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Know Your Gear Podcast
They Said My Gibson Is Fake / Why Fender Standards Could Have Been Great!
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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast, episode 401 and season. What is that? Season? Season. We'll call it Season four. We'll call it Season four. I don't know why. Let's make that up. As always, thank you guys for joining me on my Friday show and a couple of quick announcements that are easy if you're here live. There's no commercials during the live broadcast. There's no commercials on the patron version of this later that reposts and there's no technically very few to no commercials on the audio versions. So there you go. Just let you know you get commercials on the YouTube version. But thank you guys if you sit through those commercials because it, it, it pays us, which is nice. This channel is, or this show is specifically sponsored by patrons and channel members. And I want to thank them for that. And also I want to thank the moderators and if you see them with the blue, their names in blue and they have a blue wrench and it just means they're here to help facilitate questions, put links, share information, help. All the things that make hopefully your Friday afternoon better. We have a lot to go over. It's a cool, cool week. I have maybe a guitar of the week. I haven't decided. We'll see if I. We do it. We'll see how the. We'll see how the show goes. What else? I feel like there should be some other announcement, something else that was supposed to happen. I think that's it. Oh, yeah, it's Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. The Just to give you an idea, I have no idea if Valentine's Day is like, I have no idea. Is that a world holiday? I don't know what that is. Is it. What is it? I don't even know. I've never put a thought into it. Do people in Canada support our support. Support Valentine's Day, first of all, to support it because it's important that you support it. But do they, I mean, do they partake? Is it like, does, you know, does Europe, does Asia like, is it. Or is it just like the US Thing? I have no idea. I just know it's today. It's today. Today is so Happy Valentine's time. Valentine's Day, everyone with an in a hard end, you got to say Valentine's Day. Not Times. Because it doesn't. That doesn't make sense. All right, so Tony says it's a commercial holiday. That makes sense. That kind of makes sense. So, you know, unfrequently says celebrate. Question mark. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of like, I don't know. So let's get into things. What are we getting into? We got some stuff. Let me go to an earlier, wiser question, a topic, if you will. This one was from. Who is this from? This was from, I believe, Edgar, who says. I think this is. Edgar says. Phil, why do some amps have the controls in front and some on the top? I wouldn't buy. Now, one way or the other will be the standard. Also, would you review the June Harmony? And it just says June Harmony. That buy new, I think. Okay, June Harmony. So I think it means a harmony guitar amp. Controls are in the front and on the top of the amps based on a ton of different variables. So first of all, some manufacturers will take, for instance, like this Amplified Nation by amp behind me. This head, if you buy the combo, is the same chassis. So it'll load into a combo box. And that's just how it goes. But some companies will flip the electronics on the head and put it at the lower piece and then have it one direction for the combo. So like I said, sometimes the knobs are there because of the cost savings to make two functions, head and cabinet. Or sorry, head and combo. Sometimes it's just because they originally designed the amps mostly with the controls on the top. Top. For the most part. I shouldn't say that because I think there were some front controls as well. Part of the reason, I was told a long time ago by a person who was pretty smart at Fender in the amps areas, said that a lot of the original Fender amps had controls on the top. Because at the time the amps went in front of the players. They were essentially the pa. So they would put the amps in front of you. And that's why. Interesting enough. Let's share a function. A little fun. Weird thing to know. This is a weird thing to know. Let's go. We'll trust Sweetwater has good pictures. We'll see how this goes. And Fender amp. Let's try Fender amp. I want to show you something that a lot of you probably don't notice. That's really strange. I remember this from years and years ago. Let's pull up a Hot Rod Deluxe. Here's one. Blues Deluxe I want the Hot Rod Deluxe and the Blues Deluxe. Okay? So funny enough, if you don't mind, I just want to jump around Sweet Water again. And now I'm gonna do Hot Rod Deluxe. Hot Rod Deluxe. And I'll verbally explain for those that are listening later. Okay, so if you guys are familiar. That's funny, they reversed. It's probably did on purpose. Okay, and let's do this one. Okay, let me share this with you. So if you're familiar with the Hot Rod Deluxe, this is how it works. If you're looking at it, this is the back of the amp. So if you were standing in front of it, it doesn't. I'm sorry, if you're standing behind it. So keep in mind, what I'm trying to point out here is the controls are on the back of the amp. Okay, so they're on the top, but towards the back. This is the back of the speaker where the controls are. So obviously if you were. This amp is in front of you, this would be upside down. That doesn't make sense. If you look at vintage amps, and ironically, I don't know why, but the Blues Deluxe version, keep in mind what I'm trying to point it is the other way around. The controls are on the back of the. So like, like I said, this is the back of the amp where the controls are. So if you were standing behind it, you're reading them correctly. See how you read them the right way? If you bought a Hot Rod Deluxe and you're standing behind it, which I don't know why you'd be standing behind it, the words would be upside down to you. That's why they flip them. So originally, not only were controls on the top of the amps, they were inverted. The writing was inverted so that it made sense to read one of two ways. Now, keep in mind there's two reasons. One, if you're standing behind the amp, you're looking at it correct way. But also sometimes if you bend over and look down, it's reversed. And sometimes they did that like on the back of the jacks and stuff. And then later, when the amp started going behind us, so to speak, they started putting the controls in the front. That's not a fact for every scenario. That is probably in some of the design theories of amps. So some people are going to say that's not true. But it is true. It's just not trolley a blanket statement across all amps. So you said you hear two fills. Hear two fills. Okay, yeah, you guys will hear Echo when I change screens. It's just how it works, guys. So, um. But you shouldn't get double sound. Well, hold on a second. Let me check something. A blanket statement across all amps. That's why you got double sound when I was looking at the other screen. That's because there's another input I fix. I fixed it. So thank you guys for telling me. So, so anyway, so back to the. The reasoning. That's kind of just a couple of the reasons why they put the controls where they do. Like I said, to share cabinetry concepts to depending on the usage of the amplifier, whether it's in the front, whether in front of you, whether it's behind you. That's just a ton of reasons. Right? So that's some reasons, but a lot of it probably is just like said, just design, just how it looks. People, you know, I always. I always kind of find it funny. Like if you're an old school rocker, you know, like a metal guy or a hard rock guy. Amps like what I'm finding behind me, the amphonics and. Sorry, not the amphonics. Amplify Nation, where the controls at the top of the head looks wrong to you. You think the control should be at the bottom of the amp. So if you look at a lot of the metal amps, like, you know, in Marshall amps, the controls are at the bottom. But then if you look at the, you know, Fender style heads and those kind of heads, the controls are at the top. So again, you know, just design stuff. Okay, let's grab this one. This one came from Clyde. He says, hey, Phil, what's the deal with Ernie Ball pickups? They sound great. Never see them for sale or used. I don't know. I mean, as far as I know, Ernie Ball is essentially making pickups and putting them in their own guitars. I would imagine they're selling them aftermarket or they will eventually sell them aftermarket. I don't know specifically anything about them. I know that. I know this, that when I did one of the Music man guitars that I did in a deep dive, if you watch that deep dive, I really like the pickups. Those pickups are definitely clones of DiMargio's. Which makes sense because for a long time DiMargio was really a heavy pickup used by Ernie Ball. What I notice now is that Ernie Ball pretty much only uses DiMaggio for the artist's signature guitars. Probably because the artists request it. You know, so like Petrucci and Lukather and stuff like that and. And Steve Morse. But but yeah, the ones I've heard have been pretty good. The toasted Abaci guitar. I thought the pickups were pretty good. I mean at this point it's not hard to make a good pickup. You're gonna understand like all the designs are out there. It's just. What are they cloning at this point? I know they talked about this. Weren't they the ones that were like the cryogenic frozen pickups or something? I, you know what it is? I, I try guys. I really do. I really try. I'm, I'm a nerd, so I gotta look and learn. But a lot of the stuff that these manufacturers come up with with pickups, it feels like it's mostly the guitar manufacturers come up with this kind of marketing stuff. You don't see a whole lot of the actual pickup manufacturers doing it. Sometimes I'm like, it's so heat treated magnets with cold treated wire and you know, like, huh. And just whatever they can put a spin that makes it special, you know. Look, I'm not, I'm not against marketing, obviously. I think it's, it's, you know, it's very important, obviously. I think the companies that don't do engage in good marketing obviously go out of business a lot of times, even if they have a great product. But you know, sometimes the silliness gets silly. But I like the Music man pickups and if that helps, that's a pretty good, you know, that's it, really. Thank you. Max. Max. Cryogenically frozen pickups. Hmm. This emoji. Look, there's some science behind all that stuff. I'm sure, you know, we've seen it all. I just, I don't know, you know, it's. It's really tough for me, but I don't care. That's. How about that? It doesn't hurt anybody, whatever they're doing, as long as it sounds good. It's just funny that they all have to have. I still think if I was going to give it an award to the silliest though, I think the silly still goes to Paul Reed Smith for the naming structure and stuff of pickups. But you know, again, they make good stuff. And at the end of the day, if that's them just trying to put a spin on their stuff, you know, they're just trying to survive. You know, there's a lot of us, but there's a lot more guitars. So it's a harder to get us to get them, you know, get us to buy those guitars. I'm actually, let's Check this out. It's kind of a bad marketing idea. See, this is what's called bad marketing. Let me show it to you. I have an OG know your gear cup. This cup is not for sale. Not this one. See, this is the company. See, Hey, I have my own merch and you can't even buy it. Blizzard says, Phil, is the market still bad for selling? Okay, so let me tell you some interesting things that are going on and we're gonna bring up something. So this is a good time. Blizzard, thank you for the segue into a great conversation and also to also talk about this. I want to make sure everybody's aware of this. I think it's pretty cool. This is a discussion that I was. I got to hear about, you know, just, you know, as from friendship circles. Right? So let me share something with you. So I think this is pretty cool. So let me share this with you. I'd like to point out that I'm not getting anything for this. This isn't like a affiliate link or a sponsor or anything like that. Just is just. I want to share this because I think it's cool. Okay, so if you haven't heard, it's the 10th anniversary of Kiesel. Before I go into this, I will explain why that makes sense in a second. So anyway, so if you haven't seen Kiesel tomorrow, Saturday. So if you're watching this show on Sunday or Monday, I don't know, you're gonna have to go to their website. But if you go to their website, I think tomorrow at like 10am Pacific Standard Time. Again, click there for more info. I'm not really here to go into details of it. I just want to share this because this is more to share with you guys than for Kiesel, because you'll hear why in a second. This is definitely for you guys. They're doing a Aries run, which is their most popular guitar, and they are doing it starting at 1399. Now, I know what you're thinking, oh, no, 1399. Then you add all the features, you can literally get a complete guitar for 1399. That's a USA made custom instrument. Now this will have nickel, silver frets, and I think for $100 more, I mean, I could go into it and learn. But you, you guys should go check it out yourself. Satin finish guitars, ash bodies. I think they're doing ash bodies. This isn't step down gear. So in other words, they're not doing like step down quality. There's isn't like a. A Different thing, what this is. So let me explain it to you. So Carven Guitars, which is the original family, when the family was together, that company was started in 1946, the same year as Fender. So that company is celebrating 75th. Is that 75th? I don't know. What year is it? 70. Whatever. You guys get the. I should know the answer. But. So, but Keisel Guitars started off, branched off and to essentially. And I'm just going to say this, this is just my opinion, to save the guitar company. So. So this I'd like to point out, this is important for me to say to you guys. This isn't something that I, you know, because, you know, I'm friends with those guys. This isn't something that they've told me. I just know that this was Kiesel was. In 2015, Kiesel essentially rebranded the guitar side to Kiesel. And I don't care what anybody says, it was to save the guitar line. The guitar line was going to be shut down, the Carven line. And so they rebranded and they came back as Kiesel. So it's been around for 10 years to celebrate. 