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The Know youw Gear Podcast the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast. This one was a great question. It was about guitar intonation. It says, hey, is guitar intonation overrated? On Throwback, Throwbacks podcast episode number 18, John and Matthew debated this topic. I watched them debate the topic. I watched their podcast on their guitargument segment. So if you guys don't know, first of all, Throwback has a great podcast. You should check it out. Also they on the podcast they have sections, theirs is very organized and one of the things is called the guitargument where they argue things and one of the things they were arguing with whether basically tone or intonation was more importanter. I did that on purpose. I'm just being funny. More important. So. And my, my. My thoughts are simple. Let's start with the easiest thing. Hopefully it's the least controversial. The majority of players that I've done setups for could not even tell if the guitar was intonated or not. One thing I've noticed is that as tuners got better and cheaper, keep in mind, cheaper is probably more important than cheaper. No, more important than accurate. As they got cheaper, right? As they got cheaper, which means more guitar players had them and better ones, all of a sudden, guitar players could hear their intonation. I am not making this up, as I would do work on people's guitars. As people, more players got more tuners, all of a sudden they were like, my intonation's out. Before, they could never tell. And I look and I know someone's always going to say, oh, I can tell. Good for you. That's good for you. But in my experience, the majority of players, when they told me their intonation out, they were telling me what the tuner was saying. And intonation is a little bit more involved than just your tuner. In other words, it's how hard you hit, it's how hard you push, it's the type of gauge strings you have, it's how tall your frets are. It's a lot of things that can interfere with intonation besides just intonating a guitar. Great. Just keep in mind something to understand if I was to take a guitar, just any particular guitar, it doesn't matter which one, and I was to intonate it. In other words, set the intonation correctly. And then for all those. I doubt there's any real beginners here, but just in case Intonation is basically meaning that the notes, your open notes, and your notes on your 12th fret are the same. Because the 12th fret on the guitar, whether it be acoustic or electric, is essentially the halfway point of the distance between the bridge and the nut. So you want those to be exactly the same, those notes. And so when the intonation is out, even if the guitar is in tune, in other words, you've tuned your open strings in tune and. And you play a chord, all of a sudden you hear it sounds. I call it sour. Some people just may say it warbles or sounds strange. It's because the intonation is out. And you have to do that by adjusting the saddles or other things. I mean, there's other adjustments, but obviously the saddles are the main adjustment. But in my experience, when players told me the intonation out, it was because, like I said, the tuner said so. So I was like I said I could take any guitar. I could set up the intonation. And a player can make the intonation out. I don't mean from bad playing. I mean just put. They push down too aggressively, right? Or, you know, they push down, or their frets were too tall and they pushed down too aggressively. There's. There's certain things I found it was always better. It was easier to keep a guitar intonated with smaller frets. I just don't like smaller frets. So you have to push down a little bit lighter. And one of the things I always just show players, so. So just give you understanding. When a player would tell me a guitar was intonation was out, sometimes their intonation was out. What I mean by them, it was them doing it. I would show them this exercise. And the exercise is simple. Basically. Let me grab a guitar, okay? So the exercise is simple. What you do is you pick any note on the fretboard. I don't care where, and you press down. Doesn't matter if you can't hear that right now, when you press down, what you want to do is put your finger right on top of the string, okay? So it should sound like muted like that. Because you're just resting your finger on the string. You're not pushing any force. Then what I ask them to do is push down lightly until. Until they make a note and the note doesn't buzz. And then relax their finger. Just relax. Kind of take a breath and see how light you can push that down and still make the note. And the thing to understand is that it's to help me understand how hard you think you need to Push a string down. So some players really think they need to push their finger so hard that it pushes through the fretboard, out the back of the neck, and touch their palm. I wish I was kidding. A lot of players like a lot of force. And if you use such force and your frets are tall and your strings are light, intonation is going to be almost an impossible task for you. Luckily, luckily, there's some fixes for that, too. Basically, what I'm trying to say is intonation is more than just the calibration of the bridge and the setup of the guitar. It's actually the player, too. These things are magical when they align, and they sometimes do, and that's what's great. So does intonation matter? Well, I'm going off the premise that most guitars and players are out of intonation. First of all, all guitars are technically not intonated perfectly, but we're not even going that deep into it. We're just going into. I would say most guitars, 6 out of 10 are not 100% intonated to the best of their abilities. And those players are not playing with the intonation and the. Like I said, the relationship of their playing style to the guitar in the perfect, harmonious, harmonious, perfect world of intonation. So my argument, it would be to agree with their argument, which is, I think, is that what they determined, the intonation didn't matter. You know, what's funny is I don't think I caught the end. I was really into it. But then I think, I think sometimes when I'm listening to podcasts, I'm working, and then sometimes the work takes over and I got to go do something else. But anyways, my point is to the intonation argument, I would say that intonation is very important, but it's. I think there's a range in where it needs to be pretty good, because then when it's not good, it's. You can obviously tell it. It's horrible, and it sounds really sour and horrible. But. But there's a There. When they remade the Frankenstein guitar for Eddie Van Halen, the $25,000 one, I actually, you know, I was just fun the other day. I should show you guys. I actually have my promotional materials when I was a dealer for EVH and that guitar came out, and maybe one day I'll tell you about the story about that guitar. But anyways, so if you guys don't remember, they made a $25,000 Eddie Van Halen Frankenstein clone. And as you know, that was done by Fender and the Fender Guys were here in Scottsdale, Arizona, and they were next to my store, and I happened to be one of the first EVH dealers ever in the country. And they talked to me a lot about the stuff. And we got to see a lot of cool prototype and stuff. I even got to go there one day to the facility and see some cool stuff. And one of the things they told me. I'm just telling you. The story they told me was that when they were cloning Eddie Van Halen's the Real Frankenstein, its bridge post to the Floyd is in the wrong spot. And the guitar's intonation is slightly out, that it is not perfectly intonated. So they said that was a question of what are they gonna do? I guess that's what they said. They were like, when they were cloning it. Do you clone it exactly, or do you fix the issue? And they gave some guesses. We had some talks. I want to not confuse the real story with the guesses. That was real talk. They told me that. I said, oh, and then some guesses where that when Eddie installed the Floyd, maybe he did it wrong. Maybe, you know, right. I mean, it's, you know, obviously, you know, stuff like that. But whatever reason, it's just. It was not intonated. Perfectly perfect intonation, as the guitar's full ability could be. And so maybe the assumption was it was recorded that way as well. So, you know, I've always gone off the. Well, Eddie played with the guitar with intonation was slightly out. So I had a customer. He was my first. My first negative customer. When I say negative, I don't mean the customer is negative. The first, like, I failed to give good service customer was an intonation issue customer. So I got their guitar, and it was a refread. I refreaded their guitar, and I did a full setup and everything. And then they got the guitar. And there's a little bit more to the story that involves them. So I don't want to go into that because that might. Somebody might be able to figure out who that customer is that knows me and the customers. But the important part of the story was they got the guitar, they played the guitar, they loved the guitar, they went home. And I don't remember if they came back to the shop or if they called me, but whatever it was, they were like, the intonation's out on this guitar. And I'm like, oh, okay, we'll handle it. And then when they brought it back, it was the same thing. It was the. The tuner was telling them something was off. And. And I was like, well, can you hear it? And I was, you know. And again, I'm not trying to be passive. Like, oh, if you, you know, can you even hear what you're saying? It was more of like a. I'm trying to again, try to address how much is the player's interaction with the guitar is pushing it. Because like I said, I can only intonate it so far without really calibrating to the player. And the end of the story ended up being they took it to guitar center, of all places. And the guitar center tech featured fixed was quite embarrassing. Right? Look, I don't really have an ego, but, you know, the guitar centers especially then weren't really known for having good guitar repair work. And you know, to have somebody like, fix my mistake. And I kind of obsessed over that. So, you know, for a long time, and it probably was a good thing in the long run, I really obsessed over, like, I gotta fix this. I gotta. I gotta make sure I never make this mistake again. And it was probably months, wasn't weeks for sure. It wasn't years. So months later, the person came in the store and brought me another guitar. And I thought, oh, okay. You know, you're like, I thought I'd never see this person again. I thought I failed