This Company’s Reaction To My review Is Interesting

Summary

Know Your Gear Podcast – Ep. "This Company’s Reaction To My Review Is Interesting"

Host: Phillip McKnight
Date: August 8, 2026
Main Theme:
Phillip discusses his recent review of the Enya Inspire Pro guitar, the company’s surprisingly positive and constructive response to his critiques, and broader themes concerning honest gear reviews, proprietary technology in instruments, and the lasting qualities of guitars. The episode also blends in listener Q&A, personal gear stories, and a notable pedal shootout, all while maintaining Phil's personable and humorous tone.

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Episode Overview

Phillip kicks off with the usual mix of personal anecdotes and listener questions, ranging from preferred guitar action, experiences with specific brands, and thoughts on proprietary technology. The major content revolves around the Enya Inspire Pro review, the company's reaction, and the unexpected positive aftermath – including Enya gifting the guitar and Phil deciding to give it away to his listeners. Throughout, Phil weaves in reflections on reviewing ethics, guitar technology, and the allure of affordable instruments.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Guitar Preferences & Gear Insights

• Lowest Action Preference (06:30):
  Phil prefers guitar action around 1.75 mm at the 12th fret, noting that most manufacturers ship at 2 mm. He emphasizes that every guitar is unique and that action should serve sound/tone rather than playability alone.

  “I used to think all my guitars needed the strings on the deck, super low action… and then because I realized I'm not even that kind of a player…”
  — Phil (07:10)

• On Warwick Rock Bass (12:45):
  Shares an in-depth story about buying a Warwick bass when starting his family, including the emotional importance, his first encounter with a more affordable Rock Bass line, and eventual realization of varying quality within that series.
• Why Buy $500–$900 Guitars If You Own High-End Ones? (23:30):
  Discusses the appeal of more affordable guitars: they can be fun, less stressful gig choices, or just inspire in different ways than expensive instruments.

  “Not my most expensive guitars are my favorite. That's not how it seems to work for me...”
  — Phil (27:10)

2. Proprietary Parts & Technology in Instruments

• Phil’s Frustration with Proprietary Power Supplies (31:15):
  Recounts a situation where a Fishman amp’s proprietary plug delayed a video project. He highlights the value of universal parts:

  “I love it when companies go to universal things. I like it now that USB C is so prominent everywhere...”
  — Phil (36:30)

• Caution About Tech-Heavy Guitars (1:14:22):
  Phil restates his concerns about building complex, failure-prone, or proprietary technology into guitars, especially at high price points:

  “When you're adding technology to a guitar… you're now shortening the lifespan… you're adding problems to the guitar that may exist later, like technology problems...”
  — Phil (1:22:00)

3. The Enya Inspire Pro Review Saga

• Initial Review & Bias (1:04:22):
  Agrees to review the Enya Inspire Pro for his wife Shauna, despite a natural bias against “tech in guitars.” He’s always publicly said he dislikes the idea of speakers/electronics built-in when portable amps can do the job more flexibly.
• The Company’s Response (1:15:10):
  After Phil publishes a mixed review noting issues like weight and a persistent hissing sound, Enya responds constructively, thanking him for the feedback and explaining how the hiss could be lessened with the app’s noise gate. Phil points out that needing an app for core functions is off-putting.

  “If you have to adjust the app just to get something to sound okay, that's probably not where you should start.”
  — Phil (1:18:10)

• Gift (and Giveaway!) (1:23:00):
  Enya gifts Phil and Shauna the guitar and offers to send a lighter model as well. Shauna suggests giving away the Enya Inspire Pro so it doesn’t go unused. Phil outlines how to enter the giveaway (US shipping only).
• Transparency on Review Honesty & Industry Reactions (1:25:30):
  Phil contrasts Enya’s gracious response to past brands’ blacklisting or even public attacks when faced with negative reviews. He highlights the rarity and professionalism of Enya’s approach.
• Clarifies Viewer Critique vs. Bias (1:37:50):
  Addresses a viewer calling Phil a hypocrite for not critiquing similar technology in acoustic guitars—explains that while he’s wary of any built-in tech, there’s nuance depending on application and historical context.

4. Deeper Gear Philosophy

• Forever Guitars: Myth or Math? (1:45:40):
  Phil dispels the belief that a “forever guitar” can be mathematically chosen by specs or cost; instead, it’s about bonding over time and play hours.

  “I've now had my hands on… thousands… of guitars… yet… I'm still sticking to certain guitars. It's not because they're better… you bond with it. It becomes part of you.”
  — Phil (1:49:10)

• Why Buying Used Makes More Sense Now (2:28:15):
  With high new prices and “buy before you try” becoming common, Phil underscores the importance of robust return policies and the buying/selling ecosystem as key for modern players.

5. Listener Q&A Highlights

• Shipping Guitars: Loosen Strings? (1:58:20):
  Acoustic guitars should be detuned when shipped; electrics generally do not need to be.
• Electric vs. Acoustic Shipping Practices (2:00:58):
  Phil draws from manufacturer contacts, confirming most electrics ship in tune; acoustics ship detuned.
• Favorite Compressor for Bass (2:31:50):
  Phil doesn’t seek “bass-only” compressors; any good quality comp works (especially likes MXR and Keeley). Uses bass compressors less now since not gigging loud.

6. Company Resurrection: Who Would Phil Bring Back?

• Parker Guitars… or G&L? (2:10:00):
  Although Parker would be the expected answer, Phil instead champions reimagining G&L as a boutique alternative to Fender.

  “G&L has as much right to be revered the same way SIR is… You just have to make a better guitar.”
  — Phil (2:15:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Reviews and Objectivity
  “I gave an honest assessment. They don't agree with everything I said… Some companies look at the feedback; some… go to extremely different angles on this… I have a list that's getting so long, companies that not only won’t work with me anymore after a video… gone out of their way to blackball me… but I'd also like to point out… I've also been publicly attacked…”
  — Phil (1:25:30)
• On Proprietary Parts
  “I don't like it when companies lock us down on proprietary stuff. I told you my AUX, I still love my AUX box. But one of my biggest complaints is that proprietary plug on the back…”
  — Phil (36:50)
• On the Perils of Tech in Guitars
  “If Inya made this guitar… just as an instrument, and the tech [was] external… I'd buy it. It can't be like a thousand dollars. It's got to be realistic.”
  — Phil (2:36:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|:-----------:| | Lowest Action, Tone Over Playability | 06:30 | | Warwick Rock Bass Story | 12:45 | | Why Cheap Guitars Appeal Even With High-End | 23:30 | | Rant on Proprietary Power Supplies | 31:15 | | Inya Inspire Pro Review Recap & Bias | 1:04:22 | | Company’s Response to Critical Review | 1:15:10 | | Why App-Dependency Frustrates Phil | 1:18:10 | | Enya Guitar Giveaway Details | 1:23:00 | | Honest Reviews’ Industry Aftermath | 1:25:30 | | Forever Guitars Fallacy | 1:45:40 | | Electric vs. Acoustic Shipping Detuning | 1:58:20 | | Company Resurrection: Why G&L Deserves It | 2:10:00 | | Technology in Guitars—Synergy, Longevity | 2:36:00 | | Used Market Advice, Buy Before You Try Rant | 2:28:15 | | Listener Q&A: Pickup Height, Stringing Advice | 2:52:00 | | This or That – Klon KTR vs Warm Audio Centavo | 2:55:00 | | Pre-Podcast Rituals | 3:12:00 |

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Pedal Shootout: This or That – Klon KTR vs Warm Audio Centavo

Timestamp: 2:55:00
Phil presents a direct AB comparison between the $600 Klon KTR and the $189 Warm Audio Centavo.

• Most listeners (incl. Phil) preferred the KTR for its mid-boost and classic “Klon” texture but found both solid.
• Phil’s insight: “I don't know. I think I'd be happy with either one… sometimes the cheaper pedal wins, sometimes not, but today the KTR is the clear winner.”

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Podcast Rituals & Behind-the-Scenes

Timestamp: 3:12:00
Phil shares his extensive pre-podcast routine—starting mid-week and culminating with technical prep, hydration strategies, and vocal warmup.

“Bands always have weird rituals. For me, it's hours of prep, gym, lots of water, no talking for two hours before, warmups for my voice… The show goes on because it’s 3pm, not because it’s perfect.”
— Phil (3:15:42)

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Closing Thoughts

Phil wraps with gratitude for the viewers and a reminder to enter the Enya Inspire Pro giveaway, reflecting on the importance of genuine feedback in the gear community. He underscores his belief that thoughtful critique—not “shilling” nor baseless negativity—serves both players and companies best.

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How to Enter the Giveaway

• Prize: Enya Inspire Pro SD (purple flake, Seymour Duncan version) — reviewed, fully set up, and signed by Phil (warranty likely voided due to teardown)
• How: Go to knowyourgearpodcast.com, enter your email (US shipping only; forwarding allowed for int’l listeners)
• Caution: Ignore messages from anyone posing as Phil outside of the official email notification

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Final Word:

“I think that was really great… Inya also said not only would they like Shauna to keep the guitar, but… they want to send an Inya Go for her. So we’re getting this guitar into someone’s hands. They deserve the props… When companies take feedback on the chin and come back with ‘thanks’, it matters.”
— Phil (1:30:45)

