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The know youw gear podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast on April. What are we at, 24th? Yeah. April 20. Was this almost the end of the month? It's almost the end of the month. Look at that. We. We survived another month. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. Let me move this mic just a little bit closer. Get a little deeper in my voice. No, seriously, I just want to say thank you guys all for joining us live. Let's get into some questions and topics. Okay, so Jeremy wanted to know what happened to the. I'm not gonna say the name of the video. The video. There was a video. Okay, so let's talk about some videos. So this week I did a breakdown video. If you guys haven't seen it, definitely check it out. It was the most difficult video I've ever done on YouTube. It took the longest time ever. I don't even know the exact time because if I did, I'd probably quit YouTube forever. And I'm not exaggerating any means it probably took. Well, I knew it took months to. To process and get through what I needed to get through. And then the most amount of editing time I've ever experienced with the most of. Amount of. Of just work to do a guitar. And. And so I hope you guys enjoyed that video. And something to point out, thing that kind of interesting and videos like that are very painful because when something is wrong with a guitar, the thing. The approach that we take here is instead of just pointing out the problem or telling you guys, hey, there's a problem, we try to show you the fix. Which means every single thing we find issue, I find with a guitar, that means a separate little micro video has to be made to explain the fix or at least have you let you have a better understanding of what is wrong with the guitar. So long story short, as you can imagine, that guitar had a lot of issues. And I. I gotta say, the manufacturer was very kind and. And working with us. Somebody asked me this week, you know, what happens like a video like that? Do they get upset? In that particular case, the guitar was. In my. In my opinion, here's what happened with the guitar. So, you know, some people talked about humidity issues and. And things like that. Because the guitar is from the Philippines. I get guitars from Indonesia. I get guitars from Japan. Japan's a wet climate too. Indonesia is a wet climate. You know, obviously at the Cortec Factory, I can tell you it's pretty humid, right? It's essentially a swamp land in humidity feeling. And so, I mean there's other, there's, there's other factors besides just where the guitar is made. I will say the company did reach out to me and make some comments and some promises and maybe there'll be another video in the future. I'm not going to say what, because in the past I've always kind of said what the company said and people are like, that's great. I'm going to buy from them because they're so nice. I. And they might be, but I can tell you, I feel like the majority of the time I tell you that the company reached out and said, hey, we're fixing it, they didn't do it. So I don't want to give any more companies credit until I see something. But in that particular case, what happened with that video was, you know, there was a lot of videos made that guitar. I believe that all the channels that make videos about the guitar were telling you the truth. I just don't think they spent as much time with the guitar and scrutinizing the guitar as I did. That's just my opinion and nor should they. I'm a guitar tech, so I have to approach it like a guitar tech where they approach it like a guitar player or, or someone who's just, hey, enjoying guitar. And so I think you guys expect a little bit higher standard from me and that's why I kind of approached it or hit it a little harder. So you guys know I feel so bad about that video that they were supposed to pay for that video. I didn't charge them. I just told them, nevermind, you know, we'll just put the video out. But that was a paid sponsored video. So when I say it was paid sponsored, they did, we did not ask for the payment. So we, in fact I sent them a message ahead so they got a little bit of a heads up. They don't see the video before you guys do. In fact, they saw it after you guys did. And but I did give them a heads up like, hey, this video, this guitar didn't do well. So, you know, here's the issues I'm dealing with. Okay, so there's the backstory on that. But the person was specifically talking about another video that was released to Patron. You guys will see in a couple days. And it's because you guys see on Patreon, if you guys don't know, you get a first wrap version of a video and then I'm making adjustments and then sometimes I pull the video to make some other adjustments. Okay. I feel like we talked a Lot about videos. All right, let's get into another question. This one is from Blind Paranoia. This one was sent from Amanda, says, hey, Phil, your first Sharpen Max guitar. Rob, the Rob Scallen Chapman signature came into my guitar center for a trade in. Still has the pickup she put in it, and it plays great. You know, I see remnants of those guitars everywhere. I. It's funny, not all the guitars, but a lot of them. We actually put a know your gear sticker somewhere inside the guitar when we work on them or when I. They're in a video. So that someday, if you ever see the guitar and you go, hey, I think that's from a know you get video. Video. A lot of times you can just open up inside the cavity or something like that. There's a little sticker in there. Although people do remove them. So I can tell you, companies remove them, we win. A guitar is loaned to us. Sometimes I'll put a little something in there. And I. Not for a negative thing, either way. I put the sticker in there, thinking in case. Like I said, in case anyone ever buys it or sees it. And they go, was this that guitar that was in that video? They can pull it up and go, oh, there's a new year sticker. It's gotta be the guitar I used to sign them to inside. And. And when I say, sometimes I did it, I've kind of backed off, away from it because I've had multiple times where the guitar was sent to us, it was loaned to us. I did that because I thought, oh, that'd be cool for the consumer that's buying it. And what happened was the company would get it back and then they would remove all that because they're either selling it now to a dealer or they're sending it to another influencer or channel. And I'd say that'd be the more common thing I see them doing, is they send it to another channel. So which I always kind of. That's where it gets a little weird with us and the borrowed guitars. Because sometimes I worry both ways. I worry, like if I detect problems and I fix them, and then I send it back to the company, then they send it to another channel, and that channel says the guitar is great. Well, is that the guitar was great or the workmanship I just did, which was great. And then sometimes it works the opposite. I don't fix some of the things and send it to them. And then, you know, and then I get a little. I get a little weary when I see the second channel that Sees it not mention any of the problems. I'm like, well, they were pretty obvious, so I don't know. So, yeah. All right. Brian says, what does he say? He says, hey, Phil, do you think the trend of wild guitar shapes will ever return? I don't think it ever went away. This is, I think, of the wild guitar shapes in the same category as rock and metal and guitar music in general. You know, this comes up a lot, personally. Not so much on the, on the podcast, but it comes up a lot, personally. I love it when people go, guitar is dead. Guitar is dead. You know, guitar is dead, metal's dead, rock is dead. When, you know, if. When I went to high school, guitar was dead. Totally dead. I was talking about this on the bonus podcast and on the coffee talk with the patrons. When I went to guitar, When I went to guitar. When I went to guitar, when I went to high school and I was playing guitar, there was probably seven kids in the entire school, the high school of, of, of a graduating class, about 600 plus kids. There was six or seven kids that play guitar. I know this because we tried to have a battle of bands. There was only two bands in my school, so we couldn't have a battle of bands. So then we came up with the idea of like a guitar battle, like, let's have a guitar. Which I, I think it turned into a guitar expo. And we could only find five kids, six kids total, and I think only four, five. So we had to open it up. So I had it. Here's how it happened. I actually orchestrated all this myself. And so I had to go to the school, to my school, high school to get permission to allow other kids from other high schools. Because then I drove to other high schools and got other kids. So in this guitar expo that we did, kids came from other high schools. And then even then, I think we got up to 10, maybe 15 kids. Well, maybe 10, 10. There's no way there's much more than 10. And because there's just not that many guitar players and there are definitely not a lot of people that were into rock and metal. So it was so. I always love it. It's like it was dead then, per se, but then now it's dead now. Like I said, I say no, I say that there's a certain generation, right? And I'm going to call it the Van Halen generation. Screw this Gen X boomers, all this stuff. I'm going to call it the Van Halen, the striped Van Halen generation. And they. And maybe, and maybe the generation before them, we'll call that the Buddy Holly generation. Some of you guys are going to be pissed at those comments here, but I'm just. Please stick with me on this. The Buddy Holly generation and the Van Halen generation, they know guitar and rock guitar as pop music, as being popular music. And that's not. That's not a slam, by the way. Somebody always gets upset when you say pop music. Popular means. Pop music means popular. It means people liked it. Lots of people. Lots of people for two very brief moments in modern music history, in mainstream liked guitar, especially rock guitar music, just to those two. And if you look, you can look through it through stats. I'm not off by much. The stats really do show this. And when people always go, but you forget Clapton, you forget this. Look, there's all kinds of guitar throughout here. But we're talking about when. And I always use a good barometer was I used to use my mother for this. My mother could tell you who Van Halen is. She couldn't name a song or ever heard a song, but she kind of knew the band. She knew she wasn't in the Beatles, but she knew the Beatles. My mom liked more like pop popular, like, you know, top 40 music. And. But she knew, she knew certain rock bands and even certain blues music only because it. It kind of came into the top 40. And so that's it. Once, once I think that, and I think the last one was definitely Van Halen, especially Striped era Van Halen, you know, with Roth and stuff. Then I think that's the last you see of, like, I think guitar and rock guitar music as being a huge popular music movement. And everybody always, like, will pick. Every time I talk about this with friends, they go, what about this one artist? I'm like, look, man, you can pick anomalies all day long. I'm talking about. And here's why I say this. My sibling is six years older than me. When they went to high school, it was all Ozzy T shirts, Dawkin. That was like. That's why I was ready for that. When I went, I was like, oh, Dawkin, Ozzy, Motley Crue, Van Halen. This is the thing, you know, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin. That was the thing. No one listened to that when I went to high school. Now again, my high school is where I was in Arizona. It's not everybody. It's not everybody's high school. It's not everybody's time. Different. Different place in the world, different times. But I'm telling you, I could Count the amount of rock band T shirts in my high school on one hand. And one of those shirts I was probably wearing because the fact that it was just not the popular music. It was definitely rap for sure, without any question. Too short, you know, two Live Crew. I mean it wasn't even, you know, that that stuff was definitely the popular. Well, and sadly enough, it's probably not was the popular. That's just the rap music I think I knew at the time. But. But yeah, that's it now. See, watch this. Haunted Guitar man says, as a 90s kid, I feel like Korn, number one on MTV and nu metal in general. Guitar was good. They're also gangster rap though. So think about this. When you think of the nu metal, which I know that's a. People get really weird about when you tag music with certain names. But when I think of Korn, because I'm a huge Korn fan, I think of Deftones, I think of Limp Bizkit. So, you know, they corn, I believe, got Limp Bizkit signed and Deftone signed. I think that's how I remember the story. If I'm incorrect, I apologize. But there was definitely that movement of the seven string music, the lower tune music for sure. I would definitely, I can tell you right now, haunted Guitar man. When I say pop, I don't mean that it made a pop like it made it on the radio or it made it on a top 40 for a moment or it made it on MTV. I'm talking about actual people who are not into guitar would know what it is. Guitar has always been a cultural phenomenon that has been people who love guitar, usually guitar players. I say that because I don't think that's the same for piano. When you see piano players, everyone seems to know who Elton John is. Everyone knows who Billy Joel is. When I say everyone, I mean literally go outside of your genre of musicians. Go to people who just consume music non hyper passionately, right? We're talking about people who enjoy music. They have it on their headphones or maybe they run on the treadmill with some music, they listen to it in the car, but they're not going to concerts every day like. Like some of us would if we were given the choice. They're not consuming every bit of music they can and every piece of music trivia. They're not into musical instruments at all. Maybe they dabbled, but they're probably not playing a musical instrument. I would say there's a ton of music that they will know. And when you get to the guitar driven Music, it's never usually that's the music they know. And what they tend to know are all the stereotypical people that we like, Hendrix, they're like, oh yeah, I know Jimi Hendrix. But they probably couldn't name more than the two or three popular songs. So I just find that that's been the case with music and guitar for a long, long time when it comes to mainstream. And the reason I say that is because every time something is quote, unquote dead, I'm always like, well, if it's dead, it's been dying for 30, 40 years. So that's. I don't think it's dead. I don't. I think if you told me something's dying that long, it should be over, it should be gone. And the fact that it's not means that there is a when what I always believe there is. There is a smaller culture still, a large culture, but a small culture of people like us who are super passionate about guitar. Guitar music. And plus guitar players are strange because when I. Because guitar players are one of the few musicians, you don't see it as much in drummers. Remember I'm a bass player. Don't see it a whole lot in bass players as much by far. Guitar players stay really passionate. Majority wise of guitar players stay really passionate to their vein of music and guitar. So if they like rock, they like rock. And. And if you mention like a good example, if you mention like Steve Lukather, you know, to a metal crowd, they're just like, who, what? That guy sucks at guitar. And you're like, it's amazing at guitar. What are you talking about? He's a flipping amazing, right? Because again, they're not used to guitar outside the genre they love. This is something that would have never happened to me. I luckily, luckily one of the things that the army did to me was lock me up in the barracks, so to speak, right? You know, being trapped in the barracks, it really helped me improve myself musically. Because what happened was back then we had CDs. And so what would happen is in fact my first expensive thing I ever bought with, with my check from the military, the first nice heavy big purchase I'll never forget was this. Not only a Sony Walkman, it was the yellow and gray waterproof Sony Walkman. So I could take it, I could run outside with it and go, you know, anywhere I was. And I had this Walkman. It was, I think it was like $99 at the PX, which was super expensive. That was like $1 million. And like 50% of your paycheck and no money to buy the music. I just had the one cd. And so what you would do is you would walk from room to room and ask if anyone would let you borrow a cd, and then you would loan them the CD you had. And that is where I expanded my musical horizon. Because when I went to school, and again, this is just my world. It's not everybody's world, but my world, I used to say. And by the way, by the way, in my world, music was presented to you on a cafeteria tray. In other words, your applesauce doesn't touch your peas, and your peas doesn't touch your chicken cutlet thing. And that's just how music was presented. And by the way, MTV was totally guilty of this. You know, I remember watching MTV and you didn't see rock unless it was. Again, it got into pop genre. Like Def Leppard would get a hit song and they could get into the main day. Otherwise you would sit watching mtv. I would remember watching MTV for hours and hours a day, waiting for one or two of the bands that I love to come on. And then every Saturday night, you would stay up waiting for Headbangers Ball, because Headbangers Ball was finally where you're going to see. You had to wait for Yo, MTV Raps to end so that you could go into Headbangers Ball. And then, even then, Headbangers Ball would play a lot of the darker cuts, the deeper cuts, darker metal stuff that I, you know, I wasn't personally into as much, but at least I could listen to metal. And of course, I would hear, you know, a few of the bands I did love and know. But music was definitely segregated out for sure. Right? It was. Even though you thought MTV is like, no. They would play a pop song and then a rock song. Yeah, they did, but they mostly played the pop stuff. And so you just didn't get a lot of the. The. The. The rock metal genre or anything different, in my opinion. And so, you know, when I was in the army, I got exposed to so many bands, so much music, and of course, you know, I've listened to it and go, oh, I love this. Oh, wow, the guitar player is really good. Oh, wow, this is amazing. Oh, wow. This, you know, that this bass player was truly amazing. And then, you know, you start noticing, like, oh, see, I thought, you know, when you see Steve Harris with Iron Maiden, you think, okay, bass player, and he's galloping. It's amazing. And then when you hear somebody like Marcus Miller, you're Like, oh, wait, this is a totally different, amazing. And so, like I said, that's another reason I think the way things are. The way things are. I think guitar players are not unified in all music like a lot of other musicians are. And I don't know that to be true. I just, like I said, as a bass player, I find that when I talk to bass players, we just talk about bass. When I. I'm not a drummer, but drummers I find talk about drummers. Guitar players tend to talk about only their favorite, favorite guitar players. And when you bring someone out of the arena into their, into their purview. My experience personally has been seven out of 10 times, you're. You're gonna get more pushback than acceptance. You're gonna be like, oh, that guy's a hack. Or, oh, that guy's horrible. I can't stand that music. And you're like, okay, but even if I can't stand it, I still appreciate it. So I don't know. That's my little tirade. A lot of you guys mentioned Headbangers Ball. Yes, Headbangers Ball. I think sometimes people forget they romanticize those MTV years. Like I said, I, I romanticize now. This is my favorite time for entertainment now. Streaming Entertainment. Going on YouTube and finding exactly the stuff I want to watch and the music I want to watch and finding new things and having it. You know what I remember as a kid? It was just force fed Gilligan island reruns and watching MTV and then VH1 and hoping for anything I like to pop up. In fact, that's what I remember about TV in general, was hoping for anything I like to pop up and watching lots of stuff I didn't care for. So. All right, Let's see. Zach attack. P1 says question for the podcast. Could. Could be interesting. Okay, says, well, why do you think Kaler Bridges fell out, out of favor after the 1980s? Well, part of it is they, they went out of business. They went away. So Kaler, I don't remember what year Kaler went away, but Kaler went away for a while and then came back. And the only reason I really know that is because like I said, my first, I would say five years is how it feel like my five first five years or so as a guitar tech. Kalers were a nightmare because people would bring in anything Kaler and you couldn't get parts and it was always corroded parts or missing parts. And you would just be dealing with it and trying to figure it out. And so you would like, you Know, everything became like triage. You just got to try to get this bridge limping across and going for this customer. So every time somebody brought one in, I was always a little like, oh, this is going to suck. And, and if you could find parts, people were asking premium for them. But then Kaylor came back and the parts became readily available rather quickly, if I recall, because I remember the first time somebody mentioned to me like, oh no, they're back and you get parts. And I'm like, oh. And then we would just fix their bridge. But, you know, here's the deal with Kaler. And again, you know, obviously Kaler's still around, so I mean, and he has a podcast, I believe, so I mean, he might be the guy. Go seek him out and ask him the answer. He probably knows it better than anyone. What I understand about Caylor, as someone who came after that seen with Kaler and Floyd Roses, Eddie Van Halen picked Floyd Rose Bridges. And that's really all you have to know, right? I mean, there's probably a lot more going on to that. But the reality is, is this, if you guys don't know when Eddie basically decided to play a Floyd Rose Bridge and he put it in a Kramer, Kramer, I guess, got an exclusive lockdown to get Floyd Rose Bridges. Like, that's because they could only make so many and, and Eddie was so powerful, they were selling so much that only like Kramer got Floyd's for the longest time. So every, everybody had to, you know, that's why there's a, a comment Jeff Keisel makes about his dad, Mark Keisel, saying, hey, in the 80s, he, he said, his dad, he goes, I'm trying to remember the quote he said. He says it really, it's like a little, really a little innocuous. It's not really. Doesn't sound like much, but he says my dad even made an. Figured out how to make an arrangement to get Floyd's on the carvings. And no one reacted to what he said. And, but I knew what he meant, which is at the time it was almost impossible for anybody outside of Kramer to get a Floyd. But anyways, Floyd, you know, it's, it's, it's. If there's one thing you learn, it's. I think it's, even though I'm not into sports, it works like sports too. You know, Michael Jordan makes Nike the biggest thing ever. Obviously there's a documentary about that that explains it. Basically before that it was Adidas and Converse with pretty much the two giants, the Juggernauts and Nike was nothing. And then they get Michael Jordan and there's more to the story, but the end result is they are. Bam. That's. They're the thing. And we can say the same thing about Ibanez. Where was Ibanez before Steve? I. It was nowhere, let's be honest. And, and same with Eddie Van Halen. Look, when you get people that come out of nowhere like Eddie Van Halen, a talent like that, with a craze that's behind it like that, you know, he. He. He played a Floyd, and that pretty much made it to where everybody had to have a Floyd. And I. And I can tell because if, like I said, I love Eddie Van Halen for a lot of reasons, but the players who are a few years older than me, they. They, like, worshiped at the altar of Eddie Van Halen. Like, it was a different. It's. And I recognize it to this day. I have friends that are just a couple years older than me. Not a lot. Like, two, three. That's all it takes. Two, three years older than me. And their appreciation. Eddie, mine is absolute. He's amazing, and he's one of my favorite guitar players of all time. Theirs is a next level. Like, like I said, it's. They worship at the altar of Eddie Van Halen. And so, you know, I think him getting the Floyd rose is pretty much the guarantee that that's where it goes. But that's probably not the whole story, as it usually isn't. The one thing. I used to do a lot more interviews than I do now. I'm still doing a lot of interviews. The one thing I love about interviews is I'll interview two people who were there at the same time. Two, you know, like, you know, like the parts maker and the company that makes the, you know, the widget or whatever, or the artist and the thing. And I always find the stories never seem to align. Everybody has their own, like, you know, version of that history, which is. Which is quite interesting. Let's see. Okay. Oh, the light clicked off. I'll have to fix that. Jeremy wants to know. This came from a man as well. Hey, Phil, what's your opinion on composite guitars? Like the rough guitars? I have not tried the rough guitars. I hope I'm saying it right. It's just ruf, so I assume it's just phonetically. Right. I'm love. I love composite guitars. Now when I say I love them, I have a great love of the concept of composite guitars, and that's why I continually keep getting them. But I will tell You. I've been unhappy with most the composite guitars I've bought for a ton of reasons. So I love my emerald acoustic. I'm. I'm working on getting a second emerald acoustic, a different style one right now. And still a huge fan. In fact, I can't believe it's for today of all days. It's not out. It's usually, as you guys know, it's on the back wall, but right now it's in the rack. So, huge fan of that. Uh, anyways, I haven't tried or seen the rough guitars in person, but I'm always a fan of composite guitars because I love the idea, I love the idea of innovating guitar. I just, I just. And that's why I own so many concept style guitars. I own about six or seven maybe more guitars that are now all defunct or no longer around, but some kind of version of, you know, a futuristic guitar. And the reason is, is because I think, I think to say for me personally, I think to say the Strat and Les Paul and the Telecaster are some of the most iconic guitars and that's all you really need is absolutely true. But who wants to live in a world where it's like, you know, all I. Yeah, all you need is ketchup, mustard and relish. Well, you know, I don't know, man. I still want to try new things. I want to see. Maybe somebody's got a better idea out there. I think that's. I think it also too, on a. On a. Just an intellectual level, it's more interesting to try crazy and weird, strange things. It's just, it's, you know, after a while it's like, I don't want it to be over. I don't want it to all. All. You know, it's like music. I still like discovering new bands and new music. You know, obviously the older you get, the less you do that because especially now with algorithms, they just like to feed you what, you know, what it is you already listening to. But I love finding new stuff. I think I find about one or two new bands a year and you know, I mean, that's not a lot, but it's not especially compared to when I was a lot younger. But I still like trying the new things. New, new music, new things. So Tony says, ketchup, mustard and gravy, you know, you never know, maybe one day I'll like gravy, who knows? Joel says, hey, are Yamaha Indonesian guitars made in the Cortex factory? I have a Schecter made by Quartz. It's by court. It's awesome. I didn't see any Yamaha, Yamaha guitars in the Cortek factory when it was there. But key. And that's only interesting because the way Cortek works in those buildings, that's probably important to understand is there are buildings that make. So there are companies that buy so many guitars from Cortex, they have to have their own building because they're just making them, right? Like, so imagine I don't know the exact numbers and I don't need to, and neither do you. But just give you an idea. Let's say they said, hey, we need 10,000 guitars of the year. So court would go, okay, we can make obviously like 800 guitars a month for you. And so that would be a full building, just making guitars all month. 800 guitars to fill this 10,000 desired order for the year. Now keep in mind, the numbers are much higher than this. But just. You get the idea. So a brand like Fender, Squire, Ibanez, Strandberg, Paul Reed, Smith, just to name a few, all have their own building, right? So there's a building just designated that. But then there's buildings that make all kinds of other brands. So they're co mingled, including those same brands. Not PRs and Strand. Well, even Strandberg's in a different building twice. But Ibanez is in multiple buildings. And you go, wait a minute, if they have their own building, why are there guitars in this building? It's because, well, maybe they're not making that many of this run and it's specialty. In other words, something a little bit less expensive or more expensive than their main tier. So they make it in the nicer or the nicer building. Higher skill set building, I should say, or the lower skill set building. So my point is, is that when you go there, you could see that there was lots of brands, but there's a lot of brands I didn't see. And here's why. A good example is I know for a fact that GNL was made by Cortec, but when I was at the G and L facility, I, I'm sorry, I know that GNL import was made by Cortech, but when I was at the Cortec facility, I don't. I didn't see a single G and L guitar. And the, and that's before GNL closed and before, you know, and they, and I know for a fact that they had an order. And here's what I think happened because I remember the owner of G and L saying they were getting their court. Court, the brand court order About June. And I was there in June, so that means it had been shipped before June to get to the US In June. And so what happens is, you would think, oh, if they make G and L, or if they make, you know, another brand, you would see it there, but you would only see it when they were making it. Let's say G and L ordered a thousand guitars, but they can knock those guitars out for a month. And therefore, if you went to that factory any of the other 11 months, you would never see that brand. Does it make sense? I would imagine Yamaha. If Court makes a lot of Yamaha guitars, I would imagine that. That I would have saw some, because I can't imagine Yamaha making so little that it would be in a pocket there that I didn't miss when I was there. And I can't imagine they wouldn't have their own building. See, Cortec is the largest manufacturer in Indonesia, but there are a lot of manufacturers building guitars in Indonesia. I can tell you one thing that will help you is you want to look in your serial number and you want to look for the letters ic, which will stand for Indonesian Court. So a lot of serial numbers will say ic. Now, some manufacturers will specifically require request that that serial number not say that. But in my experience, I would say you got a good chance. I don't know, percentages wise, you know, let's just say, you know, 8 out of 10 chance, 80 chance that you'll see an IC in your serial number if it was made in the Indonesian Court factory. So if that helps, there are a lot of factories making a lot of guitars. And. And that's why every time I talk about this, which is when I. Why I wanted to go to Cortech was everybody was goes, who's buying all these guitars? I'm like, you guys right now. You watching right now, you guys, you're buying all these guitars. Stop saying why? Who's buying all these guitars? When it's you, I always find it funny. It's always a viewer going, who buys these? I'm like, you, you the guy who would hang out and watch other guys talk about guitars. You buy guitars. So anyways, that's a little. I'm just. I'm having a little fun. I hope you guys have. All right, let's see, let's see. Mr. Austin, music that came from Amanda as well says, do you think you critique guitars more being a guitar tech instead of just a player? I was happy ignorant before working as a tech. I. I took. So there was an amazing human being that you guys would know as the China guitar skeptic. And he was just an amazing person. I was very, very fortunate to get to hang out with him a few times personally and then a few times digitally. And he was just a really passionate person. And unfortunately we lost him. And he was really young, and that's why this is tough. But he and I would. He was one of the few channels there was, you know, that I would hang out with, who would engage with me in the way that I wanted to engage. Other channels, you know, most channels they wanted to talk about, you know, how much can you get paid and what can the company do and, you know, you know, content. Let's just film some content together. And I was more interested in the, you know, why are we doing this? What happens when we do this? You know, is this all disposable and in 10 years, no one cares about this content? It disappears? Or is this, you know, a building, you know, building platform? Let me ask you. This is, you know, sorry this question's pushed me this way, but, you know, I'm sure the Beatles probably thought their music was good, and I'm pretty sure maybe they had some intuition to know that the music, music was going to be great. But I don't know if they really thought, like, wow, this is going to inspire hundreds of other bands and they are going to make great music, and then that great music will exist because of something we did as a template over an idea or a concept. And I try to not to be too much into my head about this, but I'm like, you know, you make videos and it's not hard to figure out. Everybody's sitting here in a chair in front of a camera, in front of a bunch of crap that they own. And you're like, well, that came from somewhere. Somebody made that video. And then everybody goes, how do I start making videos? Oh, I'll sit in front of my stuff. And that just becomes the formula. So my point was him and I would talk about this. You know, what is this that we're doing? Is it have value? Is it really just, you know, getting companies to send you some products so you can make a video and get paid? Or is it you're trying to get value? What's going on? And the thing he said to me, it just. It hit me just perfectly. He said, we're the surrogate for the viewer. The viewer can't touch this stuff, right? And we can. So it's important. And it's why, like I told you guys, in a lot of My videos, you guys will say in the con, in the comments, like, hey, you didn't say what color it is. Yeah, well, you got eyes. It's red, right? Yeah. It's not something I'm gonna focus a lot of time on. In fact, I'm always weary of people who point things to me that are obvious to me. Looking at it one second, like, hey, it has a pick guard, and it's red. I'm like, those are the things I can figure out real fast. Tell me what I can't figure out. Help me understand this. And here's why. Because, yeah, being a guitar player, I think, is a passionate, important thing. But reality is, is we're all trying to figure out what to do with the thing that we have this thing called money that we spent so much time getting, right? It's so much work to get money. And then you give it to someone in hopes that what you get is a. Is a value that is. That matters to you. And so the way I scrutinize things, and I'm getting more. I told you guys during COVID I laxed it a little bit because Covid, the employees were put under a lot of stress. And I knew that, so I still pointed out the mistakes. But I would always make the point to say, hey, give the excuse for why a mistake like that could happen so that, you know, no one got their pitchforks out in their. And their. And their torches, you know, to torture these poor employees that are just trying to do the impossible, which is make a gazillion guitars more than normal in a time where everybody's a little scared. And so. But then post Covid, there's another problem happens, which is this hyperinflation, this inflation. And now when you look at guitars, the reality is this. When people say, I can't afford. No, the reality is that's. That's true. I'm not taking away from that. But the reality is you're gonna buy less. You're gonna buy less things, and you're gonna be able to afford less turns. Turns, meaning you bought this guitar. You don't love this guitar. You sell it at a loss. Those losses start to. They pinch a little harder. It's a little harder to lose $200 buying a guitar and then flipping it. Cause you wanted to try it when. Now the plumber wants. This just happened to me this week, so I'm using this example. The plumber now wants three times what he charged you to do something two years ago. And you're like, three times that's ins Insane what I paid just two years ago, right? So the way I scrutinize things now is. Is I like, I'm protecting your money. And that's why it's tough, and that's why the statements are more bold. Notice I don't things like, is this the greatest guitar ever? I go, no, this is the greatest guitar ever. Is this the worst guitar ever? This is the worst guitar ever. I. I'm gonna have. I have enough to tell you guys. If I'm gonna say it, it's gonna be a statement. Now, sometimes there's a question because I don't know. But the whole point is, if you're watching me, I'm supposed to know, right? You don't need to watch me so I can tell you I don't know. Also, who cares about that? You're like, is this a good guitar? You're like, wait a minute. I'm trying to figure that out. You don't know that. Why am I watching you? I want you. You know, you want. So that's why I'm scrutinizing things. So it's not so much as a guitar tech. Being a guitar tech. Sure. That. I mean, it's not even being a guitar tech. It's two decades of working with guitars gives me some insight of what to look for, what is, what is not so much wrong and right, but what is suspiciously wrong and right. For example, something comes in and it just doesn't feel right. Like, you know, like you guys said, they cherry picked you a guitar. Look, I'm smart enough. I've been around long enough. Now, maybe that happened to me at the beginning and I was too naive. That happens, and no one's perfect. But now I'm telling you right now, if a guitar company sends me guitar and you're like, yeah, they picked you out a nice one. I know. If they picked me out a nice or not, I could tell. I know what this company does on average as a guitar quality. And I'm like, if this is far above that, my radar is pinging, just like yours. And we kind of move, you know, like I said, we've done that now at least a half a dozen times where I. Even though the company sent the guitar, we went out and bought the guitar and used the one we bought. Bought because I just didn't trust it. Or like a perfect example. Kiesel is a great example because Kiesel, of course, built me guitars. They build me guitars all the time, and they send me guitars, and somebody goes, hey, they. They make you better guitars than us. So a volunteer. And now, granted, it was only. I think we did it twice. But only one video. A viewer ordered a guitar, totally had the guitar shipped to his house. He was so kind, he stuck a label in the box. He never opened the box. Stuck a label in the box and reshipped it to me. You can see that video. The video is actually titled, like, our YouTubers or something, getting special Kezel guitars. And then I went through his guitar, and his guitar specifically was important because his guitar was really expensive, more expensive than any guitar I had I've ever received from Kiesel. And I. I. You know, look, can Kiesel send you stuff? Defective stuff? Yeah, they send me problems, too. I mean, nothing is perfect. No guitar is perfect. This isn't a system of, this guitar is perfect. Screw this company. And they should be destroyed. It's when something's not perfect, it's important for you to know so that you have a correct expectation of what to do when your decision is to get rid of your money. That's why. That's all I care about. It's at the end of the day, and when I stop doing this, because that's what happens. The AI will come. The Overlords will take over the robots, and I will be doing that. Or whatever happens, I quit. Something will happen. But. But whatever happens, I would like to not have to look at my videos and go, I should delete those. Huh? They suck. You know, I'd like to go back and go, no, they still have a. They have a good point. They. They're still relative. Relevant to somebody for looking at a guitar and purchase. So that's why I scrutinize the way I do. And. And I try to also balance the scales of, hey, here's some. You know, I try to follow things. You would do this. You know, things that would make my mother proud. Like, hey, yeah, I said a negative thing, but here's a positive thing. Here's another negative thing, but here's a positive thing. Try to balance it out. So to answer your question, being a guitar tech helps me find certain things also, you know, some other educational things that I have help me. But. But that being said, that doesn't really help me with the actual video or what I'm addressing in the video, which is to try to figure out what's important, you know, for somebody to know about this guitar. So I don't know, let's see, what else? Oh, that's funny. Somebody says the kyg work shirt Is nice but expensive. I didn't even know you could buy a kyg work shirt. I had no idea it was possible. So now I'm curious. Now I can tell you what I pay for mine. When I used to buy them from a company, I used to pay $80 a piece. And that was back when we had the store. $70 to $80. And now that my wife makes them for me, and I don't know what she pays. I think she pays. If I was going to guess, not including labor, I think she pays 30 bucks for the materials. If you're watching Shawna and you want to text me what you pay for a work shirt to make one with, you know, just parts. And because she gets the, you know, the patch and the shirt and stuff, that would tell me what it. What it costs, but I have no idea what they go for. If I was going to guess 50 to $70, that'd be what I guess. Depending on what the work shirt is, the style. And then if it helps you guys, I'm assuming if we do sell a work shirt. Cause again, I don't really handle that stuff. I will double check. Cause I trust Shauna that it's the correct thing. The type of work shirt that we're selling, if we're selling it, should be the same one or same type that I have. The type that I have. So, you know, I'm very, very particular about these work shirts. I worked seven days a week. Okay, I'm now exaggerating six days a week. I don't know why I said seven. There's seven days in a week. I worked six days every single week in the store for 13 years. And I wore mostly those style work shirts. And so, you know, you have, you know, like a dozen of them, but even a dozen, you rotate them all the time. So I was washing them all the time. And. And they need to stay and not fade out and not get ruined. I'm real particular about that. That's why this. The. The logo has to be stitched a certain way. That's why all That's. That's why I don't do any silkscreen on the work shirts. So none of the work shirts should have silkscreen on them. As far as I know. She's. She's messaging me now. Let's see what she says. She says, oh, she says, okay, yeah, you can get them through. They're all color. She's giving us information. Look at this. At least we were getting her. So, yeah, you can order them. And then, like, I Said they should be the ones that are durable like I have, because I would imagine that's what we focused on. So. And that's, it's a work shirt. It's look, I actually work in them, so I assume if you want one, you may not be working in yours. She says yeah. For her to make one personally for me, that's how she does it. Raw material costs $35. I knew it. I thought I heard her say that once. That's what it costs. And that's her making it personally for me and, and, and not paying herself anything for doing that. So that's as cheap as she can get them for us, for me. So. But yeah, but just to answer the question, but I'll double check now. Now I want to look at Ultra color and see which one they're doing. I, yeah, it's a, I think it's a Dickies logo. It should be Dickies. I've always requested Dickies, but I know sometimes I, I know and I know I have a couple shirts now that are not Dickies and Shawna sourced them and found shirts that were again, the same. I can tell just by touching them how thick they are. And more importantly, I can tell you after about 10 washes if they're fading or if the, the stitching is starting to come undone. All that stuff, it, it's, it's, it just drives me crazy because I have to wash the shirts a lot because there's always something on them. Guitar polish, oil, little little metal flakes. I'm always getting tons of little metal flakes in my shirt. And so, you know, vacuum it out and then wash it because otherwise, you know, you're walking and you get itchy all the time from all the little flakes. So let's, let's dive into more subjects and then we'll get into this or that. This week, raining fire. This from Amanda says, hey Phil, by the way, he's a channel member. Thank you. Random rain and fire says, hey Phil. I spent about 3k on a warm mock because I couldn't afford my dream Charvel or Charvel custom shop. How close is warm US quality to a 6k charvel? I think it's better in my opinion. Better, I would say I, I every, I have had no negative expenses experiences with War moth and it's great. So yeah, I like warm up. I have three warm up necks on guitars. Absolutely love all of them. And so, you know, I kind of been like on that kick again. Like maybe I need to build a, you know, an 80 shredder. Warm off parts guitar and put it together. The only thing that holds me back is I've been buying warm up for so long that it's tough because it just. Oh, you're like. Every time, you're like, I remember when this was 200 bucks. Oh, I remember this was 300 bucks or was $500. The warm up stuff's getting really expensive. So that does kind of slow me down because, you know, like, that's a lot of money. But it's not because of the quality is. There's no re. I'm not reserving my, you know, myself because of the quality. It's always because of the expensive. Spike Sparkle City guitar says, how do they paint the guitar? All right, I'll show you. Okay, for everybody. You got. You got five seconds to mute this or, you know, whatever. Think of it like spoilers. Okay? So when you look at these EVH stripe guitars, you're looking at what you think is a red guitar with stripes. Okay, what now? I want you to picture it different. I want you to picture the guitar as white and there are just red triangles everywhere. So these are red. That's a red triangle right there. And that's a red like shape. Just think it. Now look at it as shapes. So they paint this. When you watch them paint it, they painted it white. Then they paint black stripes and then they have stencils and then they, they paint. That's why I see underneath the paint, you see the, see the black underneath there, you can see through this. See they picture this like right here. Picture. This is white. But then picture. These are just templated shapes that they spray paint. See, your brain is like, oh, no, they painted. They taped it off and they spray everything red. It's kind of how it works, but it's really just if you look at it right, all of a sudden you'll see the red is just like floating. Like they're little shapes floating on top. Like geometric shapes floating on top. So it throws your eyes off when you see it that way. When I saw him painted, I was like, oh. Oh, wow, that looks weird. I don't know why I thought it looked backwards. So. So yeah, little geometric. Little shapes hovering over. So yeah, it's very, very difficult for Fender to paint that expensive wise. And they just do it. And so, you know, I remember. I can't remember the year, but let's say 10 years ago. Safe. 10 years is safe. It had to be at least 10 years ago and it could have been longer. I remember two different Times a discussion with the Fender guys and them saying they're gonna probably stop painting those striped guitars and go to a graphic because they do have a machine in Mexico that can wrap graphics like a wrapped, like a wrapped car. And I kept thinking, like, they'll eventually just wrap these things. But according to them, they're still painting them. So Happy Good thing says, didn't he use tape? Sure, he used tape because he. Remember he already painted the guitar and he just kept taping and painting the guitar off. And they do use tape as well too, but there's more of a. Like I said to get it right. There's. It's just easier to do this template thing that they use. It's really cool. It's a little cool. So. Oh, why did it go that way? Okay, let's try this one. Let's do these two. Hold on, give me a second. Hmm. Hold on a second. I just need to refresh. That's weird that I can't see. Let me go to the top. Okay. So happy. Oops, where'd it go? Happy Good thing says I don't go in the ocean because the ocean is a shark's living room. I don't want to bust into their living room. Yeah. Comic iron Ian Edwards. Yeah, I, I'm wearing this because on the Coffee Talk, hanging with the Patreon members, we were talking about sharks. This is all the types of sharks. So, you know, so there's a bull shark, there's a blue shark, there's a great white shark, there's a nurse shark, there's a pool shark. Where's the pool stick shark? There's a pool shark. Right? There's a loan shark. I like that. The loan shark has a bat. As if to. So yeah, it's all the sharks. Yeah, I don't go in the ocean at all. So. So, you know, I saw Jaws when I was 6. I was talking about this. I will keep this short and then we'll do this or that. I was telling the Coffee Talk, I. Like I said, my sibling is six years older than me. And so when, when they were 13, they wanted to go see Jaws and I guess we went and saw it. I don't know if it was the. I don't remember. I was 6, was in the drive in. I don't know where we saw it. They were replaying it somewhere, obviously. And so anyways, what happens is we, we go and see it. And I know what you're thinking, how could your mother take a 6 year old to Jaws? Two things that you need to know 1. My mom's. My mom's parental advisory was just putting her hand over my eyes so she'd be like, don't look at that. Like boobs, don't look at those. Like monster, don't look at that. So that's how she did it. Right? That's just my mom's way of doing it. But more importantly, Jaws was actually rated PG. And then that crazy thing, I think now it's PG 13, but at the time it was PG because I don't think they had PG 13 yet. So my mom think about this. Somebody said it best in the Coffee Talk. Give them credit. Bambi and Jaws had the same rating. So for those. I just don't want anybody to think ill of my mother thinking how could she bring a six year old young man? The crazier part of that is, is that at six years old, I live in California. So the day after we went to the beach and I sat and made sandcastles. So now you know what it is. You know what time for, you know, and now it's time for this or that. It's time for this or that. Thank you guys so much for, for indulging this idea. The on the Know youw Gear channel, the videos have been doing great and I think people got it from the concept. And I want to also thank Michael Nielsen because he was one of the only people that told me this is a good idea. And everybody else was like, and rightly so. It was really weird. I was like, what if I just hide it and do it a thing and this there. I was like, what the hell are you talking about? But the thing that's cool is if you watch it live. Okay. Which you're about to do. I think the fun part is to try to figure out which one you like and then figure out what it is when you watch it on the rebroadcast. I think it's more interesting to see how people voted, which is why I think it's doing well as a. As an individual video clip. Somebody made a suggestion. Why don't I do this as just an individual video and not put it on the podcast? It's because there's 1290 of you here live. And that's the only way we get enough live people to give enough vote to give a session sense. So. All right, so. Okay, let's do this. I gotta type this in every time because there's no pre way, preloaded way to do this. Okay. All right. I'm not gonna let you Guys, vote until I get situated here. Let me get a guitar and I gotta steal a cable from the EVH guitar. Turn off the overdrives and the delay and do that. Turn on this. This light. Because that wasn't turned on for some reason, actually. Was it timed off? Okay, and here we go. All right, let's switch to this or that. We need like a studio audience. All right, we're start the poll. Okay, we're going to start with this. No, you know what? We're going to do something fun. We're start that. Oh, I almost forgot. Am I supposed to hang my. My vote first? Okay, so I apologize today. This week, I'm going to use red. I'm going to use a red marker brace all my stuff from last week. Okay, ready? Here's my official answer. Which one I like the most? We'll hang it here to be. To be exposed or shown to you a little later. Okay, let's turn on the guitar. We'll give you the clean sound right now. All right. And I'll play a clean just for a second so you have a sense of it. Here's how clean the amp is. The amp's very clean. Got a tune. All right, we're good. All right, so let's go ahead and we'll start with that. We're going to do that first. So here we go. Starting with that. Okay, so let's play this little right here. Let's open up the. The poll. So we're gonna go ahead and there's 179 votes, and we'll try to get to 300 on this. Do you want me to keep. I'm gonna keep playing. I'll go back to this and play a little of that. Here we go. All right, here's this. That's. Here we go. Here's this. Sa. Sam. Okay, so let's do this. So we're at about 267. Let's do to 275 when the poll. I know this one's a tougher one. At least I feel was tougher. And we'll talk about this in a second. 268. As soon as we hit 275, we'll end the poll. 269. What's great is no one could take their vote back. So it's like sometimes when you're trying to get certain things, it drops back down. 273, 74, 75. 275. Okay, we're ending the poll. Okay, so let's go ahead and capture that So I have it. And there you go. All right, so 270 votes. What did you guys pick? Well, it seems like that one by small. This is the most narrow margin that we had. And I thought this one would be fun. This was actually a viewer suggestion for this one, and I gotta. I thank you guys for that. So what. What was the winner? That was the Blue Note by J Rocket Audio against the Dukatone, which is the pedal you guys picked last week. So the Blue Note, as I told you guys, was one of my favorite pedals. If not. I told you I loved it more than the. The blues driver. I just. I just. I don't know what it is. There's just something. And now you can see it just kind of show you what it does. So many people. I mentioned it too. The gain is not aggressive. Okay. So it's really subtle. Okay. Versus this. And this is where, remember, this is all for fun. And there's a couple things to be. To learn here. Somebody said, you know, again, we talked about blind tests, you know, me being blind. And somebody's like, hey, you know, you should put it through a looper. And that way, you know, it's the same. And my argument, and this is just from doing it for many years, is the looper is accurate if all you're trying to do is dissect whether or not, you know, how different something is from something. But I believe, from doing this and just being a musician for so many years, that when you play with something the way. If you notice every time I went to the Duke tone, you'll hear. If you go back and listen, you'll hear I get a little bit more aggressive because there's a little bit more distortion. There's a little bit more overdrive happening there. As much as I try to back it off, it just grits faster. It's like when I tell you if the neck is thinner on a guitar, I try to. I start playing faster. If it's thicker, I play a little slower. It's, you know, there's just. There's just something too. You want a little bit of that. So the question is, which one did I pick? And I picked that. Look at that. So I agree with you guys. So last week I disagree with you guys. This week I agreed with you guys. And look at that. I want to tell you, for those, especially on the rebroadcast list, a lot of people are like, hey, you should do this. You know, we talk about this. Don't suck the fun out of this. You know, have some Fun for yourself. This isn't scientific. This is just for fun to see what a bunch of guitar players together. If we were all hanging out together, we would be sitting here and we were checking out pedals and talking. This is the closest I can make that to being a feeling as real as possible. You know, this is something I do with my friends all the time. We just try pedals A, B and B. And which one do you like? I kind of like this one. Tweak it a little bit more. And I spend a lot of time during the day today tweaking them so that it's not so abrupt. So one thing that somebody mentioned was like, did you use the internal trim pot? Look, I do everything, but really what I have to do to make this not so much fair, but to make it easier for you is try to make them sound as similar as possible and not dissimilar as possible. And so, you know, you could probably keep tweaking and get them even more, you know, together. But keep in mind, I'm doing this with a live rig in a live situation. So. So that's the whole point. And I. I think it's fun, and I'm glad we agreed today because I really like the Blue Note. That is one of my favorite pedals. I would say it was in my top five pedals. I discovered it on accident. I happened to be in Zim's music one day. They had it sitting there. And funny story was back to AI being sucks. So I was in Zim store. I think it was like $99 used. It was sitting there. I'm a huge Jrocket audio fan. Like, I keep finding everything I like is jrocket Audio. In fact, I think it's my favorite pedal company at this point. Just. I just keep buying their pedals. But anyways, I. It's funny how perception works. I go, what is this? And they go, I don't know. So I. I go into AI and I go, what is the Blue Note by jrocket Audio? And it pulls up this thing. It says, it's a interesting take on a tube screamer. And I'm like, I don't need a tube screamer. So I played it for a second. I go, nah, it doesn't do anything for me. And then I bought some other pedals. I left a couple weeks later. I come back, still sitting in the case. I'm like, okay, let me look at it. I plug into it this time, and I just start playing it. And I'm like, wow, this is really Great. It's really fattening up the guitar and love it. I just love it. They make a version with a little switch on it so you can get more gain. But I'm okay. So cost comparison. That's a good idea. Let's take a look. Thank you for that, Michael. So the Duke of tone is 159. So 160 bucks is the rough average for that and the Blue Note, I believe. And I'm going to give you new prices. You can find deals used the Blue Notes. There's tons of them. Used the Blue Note. Look in here. That's new. Yeah. Are used. Used. Well okay, so let me just. I'm gonna give you two new. It's 229. So what's that? 60, 47, $70 more than the Dukatone. However, for the record, looking right here, there's a one use a guitar center for 129. There's one use a guitar center for 174. The one I have. Oh, look at that. Wait, no, back up, back up. Pro Audio store. What? Get 15% off. Okay. Pro audio star right here. $119.99 on sale. That's. That's normally 229. This is brand new. Yeah. I'll tell you what I'll do. I will take this link and give it to you guys. This isn't a paid sponsored link. Whoops. Let me go here. I don't get anything from this. I don't. Not that I think it actually matters matters. But I'm gonna post a link for those that want to buy at that price because that's. Think of this. I paid almost that used. I paid 99. Or maybe I paid 109. Won't let me post a link. It's too long. Stupid. Okay, so Pro Audio Star. I'll just. So I'm gonna. Hold on a second. I hate that it blocks it. Okay, so there's the pro audiostar.com go there. Look. Jrocket Audio Blue Note. And for those that want to get it for 50% off. There you go. So Vim said just bought mine. Yeah. For 100. Look, this is the best time to try to do stuff like that because you figure what is it? What did I say? 119. Is that what it was? 120 bucks. It's worth a hundred bucks used. You know. So I mean think about this. If Guitar Center's selling them, I'm trying to find Guitar Center. So Guitar Center. Oh look. So you guys know I'M not crazy. Guitar Center's got one right now for 1:19. So it's 120 bucks used. So that means what does Guitar center think it's worth used? They would say this pedal is. Is Guitar center will give you $72 for it. So. So I mean, I wouldn't do that because you could sell it for 100 bucks. But I'm get you the idea. Like if you bought it for 120 bucks and you didn't love it, you could always just trade it. And I mean, it's not a whole lot, I guess to lose. I don't know. Seems a little high now that I think about it, but. But there you go. All right. Yeah. Says if this was JHS, the Blue Note would go for $300 based on reverb. Yeah. Well, that's why, you know. Yeah. Thank goodness. Is not doing that. Cassie wants to know, Cassie Lee wants to know what acoustic is hanging over the Marshall. That is a. A Taylor guitar. There's a video I have on that. I just recently did a video. I'm doing another one on that one specifically. But that's in a video as well. So it's a. It's one of the new Taylor Gold label series guitars. It's absolutely amazing guitar. It's their take. It's more of a vintage vibed tailor and it's a. More of a. A kind of a. A competition for like a Martin acoustic guitar. Which ironically I'm also doing a Martin guitar as well. So I plan to do a one of the one. Another one of that ones particular. And then I'm doing one of a Martin and the Martin one should be out. Supposed to be out Sunday. We'll see how that goes. And then after that will be Epiphone, Futura guitar, Vitara, Fatura, Fujitera. All right, enough shenanigans. Back to work. We get to get back to work. Alex, our guitar says what Marshall is that? It's a Marshall 2061 head with a Marshall 2061 X cabinet. So it's a 212 cabinet with a 20 watt head. They don't make them anymore. Absolutely love them. And it's my favorite Marshall because I can just crank it and it's still crazy loud. But it's the only way I can get a plexi sound without attenuating it and not just crushing my own head in and teeth in. Let's see. Somebody says. How do you say Futera? It's Fitera. Futera. Fitera, Futera. Futera. I know it's weird. It's Futera. I say it right in the video because I practice like 10 times. I listened to Danish say it and it was. Drives me nuts. I hate it. It's like fedora. Foodora, not Fedora. I'm just phonetically how it's. It's like fatora. Fatora. Like fedora. Fitora. I'm pretty sure that was the correct pronunciation when I did it in the video. So, you know, people wouldn't complain. Fitora. I think. I'm pretty sure that's the correct way. Fitora. Because I remember it was like, oh, okay. I was trying to get the like, yeah, somebody says fitzhera. It's just what it should be. Fitzhera makes more sense to me. So. I pronounce it future. Future. Yeah. Nope. It's however I say in that video is the correct way because I'm copying Dinesh and so their marketing guy doesn't know how to say it. I guess they're screwed. All right. Okay, let's. Jamman403 4003 says. What would you be your suggestion for an Ibanez first electric guitar. I've been playing for years, but that's one brand I haven't tried. I can't recommend Ibanez anymore. I, I just can't. I keep buying Ibanez's and Ibanez breaks my heart. That's what it is, man. That's where I'm at. I have two Ibanez videos I'm doing and both I'm, you know, I try not to dole out the, you know, dole out too many of the same type of video. You know, like this one's negative and this one's negative. So I just pushed it back because obviously the last video, obviously the guitar didn't do well. So the video has a negative vibe to it, which is I sometimes I think more entertaining for people, but, you know, it's just not fun. You know, I like to keep it, spread it out. But I got nothing to say. I've done it all. I, I, My light, my last Ibanez, that was the Genesis series. That was a hundred thousand dollar guitar. Was okay. I would. And then my, the, the crazy expensive Joseph Charterani guitar was okay. So I don't have a whole lot. I don't know what it is. There's just, they're okay. You know, some of the Indonesian made ones that Cortex Factory are nice, but I haven't put a whole lot of hands on anything recent. Recent. So, you know, I would say I would say if you want to, if you want, if I want to give you a fair, like, hey, you know what Ibanez buy? I would say try an Ibanez and if you like it, buy it. But I keep picking them up in stores and every time I'm just, I feel like Ibanez's quality is just not there anymore and I'm just not loving it. And I'm an Ibanez fan. Okay. Like, let me put it this way. If there was one brand I get a tattoo of my body, it would be Ibanez. It be. Would Ibanez logo. It's my favorite logo. Like I said, I'm, I'm. It was my fa. My first high end guitar and it's the, my most expensive guitars I own are all Ibanez guitars by far. And you know, I just, I just don't, you know, I, I don't know what it is. I just. There's so many, so many other brands. Somebody put. Let's see. The sarin says the problem with for. Is for Ibanez's price increase these days you can just get a Keezel, you know another. That's another problem too. Yeah, I mean, you know, for what some of the main Japan and even Indonesian guitars are costing. Yeah. You can get a keys especially used Kizo. But even new and that's tough. So Steve says the Ibanez logo has Nike vibes. Sh. Sure. I mean, you know, for me it's just branding, you know, kid. You know, I was a kid and the guitar worlds were just, that was. Their ads were just on point ads in my opinion, for me, for at least for my age and. Yeah, so don't. Yeah, I wish, I wish. I don't know, I kind of feel. See, I'm all bummed. Let's do something. By the way, great question and I hope you find a great Ibanez and let me know what it is. I keep buying Ibanezes and putting them on the channel and I'm just. Overall I'm just like, eh, eh. They're not sticking. Okay. Marty4558 says, what's the difference between a CNC machine and a spray booth in China and in the US Apart from labor costs? Well, look, this question is anchored into an idea that we have to always address honestly. So. And this is why I'm going to China soon too. I'll be going to China to go to some factories. I went to Indonesia factories. You know, again, it's a, it's a, it's an expense. So you guys know, I'm going to some other factories very soon. There'll be videos within the next 30 days of factories for you guys and, and what I'm trying to do and show you guys the, the core at that question. Let's get to your question. Let's get to your subject. Okay, Your subject is what's the difference between a CNC machine and spray booth in China and the U.S. i've heard that question framed sometimes like a CNC machine doesn't know what country it's in. Okay. I, I want to be very clear. I don't have any kind of like, opinions, negative or positive about any particular country's labor. You know, like workers. I don't go, oh, like these workers are better in this country and not better in this country. I think there is definitely, there are definitely people that feel that way. I don't have feelings that way. However, China in particular, as, as someone who's been, you know, buying stuff as a consumer, and not even a guitar consumer, but just as a consumer, you know, needs products. China has a lot of great product for value. You can get something really nice for a, for a little bit of money, which is really nice value for. Especially when, you know, when I was younger and had kids and, you know, it's like, you know, it's really nice to be able to buy something that you, you know, like a little toy box or something for your kids where normally would be very expensive. This could be a very affordable project when we're talking about guitars and stuff. The same thing, you know, it's nice to be able to afford a guitar. Buy a guitar made in China versus, you know, that's very affordable compared to a guitar that's going to be made in the usa. And that's usually the argument. Even though we know there's tons of other places that we can talk about. We're just really going to go China versus America argument. The thing, the elephant in the room that you always have to bring up with China is it's not that their quality isn't good. It's not that their workers can't make great stuff. And it's not that the same machine, a CNC machine or paint booth, especially with a robot painter, because that's what a lot of them are using now. Robot arm painting can't produce the same quality. China has in the past been shady as, as, as a manufacturer, as a blanket manufacturer, you know, in other words. And by the way, no one's perfect. I'm not good But I'm not calling out the US because there's not a consumer sentiment that's a little skeptical. Okay. There is though, one of China when sometimes when people, besides the fact that people just have tendencies to be stuck in history, when we talk about Chinese made a guitar, China guitar, made in China guitar, sometimes what we're talking about is they've been known to not give you things. Like let me give you example. I have had zero guitars made in the USA come through the bench that weren't what they stated they were. But as I did, because I did a video on the second channel talking about this, I would say that the large majority of guitars that come from China, specifically China, more so than any other country, even Vietnam or Indonesia, sometimes don't have what the manufacturer claims. And then what you guys don't see sometimes is that you're like, well, you know, hey, you know that little blurb that says can change specifications without notice? Yeah, except when I talk to them, the brand, they don't know either. Like, wait, no, no, we, we told them to do this and we paid for that. There is a, a thing where we see that mostly in main shining guitars where sometimes it says that it's lacquer, but it's not. Sometimes it says stainless steel and it's not. Sometimes it's not what they say, sometimes it's not the wood. They say, you see that more there than anywhere else. So I don't think it's unreasonable for a consumer to be a little skeptical sometimes when they see main China. The other thing too that comes in has nothing to do with. Let's talk about the secondary thing. It has nothing to do with China. Sometimes when we see something not inexpensive, so something that's actually kind of pricey, like let's say this guitar is like $900 and they go $900 made in China. It's not so much that we don't think China's capable of making a guitar that's good enough to be $900. It's that a lot of consumers are like, wait a minute, it doesn't cost that much. In fact, like I said when I went to Cortech in Indonesia, it costs five times less to make it Indonesia than the U.S. or you can say the U.S. takes five times more to make the same thing. So one of the problems that you see is when you see a high expensive item made in China, one of the skeptical things a consumer might think is, well, who's keeping all the money? Because it didn't go to the labor force. And that's sometimes what it's about, right? Sometimes, as most of us are really, we're just the ants, right? Not the generals. We're the soldiers. We like to know that other people who are working are actually being paid somewhat of their worth. And. And like, when I went to Indonesia, one of the things you have to think about is one of the things that makes it inexpensive to make guitars in Indonesia is labor costs are less because exchange rates are less. That's not the sole reason, but that's a factor that's factored in. So when. So to the core of your question or your thing is, what's the difference between a C machine and a spray booth in China versus us? It's not really necessarily the machine that we're concerned about. It's whether or not that manufacturer is doing what they say they are. And that's why a lot of times we have a lot more confidence when we see a Squire made in China because we assume that Squire Fender is keeping someone accountable to that, you know, as someone who does this. And again, you have to just. I'm filtering through my lens, so you have to understand, sometimes when I make a video, one of the. One of the things that can happen, unfortunately, is I can make a video and a company can sell thousands, if not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product. Well, that's great for the company, but I don't. I don't get paid by the company. I get paid by you. You guys watch videos, the videos turn into ads. You know, the ads that you guys might see. And then I get a little bit of money from YouTube. When I say a little bit, I mean, it adds up because I got like, a half a billion views. So it adds up. But the point is, is that I work for you. If you guys don't watch the videos, I'm. I'm done. There's no backend deal here. I got nothing. I got the Patreon Channel, I got you guys, and I get a little bit of sponsorship here and there, but it's. You know, if there's. If the views drop to zero, and yet you could say that's for everybody. But no, I know tons of channels that are good friends of mine, even that they can make videos even if they have one viewer, because as long as the company's gonna pay to sponsor the video, they can make the video. But my business model doesn't work like that. So I'm very determined to be working for you. And so one of the things I gotta watch that I can't do is I can't hopefully cause you guys to buy something that ends up taking advantage of you, because then you'll just. You'll be like, well, that Phil did that. So what I'm trying to say is when I. When I do videos on companies where guitars are made in China, I scrutinize them harder because of my experiences doing reviews of them. And that's just the reality. So I think that's part of that. The, the answer. The answer to the second really part of your question, which is basically where you're. If we go the other way, which is, yes, if you put a. The same CNC machine in China and you put the same kind of quality booth, paint booth in China and you make a guitar, is it really different than America? No, my. I did a ask me anything or ask whatever AMA on Reddit once, and one of the questions was, you know, can. Can China make a guitar as good as the United States? And the analogy I used, which I've used many times since, is I said, look, if you took John certified and you locked him in a Chinese factory and said, don't come out until you have a great guitar, I would imagine he'd make a great guitar, which means the equipment would not be the hindrance, is what I'm basically saying. And as someone who's been to 36 factories, about to go to 37 and 38 in a week, I can tell you that mostly all factories are about the same. There's a little bit differences, you know, in, in from state to state, even in some of the laws and how they do things. But generally speaking, they're using the same kind of machines, the workers are trained in the same kind of style. And, you know, the payway, the pay system is relatively close to how it works for each factory. But that being said, I think you can make a great guitar anywhere in the world. I don't think that's the problem, but I think as consumers, we're a little skeptical. Think about this. One of the things, whenever I do a guitar, especially guitar, but if I do a guitar and the guitar happens to be made in China, sometimes the viewers will say, did you test it for lead paint? And, you know, the reason they're saying that is because there's. There's been issues with toys and stuff from China that had lead paint in them. And, and, you know, and, and so that's what I'm trying to say. It's like that's the, that's the main thing in that, in the crux of that, I think that's what I'm trying to get out of it. So somebody's asked, have you been approached by a private equity as a YouTuber yet? No. Mostly I get approached by Temu a lot. Timu wants us to do a video pretty bad. They throw right some great and. And we get a lot of people who want a piece of what we make. A lot of people are like, we can help you with your channel. Just give us a piece of money. So that's what we get. So Plum plump Weasel says quality of wood and hardware could all could be an issue with Chinese mig guitars. See, this is where like I said, sometimes I always use that term get lost in the weeds a little bit. When we get lost in the weeds a little bit. I don't believe in like woods in the way that most people believe in woods. Like I don't believe like, you know, when somebody goes, poplar sounds horrible and alder sounds great. I have many different guitars and none of them, no guitar, no guitar on this wall or in my collection of guitars has ever been purchased even remotely on its wood. Like what wood is made of. I could care less what a guitar is made out of. Wood wise. I've said this before when I talk about wood, whether it's one piece, two piece, three piece, five piece, whether it's alder or mahogany. Everything for me personally has to do with two things that are factored in, one, cost. So obviously a one piece of solid mahogany is going to cost a manufacturer more than a five piece poplar body guitar body. And so not that I have a problem with the five piece poplar body, I own that too. My argument is that I just don't want to pay mahogany price, one piece mahogany price for five piece. I don't want to be duped is what I'm basically saying. Right. I don't want to go to a restaurant and pay $600 for a, you know, white claw. Right, right. You know, I'm trying to make a bottle of wine analogy. It's not working. You get the idea. I don't want to go and try to pay high end bottle wine prices and get a white, oh, you know, a white claw seltzer drink. It's basically saying I don't want to be duped. So that's where I focus on that. But mostly wood has to do with me is weight. So a lot of times what I'm like, in fact, I can tell you when I order my guitars from Kiesel. Every time. Every single guitar that I've ordered for Kiesel has only to do with how much it's going to weigh. So I. I've sat with Brandon on the phone, and I'm like, hey, we should do mahogany. He's like, okay. And I'll go, hey, what about this guitar? Can, you know, can we do alder or roasted alder? You know? Yeah, roasted alder. Okay, cool. It never has to do with anything other than the weight, so I don't really think it. It really. It doesn't matter to me is what I'm trying to say. So if. If a guitar in China is made with basswood versus a guitar in the US Is made welder, I really could care less. Um, and especially since. Cause I don't like heavy guitars, I don't have to worry about worrying about heavy amounts of water content or SAP in the wood, because if that's in there, the wood's probably heavy. So I don't really worry about that. Parts. I can tell you almost all the parts are mostly China anyway. So even if you're buying stuff in the US you're mostly getting usa, our China stuff in it. You know, I had. I had a friend. I have a friend, he's still my friend now, who does own a factory in China. And we did talk, and he made a comment that kind of hit me kind of funny. We were talking about manufacturers that, you know, say, made in the usa, and they're using China parts and, you know, companies that say, you know, made in Germany, but it's, you know, like Indonesian parts in there, you know? Right. And where stuff really is made. And he said sarcastically, he said, even in China, we can't make something 100% China. And it made me laugh. I was like. He's like, even if we wanted to, we can't get all our parts. We can't get everything here made in China either. So he goes, even when it says made in China, it's really not all made in China. It's made in China like everywhere else, with parts from Malaysia and everywhere else. I'm like, yeah, I guess it makes sense. So, yeah. And then what else? I'm just looking to see what else. So, funny enough. So Steve B. Roll says, hey, for solid bodies, acoustics for sure, pay more attention to the wood top. Solid spruce. See? Yeah. You know, I definitely understand that logic, because an acoustic guitar is obviously a sum of its parts, more so than the electric guitar and the way it's going to sound. But my favorite Sounding acoustic look, my tailor, my main Taylor that I play is the best playing acoustic I've ever played. It's absolutely flawless. In fact, like I said, I barely have an electric guitar that plays as good as this acoustic. And I think that's a ebony fretboard, rosewood back and sides, and a spruce top. So traditional, right? But my favorite sounding acoustic in the world is Cole Clark. And you should look up the specs on those. They're all like these Australian indigenous woods that they get that they find like. It's like fell over trees and stuff. So I. I don't know. Like I said, it's kind of. I. Like I said, it's just not how my. I get the point of it for traditional ness, but I just don't have it in me. To me, it's. I don't know what it is. I just have decided that even though I think wood matters, everything matters a little bit to me. Just one guitar sounds great and plays great, one guitar doesn't. And there's a lot more going on. So. Let's see. Somebody said the new epiphones are made in China. All epiphones currently are made in China because they have a factory and they make them all in China. So that's how they do it. They have their own factory. The only thing coming out of that factory is epiphone. So they say they own the factory. I don't know if that's true. I mean, obviously it's what they say. I don't have any reason to disbelieve them. But I do know that the only thing comes out of that factory is epiphone. I had to confirm that once because I had somebody ask me, you know, they said, hey, my. This company says they make the epiphones and they're gonna sell me this epiphone that you know, And I'm like. So I called the person I know who knows, and they confirmed with me that the only thing coming out of that building is Epiphone guitars. Currently. Let's see, this One is from JN7498, says, Do you buy guitars that you aren't crazy about playing wise, but are collectibles such as. Such as the plaid guitar or other rarities. I buy guitars that I think I'm gonna love or want. And that. That's basically it. You know, I buy guitars, obviously, if I play a guitar and I love it, then the guitar is easy and I love it. But a lot of times when I'm buying guitars, it's not that they're rare, collectible. I actually don't like collectible guitars. So, you know, anything collectible won't stay if I. I've said this before. If I get a guitar or a pedal or an amp and it doubles or triples in value to it, I just sell it because of the fact that I'm like, it's not something I'm interested in. I'm not interested in curating stuff as a. You know, I've said this before, this is a little off subject, but when I talked about this a few podcasts ago, I want to say four podcasts ago, I mentioned that when I die, I've instructed my kids, you know, to just take all this crap to Guitar center and then just get a check and, you know, be done with it. Right? Don't, you know, don't. Don't stress yourself out. You know, if you want anything, keep it. If not, take it all to Guitar Center. Or better yet, have them come with a truck and back it up. And just for the record, so you guys know if a local mom pop shop can buy it too. But my guess is they wouldn't imagine it would be Guitar Center. And somebody put in a comment, it was really interesting. And they said, they said that basically I must not love my kids because, you know, I'm screwing them out of all this money and they could get more money. And I didn't respond to them because I don't respond to comments generally. Rarely at all. But definitely if it's not, you know, just a question or something like that. But this is just my mindset and this kind of ties in. So you guys know where I think about this stuff. To me, as someone who's lost both parents, and I can tell you this, don't. Just for me, just my advice, and this is again, take it if you know it's. Take it if you want it. Don't take it if it doesn't apply to you. Get a good insurance policy on yourself when you die. It'll be easy. They'll get paid out immediately. They won't have to hock your crap, sell your crap, deal with your stuff. They'll just get a check. It'll come fast, it'll be easy, and it'll pay for the however you want to be taken care of. And so basically I'm trying to say is my kids take this stuff to Guitar center, whatever they get for it. That's just frosting on a cake that they'll be fine. They'll be fine is what I'm trying to say so I try to. I try to make sure they're taken care of, but not so much taken care of that they actually have motivation to not take me out. I don't need to be sleeping at night with one eye open going, ah, these kids. These kids are going to get smart and figure out I'm better. I'm better for them dead than alive. But sarcastically. I'm kidding. Yeah. You know what, Scott, man, Scott. Scott. It's just Scott Scott says, nobody wants your crap. That's unfortunately, what I've learned with two. Unfortunately, two parents that have passed is that nobody wants your crap. So, you know, so again, everybody's different. So if it doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you. But if you've been on the fence thinking about this stuff, just how it goes. So. So that's what. So back to collectibles. Nothing. I don't have anything that I would. That will say, kids, like, this is worth a lot. Make sure you sell this and get top dollar. Just take it all. And that's why I don't worry about it. So. So. Oh. So we put. If Josh Scott's kids. Wait, if I was Josh Scott's kid and he died, I would take all those pedals to Guitar Center. Sadly enough, I don't think the Guitar center would buy all his pedals. They'd buy a chunk of them. The collection's too big. No one cuts a check like that. So they would have to buy it in sections. That's what my guess would be. So. Which is why. Another reason why I won't keep my collection any bigger than they can get rid of. But you know what? That's kind of like nothing we have to worry about right now. So I made a joke to my wife. I said, we were talking about. Because I've been collecting pedals again, getting pedals, and now I'm doing this or that. And then there was this discussion, like, would you get a clan pedal? Right? You know, like a $5,000 clan pedal. As I told my wife, I said, you know what I would buy? Instead of which I said, I'm just telling you guys now. So instead of telling you how I told her, I'll just tell you what I. What I told her. Tell you, you know what I would buy? Instead of a $5,000 clown pedal, I'd buy a fake pedal, a fake clown pedal for like a hundred or two hundred dollars. And then I would duct tape a gold. A $5,000 gold coin underneath it. And when my friend's car, I'd point out and go, look at that pedal. It's worth five grand. Now, by the way. I'm not going to do that either. But that's what I would do before. I would do that before I would buy a $5,000 pedal. I would just duct tape a $5,000 coin or something like that under a pedal before just do that. So. All right, we've gone. We're gone. Off. Off the rails. Let's go somewhere else. This one came from. Amanda grabbed it. This one says, I just got my first guitar. That require a neck to be removed to adjust the truss rod. What is the best method for going about this? Thanks. It's super easy. It's super, super easy. So here's how it works. Get yourself a capo. I like the shub capos, but you can get kaiser capo. But any, any quality capo, it needs to be good. Here's what you're going to do on your guitar. I'm going to use this Eddie Van Halen guitar because this is the same problem. So to adjust. If you need to adjust this truss rod, you have to take this neck off. So let me explain how you would do this on this guitar. This guitar. For the record, the. The bridge is against the body. That's important to know because if your bridge is floating, you're going to have to make sure you either block it or put something underneath it. You can put, you know, a deck of cards. Not deck cards, but some cards underneath there. I use a lot of tongue depressors because that stuff works too. But just something under there. This is all you're going to do. You're going to go ahead, you're going to loosen the strings until you feel like they're relatively loose to where they don't come unseated from tuners. If you have locking keys, don't worry about it. Just don't unlock them. If you have wrapped tuning, tuning keys, just make sure that you loosen the strings to the point where they don't fall out of your tuners. Then once you do that, all you're going to do is capo. You could Capo the 9th fret or the 12th fret. Just somewhere around here. Just capo it. Here's why you're going to capo. It's going to stop the strings from flopping all over the place. Then you're going to go ahead and just loosen and take out those four screws to that neck. Pop the neck off. While the neck will be you're holding the body and, and the neck at the same time. If you have a nice padded bench somewhere nice to do this, you take the neck off, you're going to go ahead and make a slight adjustment. A little goes a long way with a truss rod. It's going to quarter turn. That's all you want to do. It sucks. If it takes you two times to do this. It's worth it than having to frustration wise, it's worth it to do it twice, then do it and then redo it. Then you're going to go ahead, put the neck back in the pocket, screw the bolts back in. You can either undo the capo or slightly tune everything up and then undo the capo and then go ahead and tune everything back up, give it a play. If it feels great and the action is right, you're good. If not, you may want a little more of a, you know, adjustment. Repeat the same steps again. Loosen the tuning keys or loosen the strings, capo it. And that's the best way to do it. So it. So you guys. So you know, for this question, I was asked to do this in a clinic, I think it was two clinics go for my patrons. And that's what we do for the. It's $12 for the month or it's like 8, $9 for a month if you pay for the whole year or something like that. Somebody asked me to do it, I did it. And I believe Bird, one of the patrons, timed me and to take the neck off, I did it in front of them. So you guys know and maybe I'll put a clip and put it on. I'll put a short, maybe I'll put a short out for it. But I took the neck off, loose the strings, adjust the neck, put the neck on and it was all done in under four minutes. That's how long it takes the total, total time to do that. So when I say do it again, you're like, ah, it's the second time. Yeah. So think about this. If you did it twice and you can do it as fast as me, you're under 10 minutes you've done it. If you notice I about it, it's because to me, it's not that I. It's not that I mad that I have to do that. It's just so when a guitar like that is like that, I'm like, that's fine. I just don't know why when we make new guitars going forward, we just don't put a spoke wheel truss rod in it or do Something better than that. That's my whole argument. Now. It's not that it's. It's hard when you're doing old guitars. Look, old guitars are like old cars. Certain things have to be done. It's just how it done. But when they make new guitars, I'm like, why don't they just make them better? We know how to make them better. Make them better, right? Make them better. So. So. All right. This is a. From oh, the Joe Wins project. What's up, Joe? Hey. He says, hey, my friend. I hope you're doing well this evening. I ordered my first Marshall amp head last night. 100 watt DSL all tube all the years and never owned a Marshall before. Oh, this is your first Marshall? Got it from GCU's online. That's interesting. I've been watching. I listened to you guys. You do? Joe Winston does the Saturday podcast with him and Ralph. So I listen to it in the background. I'm looking me, it's. I'm constantly, always looking for guitar talk. I'm just trying, you know, it's tough. I, like I said, it's really tough because I like podcasts playing in the background, especially when I'm working. And, and it's tough to find stuff because everything podcast is sports or politics. That's the, that's the sad part. And, and anyways, so it's really great when there's guitar content list too. So I was listening. So I know you. I, I knew you had just bought a, a fish 5150 iconic head and cabinet. I. Marshall is its own little magic man. That's what's great. You'll love the DSL, the 100 watt Marshall. There's just something about Marshall, you know, especially since you're an Eddie Van Halen fan. What's really funny about Eddie Van Halen is I love the EVA champs. But when you play, especially the way you play Eddie Van Halen, which is pretty dead on accurate and great, when you, when you plug in into a Marshall and you play Eddie, it, it's just, it just takes you right there. Even the dsl, I know technically he was playing plexis and stuff, but just. There's just something about the Marshall, you know, I heard it once and I can never unhear it, so I'm going to say it today too. Marshall. One of the magic things about Marshall is very unforgiving. What? I mean unforgiving. Not like unforgiving to the player, it's unforgiving to the audience. Like Marshall makes no apologies it's in your face. It's a. It's a spiky, brash punch. It's just like we don't even care. We're just gonna hit you. So that's what I love. So, yeah, I'm curious to see what you think of it. I'll be paying attention to see what you think of it. So. And thank you for the super chat. And also I'm glad you had a. You know, by the way, I'm glad you had a good time at Sweetwater. If you guys didn't watch, I watch, I listen, I say I watch, but it's kind of always playing in the background. I watched it when he stayed in the red roof over hotel. You know what's funny is I will tell you this, and I'm asking for trouble. Not from Joe, but just from people. But I'm gonna say a lot of people send me messages and there's just no way to get to stuff half the time. Usually I'm always a day late and for everything anyways. And there's usually somebody upset with me. Like I said, I wake up every day and I'm like, who am I pissing off today? Because somebody's not getting what they need from me and so they're gonna be upset. So that's a minimum. But I will tell you that if you make content on YouTube, okay, and, and this is how I feel about this. I really am. I'm not. I'm really passionate about guitar content. I am really just. I'm constant. I consume a lot of content. Like a. Consume a lot of TV and it. To find stuff that's not the things that I don't want to watch, which is politics and sports is tough. And so a lot of content creators, when you're doing stuff, if you have a question and you send me a question, if you keep it short, you're going to get an answer fast. If you keep it long, you're going to get an. Going to have to wait until I got the. The minute to process what you're asking me. But Joe, when you went to Sweetwater, just so you know, if you ever do something like that again, because you know I've gone, you know, send me a message, say, hey, I'm going to Sweetwater. And I could have told you, like, oh, yeah, you definitely want to stay. So he learned the hard way. Sweetwater is really strange if you haven't been there. Here's what I know about being Indiana. I've been to Indiana now four times now in that area, that area is weird. In fact, where I stayed last time with Sean, it was really nice, like, beautiful hotel. It was super nice. And we went. Shawna and I went for a walk because we went in June of last year. And when we left, Arizona was like 105. When we got there was like 85. And she's like, let's go for a walk. So we went for a walk and then she turned to go the other way. And I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, turn this way. She goes, no, that's good. And I go, no, no, no. One block that way. You're. It's bad neighborhood. She's like, what? This place is so beautiful. I'm like, I don't know how to explain this, but if you go that way, we can't, we can't go that way. We gotta go this way. The. When I stayed in a. My first time in Indiana, luckily Sweetwater took care of it. So they put me in this hotel. They have a hotel. They put most YouTube channels in that are invited out. And. And I was there and no one said anything. Two things no one said that said, by the way, don't think that Sweetwater, by the way, because I got taken out by Sweetwater. You know, you'd think like, oh yeah, Phil, they hooked you up. They don't tell you anything either. You know, when I first time ever got to Sweetwater, I landed at 5:40 their time on a Sunday, okay? They had a driver pick me up at the airport from Sweetwater. And Joe can tell you it's a small airport. So you get there and you're like, you get off the plane and then you walk five feet and you're outside and you're like, what just happened? You're just like, the airport's gone. And so what happened was the driver picks me up at Sweetwater, he takes me the hotel. Hotel's about 15, 20 minutes, maybe 25 minutes, something like that. So I get the hotel, okay? They drop me off. Now keep in mind It's. It's like 6 o' clock on an afternoon. And to get there, there's no direct flights from like Phoenix to Indiana. So I gotta go like Phoenix to Texas to Texas to Indiana. And there's a layover, right? So remember, I've left my house at like 8am I'm not exaggerating. Like 8, 7am, something like that, you know, because you gotta be two hours early. Airport. And then you have a two and a half hour, three hour flight to whatever Texas, Texas Texas, like two, three hour layover. But remember, I'm going back in time too, right? Because they're ahead. So six o' clock on a Sunday, everything is closed. Everything. There's no food. The hotel's closed. The air, the, the, the, the restaurant, the hotel is closed. The. Everything's closed. There's nowhere to eat. And I'm like, I haven't eaten all day. I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta figure out what to eat. So I, I go to walk. I leave the hotel again. No one says anything. The hotel's nice, right? It's all shiny and pretty. You get out this beautiful main street, you know, and whatever, and these buildings are beautiful. And I go left, I start just walking, okay? And this is what happened. I'm walking and walking and just nothing. There's a lot of churches. Here's what I can tell you. A lot of churches. I was like, there's a church and that's fine, but I can't eat there. So I'm like, can't eat that church. So then I see a scooter and I go, oh, I'll rent a scooter. I'd never done that. So I scooted scan the thing with your phone. I get the app. You have to download an app. I get the thing, I pay for it, by the way. I do that. I get on the scooter, I make 10ft. My phone rings. It's Shauna going, did you just, did you just rent a scooter? Because she got a message saying somebody's renting a scooter with credit card. And now keep in mind, she's calling me because she's, I'm like, yeah, it's me. I'm on a scooter. She's like, okay. Because I'm thinking, who's renting a scooter at 7:30 at night? On which you keep in mind in Arizona time and you know, a different time, but you get the idea. 7:30 at night. And anyway, so I'm on the scooter, I'm riding, I'm riding, I'm going. And all of a sudden the scooter slows down, it stops, it just stops. And then it starts saying, you've exceed you. I went out of the area where it's allowed to be. So what happens is I had to drag the scooter, right? Because it's not light. I'm just dragging. The scooter won't roll correctly. So I'm just dragging it like two blocks because it let me go two Almost. Almost two blocks. I'm exaggerating a little bit. Two blocks past the point where I'm allowed to apparently take this stupid scooter. So then I get it back and it finally. It connects again. Like, it's like. All of a sudden it's like, boop. And it comes back on. It goes, okay. And I'm like, good, we're good. Let's go. So I go the other way. So now I'm going. I'm passing the hotel again. I'm going the other way now. Of course. Now do the math, right? 7:30, 8 o'. Clock. You understand, right? The sun's starting to set, right? It's almost 9:00 o' clock now. Okay, so it's not dark. Don't, don't. Right? But it's the sun setting. And all of a sudden, I take a look around, I go, all right, we're not in Kansas anymore. Well, literally, we're not in Fort. We're in Fort Wayne. But this is not a good area, okay? And then I'm very aware of the fact that there's now only. There's only one thing to do. And there's this. There's this, like, you know, in and out store. What do you call it? You know, 7 11. And I go, okay. But the areas now not so good. So I'm like, oh, no. What do I do with this scooter? Like, if I stop the scooter and go in there, somebody's gonna steal it. So I have to walk. I walk in the store with a scooter. Cause I'm like, imagine if somebody steals the scooter. Am I in trouble for this? Like, I don't know how this works. Plus, this is my transportation back at the hotel. So I go in there and I kid you not. Now again, everybody lives in different places in the United States. I just gotta tell you where I live. This is not a thing. I've seen it in California. I've seen it places, I'm sure. And places in Phoenix have it too. When I walked into the. To the convenience store, the clerks behind Plexiglass, like, I don't mean like Covid plexiglass. I mean, this guy's behind, like, bulletproof glass. He's got that little hole and the little slit where they can slide money through. And I'm like, okay, this is not the best place to be. And he's looking at me like, I don't think you're in the right spot. So I go. So I get, like, a bag because I Don't have anything. I get like a bag of popcorn, like a little thing of popcorn and a Diet Coke. And I'm like, I guess this is dinner. So I ring it up and. And then I realized I don't have anywhere to care. So I. I stick my. I tie my. I stuff my shirt into my pants. I pull my shirt out like this. I drop the bag of popcorn in there and the Coke and get on the scooter and I ride back the hotel. So what I'm trying to say, Joe, is that. Yeah, look, if somebody would have hooked me up with some information, I would liked it. So if you guys are going to Fort Wayne and you're kind of to make content, if you could send me. If you want to send me a quick email, something I can help with, I could give you some pointers now, like where. Where you need to be. I will tell you, the closer you are to Sweetwater, the probably better off you'll be. So. So stick to that plan. Even though Sweetwater is really not next to anything, you're still probably better off. But I will say this to Joe and to Ralph from that channel. I'm. I don't take delight in your torture of your horrible hotel room you were in. I don't in any means, but I just will say your story was worse than mine. So although mine wasn't great, I'd. Oh, I should also point out I did wreck on the scooter. So minor wreck, no damage to the scooter and technically no damage to me other than just little shake my head a little bit. But I hit a pothole too. That was always fun too. And the only thing that was tough about that was so I hit the pothole and I fell off and then I got back on the scooter and it was about 10 minutes after Shauna said, you're gonna get hurt on the scooter. And I go, no, I'm not. Like, who is she to tell me this? And then literally 10 minutes later, I hit a pothole and wrecked the scooter. All right, so that was my first experience to Sweetwater. But I'm glad you had a great time and I'm glad they treated you great. In my experience, Sweetwater is always good people. That's just one thing that you can count on. They're always nice. There's. All right, let's. The show is long, so we're going to just finish it up with one last question or topic. And let's. Let's do that. We'll do this. This is from Warren. CM says, hey, my favorite local shop close. How much of the blame can I put on Fender burning their dealers? You know, I don't know first if they were a dealer. So if they're offender dealer, I can tell you that, you know, I saw Casino Guitars talk about this recently, that, you know, it's tough because now you're in competition with the people who are supplying you. You know, there's a great argument there. You're like, look, you know, I said this once to a manufacturer when I had a store that was going direct. I said, yeah, here's the deal. I buy it from you. So I know, I know you buy it for a lot, you know, less. Because they were obviously a middleman brand. You know, they weren't manufacturing it. And I go, and so now I'm in competition with you, which is really scary in this case. Part of the blame, and this is the important part, part of the blame goes to us, the consumers. Us guitar players. We're part of the blame. You know, like everything. We're. We're picking and choosing. Not because. I'm saying, because some of us are buying direct from Fender. It's just, you know, it's. It's. It's important to support. I always tell people, always support good business. That's my only advice. That's it. As someone who had a store and someone who's now doesn't have a store, whatever, what's my advice? Always support good business. You know, I'll tell you. And this is. And this is something that recent happened to me in the last couple months. So if you would ask this a year ago, I would not have given you this answer. So maybe it will be an insightful answer. I really liked my customers. As you know, most of my customers are my friends still to this day. They come over my house from time to time. I see them in public all the time. A lot of them are patrons. In fact, think of this. My first two patrons are customers of my store, and they're still patrons. So they've been patrons of my patron thing. They supported me. They've been supporting me at $5 a month for like eight years. Whenever I started Patreon, pretty much as soon as I said, hey, I'm closing the store. I'm gonna do this for a living. Those two customers came and they were like, okay, we'll support you through Patreon then. And so I gotta thank them for that. That being said, I will tell you one thing, and this is. This is the cautionary tale for the consumer side, not the retailer side. It never occurred to me, not because I was naive, not because I wasn't paying attention. It never occurred to me anyone would give a shit that I closed the store. I never once did I ever get the impression from anyone that came to my store. And nor should I actually have to, except for this. This is why I'm saying we need to pay attention now. No one ever. I mean, I always looked at it like I was a service industry, because I am. So they came in the store, they had a problem. I fixed it, you know, Right. Fixed their guitar, sold them a guitar pick, sold them a guitar, got them into lessons, whatever the process is, you know, just like any business, you know, Right. Restaurant, they came in, I made them a plate of food. They ate it, they paid me, they left. We had a good time. We were pleasant to each other. You know, we have a business relationship, customer business. But never once. And the whole. Keep in mind, did couple people. Sure, I have a couple people who. Who were great. You know, people would come sometimes in your store, and they'd be even helpful sometimes, like, they would actually come in and help. You're like, what? I'm doing, I need to hire you, I guess. But it never, never once did I ever feel at any time like, oh, if I close this, it's a big deal, you know, anyone would care. No one will notice. They'll just go to Guitar center or the store down the street. Nothing in me. Not once did I ever hesitate, not even for a second. And Shawna can say the same thing and Ralph can say the same thing. Never once did we say, oh, no, if we close this, people will, you know, be bummed out or suffer from it. And so, you know, just for the record, the employees were all taken care of. Okay? So they're all, you know, I've told that story before. Shauna did something. If you don't know the story, I'll find it one day. But Shauna did something great for all them. She basically found them all jobs that paid more. So they all got a raise. So this worked out. They not only did not miss a day of employment, they all got a raise. So that being said, back to customers. And then what happened to me next was strange. And this is something I didn't talk about because until this recent thing happened, I didn't want to talk about it. I would be in public as a YouTuber now, not having the store, and people from my store, they would actually come up to me and tell. Tell me off they come up to me and go, I can't believe you closed the store. I can't believe you did this. You know, oh, this. Your store was so great. And the stores now suck, whatever. And Guitar center sucks. And there's no good repair people now. And I used to take my stuff to you, and. And. And that would ha. And we would just get stopped, like, at a grocery store. And people are like, yeah, I can't believe you guys did this. And we're like, oh. Or they would, you know, uh, you know, some. Some form of. That. Some form of like, they were upset with us, and. And I just was like, wow. And every time. So, you know, not to them, but to Sean and I would talk and we would say, had no idea. Never once did anyone seem to care, right? It just didn't feel that way. A lot of times, it never felt like anyone cared if you were there or not. And now time has gone by. Now people have approached me differently. Old customers, you know, hey, I like what you're doing on the channel. I miss the store. It was a truly unique store. And, you know, I miss it. And then they. And this is the part that happened that's recent. They go, do you miss it? And I go, no. And I said something to a customer that I really liked, who I hadn't seen in years. Recently, this is about a month ago, I said, you know what's funny is when he was telling me about the store, and I said, I've had this experience with my employees, like with Nathan or Warren. So, you know, they tell me stories, right? And I listen to their stories, and I go, well, that's not how I remember it. They remember it in such a beautiful way, like they're telling a story. Like, I'm like, wow, I want to go back there now. And so the reason I say that is as I'm not blaming anybody. It's like I said what I'm going to say to your. To your part about your dealer that closed, you know, your store is. Is Fender to blame? I think all of us should take some of the burden of this. Just all of us. Because remember, Fender's gonna go where the money is. That's what we talked about last week, right? Direct. Going direct is just going where the money is. The money's direct. They're gonna go that way. My point of it is not that I think you should walk into mom and Pop stores and say, bless you. Thank you. You're so amazing. Phil McKnight said, if I don't thank You. You're gonna close. But I would say whatever you feel, maybe make sure they know that you know. And I'm. I think that's the advice. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go from now is when I have a good experience now, especially with a mom and pop, I now take an extra second to not only say thank you, but to acknowledge that, hey, this is a really unique, cool place. And I just wanna say thank you and leave. And I go, I wonder if then. Cause I think if I was told not that my store was great, but it was unique or there was something different, you know, because you gotta understand and not to be negative, because I don't think I'm a negative person per se. You gotta stand most of my day is, will you match Guitar Center's price? Oh, I can get this on Amazon. It's a negotiation. You're just taking your money. I was never offended. I was never mad by that. I never go, oh, how dare you ask me to price match. I. Like I said, any business was good business. But that's what I remember was in fact. In fact, I'll tell you. And this is the last note. And this is a good friend. This is one of my close friends, not Ralph, one of my closest friends said this to me when I closed the store. He said. He said, I'm glad you closed the store. And I go, really? And he goes, yeah. He goes, I. When you were a dealer, you know, a store. He goes, you were the enemy. And I goes, I was the enemy. I was in shock. This is right after I closed this 2070. He goes, you're the enemy. And I go, why was I the enemy? And he goes, well, because you were one of them, not one of us. And I remember just my soul being crushed by that. And at the time was probably a great thing he said, because it really reminded me, like, oh, I'm glad I'm not a st. War anymore. But it never occurred to me so, you know, in the 13 years that I was ever adversarially against anyone, like, like some kind of like, match of, you know, like a, you know, thing. And. And the fact when he told me that he thought like that and that he said a lot of people think like that, I go, wow. So my point is maybe not think like that. So. And that's my. My take on that and the thing. And. And also you can help those small businesses by not buying direct. Remember, you can always make the choice to go in a store. I still go in a store. I was in Zim store this week. I try to support local mom pops as much as I can. What I buy at ZIMS this week, I bought four this week. Let's. Okay, we're super long, but let's go. What'd I buy this week? I bought four petals at Zims this week. I'm looking to see if I have them. I bought. I'll just tell you what they are. I bought this. This really cool pedal right here. Look at this. Let me go here. Okay, switch cameras to this camera. Okay. So I bought this Mr. Moto J Rocket from him. I got it for 100 bucks. This is a reverb and tremolo. And. So it adds reverb. You can take just to do tremolo. But this reverb tremolo thing is awesome. So I bought that from him for a hundred bucks. I bought a MXR micro amp from him and I bought. Oh, this one I gotta show. So let me grab it. This is kind of funny. So I bought this. It's a PV pedal. This has been sitting in his case since I remember. Like, I think his whole whole time is at a store. Stereo effects processor, DEP16. He had it for 150 bucks. And I was like, what the heck is this? And he goes, I don't know. And I'm like, well, let's check it out. What's a DEP 16? So, of course, we had to look it up on the Internet. And it's a multi effects unit. Multi effects meaning it's delay, reverb, flanger, and chorus. And one, it has a little rotary switch. And I was plugging it in this adapter because it has a quarter inch power supply. So. And I played it and I absolutely fell in love with the delay. And I was like, okay, I love this. So I got the mic ramp this and the. The J rocket, Mr. Moto. But here's what's funny about this. I go, I go. So I look up, when I looked up what it. What it was, it, you know, AI whatever told me. And then it said. I go, what's it worth? And it says 65. And I said, hey, it says, it's worth $65. You have it for 149. And he goes, well, it's been here forever. I go, I know. And he goes, what do you want to pay? And I go, I go, I'll. I'll pay the price. It's like, you know, Right, we're fine. Like, I'll get the pedals. I'm, you know, right. I was doing some trading anyways. Horse trading. So we'll figure it all out. And then I go, let's look it up on Reverb. We looked up on reverb. Everybody's asking 160 to 250. And he goes, well, you want to pay that? Then I go, no, I'd still want to pay the 149, but. And he was joking because I was, you know. But anyways, so like I said, whether you realize or not, I know I have to talk about Sweetwater because it's Internet based, and I talk about Guitar Center. But remember, I still try to divvy up my money as much as I can to any business that I can that's local, that's supportive. So. So that's it. That's the show. All right. I hope you guys had fun. Look for the two breakdown videos that come out this week. If you haven't seen this week's breakdown video, it's of a brand called RJ Guitars is a Filipino brand. And it's a lot of information in there because it's almost like a whole repair video because the guitar needed a lot of work. And you can check that video out and support the channel if you want. It's the best way to support the channel, by the way, is just to watch videos and do stuff. But if you want to do a little more, you can always become a patron. But like I said, either way, you're supporting us, so we appreciate you. And on that note, I want to thank you for your time and Know youw Gear. The Know youw Gear podcast. Sam.