them. And you know, and they told me that it wasn't me. That actually they realized now that really there was probably nothing wrong with the guitar, that they were just going through some stuff emotionally and the intonation was probably fine and they were just obsessing over it. And so I kept doing work for them and I did work for them for many years after that. But I know it sounds like, oh, that's horrible. But it wasn't horrible because like I said, it really did cause me to do more of what I've just explained to you really think about intonation differently than just the guitar is intonated and that's the end of the story. It is really a lot of things. So. So yeah, there's. That's my thoughts on intonation. It. It. I. I think it matters, but I think sometimes we obsess over it a little too much. And I think the only time I've told you before I have guitar, I had guitar players. That's why, like I said, I really long. Long. No, I really appreciate. I don't know. I'm trying to think. I. I don't. I'm trying to think how I want to say this. I basically admire. I'll say admire. That's a good word. I admire Guitar techs in the Nashville area, because I have had to do a lot of tech work for studio grade musicians who do Nashville style playing. You know, Nashville country, really good stuff. There's not a lot of that in Arizona, but there is some. And those players are very good. And those players are. I told you before they come in, they don't want their guitar intonated. They have sheets on how they want intonated. They want this. This string is so many synths flat. This. This string is so many synths sharp. They have. I mean, it's. It's dialed in. That's a different world. So me personally, I also kind of think it has to do with the genre of music you play. So I like the saying good enough for rock and roll. I find that. Throw some distortion and some power chords. I had. I've had players look. And I'm not going to argue with the customer. You know the saying, the customer's always right. I'm not going to argue the customer. But sometimes I did chuckle and I'm like, okay, you know, I. I'm not saying a lot. I'm just saying a few. It's always interesting when you're standing there and somebody who's basically playing only power chords through a very distorted crate amplifier is telling you how the intonation is out in the guitar. And I'm like, well, you're only really playing two notes. Can't even really hear either one. So. But you know what? You know, you do your best you can, and that's my answer. All right. Okay, let's see what we got. Amanda's been throwing me stuff, including. Amanda's got a question, but I don't. Manda, I don't have an answer for you. This is the worst question ever. I'm gonna read it, though. Amanda sent this to me. It says my PV Viper was under a foot and a half of water. Yeah, that's not where amps go, by the way. Don't do that. They're not. They're not really good in the water anyways. I'm not making light of it. I guess I am making light of Amanda. I'm just. I feel bad. I don't want to say. It says my. My Viper amp was in a foot and a half of water and it's dead. What do I do now? Landfill feels so wrong. I don't know. You know, I have no idea if that can be salvaged or not. I've had a ton of things in my life. Same thing. Water damage. Some of it worked, Some of It didn't. My understanding is usually it has to do with whether or not the, the, the, the PCB boards, you know, they, they corrode those, those little strips of metal, you know, those little leads, those little lead lines and stuff, those things can crack and corrode and kind of cause all kinds of problems. So I don't know, I hate anything like, like you, I hate anything that has to go to the dump or the landfill before it's time. Can parts be salvaged? I don't know. Can it be fixed? I don't know. You know, it's one of those things. I can just tell you that because I'm not an amtech. But I can tell you on the guitar tech side, one of my concerns for your story is one of the downfalls is it's not going to make sense to fix it versus replace it because cost wise. So unless you have someone who's just willing to do the work, you know, or you know, like, you know, for. As a friend, I would imagine there's not going to be a lot of work that anyone's going to do. Things I could tell you to do is make sure, take it apart thoroughly. Make sure it's, it's dried out. Brian saying Use some WD40. Use them. I would use, yeah, contact cleaner water, try to clean it again. And since it's going to go to the dump anyways, it's not in a hurry to go to the dump. So I would say let it dry out, but I would definitely open up everything. Obviously it's an amplifier, so be careful when, when sticking your hands in there, obviously even unplugged. And make sure that you let it properly dry and clean everything to, you know, and lubricate everything in hopes that it comes back. It's a suggestion, but again I'd like to tell you that's, that's definitely an uneducated suggestion because again, I don't do any amp work at all. So I do enough, I do, I do enough for my own necessities. Like for instance, the other last week I had, I biased one of my own amps just because the shop I was gonna probably take it to and bias it. I, I heard from a friend they're running two to three weeks behind minimum and I was like a month to get my amp back. I just biased my amp myself. But I didn't want to. It wasn't hard. I just didn't want to. Okay, sorry. I just read a question and I'm like, I, I like the, I don't know, we'll come back to it. This question says, this says, how hard is it to switch a right handed acoustic to a left handed acoustic? I have a right handed Martin. I'd like to give it to my son, but he plays left handed. Okay, so couple things. So it's really easy if the bridge is, is flat. In other words, it's not angled in any way. Sometimes classical guitars are easy that way. So we can flip them. We could put a cut either a new left handed nut or flip the, you know, put a new nut on there and flip the strings and it's, it's fine. However, once the, the bridge. Obviously talking about intonation, the bridge on acoustic guitar is, is, is at an angle for that reason to, to extend distance of the lower strings to the nut for proper intonation. The, the answer I can tell you is because you're saying things like, well, first of all, you're not telling me what kind of Martin. So I'm, I don't know if it's a really expensive Martin or an inexpensive Martin. Why that matters is because what I'm gonna tell you next, there's again, we talk about good enough, right? There's good enough work. So for instance, I would say if you're going to give a right handed guitar to a child or to a younger person, and when I say child, I don't mean a little kid, just even a teenager given to somebody to try guitar to see if they like it. And you don't want to really invest into a guitar because that makes sense because obviously you don't know how. If they're going to like this. I wouldn't worry about the intonation at first. They can't do much on it anyways. I would use some strings called silk and steel strings. I'll pull those up for you. There's a reason why I'm going to suggest that. So let's, let's go to the Sweetwater site. Let's type, let's see if they have them. And they. Yes, silk and steel. Okay, let's try this. So we have a silk and steel. There's a brand I think called silk and steel. But anyways, this is, this is the type of strings, authentic 30s silked steel guitar strings. I would go, I don't know what's different about these. I'm looking at them. They're both the same gauges. Hmm, let's pick one. You could probably even find some on Amazon. Again, you're just looking for the term silk and steel. See it right There Silk and steel. What these are is a hybrid. There are something in between a nylon string acoustic guitar and a steel string acoustic guitar. Why I like them. Well, first of all, I'll give you example. My father in law was having trouble playing guitar. This is recent, this last couple months. And so Shana came to me and said, hey, my dad's having trouble playing guitars. It's really hurting his fingers because obviously you know, he's, he's not playing guitar diligently every day. And that gets, you know, he's losing time because he has to work for a living. So he loses a week or two before he goes back. So I took an acoustic and I strung it up with silk and steel. Silken steel. Because it's like a hybrid between a classical guitar string and acoustic guitar string. You can, they're softer, they're a lot less tension. Okay. It's going to feel exactly like what I'm saying. However, one of the advantages are, is if you get acoustic guitar like that Martin, and you put it, you got to put a left handed nut. You're just going to probably have to do that. Okay. Put a left handed nut, pop the other nut out, put a left handed nut on there. I leave the bridge alone and put silk and steel one. It's going to be easier for a beginner. But also the other thing that's going to help is you don't have to worry about the intonation as much. You're definitely not going to have to worry about the nut being cut properly. Because if your nut slots aren't cut perfect, then the strings are a little high, it's gonna be hard for them to push down. But those strings are gonna be so easy to push down, it won't matter. Basically what I'm saying, it's a good cheat system. We've, we, we, we used to do it for. So for instance, if you came in my shop and you said, hey look, I have this guitar and I just want to switch it over left handed for a little while, that's probably what I would do to it for you. I would say, okay, it's just a beginner. Yeah, mostly gonna play, you know, Mary Had a Little Lamb or some single note stuff and then some basic chords. Let's go ahead, switch the nut. I would retain your original nut. I would make it to where you could just pop in the original nut back and call it a day when you're ready to swap and put the silken steel on there and, and you'll get away with it. It'll be good enough. Now something to think about is that you can also buy such great 99 left handed acoustic guitars for them. That that's always an option too. So I just want to give you the options, you know, plus. Or you can just buy a used guitar. Actually, you know, think about this. A left handed used acoustic and inexpensive in one. If you buy it used, I know it's an investment, but keep in mind if you get it on a Marketplace or Craigslist, you could probably offload it just as for Pro, which what you paid for it and not have any of the headaches either. So just something to think about. But those are all options. Those are all options for you. At least you have options. Okay, let's. We're