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the know your gear podcast for July 31st. It's the end of the month. It's the last day. That's it. Tomorrow's August. Can't believe it. August already seems like. Seems like only 12 months ago it was August. Anyways, I hope you guys had a great week. Dad jokes are so stupid. What do we got? I got some early riser questions. I got some stuff to talk about. Let's. Let's. I actually have a couple not serious, but things to talk about, so we'll get into those. Let's go ahead and take an early riser question just to get the flow going. This one comes from Cap and Awesome. Cap and awesome. Cap and awesome says, oh, by the way, since it's capping. Come on. I gotta say it. I went and saw Spider man this week and I highly recommend. It was fantastic. And if you like Spider man, you'll enjoy it. And also, it's one of the few times where I could say I was so happy to go in the theater and see it and not know Some of the. Not spoilers, but some of the, you know, the trailers, eventually they show you too much. Was really great to see a bunch of stuff I just didn't know was going to happen. Took me back like 20 years ago when, you know, when you would watch a movie in the theater and not know every scene that was ever cool in the movie because it was all used as the B roll for the. For the trailer. So fantastic. I definitely say, go watch it this weekend, especially if you like Spider man before you get. Find out Bruce Willis is a ghost. And spoiler alert for that if you don't know what that means. All right, so anyways. Okay, so what else? Okay, this is for Cat. Cap and awesome says, hey, Phil, what is the lowest action you prefer on your own electric guitars? The lowest. I let the guitar decide. You know, I used to just. I used to. Paul Gobert's got a great quote. I love it. I'm going to mess it up a little bit, but you'll get the sense of it. Paul Gilbert said, I used to care about small strings and low action, and now I care about tone. I. And I literally, I'm like, yes, yes. I used to think all my guitars needed the strings on the deck. Super low action. And then because I realized I'm like, I'm not even that kind of a player. What do I care? And so what I did is I experimented over the years trying to find where the guitar sounds the best and what I found for me, and everybody's different from me. When the guitar sounds the best, when it rings the most, when it does the thing that I want it to do the most, I play it more. Even if it's. Even if it's not the easiest to play. It's almost like I'm willing to put in the work on a guitar playing it if it's giving me back something I want to say acoustically but audibly, something I find more pleasing. Now when I'm running high, gain, lots of distortion, and I really can't detect nuances of like string buzz and things like that, maybe I don't care. But generally speaking, I actually run my guitars about 1.75. I feel like I. I feel like if I'm as, you know, if you watch the deep dives, you know, that we didn't set out to find this out, but we definitely, I want to say, proven that 90%. Nine out of 10 manufacturers ship guitars with 2 millimeters off the 12th rat. That's whether they all agreed to this ahead of time or just happening that way. So I feel like I'm gaining the system. If I'm 1.75, I'm like a little below the average. It makes it a little easier to play. I do have guitars that are like. I have a guitar that's 0.25 meters. It's super low, and it plays great. And there's no buzz. It's just a miracle shredder guitar that happens that way. And think of it this way. I was dealing with a guitar yesterday. Actually, it was a Jackson in. In one of my guitars. And it just will not settle at the action that I want it to be at. It just won't. No matter what you do. The frets are level, the neck is straight. Everything's just. It's just for some reason, when I mean this, I don't mean it has dead frets or bad notes, just the magic strum that I like. Sometimes I strum a guitar acoustically and just resonates really nicely. And to get it there, it's just not where I. I would love the action. So it was a little higher than normal. So again, I kind of learned that what makes a guitar so special is that. Is that there it does something. And for some reason, I don't mean a brand, I don't even mean a model. I mean just one guitar. I mean, I just. You just have one guitar. And. And if for all those. That. That say, you know, that, you know, all guitars are the same and it can be made out of plywood, and it doesn't matter. I, I don't, I don't hate that answer. I just. In fact, I envy you. I wish I was mentally there. Whether it's all made up in my head or it's true. I wish I was there with you. But I'll tell you where I'm at when I Every. Almost every guitar that I've ever fell in love with and I thought, this is it. I just need two of these, and I'll buy a second one. And every time, no matter how hard I try, I can't get two identical guitars. Ever. I don't think I, I currently don't own two guitars. Two identical models that play and sound the exact same. It's just, it's just not there. They're close. Close enough if I want to strum it in a YouTube video to prove it. Hey, look, it's the same. I strummed a chord. And then you all go, yeah, it's all the same. But, but the nuances, the thing that matters, they just, they're never the same. There's just something about that. I don't know what it is, but. So to answer your question, I'd say I'd like 1.75 as a general action. He says also, what do you think about War Warwick. Warwick. Warwick. I'm gonna say it that way. Warwick Rock Bases. So War. Warwick. Warwick Rock Base is their import line, Although technically all of them are import line to the United States because they're made in GE or Czech Republic. So Warwick makes a Germany, Czech Republic. And then I think Rock Base is made in China, if I recall. It would make sense to me because of what I know about Warwick in China and stuff. You know, I had. It was one of those things. I, I, I was a little traumatized by Warwick when I was early on. And when I say traumatized, I'm being exaggerated. You know, I'm exaggerating. Okay? But what happened to me is, so when my wife and I had our first child, which we planned, we were like, we're gonna have a child. But when I say you plan it, I don't know if a lot of men will understand this. It's like, hey, let's have a kid. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I love the idea. It's. I liken it to a lot of decisions in life where you're like, I'm for it. And then when they go, okay. You know, it's kind of like hey, I'm gonna join the army. And they're like, cool, take this test. You're accepted. I'm like, oh, I'm accepted. There's a part of you that's like, oh, that's so awesome. And there's a small part. It's like, I wish it wasn't accepted. The same thing when you have a baby, there's a big part of you. They're like, I can't believe how amazing this is. And there's a small part going, oh, my God, what am I gonna do? So I had a moment when we found out that my son was being bored, that I was like, I'm never gonna have any nice stuff again because everything goes to the kids. Which I was not entirely wrong. I mean, daycare and diapers. I always tell people, I'll say this to the day I die, to all you young people out there, do every stupid jerk person that's a parent was like, where do you have to pay for diapers? You know what? I will pay for diapers. No problem. Daycare is what literally costs me. We would just. I don't want to go on a tirade, but just to give you a for instance, at our time in our life, then, like, one of us, I was making, like, I don't know, I feel like a few hundred dollars more a month than the daycare was charging. But that mattered. And same with Shawna. She made a few hundred dollars more than daycare costs. So we had to make the decision to put our son in daycare, even though that meant we made, like, $400 for the month. That's what you made after you paid your daycare. You're like, I made $400 a week. Today's world, I'd probably just be an Uber driver and make my four bucks in the side. You know, side hustle it. But. But back then, it was just. You had to have a real job and, you know, to make money to pay and pay for daycare. So my point is, I was a little nervous. So what did I do? I went to the bass place. That's in. Was at that time. Scottsdale, Arizona, is now in Peoria. And I decided I wanted to buy a Warwick Base. That was my dream base. It was everything I could ever want in my life. It was something I, you know, was like, that was the holy grail of bases at the time. I had an iban, a sound gear, which I love, but I was like, I should get this Warwick Bass. It'll be my last hurrah. Obviously, Sean and I, because we knew we're going to have a child, had a savings account. We had, you know, we've been preparing for this. And I went to the base place and I bought a used Corvette, standard Warwick base. And two funny stories about that base. One, I was so excited to get that and I really felt like I had, like, I don't know, like I said, it just was such a big deal to own such a high end instrument. Even though it was the base model Warwick, and even though it was used and it was on layaway, I still got to own it. And I remember a short time after that two things that always stick in my head. The day my son was walking and walk around the house and I heard this skunk, skunk, skunk. And I'm like, what is that sound? Skunk, skunk, I'll never. It's like slide, kunk. It was like I was like, what is that sound? And I walk, I get up and I walk. I turn the corner and there's my son with his sippy cup, proud to just tell, you know, See, he's so proud. Looked at me like, I was like, man, this is amazing. Dragging my Warwick through the tiles as it slid on the tiles and hit the. To bring me my bass. Because he's like, you want to play your bass? I bought your bass for you. And so that was a moment. So he stuck in my head. The other moment was I was at a guitar center. It was actually the guitar center in Tempe, Arizona, at the old location. And I was sitting there and I was playing and this kid. And I say, kid, I have no reference of the age. I'm just young, young compared to. And I was playing bass as I was. And he came up and he goes, man, you're really good. And I go, oh, thank you. And he goes, what do you play? And I said, I was so happy. Like, I thought, oh, I'm gonna blow this kid's mind. Are you ready? I play a Warwick bass. And he goes, me too. And I'm like, you're like 12. He had a Warwick rock bass. That's when I discovered. He showed me. He's like, oh, yeah, they have one over here. You should try it. They're the best. And it was a Warwick rock bass. And it was like new. It was like half the price of what I paid for a used bass model made in Germany 1. And so I was a little traumatized. Like, oh, man. So anybody can have a Warwick now. It's not even like a big deal. And I played that Warwick and I thought it was amazing and actually like hit me hard like, I can't believe this. And the rock base on top of that was based on the streamer body, which is the premium Warwick bass over the Corvette, so like I could have the premium looking one. And it played great. And so it got in my head that I was like, okay, I'm just gonna get a rock bass, ditch this German stuff and go on my way. And then I got my hands on about three bad Warwick rock basses in a row where they just didn't play great, they didn't sound great. I don't know what it was. The next didn't feel right. It just didn't feel like it. And I don't know if something changed. And then I swore them off. And even though I've been to the Warwick Factory like five times, I think maybe four times. Four or five times. I never try the rock based stuff, so I probably should. It's probably, you know, it's. I mean to me now, especially now when I look at them, they look expensive. But I know the, the Warwick German stuff is crazy priced. But that's my long way of saying, yeah, that's what I think about the Warwick rock bay stuff. I like Warwick as a company. I think they make produce great stuff at all levels. They're one of those companies, they're pretty die hard. I've done some, some stuff for them where they've asked me tons of questions and, and they really, really think things through. Everything is like, you know, they could, they could have me just make content, you know, when I'm around, but instead they just want to pick your brain. And not as a, you know, YouTuber as, not as anything like that, just as a. They know I'm into bass and guitars and I'm probably a good representative of their customer base, which is probably the smartest way to explain that. I'm just a good example of what their customers are probably thinking because we're all, you know, gear freaks. So next up, the next one I want to grab early was Rain and Fire. Rain and Fire. I like Rain of Fire, the movie Rain and Fire, but this is Rain and Fire, Rain and Fire says Phil. Phil. I own a custom war moth. Me too. I said I worked. I worked hard to buy it. And the golden era. Japanese Ibanez. Nice. Okay. Love your guitar. So far they are all anyone can ask for. I could agree with that for sure. Why do I still want five to $900 guitars that are not as nice as those, you know, I don't find it's, it's that easy. I will tell you this. I once, I once I fell in love with a Paul Reed Smith SE guitar. I picked it up and I was like playing it and I was like this is amazing. And at the time I owned the store so of course I had a lot of guitars because I had the store full of guitars. We were up here as dealer, we carry cores. And I remember thinking this guitar was amazing. And it was like $499, okay. And I was like, man, this is so good. And my buddy Joe was standing there and I looked at Joe and I remember this and I said Joe, I'm going to buy this prsse. And he goes, and he's a little sarcastic, a little bit New Yorker and he says yeah, it's a great idea. You should play it while you stare at your expensive one on your wall. And I went yeah, it's kind of silly to buy this one if I have the really nice one, right? And he's like yeah, good point. Except for there's a little bit of a nuance to that. You know, not my most expensive guitars are my favorite. That's not how it seems to work for me. And not the best playing ones are my favorite. I think the only real thing I can tell you is if a guitar has a propensity to not stay in tune, I don't want to take it places, I don't want to chance it. I want to know the guitar that comes out of my gig bag or my case. Especially for me, it's gonna be a gig bag. I wanna know when I pull it out that I can rely on needs to be something I trust wholeheartedly. In fact, every piece of gear that I use that I take anywhere. And now with the YouTube gig for these years, I've put that on steroids. In other words, everything I use is a one shot and go. What I mean by that is one bad time and it's gotta go. And I, I listen to some of you guys tell me like, oh, I tried this thing and it, it didn't work and I'll never use that brand again. And I always, and I don't really relate to that as a, as the hobbyist side of me. It's like eh, you know, if I get this pedal and it shorts out, maybe I'll get another one sometime. It kind of sucks that it did that depends on what it costs and circumstances. But whenever I have to be in front of people, I will not chance, anything. It does not take, you don't get a second chance. And I know that sounds almost hypocritical to be that way, but. And I just don't know how to separate those two things. But what I'm saying is, like, on this podcast, I've owned so much equipment over the years, and the equipment I have now is all 100% here because some other brand failed me. Every brand who's failed on this show, live show, it's gone. It just doesn't take much. I won't say I only gave them one shot. I would give them one or two shots, maybe three. But, you know, I just can't afford to have this stuff go down. So same thing with some gear now. So it's important this stuff matters to me. But if it does or matters, it's important that it works when I'm in front of people. However, without that experience, without the, you know, I'm at a clinic in front of somebody, or I'm on this live show or I'm doing something in a video. A good example. I just recently had a perfect example. Let me, let me share a story that's absolutely true. So Fishman sent me a couple amplifiers. The Fishman Loud Box Micro and the Fishman Loud Box Mini. Okay. And I decided at one point I think I liked the Mini better than the Micro. And I think I got rid of the Micro. I can't remember which one it was. I don't remember the order of this happened. But then I changed my mind again, as you do sometimes, and I decided I liked the Micro. I liked having the small acoustic amplifier. So I would take it downstairs. I would have it in the front room. In fact, Shauna left town for the weekend. I would have the Micro in the front room or the family room, and I would play my guitar through that and with a looper pedal. And I loved it. And it is the only one of the Fishman amp series that doesn't have a standard plug. It has a special 24 volt, like 2.5amp plug in the back. And. Which is problematic, and here's why. Because all of the lights in this room use 16 volt power sources that look identical to it. And I have a lot of lights. There's probably 30 or 40 lights between all the studios and stuff. So what happened was I lost the power supply for this and I was doing a video. I can't remember if it was for Taylor or Martin or Yamaha or somebody. I was doing a video for somebody and I couldn't find the power supply for this amp. And it was driving me crazy. And I'm looking all day and I had to delay the video for a day. And then I delayed the video for another day. Two days delayed and I can't find it. And I said, screw this. I went online and I ordered. I'll show you right now. I ordered this loud box from Guitar center, okay? And