10 years. That's why it's a big deal tomorrow that it's like only for a limited run or limited time, you can get a guitar, one of their guitars at the lowest price I think they've ever done it ever in their history. To say thank you to you guys. But more importantly, because they're not really making any money. And this is just from. I watch their live thing, but I understood what he was saying. They're gonna make these kind of fast just to get through it. So they're gonna do this run. So when you put in your order, I think you get them in like two months, like eight weeks. So just letting you guys know, I want you to know the information out there. Why? Well, because it's. That's 13.99. That means you can buy a USA made essentially custom style guitar because it does have some customizable features at that price point. For the price of what we've been reviewing on this channel. Made in Indonesia, China, you know, Japan, you know, you name it. So it's a pretty good deal. So just check it out. That's for whatever it's worth. And let's see. Hold on. I'm just looking to see if there's any thoughts or comments. I don't understand that comment. I'm like looking for comments and one of them, I'm like, I read. I'm like, I don't understand what that means. But what's funny is, is I thought it was a cool idea. So that's basically what it is. I thought it was a cool idea. You know, I think it's funny. What I always see. This is an interesting idea. I always pay attention to this stuff. I told you guys this years ago when Behringer decided to ditch all of its dealer network and only go essentially with direct. So Behringer sells direct. They sell on AliExpress, they sell on Amazon, they sell Sweetwater, and they sell Thoman. I believe that's the only five places you can get Behringer now. Okay. And I said this, this was like five years ago. I said, the industry is going to pay attention to this in a year or two. If this idea flops, then that will mean don't do it. But if it doesn't flop, you're going to see more companies taking advantage of that. And. And I like that because I think ideas, bad or good ideas are infectious. They just get out there. And what I. I never understood, and it's maybe tell me if you guys don't agree. I've never understood when a company's anniversary, it's like, it's our anniversary. And now we're doing a limited run of a guitar for more money. It's a more expensive guitar and has anniversary badging on it. And I'm like, well, how is that for the customer, right? I mean, it's cool to get the badging, but I mean, why is it, like, more expensive? And I understand sometimes they kind of token up a couple options on it, but I thought this was a cool idea. The idea essentially is to say, hey, thank you, thank you to all the customers who have come to them before. Here's a really good discount that we've never offered before. And also to anyone who's ever been thinking about trying our brand, we just opened up a price point to you. It'll be really interesting. I also happened to, if you guys watched him talk about it, you can watch in detail. I'll put a link to the Kiesel guys talking about last Wednesday on their live stream. They're going to limit this. And it's because, again, they're not making much or any money at all at that price point. So they don't really want to be inundated for like the next eight months. Right? And that's a big deal. Like, if they sold out for eight months, I mean, they would be making no money for eight months. So that's why they want to get through them and get this. This out there. So I thought it was a good way to celebrate. What I think is funny about this is what I like about this is last year in 2024, they did the Kiesel event where they had people come and enjoy. You know, they had bands come. They had me do a clinic. They paid me to do that clinic. So, you know, they paid. I didn't ask for any money. They. I just want to tell you just because, again, transparency is important to me. Not only did I not ask for anything, they paid me anyways. They paid everyone the same. They handed us all our checks at the same time. They walked out in the room and they handed everybody their check, and everybody got paid the same amount regardless. And I thought that was pretty classy, right? Like, okay. They just wanted everybody to know, like, everybody's getting paid, and this was getting paid. So they paid me for coming in and presenting a clinic for you guys, which I thought was really cool, but. But what's great is a fortune. And they did that to kind of give. And they did that to kind of give back to customers. And I obviously, I was pervy. Preview. Preview. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say the word. I was. I had purview. I think that's what I'm trying to say to the fact that, you know, this year, what were they going to do? You know, right? What are we going to do? And if they throw another big party, it's really expensive and only a few people get to go. Few people meaning a couple hundred. And so this is their idea now. Thank you. It's purview. Thank you. So what's cool is I'm curious about this to see how it works out. I want to see. I'm curious to see if it was going to be a success. Why? Because whether you like Kiesel guitars or not, if you're into their style of guitars or not, what if Spinder does this? What if Gibson does this? This would be cool, right? If Gibson all of a sudden said, hey, we want. We want to take our most popular guitar, by the way, not our cheapest guitar, our most popular guitar, which would be like the Gibson standard, and we're going to make a version of it that's, you know, 30, 40% off for our anniversary, that would be a cool thing, because I would expect that the discount will disappear over time. So. Privy. Thank you. Thank you, guys. I was privy to it. See, I knew it was one of those words so words is hard. It's tough, especially whenever I'm dumb enough to try to read your guys stuff and talk at the same time and then my brain just loses track of both things. But anyways, I think it's a cool idea so I wanted to share it with you guys and I hope they do great. I'd like to also point out just because sometimes I get a lot of flack from some people about talking about keys a lot because I like them, that's fine. But also I kind of feel bad telling you guys about it because I'm pretty sure that whatever is going to happen tomorrow is going to happen. They already have enough people without me throwing any people at them. So I hope you guys get there and get something if you want it because I imagine it's going to. Whatever they're going to have is going to sell out fast. Let's see Darren, just because on subject, we'll talk about this. Darren says, hey, I recently bought an Aries and I love it. Never playing a head. I never playing a headless before but would like one which keys would be most likely to work with me. You know what's funny is I have a bunch of keys, headless. I have the Zeus, I have the 10 miller, I have the Delos and I have the, the Os, the Osiris. But I think it's just called the O2 now. Right, the O2, I have the new one. So I have four of their headless guitars and, and I've had the Vader so you know, I had the Vader. And I would say for headless guitars it's all about the size, your size. Like me, I mean not just because I'm big, but I'm 6 foot. So I really like size wise the 10 miller, the Delos and the Zeus the most for size, like holding them. They feel like full size guitars to me. The Leia is too small for me, so I'm just giving you information to think about. Leia is too small for me. The Vader, which is probably my favorite playing one and one of my favorite looking ones, just was a little too small for me. It just didn't work. I was just, I felt hunched over a little too much on that guitar and as much as I loved it, that's what the, you know, the thing was. The O2, which is, is close to me, is close to the Zeus. But in order of comfort for me, I'm going to say that Tim Miller is the most comfortable because it's just the way he did the Body Tim is. I don't know how tall he is, but I said this before, I'm six foot and the whole time I was hanging out with him I was looking at like this at him. So he's taller than me. That if you're tall, that one I would consider that also has a slightly chunkier neck which is nice. And then the delos to me feels like the delos. So if you've played a delos, the delos headless feels almost identical to it in every way. So that's pretty nice. So I think their headless guitars are where they shine. I love a lot of the guitars but the headless guitars, it's. I mean they're legit. They're as high end custom shop as you can get feeling and price. They're more obtainable than some of the other high end USA made headless guitars. So yeah, Rob Baker says the Zeus is my preferred headless all day. Mostly because where the neck lays in is his hands. Yeah, absolutely love it. Yeah. So same thing. But I'm going to tell you for me, I figured it out. That's really where the focus is, the comfort thing. All right. Ellen wants to know, Phil, do you still play your Strandberg Ergs? How do they compare them to the Kiesels? So I have one Strandberg and I have the True Temperament one. And the reason being so you know, I had the green Strandberg, I absolutely loved it. I would have kept it forever and ever and ever and ever. But same with the seven string. But they sold them to pay for the True temperament. The True temperament one was super expensive. It was one of the most hard purchases I've ever made. Not only because it was astronomically expensive, but it was also for what, in my opinion, for what it was, it was extremely expensive. So if you haven't looked at the Strandbergs, which are pricey, this one, the True temperament is like $1,000 more than the regular ones for the true temperaments. And there's a reason why I did that one. I really found the guitar interesting and I kind of love it. And it's just weird and I love playing it. And there's things I get joy out of it, which is really what it comes down to. Right. I gotta get joy out of this. I gotta play, I gotta make music. But it also, it's so different than the Keysles. I kind of felt like, okay, this is how I own a Keisel and a Strandberg. I love the Strandbergs. I'm still really curious about the $999 Strandberg. That's kind of, to me, the most interesting Strandberg, which I've told you guys. I'm like, I just don't know anything about it. And I keep thinking maybe it'll be, you know, maybe it'll be really, you know, like the other ones are really cool for a thousand dollars. But the thing I like about the Strandberg is very, very comfortable. So. But there's, you gotta understand some of this is. And this is just the silliness of a lot of us. And some of us not so much. You know, part of my logic is when I'm buying something and stuff's expensive, especially expensive, I pay attention like, oh, this is made in the usa and this costs the same as something made in Indonesia or China or Japan or whatever. And again, it's an economical thing. I've said this a million times. I'll say one more million if you want. When it comes to where things are made, I prefer things to made not only where I live, but when I say where I live, I mean in my town, in my city, in my state, in my country, right, in my continent, you know, that's where I prefer to put as much money as I can. I have no issues with saying that publicly. I buy guitars from everybody and everywhere around the world. Cause I'm an addict to this stuff. But it's not hard to figure out if you look behind me. I don't even know what is behind me today. Let's see. Oh no. Okay, so we have Made in the usa Made in the usa Made in the usa Made Japan, Made in Germany, main usa Made in Japan, Made in usa. Main usa, USA and usa. So there you go. I tell everybody it's just my opinions. That's what this. Sometimes the show ends up being. Sometimes I think buying made in the USA is a luxury. And if you can afford to do it, you should be very happy. It's a very nice luxury to do. So I don't think. And the reason I say all this is not cause I'm afraid of offending anybody, trust me. Last week's show was negative. 43 subscribers was my net total for the show. So obviously I'm not making friends out here. But. But reason I say that is because I don't want you to think it's attached to a quality logic. I'm not saying these guitars are built better. I don't think that's a thing. That's real true. I think there's guitars that built all around the world for a Fraction of guitars, they're made in usa and they're better. Not only as good, they're better. The Strandbergs that I've played and have, I know some have had been. I've heard complaints, but the ones I have are as good as quality wise as Kiesel. They just are. My Strandberg is as good as Kiesel. But when I'm talking about $3,600 made in Indonesia versus $2,500 made in the USA, you know, there's a part of me, it's like, I really like to put my money in my economy. That's part of my thought process, especially for stuff I don't need. There's a thought there. But again, it's a lot easier to make a decision to. There's an. It's a lot easier to justify when it's a lot less money. When I'm like, oh, well, you know, why pay more for USA min guitar when I can buy a really good Indonesian for half the price? I think that's a great logic. But I also think when once Strandberg made the price, it made the problem a little harder for me. Once they made the prices equalized to a USA manufacturer, I was like, oh, I kind of want to buy a USA manufacturer now. And funny enough, that's another thing is because I'm friends with both those companies. I like them both. I like the people at both, and I love talking to both. So it's funny that to me it's equal. All right, that's my two cents. Probably lost 40 of you, by the way. I've been chuckling all week because I'm like I was. Sometimes when I lose the subscribers in the live shows, it never happens on the videos. By the way, every video I have nets me positive subscribers. But I think I told you guys this before. It's just fun. Sometimes. The podcasts. If I take all 50 podcasts per year collectively, I probably only get about 100 to 200 subscribers net total for all 50 episodes total. Maybe that doesn't sound. Maybe that sounds good. I don't know. To give you a reference, 50 videos every 50 videos nets me about 50,000 subscribers. So the. Apparently what's different is. And I could be wrong, what's different is I find that these. The podcast has lots of opinions in it and the videos have lots of just information in it. And. And I find that for some reason people get really triggered from opinions. But I could be wrong. But I do notice whenever I say something that people just. I don't know. You know what? I hope everybody is happy. That's how about that. All right, let's see. Alan says made in the USA is no longer the best made. Yeah, well, of course. Right? I mean, here's the deal. We're all using the same machines. We're all using Haas CNC machines. We're all using Plex. We're all using. You know, it's really not that equation anymore. You know, for me. You know, it's funny for me, what's tough is. And I'll get off this subject just because we can jump to another subject. What's tough for me is I have friends throughout this industry, throughout the world. And to me, they're all just passionate guitar freaks who love guitar and love building guitars. And so it's funny to me is when we do talk about the hierarchy or the where countries are made topic, it's tough for me to talk about because it's real. And I think we should talk about it because it's something that's really something we really do value and think about. But it's tough because I have friends in almost every country that build guitars. And I know they watch the podcast, and sometimes I've had them reach out and go, I don't understand what you guys are talking about. And we're like. I'm like, oh, it's this weird thing where people are like, this guitar is worth more because it's made in this country than this