not gonna do guitar of the week yet because it's too early. We're gonna talk about something I want to talk about. So I was on my phone two weeks ago. I think they call it doom scrolling, right? When you're just looking at crap. You know, I don't really get on social media very much. I think it's because I work in social media. So I think I, I say that, but I really don't feel like I do. I don't feel like YouTube and the podcasting is really the social media platforms as much. I feel like this is more the information based. What I mean by that is I do very little Instagram, TikTok, Facebook stuff, right? But, but I was doing this and a product came in my feed. Like, you know how that happens, right? Somebody's trying to sell you something and this product comes in my feed and I'm looking at it and I'm like, what is this? What is this? And I screenshot it, you know. Cause I was like, oh, I know you guys can't see kind of what it is. I'm kind of being vague on purpose. You know, look at a little better picture that you can't see. You see the Fender logo there, some outfires. I'm like, what, what is this? Now when I say what is this? I knew what it was. I was looking at it and my brain. I was thinking about a couple podcasts ago when I told you the story about how Fender made us buy baseballs and we had to buy all these baseballs and Fender and these companies sometimes push, you know, product on dealers. And I even like, I told you guys that one of my friends who owned a music store as well was very upset because he said he didn't want to be in the fashion industry. And so when Fender and Gibson were making him buy shirts and jackets and stuff. He was very upset because he wanted to sell guitars for a living and not, you know, clothing. And so anyways, so I, I could. You couldn't time this any better. Not only did I see that I thought about buying it for a laugh. But I was like, no, that's what a waste. And then I happened to be in the guitar center because I don't know if, you know, half my stories are I happen to be in a music store. I happen to be in a music store. And I saw it actually. And then the guitar center employees said, oh, yeah, we can't sell those. That's what they said, we can't. I'm telling you what it is. In a second. They go, yeah, we can't sell those. And they're on sale for half off. I'm like, oh, so this is a new product from Fender. We're gonna go over it because I know what you're thinking. It's not the product that I find funny. If you haven't figured out what this is, this is the new Fender 2 pack Fender amplifier kitchen sponges. Yes, we will remove them. These are. These. I'm reading what they put. These amp sponges contain three hard working layers that will scrub through your toughest dirt. That's right, Fender. Don't worry about Marshall selling refrigerators and Bluetooth speakers. Fender's got kitchen wares down now. I know they make cutting boards and spatulas. I'm not making that up, by the way. That's all true. But now Fender has the new Fender twin. These are Fender twins. I was telling some friends about this the other day. I didn't want to actually take the packaging apart. I'm gonna take the paper. Take one out now. All right, so check this out. So it's a Fender sponge. It has the Fender twin logo on the front or the amp. All right? And then it has the hard. Like it has the 3M PLA. 3M kind of, you know. So. Yeah, could you. If you're asking me, can you use this on the back of your guitar neck, sure can. Then you got a soft sponge, right? And I thought about this and I know we made fun of Fender and other brands for making silly items, right? You know, but this one actually made me laugh for this reason. Not because Fender made tone sponges. That's what I'm calling them, by the way. Not because Fender made kitchen kitchen sponges that look like twin amplifiers. Because grown people who work in a corporation who gets salaries Sat in a room and thought this up. This was like, this is how I picture it. Somebody went, jenkins, we need an idea. We are not selling enough stratocasters. And they said, what about kitchen sponges? And then they went, are you an idiot? He goes, hear me out. Hear me out, right? This had to get pitched. There's no way that somebody said kitchen sponges. And then everybody at the table agreed. Any of you ever been in a meeting in a corporation? Nobody ever agrees. Half of them stay quiet because they're just waiting for lunch. The other half, they're. They won't shut up. But then the last half. That's three halves, by the way. They were like, you had to pitch this. This is. And I'm like, how did he sell this idea of kitchen Fender? He probably said, look, every guitar player does dishes, right? I mean, hell, half of them do it for a living. So they already. They need kitchen sponges. What guitar player doesn't need it, right? And then they go, you know, you got a good point. Every guitar player either is a dishwasher by trade or does them because they have dishes. And they're like, yeah, that's a great idea. We should make two Fender. Fender. In my head, it's. We should make two Fender Princeton sponges. And Jenkins went, no, no, no, man. They have to be twins. Fender twins. Because you want to. You want to clean your dishes like. Like a clean tone. You can't get a clean tone out of your Princeton. You need to clean with these things, right? And they were like, huh? And they were like, you know what? You're. It's a great. We're going to make a Fender twin kitchen sponge. You're right. And then Jenkins, in my head, this guy's name is Jenkins, and it could be a woman named Jenkins. I don't know. Anyways, that Jenkins person went. And they got to come in a two pack, right? And then the. And then the people at the table are like, what? Why two? We'll make more money if we sell one. They go, no, no, listen, you have two. Because what you do is you get yourself a glass of water, right? And you put one in the water, okay? You put one in there. And that's your wet, dry rig, right? So you need a wet, dry rig. So when you're doing dishes, you use the wet one to clean and then this one to scrub, right? So every guitar player, they need to do dishes, have a wet, dry rig, right? I know this is dad jokes, right? But I'm wearing a dad hat today, so it's good. Just gonna, I'm gonna. I just want to show you guys. And squeeze some of this water out into the cup. And I thought it was just fate that when I was at a guitar center, after seeing these online, I'm like, I have to have these. The guys at guitar center thought I was kidding. They were like, haha. And I'm like, no, seriously, I want to ring these up. And they were like, are you serious? I'm like, yes. I need kitchen sponges. My favorite part of this story was when I came home, Shawna was like, she knew I went to the music stores. And she's like, what'd you get? And I go, kitchen sponges. She goes, no, seriously, what'd you get? I'm like, yeah, see, you don't trust me. Why would I lie? I got kitchen sponges. So anyways, anyone interested in these? They were $10. They're on sale now for 5.99. They're five bucks. So you can get. You can get yourself a wet, dry rig or you can do dishes, right? I mean, come on, you know, this is a great idea. Seriously though, on a serious note, you know, they were thinking like, we needed something at Christmas that people who like guitar players want to buy them. And they're like, they're like, maybe if they buy a guitar, maybe. Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe you guys, I don't know. There's a thousand of you. You have to tell me. We'll put up a survey, you guys, maybe. How many of you guys don't do the dishes? Is this a problem? So what I'm thinking is, is this Fender going, You know, guitar players, they're lazy. They don't do any dishes. But if we get them kitchen sponges, they'll do dishes. Now the next thing I got was the new Fender garbage bags. These are pretty cool, what you do. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Now when I say just kidding, Fender send me free garbage bags when you make them, because obviously you'll make them. I think this also shows there's just no limits, right? They'll just. I don't know where the connection is. I don't know why Fender thought this connected, but I just enjoyed it so much. And I thought. And. And I'd like to also point out I've been waiting to share this with you. Like, like, I thought this was so funny. So anyways, that's my Fender kitchen sponges story. There you go. If you buy any of these from guitars that are online, use my Affiliate link so I can get 3 cents for the kitchen sponges. All right, so hopefully now my tirade's over and, and I think maybe we'll do that from now. And I'm just gonna find odd things and then share them with you that I think are funny. Let's. Let me get out of this screen. Let's find another question or topic. By the way, if you're sending a topic to me and either Amanda grabs them or you can put a question mark at the beginning, Zim's guitar says, what ideas do you think got thrown out of the meeting? I can't say. I feel like this is a family channel, but I'm going to push it. So, kids, muffs, edible underwear. Right. I'm sure that was like tweed, tweed style edible underwear. I'm sure. Look, at this point, you know, I'm, you know, they thought of it. It was definitely a thing, right? Like, that was probably, they were like, probably go to those things. I would say that probably idea got thrown out. Right? What else? The, I don't know, Fender colostomy bag. I don't know. I, I, at this point, I don't think they're throwing out too many ideas. It's like the kitchen smudges made it and the baseballs made it. I think everybody's gonna, I think everything's making it. So. Yeah. All right, we're gonna make it PG13 again. Let's go. Let's go back to a. Another question. This one is, this one is a good one. Says a tech question. Says, hey, you had mentioned an oversized nut slot can result in a sitar type of buzzing effect. I wonder about this, since the slot has to be at least a couple thousandths larger than the string not to bind. Yeah, it does. It needs to be wider. But I'm not talking about just a little bit of, you know, of room where the string can glide across. I'm talking about, like, pretty well. First of all, it's not just a bigger slot. It's. It's how the slot is cut. So in other words, the string now sitting too low. So keep in mind, the slot is kind of like a. Think of it like sometimes like a V or U. Technically, we're hoping it's more of a U than a V the way they slot it. But in that slot, which is a U shape, the string is sitting in and it's resting on the bottom part. Right. It's like a cradle. And sometimes there's a little gap where the string, you know, the string doesn't rest heavily at the bottom because just the way we cut the. The slot, when we put a smaller string in there, the string can sit a little bit lower, and that causes a. Sometimes an effect. The other thing that happens is it's not only just cutting the slot too. Too wide or too deep. It could be at a wrong angle. You put it too flat, you. You put it too much at an angle, or sometimes you crisscross it. I guess that's what I call it. Like, you're. A lot of people don't understand. The slot has to be perfectly straight, right? Has to follow that string line perfectly. So that's the ideal situation. So sometimes the angle is off. So there's a couple things that can cause that, but it's not going to sitar a ring because it was. There's a little bit of a thousandths, you know, difference in the, in the way that you cut the slot. It's usually a little bit more dramatic than that. So in my. In my experience. Okay, let's hop out of this thing. And is it time for gear of the week? Why not? Let's do it. And now it's time for gear of the week. Yes. So notice it's gear of the week, not guitar of the week. Why is it gear of the week? Because I told you guys, I promised you guys I would share with you the new pedal. I got, I got the. Let me go to it. I got the. Oh, two things. Perfect. We'll finish up a problem that happened from two weeks ago, and then we'll have gear of the week. So let me share this with you. So two weeks ish ago, or maybe it was last week, I don't know. A couple weeks ago I was talking about Reverb and a lot of people were talking about Reverb saying that the market isn't crashing and it's. It's. It's doing great. I'm paraphrasing. And I said, well, we obviously know the market's soft, right? Don't think it's crashing, but it's definitely softened. And it's because Reverb is telling me that. This is what I said. Reverb's telling that in two ways. One, I keep my collection thing on Reverb. If we've talked about in the past where you can go on your Reverb account and there's a button or tab called my collection, and you can enter in all the products you own, and it keeps a running track of it, but also it gives you like a spread of what those items are going for at any given time. And then of course, I also said that, you know, a lot of people, you can't go on reverb right now without getting five offers on everything you try to look at. So this is my personal collection. And I want to show you. Somebody said a comment. They said, phil, you're actually wrong. And you know, hey, it's always possible. They said you're wrong because you bought the stuff new. So I said that basically if you look at these reverb estimates and it gives you a total. So see, this is the estimate. And then all my gear is in here. So at the end it gives me a total value of what it thinks my entire catalog of gear is, which is somewhere around $7 million. Anyways, that's not the important part. The important part is that it gives you a range. Okay, so if you can see here back to what I'm saying. It's saying that this guitar is worth somewhere between $911 and $1153. This is based on what's selling currently right now. So for instance, if you. Five of these were to sell, in theory in the next 24 hours for $800, these numbers would lower. And if they were to sell for fifteen hundred dollars, they would. They would go higher. Somebody said, yeah, but I bought. Phil, you're miss, you misunderstood because you bought this. Some of the. You bought your stuff new. Not all of it, but some of it. And this is used prices. Well, I didn't explain it because I thought you guys knew. This always puts it in used. So for instance, I just bought this boss pedal, okay? So I paid 209, I believe. I'll look it up in a second. 209 new. Okay, but it doesn't care about new. It only gives you the estimate of used. So it's saying used. The pedal's worth about 188 to 210 used. And this guitar I just bought new. This I did buy used. And so this is giving me my estimates on used prices too. Even if I buy new gear. So in other words, what I'm saying again, just want to reiterate to everyone, if I buy a brand new thing on reverb and put in my collection, Reverb is never going to tell me what the brand new cost is. It's always going to give me the estimate. Estimate of the used pricing. And based on that, reverb has dropped my collection 20 to. It's almost 30%. It's like 20 something percent. Right. Because it's. Again, it's hard to say because there's a range. Right. So that's why I say 20 to 30, because depends on which two of those numbers you want to go off of. Right. I'm either down 20% or I'm down 30%, depending on what those numbers are. And so. And I'm not. It's not a stock market here. I'm not like, oh, I'm not. Right. Buy low, sell high. But it is. I'm just kind of explaining. Yeah, of course, you can tell the market softened because my. The collection has. Has gone down. Think of this. The total amount's gone down, even though I've added to it. So there you go. It says, hey, Phil, how do you feel about the 2018 Gibson cheap models like the M2 and the custom Studio? And do you think Gibson will return to making cheap guitars in the 2000s? So I don't think so. I think the, the business model is exactly what I've. I've kind of told you guys what I think it is. You know, I've talked about this. You know, obviously you saw me interview Mike and Gabe, the CEOs of Guitar center and Sweetwater. And the reason I bring that up is I think I'm one of the few people that have ever interviewed both CEOs of the two people who control 50% of the market and had, you know, lengthy conversations with them. And the reason I just tell you that is insight, you know, maybe that gives me an insight that maybe is useful. Here's something that I see. And this ties into the Gibson. Let's talk. Let's tie it into this. Somebody also asked me a question. They said, hey, Phil, what do you think of the Back to the future ES345s that are going for $20,000 and being released only of 88 of them, and they're a limited edition. And why is that so expensive? Why are they making a $20,000 guitar? And this goes to exactly the term I keep using, which is the anchor pricing. It's an old sales term. It's been around for a bazillion years, as long as people been selling goats and chickens and whatever else in sand. So anchor pricing is essentially. Usually is a term. Not usually as a term is when you kind of say, hey, this is $1,000, but I'll give it to you for $700. It's to trick someone into thinking that they got $300 off. Right? This is why I think the brand names and I'm call. I've called them all out for it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's Ibanez, it's, it's in no particular orders. Ibanez, it's PRs, it's Fender, it's Gibson, it's anyone who can do it. Why do they make a twenty thousand dollar back to the future Gibson? So they can make a $2,000 back to the future epiphone? Why, why does PRS make all of a sudden a $10,000 guitar is so they can make a thousand dollar version of that in an se? Why does Fender come out with a guitar that again no one can afford or have, but again they're going to come out with a squier version of it. This is a really good strategy for them because what happens is, is it takes us away from the one thing that we usually use to make a decision, intelligent decision, which is you take what you think it costs to make something and then you come up with what you feel it's worth to you. Okay, so for instance, a good example is you go and look at like some off brand guitar that we're always highlighting. You know, when I say we, I mean all the YouTubers, right? So there's always some new Chinese brand that's a new, new company, new name. They're selling it on Amazon. They're 200 bucks. They have an insane amount of things. You've seen me breathe this subject to death. It's bone nut, it's stainless steel frets, it's roasted maple neck. It's Al Nico 5 pickups. It's all the boxes checked and it's $200. And why is it $200? Well, because that's what they, they can sell a lot of them at that point. It's again, it's like a, it's like a wow, what a good value of, of, of of laundry list of value for the price. Then you look and you go, well it's made in a factory that's next to where Epiphone's making their stuff. Right. And this could be said for PRs as well, right? You're making a guitar that I can buy for really, really well for $300. And it's, it's made as you guys know, I can tell you it's made 150ft. 250ft. 250ft from the SE version. Right, the SE guitar. And then you go, well okay, so why is the price difference? Well, brand name is a thing that always brought Pricing up, right, the brand value. But now there's a new thing which is the comparison of it. Wow, you're going to get such a deal at $2,000 because the original is 20,000, the US is 20,000. And your brain just goes, this is true. You see it over and all. Again, we saw it with the Kirkhammer guitars on and Gibson and where they did the three levels. I think they did the same thing. Well, they do it with all the artist guitars. Think about this. It's a learned lesson from the artist guitars, right? You sell everyone. It's. I told you guys this once before. I believe if I, if I'm incorrect, I apologize. But it was like Steve Jobs, right? Something like that. And I think the quote was. And again, it was again, I just giving you the quote as I remember it, something to the effect of we sold everybody in America a thousand dollar computer. Now the trick is we got to sell Everybody who has $500 a computer, right? And again there's, if you guys Google it, I'm sure it's, you know, right. It's something different that. But to get the concept right. In other words, the same thing could be said for like, let's say an artist guitar. We sold everybody who can afford a $5,000 John Petrucci guitar. Now we got to find everybody who's got a thousand dollars and sell them a John Petrucci guitar. So we're going to make them a Sterling. And again, that's just how they're going to do it. And the, the point I'm making is, is that it's always interesting to me. And again, I'm not, I'm not shaming this. I'm not saying it's wrong because I fall for it, because I'm an idiot. I just buy the stuff I want sometimes because this is all luxury items and wants. But the important part is how your brain, I guess, decides that it's okay. And sometimes it's easier to go, well, you know, it's a thousand dollars. It's way less than six, Right. It's not. Oh, but comparatively, there's another brand making a product just like it for seven, you know, so, wow, a lot cheaper. And so, so that to answer your question, do I think Gibson is going to make the 2018 kind of cheap models again? Look, the economy dictates. The customers in the economy dictate what the companies ultimately have to do, right? So if the market gets bare enough and gets hard enough, they're going to try to figure out how to hit any Price point that works for them. But I think they've all kind of learned this is a better deal for them, right? What's better than selling a USA made guitar at bare bones, bare bones specifications and bare bone price with a low margin. Selling a guitar made in China, Indonesia, you know, India for top dollar. Right. But, but people realize, but people thinking that price point is a good deal because of the comparison that it brings. It's, it's like, wow. I want, you know, I, this idea that I had, this isn't just me because I, you know, I sold guitars or I've been in the guitar industry, you know, all this theory came from one thing, one thing over a comment, a random comment from years ago. It just really hit me. Somebody's comment. They said they bought and forgive me, I could have been a Silver sky se. I don't know if that's what it was, but it was something they bought something that was the import version of, you know, the expensive USA manufactured one. And in their comment they, they called anyone who bought the expensive one a moron. And I remember thinking like huh, not, not that I think they're the moron, but I thought what an interesting thing, right? It's, it's funny because it wasn't based on like, like I said, they didn't. There's no difference in the spec sheets. So so much is in their decision making. It was more like, oh, anyone who spen dollars, they're dumb because they could have got this for a thousand. And I'm like, wow, that really worked. Basically that's my takeaway. Whatever the strategy was to sell that really worked on that person. And again, I'm not saying anything bad about anyone who buys any price point guitars because you all gotta, like I said, everybody spends their comfort zones and what makes sense. And I could argue sometimes that even a $2,000 main China guitars not only a better deal, it's a better product than, you know, $10,000 USA guitar or whatever crazy number it is. I'm just kind of explaining to you why I think they're all gonna find this system and just kind of keep going with it. This is, this seems to be, and I always said this, bad ideas are infectious. And what I mean by that is like, you know, when a company does something all of a sudden and it works, another company does it. And so I, it's not that I say, you know, when I say like, oh, you know, Ibanez is doing it and Gibson's doing it and Fender's doing it and PRS is doing it. It's really, that's just because they're the big guys and I can just mention them. But really what it was is you're noticing like everyone slowly moving to a business model like that, hey, let's make this inexpensive version thing. But it's again, the pricing is more of, it's more dependent on how far or close it is to the more expensive thing than it is based on its actual value of components. And, and this is my, that's my two cents on that. And also one thing that I notice is when you look at companies, and this is just an example, when you look at companies that make guitars in the United States, but they only make guitars in the United States, their pricing structure is different. So in other words, you don't see SIR guitars or Kiesel guitars or Tom Anderson guitars or even Novo guitars or Nag's guitars posting all the time that there's some new crazy, expensive, unobtainium unaffordable guitar. Right? Like there's, there's no logic to that. There's no reason. Novo is like, hey, we just came out with a guitar, it's $25,000 and we're making six of them and it's on the front page of Guitar World. It doesn't seem to happen. And the reason is, is because the reason why I believe prs Ivan is. And again, Gibson, Fender, all of them do that is because it gets us talking about it. We're like what $20,000 for an ES345? What are they crazy, right? Is, you know, Michael J. Fox, you know, did he, you know, did he play it in the movie? You know, right? What is going on here? But then like I said, that comes out and then the next thing on the epiphone is oh well, the epiphone is more reasonable, right? So, and, and we, we, we not only do the comparative and the pricing, but it's almost like we're, we wouldn't have known about the, the affordable one if it wasn't for the, the, not the drama but the craziness created by the marketing hype of the Unobtainium ones. So that's my observations. So that's all why I'm giving the answer. I don't think Gibson will do affordable usa, you know, stripped down guitars anytime soon. I don't think so. So barring the market just really gets bare out there, you know, because again, desperate times comes from desperate measures. So you know, if Gibson can't move any USA stuff and same thing with Fender and prs, they're going to do things that they, you know, but in this current market where the market's not down, it's just not the boom it was before. It's just not, not hitting like it was. I don't see anyone making any, any calls like that. Okay, let's get out of this one. Let's go to this one. I don't know the answer to this question. This one was when does G and L usually do their shipments to dealers? Hard to find one stock this time of year. This my understanding is G L is a just in time manufacturer like Paul Reed Smith guitars. And the idea that no guitar is built without a dealer order behind it. So you know, they're whatever guitars, when a guitar is done, they ship it to, to the dealer. So. But the part of the thing you're probably not aware of is GNL is very, very, very small company. We growing up, a lot of us, we just, you know, we didn't get perspective like we do now. We don't have the Internet, we don't have, you know, Friday discussions of, you know, like we do, you know, now where we can talk about stuff. You gotta understand, GNL is a very small company. It's very small, okay. Even the tributes, the made by Cortek import guitars, I mean they're not buying containers and containers of these guitars. So GNL is a very small company and so they're not a high volume company. In fact, as you guys know, I did GNL factory tours and I hung out with them. And my assessment of them was the GNL facility, not the, not the one custom builder because I got a guy who builds custom stuff for them. Not him, the whole facility. So we're talking about the USA side, not the, not the import stuff. And my assessment was smaller than Fender Custom Shop in volume. So just to give you an idea, that's, that's where I would put that G L. Now I could also back that with some numbers because if you look at their gross total sales or at least the guesstimate, you know, guess of what it is, versus Fender Custom Shop total sales. Fender Custom shops bigger by dollars too. By, by, by a good amount. So, so think about that. So it's. So when you walk in a store and you don't see a whole lot of GNL's, you also don't see a whole lot of Fender customer jobs. In fact, I would argue actually going to see more, you're going to see more Fender custom shops than you're going to actually see, GNL's, that actually lines up with the numbers I've seen in manufacturing. So that's the part of thing with gnl, you got to understand G and L. I think. And this is my personal opinion, it's been this way. And I've told them this personally, so I don't have a problem telling you guys this. My assessment to them, hanging out with them, I like them a lot. I think they have a lot of passion. They're definitely a group of people who really champion and love what Leo Fender did. The whole story of Leo Fender. And they champion the history, the California part of the history of the company. The whole thing is just. They're very passionate. But I believe that one of the things that they do is they're from a time where you was. I'm gonna say, fake it till you make it. There was a time in business where the term fake it till you make it. Right? Like, when I started a business in 2002, 2000, 2003, the advice I got from friends, this is, like, actually advice I got. I have a friend out of business, and I said, hey, I have some. I'm gonna start a business. And what's your. What's your advice? And he was like, go get a Humvee. Like, what? He's like, get yourself like, a $60,000 Humvee and deck it out and park it on the corner. Let everybody know you got money because you're doing great, right? And I'm like, what? And it was, you know, let everybody know that you're. As a business, you're just doing so amazing. They're missing out if they don't go to you. And I remember thinking, this doesn't make any sense at all. And this is my point. And now we definitely know it's not part of the way we think now. That's one thing that social media gave us. Look, social media is a. Is like anything. It gives and it takes. It gives us some horrible things, and it takes. And it doesn't take. It gives us some horrible things, and it gives us some nice things. So one of the things that's nice is that, you know, there was a time where if. And I just. This is the analogy I like. I just want to use it that, you know, somebody baked cookies from home and they made organic cookies and, you know, all wholesome ingredients, and they bagged them in a paper bag and. And they went to a farmer's market. You'd be like, ugh. Like, you know, I need professional packaging. I want to know this is a real business. And now people seek that out. They seek out the honesty, they seek out the uniqueness. They seek out small. They seek out, you know, hey, I want to have something that is unique and interesting and somebody cares about it and it's not an empty corporate shell kind of producing stuff. And I think GNL is one of those companies, like when I see them and I talk to them and I go to their factory, what I see is a small builder building guitars and trying really hard. And I think that should be their messaging. And I've said this to you guys many times. You know, one of the reasons I did not sell gnls for a long time in the store was the rep would come in and he would be like, you don't need Fenders, we got gnls. And I was like, people prefer Fenders, I always think. And I told this to the GNO guys, if he would have came in one day and said, I see you got Fender custom shop here. You know, we'll give you the same, if not a better margin. And these are just as unique and they're just as good. And they're half the price of your customer. Like if he would have said to me, we make less or the same guitars volume wise as Fender customer shop, but at a lesser price than Fender production pricing, I think I could have told that to my customers. That's a story I could have conveyed to them. They walk in and they go, yeah, I just never been a GNL friend, I'm like, well pick it up and play it. You know, this is still handmade, basically. Still a lot of hands on this. You know, it's not a lot of CNC stuff. It's, it's, it's a little bit of, you know, like everybody, it's all cnc, you know, little cnc, but not a lot. And that's my whole point with G and L. So I always tell people when you have issues with gnl, like somebody will say, hey, you know, I called them and they don't call back. Yeah, I mean, for the longest time the person who did pretty much 100% of sales to all the dealers also was the customer service person. And he like five jobs. So yeah, they're a small company. So that would be my answer to why you don't see them readily available. And I also think that's why they're messaging also hurts their resale value. So the resale value is not very high and then that kind of makes you less, less likely to buy Them sometimes because you're like, you know, it sucks to look at a guitar for $2,000 and you're like seeing people trying to sell theirs for $1,000 used, you go, what if I don't like it? I don't want to be in that situation. And I think part of that part is again, they're not the messaging. They're not messaging. But I'm telling you guys, as, as, you know, whatever it's worth, all the factories I've been to around the world, I'll tell you right now, GNL is making guitars pretty much the same way the Fender custom shop is, if not a little bit more accurately to the original way that Fender did it. And for a fraction of the price and for a little less volume of guitars. That is actually accurate. That is the, that is the truth. Whether or not anyone cares or not, that's exactly what they're doing. Sean says, I want a gnl, but they need to improve their color offerings and weight. Well, weight is a tough thing for every company, right? Because like, you know, the weight relieving and stuff. But GNL does that. They do weight relieving and they do offer more colors than they, they. Because again, they are kind of like a custom shop. And the problem is, is that G and L. And again, this is true with some other companies too. During COVID during the boom when they were all selling like crazy, there was a back off, if you notice, of like, well, we don't do that anymore. We don't do those custom offerings. We don't do a lot of stuff. I had people tell me during COVID like, I try to get GNL to do this, they wouldn't do it. And then now I've seen GNL on social media recently saying, oh, we do all these things now. And it's because again, it was a volume thing. So I think they've opened up a little bit. In other words, when they need your money a little bit more, I think the companies are more, more eager to work for it. So that's just, that's just the thing. I have a G and L video coming, by the way. I'm very excited about. Sweetwater reached out and asked me if I was interested in doing any G and L videos and I said absolutely. And I picked a G and L. So I have a GNL video coming. I do not have the tribute GNL guitar video yet. We're still working on that. Hopefully they'll get done too. Okay, I'm gonna sip some water while I and run Riot says, hey, did Jerry Cantrell, he's the guitar player for Allison Change, use Kaylors? He did not. Putting the thing he uses on his signature model sounds backwards. Oh, is it not? Is it not on his signature model? So I'll just tell you because we're. We're kind of on the second half of the show. The. The GNL I have is the new rampage, and it has a Kaylor on it. And that was kind of my thought process. A lot of you guys asked me what I thought of Kaylor. So I have some experience with kalers in the. In the past. You know, I owned one Kaylor bridge a long, long, long, long, long time ago. Like, I'm sure I was still in my teens when I owned it, and I've worked on one or two. But again, remember, they disappeared for many years and then they came back. And so I. When I did a lot of my work, I would. They were absent. So I thought that would be cool to do. I thought it was a cool guitar and a cool bridge. And I think in a deep dive format, that bridge needs to be deep dived. Does it make sense? I think it would be good. I. I told you guys before, part of my thought process, process with deep dive videos is not each individual is good or each individual video is a good or bad video. It's just a compare contrast to the history of them. In other words, the more videos I make, the more somebody can look at one thing I did and look at another thing and maybe have a, you know, a reference. All right, Dale says, hey, reverb accepted a guitar back for a refund when the seller refused to take responsibility. What do they do with it? I haven't seen it for sale. They do sell them. They refurb sometimes they sell them. I'm not sure. I mean, I don't think they donate them. That's not the impression. If you guys remember, I had a guitar, I sold a prsse. And then the guy said that it was not as described. Long story short, he sent it back and obviously he did some stuff to it. And then Reverb's decision in this was. And I think I told you guys this before, actually, I know I did reverb because that's why I tell you guys, I learned a little secret Reverb. And it's not a secret, just something you need to know if you don't know it, which is whenever you have communication, whether you're a buyer, seller, all communication 100% needs to be in the reverb messages back and forth, do not accept any emails. That's. That buyer even emailed me and tried to talk to me sideways. And I'm really glad I did not take that email and start talking to him that way, because what happened with me and that buyer was. I didn't even really throw a complaint. I just notified Reverb that there was a buyer. And this is what I feel. He, you know, this is what I thought was disingenuous about him. More of like a, hey, you know, as a heads up, you know, I want them to know, hey, you have a buyer. You know, just like if you have a seller, you have a seller. A buyer that I think is not very forthcoming or whatever you want to call it. And they reviewed the messages back and forth from him. And they. They came back to me and said, we'll take care of everything. I'm like, oh, cool. So they took the guitar. So a lot of people were like, hey, they wanted to buy that guitar. So kind of like in your same situation, what do they do with guitar? I don't know. I don't know what they ever did with the guitar. I don't know if they sold it. I don't know if they. They. Because keep in mind, they could be selling them to their employees, if you're an employee there, right. I mean, in that particular case, the guitar, the modifications he did were mods. But, I mean, everything could be fixed relatively easy. My plan was to fix the guitar and then sell it, you know, fix. You know, put everything back to standard and fix our. Sell it. So they could do the same thing easy enough or just sell it to somebody for a huge discount. So I think the way you're looking at it is like they're trying to recoup costs on, you know, like, so when they. So I've had Reverb do this where they've stepped up and taken care of us, whether you're a buyer or seller. And it has to do with the insurance. That's what I've kind of figured out is that it's all about. It's their insurance thing because you're paying for insurance, right? So I've told you guys this before. You have to pay attention. There's. There's the shipping insurance, but then they're giving you a buyer's protection insurance to click on, and it defaults to it in most cases, especially after a certain amount. So you have to, like, unclick it, so to speak. And so I actually recommend you don't unclick It. I mean, for whatever, you know, it's for me, the peace of mind in the past. But more importantly, I think that's why they're so easy to just take care of you, because it's not like they're going to go, okay, we're going to refund you your thousand dollars and then we'll try to get 600 back for this guitar and move our way. I think they're looking at, like, almost like an insurance company. Like, you know, we took in. I'm going to throw a number. We took in $500,000 in money in revenue for insurance, and we've paid out, you know, 400,000, you know, and our, you know, 400, you know, what I say doesn't matter. You understand what I'm saying? Let's say they took in a million dollars in insurance and they paid out 900,000. They've made a hundred thousand dollars profit. And so, like I said, I don't think. And then the selling the stuff is just. It's not, you know, it's not consequential to them. It's not a big deal. That's the takeaway I get. But I don't know. I would love to go to Chicago and sit with Reverb and go through all their stuff. Same deal as everybody else, like Sweetwater and Tolman and Guitar center and Cortech and everybody else. Just let me film and see and I won't release anything you don't want me to release, but at least I'd be informed in stuff like this. At this point, I feel pretty confident. If you ask me anything about Sweetwater Guitar center or Toman or Cortech or many other brands, I can really give you a really insightful answer without disclosing too much secret stuff to you guys where Reverb is just something I'm not familiar with. So we'll see. Maybe one day they'll. They'll let me do that. Okay, let's. Okay, let's do another. Another. We need another topic. I don't know that I don't understand the question. It says, does Marshall's legacy hold back when making new products? Like, does it hold its. Marshall is and will always be an iconic brand. It is. There are very few iconic brands in the music industry. Guitar, you know, industry. You think there's a lot. There's not. There's a few. It's Gibson, it's Fender, it's Marshall, it's Vox, it's SEYMOUR Duncan, it's DiMarzio and. And of course, I can keep going. But here's the important part. When I say, you know, iconic brands, or when I say these brands, you know, legacy brands, I guess that's the best way to put it. Doesn't matter where they are now, okay? It doesn't matter if Marshall becomes just Bluetooth speakers and electric toothbrushes, okay? The reality is hit songs, hit albums, and amazing concerts that are some of the most, you know, some of the most iconic things you've ever seen in your life. Marshall was there. They were part of history, you know, and it's not even just the brand. It's certain products, of course, but, you know, Hendrix on stage with a Marshall, Zeppelin on stage with a Marshall, AC DC on stage with a Marshall, you know, you understand, these things just aren't going to ever go away. They're. They're literally part of our society. And, yeah, those things can fade, then maybe those brands will fade. But if those things don't fade, those brands don't fade, you know? You know, it's. It's. It's. There's. There's a great brand, okay? And I. There's a lot, as you guys know, I love a lot of brands. I love Amplified Nation, obviously. I love Friedman, obviously. And I think those two, Two. Two brands. Just picking those two right now, if you ask me, personally, I do. I find them more relevant to me in my world. And then the current Marshall in the Fender lineups, I. I do. I do. I prefer them. I like them. I think they're an improvement of. But they don't have that moment, you know? And will they ever have it? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, do I see Friedman's on stage? I do. You know, I see the Foo Fighters. They got Friedman's. The guitar player that plays with Dave Grohl playing Friedman's. A lot of bands I like Friedman's are on the stage. Hey, Phil X. Friedman on the stage, you know, but is that the same level of that iconic moment? Is it the Hendrix on At Woodstock? Is it that. I don't know. And actually, I do know, for me, it's not. And. And also. And also, there's another thing that really hits for me is I use. For an example, I'll use the. The Def Leppard Hysteria album. If you're into metal, great. If you're not, let me just explain it to you. That album is considered by a lot of people as like, this perfectly recorded album, right? They used in a gazillion tracks. They. They, you know, they, they made essentially a very perfect sounding app album. And I use that as I think it was before them. Okay. But I'm using them as the timestamp. Okay. So you take that album and you go from that album to now who knows what's on an album. What I mean by that is you go in a studio, once they had infinity tracks, once they could, not even digital. Once they could do, you know, chain up eight track recorders in rows, once they could have 20 tracks, just 20, then it becomes impossible to go, what is that iconic sound I'm hearing? You know, you know when you, when you hear an album from the 60s or the 50s, 70s, you hear an album, you know, you hear an album that had a four track or an eight track system that recorded it, not only is the band probably playing together live in the room, but more importantly, they're probably playing through their Marshall or their Fender or their, you know, they're playing their Vox and they're playing their Rickenbacker or they're playing their Gretsch or they're playing their Gibson and we kind of know what they played. Now when an album comes out from artists I love, I like, there's all kinds of artists I love and you know, in the last couple years their album comes out, I go, wow, sounds amazing. But I know what it is. It's digitalness. It's infinity quad tracking and plugging in the tone from a bogner from this part of the song. And then the solo kicks in and it's this other amp and then you go, well, what is that sound? It, well, it's obviously the artist and it's always been the artist. But I'm just saying. That's what I'm saying. It's different. You know, it's really tough to, to say that they'll ever be like these kind of brands. So I think if that's what you're getting at with this question with Marshall, that's what I take from your, your, your comment. You know, the legacy of Marshall will sustain as long as the music that used Marshall that's noteworthy that use Marshall sustains. I think they're one in the, the same. Even if Marshall goes away, won't matter. Old Marshalls will just be collected and so people will want them. And, and yeah, that's just my two cents. Why do I keep saying two cents today? I don't know why. It's just a thing to say. All right, okay, hold on a second. I have no idea. Okay. Some of these questions. Okay. Oh, that's the refund from thing Sean wants to know. Hey Phil, what's your thoughts on the Fender 62 Super Reissue? I have the 65 Deluxe Reissue. Looking for a good complimentary amp to go with it. I haven't tried that. What's the 62 reissue? Let's take a look. Fender 62 reissue. All right, let's take a look at what we're looking at. Oh, I see right here. So I'm assuming this is it right here. Fender 62 super amp, 40 watt, two 10 inch speaker. So I assume for 2,500 bucks. I see. I think it's hand wired. It's probably not. $2,500 is probably just a mass produced amp, is it? Let's see, where is it? Come on, tell me where it's made. Because if it's hand wired, it's going to be in the US if it's not hand wired, it'll be made in Mexico. I don't see manufactured in. Do you guys see it? Am I. So maybe it is us and they're just not putting that. I don't know. Let's look at the description period application during which Leo Fenders color operation began. Exchange coats of brown blonde. Okay, you know, it's funny. This is exactly what I'm talking about. By the way, notice that the first thing they want to tell you about the amp is the history of the amp. This is what I was talking about about history. If you went. If I was to. For, for argument's sake. If I was to go to a Friedman amp right now and we look at a twin sister, it's not gonna be like in 1989 Dave Freeman thought why wouldn't it be cool if there was an amp that sounded a little better than a Marshall? And then he met up with his friend Dave and then they. Right. Like there's no history there. It's just. In fact, let's test the theory. Hold on, let's. Let's go back. Let's look at this. Okay, so the first thing they want to tell us about the history 60s marked a transitional period of vendor application during which Leo Fender's tweet colored creations began to exchange their coats for brown, blonde and black esthetics. Okay, so it's got a rich, warm sound. Debuted. Debuted in the 50s tribute sonic elements 40 watt design. I mean it's not saying hand wire point to point. Not that it matters. I'm just curious. I just, you know, I'm trying to, trying to have reference of amps anymore. Now it's tough to me. 2500 bucks, I think. Oh, hand wired. But I guess not because I guess the 64 reissue twin is like $3,000 or 3,500. So I don't know. Looks cool. I haven't tried it. Let's look at the Friedman. I just curious. Let's see what, how Friedman has to sell an amp. We'll type in Friedman. Since I said the twin sister. We'll grab the twin sister if we can. Let's do some sorting, if you don't mind. Guitar amp heads. There's a little one. Here's the full one. Let's go. The first thing they say. The first thing they say is ranging from smooth cleans to see now it's about its sound, right? Ranging from smooth cleans to Friedman's famous high gain tones, the Freedman Twin Sister 40 watt tube amplifier delivers world class performance based on legendary JTM 45. It sounds, see, it's like funny like that's what I was saying about the difference between a brand that's intertwined into the history of, you know, in, of, of the thing we love, the music we love versus just the new cut. The new companies who are like, hey, I made something really good. Check it out. It's just, this is, this is why we make this, like I said, history. It's tough, it's. And that's why I think those brands, they're gonna ride that forever. And I don't blame them at all. But back, back to your question. What are my thoughts on it? I haven't tried it. You know, I, I still like my 65 deluxe reissue. I, I, you know, I, I mean, it's a little hard for me to, to praise them now when they're expensive. When I bought mine in2014 or maybe 2013 used, I paid $350 with a British greenback celestian in it. So, and, and actually so, you know, mine's modified. I didn't know that. I didn't know for years. We took it out to change tubes or do something. I forgot what we had to do and I pulled it out and I realized then somebody had went in and replaced all the components with higher grade components. So it had been modded. So 350 bucks. So, you know, it's hard for me to say, you know, whatever. Today the amp you're listening to was a car. Mercury. Not the new Mercury, the old one, the one they don't make anymore. So it was an 8 watt amp. So you're listening. Today was an 8 watt car. That's with two Rs because it's the evil one. Anyways, Carr car, Mercury amp, which is. I had it in 8 watt mode. It can go 2 watts, half watt or I think a quarter of a watt or 1/10 of a watt, something like that. I don't know. Some. Some switch. And then I didn't have the boost on it. And it has a. I think an eminence speaker in it. It's also. It's stock, so that's what you heard. And then my Sennheiser mic. So that was the clean sound you were getting. All right. And then happy good thing. Oh, I love that sign on. That's awesome. We need more happy good things. It says Mr. Dave Freeman wanted to make amps like a modded Marshall with dumbass names he invented in junior high school. So he. So he stayed on his own. On his own company. Yeah. That. He, he, he 100% achieved both those things. Dumbass names and great modified marshals. I like my small box, as you guys know. I. I love this magnetone. This is legit. The magnetone is. Is great, but the small box is. To me, it's just a great modded. It does everything. I've owned so many plexis in hopes to have what I really wanted, which is something that doesn't make sense, which is a plexi that doesn't rip my head off and blow my teeth out. And. And the small box does that for me. I can get. I can get it to sound great without having to run it through tons of attenuation. And. And I know you guys, like, you can attenuate it, but there's something about that that's just not always fun. Okay, let's do. What are we going to do? Button up here. I think we're going to button up the show. I kind of thought. Let me look at my notes. I have sometimes notes for the. And just to make sure I don't forget anything. Okay. Nope. Huh. That's a good question. Hey, Phil, how come acoustic guitars don't have jumbo frets? Think about refrating one of mine to jumbo frets. Do you see any issues? You know, I know I've come across acoustics with jumbo frats before. You're right in the idea they're not common and you don't come across them. I don't know why particularly. You know, probably because you're using thicker gauge strings. I don't know. I've never really thought about it. What? Why? I mean, most Acoustics, I would say, not only not use jumbos, but they tend to use smaller fret wire. So there's probably a ton of reasons for that. Maybe because you kind of do push down really hard on your fingers, and you don't want to push the note sharp, and then again, mess with the intonation. Like we talked about the beginning of the show. I don't. I don't know. Is there any issues refreading with jumbo frets in the idea that I told you about? You know, you could throw the intonation out. I. I can tell you I have never personally refread an acoustic with jumbo frets, but I have taken a acoustic from vintage fret wire, you know, small fret wire, to medium jumbo frets. And I had to cut a new bridge saddle because the intonation was jacked, because the. The frets were slightly wider and they were different, and the crowning was different. And it threw some of the chords off. You could just hear it. There was a dissonant tone in them, and the intonation was slightly off. And so I just. Just let you know that was, you know, a custom. And I believe, if I'm correct off my memory, the reason we did that guitar was because that particular player was wearing through frets too fast through his gigs. He was doing it every year and wearing out frets. And so the idea was if we gave him taller frets, we could then crown and level them, you know, three times, four times. So he basically giving him a guitar for four years, and this was his guitar, you know, so he was like. It was personal, and he was really happy with it, and he loved it, and. And, you know, he needed it to come with him to all his gigs, because it's his. It was his buddy, you know, the thing that you love, you know, when somebody's like. You know, sometimes the luckiest guitar players in my mind are the. What's the. What do you call the little blanket? When a kid has a little blanket, they call it a woobi or something, right? You know, like some kind of cute name. Like this kid can't go anywhere without their blanket, right? And that's like from a Peanuts cartoon or something, right? But anyways, to me, when you see a guitar player who's like, I don't go anywhere without this one guitar, I just always go, man, that's really great. I tend to have a guitar that I lean towards a lot, and I'll use that a lot. But I've never had a point where I was like, Oh, I can't. Oh, I can't, can't, can't play unless I have my guitar. But I've known people who've done that and who act like that, and I'm always a little jealous of them because I'm like, wow, to be that connected to the instrument, to the one particular instrument. So, yeah, I said, yeah, because two people say two things that I read them back to back. And so somebody said linus is the name of the kid in the Peanuts that had the blanket. As I read that. And then I saw the other one was Friedman's. Basically like a cover band that's really good and. And does better covers than the original. I don't know why I read those two things. I went, yeah. So I just thought I'd explain why I did that. Okay. All right, let's button up this show. Let's do it. We can do this. Let's get out of this one. Let's find one last topic. This isn't the topic, it's just funny. Title chapter A says, are you sponsored by vans? Man, wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice? That's, like, real money. I would bet. I bet you they wouldn't bet you. They pay you really good. No. Where vans come from, because you asked, so you're getting. It is simple. I heard this joke once. I think it's absolutely true. Absolutely. The joke is that every father dresses whatever he was dressed like the day his first child was born. That's his outfit for the rest of his life. I heard that. It's a good joke. It's a comedian. I absolutely agree with it. I laughed so hard because, like. Yep, that would explain it, right? Like, there's a little bit of difference in that, but not much. Right. To a joke. Here's what I will tell you. I think if you're. If you're my father's generation of men, to me, somebody who lives on the Arizona, so it's west coast adjacent, south adjacent, right? Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada kind of thing. They all dress like cowboys, whether they were one or not. Like, it's a. It was a thing forever here. Like, every dad was like, not every, but you understand. Like, that was the uniform of dads. Cowboy hat, belt buckle, boots. Now, this generation, this. My particular generation, the outfit. We look like we all just came from Little League practice. Like, we're just playing stickball. Like, I. My joke is I. I look like I was just playing stickball 10 minutes ago. Ball cap, jeans and sneakers or shorts and sneakers and a shirt, right? So, I mean, that's just the thing. But the outfit is the vans thing is, has nothing to do with what everybody thinks. It has to do with the fact that for years. Why? I don't know. No particular really heavy thought put in this. I decided that my outfit of outfit of choice is Fender. So I wore nothing but Fender shirts. I wore nothing but Fender hats. Maybe there was a time in my life where not thinking about it really hard, I was hoping that I would be found. I told you guys, you know, before I found you people, my life was very lonely. I was very lonely in corporate America. I'm not into sports. I'm not into politics. You know, I'm not into things that most people find. I really don't care about the weather because I live in a state where it's either hot or not hot. That's really an easy discussion. And if somebody says it's hot today, you almost think that they have a mental problem because you're like, well, it's hot almost every day. Why are you bringing that up? My point is, is that I thought, oh, if I. Maybe I thought subconsciously if I wore a Fender, somebody would walk up to me and go, do you play guitar? And I'm like, I sure do. And I can't wait to take. Tell you about all of them, right? And then we would become friends and we would talk about guitars. Maybe that's what it was. But what happened was I used to wear Fender all the time. All the time. Fender. I have Fender luggage. I told you guys for a longest time, I had. I got rid of it over the years here on YouTube. But I used to have a huge collection of Fender memorabilia. I gave Zim's guitars recently. I gave him a sign I got from Fender. I just decided to give to him for being like. I think we were like one of the top sellers of Fender acoustics. And they gave us this cool sign and I gave it to him. So I gave him some signs. And so anyways, I had those Fender memorabilia. And so I used to wear Fender stuff all the time. And when I started the YouTube channel, the first thing that started happening was people were like, defender, sponsor this video. Or the weirdest thing I ever got was like, why are you holding a Gibson if you're wearing a Fender shirt? So that was kind of weird. So I go, well, I also like vans, right? And so I bought van stuff. I mean, you know, the. It's not so much connected to skateboards as much as it is just Kind of probably like Fender, maybe the California dream. To me, the 60s California, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s California vibe. As an Arizonan, you know, like, like that's, you know, Arizona is like poor man's California, you know, back in the day. I don't know what it is now, but that's what it was. So anyway, so I just. That easy. So I bought Vans. I typically only wear black anyways, so it's easy, you know, so that's, that's the main thing. The shoes, though. The shoes. The shoes are definitely not what you guys think. So let me put it in a way that makes sense. I'm not gonna tell you, obviously, for a lot of reasons. My daughter works for a shoe company. Let's just start that. And so she buys lots of shoes. And then I bought lots of shoes, so I have lots of shoes. So why you guys always see me with cool checkered vans? I don't know if they're cool. I think they're cool. She told me they're not cool. My daughter. Not as cool as they used to be. Anyways, I just like them. So I use the pink ones. Anytime I'm going to show a pedal, I use pink shoes. Pink vans, because I think they're funny. I don't know why. Just because I have them. Actually. Actually. See, I'm laughing because how stupid this conversation is. And I don't know why I'm having it. Here's why. Here's what it is. Why. Why do I have pink Vans? Well, I have pink fans. As you can see, they're very clean. I mean, there's a little dirt, but you can see they're pretty clean. Right? The reason I have pink vans is because my office is upstairs. We don't wear shoes upstairs. All the shoes are downstairs. And every time I had to do a pedal video or show something on the floor, I had to go downstairs and get a pair of shoes. So I decided to have a. I bought a set of these because I thought these were cool. And they matched these pink cables. And so that's why I have brand new looking pink vans up here. And that's why you sometimes see in the background they're here because they're. They're just for this office, just for these videos. I did it for you guys so you didn't have to look at some janky shoes. That's okay. You know what? Now let's get out. But no, Vans does not sponsor. We have. And especially the podcast. This podcast is only sponsored by patrons and channel members, which Is great. And let's do one last thing. Okay, what do we got? Hold on. Maybe. And I say. I always say that last subject, and then I can't find one. So maybe we'll just call it. Let's. Let's try this. Nope, I think we're gonna call it. I don't see any new topics or subjects. And if I missed one, I. You know, I miss a lot of stuff. But I want to thank all you guys for. For hanging out and. And I hope you guys have a great weekend. I hope you guys play some guitar. I know the world's a little crazy out there. I think that's why we need time away. I don't want to get preachy ever, but I'm gonna, you know, just say this as a hopes. You know, I've said this a couple episodes ago, that every week, every month since I've been doing the live show, you know, I feel like every time I turn around, there's something that I'm like, I don't know if I want to do the live show because, you know, there's always something, right? Is it a tax? Is it a. Is it a war? Is it a bomb? Is it a this? Is it a virus? And I just want to let you guys know, I like to be here with you guys. Not just because it's my show and I'm here with you guys. I want to be here with you guys because I think the best thing we can do sometimes is take a few hours out of your life and enjoy yourself. And if that means listening and talking about guitars for two hours or playing the guitar for two hours, I highly recommend you guys do that. That's what I do. And I just want to say that I hope you guys take this weekend and try to spend some time with people you love and play some music, and I think you'll be better for it. That's what I'm planning to do with my free time. So on that note, thank you guys for your time. And to the next time, know your gear. If you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget, you can subscribe for free and help this channel, or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patreon for live clinics where you can ask questions every single week.