so that's the one I got. Now has the typical power plug in the back. This is an overkill amp. This is a four or five times the cost of the small one. And my buddy came over and he was talking about getting an acoustic amp. I said, hey, I have this small one and you can have it. It doesn't have a power supply, but you can buy one on Amazon. He actually bought one straight from Fishman, so I'm assuming he made like 25 bucks. But anyways, here's my point with that. Because it has a proprietary plug and I couldn't find it, there's no second chances of that. It cost me two days of time looking for it and delaying a video. And so sometimes, as silly as that is with the decisions, I can't trust it for a video. So it's not going to be here for that. However, if I was just a hobbyist, you know, and I wasn't going to make a video for a company and there wasn't time and money on the line, I think I would have just rebought that power supply again and went on my way. But. And that's just what I'm saying. So I guess to answer your question, why you want cheaper guitars, even having nice ones, it's because, you know, the nice ones are great for recording, for travel, for, you know, touring, for playing in front of people. Inexpensive guitars when it really doesn't matter and it's not as good, it's fun to play them. And there's that some of the things that matter don't matter. What I mean by that is tuning stability. I have a couple guitars on this wall that are not the best in tuning stability. And I have a couple guitars on this wall that are bulletproof when you pick them up. And so, yeah, Glenn says, hey, Phil, what are we supposed to do with proprietary parts we can't find easily? You know, I hate it. I love it when companies go to universal things. I like it now that USB C is so prominent everywhere. I like it when, you know, yes, I have a big hang up on that because, like, you guys, I mean, I'm always. I probably would have never been a Mac user ever again. I bought a weird year, I think in 2019, I bought a MacBook Pro. And I was. I was. That was the year I was traveling the most. It was right before COVID And that was the year that Matt came up with the ingenious idea to only have USBC ports on the side and there was no other thing. So you had to buy this dongle with all these things. And every. It feels like not every time, but so many times I was somewhere in a hotel and then, oh, the dongle's not here. Oh, I left it at the other place. Oh, I left it at the event. Oh, I left it at home. And. And I'd have to order one and have it overnighted. And I was just done. And then luckily Apple went back to the normal thing where you can actually have an SD card slot and stuff. So. Yeah, I don't like it when companies lock us down on proprietary stuff. I told you my aux, I still love my AUX box. But one of my biggest complaints is that proprietary plug on the back, which is why even though I see tons of artists use them on stages, I would never take it out on a stage or anywhere. I don't trust it. I don't trust that I could lose the power supply and. And I don't trust the only way I can update it is with a tablet on wifi. That's just too. Too many things. So, yep, too much. Okay, let's. We got some more subjects. Let's. Let's talk about something that happened this week. So if you guys didn't see, I did a video this week. It went over kind of interestingly. So here's what happened. So the company has reacted to my video, and I want to talk about their reaction to the video. So obviously, if you hadn't seen it in your reached out as they do every time. So I just be up front in your reaches out every time there's a product to me. So they pretty much hit, I think, all the YouTube channels. And so obviously this channel is large enough. It's just getting hit every time as well. They hit me up. I always say no. Sometimes I don't even get to respond. But most of the time, I always tell them, like, thanks, but no thanks, not interested. And in this particular case, I tell the story on the. On the video. In this case, Shawna's looking for a guitar right now. She's trying to find something that's a little special for herself to play guitar. She's been playing guitar More lately, she can play ukulele and guitar a little bit. And it's funny, somebody put a comment in the videos like, phil doesn't let her borrow his guitars. She can take any guitar. In fact, I probably have six guitars on loan to my friends right now. I generally have guitars. I never have my whole collection of guitars here anyways. But that's not the issue she has. Her fear is, and this. Want to be very clear about this, because I've talked to her about it, is not that she'll have one of my guitars and I'll want to play it and then she'll be like, oh, no. It's that she's worried that if she grabs one of the guitars and I'm making a video or something and I can't find it, you know, that's a hindrance on us as a. As content creators, right? So. So she doesn't, you know, she doesn't want anything that stop my workflow. So she, you know, generally speaking, just like, so, you know, just. Just so you guys know, we have duplicate tools. Like we. Every tool you see that I have, like a drill and stuff like that. She has her own set of that stu because she doesn't want to borrow any tools for my shop. Since I could go in there and start filming, go to make a tool, and then if I don't have a tool, I have to stop filming, go back, come back, you know, start filming again, edit that part. So that's what's going on. So she wants her own guitar and she saw the inion. She thought this might be the way to go. So if you guys, I'll give you the snapshot. You don't have to necessarily watch the video, but the snapshot is that I'm not a big fan of that technology. I once said here on the podcast, I don't think you should put speakers in guitars. It's not something. I think it's an interesting thing for me, but I can understand why she was interested in it. So I said yes to Inya. Go ahead and send it out. My job was only to assess the guitar like I normally do in a deep dive and generally just give you some insights on it. And one of the things I wanted to be upfront about, not because I hated it or was upset about it, it's because I've been so public saying, I really don't think technology like that belongs in guitars. It's not something that I'm excited about because here's why. Because like I said, all the technology that's in the guitar can easily be. Is in an amplifier too. You can get a battery powered amp with a loop and all the effects and everything that guitar has and just take that with you. If that's. That's what I would do. I'm not saying you should do that. I'm saying I would do that. And so assess the guitar. Now, one of the things that happened in the video was I mentioned that she thought it was a little heavy. It's a little heavy. It was 8lb ish, not super heavy, but it feels heavier than it is. But the main concern was it made a hissing noise. So they reached out and they wanted to respond. I'm going to tell you their response and what happened with this. It's pretty long, so I'm going to paraphrase some things. I hope you don't mind. I want to get to the hissing thing they said. Regarding the hissing sound you mentioned. This is actually. This can actually be improved by adjusting the noise gate in the app. Now, not everything that's in the video is disclosed to you guys. So for instance, the video is. The original video is an hour and 50 minutes long. It was edited down to 21 minutes. So you're gonna miss. There's a lot of information missing in the video. One of them is me using the app because I had to use the app to. I did that. I increased the noise gate. I feel like the more I increase the noise gate, the more I got that more high end pitch sound. Even though it got rid of the hiss. That's where the high end pitch sound was happening. And also to be clear, so we all know somebody mentioned my lapel mics may be interfering. That sound happened whether I had the lapel mics on because we were playing the guitar for weeks before I did the video in the first place. Okay. But my problem with that is, uh, so to Inya, my response to that, so you guys know is thank you for that information. But also my argument would always be, and because they asked for this feedback, this is the important part is that if you have to adjust the app just to get something to sound okay, that's probably not where you should start. Okay. It's not that I know you guys know I have a thing. I don't like apps, but I do use apps every day. Like I said, I have about 10 apps that I use daily. It's not that I don't use apps, it's just I think apps. Perfect example. I finally came up with the perfect analogy of why some Apps bug me. Here's a clip on tuner. This tuner goes on my headstock, on my guitar. You clip it on, you turn it on, it turns on, and then you hit a note and it shows you what note you're playing and you tune your guitar. There's an app on my phone that also tunes my guitar. I think those are great. If you made an app where you had a device like this, but no screen that clipped on my headstock and then I would have to sync it to the app to see the screen on my app, I would call that stupid because that adds a thing I didn't need. Say, I already have something that does something, and I already have something that does something. I don't need two things that just do the same thing as one. So when I complain about apps, I want you to be clear. That's what I'm complaining about. Apps, apps that insert themselves into a situation that they don't need to be there just because companies want to get data or have info, you know, whatever. But back to Inya. So that was my thing. So I want to tell you what they ended up saying. They actually thanked me for the feedback, which is very polite of them. They said that it was very constructive and that they are passing the information on to the R and D team. My take on that is that there are. Since the guitar has actually not officially been shipping to customers, I think they're going to try and see if they can fix that noise is what I get from this before it actually lands and anybody has to deal with it. So I'm glad that me pointing that out was something to focus on. They also wanted me to know that since I said that, basically I. I'm going to reach out to them and send the guitar back and maybe we'll get an Inya Go guitar, which is a guitar reviewed three years ago. And I absolutely love it for $200. And maybe that's something Shaa will enjoy. They told me two things. They want me to keep this guitar. They would like Shawna to keep the Enya Pro guitar, which is a $900 guitar, as a gift. They said, hey, it's a gift. Here you go. Please keep it. And they would like us to. They would like to send us the. In you go. And the reason why I wanted to share this with you is for one reason, one reason only. You know, somebody asked me once, why would a company ship you a guitar for review when it's negative? And I always, I say, I don't know. I just Know that most of them don't. I have a list that's getting so long after all the years, and I don't want to be totally cruel about it because I have been doing this for a long time. I have a list that's pretty long of companies that not only won't work with me anymore after a video, I've had a couple, let's just say two just to keep it safe. Two that have gone out of their way to blackball me on every way they can to even get access to guitars, you know, so some companies. But I'd also like to point out, because it's important. I've also been publicly attacked a few times by companies. And the only thing that still makes me laugh this day, not a single one of those companies, I think actually like, paid me or gave me product for the video. It was a video I did independently, and they got mad. So just to say. To say that companies go to extremely different angles on this. Some companies look at the feedback. The reality is this. They sent the guitar. I gave an honest assessment. They don't agree with everything I said. They think the guitar sounds great. I thought the guitar sounded great, too. In fact, I think the guitar plays great, and I thought it sounded really great. In fact, my critiques are very small in that video. So the point of this is I talked to Shauna and I came up with an idea, a fix, if you will. Since my only critique of the guitar that I don't like is all the technology. And her really only critique is that it was heavy. I thought, let's rip all the guts out of it and just have it, like, hollow. And if I'll shoot it full of foam or something, right? Fill it in, and if there's a weight thing, I'll add a maybe a little bit of, you know, weight to it or something to balance it out. And Shauna said, let's not ruin a $900 guitar. Maybe somebody would really like a $900 guitar. And I. She's like, I know that they sent it to us and we didn't pay for it, but maybe. Maybe doing that isn't really that important. So she came up with another idea, which is why the guitar of the week this week is the Inya. Here you go. Pro guitar. This is the Inspire Pro in the purple flake finish that she loves with the Seymour Duncan. This is the SD version. So if you guys don't know, there's two versions of this guitar. This is the Seymour Duncan version. So it has the upgraded pickups we're gonna give this guitar away. So that's what we decided to do. We're gonna pay for the shipping. So, you know, Inya gave us the guitar. We can do anything we want with it. My mom used to say, never give a gift if you have rules. So they gave me the gift. So there's no rules, according to my mother. So we're going to go ahead and gift it to one of you guys. In the description down below. It takes you to our websites, the Know youw Gear podcast website. Do not trust anyone who contacts you in messaging or questions you or ask you for anything. Here's how it works. It's super easy. The way I do all contacts, contests, you go to my website, knowyourgearpodcast.com. you'll go. You'll click the button that says Enter here. You'll put in your email address. That's all it's going to ask you for is just your email address. Okay? And I pay so that they don't put you on a thing. What do you call it? Email blast. Okay, So I pay for that service. You put in your email address on next week, about four hours before the show starts, it'll randomly pick a winner. I will then email you personally. I always put my cell phone number in the email so you can call and talk to me. I know with AI that's even scary, but you get the idea. At least you'll know, right? And I'll announce the winner next week. This is a 900 guitar. There's only one stipulation and that is because if you watch the video, well then like spoiler alert. By the way, I'm gonna give you a spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. So if you guys haven't watched the video and you think you might, I'm gonna give you five seconds to mute this and then I'll wave when it's time to not mute this anymore. Okay, ready? 2, 3, 4. Okay, so for those of you guys who watched it, you know that I voided the warranty when I took it apart. So I signed the back and I put. I'm sorry, you don't get a warranty. Phil McKnight 2026. Now, I'm pretty sure Enya will still support you with a warranty, but in case they don't, I put a disclaimer because I, if you watch that, I, I did take the guitar apart, even though it said don't take it apart. So there you go for the rest. It's okay to come back now. Okay. So the rest that came back, you didn't get a spoiler, which is good. Okay. So anyways, this guitar. So you know this is a carbon fiber style one piece guitar with a dual speaker system in. It has a looper built in. It has effects. It has. It has a USB plug to charge it, internal lithium battery, has 24 stainless, medium jumbo frets and locking keys. And this guitar could be yours. I will make sure it plays perfectly. I'll make sure to adjust anything. Set it up. I went through and beat on the tremolo a little bit more and I think I got it all dialed in. So it's not going to go flubby. Out of tune, Anya. Not that I. I didn't have too many issues with that, but I did have a few issues here and there with that. And again, I don't think it's the guitar's fault. I just think it was a lot of selling and stuff. So this is the guitar of the week. I could play it, but you could just watch the video. But for those that need to hear something, we'll strum, we'll strum a chord. I'm running through my Morgan PR12. Let me switch side cameras right here. Side camera here. Okay. Somewhere. Sound. Why don't I have sound? Okay. What am I plugged into? Okay, see now the guitar has no sound. Was working earlier. Oh, because I turned the volume down. That's what I get. There you go. All right, I'll play a couple things for you so you can see it. Let me move so it moves to the guitar is in the actual camera and I'll just play a little clean for you. Here you go. So that's your two pickups, the single wheel neck and bridge pickup. And of course there's a bridge. Hit a little gain, little delay. Sam. So interesting enough, somebody asked, is it still buzzing? So the buzzing sound, the hissing sound, it still does that. I think if you go in the app. This is my critique again. So anyone's watching this. When you crank the noise gate to where it almost goes away 100%, your noise gets choking everything out. You get that end to choke out thing on the noise gate that I didn't love. That only affects the guitar when the sound speaker is on. Does not affect the guitar. Right now I'm just playing the guitar into an amp. You can play this guitar like a normal guitar. So. So like I said, you get choices. I and hopefully they'll have an update that they'll put out and that will just be through the app. And then the update will fix this if it. If it continues to have that problem. Like I said, my issue, and this is my thing, my issue with that sound is it's. It's actually could almost say I wouldn't bug me if the guitar was less money. But for. For the type of money this is costing, it's not a sound I was excited about. But just. Yes. So keep that in mind. So if that's something you think. But I do have the hissing down. In fact, let's turn on. I'll show you. So now the noise gate. Turned it on. Give it a second. Okay, here it goes. It clicks. Okay, there we go. And you can still hear it a little bit. See that hissing there? And like I said, it's not as bad. Like I said, you have to. When you crank it, it gets a little worse. But most of the time it's not that bad. Again, you can noise gate it completely out. I just don't love that noise gate. Choking it down so hard. So just let you know. But again, that's. So if you want to use it for the speaker itself. Internal. Otherwise the guitar plays amazing. It's just plugged into an amp and it's sure gorgeous. Let's go ahead and do a thumbnail with this thing. This one I'm excited to do a thumbnail about. I think this is great. Okay, Ready? Have to do it. What? It's a guitar face. What? It's a guitar. It's a little tricky to always get the lighting on. Right. Okay. There. Okay. So that's the guitar of the week. You can win it. We'll announce it next week. There is some bonus entries if you sign up or subscribe to our second channel. Just so you guys know. That's how we do it. Makes it pretty easy. And the only bad news. Ready for the bad news on the giveaway? We will not ship outside the United States. That does not mean you can't enter. If you're outside the United States, there are forwarders that will forward you this stuff. It's just look to keep things safe and easy for me. I know what the most expensive place to ship is in the US And I know what the cheapest is. And that's the range in which we decided we would pay to cover the cost. So I just can't, you know, I can't. If you're like in the Philippines or if you're somewhere where it's expensive to ship to and there's duties and all that stuff, we can't. We can't take that on. But if you're somewhere outside the US and you win it, I mean, I'll ship it to your best friend. If you got a friend in the US I'll ship it anywhere in the US is what I'm basically saying. So like I said, some people can win it and you can ship it to a company that forwards it on. You can ship it to your, your uncle who you've never met, who's hopefully you trust enough to hold on the guitar until you get a chance to get it. All this stuff, I'm just letting you know, the stipuli stipulation is we won't ship outside the US So that's it. That's it. And that. All right. So I hope you guys. I'd say I hope, I hope you all win. That's not even a thing. You could say it. So. But I, I think that was really great. So, you know, Inya also said not only would they like Shauna to keep the guitar, but the main reason we wanted to do the giveaway is they said the next thing, which is pretty crazy, which is I said in the video that I said, oh, we'll just buy an Inia Go. They said, we would like to send you an inu go for Shauna. And that's a $200 guitar. So that was like Shawna's like, well, if they're gonna give us a guitar, let's. Let's get this guitar in somebody's hands and, and talk about it. And, and again, also give them the prop, the, the props, the props they deserve in you. You know, I have had the fortunate life on this channel to have met and talked to half a dozen or a dozen companies where the video did not go, you know, hopefully the way they wanted or the review. And man, they took it on the chin and they came back and said, you know what, thanks for the feedback. They actually asked for more than they go anything else. But to be honest, like I said, the guitar plays so great, feels great, and I think it looks cool. So obviously the technology, the hissing thing, I think that can get addressed and fixed and then weight wise, that's up to you to decide if you guys want an eight pound guitar or not. I own guitars that are eight pounds and I don't really necessarily have a problem, but Shana was not looking for something £8. She's looking for something a lot lighter. So we'll see. And of course, the in you go is much lighter. It's four pounds, five pounds max. So. And Then to address a funny thing, somebody said, it was a good comment. I appreciate it. Somebody said, phil's being a hypocrite, which is funny. Never make a statement. Ask a question. Just ask the question. Say, phil, aren't you being a hypocrite? That's a good one. You know why? When you state something as a fact to somebody, like, hey, you said this and they didn't, you just sound like you weren't paying attention. So I'm not saying this is the case for you. The person said that Phil did not like the Indigo, which is not true. So that's not what I said in the video. I said that. I explained to you what my bias were. I wanted my bias to be up front because I do have them. I try to do that when I can sometimes. I don't tell you the bias in the idea that maybe I don't like the company, but that has nothing to do with the guitar. So I won't tell you the bias on that. The reason is because, again, I'm critiquing the guitar, not the company. In this case, the bias was the guitar. I'm not a real fan of tech and guitar, so I wanted you to know that I'm not a fan of that. So that if I critique anything and you go, wow, he's being really harsh on it. Not that I'm being harsh. It's just my bias is coming through. Okay. I'm not an actor. I'm a YouTuber. So anyways, the question was. Or the comment was being a hypocrite, because I didn't critique the Yamaha or any of the acoustics that have that technology in them versus this. And that's a good point. I will say, I will argue it, that I see them differently. I see an acoustic that has a actuator in it that turns the guitar into a speaker and adds effects to the guitar's already existing organic acoustic sound. Is an interesting idea, and I think it's. It's fun to check out. And I said that, and I said in the MMO video that you're adding technology to a guitar. I say the disclaimer the same thing. When you're adding technology to a guitar like this, you are now shortening the lifespan of the guitar. You. You're adding problems to the guitar that may exist later, like technology problems, in fact. So, you know, with acoustics, I actually don't like it when acoustic. When brands drill holes like Taylor, think of this. All my tailors now, they don't have any holes or cuts in them. They all have the electronics stuck inside the sound hole. Something I told the Taylor guys at the factory, I'm not a fan of somebody cutting holes in acoustics and putting technology in them. Because as someone who's dealt with this over the years, what ends up happening in Arizona or everywhere is that when you put humidification in your guitars, the humidifiers cause the circuits to corrode, and then your electronics go out in your guitar, and then they stop making those electronics. So like a perfect example, they make your acoustic guitar, and they've been making it for 10 years, 20 years, but they don't make those electronics anymore. And then you gotta find some other makeshift electronic to shove in there. So again, I've been very consistent about this. I'm not a huge fan of putting technology in guitars if they don't need it. And I do like the idea of the effects added to acoustics. But I also like said, say that's a concern you should think about. But I don't think it's the same as actually making the guitar like a full technology, Adding speakers and effects and stuff like that. This guitar, like I said, I actually think this guitar. So, you know, in you again, I think I would love this guitar. It's Olshana. I think I would absolutely love this guitar if it didn't have the speakers. I think that adds weight and adds a thing. I don't need all the tech inside the guitar. I could get past that. I could use the effects of the distortion sound pretty good, but I don't need the speaker. And again, that's not saying they should do that. I'm just saying what. What I would like as a customer. So there you go. All right. So hopefully you guys try to win the guitar. I don't know. I'd be excited. Okay, I hope I get to. Please. If you do enter to win, please understand I'm going to email you next week, hours and hours before the show. So look for my email, it's pmcnight7mail.com so and. And it'll be me. And I'll say it's Phil, and then I'll have my phone number and you can confirm. Okay, let's see. Ah, see, Jesse, guitar says I can confirm. I have a beautiful Tacoma with a dead preamp. Major surgery needed. Yes. See, it's just like said. It's again, the bias is years of doing repair. It's like I told you, like, mechanics get like this amp, techs get like this. They get curmudged, I get curmudgeon on things like that. I hate the idea. I'm like, ah, the guitar works, but the technology has failed. So it's a. It's a. It's a sucks. So, all right, let's. Let's go to the next subject. What are we gonna. Lemon Les says, hey, what's the biggest mistake when people make by when buying their forever guitar? Assuming that you can just buy a forever guitar in the first place is the biggest mistake I've ever personally made. The idea that I can math it out or, you know, draw it on a. On a. On a piece of paper or somehow decide that this guitar based on a laundry list of options or features or price point. And by the way, price point always seems to factor into your forever guitar. Like, you know, this guitar, if I. You know, because if I spend this much and I get this much, it'll be the only guitar I ever need. What I've learned about forever guitars is they don't. You don't. You don't calculate into them. You find out you already have them. The. My. All my forever guitars are pretty. Pretty easy to figure out. You could go back, Think about this. I. I'm a perfect. I'm a perfect example of something you should pay attention to. Go to. My very first video ever. My very first video I ever uploaded on YouTube is me reviewing my George Benson Fender amplifier. That's my very first video. I never put a video before on YouTube before that video. And let's go and look. Let's. Here's why. Because there's Hank stuff hanging behind me. Then let's see what's still around. Now, I just recently got rid of that George Benson amp, which is funny. So. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about Phil McKnight. Philip McKnight. George Benson. Okay. Wow. Okay, so I'm gonna click on it and try to pause it. Look it. That's me when I was. Okay, so what's behind me? Well, the first thing you're gonna see behind me. Hold on. Okay, hold on. Let me move this out. Is. Is that Gretch? Well, guess what? I can't make this up. There it is. It's behind me. Okay, what else is behind me? The stu hand base. Still have the stu hand base. It's not here today, but it was here last week, and it's in my rack right now. What else is there? Ready? My copper Strat. Still have my copper Strat. Now the gold Lime Gold Parker. That was actually not mine at this Time I had borrowed that from a friend and then eventually bought it later, but got rid of it. And the RG550 in. In Rover red that is now owned by Ralph's brother. Ralph bought it from me for his brother for his brother's birthday. And I got rid of it because I got A. A RG565 inflorescent yellow. That's what I was actually wanting more so than that guitar when it came out. But what I will tell you is there are guitars that I still own to this day. My mirror. I have had my mirror that are. I didn't buy them going, oh, these will be my forever guitar. It was more like, I've learned now they are my forever guitars. I just as many guitars have cycled through. The reason I'm telling you this is, is this. It's not to say, oh, look, I've had these guitars for a long time. It's to say I've now had my hands on, just through this channel, thousands, no exaggeration of guitars, and at least 205,000 R plus guitars. And yet notice I'm still sticking to certain guitars. It's not because they're better. It's not because the other guitars weren't better. It's because I think a forever guitar is not determined by calculation. It's the just. It's the hours and hours of play you put on the guitar. You become so familiar with the instrument. It becomes part of you. It's a second skin. I can, I can, I can. I already anticipate what it sounds like, what it feels like before I start it. It feels like home. And if anything, you're trying to replicate that. That kind of goes to our earlier question, you know, why do you still buy 5 and 900 guitars when you got your forever guitars? Well, just because you have a forever guitar doesn't mean you want more. Doesn't mean you don't want more. I want more forever guitars too. I want a bunch of them. And that's why we have to sometimes refine these collections. Whether you're an actual artist touring or playing or writing albums or just a hobbyist, you refine your collection to try to make all the guitars in your stable, so to speak. So to speak, be absolute bangers. This beautiful guitars. You know, something that the Indian guitar, Shawna was like, the guitar is great. She was playing again because she was deciding, you know, does she want to pass this on and do a giveaway or does she want to keep it. And she basically said her biggest Fear is that this guitar will sit in a rack and just get dust. And she's like, then that just doesn't sound like the right thing to do with a thousand dollar guitar. It shouldn't. You know, she's, she's only going to have one guitar. Okay. So I want to be very clear. Shauna's gonna have one guitar. And so she, she doesn't want to have a guitar and then not use it. She's a little nervous about that. So, so yeah, that's my answer to that. That's unfreaking believable. Says, yeah, if it's, it's, if an instrument speaks to you, absolutely. It's, it's, it's a, you bond with it. It becomes a unorganic thing that somehow just becomes part of you. I don't, I don't know how to explain it. So, yeah, it's, it's fun that way. All right, let's, let's grab a question. Amanda grabbed. This is from Jeff Watson, who says, phil, I am shipping a 1979 Ovation from Houston area to South Dakota. Do I need to loosen the strings? Heard both ways? Sure. I can answer that question. What do you get? What want to get your input? Sure. Okay, so let's, let's be very clear and it will help you out. Electric guitars, you do not have to down tune them. However, I will tell you that FedEx keeps telling you have to. When I say don't have to, just understand that I, I, I can tell you that Paul Rid Smith guitars and Fender guitars and Kiesel guitars and Warwick, we're talking about Warwick and which is Framis, let's say Framis Guitars and a plethora of other guitar manufacturers ship the guitars in tune. When they ship electric guitars, solid body guitars to us, they do not down tune them. On average. When I say on average, some employees might do it, but there's no policy. I did a Myths video years ago and I actually, since I figured I got this, I have connections, you know, to call these companies. I called them and they took my call and told me, I said, could you tell me if you ship the guitars down tuned, half step, you know, full step, you know, random. Is it intune? They all responded with intune. When I talk to acoustic guitar companies, they all 100% the ones I talk to do the opposite. They do down tune the guitars. And so it's obviously important to downtune your acoustics, but you don't necessarily have to downtune your electrics. I have heard Arguments on the electrics, both sides, about why down tuning them is actually bad for them as well. And just like keeping them in tune is bad for them as well. What I figure is this Pollard Smith ships thousands of thousand dollar guitars out every year and they're shipping them in tune. I'm just going to stick to that philosophy. But acoustics, yes. I would down tune the acoustic for sure. The thing I would do on an acoustic is down tune it and then if you have a piece of brown paper, like brown paper bag, get that stuff, just cut a sheet of that and stick it in between the frets and the strings. One of the things I don't like about when the strings are loose is sometimes if it gets impact, you know, you might get a dent in your, in your fret. You can get that where the strings tight or not too. But just keep in mind. But yeah, go ahead and down tune it. It won't, it won't hurt it. Especially the Ovation. So Ovation's an interesting guitar. It's made kind of like an acoustic but slightly different. Okay, so this one came from out. I don't know how to say it. I'm gonna say Alan, it says, hey, Phil, if I could resuscitate a dead guitar company, which one would it be? I know you. I think the answer would be Parker Guitars. I just don't think it would do well. I don't think the following of Park Guitars is, is that, is that big. And on top of that, I think park guitars at the time are kind of like a DeLorean where it looked so futuristic for a minute. And now you look at it and it looks so 80s. Even though it came out in the 90s, it just looks dated. But I would say that's so I'm just saying, I think most people, if they, they know the channel, they'd say it's going to say Parker. That's why I'm saying Parker. But honestly, that's not the company I would resuscitate. I would bring back GNL guitars, I'd bring back G and L guitars and I would. And I think it would be an impossibly hard task to do because it would have to be rebranded 100% different than the way they were rebranded in the first place. The GNL things were, the GNL marketing is, was horrible. I just recently had a nice conversation with the people at Heritage and I was explaining to them what I think some of the biggest failures with G and L was as a social media person. So in other words, like social media is part of your brain is marketing now, right? You have to figure out what's a thumbnail, what's a title. You know what, what are people interested in? Social media is, is sales and Marketing 101 boiled down to the purest point, which is what will, what are people interested in? What will they buy? In other words, what would they click on? And it's a really tough thing, especially with so much competition on social media. And so when I see G and L, one of the biggest problems, biggest problems with GNL's marketing was they were always trying to sell themselves as the cheaper Fender or the alternative to Fender. And I always told, I told them every time I thought that was bad marketing. I think you're better than Fender and you should be marketed as. Look, GNL has as much right in my opinion to be revered as the same way SIR is. But yet their marketing went the other way. Their marketing went to like, hey, we're the other offender. You know, not as cool but not as much money. And that was kind and they didn't say it that way. And that's what they would say. But I'm like, but that's what was shown to us. Hey, it's not Fender, but it's like Fender, but it doesn't cost as much. And if you've played a G and L, especially a good one, you know, they were always punching above their weight. Am I going to say fit and finish is as good as a SIR they can be sometimes. I mean they're not as consistent as SIR but one of the things that gives SIR some better consistency is super high price points. Right? I mean it's a lot easier to, you know, when your guitars are super expensive to spend more time. It's also keep in mind people get a lot of things wrong. And this is where sometimes my retailer experience will help you. One of the things that helps high end guitars do well like sir is that when you have a guitar that's $4,000 even if you are a 30% mark. But on those guitars they're now looking at like a 50% mark or a 40% mark. Okay, so let's just play the 30% mark game. Okay? And so, so that means if a guitar sells to you for $4,000, the dealer paid, in theory, we're going to call it $2,800. Okay? That's a $1,200 profit margin. Now I'm not, I'm not arguing whether what's, what, what's good or bad about that. I'M just saying that's the least. Okay, we're not, we're only talking about that what they paid for the guitar and what they sold the guitar for. We're not factoring in their employees, their electricity, their rent or mortgage, all this stuff. We're just saying they get 1200 bucks and that's if they only get that. And it's like said some. Every manufacturer has different rules about this. Usually high end stuff has not less because it takes longer to flip. And so, so you guys get. Some of you guys get cocky with a piece of information. And like I said, just because you know a thing doesn't mean you know everything. So one of the reasons you have to have a higher margin on higher end guitars is, is you're holding a lot of money in your store. And that money could. Look, it's really sad when you sell a guitar, I've done it, a high end guitar, and you had a discount the whole hell out of it to get out of your store. And you look at the final number and we're not even talking about if you lost money, even when you made money. You go, God, I could have just put that in a savings account and would have made more money in the last eight months or two years it was sitting on in the store. So basically what I want to tell you is let's assume that they get a 30% margin on a sur guitar. It's 1200 bucks a store to pay a tech 100 bucks, which they wouldn't pay, that they pay the cost of it. But let's just say they pay a tech a hundred bucks to make sure they go through the guitar, make sure it's dialed in and plays perfectly. Not a hard task. Do the $300. Let's just do $800. Okay? The same guitar at $800, okay. Times well, 70% of that is 560 bucks. Okay. So now we're talking about $240 margin. You want to give a hundred dollars if you. Everybody gets cocky with this. But if you were going to make, if you're making $240, would you want to give 100 of it away immediately? That's almost half. You're going to give half away just to make it playable for the customer. It's a tough thing to do. And so what people don't understand is, and I've said this before, when you make guitars fast, which means cheap, right? The cheaper the guitar, the more you make. The more you make, the faster you have to make them. The math in that is simple. I can tell you this in factories. When you go to a factory and you go, wow, this company has 60 employees, and they're making 4,000 guitars. And then you go to a company and they're making $40,000. 40,000 guitars they don't have. 40,000 employees. They don't have. Right, they don't. The number doesn't increase that way. It doesn't even have 4,000 employees. Has like 300 employees. I've been in factories where you go in there and they're like, okay, they're making 10,000 guitars, and they'll have 200 employees. And then you go to a company, a factory that makes 150,000 guitars, they have maybe 50 or 100 employees more. So they're making them faster, less hand time on them. They're moving quickly, okay? Which means things get through. And then when they get to the dealers, the dealer's margin is decreased. Not the percentage, but the total dollars. And they're fixated on this cost to fix the guitars, change the strings. Think about this. One of the toughest things I had to deal with in my store was when you got $99 guitars and you made $30 on them. Just to restring them would be such a big difference to the customer. It was like, hey, take off these cheap, horrible strings, oil the fretboard for a second, put on a new set of strings, and maybe tighten the truss rod with two cranks. You have a guitar that plays much better. And it was almost impossible to. To do that in your numbers because you're like, okay, strings are going to cost me $5. Now I'm down to making $25 on the guitar. I need 20 minutes to go through and service this. That's at least going to cost us $40 in labor. And so we'll call it $20 in labor to keep it. Just keep it safe. Okay, 20. Now we're at $25, right? We make $30 on the guitar. One of the ways we circumvented that in our store for years is, was we would add that as a service if you would sign up for lessons, because then we could take a guitar that made us $25. And if they bought lessons, which $100, we also made $25 off the lessons. Now we made $50. And then the $50, if we took 25, in other words, half of our profit and gave it away to service, to make the guitar better. It made the had the better chance of the guitar player playing. But also if they stayed the following month we'd get $25 again and then $25 again and $25 again and over time and then as they got better they'd buy other accessories and other guitars and upgrades. So then you could loss leader a little bit or figure it out a little bit. And sometimes during Christmas we'd actually service the guitars and and not even worry about if they signed up a lesson. It's just hoping that maybe the percentage of them stayed and signed up for lessons. My point to this is, is that these are factors that sometimes don't factor into people's minds when they talk about like sir is not that great. I'm like, well it's not that it's not that great. It's. It is great. It's just. It's got a lot of hand time in it. But again the dealers can spend extra time making it play really well. So a res. If I was going to resurrect a company, I would resurrect G and L. I would obviously talk about the innovation it brought with that Leo Fender did with that company. That Fender then took those ideas. So you know, like I've said I've before, the two point tremolo was invented by Leo Fender at G and L, not a Fender. Fender added it in the 90s. The three point, the, the micro tilt Leo did that, that was a G and L thing as well. Well actually I guess he did that slightly before that because he was doing that Fender as well. But you get the point. He did a lot of innovative things and the gnls. I think I would have stayed away from the import side of gnls and me personally, I would have stuck to just doing usa, keep it small shop and cared about the legacy. The reality is the compromise, the compromise that GNL made was they really honestly I believe cared about his legacy but they cared about money too. And that's a hard thing to judge people on because sometimes you need money as you know but sometimes you have to decide what really matters and how are you going to get there. It's a really tough thing to do to figure out how you're going to get there. One of the things I had to do when I decided to leave corporate world and start my own business was I had to figure out how am I going to get health care. That was a huge deal. Like it's got to happen. I got to have health care. I have children, I have a family, how do I get health care? And you have to, you have to think about that. And that's one of the think of this. I've said this before and I'm but on a tirade. I'm sorry, but I think health care in the United States and I know the Europeans are always like, what are you talking about? And the Canadian, our Canadian friends are like, what are you talking about? Look, in the US it could be one of your biggest costs, especially on accident. In other words, if, you know, if you're not ready, something happens. But my point is, is that I believe the lack of health care in this country is what kills and chokes off more of the entrepreneurship in this country than anything else. Because a lot of people not going to give up their health care. I've said this before and I'll end on this tirade. My son cost $25. That's how much he cost. When we found out Shawn was pregnant, we worked at a Fortune 100 company and our copay was $25. And once they said that she was pregnant, then it was covered. I couldn't even tell you as an entrepreneur now what a kid costs. I bet you it's a couple hundred grand. I wouldn't even know. How do you have a kid and a small business? It's a really hard thing to do. So my point is G and L, you have to make decisions. One of the decisions I had to make was that when you make your first hundred thousand dollars a year and you go, wow, you're gonna get 40 to insurance and go, I guess it's not as much as I thought then, right? But I'm gonna have insurance and I'm gonna. And yeah, I could have made that in the corporate world and have healthcare and 401k, but I also get to own my own business. So there's this thing with gnl. GNL didn't make the decisions that were. They didn't make the toughest decisions they should have made, which is sell less, make it best, keep the legacy alive. Prove every day that you're better than Fender because Fender is a money game company. Again, I'm not doggin Fender. I just. Look, everybody is who they are. They're a big corporation and they, they, they're a big corporation. That's basically it. And so I told the heritage the same thing. I bought this heritage guitar. I told them this on the Zoom call with them. I said, I bought this heritage guitar not because it was $350 less than the Gibson. I bought it because it had the better neck profile than the Gibson. So I don't know why you don't have to be $500 less. You just have to make a better guitar. I didn't make the decision if this was the same price of this Gibson. I'm Sorry, this Heritage 535 is. I think that's the model number 535. I can't remember all their model numbers. This is the full hollow body with P90s. So if you want to look it up, it's $3,000 versus Gibson's version which is $3,500. If this was the same price but still had that better neck. And when I mean better, it's a better car, it just, it's a better neck. It's actually made on the same templates they used to make the original Gibsons. My friend actually has a 59 Gibson version of this and he played it and he said, yeah, this neck feels exactly like mine. I'm like, yes, like the Gibsons used to. So again with gnl, my, my speech to GNL would be resurrect gnl. Make it great. Make it a great brand. Like go for. Go for the sir customer. Go for the Nash customer. Go for go for those customers. A lot of you wouldn't like this idea because that means the gnls will cost more. I'm not saying they need to be astronomically priced, but they just can't be. You know, they're not going to be the bargain they used to be. But at least that's how I would do it. And I think it's because it's a good design. So that's how I would treat it. What, what I think if it got resurrected, I think it's going to get slapped in into cortech as fast as it can and they're going to make move zillions of those import models and, and slap gnls on them. And that's, that's how it goes. So I don't know. I don't think that is ever going to happen. And the reason is, is because I think like Parker, the market is so small for GNL that it won't have a mass peel. A lot of people had a theory that Fender either bought or would buy GNL, not just the IPs and stuff and then make it like a cortec affordable brand of guitars. And my argument to that was Squier is so huge, they don't need gnl. GNL could never be the pimple on Squier's ass when it comes to volume of numbers. And that's from me just Being in the factory, seeing what I saw, I mean, if. Look, there's. I would say out of all Cortec, I couldn't tell you for sure. They won't give me that exact data. But I would say at the Cortex factory, if I was going to say what brand had the most volume of units being pushed out of those million units. And let's exclude the acoustics because I. I didn't dive so deeply into the acoustic numbers. I would say Squier is the most thing coming out of there by a brand, right? So if you look at the brand, you know, whether it's PRS or Ibanez or, you know, at the time, GNL or Sterling or whatever, you know, there's tons of brands, right? There's Court, obviously the Court brand. I would say Squire is what's pumping out the most. So there was no. No other brand, probably even close. So there's no way to take G and L and make it that. Let me go look at the comment section to see what you guys say. Ha. Snake Plissken, 44. Snake Plissken. They call me Snake. Okay, Snake Plissken. He says, where does Phil get his awesome T shirts? All over the place. But there's a place called 80s Tees. 80s, like 1980s Teas. Let's pull it up. 80s Tees. 80s Tees. That's got to be because it populated as soon as I type it in. 80s tees. Oh, and look, it gave me a discount. I will tell you that I have had some dicey quality from these people where some of the shirts are thin. This one's a good one. This is a Battle Android Trooper. This is my favorite. Not my favorite character in GI Joe. My favorite moment in GI Joe is this. If you guys are old school GI Joe fans, I watch a documentary on GI Joe and it changed my whole perception of the world. Little fun fact about GI Joe. They never killed anybody on GI Joe cartoons. You know, remember they'd blow up the planes, and then you always see the parachuting. You know, pilot flown out. They couldn't kill anybody on. It was a cartoon. There's no killing in cartoons. And. And. But, you know, the violence was obviously something that people were drawn to. All the pew pewing and stuff and the lasers. And so what happened is GI Joe figured out. They figured out that because Transformers were robots, they could bludgeon the crap out of each other and kill each other, right? And so what they figured out was they need robots. So they made the Battle Android Troopers, the bats. Oh, this way. Bats. Right. So the robots, GI Joes could just blow them up and we wouldn't care. So remember that when AI tries to take over the world, we'll just blow them all up. We don't care. But anyways. Yeah. So essentially they turned these. This character is essentially the target practice version of a rumba for GI Joe guys. So I thought that was a funny story. When I heard it, I go, you know, that makes so much sense. I never thought about that. That, yeah, once these, the robots came on GI Joe, they can start just blowing them up. And I'm like, oh, it's nice, it's good. I like how they sneak the violence into my. Into my childhood. Shouldn't be laughing, but it's just a funny time. Brian says, I'm so old, GI Joe was 12 inches and had fuzzy hair. Ah, yes. So, Brian, you're not that much older than me, but yes, that predates me. GI Joe's being full size 12 inch action figure dolls. Don't. That. I had the little guys like this. So. Yeah, but mine were action figures. Which was totally, totally manly. Was not. Just kidding. All right, let's see. Oh, okay, here's a good one. He says, hey, hey, Phil. Been watching the content since the pandemic. I'm from Brazil. And he says, I love your content. Been wanting some more deep dives. The last one disappointed me a bit. I don't care. I. I don't care less about digital guitars. I agree. So like I said, you know, I like a challenge. That video was a challenge for me because again, I like Inya as a company. I like that other guitar. I like their product. Just the tech. Some of the tech stuff isn't my. To my liking. When Sean is like, hey, actually I think the guitar is kind of cool. I'm like, let's. Let's have it. You'll. You'll. Sometimes I get in a mental rut. So let me just tell you this. You know, if I review a Strat, Strat, whatever, the same guitar over and over again, and everybody's like, hey, do this brand, do this brand, do this brand. What happens is, is you get a little numb to it and I don't get excited. And when I. And I need that not, not to be in a good mood, not to sell it, like, hey, buy this. It's more of a, you know, what's interesting and what's exciting and sometimes I can get a little melancholy in there and. And also it makes the. It makes the whole process not as fun and When I. I live in a world sometimes where videos can make, you know, make our month, and that's great. And sometimes we don't make anything. And I don't want to think about that when I'm making them, because I have. There's no real prediction for that, you know, what people will focus on and not focus on. I don't. I don't know. I can't make sense of it. Some people say negative travels, and then somebody say negative, negative doesn't travel. I have both. I have videos that I got videos that do I. The Taylor video is probably the most wholesome. Can't believe this is amazing. Life world video ever. 375,000 views. And then yet I have another video. It's like a. 400,000 views and it's a negative video. It's a, you know, I made a video about a negative thing. So to me, I find that that's partially true, both those directions. But really what's really true is, is that some people just the timing of it, the market, the, you know, things happen. But I try to make things more exciting and fun. And that was a. That was a rut buster guitar for me. So in other words, like, I was like, oh, yeah. You know, when Shawna's like, I'm interested. I'm like, I'm interested in the challenge of it. I was kind of hoping at the end of the video or at the end of the experience, I'd be like, it's amazing. And I'm totally wrong. I have decided that the guitar is great, which I kind of knew that going in. I just. Still not a fan of the tech. And there's nothing wrong. Like I said, if you are too. My favorite part was the. We rotate titles. So I've said this before. Everybody's doing it on YouTube now. It's highly effective. If you're not doing it in your YouTube content creator, you're missing out. We do you. How it works is you pick three. Three thumbnails and three titles and then you print them and then the algorithm presents them to different people at the same time. And then if more people click on one title, they give a scoring and. And they click on one title than the other, then that one wins, and then they present that one to everyone. And that's how you do it. Now, there's more to it than that because sometimes that's not even. That's just the first draft. Sometimes we then have different titles and different thumbnails sometimes then one thumbnail was reacting good, but one Title wasn't. Now we have to layer that and see how that works. And this is all just to get the minimum amount of views we used to get. No problem, right? This is just how competition works. You have to be always, always doing your best, your A game, always. And so we try, and I try. I shouldn't say we, because we all do it, but I try and present titles. Like, I have a title. Like, this is the title I hope wins. This is the title that makes my heart feel good about the world I live in. Here's the title that I'm probably going to win and I'm disgusted. It's going to win. And I go, but here it is. And then here's the title somewhere in between that or just something else. And every once in a while, it's not very often the good title wins. I'm like, wow, they pick that? I can't believe they picked that. Sometimes the. It's the thumbnail that wins. And so you have to adjust. But most times a bad title wins. And so that video, it's had three titles. It was essentially like a basic. Like a basic straightforward title, a fun title, and then the, you know, extreme, like, yeah, you better click on this or you're going to miss out title. And that's the one that won. So, you know, it won so fast. So, you know, the negative, I don't want to say negative, but the sensationalized title one so fast that I actually retitled and rethumbnailed again and let it run again, like to see with the different variations on the other two to see if I could get some other titles to pull and nope, it won again. It. It took this time about seven hours before it won, but it won in about six, seven hours. So. But yeah, and then. But what else? I don't know. I don't know what's going to say. And then, oh, I was going to say oh to your thing. And then now, because I'm out of a rut again, I've actually produced a couple videos that I think you're going to like. I think you'll be more interested in some of these, so. Because what happens is you get your juices flowing again when you do a new video, you're like, oh, that was new. See that guitar? Regardless of what we think about it, it's not something I reviewed before I had gone and analyzed before. So I have to think, like, how do I do it? Especially that guitar. That guitar is more of an effects processor and an amplifier than it is a Guitar. So my skill is almost useless dissecting the instrument. So I'm like, how am I going to do this? And we'll have to have. So let's see. Yeah. He says, oh, and this follow up from our friend from Brazil, he says, hey, the necks on those Inas actually seem to be pretty damn good. They are very good. I, I, I'm, I'm not kidding. I, I, when I say this, if they make their guitar without all that tech in it, I'd buy it. Now don't get me wrong, it can't be like a thousand dollars. It's got to be realistic. But I want an Aristides guitar. And this vibes like an Aristides. It's got that same kind of vibe to it, man. If it could be 5, 600 bucks, I would throw a flyer on that. I'd give it a try. The reason is, I've said this before when we talk about Harley Benton's or Fireflies. See, people don't understand even if you buy used. The problem is, how do you try? I have a YouTube channel. I don't know how you guys do it on a YouTube channel. I can buy a guitar, see if it kind of works for me personally, if I can actually figure out a good video to make out of it, because that's a big factor of that. Try the guitar, then go, okay, I like it or don't like it. And then it can move on or stay. And I can take that shot because there's a revenue stream attached to the other side of it. You know, if I like the guitar, well, then it will get, it gets justified to get paid for. And if I don't like the guitar, I'll move it on. And what I lose on the guitar, maybe I'll make up on the video and that kind. And it's good entertainment. And it's like, that's good one. As someone who's just randomly buying, you're gonna spend $4,000 on a guitar and then hope that you like it in some way. And, and Aristides is a perfect example. I have no, I have no experience with that guitar at all. So all I know is what I, what I see when I see it online. And I'm like, that's a lot of money. So what's nice is, and what I mean by that, it's not even like the materials or this specific guitar, but would be nice is, is if you could try, you know, am I a carbon fiber? Would I try a guitar like that? Would I play the Guitar. So that's what I said sometimes that's what I like about inexpensive model guitars is that you can buy one, try it, see if you like it. You know, perfect example for me is Les Paul's. I would have never owned a Gibson Les Paul in my life ever if it wasn't for some more affordable, very obtainable single cut style guitars that I bought and tried and then thought, well, I do kind of like this. I never saw myself as a Les Paul shaped type person. And there's, I would have never bought even a used like you know, 600 studio or 900 studio and tried it. It'd be way too much money for something I already thought I hated. So. Drew5 says it's much bit. It's a much more. I think he means more. Much better commitment to buy a guitar than before. Yes. That's why your guitar center pivoting to used would be such a great business to move for them. I agree. I, I wholeheartedly agree. The, the, you know, I think, I wouldn't say I coined the phrase, but I sure as hell start promoting it the most. Back in the day when I said we used to, you know, try before we buy and now we buy before we try. And so, you know, that saying, where that came from was I was talking to Dennis who owns the base place, and I was talking to him because I owned the store and he owned a store and I was asking about returns and they did zero returns. You know, you buy a base and it was like a car dealership. You drove off the lot, it's yours. And I told him, I said, but how do you do that? I said, because I said, you know, you know people, this is the age of Walmart returns. And you know, this is predates Amazon back then. And I said, you know, you know, customers want a return policy. And he goes, well, they get to try it here, so they better. So he goes, when we ring him up, you're like, I hope you like it because you own it now. And I. And he goes, you got, you know, you get to try before you buy it. He goes, you can't do that at Walmart. And I'm like, oh yeah, you tried before you buy. And now you have to buy before you try. So if you buy before you try, you need a great return policy if you tried it. So I was walking through his logic and I was like, okay. And like I said, in our store we, we would do a hybrid of that exchange only and then we would kind of work with you from there. But my point is that saying the buy before you try it didn't hurt as much when the prices were somewhat, relatively normal. Now everything's so freaking expensive, used and new that you're like, how do I. How do I invest into these things and hope that I like them? And I think that's. I agree with you 100%. That guitar center, this is their. This is their time to shine as a used platform. Because, you know, it's tough. It's a tough thing. So. Okay. And also on that to. To tie on the tail end. That's also when I do reviews because a lot of people are saying, like, I could tell you really hated the Indian guitar. I'm like, I don't think you can tell crap sometimes. I'm sometimes more sarcastic in other video, some videos than others. And that throws people off. I get that. I don't hate the guitar. There were, like I said, I said my statements of the bias. There are. There's a guitar I recently just did on the channel that I disliked way more. Way, way, way more. If you're trying to figure it out, is it's probably the most expensive guitar reviewed in the last like four months. And so it was like I. It was fine. It was a fine guitar. But again, Mason says, hey, Phil, can you recommend a good glue to use to glue a nut back onto his neck? My Ibanez just off, I would use just type on wood glue. I look, here's what you can use. Here's what people guitar texts that I know and trust use. I1Tech. He likes to put two micro dots of super glue on each side of the nut, make sure it's all clean, and then we do it there. I'm not a fan of super glue, but he does it. And actually he's a much better luthier tech than I am. So it's a tough. It's tough for me to. To say that to you. Like, hey, don't do his way. Even though I think he's actually better than me. I like Titebond wood glue. Same thing. Two little dots on each side. And I let it smush out. And then I clean it off with a paper towel. And I, you know, look, no matter how much you use, you're using too much. I have another tech friend, he uses Elmer's white glue. All the, all the glue is there is to help it not fall out or shift side to side when you first string up the guitar or when you restring the guitar. So you don't need much in There again, you're not trying to glue it in position. You're just trying to have. Think of it like this. You're. You're just. I mean, don't do this. You could put a piece of double stick tape and that would be more than enough. The reason why we don't want you to do that is this, this double sticks tape will get mushed up and it's too thick and it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't compress out, right? Because the thing about the glue is. Which is why my friend who likes super glue, he likes it because the super glue is so thin. So when you press down, you don't have to worry about any of the glue getting pushed out of the sides. The reason why I like type on is that reason when you, you push down, you clamp it down, the glue gets, you know, pushed out of the. Out out of there. And only the smallest amount is left behind. So especially if you're using a little. Two little dots. Like I said, use the term micro dots. Like, you know, think of it this way. Like if you bought a typical. I don't know, it was an eight ounce thing of Elmer's. Type on wood glue to do nuts for your guitar. That's enough to do like 10 billion nuts, right? You don't need any glue. Let's see. Okay, we did that one. Okay. Oh, this is, this is the question says. Hey, Phil, what is your thoughts on Ibanez stepping into the jazz bass market with their new MDM MA Mode series? If it's the one I saw, that's super expensive. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shoot for it right now. Ibanez MD M. I think it's the one that's crazy expensive. And I already have a crazy expensive base, so I'm done. Yeah, this is the one. Well, fifteen hundred dollars. Twelve hundred bucks. So probably made in Indonesia. Let's pull it up. Let's take a look at it. Let's move this back over. So this is the. So for this is called the Ibanez cease and desist or. No, I'm just kidding. This is the Ibanez MDM1000. This bass is 1200 bucks. It's got the spoke wheel, truss rod, jazz bass pickups. I didn't know anything about it. Yeah, I'd be interested to try it. So the. Yeah, it's made of Cortec. So the I there is for Indonesian Cortec. So comes with a gig bag. Seems nice. Weight's pretty Good. A little on the heavy side. One's 8lbs 9oz. That's good on basses. They're not like guitars. 8lbs is like, I want to say light, but it's definitely on the lighter side. On a bass, you. You can have £9, no problem on a bass. And it'll feel like, I would say a nine pound bass. Feels like an eight pound guitar for sure. Okay, let's go. Hold on, let me go back. I lost the chat. Okay, let's do how we do one on time. This is a question. Let's hit it. It says, hey, Phil, does the scale length On a Gibson versus a Fender, which is 24 and 3/4 versus 24 and a half or 25 and a half, does it change the sound significantly or is the scale length more about the feel of the guitar, in your opinion? In my opinion, it's mostly going to be about feeling. Sure. There could be some sound changes. I don't really think of it that way because again, I've played strats that are 24 and 3/4 and I've played Les Paul style guitars that are 25 and a half and 25. Obviously the PRS ones are single cuts are 25. And I don't notice the sound difference from the scale length. Usually there's a different pickup in there, different, you know, setup, different bridge. So again, I'd like to say what I always say, when it comes to sound, everything matters. And then you just decide what percentage of it you think is affecting the sound. I think that's a realistic way to look at things. So I would say the scale length on the guitar, given the tuning is the same. Right. Obviously we're not talking about extended scale guitars and then different tunings. I would say the scale length is not a huge part of the tone. I'm not saying it's not part of the tone. It's not a huge part. I'd say more. Again, pickups would affect that more. The bridge could affect that more. The string gauge could affect that, you know, a little bit. You know, the type of string could affect that. But in, in this case, I would say it's not something I actively. I've never sought out. A scale length for a sound is best way to put that. I've always sought it out for a feel and a way. A way of, you know, the way the guitar feels. So a good example is like the, the. The PRS595.594.594. You know, I don't necessarily think that scale length makes it sound different, just feels different. And I definitely noticed the feel on the scale length. When I say definitely, I mean not to wear like, whoa, what is this? I mean, I do notice it. Like when you change the scale length, it. It does change the way the guitar feels to me just fine. Says, hey, do you use a bass compressor? If yes. If yes what, what? Which one do you like the best? I used to use a bass compressor all the time because of slap bass and compression is really nice. But I don't play aloud anymore on bass. No one really wants you to anymore. When you're gigging and in home, it doesn't make sense. So one of the reasons I did that is when you're thumping and snapping, you know, your low frequencies, your high frequencies are so extreme that you know it's just all over the place. And there's a lot of rumbling going on and a lot of acoustic noise from the bass being, you know, rumbling, the strings vibrating from attacking the bass. So now that I play mostly like smaller bass amps, I don't need a compressor anymore, but I would put one back in the thing. Which one did I use? I don't know. I've used so many. MXR makes a bass compressor I like. I don't necessarily seek out bass type compressors that are focused on EQ range. It's just any kind of good quality compressor is. Is what I find that works. I mean I could use a. A. One of my favorite compressors is the Maxon compressor. But I mean there's a ton. I have a ton of compressors. Keely makes a. I mean, obviously it's a gold standard compressor as well. So I don't really necessarily seek out. Like I said, I don't normally seek out bass type effects specifically unless it's like overdrive. It's stuff like that because it has a. It's not just the distortion sounds different or the overdrive. Usually they have it set up to where the bass signal goes through even when you add the effect. And that's important when you're playing bass because you don't want the low end frequency to drop out on the band because you're adding effects other than those type effects. They don't do it that way even for a wah. I use wah on bass and I don't use a specific bass wah pedal. And the reason is, is because one of the best. One of my favorite bass players that plays a wah is, is I don't know. Why am I having trouble with this? What is Wrong with me today. Can't think of his name. It's a really complicated name. It's oh, Ray Rindo. Now when I say complicated name, Riindo is how you say it because I used to take lessons from him. So he told me Rendo, Ray Rendo. Phonetically, if you read his name, good luck with that. You'll never get that out of his name. But Ray Rindo is amazing bass player, and he used to play with a regular guitar wall, and it's fantastic. Somebody said Cliff Burton. Sure. Cliff Burton is different style of music though, than I play for bass. So I'm more of a slap jazz, funk bass style bass player for sure. So although with the wa and that stuff, Cliff Burton is great. It's not something I ever. I've never let me this way. I've never played a Cliff bur bass song before. I've never played any of the bass stuff. He had love Metallica, but it wasn't something I learned or learned to play on. The burking says, hey, Phil, how's Shauna? Okay, so we'll do. He's got multiple questions. Let's go through them. Says the whammy bar in my made in Mexico broke in the block while trying to unscrew it. How do you take the bit? You know, there's a way to fix it. You could tap it out, you could drill it out. But you know what I would do? I would replace the block. It's a good opportunity. Look, you're going to need a whammy bar anyways. Trimble arm. So you can get a new block, like a brass block and a new tremolo arm and install that onto the, you know, just take the plate off, you're gonna take this. Take six saddles out, Take the plate off, it's gonna be three screws into the block. Pull that out, put the new block in, have a new trim alarm. Callahan makes great ones. Tons of Floyd Rose makes tons. A lot of companies make great aftermarket blocks. You can find them dirt cheap. Now. It's not like the old days where they're 30, 40 bucks. And it was kind of, you know, 100 bucks. Now you can find them for relatively inexpensive. Let's do it. You know, I'd say that, but then sometimes let's do strat brass block, see what comes up. So, yeah, the first one comes up is 50 bucks on Etsy. EBay's got one for 35. Here's a Trimble buck for 30. Futone. Let's see what if you tones Got. If you tones got one for 50. For 50. The trim loom's $15. You're talking about 65 bucks. That's on the high end. Or not high end, but I mean, you can find them for less. 26 bucks. Here's on one on musical ly. Here's one. That's $26. Here's one's $23. Same on musically. 23 again. Yeah. So, I mean, if you hunt and peck for them, you can find them and you can get them for like, I'd say 20, 25 bucks. Guitar Fetish has one. They used to have a good deal on one. Now this is 57 bucks. Oh, it's the whole bridge. That's why. But I would go ahead and replace it. It's a good opportunity because here's why. If you fix the other one, all you have is the same thing you have before, and you're gonna have the same problems before. First of all, the pot metal block is not very good. But more importantly, the trim alarm they use. That's why when it broke, it's all like. It looks like crystals inside. It's called just inject molded crap. It's not like, you know, the. It's not like real. Real trimble arms where they make them out of metal and then they bend them. Right. That's why it's breaking, because it was all probably cast and junk, so I would replace it. So that's. That's what I would recommend. Make it better. I mean, it's. It's. That's the best thing you can. I could say to you. Make. Make it. Make it better. Make it a better thing than it was before. Arcola says Fu Tone rules. Adam stuff is top notch. I've had good luck with as well. So. So like I said, I would do that. I mean, you could buy a new bridge too. It's up to you. But I don't think you need to. So the only reason I would recommend a new bridge is if you're having an issue where you can't find. Because I know we live in a world now. It's crazy that you can probably find a bridge that fits in the guitar with a brass block and a trail arm for the price of brass block. That's the case, go with that. But I'm just saying. So. Wait, he says, hey, Phil, do you know anything about the end of life for the aux amp on Mac on OS with the upcoming iOS 27 update? I don't know, man. It's. It's. Look, the Reality is, is this is why I'm. I always, I think, I get, I think people think I hate technology. I love technology. I just realistic with it. It's. I know buying anything technology, I mean it, it go. It outdates sometimes faster than it breaks. So I'm. I don't know anything about it. I'll look into it. So. Sure. Okay. So this is, this, this question is another question. It says I've been thinking about getting the, and grabbing the Synergy SIN20 IR and the JCMA 800 module but I'm worried about the electronics failing. Longevity. Do you feel differently about that than you do the Inya? Well, remember the India is not just the technology. It's not the technology, it's the technologies put into a thing that ness. Like a good but good example. Let's talk about the Indian guitar. If anything, this, this technology, there's a lot of tech in this thing. It's not just a, it's not just a speaker in there, right? There is a lithium battery which can be changed out. It's not easy but it can be done right. In other words, you have effects processor. There's. This is all kinds of built in effects and there's a touch, touch sensitive pad here. There's a lot of tech in this guitar. And my point is, is that tech could fail and if it does well, you'll still have a guitar and you can play that forever. But now you have a guitar with failed tech in it. Does it make sense? My point is, is I love the idea what they're trying to do, but my brain goes well why not let me argue this and I'll get back to the argument with synergy too. Let me argue this. If Inya made this guitar the way it is now, right? One piece extruded, this, this carbon plastic stuff that it's, you know, whatever it is, stainless steel frets, locking, tuning keys, which all things we traditionally know. This, this bridge right, with the, the brass block that we just talked about, right? That's not. The trim alarm is not going to break off in there. They made this guitar and then this tech right here was all in like, like the black star beam or something like that. Like a little, that I have those amps, I have all these little amps that are tech that have tech. Okay, Now I have a guitar. This guitar lasts forever. Like this guitar forever. It can't even. Look at this. The neck can't even shrink right. I don't know what the lifespan of this material is, but I'm gonna say I'm not. I don't have to worry about it. I'll be dead before I think this is gonna be a problem for me. So the failure of this guitar. The. The potential failure of this guitar is the tech. It's not that I'm against the tech. It's just now the tech's in there, and once it dies in there, now you have a guitar that still functions with dead tech in it. So, like, my argument is like, why does it have to be in the guitar? And somebody says, well, for busking. And I'm like, I mean, I have a belt clip amp. Back to my thing. I wish I had the amp here. If you look at the Blackstar Beam, like, it's. It's like this. This thick. I have the go. I have the. The whatever. The spark go as well. Those amps are tiny. I have a. Took it out of here too. I have a little JBL Bluetooth thing. They're tiny. I put it. You could put it on. I could put it on my guitar strap right here. And now I have this guitar in port, and somebody's like, yeah, but this is portable. Like, that stuff's portable too. I throw that in. In the gig bag that this guitar comes in. I can stick any of the amps I just mentioned in the front pouch, and they would go with this guitar, fine. So now the argument is, well, yeah, but you have to have a cable to go from this to the amp. I'm like, really? That's what we're coming down to. This is like, back to the Do I. I like having my. I have wireless headphones. I'd really like to have, you know, back to wire again, because half the time I'm at the gym trying to pair my headphones to my phone. And so that's what I'm saying. I don't need to add the tech where it doesn't need to be. And then for anyone who say anything, just understand. I. My earphones I wear are the kinds that are. Don't go inside your ears. So I don't recommend putting ones inside your ears. If you remember, I got ear infections last year. That's how I got them was from using the Apple earbuds. So now I have ones that sit on the outside of yours. You can get ones that go on the back ear here too, but they sit like they sit on the bone and then they reverberate. But my point is, that's my issue. So my issue is not necessarily that the tech is bad or the guitar is bad. It's just that I'm not a fan of that. Okay. And where I lose a little of my joy is this is a thousand dollars guitar. This is so back. Let's argue again. This guitar is $899, so $900. And then my argument is the tech, this processor and this amp. Let's play a game, okay? It's rhetorical. You don't have to. Actually, we're not going to take a poll. What does that cost? Well, I could buy a processor that's pretty badass. It sounds like everything I heard in this thing with a looper for about 200. And I could buy that amp for about 200, so that's $400. Okay. So if I took those out this guitar. What does this guitar cost to make? Well, they. They charge for the same guitar without the Seymour Duncan's, they charge $600. So I would argue they could make this guitar without the Seymour Duncan's and out this tech. They could make it for $400, no problem. I'd rather have that guitar for $400 and spend $400 for the tech to be external. Although keep in mind, I wouldn't need that processor because the amp has all those sounds. That's my argument. And again, it's not to say one's bad or good. I'm just pointing out the things. And this is also, you understand, I. This is a hindsight thing. I have hindsight. I've sold and fixed so much stuff that I can just tell you, like, yeah, that's not going to make it. This is going to make it. And it's not so much like every penny. You shouldn't spend it. If it brings you joy, great. But my point is, if the joy comes at the end of the frustration or at the beginning and then ends in frustration, it's not that great. But back to your thing with Synergy. The Synergy module thing is just that. Here's what's different, you understand about a Synergy module. Okay. And again, there's no right or wrong. I'm just giving you my opinions so they make sense. The Synergy 20 in the JC100 module amp would do. I think that tech can fail. Technology could fail, sure. But it's also less than the real thing. So. Yeah, I mean, if you get a Marshall JC100 studio, which is that amp, right? Yes. That amp costs more than the Synergy 20 technically does and then costs more than the module does. And it probably has the same fail rate or close to it. So I know The Synergy guys, I know the owner, Synergy really well, and I'm gonna tell you right now, he's. He is one of the most straight shooter cool guys I know, by the way. So, you know, he just. Oh, man, I can't tell you. How do I tell you guys? How do I tell you something I'm not supposed to tell you? So I'll tell you what I can tell you and then we'll keep the rest vague. So my buddy Larry Mitchell, you guys know Larry, he's amazing, right? Grammy winning producer, amazing guitar player. He bought a. A Royalist and it was making some kind of crazy sound. And Larry will gladly tell you, so I'm not gonna. Obviously we're a good friend, so I'm gonna tell you, right? He'll gladly tell you that tech and him do not get along. In other words, when something goes wrong, he just, he has no technical skills. He doesn't work on his guitars in any way. Here's how you get as good as Larry. You just practice all the damn time. You play guitar, okay? He just plays guitar all the time. He doesn't fix his guitars. He doesn't fix his amps. So the pedal was squealing. So he was going to like, hey, do you. Do you know what I should do? And I said, well, I know the owner, okay, so I'll just text the owner. You know, I know the owner isn't going to fix it, but I'll tell the owner, and then the owner will just figure out the process. I text the owner on a Friday night. It was actually after a show, this is a few weeks ago, and the owner took care of it. I got a text the next morning going, hey, I took care of Larry. I had the engineer who designed it get on the whatever, and we took it and we got him a new model bottle. They took care of Larry, okay? And then I found out that he's out of the country, the owner at his son's birthday. And I, I'm like, dude, you don't have to take care of my friend. You're out of your. You're at your son's birthday. You're literally on a vacation out of the country. And so. So my answer to you is, is. And by the way, for the record, I bought my Synergy 20 and they didn't give it to me. They gave me other stuff, but I bought it. The. The reason is, I'm sure if I would have asked him, he would have sent me one, but I didn't want to do that because Like I told you, he's a friend. So I, I don't ask my friends for, for, you know, I don't ask so, you know, I don't ask my friends for free tickets, their shows and I don't ask my friends who own companies for free gear. This is how I think, right? They're my friends. So we, we can do things, you know, I can support them. I don't have a problem with that. But anyway, so, but yes, you're not wrong. The Synergy technology, there's a lot going on. The modules, there are more break things that can break. There's gonna be stuff. But, but the main thing you have to factor in is that it's, it's not super expensive. Compared to what, it's a cheaper, cheaper product than what you're trying to emulate. In other words, trying to get a Saldano head and a, if you had to get a salgno, even the 30 watt one and a, what do you call it, a 20 watt Marshall. You know, see what I'm saying? And the PV 6505, and that's what Synergy offers you. It offers you some analog choices to things that normally are either very unobtainable, either for size or money, and doing it in a non digital way. So like a fair thing would be, do you really need Synergy now that you can buy effects processors that actually have all this modeling tech in them and they're a fraction of that price? No, that's a better, that's a better price too as well. But, but the, what do you call it? The, the Synergy stuff is just trying to fill a need and he keeps the prices very reasonable. Plus there's something cool coming for Synergy coming out soon too. So I should tell you that I haven't seen it. I just know about it. Let's. Wait. What? Hold on. Okay, so Steven, we're going to do this. Two questions. So Steven's question is, Phil, how do I determine the pickup height? At what point is the pickup too high? And what should I listen for? Okay, so, you know, I actually had this discussion, funny enough last Saturday with Larry DiMarzio. I was talking to him about something else and I said, hey, let me ask you a question, right? The guy's been building pickups for longer than I'm alive. Been alive. So fun fact for you, DiMarzio's been around longer than I've been alive as a company. The pickups. And I said, hey, do you have. I said, I get this question a lot and I said, I have my answer. He didn't know my answer. And I said, I have my answer. But they ask all the time, what should they set their pickups at? Maybe he has a magical answer. And then he proceed to give me the answer that I always say, which. So I'm just telling you now, I've kind of come to the conclusion that maybe my answer, unfortunately, is the only answer out there. And it's the answer I learned from other people too as well. So setting pickup height, there's two things I follow, and hopefully this will help you. If the magnet, like a single coil pickup, the slug is the magnet. If this slug is the magnet, in other words, it's okay. The magnet, you don't want the magnet where the closest string. So when people say that your intonation can go out or you can get string buzz by having your pickups too close, and then other people say that's not true. They're both right. The one that said it happened, it did happen. It happened with a single coil pickup. The one that said it didn't happen, they were probably. They probably use humbuckers and P90s. I've. I've caught this because I might ask them, I would say somebody go, yeah, that's not true. Pickups can't make your intonation go out. And I go, do you play Strats? What do you play? And they go, I only play Les Paul. So I'm like, yeah, it's not going to happen with Les Paul. The reason is because when you look at a humbucker, a P90, the magnet is at the bottom of the pickup, and then steel slugs or steel screws are touching that magnet. And then that's how they're getting the magnetic, let's just call it energy to the string. It's not going to be as strong. For instance, the Northern Lights, the magnets are so weak. By the way, Can I just share with you guys that it's so hot in Arizona right now that I filled up this thing before the show with ice and water. Ah, gotta love Arizona. Okay, so anyways, the. My point is with the magnets that we use in the Northern Lights, they're so. They're so. They're charged so low. They're so low that you could pretty put a northern light magnet or pickup right up on the string. I have one guitar. I don't necessarily think you should do this. I got the magnet, the pickup, it's literally not even a millimeter from the string. It's ridiculous. So the answer to your question is you have to use your ears. And the reason this is is because even when you think about micing up a cabinet, right, the question is, where do you set the. The microphone? On a speaker. And some will say, well, it's off to the side. Some will say, on the edge. Someone say, in the center. Some will say, right up on the. On the. On the. On the basket. Someone will say, further away. But the reality is that without knowing the second part of that question, which is, what microphone are you using? Right? So the same with pickups. When you say, how do I set the height of the pickups? The problem is you have to take the time to learn about the pickup that you have. And so you have to know if it's a. It's a really powerful magnet, like, if it's a really powerful ceramic magnet, or if it's a. If it's a. Like I said, the magnet itself. The slugs are the magnets. And by the way, there are humbuckers where the slugs are the magnets. That is a thing that exists. There are humbuckers where there's a bar magnet underneath touching the screws. And then the slugs themselves are magnets. That would also cause the same problem a Strat would have. Strat pickup could do. So what you have to do is you just adjust it using your ear. And I know you're like, what are you listening for? Well, first thing you're listening for is just like when you run your. Think about when you strum a guitar into your amp clean and you get that breakup. Not the good breakup, that one where it's like, farting out a little bit. That's not good, right? You're like, oh, something's hitting the amp too hard. Maybe I got the gain too high. Or something's, you know, something's too. Too extreme. Same thing with your mag. Your pickup, generally speaking, the closer you put this. The pickup to the string, the brighter it gets, the further away it gets, the bassier, and then it gets hollower sounding. In other words, sounds like me just going to. It's just like a microphone. So, you know, when you ship pickups internationally, you actually look. You actually put them down as microphones. That's essentially what they are. They're microphones. So that's. So not technically, but, you know, according customs, that's what they are. So the point is just like this. If I get right up on this thing, sorry to do this, you guys in the cars right now. You understand, right? So the question to ask you Is where do I. Where do I put my microphone and distance to my mouth. The same logic. I figured it out. Like, here's the setting. Here's the. Here's how I set the microphone gain. Here's the thing. And this is where I've decided to sit from it. I sit about 12 inches, 1012 inches from the microphone. So you have to just use your ear. And there is some cheats. Some people go, we'll start here. If you need a starting point, sure, use. You can use a starting point. I don't know what that starting point is. I've heard a ton of stuff. I'm sure if you go and Google like Seymour Duncan and some other places, they have a starting point to start from. But I don't use any of those points. I just use my ears real quick and I just go, so. So I. I hope that's enough information to help you start the journey. And if you don't know specifically what's in your pickup, don't worry about it. Just use your ear. You know, it's. And. And so, you know, you could. There is no wrong answers. What I mean by that is you might actually be doing something that's technically wrong, but you like the way it sounds. Like, you know, the micro. The pickup is just super close to strings. Another thing that's going to be problematic is the type of strings you have. So for instance, if you were using pure nickel strings, you could put the pickup closer to the string. It's not a problem. I'm not saying you should. I'm saying you could. So. Somebody says, the dimargios that are sitting on my desk, are those too far from the strings? I'm gonna say yes. I'm gonna say absolutely yes. So, yeah, I have a. I have an idea on a way to experiment with that idea. And I'll probably work it out on the next live clinic by using a pickup external outside of the guitar and just using strings on top and seeing where. Where it kind of comes alive. But generally I use the. If it's a really powerful pickup, I kind of bring it. Pull it away from the strings a little bit. If it's a weaker pickup, I bring it a little closer to strings because I'm generally trying to get the same. The amp to feel the same when I'm changing out guitars on that note. Let's go ahead. And now it's time for this or that. Okay, let's do it. This or that. This week's this or that. Let me turn on light is interesting. I have no idea how I feel about this one. I've probably voted three different ways on this already. I'm gonna stick with my final answer. So my vote is locked in. So you guys know we're using two pedals. I'm running the Morgan PR12 head into a 212 cabinet. I got 212Marshall with greenbacks, and it's mic'd up with the Sennheiser mic. Guitar wise, we're using the moon pie guitar, and we're gonna. We're gonna do. I'm gonna use a little delay. I hope you don't mind. Just it helps me. Okay. I'll do non coil split. Then I'll do coil split on the neck, and we'll try that. I'll give you a sample. Here's the clean. Got the Duesenberg trim on this. Okay. Now let's go ahead and try the two pedals. We'll start with that. We'll start with that. Let's do this. We'll make this fast. I got a little drum track. I'll play something. Let's start the poll, too. That will help, I promise. This one. If you've never done one of these before, I think you're gonna have trouble with this one. And I think you're gonna love how it ends or what. What it is. So this, This, that, and I'm going to do something. None. And. Oh, I'm going to make it worse. Both. Should I do that? I feel like that's a cheat. That's a cheat. We're not doing that. Okay. All right. We started the poll. I'm gonna try and play. We'll see how it goes. First pedals on. We're on that. Here we go. Okay, now we go to this. Here we go. Here's this. Okay, so I want to see this. I want to see how it goes. Hold on. I'm looking at the poll. Oh, this 42 already. Wow. Okay. All right, let's. Let's do one more. We're gonna go that. And we'll go coil split. Same riff, same drum track. Now our coil split on the neck. Here we go. And then, to be fair, this time the squid didn't make it play Wrong. That was me. Let's do it again. Okay, switch pedals again. Now we're on this. This is the. This track with coil split. So with that being said, I'm going to put it back in humber mode, and I want to look at the poll, and I'm gonna say, wow. That is crazy. Okay, okay. So I'm gonna call it this wins 68% to 22%. 8% said none. Dude, I don't know anymore. I feel like this or that is a fun game. And I know the problem with it is we're doing just a capture of one thing on, you know, who the hell knows? I'm gonna end the poll right now. So what was. What is this or that this week? Well, it's two pedals. It is the KTR clon pedal and the. Is it warm? Warm audio. What do you call this? The Centavo. Centavo pedal. Now, for why I decided to do this one this week was I was watching a bunch of YouTube channels, and it seems like everyone bought that warm reverb audio deal. We got a box and got a pedal. I didn't do it. I should have done it. What happened with me was I was at the guitar center. By the way, I picked this as well. You can see my little. This here. I'll just pull it out, show you. I picked this. So I agree with you guys. I was at a guitar center, and I was. Funny enough, I was over at one of those pedal stations, and I was plugging in, and I was trying some of the pedals out. I never done it. As much as I talked about it. Never done it. And I tried this pedal, and I was the warm audio one, and I was like, oh, I love this. This is amazing. And I got it home, and it did that thing that pedals sometimes do where in the store. It sounded fantastic. And then at home, it sounded. It sounds good. It's a good pedal. And it's not cheap. I thought it was gonna be cheap. I didn't even. I didn't even really look at it because they didn't have the price on it. And so I go. I just went up to the counter and go, I want this pedal. And the guy got it out of the box, and it was like $189. I thought it was like a 99 pedal. I must have been confused. So I bought. It was 200 bucks. Now the KTR is run about used. They're running about $600. So. And for those that are know anything about pedals, I'm not a huge pedal guy, but I know some basic stuff. This KTR is a pre 2020change. So this has the original op amps or whatever you want to call whatever it is that makes it original to the. To the original KTR clone version that he was doing before he switched. So. But they're running about 600. So you can imagine this is. This pedal is three. The one I'm pointing to, the KTR is three times more than this. And that's used to new pricing. So I don't know what used on the warm audio one. And my guess is about 150, 120 bucks. So again, still, still quite a bit more. And what I found was is that the main difference between them and I think what you guys maybe hears too, is not so much the gain differences because it was hard to kind of get the gains to line up no matter what I did. The actual clawn the KTR that's actually a clone has a mid range to it. That this sounds more like to me, the warm sounds more like a Fender product Fender amp that's more V scooped out. In other words, I feel like, I feel like the treble, the control, this one EQ control, I feel like it went from like, like a Fender amp. It was like bassy. And then you get a little bit of mids and that's usually enough. And then you go right into bright territory. By the way, both these pedals have switches and I put them in the switches in the. In the positions I thought sounded the best. What's funny about this is sometimes as you know, sometimes we all agree that the cheaper pedal wins and sometimes it's more expensive one. You know, given that the clan is just soaked in hype and this isn't even the real clan, this is the whatever you call it, reissue clan. But, you know, yeah, it's crazy. So I don't know. I. I have to tell you, I think I'd be happy with either one. I think the warm audio is still really cool and I don't think without the AB you would actually notice a whole lot. So. But yeah, definitely this time the more expensive pedal one. And again I had toggled back and forth all day and then we'll end on this last question. And this was a question I saw. It was one of the second question I saw and I thought it was a good time to answer is at the end of the show. Ready? This was from David who says hey, first time joining one of these from the start. So hopefully you made it to the end because I got your question says, does anyone know if Phil has like a pre podcast ritual? I absolutely do. It's a very long rich. I'm not kidding. It's very long. Bands always have some weird ones before live show. So the live show for me starts somewhere right after I wake up and have coffee. So My day. So actually, let's back up. The show starts usually around Wednesday. So around Wednesday is when I'm starting making notes. I'll be talking to Shauna and saying, hey, these are the things going on this week, and I think people might ask about this. So I tend to research stuff. So a little fun fact information for you. Like, this week, there were two things that I probably spent a good two, three, four hours on researching. You guys didn't even ask about. I thought they might be topics for the week. So I tend to go. I don't want to go off totally, like, with no information what's going on. So I'll give you. For instance, I did a heavy amount of research on the d' Addario AI thing, but no one, really. I didn't see anybody bring it up. Not here. And then, of course, the Fender CEO's AI is the same as a cover band. And. And if you like cover bands, AI is the same kind of thing. I thought that was kind of weird. So, again, I did some diligent research on that, but I'll tend to do that, too. If there's a new product, I'll research that sometimes, too. Again, if it's not something that I'm versed in, at least I could have some kind of information on. Then when it comes to Friday, like I said, right after coffee, what we start doing is I start figuring out what's this or that going to be today? So I kind of go through. I usually have an idea throughout the week. Guitar of the week. I try to figure out that. Guitar of the week. I have to usually run through about three or four times to make sure the settings are right. So there's no overloading. Because there's a lot of stuff going on. There's like mission control over here. I have, you know, there's. Think of this. There's four mics on that. I'm switching between four mics. There's mics on this cabinets. There's mics on me, you know, and so obviously this or that thing has to go through a different part of the rig. So there's a lot of things. Then what happens is now that I have a new routine when I say now in the. Since this, tomorrow or no, we're in July. July marks one year. I've been going to the gym. So I go to the gym on Friday. So today I hit the treadmill. So I have coffee. We start prepping the show. I start figuring out what's going to be this or that. I write that down. I write down what's going to be guitar of the week. I work out all the ideas and then I go to the gym, I do the treadmill. It's very exciting. And then after the treadmill we have a lunch. And then after lunch, I know this is not part of the show, but understand. And then around 11 o', clock, so 11 o' clock in the morning, I have to start drinking water to prep for the show because I talk for two hours straight and I'm talking fast and I'm talking a lot and I'm actually louder than you think I am because it's how I keep the excitement up a little. Fun fact for YouTubers. You know how the camera adds 10 pounds? Well, it also decreases your energy by at least 30%. So when people, you have to be up, you know, in your head, in your voice, you have to be more excited then you come across. If you, if I talked like I do on this show to a normal person on the street, they think I was a crazy person. Hey, what's up guys? How's the week going? You'd be like, what is wrong with this guy? But that's how you keep your energy up. So I have to drink, start drinking water around 11. I have to consume one of these. So I consume one of these. So I have hydration. You don't drink for the water. You don't. When you need water, you don't drink it. You need to have the water already in your system. Drinking the water during the show, sometimes it's more about just taking a mental break for a second like now, but also just because I'm still because of water. Then around noon, sometimes I push it as far to 1230. I can't talk to anyone. No talking for at least two to three hours before the show. This is because your voice, if you guys have been doing the show long enough, you know my voice used to crack or. And that was because it was starting to get nodes because. Because the, the doctor was saying that basically projecting like I do as loud as I go and talking as much for two hours. It was causing a strain on my vocal cords. So, so we relax them and I do have a warm up thing I do. And then around 1 o' clock is when I start setting cameras, setting all this stuff, getting all this ready, setting the show. Today there was a contest. So I set up the, the contest to make sure all the things are done and get that prepped and ready to go as well. And then we start the show and then whatever ensues Ensues. It goes this way. Sometimes I might have to reach out to the moderators and tell them a heads up on something. Today I give them a heads up that there was a con. A show. Hey, there was a show. No, today I had a heads up that there was a contest that we're going to give away a guitar. So sometimes there's stuff like that. Sometimes I've actually. So, you know, the patrons already know this. So I'll just tell you guys this one on this. Sometimes, like when the Fender thing happened, I let them know if they want to not be on the show today or not hang around. I understand that it's probably going to be, you know, people are going to get upset. And generally speaking, if you're talking about a subject that's a hotspot, people have really harsh opinions and they get really aggressive towards each other. And you know, these, these, these, these folks are just people in the community who just want to make, you know, make this experience great for you guys. And so I'll tell them, like, you may not want to be on the comment sections today. And, and that's different. I will tell you this. Four years ago, yeah, four or five years ago, I had a different philosophy. I wouldn't do the show. Remember, every once in a while, there was no show on Friday. If you go back and look where their show is missing, you can, I can guarantee you there was like the, something like the Fender fiasco, like where something happened negative. And I, I knew on Wednesday, I'm like, it's all going to be just negative on Friday. I don't even want to do it now. I've decided I'm gonna push through and do it. I do it. I do the show. I do the show unless I'm sick. So, you know, I, I heard a quote and it stuck with me. And it was Lorne Michaels. And the quote was from Saturday Live. And he said, the show doesn't go on because it's ready. The show goes on because it's 10pm and that changed my life. The Friday show doesn't go on because it's ready or it's good or I think it's going to be whatever. The show goes on because it's 3pm Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Daylight Time, whatever makes you happy. And I just go through and do it. So that's the prep for the show. By the way, you can tell already my starting to lose my voice now. If you hear the gravel in my voice, that's because about two hours in is when it's most I can give. So on that note, I'm going to let you guys go. I want to thank you guys for hanging out, making the show fun every week. Please enter to win the guitar if you so want to. And don't forget, you get bonus entries if you subscribe to the other channel and to this channel. So just something to think about again. And I'll see you guys next Friday. We'll give away a guitar. On that note. Thank you so much. To the next time. Know your Gear the Know youw Gear Podcast. Well, I'm back here. I'm back. Somebody said get some Pedialyte. Okay. So I should tell you too that I also drink one of these. And in this I have no idea what it is. So let me show you just because it is part of the ritual. So let me tell you what's in it. I'm gonna pull it up. So it's water and. Nope, this. I'm gonna pull this up. So here is what is in this. It's this. It's a. It looks like this. I don't know if this is the exact brand I'm using, but whatever I have. I have a tube of this stuff and there's a tablet in here and this is a hydration tablet that has like salt and I don't know, whatever. I don't know what's in it. But so you know, that's. So that's also. I'm drinking that on top of that. So I just let you let know. Okay, now I'll let you go. And know your gear the Know youw Gear podcast.