country, even if they're the same. So it's kind of a weird thing to talk about. But I don't know. I don't know. Let's see. Music gear says, don't feel bad. I lose subs every live stream. Yeah, it's fine. It's kind of a funny thing. It's just funny. So, you know. Okay, okay. Before we drop subjects, I just want to say this because it's kind of a fun fact, because I know sometimes when I say things like what I just said about the subs and stuff, somebody will give advice in the comments. I'm gonna let you know a weird little weird fact about this channel. The retention, in other words, how long people watch is eight times more on the podcast than it is on my videos. And that's not by minutes. That's by percentage. So if you're saying, well, yeah, your video is 20 minutes and your show is two hours, I'm not talking about the average person watches more minutes because the show is longer than the videos. I'm talking about the percentage. In other words, they consume a bigger percentage of the podcast. So the podcast has more people watching and listening to it much longer than my regular videos, percentage wise. In other words, you know, just not even like total minutes, but percentage. Which is important but does not net subscriptions. Subscriptions. In fact, it usually nets loss of subscriptions. So it just means more people like to hate watch the podcast. That's. I think that's what that means. Who the hell knows? Who knows? I don't know. It's guitar stuff. Let's talk about guitar stuff. We're going to talk about. Who are we going to talk about? We're talking about antique rocker says. What's my opinion on the circle guitar that's been in some videos from nam? Is it $11,000 plus a novelty or a new creative tool for making music? Okay, let's share this. So the circle guitar, I saw it on, on Paul David. So I'll go there. YouTube Paul David. Because I know he did it. Is it Paul Davidson? Yeah, with an S. I should know. He's Paul Davids. I'm sorry about that. Let's. Let's do this. I'm gonna click in and then I'm gonna mute this thing and then I'm gonna scroll here and I'm trying to find a picture. There it is. Look at that. Cool. Here we go. This is Paul Davids. If you don't know his channel, you should check him out. He's. He's. It's a really good channel. He even had me one of his videos once. Really cool. And that's a big deal because he's 3.5 million subscribers. Anyway, so this is the guitar in question. So this guitar, apparently this thing spins and as it spins, it makes weird sounds. That's how I'm describing it. Please don't get upset if you thought it was the greatest thing ever. Me? I don't know. I, you know, what's the question? I wouldn't. I don't know. What's the saying? A problem looking for a solution or a solution looking for a problem? You know, I think that's the way to say a solution looking for a problem. It's probably really cool. I don't know what to think of stuff like that. You know, when they, you know, make a weird guitar that's 11,000 bucks that just. It spins and makes this crazy sound. My thought is this, seriously, Seriously, when I saw it, because I watched some of the videos, I watched the Paul David's shorts of it, you know, short videos of it, and I thought it Sounds like a keyboard to me. And anytime guitars sound like keyboards to me or synthesizers, I'm just like, well, why wouldn't I just do that? So that's my thought. But I don't know. It's probably cool. The tough part is this. It's easy to, you know, I didn't touch it. So it's one of those things. $11,000. I have no idea what its value is because I didn't touch it. I don't have a. The. The problem with YouTube that's been a problem is. And I've had this conversation with so many companies that they don't understand is that it's hard. It's hard to give a end user, you guys, a concept of value off of a screen. To you. To us, when you're watching a video, everything looks the same. Everything is the same. You know, it would be like showing you pictures of food versus letting you smell it or taste it, right? It's like, it's just too difficult to get a hundred. So to me, looking at it, I just don't. I don't have any value of it. But also, especially when you hear it's like $11,000 and it does a thing that I never really needed to do as a musician. I'm not like, oh, yeah, I always wanted that sound. It's not my thing. But I don't know, it was an enjoyable video. So at the very least, I thank him for making the guitar and then letting us watch a video and going, you know, and you never know. You never know when the next trend is going to happen. Maybe in a couple years, we're sitting there going, yeah, all the kids, man, they're all playing spinning guitars, like with fidget spinners. I saw the pedals. Some pedal company had fidget spinners attached to pedals, making spinning sounds with it like a. I was like, all kinds of stuff. Just. I don't know. So weird. So it's the harsh reality. I didn't go to the NAMM show obviously this year, and I'm probably never going again. And there's a ton of reasons why. But the main thing about the damn show that I always loved and hated, okay, absolutely loved it and hated it. Was like the. Is checking out the. Not the new product, like the new Fender, the new Ibanez, the new thing, the new Gibson. It was always like this. That. That stuff, the crazy inventions, the crazy ideas. And the hard part about it was half of those ideas were always like, wow, that's really crazy. I never thought that of that or I never thought that was going to be. Be a thing. That's pretty cool. And then half the time you're like, oh, oh man, I'm so sorry. Like, you're like, like you just can't say. You just don't want to say. You're like, I hope you didn't pay to come here to show us this right? You feel so bad. And I've thought over the years, you know, cause I've been to enough NAMM shows, like was there things that I saw and thought that like, oh man, this was a horrible idea and then later, you know, was wrong and it's the next big thing. And so far not a thing, like not a weird thing I've ever seen, you know, was like, oh yeah, this is really cool. It was, you know, and one of the things that sucked about going so much as a YouTuber over as being a store owner is as a YouTuber. I would change my mentality from the show. I would take more footage of odd things because that would get clicks. Then at the store I would just pay attention to things that I thought were really interesting and people would probably buy, you know. So it's funny to me when I would walk around with the concept of like everything here is potential product to sell someone. I would look at all the things and go, this has value. And I would look at that when I was a YouTuber. Well, I am a YouTuber, but I was a YouTuber going to NAMM show, a lot of it was like, that is gonna get a lot of clicks. People are gonna make fun of that. And I felt, you know, like that's one of the things I didn't like about the show. So says Yep, yep. Says Phil just described every first acotar. Yeah, you guys remember I, I did a video on, on years ago was it was a big video or, you know, it did really well for me and it was like NAM trends of that year. And there was a penis shaped headstock. And I always remember I took a picture and that video, that's the only reason it got views is because everybody was like, why did they make a headstock look like a penis? And but the funny part is when I say that is they didn't think it looked like a penis. It was one of those things. Like I took a picture of it and I posted, I think it was the thumbnail. I posted it and it got all these views. And I kind of always felt bad all these years later at the company because the company, they didn't see It. But everybody else was like, is that a picture penis? It was the weirdest thing. So it was strange. It was a strange thing. Nice. Okay, okay, so let's, let's go. You have to go and look at that video if you want to see it. It was. It was crazy. Okay, so Brian's question is, hey, I ordered a warm up neck from my player to telly Telecaster. What are the best case and worst case scenarios when I go to install it? Any extra tools I need? Best case scenario is it pops on and you're done. That's happened to me many times with Warmoth Next you're just lucky and everything lines up in the world and it's good. Worst case scenario, you will have to level and crown some of those frets because you know, when they level and crowned it, they did it when it wasn't on. A body is set to an. You know, it's set to. To a guitar set up with strings and stuff. My experience with them is that most of the time they're going to do a really good job. They're going to get you pretty dialed in, so you should be fine. What tools will you need for that? You're going to need something to level the frets. You can either get a leveling file or you can use sandpaper on a flat beam. You want to use a flat metal beam and just level the frets and then get yourself a crowning tool. I like the Safe file by Music Nomad for something like that. If you've never done it before. I've said this before. Everybody's. I think it's funny. Everybody's critique or complaint of that file is exactly what I said in the video. It's the. The. It's not as fine as the Stu Mac files. The. The. The coarseness of it is not as fine. It. It's not warrantied like a stack file. But you cannot screw it up. What's probably going to happen is Stomach's going to make a version of it or already has a version of it and you can check out that too. But that's why I recommend the save file. It's a great way to crown a fret. So you're just gonna have to do some extra polishing work. But in my experience, that's the harder thing to mess up. So that's a mess. Okay, let's. Okay. Did it jump it did it jump to the next question? How weird. Okay, I don't have to say this name. We'll give it a shot. Okay, ready? The name is Judo Dad 3. I think it's Judo dad of 3. I think I got it. I feel like. Is this a license plate game? Did I just win something? Judo dad of three says, hey, Phil, on Reverb, you can save your purchase in your collections. But if you sell something, how do you remove it from your collection? Oh, okay. So that's easy. Let me. Let me just go in and show you real quick. Go to collections. So if you're not sure what he's talking about. A couple weeks ago, we talked about the fact that Reverb allows you everything you buy to keep track of it. And here is the. Here is the deal. I'm going to show you mine here. Oh, that's the wrong one. This one. Okay, so here are some collections. So for instance, I didn't buy my Strandberg from the. From Reverb, but see how I put it in? I used the file picture, but I did buy this Marshall Class 5 from Reverb. So if you sold it, you would just go here and hit delete. That's how it is. They used to make you go into it and do all this other stuff. But I think you can hit delete now. I can't click mine because I don't want to delete that. But. But. Oh, you know what? Here, let's try it. Because I don't own this strand, this tags anymore. That's how easy it is, buddy. For those of you who are listening later, I just pushed the delete button and I. I lost a guitar. It's gone forever. But I. I traded that guitar to my buddy Pat for his Parker. So that's why it's gone. That's easy. I really like this idea that they're doing, you know, where you literally can put your collection in there and keep track of it. It's really cool. I. Like I said, it's nothing. No issues that I've seen with it so far. Let's see. No idea what you guys are talking about. Let me go another question. All right. Why am I. Normally I have my screens in a different order than today, and for some reason when I pulled them up, it just didn't go in the order I thought. Okay, what do we have? We have T size says, hey, Happy Friday, Phil. You mean Happy Valentine's Day. Yeah, I know what you meant. Tea sized says, thoughts on a tele pickups. I have a Fender Tele American Pro with V mod pickups. I don't jive with looking at Fender Nocaster 51s. I like Lindy Frailan Telecaster pickups, that's for sure. I like those. I like the. I. I like the Seymour Duncan BG 1400s, which are noiseless stack, but they're just. Oh, they're so powerful. And you could coil split them. So essentially, like coil tap them almost. You can make them noiseless where they're really powerful, then click them and they'll go to kind of a vintage tone. I used to have it set up on that, and then I just never use the vintage tone because I just turn the volume back a little bit. Those are two really good Telecaster pickups to check out. But the Nocaster 51s are cool, but I prefer the Lindy Frail lens. So that's just where I go. Craig says, hey, I can feel the edges of the skunk stripe on my poly satin Squire Telecaster neck. Yeah, that's right. It happens when the two different woods dry at different times. Is there any way to smooth it out without having to sand and refinish? Yes, you do have to sand it, though. You'll want to sand it. I. You can use the Scotch Brite pads, but I still. I prefer steel wool for everything. So you just bag the guitar. I've shown that in videos where you just take a plastic bag, put it over the body of the guitar, tape it off so that nothing's going to get around the pickups of the guitar or the guitar or the body or anything. And then just go ahead and you would want a steel wool triplot or 40 steel wool in that order. And just kind of try to blend that little bit of edge. I always tell everybody that edge feels dramatic. It's not okay, because here's the deal. You don't even need it. You're thinking like, you need to sand it down. Really, what you need to do is make the lip blend out. Think of it that way, right? You have two edges, right? And that's the real thing that you're feeling. It's not so much the skunk strap lifted out, which is what it really feels like. It is kind of that, but it's not that. That's what's really you're trying to fix. What you're trying to fix is that you know, when your finger goes over it, it doesn't feel that edge. So you're trying to blend that edge. So you're gonna spend most of your time just blending the edge of the. The skunk stripe, which is the walnut. Once you blend it out. And if you have a satin neck, you're probably just not gonna have any issues because you're just gonna keep steel wooling the whole neck. And it's satin. If you have a gloss neck, well, then you're gonna have to get some buffing compound and buff it back to a shine. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, I'm not suggesting that you just do this willy nilly, but I'm just telling you that's the. That's the procedure to do this if you're lucky. In some cases, though, in some cases it does need more work than that. But a lot of times they'll. That will. That will do it. That'll get you. That'll get you going. And a lot of people hate steel wool. And I know it's because they're like, it gets on your pickups. It's a mess. I'm like, yeah, but man, the problem I have is it's what I've used for 20 years. Even though, like I said, I do recommend 3M pads, I do use those. And a lot of factories do use the 3M pads. And a lot of factories use steel wool. It's just, you know, it's readily available and it works really good. Brad Guitar Miller says. Hey, Phil, New guitar day, I picked up a PRS sce with. Was going to go with the standard, but ended up with a cool black cherry almost perfect veneer on the maple cap. Ask my Stu Mac notes Sweetwater rep and I got 10% off. Thanks for all you do for the addiction. Yeah, I'm glad you got it. I'm glad you got the 10% off. Like I said, if you guys don't know, always ask for a discount if you have a rep, whether it's with the, you know, guitar center, your local mom and pop shop. You know, um, I always say this, you know, look, somebody's probably going to give you a deal. You know, it's. And so you might as well ask the people that you like to work with to see if they want the opportunity to give you the deal. And I always ask. And so, you know, I never say if they say no, I always come back later and do it again. So it happens to me. So you guys know, I've reached out to the Sweetwater, my Sweetwater rep and said, hey, can I get the discount on this? And he's like, yeah, no problem. And he sends me an invoice and I pay it. And sometimes like, can I get a discount on this? And he's like, no. Like, okay. And then if it's. I want it, it doesn't matter about that. I just buy it. And if I find a deal somewhere else, I find the deal somewhere else. This is how it works. But the reason why I try to find. I try to find a couple dealers to work with and just kind of hit them over and over again. I try not to spread the money too far out. And the reason is, is because, you know, it's. The more you spend with one dealer, one entity, the more loyalty you. You bring to both sides of that table. So I'm just letting you know my. My thought on that. RM munching munch ham. I don't know. I'm just. RM says who gives better deals? So the big guys Guitar center gives the best deals. Which would also be Musician's Friend. Musician's Friend, in my experience and Guitar center, it used to be Sam Ash too. Sam Ash. But that, you know, obviously gone right now when it comes to Sweetwater. Dollar for dollar. Like if I'm. Like if you're. If you were throwing bet, you know, you want to throw down a hundy 100 bucks and throw a bet down. Right now I'm gonna bet 100 bucks that I could get a 10% off deal off Guitar center or Sweet. All right. Musician's Friend. Way easier and faster than Sweetwater. So I mean, they usually have the deal. They're usually faster to match the price. In my experience. The by the way, a little cool fun fact. If you don't know if you buy from Musician's Friend, because that's owned by Guitar center. If you buy online, if you buy anything from Musician's Friend, I don't know if you know this, but I learned this recently from the Guitar center guys. You can return it to a Guitar Center. So if you buy something a musician friend and you want to return it, you don't have to ship it back to him. You can actually take it physically into the Guitar Center. I know a lot of you guys already know this, but I'm just sharing. So everybody is on the same page. The only caveat is you can only get money back. So in other words, you can't exchange it for anything in the store. And they can only return the money back on whatever card or system you use pay for it. So whatever you know, that's no problem. You just wear it. You know, you don't have to ship it now. You don't have to deal with it. You just walk in the Guitar center, hand it to them, and they just easily give you a refund. But that, that in my Experience deals are always more with those guys. And then. And then that's the big two, right? And then my experience is mom and pops always give you the best deals. By far. I always find the best deals with a Mom and Pop. And when I say mom and pop, I mean anything that's not the big corporate kind of big, you know, entity, right? By far, you'll find the deals. There's less consistency, though, with the Mom Pops. What I mean by that is just like I told you, sometimes it's not very consistent with the deals in my Sweetwater rep. It's really inconsistent with Mom Pops. Like, if there's money to be given, they'll give it to make the deal, and if there's not, they don't. But. So you got to hunt and peck. But usually when I'm trying to find something, something that's very expensive, and I'm trying to kind of find a deal so I can, you know, lessen the burden of this crazy decision that I'm trying to make, I tend to go to mom pops. I still spend a large amount of money on Reverb. And I've said this before, most of the purchases I make on Reverb, which, you know, it's funny because I'm gonna say this publicly in front of Reverb. I don't buy off Reverb. I find it on Reverb, and then I contact that. That dealer directly, so they'll have it listed. So a lot of times I'm on Reverb instead of sending an offer. I'll see. And it goes, oh, it's, you know, Bob's Music, North Dakota or whatever. And I'll. I'll see that. And I just physically go to their website or I call them and I. And I tell them, I go, look, I saw this on Reverb. You'll save some fees. You know, can. You can basically save them some money, saving me some money kind of logic, so especially since most of the time they won't have to charge you sales tax. So you'll save the sales tax, which is eight for me, eight and a half percent or something like that. And then they save the fees, which is about between 4 to 8%. So everybody's really happy with that deal right off the bat without even asking for anything more. And then the other thing happens a lot. I don't know if you guys had this experience, but a lot of times when I go to the mom and Pop's website, and I call it mom and Pop, just means small, smaller business so when I go to the small business website, they put it cheaper on their website than they do on Reverb. It seems to be really common. So where I go and it's like, let's say they want $1,300 on reverb and I go to their website and on their website it's 11. And I'm like, oh, they just marked it up to cover the fees. So I'm like, I. And I'm like, I don't even really need the deal. I'll just ask them for, you know, you know, tax out the door or something. So that's, that's my experiences. Greg says he just got 15% off of instrumental music. Yeah, same thing. I like I said I like any of the mid sized businesses. I think you can get a better discount. They're just, you know, look, it's about turns, okay? Like taking turns. Right. The reality is it's a lot easier to say no 20 times knowing that you're going to get the deal. So what I mean by that is when you call your Sweetwater rep and he's like, hey, give me a deal. And he's like, no. And he knows he's talking to 200 people after you, he's not as concerned. But a mid sized business, when you call them, you're the fifth customer today and there's probably five more left for the day. It's, it's a lot harder to say no over and over again to those customers when the deal makes sense. So, and I always say this, and we haven't talked about in a while, as long as you, as long as you do it with respect, I don't think there's any problem asking for a deal. I always, I always do it with respect. Okay. UnsilentBob 420. Sure, why not? Says Phil. I want to install locking tuners in my squire 40th anniversary vintage strat, but don't want to cut into the, into the neck. Yeah, that's fine. You can do hipshot tuners with the ump plate. So you want to Google that. Or you can do ratio platers. Ratio tuners with a. They have adapter plates. There is another option. I'm not going to look up your specific guitar right now because even if I did, the Squire 40th Anniversary Vintage could be different models. You have. The third option you have is you can just physically find the exact tuning keys that you have now in a version that has lockers, there's a locking version of every tuning key out there. At this point so you can find it, line up the holes. But if you don't want to do that, if you don't want to find a specific tuner, there's a cool advantage to buying hip shot tuners with the ump plate, which is an adapter plate or the ratio tuners with the adapter plates is that when you put them on that guitar, if you ever decide to sell or trade that guitar, you can pull those off and put your original tuners back on and put those on another guitar where if you get the specific replacement tuners for that guitar, then you know, you take them off. But yeah, now you have tuners that you can't fit onto another guitar unless it has exactly those tuners. So I really like those systems and I think there's a smart move for a lot of people. That being said, now it's time for Guitar of the Week. Let's do Guitar of the Week. So Guitar of the Week this week is. I may have shown this one before, but it, it, it came up I. It's on. It's on. It's on. It's in the ether of what we've been talking about lately. So lately, if you guys haven't seen, I've done a bunch of videos of the new Fender standards which were controversial because all the standard videos are apparently controversial. And we all, we really need some free time for as people figure out how to calm down. Anyways, I also did the new Ibanez AZ model, the standard. And I did the new Yamaha Pacifica that was affordable. And a lot of discussion in the deep dives now that I'm doing these new sheets and more, even more deep of the deep dive. A lot of discussion of woods and materials and the value of them and the specifications and the value of those special locations. And what's funny to me is it's, it's constantly a. I just don't want to confuse people and I know I can't put everything in every video every time. So what's funny is one of the discussions of the standard series was that they've that they have a four piece poplar body. And that's horrible. And I saw lots of comments and if that's your opinion, that's your opinion. I'm not here to dissuade you from your opinion. I just want to make sure my opinion is clear or my decisions of why I made the video the way I did. I did a video on the standard Fender series and I said this has a four piece poplar Body. I don't care that it has a four piece poplar body. To fully disclose things. The people that make the Fender standard guitars, I consider friends. So let's start there. It was not a. It was not a fun video for me to have to make because when I was critiquing some of the things, in fact the people. So you. So funny enough, the people who made that standard guitar that are, I consider friends also made that Pacifica guitar, which I'm like, wow, what a week. I think I've been pounding on all their guitars lately. But anyways, the things that I was talking about, the four piece poplar body, I don't care if the guitar is made of poplar. A lot of people say that's a crappy wood and it's soft and it's horrible. I really don't care. It's sealed in plastic. Essentially, polyurethane is plastic. And it doesn't matter. I don't care if a guitar body is made of three pieces or four pieces or ten pieces or two pieces or one pieces. This is again, this isn't to tell you you should not or care either way about it. I'm just telling you I don't. What I do though, care about is that when I want to know what the value is, in other words, I talk about this all the time. If you make a four piece polar body, that's a great way to make a very affordable body blank. It's a great way, why not? Who cares? Make a four piece poplar body blank, but don't charge me like I was paying for a two piece alder body blank. That's my issue, right? Does that make sense? I don't really care. My guitars behind me that are made of mahogany or, you know, maple or whatever wood, I don't care. I don't care what they're made out of. But I don't want to pay for. I don't want to pay the same price for lesser expensive materials than I do for expensive materials because that's not a good value to me as a consumer. That doesn't make sense to me. Right? So in other words, I don't want to pay $75 for chuck beef, right? I want a nice steak for that price. So that's kind of my thought process. But what's funny was I wanted to illustrate this. I have a guitar today and it's made of poplar. Okay? So funny enough, I love this guitar. I've shown this before. I don't know if I've done It on the gear. Guitar of the week. Let me back up a little bit so you guys can see this thing. So this guitar is a poplar body. Solid poplar body. Ironically though, it's one piece. It's a one piece poplar body and a basswood neck. That's right. So this is a Parker fly. I've shown Parker flies before. This particular one's been in videos. I think this one. I don't know if I did guitar a week. If I did. We're just going to rehash a little bit because it's a funny thing. So when Parker made this guitar, this guitar was made out of this body is one piece. So this whole thing is one piece. It was like 4 inches thick. And they. They kind of carved everything out. And they used a very soft material like poplar because they use carbon fiber or glass. Carbon glass sheet on the back. And then they paint over it. That's what laminates on the back. The neck is basswood on this model. And it's set into the body like a set neck. And then again there's one. This sheet that goes over the back is one piece sheet. And then as you guys know, if you know anything about that material, it's really hard. It makes this guitar really indestructible. Ironically, I'm too fat to stand on this thing. But if we could find somebody about 150 to 180 pounds, they could stand on this thing. Isn't that crazy? I'm just too big to it. But I've shown this before. They're perfectly balanced. So I'm holding it with one finger for those listening later. So you don't drop it. It's always scares people. But again, so poplar body. So I thought let's share this guitar. Now here's a perfect example. It's full of a little. A lot of electronics because obviously that's what they're doing with it. Let's switch cameras here. Let's. Let me back up a little bit more. We'll keep talking. All right, so what we have on this guitar, like I said, poplar body, basswood neck, carbon fiber fretboard, stainless steel frets. And we have volume tone with a coil split. And we have a volume for the transducer pickup which is going to give you the acoustic sound. I'm going to start with the neck pickup. I'm running the Amplified Nation Wonderland overdrive 50 watt tube head through a 212 cabinet with cream back selections. And I'm saying cream like cream in your coffee. Selections and a Sennheiser microphone. I'll start cleaning and I'll just play the neck pickup and I'll coil split it. Here's the neck pickup. Okay. Here's coil split. Okay. Now I'll go to the. This is the acoustic piezo system. Okay. I'm gonna hit the overdrive on the amp. And the amp has an internal boost. So this is the. The most gain the amp has. I'm going to start with the bridge pickup here we. And the neck pick up. Okay. So that gives you a sense of the guitar. And look, these aren't, in my opinion, they weren't known for being amazing sounding instruments. They sound really good. I like the way it sounds. Obviously I should point out this guitar is 4lbs 3oz. Actually, I'm wrong. It's 5lbs 3oz either way. I mean it weighs nothing. And you can see here it's pretty thin. Definitely kind of like to me it's like the DeLorean definitely screams a time, doesn't it? Like, it's like some people just hate these guitars. But I just like this week was. I feel like the last two weeks have been a lot of discussion on a lot of platforms. All the podcasts I watch, like 40 cycle hum or 60 cycle hum or you know, Tone Mob, right. Or Tone Chasers. All the stuff I watch, you know, a lot of discussion over this heated debate of, you know, materials and specifications. And what's funny is, is I like to share specifications with you. I like to share all the details. When I make a video, I like to be. My goal is to be as one of the most detailed channels out there because I let you make your own decisions. But what's funny is sometimes I look at the comment sections and not that I agree or disagree with everyone, I just go. Some of the thoughts, I'm like, you know, I don't. My hope is that when they manufacture guitar. Let me, let me explain this to you. Let me put it to you from this angle. Cortek guitars, which makes a lot of the guitars in Indonesia, obviously making the new Fender Standard series, obviously made that Yamaha Deluxe DLX affordable guitar and so many other guitars. The gnls, they make the GNL tribute series. That's who they make. They make those Paul Reed Smith Ses that we like so much now. They make a million guitars a year and they really have the ability to do as much as you can imagine. They make Strandberg. If you're not aware, the Strandberg guitars are made within a rock throw from the Indonesian Strandbergs are rock throw from the PRS side of the factory. So my point is, is that when I critique a company like Fender and say wow, four pieces of poplar. I want to, I want to just make sure it's clear what I'm saying. I really don't. It's not the tone wood debate. That's not what I'm arguing. My argument is that they set the standards for Cortec to build. And the point is Court. Yes, somebody says court. Yeah, it's called Cortech. C O R T and then E C, you know, T E C H like Cortech. And actually I don't think there's an H at the end. I think this is Quartec. But Kort. Yes, Court guitars, you know, Court will build you whatever you want. And Fender to me was the disappointment of the standard series, which is where I stand on this. And that's what I've been basically saying since day one with the standard series is. My disappointment is you have a big buying power like Fender. In other words, they can buy a lot of guitars and they can sell a lot of guitars to us. Especially at a $600 price point. That's an amazing price point in Today's market. Right? $600 essentially was, is $400 five years ago on the guitar market. When you look at pricing and to see, oh thank you. It's Te. Tek. Thank you Cortech. So anyways, the point is, is that when I saw Fender doing this, I thought oh, with cortex ability to do volume and quality a la. I mean Cortech physically think about this. Cortex physically makes a $3,600 Strandberg street price guitar out of that factory that exists. I own it. I paid for it. They didn't give me that guitar. I bought that guitar. Okay, they gave me a discount. But discount on $3,600. I don't care what the discount is. That's still an insane amount of money. So that's what Cortek can make. So okay, so of course with Fenders volume, which is where Strandberg's problem is, they don't have volume. Who the hell wants to buy a square neck Strandberg? I mean it's, it's a. I mean think about this. Take guitar players, which there's not that many of us, and then go hey, you know what? There's, there's only so many guitar players who buy guitars. Let's do this. Let's chop off the headstock. You're like okay, well you just lost about 40% of the guitar market. I'm like, oh well then let's make this the, the next square. So squared off, okay, Then we just cut it down to what, another 30, 40% of the market gone. And you're like, okay, now you're down with what, 20% of the market left. The guitar players that were interested in this guitar and then go, let's put squiggly frets on it, okay. And once you break it down to such a small group, they have to pay the price for the low volume. So like I said, I think the, I think it's funny when I saw the Fender standard stuff, I thought man, with Fender's ability to sell guitars in volume and the template for a great guitar because they could just follow the Strat and the Tele templates and cortex ability to make extremely beautiful instruments, I thought man, this is gonna win. I told you I bought those guitars. And I think one of the things that was across those videos, and I've said this before, a lot of what you saw emotional in my videos was I bought those guitars thinking I was making two banger videos, right? Because I thought I was gonna, oh, this is great. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna tech guitars which I got and I'm gonna do this video and it's gonna be, the title is gonna be like Fender just blew away the market. You know, like no one's going to buy a two thousand dollar American Strat again because with a six hundred Cortek built guitar it's going to just be unbelievable. And when I saw what they did, I was like, wow. I wasn't trying very hard, was it? It was just. They really thought the brand was going to float a lot of that value. So specifications, when we look at the factory, this is what I look at. So, you know, and everybody has an opinion. I actually, if you watch those videos, I thought the guitar sounded good. I. The playthrough noticed I didn't say anything. I, I like those pickups, the ceramic based pickups I've, I've championed for years as being a P90 punchy pickup. A lot of players don't like them. But if you like vintage style pickups, you're not going to like that. It's a modern pickup for sure. But what's funny is that made me kind of chuckle the most is, is that when I was going through the guitars I thought man, what a missed opportunity here. You know, I thought like I said, they could build a guitar that's better and with that volume and that ability of that factory and the volume of that price point. In other words, the volume of sales, right? Because think about this. Here's the opportunity lost everybody. I've watched everybody's opinion in the last couple weeks and I agree with some, disagree with some. Like you would imagine what you're going to do with me. But I thought as a person with a custom shop vendor and an American Standard Fender, or professional spender, whatever you want to call it, I was a buyer. I was like, man, I would like to have one of these, this would be great. I was thinking, man, if you can make this like what I already have, but make it 600 bucks and open up that window to everyone else, this is going to be fantastic. Because of what I told you earlier on the show, which is a lot of the reasons I buy the American ones is because of the fact that I'm a prideful American and I want to support my country and I want to support my own economy or especially my economy. And like I said, when I say my economy want to be very clear. It's my. The city I live in, the economy first, then the state, then the country, then the continent. That's like kind of like the thought. And then after that the world. Right? Like that's the priority of things, Right. By the way, this isn't a weird thing to say. I like to take care of my kids before I start taking care of other people's kids. It's just how it works. But my point is I thought it was a massive missed opportunity. And there was a lot of disappointment in my tone in the videos. And it was not because the guitar had a four piece poplar body is what I'm trying to say. It was because I really think they could have just, what do they call it? Break the Internet. They could have broke the Internet. They could have blew us away. What Ibanez really has released recently on the Azs was really impressive and I was really proud of it. Really cool guitar, very exciting. But man, I thought Fender could really just really killed it. So it'd be interesting to see a Fender re circles the wagon, so to speak, and comes back to this and maybe tries a different model or if it's good enough, you know, and it might be good enough, I don't know. Let's see. Any thoughts on that? Ron Riot says the Seymour Duncan distortion is ceramic. And it sounds good to me. So different, different concept. This is another thing. I've talked about this and I know I make so much content and I, you know, again, you have to catch more and more of my videos to understand. So the thing about ceramic magnets is there are two reasons you talk about ceramic magnets. There's two things. We're going to go into a pickup talk now because there's a couple things because I got a great question about pickups that I want to talk about. So first, when it comes to ceramic magnets, let's. I want to clear everybody that is confused, okay? Ceramic. The ceramic material that they make magnets out of, by the way, is a numbered ceramic system is numbered like Al Nico. So it's Alnico, you know, two Al Nico five Alnico four. There's Alnico three, there's Alnico eight. There's all the numbers, right? But the more popular is what I just said. Ceramic has the same kind of concept, right? There's different staging levels or staging numbers, let's say numbers, okay? That's not what's important. What's important with ceramic is that it's, it's out of the, out of the magnets. It's the least expensive to manufacture. That doesn't mean it's a cheap material. It just means it's the least expensive to manufacture. It is really cool because it does something that's really cool. To me, in my opinion, it makes the pickups really punchy. That's one of the things I like about it, right? I've talked about Alnico like I like 5 over 2 because it's a little brighter. 8's a little too bright for me. These are very connoisseur type levels. Most people would hear those pickups and not hear any difference for the most part. If we're just taking, taking a, just a cross, you know, cross section of pickups. The thing about ceramic though is that one of the things, speaking of the super distortion, one of the things that makes that magnet do really well is a lot of wire. Okay? So when we talk about a, A Seymour Duncan or. Sorry, when we talk about a super distortion from DiMaggio, we're talking about a ceramic magnet with a pickup with like 43 gauge wire and a lot of it, right? And in my experience with ceramic magnet pickups, not all that they sent. They tend to do better to my ears with a lot of wire on them. So the more wire, the better the pickup, right? It makes it, like I said, a more powerful pickup. Something that's really, really good. Those two things, in my opinion, complement the pickups as a whole. Like again, we're generally Talking there's going to be circumstances where each pickup, you know, each, each situation is going to be different. But as a whole ceramic magnet and a lot of wire to me generally can be a great sounding pickup. All of the superstortion and so so many others like Bill Lawrence pickups and stuff. But obviously sometimes a manufacturer is trying to save money by using ceramic. They're not using it as a personal choice for the, for its properties or sound benefits. They're doing it because it's the least expensive magnet. So what they'll do is they'll put it in a pickup. But obviously if they're going cheap, they're not going to put a lot of wire on it. Which is why sometimes I'm giving you guys resistance measurements and inductance. I'm kind of giving you. That's what I'm giving those numbers for is to understand. To understand maybe in that. And that's just a small snapshot, but it's at least understand. Like look, in this case if they underwind the pickup because they don't want to use a lot of wire because it's expensive, copper is very expensive and they use a ceramic magnet. To me, the pickups have a very ice picky attack. The way I like to explain it is if you've ever been in a crowd and somebody on the stage, the microphone feedbacks for a second. To my ears when I hear those kind of pickups for every once in a while I hear that kind of high piercing tone of feedback. It's just very light and it's in the pickup. It's not very pleasing to me. Now here's what's funny to fix that. I roll my tone control back a little bit. Then pickup's fine to me. Like I don't go, oh, this is a horrible pickup. I just go for this pickup. This is how I adjust. I just run the, run the tone control back and let the capacitor, you know, kind of restrict some of those high frequencies from getting to the amp. It's basically, I don't want all those ice picky highs to go and I get a, a nice, a nice sounding tone. The other problem, so you know, other problem is one of the ways that I've seen really cheap manufacturers try to make a pickup that's really interesting to me. This is from dissecting pickups. And by the way, I'm not a pickup guru. I'm a pickup. What do you call it? Like I love pickups. That's it, that's enough. I just love them. Okay. So I love them, so I try. But one thing I've learned over the years that there's another combination that's interesting with pickups. So if you take a ceramic magnet and then you underwind the pickup, in other words, you don't put enough wire on it and you get those kind of harsh, picky, ice picky sounds. A lot of you guys right now I'm hoping are going, well, I got a cheap guitar and the pickups weren't ice picky, Phil. It was really muffled. It was like sounding like this. Well, here's why I think you hear that because the way the pickup works is they take the magnet, okay? And as you saw in the videos, they take the magnet. I'm using this for illustration purposes. Take this. And they put it against the pole pieces, which are steel, right? So they put against the pole pieces and that magnetizes the pole pieces. Well, one of the things they can do is they can manufacture the pole, the slugs in the pickup so that they basically do alchemy. They basically, I think they use zinc, but who knows, right? Who really knows what they're doing? But what they're doing is they're making it to where it's not super, the material, the metal is not super easy to magnetize, right? So a lot of that magnetic energy gets lost in the, in the mess of the, of those pole pieces. And that creates, to me, it softens those high frequencies. But then you tell me the pickup's muddy and that's when it's. See, and that's what's tough about these videos. And that's why, like, we're trying to expand the deep dives, you know, and give you more information. And the nice thing we're hoping to happen soon is we're going to have expert drop ins. So that's the real thing, right? So when I come across a problem, maybe my analogy doesn't work, maybe the situation to work, but instead of just a tech tip, we'll have like an expert drop in and go, here's why. This is why you're seeing what you're saying. The whole idea is just to be better, better educated. But all this really comes back to is that there's nothing wrong with the Fender Standard series except for the fact that, like I said, there was an opportunity to make you a much better guitar for that same price. Or based on what I see, they could have made the price even lower. And I think if the price was lower, we would forgive them more. But I wouldn't have been excited about that. I'd been fine with it to tell you like, hey, for 399 or 499 you can get a Fender. All right, there you go. You got a Fender. Good for you. But to me, what would be exciting is that for that price, 599, it would be really nice to see a lot more out of it. And personally, especially since. And I've said this before and I'll get off this tirade to go to the next one. You can make cheap Al Nico 5 you could make. They can make. They could recreate pickups dirt cheap right where like I said. And they're made it right in that factory. Cortech could. Could deck that guitar out if they want. If they so wanted it to be. So I don't know. That's my. That's my thought process on that. But that's just. I thought it was interesting because like I said, it seems to be a big community, a big thing out there. Everybody's really trying to. I feel like the standard series has really created another creepy divide in the Internet of like, people are like. They're like, oh, people are being too critical. And other people are like, these are horrible. And I'm like neither. Neither opinion is actually right. It's somewhere in the middle. These guitars are just. They're not exciting. That's what they are. It's. We want to hate them. I don't hate them. I just don't give a crap about them. That's really what it came down to. It's like, eh, you know, I'd put my money in something else. That's about it. In fact, I could tell you exactly. I bought that. I've been as AZ for 549 and I want to keep it. I like it. So that tells you a big difference. The offenders I'd like to get rid of as soon as I can find a reason or reasonable offer for them and move on and turn that money back in the channel. There was a question that was about pickups and I wanted to share it with you guys. Let me go and look at a guitar pickup, a guitar humbucker pickup. This question came in and images. Let me pull this up. Let me see if I can find a picture. I don't know if I can because what they're asking me is actually a thing that's kind of going away. Okay, here we go. That's what I want. Like I said, when in doubt, go to Steve Mack. Okay, so here's what we. Here's what the question. Let Me share it with you guys. So here's a humbucker pickup. This is a. Oh, of course, 10% off anybody if you want. Stu, Mac. Okay, so I want to show you this picture. The question I got was really interesting. This is basically all the components that we're looking at of humbucker. So you can imagine this old stuff minus the wire. And the question was, why are these little holes there? So if you're looking at this, what you see is six holes for the slugs. And then you see two, three little teeny holes right there. And on this bobbin you got two little teeny holes right there. Now what's funny is I think Seymour Duncan has square holes. Like his holes are Square. Originally, DiMargio were like octagon shaped or something. They look like orange holes, which is really weird. Originally, the Gibson ones I think were circles like this. What you're noticing now, okay, And I got this information and this is where I was talking about reaching out to people and learning more. I got this information for you because the question was like, why do they have those holes? And I'm like, I kind of know, but I, you know, I don't know. I never thought about it. I mean, hold on. I know the answer, but I didn't know why. I didn't. Come on. I didn't know why they were on the top. Okay, I'm going to go to a website because I. The. Here it is. Oh, look at that. There's them. Okay, so here's another website. This is DiMargio. This is a PAF 57 bridge. And you can see here. See, those are the bigger holes that I told you about. Like, I guess they're not. They're like square in the circle, a little different. And you have these holes here. Okay. But if you notice here, a lot of companies like Paul, Reed, Smith and now with DiMargio. Nope, still holes. He's got a lot of pickups that don't have holes anymore. This one. Nope, still holes. I know he's gotten a bunch of pickups that don't have the holes, but most of the pickups do have holes. Okay, So I, I had an answer for you for the question, but I really wanted to see because when I did what anybody does, I kind of googled and looked around and there's not a whole lot of information. So I asked a bunch of experts that I know that make pickups and I got some feedback and most of it was really like, no one really knew the answer totally. But a lot of them had theories, but a lot of theories started crossing over. So first of all, let's start with the easy thing. The holes are on both sides of that bobbin. So let's go to that. Back to that pickup, the first pickup. So you can see this, guys. So the point of the holes is there's holes on both sides. So obviously the holes originally are for the wire to go in there. But what's funny is I asked the question, why are they on both sides? And DiMargio told me, Larry told me that a lot of his new pickups don't have the holes anymore because they learned that when they do the inject molding, that if they seal off the side of the top part of the bobbin with plastic, it blends better and it doesn't have as much mess in there. The funny part is the theory that I think makes the most sense is that originally, originally, when Seth Lover, who made the humbucker, made the humbucker, they made them with going the wrong screen here. They made them with just solid slugs. Okay? So originally this was solid slugs, okay. In other words, both rows. Because Gibson essentially was only doing the chrome covers or the nickel covers. They weren't doing the exposed bottoms. So what they were trying to do is create a Faraday cage. So what they did is they made the pickup and then they put the COVID over it. And keep in mind, a lot of people were like, oh, it's so the wax can go out. But they weren't using wax back then. Gibson wasn't putting. They weren't wax potting the pickups at that time. So what they were doing was they were. They were doing slugs and then they would put a solid chrome cover over it and then solder that to the bottom plate because that creates a perfect. Well, I don't know if it's perfect, but it's a Faraday cage. So it ISO, you know, reduces the 60 cycle hum even more. So all the atmospheric noise makes. It makes it a quieter situation. The interesting part is later they added the screws is what. What I understand. And when they add the screws so that they could have height adjustment, that essentially kind of disrupts the Faraday cage a little bit because. Right. Just a little bit. And then also it doesn't make sense because at that point they, they don't need. They were putting holes on both sides because that way it doesn't matter where you started the bobbin when you're, when you're winding it. And then maybe they just kept doing it because that's just how the molds were. But what's interesting is, is that's what I got from you. I got two people I reached out to, and they gave me both basically same kind of answers. Like, yeah, it's how it was originally, and that's how we kind of all do it. But it was funny that they said. Larry said that a lot of the newer pickups. He says he's not doing the holes because, like I said, the inject mold, the moldings take. Are better now without the holes on both sides. But that's. That's the answer until we get a better answer. But I wanted you to know, because that was a crazy question. I got. Somebody reached. I forgot who reached out for that. But they kept asking over and over again, and I was like, huh, this is a weird. I've never been curious about that. But I was like, well, okay. I thought it was going to be easy to find the answer. And, you know, it's funny about stuff like this, and this is why I love this. These kind of questions is there's a lot of stuff in this that are. In our world or this musician world, where it's just. It's not science. It's not logic. It's just. That's the way we did it. They did it. And then we did it that way because they did it. That's it. So, all right, let's see. See, a lot of you guys are throwing theories, but we do know. Look, we do know this. This is what we learned. We do know that the holes were on both sides. Because the fact that, that way, it was just easier if they were gonna. When they're winding the pickups, it didn't matter which side. They could use either side. Right. The one reason Larry said that DiMargio kept the holes on both sides for a long time was in case they scuffed one of the bobbins, they could flip the bottom. The. The bobbin that scuffed to the bottom. And that was another reason why they kept those holes for a long time. And he believes a lot of pickup manufacturers probably did that for that same reason. Because that way you don't have to worry about one of the sides, you know, being damaged. That's kind of the logic there. The important part is. Is, yeah, I love this. He said, it doesn't matter. And I'm like, I. I didn't think it ever mattered when I was making pickups. So I don't know. All right, next question. Our subject is from Roger, who says, hey, Phil, the Katana Go amp is back. Any idea why it was discontinued for or any experience with it? Is that the headphone thing? I wouldn't know. I love the podcast. Listen to it. I. Yeah, I don't know. I don't use headphones. The only time I use headphones is when I'm mixing or recording, but I don't use it for playing guitar. So if it's a head. The Katana Go is a headphone thing. I could look, but I'm pretty sure it's a headphone thing. I have no interest in any of the headphone things. Yeah, it's a headphone amp. I don't have any interest in that. So I. It's funny, I told you guys there's two things I don't I don't use. It's headphones and wireless units for guitar. And if you watched the most recent video the az, you'll see I have a wireless unit and there's a reason for that. In the new studio, I needed to buy wireless for a particular situation and so I did my best educated guess of which wireless unit to trust. I went through a bunch of them and I landed on the boss one. That's what I'm using and it works pretty good. I've had a couple issues where I thought it drops out. It's really. There's a lot of interference in that room. So there's a lot of problems. But I've been using it to test it. I don't think I'm going to do official video of it, but I'll give you guys feedback what I think of it. But I need, I physically need it. So it's back to the headphone things. I only use things like that if I physically. I just need them. So RM says, by the way, we're going back to the pickup conversation. He says, RM says, would a scuff make a difference? A scuff on the top of the bot? Yeah. If you're selling a pickup, people don't want to pay full price for what looks like a used or damaged product. So it doesn't matter if you use, you know, if you sell like Vint, you know, you know, relic to pickups. But in his case, Dimarzier doesn't do a whole lot of relic looking pickups. So I would imagine that's. So I'm not old vintage. This is. I do, I do like wireless because it limits the six cycle home. Yeah, the. Yeah. I don't necessarily have any feedback on the wireless unit other than I've noticed that, you know, it gets. Every once while it's dropping out for just a. Just a nanosecond. All of a sudden I'm like the latent. There's no latency issues that's driving me crazy or anything. But like I said, it's hard for me to complain because when I'm using it, I'm using it for a particular reason. So because I. I needed to be able to. To have access to an amp across a room and for when I'm doing the live streaming. Okay. This is from Chris. Chris says, hey, Phil. I picked up the Phil Jones amp for practice. Not a bad option. Seems to handle the low B just fine. Gets a little. Gets. Gets quiet enough for late playing. Yeah, I love my Phil Jones amp. Like I said, I don't know how it. Well, takes the B string, so. Thank you for giving the update on that. They're great. They're just really expensive for what they are. You know, it's. But for me, it's nice because it's small and I like to have it out of the way. A lot of times it's over here to my right and when I'm practicing bass. But right now it's in. It's in the other room because. Making some content with it. Clan of house cats says hey. New Guitar Day ERNIE BALL Majesty 10th anniversary. These new cover DiMargio's look and sound amazing. The third, the three fret long inlay looks good when playing. So the new DiMargio DiMarjo pickups the 10th anniversaries. I did a video of those pickups. That was a really hard project for them to do. Doesn't look like a big deal, but it was. I wouldn't say it's one of the hardest projects they've ever done, but it was one of the hard. It was a hard project for them to. To make those pickups. They had all kinds of hell with the making those pickups for that guitar. And so it's kind of cool now to see them. And you know, I got to see them. I got to see them a long time ago and. And it was really nice. And then of course, I got asked to do the video for them, but really cool. I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you what the problem was and how. What. What it was and how they fixed it. So it's one of those things. Like, I didn't think to ask if I'm allowed to talk about that. So I'll try next time I'm talking I'll ask like, hey, would you mind if I share with everybody what the issue with those pickups were and why, why it had to be addressed? So it was really cool. It was really cool because the problem was really strange to see. It's something you guys wouldn't predict. And, and then the fix was not predictable. Aaron Short Music says, hey, Phil, there are very cool new bug wireless coming out in a month or two. Had issues with most of them, but this one is rock solid for me so far. Good to know. Like I said, I, I have a line 6 wireless that goes to my Yamaha thr 30 and I like it. I've never had a problem with it. And so I was, I was like, I was thinking about getting another line six set and then I just decided, I'm like, you know, I'll go boss. It just makes it easier. It's just, I don't know, likes I liked it. Okay, okay, hold on a second. Okay, let's find out. Hold on a second. Somebody asked me a question. Oh. So somebody asked me if I heard the news about Brian Setzer today. So I just looked it up. Let me see, eight hours ago, it says Brian Setzer says he cannot play guitar due to autoimmune disease. So I mean, that's horrible. Yeah, man, that's. Isn't that like the worst to hear? You know, I, it's funny, I think I told you guys this. I've never seen Brian Setzer alive, but I've been to a couple of his shows because I worked a booth. Every time he would come to town, Gretch would have a booth and I would volunteer to work it. The. It wasn't a sales booth. Brian wouldn't let any sales happen. So what would happen is Gretch guitars would bring all like every single one of his personal. Not his personal one, but his signature guitars. And they would set up a booth and it was usually one employee and me and we would work the booth. And how it would work. Is anyone, and I mean anyone for any reason walk up that wanted to play any one of his like three thousand dollar guitars, you could just hand them to him and play them and. But. So, you know, but my wife and kids have seen Brian sets there a couple times because they would give me tickets to go to the show and I would just give them to my family and they would go, amazing guitar player, fantastic by, you know. You know, actually it's funny, I even, I went to a party where he played and I didn't get to see him play I saw Reverend Horton Heat play because I think he was right before or after them, I thought. And he was fantastic. So he's the reason why, you know, I told you guys. Maybe I didn't tell you guys this. You know, when I look at guitars on my wall, you can almost. You can almost bet on every guitar is because of a guitar player, whether it's a signature or not. So like Les Paul. To me, this gold top, Les Paul, this is Slash, you know, you know, the, the. The green Strat that I have, that's John Mayer, you know, that's why I have it. Obviously there's a Petrucci guitar, so that's Petrucci. But the Gretsch. The Gretches are Setzer. That's. That's the reason I like Gretch. So. Horrible news. Yeah. And I, you know, hopefully. I don't know. Can you. Isn't one of those things where you can hope for the best? Maybe it's. Maybe something will happen. But, yeah, he's a legend. He's amazing and super nice, super talented. So, yeah, that's a bummer. You know, it's like one of those things. You're like. You're like. Well, at least you're alive. But then when you can't play music, it's. It's a really. It kills it. But let's, let's. Let's move on and see if we can find something. A new subject. Because I kind of want a new subject to talk about now. After that. That was pretty sad. Tyler says. Hey, Phil. Just picked up a used PRS se. Bernie Marsden in Sunburst. Why do you think PRS doesn't do any LTD SE anymore? I don't know. Usually everything with SES is about sales. And so if they sell, they keep them and if they don't sell, they don't keep them. But I know some of it. There's more than that in. In regards sometimes manufacturers. And again, I'm not saying this is the case with them, but it's possible. Sometimes when an artist signature guitar or an artist. A guitar where they're giving a royalty to an artist, sometimes they figure out. The company figures out that the. The guitar itself is outselling the. Then, you know, people are buying it because the design or what it is and not so much the artist and they'll. They'll start offering a version of those features on another guitar and then that guitar outsells it and then they stop. But I don't know if that's the case with them. Who who knows? But. But that was a cool guitar. But where is, where's it at? Oh, here's Warren's. Warren says, hey Phil, I was wondering if you know any. A good way to identify the. And price out a pair of 1950s Echo pickups. I had them from you. I have no idea. Reverb. I haven't. You got to understand, like selling things. I don't sell very many things and it just seems like I sell a lot of stuff. Because you're like, oh, I had to get rid of that. Like I said, me personally, my personal stuff that I buy very rarely. I sell, I sell. I mean if you, if you know, it's like, if you think in the last like 10 years I probably sold, you know, 10 guitars. A personal guitars. It's not a lot of guitars. The channel. I cycle stuff because again I'm, I'm. I'm buying it to make the video. Once the video is made, then I don't need the product anymore. And so. Yeah, so that's, that's. But like I said, so sometimes on the resale stuff, I just don't know. I'm so disconnected from it. Think of this. I haven't physically worked in a retail store in nine years. Is that right? No, that's not right. Why do I say that? Let me say this. Wait. Oh my God, nine years. It's been nine years since I worked in selling anything. So I'm really disconnected from it because it's not part of my day to day life anymore. Yeah. So, but reverb. And hopefully sometimes in the comment section so we will know what you're talking about and kind of give you. You know, I get a lot of those emails. From time to time people will send me a thing saying, hey, what do you think this old guitar is worth? What do you think it's worth? I'm like, I just like, I literally don't do that. I don't. I mean really, the bulk of my research for what stuff's worth is usually about just because I'm doing the review and I need to know the value of the guitar. I'm more in line with market trends, curious about that. And that's just because I'm, I'm in. That's ingrained into what I do daily with companies. So let me do. Hold on a second. I don't know why I keep saying hold on a second. Like, why are you guys holding on? Trying to refresh me. Okay, what else did we talk about? Cute. Okay, so this is for Edgar, who says hey Phil, what are your thoughts about Fender road worn guitars? Especially the first ones around 2009 and 2012? I love the road worn guitars. They've always been one of my favorite guitars when the way they look. I think Road Worn is one of the few relic guitars that are affordable or obtainable that look good. Most. Most affordable, slash obtainable, more obtainable relic guitars look like crap. You know, if you're, if you're not in your relic, they all look like crap. I get that. But we're talking about like, we're talking to the group that actually likes relic guitars and the group that likes relic guitars. Like it looks, you know, when they're not. Right. They look horrible, right? Like you ever, you ever see one of those, you ever go on reverb, you're looking and then you see a relic guitar and you can tell that that person relic that guitar. And they're like, oh, here's a guitar. It's been relic. You're like, no, you did that. That looks like ass. Like you. Right? You know, it's. It's. Relicing is an art. It is. And. But I think the Road Warrens were some of the best ones. In fact, funny, weird name drop kind of thing. Dave Freeman was talking about that with one day. That was a conversation I had with him. That was weird conversation to have. We were talking about that. Our favorite because obviously the Friedman guitars are relic. And he was saying the same thing I was saying. Which is the only relic guitars. I like the way they look, besides expensive ones are the road worns. The road worn ones. For those years. The problem, I didn't, I didn't like the seven and a quarter radius neck fretboard. That was the holdback for me. Didn't. Didn't love it. When I would come across them over years from setting them up. What I would know is. Or what I noticed is like when one was great, it was magic like. And that was. Fretboard was great, but that was. It was owned by somebody and they didn't want to sell it. And then when you got one that wasn't great, you're like, oh, this doesn't play that great. I always kind of wish they didn't do that feature. And I think now do they do that? What are the radiuses on them now? Are they more under control? But you know, and, but relic guitars are a funny thing to me because I don't own one and I've had a bunch come through on the channel and I've done videos of them and I Didn't even realize I don't own one until one day we were talking on this podcast and somebody was asking about it, like, do you like them or hate relic guitars? And I'm like, oh, I like them. And then I go, yeah, I don't own one. I have an aged guitar one. And it's. And that's not fair because that's the guitar I want to get rid of. Not because it's age, just. I just don't like the guitar. So I don't own any relic or age guitars. And I don't know why. It's not because I don't like them. It's just. I don't know, just the guitars I've come across just don't have that. Have that, Brett says, was road worn, nitro over polyureth, poly finish. I don't know if it was or not. I always thought it was just nitro, but I, I don't know. I mean, I, I can't imagine it was, you know, it's one of those things. I would imagine they wouldn't have to because they would. They would just, you know, shoot it with nitro so they could sand off, you know, sand spots. Because they definitely had templates. Because the road warrants, if you had, if you were. I was a Fender dealer at the time, so as a Fender dealer and selling quite a bit of road warrants, you get them everyone. You would never want to put multiples up on the wall because they were scratched in the same spots. They were templated out for sure. If you, if you were lucky, if you were lucky, a few would be off from each other, but they're always the same wear patterns everywhere. So they were very templated. So on the wall that made them look cheesy. Like if somebody walked in and you had two, you know, Strats with the same scratch in the same places. It did not, it did not. Didn't do well. It didn't make people feel like it was part of the. So Wiz Dog. Whiz dog. That's. That's a great name. Says, are you getting rid of your R9? I will. Once I, you know, the. I have a. I have a, A plethora of guitars. I offered them up. I offer them up to the patrons first. So it's. It goes top tier patrons, mid tier, low tier, and then. And then it goes out to the, the reverb universe in order. And the main reason is, is because I can give them a little bit of a discount and I don't charge you know, I don't have to charge fees because we do like a person to person transaction. No sales tax because I don't have to collect sales tax. And then, and then no fees because, you know, I just have you, you know, pay me directly. And I, I, I do them in rounds, if that makes sense. So I just clear out rounds. So I got rid of a few guitars and a couple amps and then I present this how I do it. I present them the whole list. And then when I sell two or three guitars and two, three amps, it's about my week. It's like, oh yeah, I can ship those out this week. So we'll ship out a couple things and, and, and do it. But yeah, they are nines on the chopping block. I don't need it. I have, I got rid of, I told you guys last week, I got rid of the Gibson light Les Paul that I love. I like my gold top. That's my guitar. And then I have a, this. Let me show you. It's not even guitar as a Wii. Where is, where is it at? It is somewhere in this room. Sure you guys can still hear? Can you guys hear me? I don't even know how far the mics can even hear me talking. All right, so here's the guitar I, I, I, I have that I'm not, that I'm keeping. This is what I got in replace of my R9. So what this is, is, you know, it's funny. You're gonna get double guitar of the week because this story I gotta tell you is funny as hell. And let me cue this up because if I don't do this, you're not gonna believe what the story on this guitar. Okay, so the story on this guitar, I'm not, I, I did play this for you at one of the weeks where I was demoing something. Maybe if you want an actual demo, I'll do guitar the week of this next week. But let me, let me share the story of this guitar and the guitar itself. And then the funny thing that somebody tried to, somebody tried to punk me and it didn't. It backfired on them. Okay, so here's the story with this, Let me, let me pull this up. So this guitar is a 2014. So in 2014. Okay, go back here. There we go. In 2014, I wanted this guitar, this exact one. Like not this, you know, but this, this model. This was a shot a Chicago Music Exchange limited edition run. So if you guys have heard me for talking about for years, I've Been really wanting an ro, which is a 1960s, you know, kind of vintage guitar. So it's got the finish plate in the back. Right. But I really wanted this one. I love this top. This is the top I like. Which looks like my R9. Right? Right. This has the neck that's not super thin, like the 60s, but it's not chunky. So it's in between. So it's kind of like a 60s, but it's a little bit thicker, which is what I love. Which is what that guitar has. It's like the magic neck for me. Like I said, it's not right. This guitar is 7lbs 4oz. It's. It's like. It almost feels like that. Parker, I want to make sure that I'm going to give you the exact weight. I said that. And I'm like thinking back in memory going, is that the exact weight? It is. Exactly. Hold on. I'm going to give you 7lbs 4oz. I knew it. I was right. Look at that. Should trust myself better. Okay. 7 pounds 4 ounces. If you ever had a play to 7 pound 4 ounce Les Paul. It's amazing, right? And it plays great and it sounds great and it's. It's fantastic. So what happened was in 2014 this guitar came out. And in 2014 I obviously owned a store. And what happened was, is I wanted it. It was super expensive. I just couldn't justify it. And I go, but I couldn't. I couldn't get up the cash, right? I couldn't get up the money. I was like trying to figure it out. And they sold out. Chicago Music Exchange sold out. So fast forward late last year, I was looking around, as you do, always out there looking, and I found one used. And it's a 2014 Chicago Music Exchange Limited Edition RO. That's weight relief. That's the big deal. It's weight relieved, right? And that's £7 4 ounces. And I bought it. Now this is why the story's funny. I'm trying to think of the order. How do I want to tell you guys? Do I want to tell you the punchline at the end first? I think, okay, I think I'm going to tell you the story in out of order because in other words, I'm going to cue you on the joke. So when I say I bought the Chicago Music Exchange, I'm sorry, Music Zoo. I don't know why I'm saying Chicago Music Exchange. I'm sorry, Music Zoo. It was Music Zoo. So it was a Music Zoo. Limited edition run, 2014 Gibson Custom Shop Benchmark 60s Les Paul Chamber, 10th anniversary Electric Lemon Burst. Right? And they have the retail price on the sheet, which back then was crazy, right? But of course, I bought this used. Okay, so here's why the story's funny. Ready? Okay, so here's the. I bought it. And the. This is the original ad for the guitar. But more importantly. Ready? This is the guitar from that ad. So if you look here, this way, you'll see this little mark in the wood. See that little mark? It's not a scratch. It's just a mark. You know, it's just part of the grain pattern. Look at that wood. Okay, go there. Look. There you go. Look at that. You see the mark? This is the actual one from the ad. So it's not just part of the limited run. It's the one that they highlighted. That wasn't important to me in the story, by the way. That wasn't anything I cared about. Just obviously I was like, oh, that's the guitar. I said. I go, hey. So the guy listed it, and of course, I did what I always do. I reached out to him and said, hey, you know, can we. Can we do some horse trading? Can we make a deal here? We made a deal. And the seller was very nice. And he told me mint condition. It's like, look, look, it looks brand new, right? Some collector had it, didn't want to play it, going to play the hell out of it. And anyways, here's why the story's funny. So I have a friend, he's still my friend, so he's my friend. And he's a vintage collector and seller, okay? For a living. That's what he does for a living. And so when I got it, I was super excited. So I took it to my friend, not the vintage collector, my other friend, to show him, hey, look, I know you Love Les Paul's 7 pounds, 4 ounces, right? Look, if you get a light Les Paul, it's like a miracle, right? You're like, it's a unicorn guitar. You want to show people. Like, look at this, right? And by the way, my friend that I'm showing to you, he doesn't care because he loves Les Paul's and he likes that they're heavy. He doesn't care that they're. That they're light or not. But I was excited when I was showing it to him, okay? And I. I'm going to use this as this. This prop is going to be. This prop is going to be my phone because it's an important story. So I'm telling my buddy. I'm like, hey, man, look at this guitar. And he's checking it out, and he's really cool. And then my other buddy, who's a vintage guitar collector, literally, like, I said, he's millions of dollars. He's bought and sold in vintage guitars. He goes, let me see it. I said, okay, hand it to him. And he decides to punk me. But what he doesn't know. Here's the important part of the story. Here's what he doesn't know. One, I'm pretty savvy. I know when I'm looking at a fake guitar or not. But, hey, look, anybody can be scammed or tricked. But here's what's funny. He doesn't know. Not only is, though, I know it's real. It's this guitar, right? And by the way, I have all the paperwork. Like, I have the. The price sheets. I have, like, literally, I have, like, look, I have all of this paperwork, everything. The original receipts. I have everything that comes with it, including, you know, so, okay, this is important to the story. So I have everything right? Now, he doesn't know where I bought it. I didn't say, like, oh, I bought it off a guy off Reverb. Because I did, right? He just knows that I'm Phil McKnight YouTube extraordinaire. This is important part of the story. He just knows that I know people. Like, he knows I'm not like, you know, like. But he. So my vintage friend looks at it, and he goes, phil, it's fake. And I go, what? Now, keep in mind, I know it's not fake because I'm like, literally, I've seen the ad. This is the one from the ad. And I'm like, he's gotta be messing. My brain goes, he's gotta be messing with me, right? He's gotta be, right? Because he's being serious. Like. And I kind of. He goes, yeah, dude, seriously, this is fake. And I go, this is what I do. I grab my phone and I go, are you. Are you serious? Right? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, I do this on my phone. And I go, well, I know the CEO of Guitar center, and I bought it from Guitar center, which, by the way, I haven't met him yet. And I go, yeah, Gabe, dude, you guys sold me a fake. And this is what happened the whole time I'm talking, right? So keep in mind, the whole time, I'm like, hey, you guys sold me a fake Les Paul, while I'm doing that, he's going, phil. Phil. No, Phil, get off the phone. Phil. And I'm like, yeah. No, yeah, it's fake. Yeah, you guys. You guys said it was real. I spent a fortune. This is fake. Like, I gotta have to tell the audience. And he's like, phil. Phil. He's like, phil, get off the phone. And then I started laughing, like I'm doing now. I lost it. I lost. I wish I could have kept it going. I wanted to keep it going so bad. And I was like. I'm like. I go, I'm not on the phone with anybody. I go. I go, I bought it from a guy in Reverb. I go, he had. He had the original paperwork, including the ad. This. It was the one from the ad. And he's like, yeah. He goes, I just want to upset you. And I said, yeah. So I said, he's like, you're a dick. And then he's like, did you really call the CEO of Guitar Center? I'm like, no, I haven't even met him yet. Like, I'm supposed to do a podcast with him. But I go, so, yeah, that was fun. So this. So I got the guitar. So, anyways, back to the question, which is where we've totally went off the rails, which is the R9. I love the R9. And so, you know, the R9's light. It's like eight and a half pounds. I mean, it's super light, if that's a factor that you care about. And it's amazing. And the neck is not as chunky on that R9 as normal R9s, but, I mean, come on. I had to. And so at this point, here's my thought process. Like, look, like I said, you can't own everything. Where would you put it? Right? Come on. I got the classic that I bought, and I got this. And that's two Les Pauls. And that's, you know. Come on. That's all I needed, you know, this ashtray and a thermos and these two Les Pauls. If you think about it, that's all you really need. And. And so. But, yeah, that was good. It was good. And by the way. By the way, there was a part of me because I was, like, pulling. I was doing the bluff back. So I'm like, he's bluffing, right? Like, I'm like, oh, he's bluffing. Because. Because I'm like, I'm doing this back, and I just got it. Like, I was like, right on the joke, right? I'M like, oh, yeah. And. But the whole time I'm fake talking and he's yelling. I'm like, also trying to wait it out because you're trying to figure out how long is too long to let him off the hook. And also, what if this is fake? Right? But when he kept. But as soon as he said, by the way. So you know, okay, just for the last part of the story. That's important. When I said, you sold me a fake and he said, Phil. Like that. He's like, phil, Phil. As soon as he said it like that, I was like, oh, yeah, he was faking. Like, I knew because he was. You could. He had that tone that it just like echoing in the room, like, don't. Don't do what you're doing. Stop. Right? And yeah. So anyways, that's my Les Paul's and that's the R9. If you're interested in the R9. I'm interested in selling it, unfortunately. It's really good one. And I'm not eager to blow it out. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not. I don't ask top dollar for anything. I'm always very reasonable. But I'm not interested in like blowing it out, if that makes any sense. Because I can wait. And I've told you guys. You guys asked earlier about the market. Where's the market at? Being soft or whatever. Yeah, the market's soft. So you just wait. If you. If you. You know, if you need money, you need money. And if you don't, you just wait. So that's how it goes. We'll see how much more these stupid cameras keep costing me. I keep going to have to buy. I think one more. We'll see how that goes. Let's do. Hold on. We got one last. Two last ones and then we'll finish up the show. You guys can go play guitar this weekend and have fun. Maybe spend some time with somebody you care about on Valentine's Day. That would be a nice. This is Mr. S. Says hey before his signature. Reverend Reverend's Reeves garbles. 10 machine. 10 machine. And. And with Bowie. David Bowie. He was in the Cure too. He did. I knew he did David Bowie. That's where I know him from. He said played Parker. Yeah, of course. Reef garbles. Yeah, of course. And Steinbergers, etc. Part because they didn't have famous players associated with them. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Parker guitars for me, I've said this before. Dave Navarro is why I have a White one. That's why I always like the white one. I just like Dave Navarro, when he had the white one. It was like. I don't know. It just, like, it popped. It was, like, so crazy to me. To me, I said, DeLorean, that's actually not a good analogy. The Parker guitars remind me like. Like, I'm not kidding, if. If when I was a kid, you know, I had friends and they had posters in the room of, like, a red Lamborghini or a white Lamborghini. Like, that's. Or a yellow Lamborghini that. Like. I think that's, like, what you always remember seeing, right? That quintessential 80s Lamborghini was either bright canary yellow, bright red, or white. And, you know, the Parker guitars, to me, even though they're kind of an early 90s, not so much an 80s thing, this is like a Lamborghini to me. That era Lamborghini, right? Like I said. I said DeLorean because of the time frame, but I think of that. So to me, like, the Parkers, although I love the green one, I have and I love the natural one stuff, to me, it's like, white, red, yellow. Like, this is a Lamborghini. Like, this is the kind of guitar. What I like about it is this is the kind of guitar that you show it to pretty much anybody. And I mean anybody. Like, no. Somebody who's never even played guitar ever. You show it to them, and they don't think like, oh, is that a. Like, is that a new guitar? They think immediately, like, oh, is that old? Like, they can tell. And it's funny to me to think that this is old now. Like, they look at this like you would look at a vintage Strat or a vintage Les Paul. They. They think immediately, this has to be from the 80s, right? There's no way somebody's making this now, right? So that's why I want to. I'd love to have red, but this was the opportunity of a lifetime for me. So since I was telling the story about this guitar, I should tell you the last part of the story. How I got this guitar was amazing. So my buddy Matt, who's a fantastic person just. And he's the reason I do YouTube, think about that. This is actually a true story. He used to come in my store and he would ask me questions, and then he would ask me. He would. He would come back and he'd ask me more questions. And then one day he's like, can I just film you on my phone? So I can remember, because he was Trying to remember everything I was telling him. And he would just film me on his phone and he'd go home. And then one day, because he lived on the other side of town, like it was a 40 minute to an hour drive, he was like, hey, I gotta stop by. Can I ask you a question? He was always very, very polite. He's super polite, super intelligent, super polite guy. And he would say, hey, can I come ask you a question? I go, you know, I can just film it and send it to you. So I would film it and send it to him on my phone and I started posting them on Facebook because you know why? Because I didn't know how to send the file to him. So I like, I uploaded to Facebook and then I send the Facebook link and I put it on the. You know, I don't know if it was my personal Facebook or the store's Facebook. And then one day, 300 people said. Facebook said 300 people watched. And I was like, 300 people? I don't even know 300 people. Like, I don't even have three friends, much less 300 of them. I didn't really say that, but. And I was like, that's crazy. And then, funny, funny. This is true. Some guy said one day, just some random guy said, hey, could you take those Facebook videos and could you put them on YouTube? Because I want to download them. And I was like, oh, and I can't download the Facebook ones. And I'm like, sure. So I started putting one face on YouTube. And then next thing I know, I was doing YouTube. So what happened with Matt one day is he had this guitar, he's had it for years, and he just didn't want anymore. And he said, hey, I want to sell my white Parker. And I said, okay. And this is years ago, by the way. So I want to say 2019 sounds right. It was pre pandemic. So 2019 could have been 2018 when I bought this from. I can't remember exactly, but it was, you know, five years ago. He said, hey, will you set up my guitar? And he goes, I want to sell it. And I said, yeah. And he knows that, you know, obviously I did a lot of work on Parker's. So he brought it to me and I went through it and I dialed it in, I set it up and. And I said, it's a beautiful guitar because it's got the original case. And I. He's like, yeah. And. And he said, what do you think I should sell it for? And I said, well, you know, I don't know, back then, I mean, they were going for like 2,500 at the time, you know. You know, probably 2000 to 2000 to 2500 is what people were getting for these. Now, people ask ridiculous prices, but to find ones that aren't messed up. This one's mint. It's very hard, and it's very tricky. But anyways, and what happened was. He goes. I said, yeah, it's beautiful. I said, man, if I had the money, I'd buy it, because I. And I. He's like, well, I'll wait. And I said, no, no. I mean, I don't. I don't mean physically I don't have the money. I mean, I don't have a justification to buy it, is what I'm trying to say. I had a. A brown one, a mahogany one. And I said, I'd rather have the white one. And I said, but, you know, I just can't justify it. And he's like, yeah. He goes, well, what would you pay me for it? And I said, I mean, look, it's worth two grand. That's what it's worth. I said, it's worth that. You probably get 25. You wait, I said. I said, but, I mean, you know, I just can't justify two grand, you know, for a guitar. I just know I'm not going to play a lot of. It's just, you know, it's not a. It's not a need. And then he said. He goes, well, I'm gonna sell my. My White Falcon. He had a White Falcon as well, Gretch. So the deal we made. So you guys know the deal we made is I didn't charge him for the setup, obviously, or anything like that. I set up the White Falcon, including. I had to put the original bridge back on the White Falcon and do some other stuff to it, which is fine. And then I sold the White Falcon for him. So I said, well, I can sell that White Falcon for you. I can sell both these. I can help you sell them. And then I said, but anyways, I sold the white fountain form, and he sold this to me for 1200 bucks. Then they make you sick. Now they hear that number. So what's great about those is sometimes, if you notice, I have stories like that. Like that. Like, wow, look at the price they gave me. But what's great about getting a price like that is I don't have any desire to really get rid of this. I was thinking about selling it a few months ago because, believe it or not, one another White one came up like this. That was just a little bit different that I was like, maybe that's the way I want to go, but I don't know. It's fantastic. But the problem is, is now they're worth so much money, I just kind of feel like if I'm going to sell it, I'll just sell it back to him. But. Crazy, crazy to think. It's just weird to me to hear that those numbers now at the time. So, you know, I was thinking like, you know, you know, he was probably going to cost him a couple hundred bucks in labor for the two guitars. And. And, you know, so I was like, okay, that's like fourteen, fifteen hundred dollars. And then, you know, and then he gives me a deal. But now it's just like crazy to think that. But. But anyways. But also on a side note, I bought him dinner a couple times and maybe that. I don't think that matters. Just amazing deal. So. So it's great guitar. Okay, on that note, we'll call it. I want to thank you all for hanging out and making it to the end. And. And those that are still subscribed, thank you for that. And. And so I hope you guys look forward to the deep dives next week. The new system. If you guys haven't seen the new system, the. The. If you haven't seen it, the new Ibanez AZ is the closest video we have of the new system that still is not everything online and working. But if you look at the new clarity of the cameras, that's the new cameras. But there's a lot of stuff missing from the videos that's going to be in the videos going forward. But the. It's really cool. And I want to thank you all for supporting the channel because all the money I make on YouTube goes to cameras. I'm just a little bitter. I just want to say on the last note, just because I. I feel bad because I keep bringing this up, but I'm like, you know, cameras, we talk about guitars being expensive. Geez, Louise, I had no idea until I started buying cameras. I had a lot of nice cameras over the years for the channel, but, you know, we wanted to up the game. And cameras, they never told me, it's the cameras. It's the lenses, the lenses, and power supplies. One camera's power supply was 400, $540. I want you to permeate on that. Next time you get upset about a $300 pedal, a plastic power supply, $541 for one camera. I was literally going to lose my mind. But I hope you guys enjoy the new videos. I by the way, they I think they look great, but also they we're getting more content out. As you know, this is the, this is the last two weeks, the first time we were able to put out two deep dives in a week. So obviously it's working. So thank you guys for that. As always, enjoy your Valentine's Day weekend. Play some guitar, have some fun, maybe spend some time with someone you love. And until next Friday, Know youw Gear the Know youw Gear Podcast Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers.