. All the lights hitting me from the cameras and it's dark. So I did that. And I thought this matched these better. And then I put the amber knobs on there to match that. So just aesthetic change over time. And that's it. And that's the guitar. And then it's on the back of it, it says, Kyg, sharpen my axe, Philip McKnight. And then it's all written in the hand font of PRs. Essentially it's a private stock guitar. But it's cooler because like I said, it was built by 17 employees on their off hours just for me. And pretty, pretty damn cool guitar. Pretty unique. It's Ultra light. I don't know how. £7, maybe. And it sounds great. Let's go ahead and play it. Probably need a strap. I'll just play a little bit so you guys can hear. Turn on the guitar. Okay, what do we got? We're here. I have nothing prepared at all. So let me just hit the delay, and I'll hit the blues driver pedal or blues breaker pedal. And then I'm playing through the Morgan PR PR 12amp. Okay. I'll do the bridge and then the neck. Sam. So that's what the guitar sounds like. For those that haven't heard a guitar, let's unplug it real quick. So I thought this was funny. Is it came up a couple times, you know, in questions. And I was like, what? No one knows what this guitar is. So this is famous because. To me. Because he sent it to me and on a live show. Okay. So he sent it to me on a live show once, and I didn't know what it was. And he asked Shauna to say, hey, have Phil open this on show live. Don't tell him what it is. Everyone knew, by the way. Every single one of my friends knew that they'd been doing this for two years. And I literally had no idea that they were doing this. But I always like to add a little bit of funny stories to this. This one has a little bit. An odd story to this. Okay, so as you guys know, Nathan worked for me here in the Valley. And one day he took something, I don't know, a piece of gear to a music store and traded it in for, you know, for in store credit. He didn't find. I think it was a Jackson. He took a Jackson and traded in. And he didn't kind of find anything in the store. So he got in store credit. He had a gift card, if you will. So he had a gift certificate. And the store eventually closed. Okay. So the store closed. And he was like, I guess I lost all my money. Cause it was a few hundred bucks. And I said, well, why don't you reach out to the owner through, like, Facebook and see if they'll take care of you. So he reached out to the owner on Facebook and he's. And the owner responded to him, and he said, you know, I got a few things left from the store you can choose from. Like, a couple of things I have. And so one of the things was this weird guitar from a artist who was having some. I'm gonna be vague about this because I. I haven't seen updates on how the Story ever unfolded with the artist, but apparently the artist had some kind of, like, it got in trouble. I don't know what they did. It was unappropriate. They were inappropriate with the child or inappropriate with the. A female. I don't know what. What it was. I just remember that's what they got accused of. Of that. Okay, something happened. And this is the guitar. The signature guitar he was given was this artist. And. And he said, that's the guitar he's going to give me. And I'm like, okay. And he. And so Nathan was like, yeah, I don't know what to do with it. And I go, well, you're a finished guy. Why don't you just refinish it? He's like, oh, okay. So he had me go get it. I went and picked it up from the. The. The store owner, and it sat here at my house for. Oh, God, I don't know, half a year. Long time. Maybe a few months, but it was a long time. And then eventually we shipped it to Nathan because Nathan finally got settled, and he's like, yeah, ship it to me. So I shipped it to him and. And then he shipped me a guitar back and told Shauna, like, hey, have Phil open this on the show. If you watch that episode, you have to find it. Good luck. But if you watch the video, I think I marked the show. If you watch me read the card from him. And that. What no one knows is the whole time I was thinking, he sent me back this artist guitar. And I was a little nervous because I was thinking, like, oh, no, this is that whole controversial thing. And so if you watch me open the guitar, I'm like, I actually creaked the case about 2 inches. I look inside, I'm like, what is this? Like, because he's my friend, and I trust him, and because he's my friend and I trust him, I'm opening this guitar live on the show as he's requested of me. But in the back of my head, I'm thinking, oh, my God, is He sends me this wacky thing, right? So I go, this is gonna be horrible, because I don't know what to do. Right? You know, the Internet is a scary place, you know? You know, you get the emails immediately. How can you, you know, endorse this person? How could you say something? You know, I get the stuff all the time just for saying things. Somebody goes, jimmy page the again. I just want to. You guys can look it up. The reason why I'm not saying the name is because I don't know, you know, I mean, I don't know whatever happened, if he got in trouble, I thought he went to jail, even. You know what's funny? Let me look, because I know if I can't find it, if I would have thought I was doing this, I would have really done a little bit more research. Okay. Because again, I don't think he got in trouble. I think he got accused. And that's why I don't want to talk about that, particularly because, again, it's not fair to him. Hold on. Oh, yeah. Well, not a good sign that my first search comes up. Oh, okay. So hold on. Let me pause that. Okay, so. Okay. So I'll just share with you guys now. I just want to point out this is not the intent of the show, and I want to keep things so the. And Rob Williamson said it correct, is Nick Cantonese. So if you look up Nick Cantonese, he was a guitar player in the Black Label Society. And it looks like it was about, you know, seven years ago. He was. I'm just reading a headline here that says, nick Cantis, former former Black Label Society guitarist, Guilty. Guilty of sexual misconduct with a minor. So the problem was I was like, oh, my God, did he send me this Nick Cantonese guitar, like, as a gift or something? I was thinking maybe he was, like, sending it to me to do something and he won and I didn't if he knew that he got accused. And I just thought the whole thing. So I just letting you guys know. I just. If you guys want to poke some fun at me, go back and watch that. The reason I'm telling you the story is not to drive up that. Or not to talk about anything other than the fact that if you go back now knowing that my facial and mannerisms in that live show are more hilarious than you think, because I am seriously like, oh, my God, is this what is going on here? And. And also, it's a nice reminder of friendship. And obviously not only because he made me this amazing guitar, but obviously just me doing it. Right? Yeah. Not knowing what it was, but knowing it could be possibly that weird guitar from that situation. And so, you know, there was a small part of me, and if you're wondering why I thought my friend Nathan would send me this guitar is I thought maybe because there was a letter with it. Right. I thought, well, maybe he wants me to rat out this store owner for giving him this guitar that's now by this artist who's gotten accused or. And. Right. So I didn't know what was going on. So I was Basically trying to tell you. But I had enough faith in my friend to know that he wouldn't do anything weird and bad to me. So I was like, all right, let's see what happens. And that's what happened. I got a great guitar. And this is the result of that crazy story. So this is the one of a kind. PRS Sandstorm Custom 24 hardtail. All right, maybe it's not funny. I don't know. I just remember thinking the whole thing was nerve wracking. So, okay, so let's go on to another subject. I hope you guys enjoyed the guitar of the week and hopefully I think I'm gonna talk to Nathan soon because I was texting him this morning. Okay. Somebody says, lee the Leith le. And then th says, sometimes friends troll you. I have. Look, Nathan is a great guy. Ralph's a great guy. I have a lot of great friends. But they are not. I would, they're not free if I'm trying to do something funny like that. So. Yeah, okay, we need to go to another subject. We need to move on. Let's go over here to another. Let's do this one. It says, hey, this is from antique rocker. Says, hey, does building a ga JHS jhs Not a clon or not a dumble teach you anything other than following instructions? Are these kids hits as educational as. As Stu Max. Stu Max preference? So I, I'm taking this could be a joke, but also I think it's a legitimate question, so I'm going to attack it like a legitimate question. I don't think you learn anything from it. I think building a nautical or not a dumble and saying you're a pedal board builder is the equivalent of buying IKEA furniture and saying you're a furniture builder. And I dare say the IKEA furniture is probably harder. So I mean, the whole point of the nautical and not a dumble is to have some, some fun, give you a decent product at a really good price and of course, you know, make it to where you can't mess it up kind of thing. Right, that's how they've kind of done that, which is give them props to that. The Stumac kits are like the Mojo tone kits and a lot of other pedal kits where they're legitimate pedal kits and you're going to have to do some soldering and stuff. So. So if that's your question, I would say, I would say that if you built a nauticaln or not a dumble, maybe you're ready to step up the difficulty level and do an actual kit with soldering and stuff and do that. So I don't know. I don't know. I have mixed emotions of the nautical and not a Dumble. Sometimes I think they're cool in the idea that I love that they're good pedals and that people get excited about them and everybody's like, putting them together. And a lot of people, so many people told me to have so much fun. Like, I mean, no, not one person has ever said it was silly and I felt dumb doing. Everybody's like, no, it was fun. It was great. But I sometimes think, like, man, it's jhs. Like, wouldn't it be funner if he sold kits, not kit pedals, but, like, mod kits on how to mod pedals? Like, this is what he thinks this pedal should really sound like. And then sell you a little kit that you could then mod this pedal with and instructions, and maybe that'd be fun and maybe that's something he'll evolve into. I don't know. It's. I don't know. You know, the sad thing about the world is, is that, you know, sometimes a great idea doesn't net a whole lot of results financially, and sometimes the goofy idea does. So. So I think the. The keeping it fun and easy is probably more profitable and it makes more sense. I don't know. I've never tried a Nauticalon or not a Dumble. Not a Dumble product. I've never. I've never seen. I've never even seen one personally, so I don't even know much about them. I thought about getting the not a Dumble and doing a comparison. I'm still thinking about doing that. I haven't looked to see if they even have them in stock. We should probably do that this weekend before it's too late. I kind of just assume, like they're probably back ordered for six years. So I don't know. And then this came from Lorenzo Dudes, 1966. Says, I bought my first amp head. I always. I always. I've always used combos. I'm bypassing my Princeton amp and using the speaker as a cab. Okay. Do I really need to buy a cab? Also, what makes a good cab to do speaker size matter? So you don't necessarily need a cab. You can use the combo, the cat, the speaker in the combo as a. As the cabinet. The only thing you want to make sure is do not. So you have your two wires that are going to your speaker from the Princeton amp. You want to make sure the two wires are going to the head and not to the Princeton and the head. Don't try to jump it that way. I don't think you are. But just be careful. You want it to speed, just use it like a speaker cabinet straight from the head into that speaker. So to answer your question, do you need a cabinet? No. You can use that all the time. People you know, you can use whatever you want. The what makes a good cabinet? It depends on what you want out of it. To me, oversized cabinets sound better. As you see, this Friedman is behind me right here. This is a 112. It's a rather large 112. It's open back. This is my preferred 112. I have three of these. As I point two fingers at it, three of these. I have three of these cabinets and originally I had three identical Friedman cabinets. Now it's changed a lot over the time and years. That one has a green back with a G in it. My other matching looking brown one that you see sometimes in videos, that one has a cream back in it with a C in it. And then I have a silver faced Friedman cabinets, identical in every way except for the colors and it has a red back. So I have now identical, three identical Friedman cabinets with three totally different speakers. So I can change, you know, if I want to change my mind about something. In fact, the Friedman redback selection is right. I'm pointing at it, but you can't see it. It's to my right. What I can tell you is, is that does a cabinet matter? Sure, of course. But speakers matter more. Three identical cabinets with three totally different speakers sound totally different than each other for sure. And I could take the same speaker and put it in three different size cabinets and it would sound different as well. So there is, there is some sense to that speaker size. I think it matters. I like 12s and 10s. So as you know, I have a Princeton with a 10. I have another amp with a 10 that I use. I'm not saying which one because it hasn't been featured in a video yet and about to be. I prefer 12s over 10s, but I like tens a lot. And when I say prefer, I mean if only given one speaker. If I only had one cabinet, I'd prefer 12, but mostly because I think it's more versatile. I can get more sounds out of a 12, where to me the tens are. They have a more mid range pronounced sound that I really like. But you lose a little bit of that woofy low end sound that you can get from a 12 a little bit bigger sound out of the 12. So my favorite cabinet. Well, I can tell you right now, my favorite cabinet is the Friedman. And this is actually so you know, this is copied after a Marshall hand wired knife. 1974 cabinet. It's pretty much what I think they copied on this same spec size approximate. And I just like this Cabinet oversized, open back 112. I think it's because it sounds like a big combo amp. So if I run whatever head through, it just sounds like a big combo amp to me. And especially at lower volume. Sounds great. Mike says, hey, I gotta use Dan electro 5912 string at guitar center because of a bad experience there recently. Okay. I'm like, you bought. Okay, we got to keep reading. Hold on. The Salesman gave me $30 off great shape. Also high end Gibson standards were unlocked. Things might be changing. Okay. So in other words, I was like, oh, you, you bought it because you had a bad experience. I think he's he. Because he had a bad experience, they gave him a deal on a 5912 string at GC. Yeah, GC I think has made massive improvements to their whole system. A lot of people keep sending me. So there's, there's memes on the Internet right now. And of course people are sending me the pictures of their new apps where they white out the background and there's like fretboards missing part of the neck and all kinds of stuff. I granted the pictures are not great. They're so much better than they were before. Even if they're messed up, at least you can see different angles and stuff. And think about this. I just recently I bought an amp from Guitar center used today, this morning. And I was specifically looking for a version of this amp. To give you an idea of the reference of this, the amp was $119. Okay. And specifically wanted a specific version of it. Right? Like, so they had like three versions of the amp over the last like, you know, over a period of like 20 years. I want a specific one. And the only way to know is to look at the back and certain. And because Guitar center does multiple pictures, I was able to do that where before I would have to call the store, get the employee on the phone and say, can you check this amp and see if it has this marking? And so I mean they've definitely improved a lot. That being said, they have not massively improved, they've just improved. So let's keep it things real here. We're not here. I'm not here to tell you guys, the Guitar center is amazing. Now just Like I wouldn't say a Sweetwater is amazing. Now there's things that they can both do to improve mostly guitar center though and but the important part is I think they're moving that direction and that's good. Although I do have a video coming that's going to be really interesting about guitar center and I think you guys will like it or you won't. That would be the two options. You'll like it or you won't or you won't watch it. Okay, so it's three options. Libertine I guess Libertine 19 I messing things up says Woo. You take your shirt off Phil. Woo. Okay. All right. You know underneath my shirt is just another black shirt and underneath that shirt is another black shirt. So I'm just wouldn't do you any good. Robert says for great advice. I appreciate that man. I wouldn't call it great advice but hopefully it's entertaining. Jedi Sparky says. Hey Phil, do you have any advice on ordering a Gibson custom made to measure getting from a local mom and pop? I don't know. I have not ever done any of the Gibson made to measure guitars that specifically. I've ordered a lot of custom guitars over the years and I think what I would tell anyone with ordering any custom guitar, I don't care who it's from, is have is is you need to have realistic expectations. I find that if you were to take a poll and again this is just all just, you know, just me shooting from the hip. I'd say if you were to ask a hundred guitar players about a custom guitar they ordered, I feel like 80 of them, 80% of them would say it was not that good or they didn't have a great experience. And I think that is accurate. And I think it's because again your expectation is always the same. It's always like wow. It's like I said we call it gear math, right? If this Gibson Les Paul standard is great, the custom shop will be better. If the custom shop is great, a custom made to measure to my specs will be even better. And in my experience, you know that's the, it's not going to probably work that way. The, the, the funny thing that I always said is this. I until I ordered a couple custom guitars, okay. And I've had an interesting, I can give you an interesting perspective that I think very few people can give you. In fact I know for a fact very few people can give you this perspective. I have experience taking my hard earned money and buying a custom instrument and how that feels. And I have experienced just at whimsical companies building me custom instruments because I'm a YouTuber. And I've had now a dozen custom instruments made as a YouTuber, which means I'm not paid for them. They just made them for me. And usually they make them for YouTubers or Instagrammers or whatever. Now, I'm not talking about when they send you product review. I'm talking about custom instruments. Most customer instruments are about. They just want you to share with the audience, you know, the fomo, hey, look, I got a custom instrument. And you could be happy too, if you get one as well. Don't you want to be happy? Right? And that's kind of the logic. And, and, and, and as a person on my curiosity as a guitar player is. Is. Is peaked when they're like, hey, we would like to make you a custom instrument. And the reason why I say it's an interesting perspective is when I'm doing with my real money, I'm very conservative. I don't mean what I spend. I mean this. The. The choices are very, very conservative. Like, okay, I should do this crazy color with this crazy thing. And I go, no, no, no, tone it down. Just do this. And I keep my order basic. Basic meaning, not so crazy. And then when I company goes, hey, order something. You know, hey, just tell us what you want and we'll make it. I tend to get silly and stupid with it all the time. I just go, hey, just, you know, I always make. I made fun of this many times, so it's no, no issues. Kiesel asked me if I wanted to do a crazy, you know, base. And I said, sure, let's make a 30 inch Vader base in fluorescent quilted pink top with white back insides. And even they're like, what? Like, yeah. And they're like, why? And I'm like, because I would never do that if it was my money. That's insane. Like, that. It just. It sounds insane to me, but I mean, let's have fun. Let's. This is like literally the way I treat them is the same way if you go to the Vegas and you win 100 bucks and you're like, okay, now I'm on the house's money. Let's see what the house is money going to do, right? I was like, I'm on your money now. If I get it and I don't like it, my investment isn't really at risk, and I want to try. And the reason I tell you, that's a unique perspective. Is having done that a couple times, I found that being crazy has really. That's what I should have done. That's what I was doing wrong. You should really, if you're going to do it, go for it. And basically, you want to be bold, be bold, go for it. But understand this one thing. Every artist who's ever had a signature guitar has told the same story. And although those stories seem a little suspicious sometimes, don't think about that. Think about the. What. They all keep saying the same. They all say, it took two years of prototypes to get this right. And you're like, whatevers. But Also, they go, seven versions, 12 prototypes. And the takeaway, you should learn from that. And everybody, everybody knows this, that's ever had a custom instrument made. They know exactly why they say that. Because the first time, no matter how good you do when you order your custom guitar, your dream guitar, no matter how good you do, when you get it, you strum it, even if you love it, you're gonna go, wish I would have done that. So that's my advice. Go for the gusto. Be bold. Have realistic expectations. In other words, it won't be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. There'll be flaws. There'll be things you wish you didn't do. You need to either have the money to not care, which I don't know what that's like, so I don't. Can't give you advice on that, but I can give you advice on this, or don't do it if you're not going to be comfortable with that idea because you will be let down. Most of the time, you're let down. Be bold. Have fun. Realistic expectations. That's it. Okay. Mukbang fatty. Mukbang fatty. What's up, buddy? I haven't seen you in a while. I say that every time. Usually kind of you're in and out. Sometimes I like to see it from says, hey, Phil, Jim Henson passed away today. What? In 1990. Do you know? He says in 1990. Do you have any fond memories of the Muppets or Sesame Street? Thanks. So Jim Henson died today. Passed away. That's really. Does anyone know how old he was? Can somebody put that in the comments? If anyone could say how old he was. I know that's like a thing, right? When I say I know it's a thing, I mean, it's weird that we always go, when somebody passed away, like, how old were they? I think it's because you're always trying to see, like, how much you know, value out of life did they get. You know, it's always stressful when they're younger, when they're older. It's not. It doesn't make it better. But you're always like, you know, both my parents have passed away and what, he passed away at 53? That's horrible. So, wow, 50? That can't be right. 53. Oh, he died in 1990? Is that what you're saying? He died in 1990. But today. Let's go back and read that again. Hey, Jim. Hence. Passed away today in 1990. Okay. He was 53. I was gonna say. Okay. I thought he had passed away already. I just wasn't sure. I was like, oh, okay. So I didn't know he was that. So, you know, I didn't know he was that young. 1990. I mean, think about this. I was still in high school, so I'm like, oh. I'm like, okay. Fond memories. I probably am not a great person to ask for this because I don't really, like, think of the Muppets. My only experiences with the Muppets are when I went to Universal Studios. I would always go to the Muppet show, which I liked. And I was a huge fan when I was a kid of the Dark Crystal. I have not been able to get through it as an adult, but as a kid, I watched it over and over again. And for almost one year when I was a little kid, I lived in Reno, Nevada. Let's say I had an interesting childhood. Let's say I was around a lot. We moved around, right? And, you know, you name it. And so when we were in Reno for, I don't know, almost a year, and. And they had a display. They had a. Like a moving museum or something, and they brought all the stuff from the Dark Crystal and we got to see it. And I thought that was just crazy. But, yeah, that. I mean, and I hate saying that because I think the Dark Crystal is, like, from his fans. Isn't it one of the ones not, not, not like one of his fondly looked at movies. But I just remember. I remember. What I remember most about the Dark Crystal is when you're young, there's something magical about scary movies that are scary but not so scary you can't watch them. Right? Like, that's what the Dark Crystal was to me. It was like a movie where I was watching it, and it's scary, but it's not. So I can. But I could sit in a room alone and watch it, but it was scary to me. But it Wasn't, you know, real scary. It wasn't like the real thing. So it's like safe scary is what I would call that. You know, there was movies like that that I could watch and I'd be like a safe scary. So. But yeah, that's what I think of. I don't know why I love that movie. All right, what else? Let's go here. Let's go. Amanda's grabbed a bunch more questions from me. This is from Rick, who says, hey, how far will you push level crowning frets? How much material removed is too much, and how to maintain crisp round bevel edges? Those are the final hurdles. So I am apprehensive at all to get too heavy. I think there's way too many musicians, guitar techs, you name it. Everybody out there. Way too heavy on leveling. It's because. And I told you it's because I do not like. I do not like frets that are really flat. Like, I like, you know, medium jumbo, jumbo frets. I don't like vintage fret wire. So to me, if you take a fret and you just level the hell out of the fretboard, I'm just not gonna like the neck. So I'm really, really sensitive to not doing that anytime I can. So how far is too far? Well, I mean, that's a personal thing. I mean, there's guitar players that will level frets on purpose because I think the frets are too tall, level and crown them. But me, I would rather not level them if I can or not get. I will definitely not get heavy handed with it because it just, to me, it ruins the guitar. And then I think the second part of yours was. Hold on. You wanted to know about the best way to round the edge. Where is it at? One second I'm in the wrong. Okay, hold on. Pulling back up. That's funny because Amanda sent it to me because she sent me nine. That's why. For rounding the fret ends. That's. Rick says round bevel edges. Those are the final hurdles. I. I like the safe file for you guys. I'm trying a new one and I've tried it now about a half a dozen times and I feel pretty confident now to put the video out. So I have a new rounding file that's supposed to be the new magic file. It's pretty good. There's things I like better about it than the safe file, but there's reasons I like the safe file still as well. Mostly I just like the fact that it has a Finer grit. On it, on it, on it. But that's a great file to use. The Z file, the safe file, Z file from Stumac or the save file from music. Nomad Lee says, hey, I want new pickups in my Vella. Not afraid to route. I'm thinking of Firebird in the neck. What would you put in the bridge? If you put a Firebird in the neck, just use a PAF style bridge pickup. I mean, I'm always a kind of go to for that. Like a Gibson, you know, go to 57 classic. That would be nice with that Firebird pickup. I would probably think of something like that. Okay, I don't understand this question. Okay, this came from Steve says, hey, is there a difference between the Tele and the Strat? Mainly the Tele bridge pickup, same necks, et cetera. No, don't know much. You know, that's a really, really good question. You know, at first I was like, what? But if you think about it, that's a really good question. Like, what's the real differences between a Strat and a telegram to someone who doesn't have a reference of either guitar? And the real thing I would say is the Strat is literally just designed for comfort, right? It's, it's got the arm carve, it's got the belly carve, it's literally the way it sits. It just feels really comfortable to a lot of players. I think that's the main thing. So the takeaway to me, if you're like, hey, I have to now tell you what's the main difference between the Strat and the telly that you might appeal to or not appeal to you? You Strat has got a tremolo arm. So if you want vibrato or tremolo, you know, a vibrato effect, you need the Strat. If you don't care, then you have the telly comfort. If you think that you'll feel like the contoured body shape of a Strat, that's another win for the Strat. A lot of people think the Strat is more versatile because it has three pickups. I could kind of see that right as you get some tones. But I think one of the most versatile guitars in the world is the Telecaster, period. I think it's just a great sounding instrument. I think the Tele bridge, well, and if you're asking about the bridge pickup, I like the Tele bridge pickup sound more than I like the Strat bridge pickup sound by far. With not even a close, you know, not even a close Call there and neck wise, they're about the same. The subtleties are not going to be detected by most players. So I would say those are your functions that you would pay attention to. And then of course, it's just how it looks. But more importantly, you just gotta pick one up and then you'll know when you hold it, if it, if it pokes you and it's weird, or if it doesn't feel correct and good, then you go ahead and you know, grab another one. Okay. Grab a different guitar. I mean. Okay. And then. Okay. Tsi says. Hey, Phil, a few questions. Vox AC 15 versus Fender 65 Deluxe. Okay, let me see. Ever consider reviewing a main China Epiphone Casino or Strandberg? I've done the Strandberg guitars. I don't know if they make a made in China Strandberg, but I've done Strandberg. I've done all the Strandbergs except for the affordable one. He also says new guitar day. I bought back an Ibanez UV71P&OAK is the white one. I couldn't be happier. Okay, that's awesome. The I genome a huge fan of the universe. Let's get to your question. AC15 versus Fenders 65 Deluxe. Both are great amps is what I'm supposed to say. Right. That's the political thing. But to me, there's no question in my personal choice. The 65 Deluxe all the way. Not even close. I bought an AC15. I got a smoking deal on one. I was in a guitar center and this is about two, three years ago. You would have saw it in the background for a short time. And I bought it and just, ah, man, I, I don't know what it is, man. I don't, I, I'm more of an AC30 guy. I like the AC30 way more than the AC15. So that was it. But that being said, AC30, which is a fantastic amp, I'm still a 65 Deluxe Reverb. It's just a preference of sound. It's not because once this, don't think of it as a quality thing or one's better than the other. It's literally just preference. I just prefer the Fender sound to the Vox sound. That's where I sit with that. I, I, it fits my playing. It fits what I like. I'm, I'm, I really love a lot of products sometimes because of the companies of the, you know, the people in the companies. Right. Like there are people at companies and I just enjoy them, talking to them or I respect them or there's just, you know, there's a relationship there and that has nothing to do with YouTube. That's been that way, you know, since I've been in this industry. That all being said, no matter how good relationship I have with a company, I am a Fender guy through and through forever. If. If given down to like, I only get one brand. If you said I only get one brand and all my gear has to come to that brand, I literally can make a rig out of Fender. In fact, it's the only company I can think of that I can make an entire rig out of, which is Fender. So what I mean by that is I could take a Fender amp. So, you know, not just a Fender amp. If you were to give me, if you were to give me a choice of. If you said, if you took all the Fender amps and said you can pick within like 90% of them, I'm sure I could find one I love like a Basement 59 or a Blues Junior or a Hot Rod Deluxe or a Blues Deluxe or a Princeton or, you know, Vibra Champ or. Right, a Champ. You know, almost every Fender amp I can find that I like, I can find something that I like out of the amp. Guitar wise, same thing, you know, Telly, Strat, Jazz Master. I can find pretty much and almost every price point, whether it's Squire and Fender. But we'll just stick with Fender brand. Okay? The Fender. No, no, Square. Literally Mexican made, American made, doesn't matter. I can find something I'm so super happy with. Dr. Frankenstein said the Supersonic. Supersonic. And then the Fender pedals. The Pugilist is one of my favorite overdrive pedals. And then they make a ton of pedals. So I mean, Fender is, is a brand that if I had to have an entire rig made of a brand, I would be making no concessions. And that's the real takeaway. It's not that I could do it. It's literally I would be all the stuff I want and it'd be happy. Same with bass. I could play a Fender bass through a Fender bass amp and be happy forever. So. And, and that's that, you know, so. So that's why Fender over box, because that's where I stand on that. Cushman, nyc. This was sent from Amanda says, hey Phil, what kind of finish is on your walls? Paint. Wallpaper. What is it? It's wallpaper. So my walls now and all the things that you see from over the years of doing YouTube, I've now been in, let's see, one, two. So dumb. I can count on my finger, but still. Okay, ready? So 1, 2, 3, 4. I think five. I've been in four rooms and five different places to film content for you guys. But think of it as four rooms. So originally my content was filmed in the corner of my master bedroom. So if you look at my very first videos, if you go there, that's literally just in the corner. That's the only space I had. That's all I really needed. I had the store. I had a full store full of music gear and I had my own workspace and a back room and all that stuff. And then I moved. That was a different house and then moved to this house. And then I was in the corner of that bedroom and of the master bedroom. That's all the space I had. We had an extra bedroom. I just didn't use it. I didn't really need it, so I didn't use it. And then eventually I made a office area and that's where I moved to that. So the reason I tell you that is that I've had different backgrounds and I would paint the room and then a couple a year go by and I'd paint the room a different color. I'd add shelves and do stuff. And then over time we kind of realized, like, that's just a little too much, you know, to do all the time. So now we do wallpaper and. And we do, I don't know what you call it, like backer boards. I don't know. There, there's. There's just stuff on the wall. So it's literally, it's. It's just a facade on the walls that we can take down and change out pretty easily. So if I want to change this look in a couple months or a year, I can do that very easily without having to rip down everything and start from scratch and start with paint stuff. So that's why we do it this way now. And it's just for function. It's kind of the. The. It's kind of, kind of come to the conclusion that I'm going to be doing YouTube, I guess. Yeah, look, I'm probably jinx myself. I probably ruined it all. And you'll never see me again after this on YouTube, you know, as you go, as the bad luck goes. But up until about couple months ago, I didn't think I was gonna be on YouTube more than a month or two at a time. And what I mean by that is for the last, whatever, eight years, every couple months I was like, whether I did a live show Or a video. I was like, this is probably the end. This is probably like, this is probably when people stop watching. I've been that way forever. It's not that I've resolved that it's not gonna end now. I just don't think about it as much as I used to. But I used to always, I tell myself all the time like, hey, I'm gonna, hey, let's put up this lighting on the, on the ceiling. And I'd be like, I, you know, my wife go, hey, you want to put mount lights so your walls are backlit nice and stuff. And I'll go, nah. If I do that, it'll probably be like the last month I do YouTube, it'll probably, this, this whole thing will end. So I just was hardwired to think like, this, this isn't gonna last. And now I'm kind of like, it's not that I think it's gonna last. I'll tell you what changed. So, you know, it has nothing to do with YouTube. It has to do with the, the Patreon system. Now that we do the clinics on the Patreon. That's what we invested in, was the clinics and the, for the patron system. And so it's the patrons that pretty much made this up, up the ante of the, of the channel. So it was, I figured if people. Because here's, here's why. And then I'm done with this tirade. Just giving you guys some insight, maybe it helpful, I don't know. Look, I appreciate everybody who watches my channel. I appreciate all the great comments. I mean, obviously I get crappy comments, I get good comments. I get it all just like everybody else. But ultimately, you know, everybody's watching a video and whether or not people watch, who knows if I can get, you know, because you need millions and millions of views to make, you know, anything on YouTube. The value is great. I love the community, I love the feedback. But ultimately when you're like, how I'm paid is like, if people watch and they don't really pay for that, they just, you just gotta grab their attention. But Patreon is the. They pay me, they pay for the service. They added behind the scenes service, which is to get the clinics and get the bonus podcast, you know, do the coffee hangs. And it was the realization over time that I haven't been losing patrons. That's really what changed, you know, the channel members and the patrons. I've had a large group of patrons and channel members now for many years. And although that can always change Too. I just feel like it at a point now, I'll just tell you, I just got to a point where I stopped thinking about myself and going, okay, I shouldn't worry about whether or not I'll be doing this. I should think like, hey, they supported the channel with money. Why don't we upgrade everything? And for them. And it just makes everything better for everybody else too. The new switching system, the new. The thing that you see that, you know, with the 9 camera switching system that I make videos that was literally invested in to make the clinics for the patrons. And the byproduct is it makes better, faster videos for YouTube. And that's literally how I just decided. So I don't know. And I invested in it. There you go. So I. I should say they invested in it. And then I. I invest. I took the money they gave me and invested that. All right, let's go to Will, who says, hey, Phil, do you think it's worth weight relieving an older, heavy, beloved guitar? Or is it possible neck dive a concern because of a lighter body or a drastic change in the vibe of the guitar? I'm literally skeptical of doing any of that stuff. I find the more you kind of do stuff like that, you're taking the chance that the. If you love the guitar, you're going to ruin it. I. I know I talk about lighter guitars all the time that I like, like guitars. I've said this before. I like light guitars because they are rarer than heavy guitars. They're harder to find. And that slows me down. You know, it's a lot. I literally was in a store this week. This, literally this week. I'm kind of saying literally a lot today. I was in the store this week and I picked up a guitar. I liked it, it was a good price. Impulse ready to go. But it's kind of heavy. And I was like, ah. And I didn't buy it because it was heavy. I didn't buy it because it's. When you. When I want the guitar to be light, it's another thing to add to the list that it's like, okay, it's a good price. It's a cool guitar. I have some scratch in the bank. Like all these things have to happen for the unit to play a guitar, right? Gotta have all these things and then it's gotta be light, you know? And then I go, oh. So that was one thing of the list that was off and that was enough for me to decide not to buy it. And then when I got home and Settled down for an hour or two, I realized like, yeah, I shouldn't have bought that guitar. It's not. Not something I needed. So that's what I do. I use this as a, as a way to curve the spending that. That all being said, you know, I would, I would invest in a better guitar strap than I would before. I would try to lighten the guitar. I have done it. I like to tell you that I literally have done it. Okay. I. I have routed out stuff in guitars and what I find is in most cases the weight relief is not enough and you. It's probably placebo, but it's in your head that it doesn't sound the same. It might not sound the same, but either way you're going to think it doesn't sound the same. So I just, yeah, I don't do it. That's my advice. Don't do it. I have a couple heavy guitars. I, I should point that out because they're great and I just like them and they're heavy. Mark says, hey Phil, I want to add a pick guard to an arch top. Semi, semi hollow. Is there anything special I should do to drill the holes with a gloss finish? No, you just want to use a good bit. Obviously the, if the bit is dull, you could. The problem. The concern with your, your bits. Drill bits is if they're dull, you're not gonna. They're not gonna cut through the finish. They crush the finish. They push into it. You know, as you're pushing, they crush into it and it causes little micro cracks and then it gets worse. So just make sure your bits are really nice and sharp. I'm working on a tool video right now. I don't have an ETA for it anytime soon. This is not going to go on the main channel. This is going to be released to the Patreon back end, but then to the second channel. I'll make the announcement here for the second channel. It will reason why is. It's going to be like an hour long, lame, boring. Literally going through all my Tools in the Shop video. Just every single tool and its purpose. So, so I'm getting situated for it. It's. It's going to. You know, I think some people would be interested to know and in that video, which Mark, why that might be interesting to you is I actually show you I have different sets of drill bits and that's what I have. Not, I don't mean different sets like for metal drill bits versus wood drill bits. I mean literally, like I have a, a drill bit set That I use only when I'm doing stuff like very special guitars, because again, I want them very sharp. And I'll sharpen them too, because I. I don't want to take any chances of cracking, you know, the finish by pushing through it. Rick did a super chat for no reason. I appreciate that, Rick. Thank you. Rick Kent says, do you have a sense of how valuable vendors do you have a sense of how valuable vendors American vintage line is? I don't know what that is. What's valuable vendors American vintage line. I don't know what that is now. I'll Google it later. Maybe I don't understand the question. Or maybe it's a S. Raleigh says, hey, Phil, has Seymour Duncan ever mentioned working for Ron Rocca in London? My guitar teacher also worked for him in the 70s as a guitar tech in his shop in Denmark street. You know, I. I don't know. I've never actually. I met Seymour Duncan. I should say I've never actually met him. And then literally, I think on my website, there's a picture of me and him. I've met him a couple times, but not in any other fashion than like, as a fan. Like, hey, I like Seymour Duncan. I like what you do. I've had longer conversations with Kathy Duncan and Kathy. The first time I met Kathy, she cracked me up because she said I'm the person who runs Seymour Duncan. She made it very clear to me she's the boss is what I'm trying to say. She said something. I can't say. I can't repeat it. It'd be so awesome if I could, but I'm not gonna. But she said something. But if you paraphrase what she said down, she said, I'm the boss. Boss. If you guys don't know Kathy and Seymour, actually, that's part I can say that she said. She said, when we got divorced, I got the company and he got the secretary. I think she said something like that. She may not have said secretary, but that's the take that me and Shawna got from that. She said it fast. But anyways, the important part is we got this. I got the sense that she's the boss. Like she. She was saying. So anyways, I've talked to her more times than. Than him for sure. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know much about that. However, I'll tell you because I gotta. Gotta, Gotta tell you this. How that even happened, how I even. The Kathy Duncan story, how it. How it worked out was when I opened my store, I Was selling a lot of Seymour Duncan pickups, as you can imagine. I was really good at doing repairs and are good enough to do repairs and make money, but also good at selling parts. And I love Seymour Duncan. As you guys know, JB and Jazz set is one of my favorite. JB59, very good set of pickups. Even though, you know, I'm really good friends with Larry DiMaggio, I love DiMargio pickups, but I love Seymour Duncan pickups almost equally in a lot of different ways. There's just certain pickups I like from each line. Right. That's how it works. Anyways, we were like the top seller Seymour Duncan pickups in the state. For sure. For sure. For sure. For the state. I don't know about the west coast, but we're up there. And they had Kathy come out and talk to us and hang out with us. Very nice. She came and popped in the shop. And I never liked glass cases. I still don't like them to this day in the stores. I don't like anything that puts anything behind glass. Because I'm like. My logic was like, everything on the Internet is behind glass if you think about it. So if you put stuff in a cabinet, glass cabinet, how is that different to the end user? If they can't touch it? You want to see it? And so when I met Kathy Duncan and then she told me she was the boss, I said, oh, I have a couple things I would like to tell you. And she was very kind. And she's like, yeah, what is it? And I said two things. I really hate that you put Seymour Duncan on the pickups. I would really like it if you would make that smaller print. And actually just the name of the pickup. I said, it's really frustrating when you have a guitar and you look at it. And I'm like, I look at the guitar like this. This has etched in this. On this PRS pickup, 5708. And this has a metal hand, sort of metal. It's a little M etched into it. And I said, I would really like it if the pickup said the name of the pickup. Because it says Seymour Duncan on both these pickups. Now I have to pull them out to see what it is. If I'm, you know, if I'm checking out a used guitar, if a customer's like, what pickups are in here? You're like, it's very confusing. And. And she said, basically, they're not going to do that. Very smart woman. Very, like, very smart, very concise. And no bs, which Was great. She's like, not going to do that. And I said, oh, okay, let's strike one. Let's strike two. I said, let's strike two with this. Okay? So the second thing is, I said, I really hate the plastic cases. The pickups come in the card cases. I don't know if you know this, but you're gonna know this. Now. Seymour Duncan pickups, to this day come in baseball card cases, right? And I go, that's. I hate it. I said, you should put them in a blister pack so we can hang them. I said. I said, I have a repair bench. I would like to hang your pickups behind me. I said, it makes no sense. They're in these plastic cases. And she said, well, we're not gonna change that either. And I'm like, okay. And this is what she said. She said, they're sentimental to her. She said, when they started out here in Seymour, they lived in a trailer. They didn't even have a shower. And Seymour would wind pickups at night, and then she would get up in the morning and she would shower with a hose. Okay, this is what she said. Outside. A shower with a hose outside. And she said, and then I would take all the pickups that he made, and I would take them down into the baseball card shop, and I would buy baseball card cases and put the pickups in there and then go sell them to the stores. And that's where that came from. That was her idea to do that. And that's how she packaged and sold them. And she goes, so, no, I'm not going to change it. And I'm like, okay, what am I supposed to say? I don't care about your history. Just do it. So she was very funny that way. And, yeah, so that's. I always love that story. So now you know why they aren't baseball card holders. Because I never understood it. I was like, why are these. Aren't baseball card holders? Next time you see a Seymour Duncan, you'll think of that. So S. Riley, I don't have any other really funny stories. Oh, I do. Oh, I do. I just. I have a funny story that I could never tell. And I mean that. But it's a great story, and maybe I'll tell it one day just like other stories. Maybe if enough time goes by and I think that the time is right, I'll tell it. But it's pretty crazy. Okay, Kent. Kent says, hey, do you have a sense of. Oh, no, we already asked him. This is from. I have no idea. Analysts and anal. Tick suck. Sure I have anal. I have no idea what this name is. I can't even figure out where all the words are. Letters are connected, connecting says Phil. Is it still a bad time to be a. To be selling gear? It's a bad time to be selling gear. It's. You're. It's not. Well, look, it's not a bad time to be selling gear. It's just wasn't a good time as you know, a couple years ago we were in the boom. Me personally, I've been selling some stuff on Reverb. Everything's been selling fine, you know, quickly, you know, gears moving, you're just not going to get. You know. I think the best way to put it is this. And this is the best way I would sum up the current guitar market right now as a whole. Sellers are stuck on 2023 pricing and buyers are stuck on 2015 pricing. And that's the current market. Like that, that statement there, that's the entire used market right now in a nutshell. And somewhere in between that, you know, I listed a pedal yesterday. This is kind of funny. So just to give you an idea, I'll share the story with you. It's kind of funny. So I listed my HX Stomp. I have decided that I'm going to pull the trigger and get some UA pedals. I'm gonna buy some. I look at, been looking on guitarcenter, use.com and I think I can get a couple. I think I want to go to a UA65 Dream and a Lion and have those two kind of pedals instead of my HX stomp. So I'm. I sold my HX stomp. And this is the interesting part of this. And I. And this is what happened to me on Reverb. And it was, it was kind of a little off putting, but it happens. So earlier in the week or towards the end of last week, I listed a couple things on Reverb. Right? So I basically, I tell Shauna and my son, I go, hey, this is the stuff I want to get rid. And I take the pictures. I take the pictures and I kind of give them all the information. I go, let's put this up. And they handle it, which is how we work as a team. So I'm pulling it up right now. So what happened was I listed two guitars and I go, okay, let's list two guitars. And what happens when you list the guitars on Reverb? Reverb said, hey, this guitar sells at a low at this price. And A high of this price. And I'm like, well, you can always come down on price. Okay, so I didn't go for the high, right? I went, like, just right under the high. So I think the first guitar, I did $10 below the high. The second guitar, I think I did 200 below high because it was a much more expensive guitar. But either ways, I'm right underneath the high. Both guitars sell in one hour. Like, literally, they say, hey, those guitars you just listed? I'm like, yeah, they go, they're sold. I'm like, what? They go, yeah, we need boxes. We need to ship them. I'm like, okay, I'll come help. And I'm like, they sold, like, that fast? I'm like, well, that means, you know, that's like, when you sell a house and it sells in an hour, you're like, that house was too cheap. That was too low. So I was like, wow, Reverb's really low ball in this stuff. So I listed another guitar, same thing. Reverb gives me a price range. I put it this time. I put it, like $10 or $20 over the high price. I was like, I looking. I looked around. Sold an hour. I was like, wow, okay, okay. Maybe Reverb's pricing suggestions are not very good. So then I listed a pedal, the HX Stomp. And Reverb said the prices should be between four and. And. And four, I think 60, right? 460 bucks. And I'm like, okay. And so I go, well, you know what? Screw it. I'm gonna stick with Reverb because, you know, okay. Even though I feel like they keep telling me the low price, so I put it at 450. Ten minutes later, I get an offer for three, maybe 320. 350. Something like that comes through. I see it. I see it on my phone. I go, okay. A couple hours later, another offer for 350. And I'm like, wow, we must have really. So I'm sitting down, and I'm thinking, we really must have priced this thing high. So I go on guitarscenter.com Guitar center used, they have the HX stomp. 1 for 550, 1 for 5. So I was like, oh, okay, Go on Reverb. There's not a whole lot of used, but one's for five. Ones for 550 used. I'm like, wow, I'm way lower. But everybody's lowballing me, and I'm like, well, it doesn't seem like the price is too out of skew. And then maybe 10 minutes again after I was doing that, it sold, somebody sent an offer for 425. And I, I'm like, let's take that offer. So my point is exactly that. The, the insanity of someone thinking that it was worth 300. Now again, I'm not making fun of the people sent the offer. Look, anybody was trying to buy the price. I've told you guys, you should never be offended or upset. I was not offended or upset. If I have something unlisted on reverb and you guys send me a stupid. Sorry, I won't call it stupid. Send me a super low ball offer. I'm going to ignore it. Not going to be upset about it. You're not. I'm not going to say anything like, what are you, you don't know what this goes for. I'm just going to be like, no, that's not. I'm not willing to sell it for the price. That's the end of that. That's all. You don't need to get emotional of this. It's just selling, buying. But in that what I learned is exactly what I'm saying. The buyers are out there still looking. They think the market's desperate so they're throwing out desperate offers. I don't think the market's desperate. I just also think that you can't sell stuff at what you could two years ago. So that's the way I'm going to sum up the market. Sellers think it's 2023. Buyers think it's 2015. And they're both a little wrong. And somewhere in there is, you know, yeah, watch this. Dirt racer said paid 375 for my used HX stomp before COVID So here's a funny thought and let me go here, let me go to give you a reference purchase. What did I pay? Let me. I can pull up. I paid $552 for my HX stomp, brand new. So give you. That's a reference on that. So I'm pulling up on Reverb right now. January 4th of this year, I paid 552. 32 new. I threw an offer and that's what I paid from Guitar Crate, which is. If you guys seen Guitar Crate, they have a little online store. It's a really good store. If you ever want a good service and good, good prices. They were really nice. I sent them an offer. They accepted it. So I bought it new for 552. I've been using it for the last couple months and I Thought maybe I would use it, you know, for a smaller rig. And I just wasn't using it. And I think since then they jacked up the price to 750. So I sound right to somebody. They just recently jacked up their prices, so. So, yeah, so everybody's trying to sell them for 550. Like I said, I could have put it for 550 and waited it all out, but I was like, I don't know, 450 is what reverb said. That sells, right? Like, to me, I'm like, I paid 550. It's a hot item. Obviously, I took care of it, had the original box, you know. You know, and I thought, okay, and I'll. I'll lose a little bit of money and they get a little bit of a deal. But it's funny because everybody's using the logic of they were, you know, they used to sell for 550, so they think you should buy them for three. But the sad thing is now they're selling them for 750. Just how it works. Like I said, you just have to. That's where they think the market is. Let me button up these last super chats. I think we have one. I missed maybe two. Maybe not, because it's not refreshing. There it is. Okay, here we go. We have Nick who says, thanks for all you do. And that's really kind. You don't have to say that. I'm just. I said never make it live as I'm in UK epiphone inspired by Gibson custom shop 335 or ES T59 T486. Never played a Semi Hollow. Oh, okay. I think the Epiphone inspired by Gibson Custom Shops and Eastman. Here's my problem. Let me just give you Nick. I've never played either one. I've played Eastman's, I've played really nice epiphones, but I've not played an inspired by Gibson epiphone or the Eastman T59 T46. So I cannot specifically tell you between those two which one I would go for. So that's the problem. I'm trying to see if I can give you any insight. I think, I mean, especially since you, you know, you're in the uk. I would say without the information, I. I'm just going to tell you. I would look at a used one. I would look at a used Eastman and see if you can get a use Eastman. So one nice thing about Eastman that I've done since doing reviewing a few is the quality seems to Be there. There is people who like them. So it's not like it's an off, it's an off brand that no one respects. Everybody respects the brand, but even their resell value isn't smoking great. Which is good when you're looking for a guitar because you know, if it's a good quality guitar, but you can get, you can get a good deal on it. I would since the, and I would imagine the new epiphones because they're so new, there's no used ones. I would look at getting a used Eastman. That's what I would look for as a, as a semi hollow. I, I, I'm hoping to do an Eastman hollow body. That would be really great. I really like all the Eastman stuff I've reviewed so far. I said I'd like to do it. So we'll see. And then the last one is Luke. Luke says, which creambacks are your favorite? G12M65 or G12H75 G10 cream back, Neo cream back, 8 ohm, 16 ohm options. Okay, we could make this crazy. No, let me give you the rundown. So I do have the neo cream back. I do have that one speaker. I did not love it. I bought it on a whim. I was on a bus talking to Pete Thorne and I asked him what speakers he liked and he said creambacks with a C cream. And I said, oh. And he said, I like the neo cream back. I think he said it passively and I was like, oh, I never thought of that. So I bought a neo cream back speaker and it's all right. Like I like it. I just don't like as much as my rare cream back. So I still have it currently right now it's in a. I did a 5e3 build amp and that's what's in my 5v3 build in my, in my all of my amps that have creambacks which is like this Amplified Nation 212. My Marshall 212 has a Creambacks in it. And of course my, one of my Freeman 112S has a Creamback in it. They are all the Creamback G12 M65 Creamback, 16 ohms. All of them are 16 ohms. They are 16 ohms because that is what Friedman put in the cabinets in his 112 and they are 16 ohms because in the 212s that's what they put in their cabinets. And that's. And, and so here's how this works. My, my Amplified Nation came with two 16 ohm creambacks which makes eight ohm cabinet and my G12, my green back and my red back. Selections that are in my Freedmans are also 16 ohms. Just because to make things easy, because they were all 16 ohms before. When I took the two Friedman cabins that had cream backs to put the red back and the green back. I took those three two cream backs which happened to be 16 ohms. And that's what's in my Marshall night 1936 now. So that's the answer question. I have never specifically tested the Creamback 65 to the 75. There's. So I basically want to tell you that it wasn't a decision like oh, I've extensionally AB'd them. And this is what I like. I just one day played a Friedman. I played this Friedman 112 with a cream back in it. I love the cabinet. Every amp I put through it, I just loved it. And I was like this is what I love. So I bought two more and I had three. I don't know why I bought three cabinets. I just did. I figured that solves all my problems. So specifically cabinets, let me just do this and this is kind of fun. Let me just tell you all the guitar cabinets I have now because I used to have a gazillion of them and now I don't. So here is every single cabinet that I own as of right now. I have three identical Friedman open back 112 cabinets. Like I said, one has a cream back, one has a red back, one has a green back. So it's three different flavors. Same cabinet. I have one Amplified Nation 212 with two creambacks in it. This is the cabinet that's right here. I have one 1936 Marshall cabinet with two creamback slushings in it that I put in it. I have one Marshall 212 slant cabinet which is the 19. No, 2061. So they don't make it anymore. It's a hand wired slanted 212. So the 212s are like this. They're not like the new ones where they're vertical. Like this. Like this. Those have two V30s in there. British made V30s. And then I have one MagnetOne 112 speaker with a magnet or one cabinet with a magnetone speaker. And that and. And that is all my cabinets. I don't have any more cabinets other than that. I got rid of everything. And without a doubt I have been and I will continue to be just using these Friedman's. That's what I use for everything. Currently, my magnetone. As much as I love that cabinet, the magnetone head, which is what I'm using the. The Super 15 right now, that's what I was. I play mostly now. I have that running through the Friedman with the red back slushing it. So. And that's my cabinets. So three 1 12s and three 2 12s. And then I have that one magnetone cabinet. So there you go. That's my. All my speaker cabinets. I got rid of everything else and I'm happy and I just. That's where I'm at. Okay. We did it. We made it. We made it. You made it through a show. I don't know. You get a prize at the end. As always, I want to thank you guys so much for hanging out with me on Friday. I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. And for my. If you're considering becoming a patron or a channel member, I appreciate that. Just to give you the sales speech, if you're a channel member or a patreon member at $5, you get the ad free podcast. In other words, this show right now will be presented to you as an ad free version, so you don't have to listen to ads. And also you get one bonus podcast a month where you can ask questions. And you're the only ones to see the bonus show, which the bonus podcast is tomorrow. So I'm doing it tomorrow morning live on Saturday. Usually do them Saturdays if you're a $10 member. If you want to pay for the year for $10, you get those features I just gave you. Plus you get free guitar clinics. I do live clinics for you guys. You can ask me questions. Just to give you an idea of range, there's usually a dozen people there, so it's not like it's here where it's a chaos. And you can ask me things while I'm doing stuff. Plus you get access to a lot of repair videos that I'm adding weekly now that are really nice. And you can just add those. And if you want to dare be so crazy to be a $25 member, you get all of those things I just mentioned. Plus, twice a month, I hang out on a Zoom call. You're welcome to hang out and talk or just watch the Zoom call and we just talk. You can come and go as you want. They usually last hours and hours and hours. Okay, that's it. That's my sales speed. Those are all the ways you can sponsor the channel financially. But keep in mind, you're sponsoring the channel also. Just by watching to the end or suffering through those YouTube commercials or giving a thumbs up. All of those things, man, they mean something to me because it gets me. It lets me do this, gets me to do this, lets me do this. And I want to thank you for that. And I just appreciate still being here. How about that? On that note, I'm gonna let you guys go. We have a lot of videos this week. That's why there was no videos this week. It's literally gonna get flooded with them. I promise. All of them are really good ones and some of them are gonna really are cool. And then I got a last super chat and it came from Hanson. It says, what amps closest to the Marshall 2525H. I don't know what that one is. Marshall. See if we can do as fast question. 2525h. Oh, silver jubilee. So I had the Marshall 2525H mini head. I really liked it. I did not love it. I probably would have kept it and been happy except for one of my friends had a real silver jubilee. I don't mean the reissue, I mean the original one. Silver Jubilee one. I think it was a 50 watt or maybe it was 100 watt and it just sounded so damn good compared to mine. It just was not in the same league in my opinion. If you're looking at the Marshall 2025, as much as I love Marshall, definitely buy the twin sister or dirty Shirley. Little sister. The 20 watt. If you're looking at head, get the 20 watt. Friedman. Little sister or twins? They have two. They have a little sister and then they have the. The little sister, right? Little sister and then the dirt. The twin sister, right? Little sister. Just sisters. So confusing. They have the twin sister amp, the dirty Shirley. That's what it is. They have the dirty Shirley mini and they have the little sister. That's what they have because they have the twin sister by far that if you're trying to get that sound, I think that's will you get you there closer. It's just way more usable. And to be honest with you, even though I think at $1300 the Marshall 2525H is a good deal, you could buy a twin sis or not twin sister, but the little sister or the, you know, little Shirley. For that price or less used new, it's only a couple hundred dollars more made in usa. Just to me it's far superior in every way. And if you buy from Sweetwater and Guitar center, you're covered with return policies. So if you get it and you just like I don't agree with Phil, you can always send it back. Also, keep in mind that if you use Guitar center used, you still get a great return policy and way the same scratch and you can just walk it into the store and return it or send it back so you get the same return policy even if it's used. Just my suggestions. So save sales from scratch. All right. On that note, I want to thank you guys for your time. Till the next time. Know youw Gear the Know youw Gear Podcast the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible.