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The Know youw Gear Podcast the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. All right, how's it going? Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 429. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. I think I did. It was really fun weekend last week when was a holiday weekend for some of us. Most of us. Some of us. And anyways, let me this mic right here a little better for us. Okay. Couple things to do some updates real quick is just if you see somebody with the blue name and a blue wrench, that means our moderator, they filled me questions, they post links, they help with all kinds of other issues or questions and I want to thank them. Before we get started, we have some some changes to the show for September. We're experimenting with one of two ideas. We'll decide which one we go with before, you know, soon. So let me explain the changes. First of all, nothing, this part isn't new, but just need to know that if you hear live, there's no commercials. So if you catch it live, there's no commercials. If you listen into it, the audio streaming versions, there's no commercials. And if you're a $5 patron, there's no commercials. If you want to watch it on that end. However, one new feature is we're going to Super Chats. We might enable them on the second half of the last part of the video just to see if we can freshen up some of the questions, subjects and commentary and give more people a kind of whack at the, at getting their their comment in their question, their topic. And so I want to just let you guys know. So if you're trying to Super Chat, you can, if you want to support the channel, you can do super stickers and super thanks if that's something you want. It's up to you. It's again, it's just anything is appreciated. But you know, I just wanted to let you know. Let's get into some of the first topics and questions. The first topic that I have is a soldering question. This is a good question. I actually like this one. It says hey, here's a soldering question. As a beginner and I assume they mean solder. Would I be able to solder inside in my apartment or do I have to go outside to solder. Sorry for the the the our for our European friends. If I'm not hitting the L hard enough on solved or whatever. I'm sorry but this is just how I say it. Solder. Anyways, this is. I hear mixed feelings about soldering inside. I would love to practice inside if possible, but not sure if it's okay. So let me, let me show you a couple things. As someone who soldered in an apartment and in my home and everywhere, I think there's some definite safety measures you should take. I'm going to give you all of the ones I think you should take and of course always with caution. You know, everything with caution. So the first thing I'm going to suggest to you is buy this solder station. So let me share that with you. This is it. It is. I will put a link to it. So here, here's it is. This is the, the Weller 70 watt digital soldering station. This is $95.38 on a Amazon. You can get it from wherever you would like to get it. I'm just showing you the one on Amazon because it's one I know we all have access to. This is absolutely my favorite soldering station for. Especially for a hobbyist. By far it does pro level work. But of course hobbyist couple reasons. One, why One, you can set the temperature right there, which is really cool. The second thing is you have. You can buy different tips for it. I suggest you getting some different tips. And also you can buy parts for it if it was to need parts in the future. Because Weller, Weller is a well established brand who's been around for a long time. But more importantly, there's a safety feature that I love in this which is when you set it like if you set it like I do, really hot. What happens is after so many minutes, I don't know. I'm sure if you read the description it tells you 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. I don't know. I just know all of a sudden you're working and the temperature starts dropping and it drops to the lowest temperature on the iron. And, and that's not. Doesn't make it safe. But let me tell you two reasons why you do that. One, you didn't say if you have kids or pets, but that's a factor. So we're going to talk about fire in your house or your apartment and then kids and pets. So kids and pets first. Having it drop down to the lowest temperature means that if a kid or a pet was to brush, especially this part, this is usually where they get themselves. Let me show it to you right here. Okay. Sorry that it's for some reason jumping me out of the screen. Okay. Right here. This is what I'm. This part right here. I don't know why you can't see my. Oh, there it is. There you can see it. This part right here, this is the. Basically the heat sink or the saddle, heat saddle, whatever you want to call it, for this solder iron. And that's going to be really hot. And that's usually what they touch and they can burn themselves. Now, obviously, if this thing drops to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and the iron's in there, it's still. They touch themselves, it's still not going to be nice, but it's not going to be the insane thing that would be if it was at, you know, 700, 800 degrees. So definitely better for there. So that's one thing. The other thing I like about this particular model is that by decreasing its heat, it's less likely, not unlikely, not impossible, less likely to start a fire because it's not gonna be super hot. I definitely recommend that you attach this to a power strip the way I do it now, because I have the luxury of doing everything in my studio, everything in my office, everything just out of years of habit of having the shop is connected to a master power switch. When I leave the room and I hit the power switch, everything in that room is off. I don't care if it's this light over here, if it's a soldering iron, if it's the saw, whatever it is, it's all turned off. I don't even take a chance and ha. And leave a couple things like charging batteries and stuff. I just go, you know what? If they didn't charge today, then they're out. And I think that's a nice redundant safety thing. So those are two things. The other thing that now we have to worry about, now that we've hopefully. Also another thing you can do, by the way, I should point this out too, is you can put the soldering station on a plate. When I say a plate, like a tray, something, obviously it's not gonna catch fire, like wood or something. But you put on a tray and therefore when you turn it off, what's nice is. Let me go back to it. Another great feature of this soldering station. Sorry, I don't know why it kicked me out. Is right here on this back. Right here is. I'm sorry, let me do this. Let me move it there. Where you can see it, is that you can unplug it from here. And so what's nice is if you wanted to, you could take the Whole station this thing right here and unplug the power from it. And if it's on a plate or something, walk it out to your patio and put it on your patio and get it out of the area or in a safe zone for again, kids and pets. Just something to think about. The other thing I'm going to suggest that you have that I really think is important if definitely if you're going to solder inside a house or an apartment is this thing right here. There's a bunch of different ones. Pick whichever one you think is going to work for you. Make your own decisions. But this is definitely a solder fume extractor. This is the one I like. There's two versions. I have the more expensive version. I don't normally suggest you have to buy this one, but in an apartment I would. So the reason the expensive version has these two arms that have the alligator clips. So that if you want to solder something right here, what happens is this is going to suck the solder into this filter and it's going to make it a little safer. I still recommend eyewear and maybe a mask, but this is just to make it better for you in the long run. And of course, if you have somebody in the room, let's say you're in the kitchen area of the apartment and somebody's sitting on the couch watching tv. This is going to be helpful to have this suck up that in the area. Now that's again, you make all your decisions yourself. So I'm not telling you to do it with people in the room stuff. I'm just being honest, that that's just something I did. I soldered at the kitchen table while somebody sat on the couch. You know, maybe we were young and dumb or maybe we're just broke, I don't know. But either way we did it. The other thing that is nice is that you can do with this is you can also buy lead free solder. And so I hate lead free solder to work with. But I would definitely say that if you're going to be in a confined area with no ventilation and keep that in mind too, if you can open the windows, that'd be nice as well. Again, eye protection, some kind of ventilation, definitely, all very appropriate things. But I would definitely say, especially if you have people in the room with you and they didn't elect to take on the risk that you're taking, I would get the lead free solder and just keep it that way. But I use leaded solder when I solder now Because I like the way it melts. It's a little easier. I have something to suck the fumes out of the way. I wear something to protect myself. And again, if any of these seem extreme, I can tell you right now, no matter what I say, somebody's going to tell me I'm not being safe enough. And somebody's going to tell me I'm being too, too safe. So you make your own choices in life. I just told you what I've done and what works for me. And the, the, the tools that I would recommend. And I think if you think about that, if you look at that, those two tools, although not inexpensive by any means, you know, $40 for the fan. And what was this soldering station? Was that a hundred and. Oh, it was 95. So you're talking about $150 with tax all in. Not, not a little bit of money, but not an insane amount of money for safety and this. And I, I can't tell you about the, the, the fume fan, per se, but I'll tell you that Weller will probably, if you take care of it, last you a lifetime. So it's a $95 buy once, cry once purchase. Those are my suggestions. If you want to solder in. And I, and I say. You said apartment. I'm saying apartment, but also I'm just gonna say confined space. You know, places without ventilation, places that are not industrial places, you know, something like that. The other thing I, I recommend, besides my pushing my finger in my ear, is we, we have here at the house, you can get a fire extinguisher. That's a really good idea to have around. You can get those at Costco. And also you can get a fire blanket. And we have those, believe it or not, we have them everywhere. I work, I have a fire blanket. And I hope that's what it's called. I'm gonna look it up. I'll be able to tell you what it is. Yep, this is it. This is a one pack. This. We have these. See how it has a little hole right there? We have these hanging everywhere. We have one in the garage. We have one in the kitchen. We have one in my shop area. We have one anywhere. We work with anything that can be flammable, we have one of these. And then we have two fire extinguishers in the house. I think a small one in the sink and then one in the garage. Then we get too quickly. But in your case, maybe this is just enough. But I would have something like this. So just Again, what was the price on this? $25 for your safety. So something like that. If somebody has great suggestions too, you know, go ahead, go ahead and make suggestions, but I'm just telling you what I use, why I like it, and safety first. I'm a safety first kind of, kind of person, you know, I don't know why I am that way. I will, but I am that way. Safety first. In fact, if you say to either one of my children, like, they're like, I broke them, almost like a drill sergeant, if you were to walk up to either one of my kids and just say, you know what they say? Safety, they'll go first. They know. Or if you just said, safety, they go first, safety first. So I had to do it. Okay, let me go back to some questions, topics. We have another great topic here. Okay, ready? This one is, I've listened to more advanced players than me say that modelers cause a perceptible, perceptible delay between your fingers and what you hear. So the ad conversion, processing and da conversion, I assume whatever processing takes a finite, if not short time. Just wondering if that's also true with digital pedals. They may have less processing to do, but are digital pedals an issue for old school advanced players? So a couple things we're now going to talk about. So when we're talking about latency, we'll call that latency, right? I know that's not really a technical term. Latency is used a lot more for record recording kind of thing. But latency in the concept of, you know, you have, you don't feel like you're getting instant, you know what, what you're putting in is not coming back instantaneously. It's not, it's not. Doesn't feel organic and intense that way. That is two things. One, this, your ears, your playing style, your skill set can determine how much of that you detect. In other words, some people don't detect any because they're just not good enough to know. Or more importantly, they don't play anything that's so percussive or fast. You know, if I strum a chord, you know, there might be a little latency, but it's just going to be so small, most players aren't going to notice it. However, you know, the more articulate you play, the more you're going to detect it. The point I always make, and I've always said this, and I'll kind of come back around to this latency thing is, I've said this many times, you know, gear is for the musician, not the audience. The musician's job is to make the audience, you know, have quality, right? You want to play something that sounds good to them. Your job is to sound good, play great, play good. Sound good, play good, right? Entertain. Well, whatever you want to say. But the point is, if you get a katana or if you get a $4,000 boutique amp, the audience isn't supposed to be able to hear the difference. They're not supposed to tell it's not. They can't see. Somebody says the audience can't. I hate it when people say the audience can't tell the difference. I have stood. I know I'm a musician, but I have stood. Even when I was a musician. I know what crap sounds like. Just like you guys do. You hear it and you go, oh, that does not sound good. Everything's horrible in the mix. Everything's not, you know, too bright, something's too bassy, so anybody can detect it when it's not right. The point is not that the audience can't tell. The audience is the. The. The point is the audience isn't supposed to be able to tell. They're not in on it. They don't know that you've used the most organic, highly selected petals on the planet. They are just supposed to hear good sounds. And so your job is to turn whatever you have into something that sounds pretty good at the best of your abilities, whether that's your playing abilities or your ears or whatever. So, that being said, I think every time we go to this digital debate, you understand that I think most musicians, I would say the majority, I don't know for sure, a percentage. I feel confident saying 70%, which is a pretty good percent. 7 out of 10. 7 out of 10. Professional musicians using digital products do not so much swear they're exactly like analog product, like tube amps or analog pedals. They just find that it fits their needs because there's more needs than just having the purest tone or the exact sound that's in your head. Sometimes you don't want to spend two hours setting up your rig. Maybe you perform better and play better. If you haven't spent, you know, two hours moving the rig and doing sound check, you know, just being able to plug and play and go is. Is just, you know, like I said, it makes you. Makes you perform better because you put less energy in that. So what I'm saying is there's concessions in this. So to the. To your question, when somebody says, oh, there's latency or the. It Just doesn't sound as good. Well, yeah. And so if your point is. If your argument is, I'm not going to make that concession. I'm going to use my dumbbell amp with my clown pedal, with my 59, 1959 Les Paul, and that's the only way I can get sound, and that's the only way I'm happy. Well, then you should do that, like we talked about in the past. But if you think you could take a epiphone through a katana and you think you could pull off the gig, well, as long as the audience doesn't think they hear crap, I guess you're fine, right? Because again, if you think you can pull it off, and I would almost argue. In fact, I think we've all seen it. We've seen the videos of, like, Joe Satrani playing like a Squire through a little amp. I think we've seen Joe Bonamassa playing like, an epiphone through a. Maybe a catan or something like that. The point is, if we give Joe Bonamassa an epiphone through a katana and he sounds good, and you say, see, it's not the gear. Well, it's not so much that it's not the gear, it's that he's really good at making things sound good. Right? So that just proves that if he wanted to play an epiphone through a katana, he could. He just doesn't want to. Why? Because he's got a bunch of semi trucks and he's got roadies and they can set up his rig, and he's paid a lot of money and he wants to give the audience the best show. And he thinks part of the best show is to have the best sound. And that's where he lies. And he's not making concessions because he doesn't want to slash. Doesn't have to. Right. That helps as well. Right. Like I said, most musicians I've talked to that using IRS instead of cabinets now, or using, you know, like the Oxbox or something like that for their amps or using digital modeling, it's a concession they made and they have a reason for it. Sometimes it is a cost equation. They're just. It's too expensive to take the real deal. And sometimes it's just a physical equation. Like, they're. Like. It just doesn't make sense. And. And this isn't new, you know, this is something that's been going on since the 80s. When I say that is not. Not modeling. Musicians have been making concessions. For instance, like a guitar Player on a tour might only take his head and just use whatever cabinet the backline has because he doesn't have room in the bus. Right. He's decided that everyone being able to sleep is more important than having the cabinets with them as well. So, again, there's. I once saw Gary Hoey perform and they were driving in a van and Gary Hoey had his. His pedal board and he was running that through whatever backline amp he could get at a show. The bass player was running his bass through a backline amp and the drummer was only taking his cymbals and snare, so they were using a backline drum set. So they. And they were touring that way. And he. We sat down, we sat, talked to him and he explained that on the tour he makes so much money and then he pays out the band and the manager and he's got to pay the hotels and all this stuff and that, you know, at the end of the show, you know, when he gets back, he needs to have some money to live off of, you know, until the next, you know, tour. And I inter. I don't say I interviewed, but I hung out with Tony McAlpine on his tour bus and I watched him explain the same thing about how the bus driver isn't allowed because the bus driver was union. This is what Tony McAlpine told me. The bus driver's union. So the bus driver, by union rules, does not sleep in the bus. He has to sleep in a hotel. So they have to pay for the driver, the bus, to rent the bus, and then they have to park that bus while the band sleeps in the bus. The bus driver sleeps in a hotel room. Right? It's expenses is what I'm trying to say. So, you know, he was tanking at that time. He was taking the Gig Masters Meister, Gig Meisters by Hughes and Kittner, because again, looking for. He. It was a concession. I just. I love the words I'm using a lot tonight. Concession. He was basically like, he. He could take a big amp, pay for everybody, and at the end of the tour, have no money. And he decided, you know, I'm gonna have money. So I think that's why musicians make the decisions they make. In fact, also, I think if I recall that the way his tour worked is a lot of ways tours work now is like the first band pays to be there and then the second band gets a smaller cut. There's like a hierarchy to it. There's channels on YouTube you should check out where there's people who are in the Touring industry and they talk about this stuff and it was, it's really interesting. And if you hear that and you see how they have to make money now and all the things they pay for, you'll see why they have a, you know, a Kemper or an Axe FX or a quad cortex now. And it sure is not 100% because oh man, it sounds amazing. It just, it sounds good. And the other thing, so this is, this is important to talk about too is I wanted, I pulled this up in anticipation of your question. Okay. Because I saw the question, so I pulled it a topic and I was thinking about this the other day and when people talk about effects pedals, you know, digital pedals, digital processors, digital stuff and how good does it sound? Well, here's just a reference. My son was born in 1999. And in 1999, I think I told you guys this. We made my son a time capsule. He got it when he was 21 years old. We gave it to him. Time capsule sounds fancy. It was a Tucker tote, if you know the brand Tucker tote, like a Rubbermaid thing. We filled it up with all kinds of stuff, stuff, you know, that happened in 1999 and some interesting things from his childhood and stuff. Anyways, one of the things we had in there was at the time, in 1999 we went and bought our first computer at Gateway. You guys think saying you went to Blockbuster Videos to rent videos is an old timey thing to say? Tell somebody that you went and bought a computer at Gateway. So anyways, the top of the line, which is by the way, not the computer we bought the top line computer, 1999, ready. It had a 600 mic, had a 600 Intel Pentium 3 with 640 megabytes of RAM and a 40 gig hard drive. But by the way, you could Upgrade it to 80 gigs of hard drive at the time and it had a optical DVD ROM drive as well, that was the top of the line computer that Gateway could build for you, which cost, by the way, a fortune. So what I'm getting at is 640 megabytes of RAM. And my point is that that's exactly how digital stuff works. They work like a computer. So when you look at an old Digitech or an old TC electronics or an old Line 6, or pick your technology from 1999 or 2000 or 2005 or 1995 and you look it now. So what my point is is that if there is a latency, if there's an issue, it's getting better. And it will continue to get better because it'll get cheaper to put better processing in there. I've talked about this before. One of my friends, Larry Mitchell, tours with an Axe fx and even he has to do some stuff with like reverbs. He'll run them on his eventide H9 to offload some of the processing power. In other words, the reverbs are really. They really suck up a lot of that processing power. So that's. So I guess that's my way of saying is yes, even with today there is latency, but you know, it's better. What do I think when I use my kempers and stuff? Do I hear latency and stuff? I do. I can tell. I can feel something. But the benefits outweigh the concessions is basically what I'm saying. It's like having my effects built in, having reverbs, having it sound the way. Being able to record really easy and fast. There's just a lot of things I like. But would I pick that if I had no YouTube, you know, recordings or anything to do or anything to check out? No, I think I would probably maybe just pick one amp and play through that. Okay, let me look around to see if there's anything you guys have to say. Okay, hold on a second. I'm sorry, you guys are just making me chuckle. Okay, let's. Let's go on. There's another topic that. That can piggyback off of this topic, which I thought was great. And let me go ahead. I'm going to post the. The link, copy link. Let me post it here. I'll give it. Post it for you guys so you have it and then I'll post it on the timestamps. So this is a good topic question somebody had. This one was about Brian Wampler. If you didn't see Brian Wampler. Two things. I want to link the actual YouTube video I believe this article is from. If I'm mistaken, I'm still going to put the YouTube video. I watched the YouTube interview of Brian Wampler. In fact, I kind of feel bad if I don't mention it because you know, you want to give a channel the shout out they deserve. Let me give me one second. Let me give you the shout out. Let me go to my history and I will find the channel. The channel is products of music. Okay, I will put the link share. There it is. Let me copy this. Give me a second. And so anyways, products of music is the channel. They did an interview with Brian Wampler. I will post it here and then I believe Guitar World did an article based on that interview. If I'm mistaken, I'm sorry, I apologize either way it seemed to be on the same subject matter. So let me just give you the topic or question they're asking me. They said. Brian Wampler of Wampler Pedals has likened the rise of digital amps and pedal modeling to the impact on Napster on the music industry. This is what basically I read in the article and I heard him talk about it of course in the interview. It was a very good interview. You guys will watch it. And it says he suggested it could take a significant chunk out of the traditional pedal and tube market amp market. He explains that just like Napster made it easy and accessible without needing to buy digital profiling technology allows guitarists to capture and replicate the sound of traditional gear, potentially reducing the need to purchase physical pedals and amps. However, Wampler also sees this as an opportunity for manufacturers like his own company to pivot and transitioning their transition their exiting products into digital plugins. Oh, okay. So yeah I heard him say this. So okay, I want to go on this on many levels real fast. So Brian was basically saying that obviously like you heard that the digital products are going to make it very hard to compete with pedals. Think about this. Digital products don't have tariffs. So think about, think about when we were talking last week about the plug out pedal by boss. $10 but no tariff on that. So that already is going to be very appetizing to a lot of businesses. People are definitely. His other point to this is kind of like the Napster thing is that he makes a pedal and then a company like Axe FX or Kemper or something, they basically replicate that, replicate that sound and put it in one of their devices and it comes with this device or you can buy it as a digital upload and therefore he's being undercut. So he's kind of thinking maybe in the future he'll pivot by when he's deciding to discontinue a Wampler pedal. Maybe he'll have sell that as a plugin. Right. This also gives insight I think into the plugout pedal by Boss last week and why they had, why they have the desire to kind of go with that business model. You know it got a lot of hate. So I think well deserved in my still opinion. I'm not gonna. I know some people explained their side of the story and, and so you know their side of it. This ties in. Somebody put a comment on that last week's show that I enjoyed so much and the, the comment was that I praised the $250 Boss Rotary Speaker Rotary speaker pedal but then condemned the $250 Digital Plugout pedal. And like they, they kind of explained, they kind of said like there's some hypocrisy there maybe. Let me explain this to you. First of all I bought that pedal. Okay. So I Bought the Boss RT2 Rotary Ensemble Ensemble pedal. Ensemble ensemble pedal. I bought an open box buy for 209. I obviously from Pro Audio Star. So some of you gonna make comments or is it a really an open box buy? I think because it was a holiday that slowed it down. It's not getting here till Monday. I will use it as gear of the week next week so I will share with you. So 230 $210 plus shipping is about 200 and you know whatever I think paid 220, 230 actually I'll give you the exact number with tax cost me 227.42. So putting my money where my mouth was, yes, I would rather buy the $230 ensemble rotary speakers pedal ensemble pedal over the plug out digital pedal. Not because I have a thing against digital sounds at all. As far as I know the rotary pedal is digital. It's because like I said, I'm just not excited about the potential issues in the future that BOSS is going to put into the market with this business model. But also more importantly all I really going to say and I'll say it again and I'm probably going to hold to it and I don't care what anybody says which is I my HX1 does what I want it to do and it sounds great. And it was boss's opportunity to get me to sell that and go to BOSS as a customer. Right. And they didn't do that. Okay. So anyways, my point is if you want to buy the BOSS plugout, you should. Absolutely. If you're, if you think it's great, buy it. I personally don't think that's enough effects and enough it's. It's not going to make me replace my HX01 stop. That's basically what I'm getting at. I don't know why I would get rid of the HX1 stomp to get the BOSS plug out pedal. There's no reason I could come up with and I thought about it all week. I try to come up with one good reason for me to buy that plugout pedal just to buy it and have it or use it in a video. And I was just like, I can't come up with a good reason. It doesn't mean it's a. It's. It just means it's not for me. And so it's not for me. It's not only do I not want to buy or license whatever effects in it, I definitely don't only want 16 effects with eight of them being kind of hardwired into it. And the I can interchange the other eight. No, I like having all the effects in one box. Like I said, the H5. Sorry, M5. The M5 by line 6 I still have has 100 effects. And I think that's amazing. I just think it should have. And also I didn't like that the BOSS plugout, it has MIDI for now. It has MIDI which is a time clock, but it doesn't have it to where you can actually hook it up MIDI like I can with Matrix 1 and actually have it set up with my MIDI controller to change out effects. That's something that somebody pointed out. Just for the record, somebody pointed out that BOSS could add that later as an update. But. But again, I'm not really excited about buying things with the potential of getting the things that I might get. And you know what I mean. Like, in other words, I'm skeptical of anything digital and promises made by companies even boss. So what's my point? My point is back to Brian Wampler and his point. I think his discussion right here kind of alludes that this is why BOSS is probably going the way they are. Maybe they see the future is it's going to be hard to sell analog pedals to us at 100 bucks a whack or 150 bucks a whack in the future. So it's going to be a lot easier to sell $10 licenses to us. Maybe that's what they see. Keep in mind, you know, they can sell more of them and they can, you know, the profit margin is much higher. So maybe they see the future. What did I think about Brian Wamper's assessment of the market right now? I think, I think every market in the guitar market right now, guitars, amps and pedals are going through the same exact thing. When I mean same exact thing. I mean the same exact situation or problem, even though certain things are different things are causing it. I mean, let me explain. So like digital, definitely digital effects and processes are hurting effects pedals, I think they're definitely hurting amps. It's absolutely the case. And. But guitars obviously aren't being hurt by digital products. Guitars are being hurt by again oversaturation and other things. And I think that I, I, I think the strong will survive. The best quality will stay stay the test. The better brands will come out ahead. And you know, this ties into another we're I guess I'm on a roll today. This ties into another question topic that I saw and it was this one was from Mr. Mont who says, hey, there was an interesting video on 5 watt world channel. And there he had the reverb data. Guy spoke and used about used guitar prices and he said no crash is evidence in the data. So what's interesting is I don't know where the word crash would come from. This is used a lot like the real I hear in the real estate market and I see it in the car market a lot. It's a crash. They're real estate crash. I I think kind of like the interview I did with Mike Clem from Sweetwater and the interview I did with Gabe and of course the discussions we have on here on the show. What I saw by the way, I listened to the 5Watt World interview with the guy from, from Reverb. What I got from it. This is my, my perception of it is the market's down. Very positive spin on the market being down, right? We know the market's down because it was in a boom before. So the boom can't last. It doesn't sustain. So no one's really questioning whether or not the market is down. We know the guitar market is down. Here's how I know because Reverb's telling me in two ways. Reverb is telling me. Here's what Reverb's telling me. First of all, if you go into the menu of your Reverb account and if you have your my collection tab, when you go to your my collection, I'm gonna show it to you. I'm just gonna show you this here's my collection. These are the guitars I own. Okay? Reverb, if you put it in your collection, Reverb tells you their estimates on what they think this stuff is worth, right? Okay. My collection according to reverb is worth 20 to 30%. 20% at least less than when it was two years ago. That's Reverbs telling me that. They're saying hey, all your stuff, if you guys are ever do the Reverb collections, you can put your gear in and it kind of keeps track all your gear but also keeps telling you kind of if you saw it tells you like what's the average price in the market? And generally speaking, what's your stuff worth if you were to sell it? My stuff's worth 20% less than what apparently it was worth before two years ago. So, okay, so that's down. The other thing is, I cannot go on Reverb without five retailers sending me offers for product. Obviously, I just bought a brand new pedal for 10, 10, 15% off, right? So they're, they're, they're being aggressive with sales. That's. So the market is softer than it was. It's down a little bit. And I don't think anybody's disputing that. So what I got from the Reverb guy, to answer your, your, your question about what I thought of it, what I got was he said, there's no crash. But that's not an answer to anything I cared about. No offense to him particularly. He was a really nice guy. And he said some interesting things. They showed some graphs and charts, basically said, yeah, see, the market's great because we're still selling stuff. Yeah, we know you're selling stuff. You're the platform for selling stuff. It would be an apocalypse, Right? In fact, if Reverb's selling too much stuff or they're selling no stuff, that's a really bad thing, right? Too much stuff. Selling means everybody's totally broke, has to sell all their personal items and they can't survive. And if there's no stuff being sold, well, that's bad too. So what I got was, yeah, the market's down, but again, like we talked about, is it a crash? I don't know who's saying it's crashing. And what we do know is, is that when the market comes down in the guitar market, this is from the guitar market side only, then what happens is there's this really very confusing thing that people think, but I don't know why they think this. Maybe because they're not in an industry like this, like a retail industry. When the market drops in the guitar market, what. What doesn't happen is every company goes down 10 or 15%. Okay? That's not what happens. It's not like it disperses the pain equally across the platforms. So every guitar manufacturer is down a little bit. What happens is some companies drop 80% in revenue and they just go out of business. Some companies drop 30, 40%, which means they're going out of business is it's just a slow death and they might survive it, but they might not. And some companies are fine, and some companies are up Right. And that's exactly. And, and, and just to point out this, and I, you know, I always kind of find this stuff that I tell you guys discretionary. I want you to, I want you to know. I, I basically, I'm telling you I don't want to tell you what I'm about to tell you what I'm going to tell you anyways, because I think it illustrates the point so much that I just, I can ramble for 10 more minutes if I don't just say this. So when I was talking to Mike Clement Sweetwater, the CEO before the interview, one of the things he said to me or asked me was, and I'm pretty sure I'm okay to say this, he said, there's a lot of chatter about sales, guitar sales being down, and it's too much used guitar. You know, everybody's selling their used stuff. There's too much used stuff and not enough, you know, that's hurting the new guitar market. And he said, very heartfelt privately, by the way. He said, we saw a little slowdown in January. Other than that, we've been up all year and numbers seem great. And he asked me why, I think, and by the way, when he asked me, he just curious, like, why would I think. He's like, phil, why do you think that's possible? Why is it that the industry seems like it's down as a whole, but, you know, we seem fine? And I told him, I said, during the pandemic, I was sent a neck by a company called Lumatone, not Illumtone, Illuminati. Illuminati sent me a neck. They said, hey, we want to send you a neck. Would you do a video? I said, sure. They sent me the neck to make the video. I have to put the neck onto something. I didn't have anything to put the neck on. So I thought I would go down and buy a Mexican made Telecaster and stick the neck on a Telecaster and make the video. And I wanted to make the video that week. So of course I didn't want to buy it online and wait a week. So I went down to my local music store. And just so there's no confusion, it was Milano's Music in Mesa, Arizona. It's the oldest music store, I think, in the state of Arizona. Walked in there, of course there was nobody in there. It was the COVID and they have guitars on the walls and I'm looking at them and I see a Telecaster and it's just not the color I want. And so the Sales manager. I don't know if he's a sales manager or sales lead, whatever. He said he was in charge. He came up to me and he's like, can I help you? Actually, that's not true. He didn't say that. That would actually make the situation better. He was standing there, and I said, hey, I have a question. He's like, okay. And I said, I'm looking for a Telecaster, preferably made in Mexico. And I said, in any color but the one you have on the wall. And then he says to me, he says, I'm being funny now. He says to me, he says, man, can't even get these right now. Whoa. Six month wait. If you ordered it right now from us, you'd get it in six months. Can't even get you a guitar. That's how fast they're selling. You can't even. You. You should. No, there's no way. No way you. No way you can get a guitar. In other words, buy the one he's got on the wall because there ain't no guitar. He's like, we're putting in orders right now, offender, two years in advance. So I walked out to my truck, I ordered the guitar off reverb, and it got there four days later. And I made the video that you guys all saw. Oh. And I got it for a smoking deal. So I told Mike, I said, you know, I haven't been there since. I'm not mad at them. But the reality is, this is why I told Mike, I said, when it's a seller's market, the buyers remember how they were treated. When it becomes a buyer's market, the funny part of the story is when it's a buyer's market, the sellers don't really remember the buyers. When it becomes a seller market. Again, that's not usually how it works. So in other words, what I'm trying to say is right now, buyers are buying, but their discretion, they use discretion on their expense. They know they can get a deal now. They don't have to fall for all the gimmicks. They don't like some of the. What the brands did. Some brands chose to pass in a price increase every five minutes. Some companies said crazy things and did crazy things, and some companies treated you the right way. And I think the companies that treated people the right way sustained or are going to continue to sustain. So I think that ties into the market right now. So I think. Yeah. So back to the reverb explanation of the market. It's not crashing. I don't think anyone thinks it's crashing. I tell you guys all the time. I can tell you right now that without a doubt, if you look at affiliate clicks, in other words, what you guys are buying off my affiliate clicks, you guys are buying more than you were buying in 2019, but way less than you were buying in 2020 and 21 and 22, for sure. There's just no. No comparison to what you guys are buying. I'd say half. No, way less than half. 20 spot. Probably down 75 from when it was the height. But that down 75 is still way up from before the. The boom. So that's where I see people at. And then, funny enough, I had a funny story. Let me. Let me. Where's my phone? Do I have my phone? I don't. How do I not have my phone? I don't have my phone, guys. I'm sorry. So I was gonna show you guys something. I was at Guitar center last week, the one in Phoenix, Arizona. I know that there's a lot of them in Avondale and stuff. And I was walking the store, and out of nowhere, I was pleasantly shocked and surprised. My friend, good friend, but also he was my lead teacher at my music academy. He has a master's in music education from Berkeley. He is now the manager at that guitar center. So I saw Frank and I go, oh, my God. Hey, Frank. And he's like, yeah. And he's here now. And we talked for a while. I bought something there. I'll show you guys later what I bought. Not today, but I'll show you something I bought. And. And. And it was a great talk and great time. And we talked about the market right now. And he said exactly what I'm saying. He's like, we're selling a lot of stuff, but he's like, we're choking on katanas, used and inexpensive Squires used. He's like, people are bringing us the same stuff to trade in and. But we're seeing some basically cool stuff and unique stuff are flying out the doors. And the, you know, they produce too much of its stuff during COVID is just choking up. So. So, yeah, I think that's where the market's at. That's my 2 cents of it. And I noticed that's where I'm buying too. If somebody makes something exciting and new, I'm after it. And if they don't, I'm. I'm kind of sick of it. Let's get into some other questions. Let's see what Amanda found. Somebody said she found the Candyman, who said, hey Phil, I just got a brand new Andy Wood signature, sir. That came from Sweetwater with a tiny ding on the back of the neck. Damn thing feels amazing. What a pain in the ass. Should I keep it? So I believe that neck is unfinished. If that next unfinished, you can steam it out. I have a video on how to steam out a dent. What I would do in your position, exactly like what would I do? So this isn't. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm saying what would I do if I. If I love the guitar like you said and I'm everything's fine. I would take a picture of it, send it to Sweetwater, send it to your rep or whatever and say, hey, this is the issue and you want some kind of compensation for it. The compensation could be one of, I would say three things. A discount, right? Me personally, I take the discount like, especially if it was 10% off on a sur like that because that's going to be a few hundred bucks. Take that compensation. The second alternative is they could ship it back. In other words, they can send you a label and have it ship it back and have their, their mod shop fix it. They have the skills. They can do anything there in their repair shop. They could fix the dent in the guitar in the neck, steam it out, blend it, send it back. And if that. And then if you're happy with that, then you go on your way. The third option is they could send a gift. In other words, you know, if they don't want to, if they said, hey, you know, we can't give you a percentage, maybe they can send you like, you know, I don't know, something cool like, hey, could you send me some cables and picks and stuff? I don't know, something you get an idea just. But I mean, really ideally best in my personal opinion, I'd rather have money or the guitar repaired. But like I said, if, if it is natural wood, you can steam it out and then, and then fix it the way I showed you in the, in the Steam video. But I would actually run it by Sweetwater first and actually ask for the best fix to the situation. Right? Because like I said, they will take care of you. I hear every once in a while, look, I want to be very clear with about everything. So a lot of times I see a lot of comments about Sweetwater and they're like, hey, I had this horrible experience and this is what happened. What's happened? I'm telling you as someone who's, who's been around the Sweetwater guys, been around the Guitar center guys, been around so many of the people in this industry for a long time. The Sweetwater at their core is a customer service business model. Okay? Which means it's not a difficult thing to get service. But you understand that sometimes people reach out and they say, hey, I've heard it all. So, you know, I've heard everything from you guys in the comments and emails. You'll say, hey, I told them there was a problem. They told me to go get bent. I don't know what happened in that case. My gut tells me all the time that either you're not telling me the truth or you're having an issue with a person. And I've said this before and I've talked about this, like sometimes when I'm like, I have an issue, I have an issue with a company and I'll say, I don't want to talk about that particular company name because it's really an issue with a person. There's a difference between having an issue with a policy at a company and a person. If you're having an issue with a policy, then you're having a problem with the company. You don't like that policy. So if the official policy is, you know, you get damaged product and that's just how it goes and suck it, then that's a wrong policy and you should fight them on the policy and also explain to everyone in review sense that this company is not doing well right by customers. And here's why you know that. Because look at this horrible policy. But if a person at the company is not doing the right job, that's a person. And so, so you want to go to their manager, to another person, you want to give the company a shot to not only think about this, take care of you, but also remedy that the fact that they have bad. And they had bad customer service, they have a bad customer, you know, rep. So I would say go, go to your rep, tell them what happened, get some kind of compensation for it and, or, you know, whatever, right? Just get, get take getting taken care of to your satisfaction is what I would highly recommend. And if that doesn't work well, then maybe you shouldn't buy from them again and then let us know that they gave you horrible customer service and we'll share the experience. But I'd like to. The only reason I say this to you guys is because I want you to understand that this came up just yesterday. It came out yesterday. I don't know if you guys know when I Buy products for myself. Personally, I use my name. So if I buy something from a company, whether it's Sweetwater, Guitar Center, Chicago music change, local mom and pop, you know, whatever, it's me. But when I buy stuff for the channel, I always use it. We use a fake name. So we have a fake name. Because one of the luxuries we have is we have a. A way to ship stuff to us with a fake name and an address they don't know. So what I'm saying is I also have experiences when I'm not Phil McKnight, YouTube minor league extraordinaire on Fridays. So I'm just saying, sometimes the pushback to me is like, yeah, but they take care of you because you're a YouTuber. Yeah, I'm telling you, I have experiences. Not as a YouTuber, you know, weekly, because, you guys know I can't help but buy gear sometimes for myself besides the channel. So I have not had a. A problem that could not be resolved with Sweetwater. So, you know, me personally, I mean, not being, you know, official night. I know they've always taken care of me as a YouTube channel. Of course they are. Well, I say of course. Some companies don't, but of course Sweetwater does. But I'm telling you, as my fake person, I've had. When I've had issues with Sweetwater, they've always taken care of it, whatever the issue. Same with Guitar center, too, I have to say. So Guitar center even did something weird. Shawna ordered some strings. Like a pack of strings? No, three packs a guitar and three packs of strings. They shoved the strings in the guitar box. They just let them throw them in there loose. They were bouncing in there. But the problem is they didn't seal the corners of the box with tape. So we assume two of the packs must have flew out because they weren't in the box. Only one of the three. And she called them and. And then they shipped us 12 sets of strings, so. So anyways. All right, so I'm just telling you, if you have an issue from Sweetwater, I'm not saying don't share it. You should share it. Because I. I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm just saying I. It's really hard because as a company, they do have it kind of set up. Pretty easy to deal with most problems. But more importantly, let's find out what happened to sir and we'll know. All right? More T says, hey, I just picked up a prsse. Paul Allender, but it has a GNB pickups. Never heard of them. Was this a signature spec or just a replacement pickup? GNB Pickups is one of the largest pickup manufacturers in the world and they were the main supplier for PRS SES for like 90% of the lifespan of PRSSE. Now PRSSE no longer uses GNB. Now they use a company called PSE which is essentially set aside from Cortec. So obviously I have a Cortec factory tour video coming and in that we're going to explaining because I did an entire tour of just the peer SSE building. The PRSSE building will be a separate video as I've talked about because PRS allowed me to film and show the PRSSE experience. You know, the experience meaning the experience I had there. Where again some of the cortex stuff, Cortec lets me share the experience with Cortec. But then the other brands, you know, not so much. My point is I will be showing you actually where they make the PRSSE pickups now and they are made by a company called pse. As I double check my. The business card I have, yes, pse. So and that's because they're going to a more specialized product pickup. And so all your new SEs have PSE. But GMB are good pickups. I don't want to say like amazing but they, they're known for being pretty decent. Especially compared to like when the pickups weren't very good. Gna GMB was a definitely a step up, but that's all it is is GMB is just the mass produced pickup manufacturer that made your pickups. Oh, I lost one that this. Sorry, Amanda. Like I don't know how that happened. By the way, Amanda sent me 15. She's really, she's. She. You're really working anyways. Sean. Sean. Brook says. Phil, any experience with Mesa Boogie410 open back cabs? Thinking of getting one to run my deluxe reverb into. Hoping to get some super reverb esque tones. I did have an open back Mesa Boogie 410 for many years. One of those things. I don't know why I sold it. I went through a 410 thing. So I used to have a 410 Marshall slanted. It looks like a 412, but it's an actual Marshall 410 cabinet and I used to have that and then I had a. I think it was a mojo tone baseman 59 esque cabinet. In other words, it looked like a basement 59 but it was a 410. And then I had the Mason Boogie 410. I thought the Mason Boogie 410 sounded the best, so don't know why I stopped. It's just, you know, this was at least 10 years ago. So 10 years ago I just for some reason switched from 4 tens. And then I decided in my head that 212 sounded better. And now I've decided 112 sound better for my liking. So I think it's definitely worth. Especially if you can pick them up for a song. Sometimes you get Those Mesa Boogie 410s used for a good price, but either way they're good. Oh, this is a question from Santheep. Santheep says, how do you get rid of that annoying sharp plastic bump that are on the side of most Strat pickup switches? So if you guys don't know what they're talking about on the, on the five way switch of a Fender Stratocaster, you have the plastic tip for the switch. And then if you, some of you will notice there's a little bump on the side. And what that is. If you're, if you were a kid or an adult, I guess, and used to make model airplanes or model cars, you know, they used to break off the piece of plastics off those, you know, off they came all in one piece and you would break them off and there would be these little nubs from where you broke them off. That's where that, that's what that is. So when they make plastic tips for the Strat, the switch tips, they're in rows and then somebody's just twisting them off, you know. So in other words they're just breaking like that little piece of plastic. That's why there's a little. I'm gonna call it a nub. There's a little nub there. You can sand it. I usually sand it. Take some 800 grit, sandpaper, something really fine and just kind of put a little teeny piece on my end of my finger and just kind of rub it down. You can use a little file. But again, you got to be delicate, you know, because, you know. But you just smooth it down and then you can buff on it. If you have any kind of. I have a little buffing wheel which makes life really easy for me. But if you don't have a buffing wheel. Hey, somebody double dog said spur. I think a spur works. That's a good term for it. Like a little spur on the side. But you guys know what I'm talking about, right? I just want to. You know what, let's see. Hold On. I keep forgetting that we can just do this. Yeah, here we go. So this is what it would look like in theory. So it looks like this. So you see what I'm talking about. All the pieces of plastic are on these. This piping, I don't know what you would call it, but you see, and you cut it off, right? We used to take an X Acto knife and just cut them off and then we would sand and smooth them. So you do the same thing with that tip. It's funny. So, you know, I actually find that annoying too. Sometimes worse than others. Do you see that spur or the nub or whatever you want to call it? And so I smooth mine over too. Katie says. Katie K. Says a nail file. Nail file would work too, again, because a nail file is going to be really fine grit also, you know, it's great as a cuticle file. I say cuticle file. I know that's a nail too, but what I mean by this is those, those little. They're like foam. So not the nail file, like where it's a piece of metal, but the foam block. Stu Mac. See, let's see, if I type in cuticle file, it comes up. Yeah, something like this. You can get them at CVS Pharmacy. Stumac also sells ones. They're called touch up sticks. The stomach ones are way better. So something like this. Because Stu Mac 1 is going to have three kinds of grit. It's going to have a more coarse grit than a lighter grit. On the other side will be even softer and it'll take you to like, I believe the Stu Mac ones go to like 12,000 or 15,000. So like, at that point, what makes your life easy is you would use like the 1500. Again, I'm doing off memory. I'm going to say that the Stu Mac ones are like one section is like 1500 grit, then the next section is going to be like, you know, like 3600 grit. I'm just giving you, for instance. And then the last one's gonna be like a 15 or 12,000 grit. So that last one could polish it really nice. Those work great too, if you want to do it. But either way you need something to polish on it. And you can just polish it with like, say if you don't have a buffing pad, you can just use like a piece of leather, even just something to smooth it over. Just kind of like once you file it down. But that's it. So. So yeah, yeah. Tone files. Okay, let's go. Let's keep. Let's Keep going. We have by grace. I'm saved. He says, hey, Phil, what can I do? What can you do about a pick that is lopsided? What? It's off from the neck to the bridge. Oh, it's a pickup, not a pick. I'm like, well, I was going to. I was going to be like, oh, if your pick is lopsided, just constrain it. Okay, so you're talking about a pickup that's lopsided. Yes. So I'm going to assume when you say lopsided, you mean that the pickup is sitting in there and it's not. It's like sometimes they sit in there because the springs. There's two springs like this, and they just kind of get tilted right. This is what usually people will see in a. In a. In a pickup. You'll see that, you know, instead of being flat, it's. It's like tilted. So one. One of the bobbins is closer to the strings than the other. The way I fix that is the fastest way. I think the best way to do it is, is you just take the pickup out real fast and you put foam underneath there and you put a foam so that basically it. It pushes up and makes it flat. And you can do that with just any kind of gray foam. You know, most pickups come with some gray foam. You can just use that. That works perfect. I mean, that's kind of the best way I've seen to do it, and that's the way I like to do it too. So that's just an easy fix. Okay. I don't know. Nope. By the way, what I'm doing right now is I'm reading questions, and I don't know what you. I don't know. You're asking me about things I've never tried, like a pedal or something. Dale says, hey, Phil, I look in to get my first real PRS custom 24. I like the versatility of the 24 8, but I don't like the TCI pickups. I'm assuming they can't swap them. Can't swap them out. Do you know which. Do you know much about how they sound? Okay, so if you're talking about the 24 hour 8 pickups, where they're. They're more narrow than the traditional pickups, I thought they sounded really good. You know, they sent me a core, and I couldn't keep it, so it went back. If they let me keep it, I would have kept it. It would not be gone. One of the downfalls of when a Company sends a guitar on a loaner is I like, I end up liking the guitar, but as a, just, as a, of just a way of keeping myself sane, I. If I like the guitar, which I did when I send it back, I don't go buy one because what ends up happening is I go buy one and it's not like what I remember. So I like that one. So I would highly recommend it. So if that helps. Okay. Stephan says, hey, Phil, can you wire up an active pickup with a passive pickup, like an hsh, the single coil being the passive. So some people are going to sell you, some people are going to sell you. Some people are going to tell you no, I'm going to tell you that you can. I have, I have done it against my better judgment or not judgment. My better advice to customers, customers, like, hey, I want you to put like a, an 81 EMG pickup in the bridge. And then I want a Seymour Dungeon 59 in the neck and kind of like I'm going to, you know, so they want to do it. And you know, at some point, as a tech, you're like, well, okay, this is how I make my money. I do things that, you know, do repairs or mods that people want to do that. It's, it's not super hard. Keep in mind, the main thing about the active pickup is remember the act. And in a guitar, a bass is different. A bass has active electronics. So this is where sometimes people get confused. Some guitars do have active electronics, but not most. Most basses that are active have active electronics. What that means is the actual eq, the electronic section of a bass is powered by the battery. Where on a guitar, like an EMG guitar, the guitar with EMGs, the pickups are powered by the battery, but the potentiometers in the switch, they're not. They're all passive. There's nothing. There's no EQ'd, you know, there's no EQ in there, right? There are. And when I say sometimes, because EMG is also known for selling a booster, they have like an afterburner kind of like thing that's. That's active. That would be different. But in the case of Switch having an active and a passive pickup, the big issue, of course, is, is that you have to use a stereo output jack on the guitar because you need a third prong for the ground that's going to the battery to disconnect the battery. So in other words, when the guitar is unplugged, the battery isn't running because otherwise the running Battery will run continuous because it's connected. So in your. In this case, what I. What you do is you. I put. It's really easy if the guitar has two volumes and two tones, especially if it has two volumes, because you can run this. The passive pickup to a 500k volume and the active pickup to a 25k volume. I think that's better. And then you. I think we run them both to the switch. I don't think there was any issues there. I think the main thing is, yeah, just running power to the active pickup. The main problem that sometimes you're going to have. And there's schematics out there. And of course you can just mix match. Because schematics. I've done it a couple different ways for people and every way. I never committed any of it to memory because it wasn't something I thought I was going to do again. And I don't think I've ever done one of those scenarios twice. Exact the same. But what I will tell you is, is that a lot of people agree that it doesn't sound very good, especially in the blending process. They don't blend very well. That would be my way of looking at it too. They don't blend very, well, but, you know, don't care. Just say. Just saying, if you don't care, you don't care, right? So. But you can do it. So that's the answer. I just want to make sure, you know, because I remember the first time I told somebody no at the store. Somebody's like, hey, can I put an active and passive pickup together? And I said no. And they said, yeah, that's what everybody said. And when they said that's what everybody said, I go, you know, it's funny, I'm only saying no because that's what everybody said. So I said, I don't know, give me the guitar. Let me give it a try. And so then we figured it out. And I remember like going, oh, yeah, this makes sense. But I don't remember it sounding exceptionally good and. But okay. Okay, then I don't know. No, this is Frank. Frank says, hey, Phil, I'm a several years in and I'm on my fourth instructor, so playing guitar, I'm assuming and feel like I'm not getting anywhere with them. Any recommendations? That is. That happens. And there's nothing wrong with taking a break. Okay? There is. Look, like anything you're trying to do to improve yourself, especially guitar, there is a point where you're trying to figure out how much of the problem is you. And how much is the problem is the instructor? And Right. Where is the issue at? And if you've been to four different teachers and you're still not maybe advancing in a way that you hoped I would take a break from the instructors, there should be no problem with that. Okay. Like I said, I'm not saying don't ever go back to the instructors again. Just take a break. I will tell you that it's very hard to get a good instructor. I've had so many instructors in my personal life, and they've mostly been good, but I've had a few that were just not great. And I find that if you're in a rut, sometimes you will push yourself into a point of frustration where you're just not. You're going to burn out. That's what's going to happen. Right? You're not going to get any excitement. You're not going to. You're not going to go forward. So I'm not telling you take a break from guitar. I'm just saying maybe take a break from instruction. One thing that I really, really, really recommend is playing with other musicians. I really, really recommend it. It's okay, you know, think about this way. And this is, I've come up with over the years. I've tried to find different ways to kind of give that, you know, that, that, that inspiration people. But more importantly, kind of illustrate the point. I want you to think about a group of musicians on a stage, and you understand. Picture a stage, you have a bunch of musicians. Picture a bunch, like 10 musicians on a stage, and one's just playing tambourine, right? And. And I want you to think like, that's, that's how it can be for anyone. In other words, you don't have to. You're like, I can't play that great. You know what, can you strum three chords? That's what happens. You ever watch a country concert where the lead singers is strumming the three chords? You know, with a capo. You know, can you get on stage with somebody and do that? Can you just interact with them? Can you interact at a church environment? Can you go, you know, can. Can you find some online friends on like a zoom call or something? Can you find a way to interact with other musicians? Interact with them. You don't have to. Don't worry about. First of all. Never worry about if you're good enough. First of all. The first thing professional musicians will tell you is kind of like the old thing where the business guys go, never be the Smartest guy in the room, right? You know that thing, right? It's musicians. Same way. Never be the best musician in the room. If you're the best musician in the room, you're in the wrong room. That's what they'll tell you, right? So what I'm saying is, is you want to be with musicians that are, that are just like minded, that enjoy things like you, you just want to be around other musicians and play some music. And I find that that's important even if you're jamming with just one other person. Because sometimes the problem with instruction is, and again, this is something I've worked on many years and if I'm not explaining it right, I apologize, but I've done it the best I can. You know, to play football you have to practice. You go to practice, you practice football. But if you only practice football and you never played, wouldn't that, doesn't that sound sad? Like thinking about a football player who always goes to practice and practices every single week all and knows all the plays and does all the exercising and does everything but never ever plays the game ever. Doesn't that sound sad? That's kind of how musicians are. You have to play music with somebody no matter what your level is. And so I would say that's where I would say if you're, if you're with multiple instructors, you're not getting anywhere. Maybe take a break, maybe go play some music somewhere. Just, just, just enjoy playing a little bit. And that's just a suggestion. The hard part, that part's easy. The hard part is finding the other musicians. But, you know, do what you can. Find what you can, you know, so that's just my, my thought. So I'm sorry. So somebody. I'm just reading Steve's 60 seconds. Steve says I'm never the best musician in the. When I'm in the room by myself. I'm sorry, that's what made me chuckle. I just want to let you know, Frank, it was, he caught me off guard with that comment. That's, that's great comment. All right. Professor X says. Professor, Professor X says, have you ever tried relicing a guitar? I wanted to relic my Strat with poly finish just to give it character. I have. So when Fender came to us to be a custom shop dealer, they came to us. And I think this is the story that's important because it kind of told versions of it, you know, parts of it. I shouldn't say versions, but parts of it. So they came to us. It was in the middle of the recession. And they were like, they were. They just lost another custom shop dealer. So Fender was pretty desperate to get some dealers to buy those expensive guitars. And I was just dumb enough to do it. But more importantly, they came in the shop and they said, hey, we'd like you to carry Fender custom shop. Which is a nice invitation to get as a dealer. Like, you're like, wow, okay. And I had this idea and I was like, okay, here's the guitars I want to order. And they go, no, you have to carry some of the relic guitars. And at that time, you gotta understand, put this back as 2007. So it was in 2007 for sure. So in 2007, you gotta understand, relic guitars were not. They were popular. They were starting to become popular, right? I mean they had road worn and stuff and it was a thing. But I mean it wasn't massively popular. And I sure as hell didn't get it. You know, it wasn't anything like. I was like, oh yeah, totally beat up guitars for three grand. That totally makes sense. And I just, I couldn't do it because it was such a huge investment we're talking at the time. I think it was like a minimum. I think the order that I was going to put in was like 34,000 or $38,000 was the opening piece of the order. It's a lot of money, man, you know, 40,000, almost $40,000 in the middle of summer. It was summer of 2007. You're like, geez, right? Because that's another factor too. Summertime, summertimes, your retail is much slower. So you're like, you know, it's not a good time to buy a lot of inventory. And I was really pondering it and I really wanted it. I really wanted custom shop. I wanted the prestige of it for the store. I wanted to be able to say we were a premium Fender dealer all across the board. But more importantly, I really wanted these custom shop guitars, which as you know, one of them ended up being my copper strap. And after the rep, Mike left. I thought about it and Ralph and I were there. It was a Saturday and me and Ralph were sitting around and the store was dead. The store closed at like 5. It was like probably 3:30 or 4 o'. Clock. The store was totally dead. Like there was probably one or two students coming in and going out. Nobody was there. And I told Ralph, I said, I just don't get it. And Ralph's like, yeah. And I said, okay, I have an idea. And I went and I Grabbed a Highwayman base that Ralph still owns this day. He has this bass. I said, ralph, you want this Highway 1 bass? And he's like, yeah. And I said, I have a plan. And we took it apart on my bench and we took the body out and me and him kicked it back and forth like a soccer ball in front of the store. I remember this because the customer was walking up. As this guy's walking up, he goes, I hope you don't treat customers guitars like that. And then we laughed. And, you know, because he was. He was being funny, by the way. But he looked a little shocked, like, what the hell is going on here? And we're like, no, we're trying to build, like, this bass. And so then after we did that, after we. Then we threw. Hit it with car keys and stuff, and then we put the. The took all the hardware off. And I remember we had to go to a party. I had to go to a pool party. It was Saturday afternoon as I leave in the store. I had to go to the pool party. Pool party started at like 3 o' clock in the afternoon. So at 5 o' clock I was late, but I'd be at least be there. I got there, I was, you know, a bunch of guys drinking beers around the barbecuer. And one of the guys, the guy hosting the party, I said, hey, he's my friend. I said, hey, do you have some miraculous that I want to. I want to relic this hardware. And I had it, like in a bag, and we put it in, like, a mesh bag and we put a can of muriatic pool acid underneath it to, like, eat at the hardware. Basically, we spent the whole weekend, Ralph and I, just destroying this base and we set fire to things. We did all kinds of stuff. We just tried to relic it. Here's what we learned. Did not look as good as Fender dust. Not even close. One, two. It was hard. It was a lot of work. It was like, immediately. In fact, it was so much work that on Monday I put in the order and we became a custom shop dealer. Because at that point, although you could laugh and say how easy it is, it's not easy. You know, I would say relicing a guitar to me is like, you know, you see art and it looks like somebody just splattered paint on the wall or that kind of art, that just seems, you know, easy, right? And then you do it and it looks like ass. And you're like, oh, I guess there's more to it than just throwing paint on the wall, right? That's how I felt relicking was. So I did that, and it wasn't that great. I didn't try it again. But I did, however, for a customer, a kid, he was 16 years old, I did recreate a Frankenstein Frankenstein Eva Strat for him. When the. The reissue came up for $25,000, he, you know, was hyper into it. And so I recreated that. That's a very relic process. And so I made my own relic one. I have a picture of it somewhere. I'll show you guys one day. So I did a relic recreation of it is, you know, as accurate as I could basically do off pictures I had. And so my answer is yes. And I will tell you this. The Highway 1 was a satin nitrous that was, you know, not easy, but not super hard. Poly is a really. Is a nightmarish thing to try to relic, by the way. Poly doesn't look right when you do it. It's super thick for the most part, and it's. You're just gonna be sanding through it. And the problem is, is that when you. Unless you get it all off the guitar 100%, you're gonna have to use some chemicals or something because. Because if you don't get it all off the guitar, it always has this white haze in it and it doesn't look right. And so the guitar doesn't look right. If it makes you happy, it makes you happy. But I'm telling you as like a, you know, if you want to convince somebody to. In fact, I guess. I guess a better way to put it is I would say be Professor X before I would relic a guitar. My advice to any of you, before you'd relic fully relic a guitar, especially any guitar that of any value, take us take a stroll on OfferUp on Facebook or Craigslist and type in relic guitars and watch all these hacks who have tried to make relic guitars. They've. They relic their own guitar and they're kind of convinced you like relic guitar. And then you look and they're horrible. In fact, you know what I would do? I would watch the 60 Cycle Hum podcast and I would watch Ryan and Steve as they critique some of the works that people have done. It's a. That's an interesting part of their podcast is they're, you know, critiquing some of the more interesting things that people have attempted. And what you realize is, is that not everyone is the artist that they think they are or is as talented as they think they are. So I'm just saying before you go down that route. Unless you're just got a really inexpensive guitar and you decide, let's have some fun with it. Maybe do that. But I don't know. But I will tell you. I did the beer caster guitar video. I would watch that. That was, you know, that shows you how I relic the hardware and did all kinds of stuff too. Something like that. Okay, let me go here. Where are we on? We're good. We're gonna. Let's take a. We got another. We got something special. So let's do something special today. All right. So I want to tell you. I don't know what's in the box. What's in the box? I don't know. It's gonna look like. I know. I just want to show you. I'm gonna tell you why it looks like I should know. Because it's been open and there's painters tape here. Here's why it's been open. There's painters tape here because Shawna opened it. Why? Because she thought it was a good idea. No, that's actually not true. She. She just wanted to see. She was like, I don't want to wait. So I gotta get. I got a box. Okay, don't worry. I got a box from chipson. Okay, so Chipson guitars, if you don't know. I don't know if anyone knows his name, so I'm not gonna say his name. If somebody says his name in the comments, then we'll acknowledge it. But anyways, the. The man, the myth, the legend behind chips. And if you guys don't know, the first time I met the guys at chips and I was at the NAMM show, probably 20, 19 or 18, was walking around, saw them, said, hey, I'm a huge fan. They gave me a chips in shirt. I gave them a know your gear shirt. And. And anyways. And then I don't know when it was, but this year, I don't know if this is connected to this. I'm just letting you know set up so you understand there's a pot possible. I bought. Let me show you. Let me show you what I bought. I keep every lanyard at every event I've ever been to. This isn't part of it. I just want, you know, to explain what you're seeing here. So every, you know, every event I've ever been to in this industry, I keep all the lanyards I've been to. Even this one, which is my favorite. This is the Gibson VIP event that I crashed. I was not invited. I just went. I snuck In. Anyways, so anyways, I bought this gypsum thing. It's. This is the chips in thing. I. I got a yellow one and a. And a pink one. They go in the. The handle of your Stevie guitar. So those guys don't know. So I bought these. So I don't know if I. Because he maybe saw my name. I used my real name when I bought it. Maybe he thought he'd send me something or just. He just wanted to send me something. I don't know. Like I said, I've had many great conversations with him over the years, and the chips and guys, I think are hilarious, so. Plus, I think we had a good time hanging out with them at. At a Sweetwater event once. Okay, so I want to share what's in the box right there with you guys. Let me move this microphone. Okay. So he sent me some stuff, and I thought, let's share. Oh, it's a little sticker of that. That foam thing and a sticker called guitar center Keytar center. That is great. I actually, I'm gonna. I want to keep this, but I'm gonna give this to my friend who I know is gonna love that too much. I got. It's a. My other guitar is a chips and sticker. That's nice. By the way, if whatever reason he did this, I hope he gets some business out of this, because at the very least, it's smart marketing to send it to me. Right? These I love. Okay, so my advice to chips. And if you see this, you need to make these with backings that are like painters tape, because I'm going to stick these on my Gibsons, but I need to not use the actual adhesive from these because I don't want to damage them. I got this sticker. I don't know what that is. Okay. So then he sent me these. This is. I know Shawna was laughing because I heard her laughing. And I go, what? And she said, pics. I'm gonna assume these are the pics she. Pepto Bismol pics. They're pepto pics, so that's really funny. You know what? There is. Is there a slit in this? Is there something. I wonder, huh? Because it says jazz three pack. Three pick. But there's two. And I went like, did Shawna take one? I think Shawna took one. I think she took it apart and took one. I think Shawna took one. Okay. Oh, more chips and stickers. So we're getting a lot of chips and stickers. Oh. Ah, this is funny. Okay, this is Cool. There's more. We haven't done a show and tell on the show in a while. I used to do it when you guys send me gifts and stuff. I need to do that every once in a while. Okay, so this box. This is the tone mug. And it is. Exactly. That's funny. It's porcelain. The Tone mat. The Tone mug by Chipsin. Look at this. It looks huge, right? But like, it's a scale. If this helps. See? See? It look like, right, for when you see this, like, you put a bowl. This is nice. Nice hat. Does it come with a free bowl of soup? Looks like you put soup in it, but then you look. You're like, see? It's. It's just a. So there. For those that want scale, it still looks huge. That's pretty cool. Does it go to 11? It goes to 11. Thank you guys for saying that in the comments. That's funny. It goes to 11, so that's really cool. Okay, so we got that. That's in there. Definitely gonna use that. We got something else in here. There's two more things, actually. Okay. Oh, it's another one. Foreign. It's another. As seen on the Internet. As seen on the Internet is funny. So is this. Is it the same? It's a different color. Same color. Nope. Same color. So it's. It's a white one. Maybe we'll use that for a giveaway. I don't know about you guys, but everybody loves to send everybody a mug. And if you have a. I have a cabinet with mugs in it. And you open the cabinet and you go, I can't fit any more mugs. So. So chips in. I think we'll do a giveaway with the other mug. We'll do. I'll add some swag to it and pass it on. And I'll keep this one because then again, officially, I need to wait to see what Shauna says. She might have different plans. Okay, this is. This here. This is a. I don't know what this is. A scarf. It's a. I'm gonna say because it's got grommets. It's a flag. It's a flag. Ah, it's a take. I know this one. I. I am not a Marine, and I am not a former Marine, but I am army, so I recognize the marine thing. So this is the. Don't shred on me. Don't sh. And then it's got. Instead of snake, it's got a thing. I have a friend who's a Marine who will think this Is hilarious. I would tell you as just as a guitar player, I think this is a great. I put this on my wall. But as an army guy, I kind of don't. I kind of have a weird. I don't know how to explain it. As an army guy, I have a weird. Don't, don't ever. I always kind of honor that the Marines are a little bit like more actually, just for the record. Let me just tell you a funny story. So when I went to ait, I went to AIT in Maryland. And that's your Advanced Individual Training in the Army. And in the building I was in, they had four floors. And in the building I had had Air Force, Marines, army and Navy for one part of the course. Because it was. We worked on some equipment that all four branches used. So they would just have us go to this one place and we trained all there. And I always love telling this story because it's like everybody's always got a Marine joke or a Navy joke or an Air Force joke and all that stuff. But this is not a joke. This is true. Okay, so what happened is when you were in Maryland, you were off to Chesapeake Bay. Getting up in the morning was freaking cold as hell. You'd get up, you get in your PT Guard, you know, your PT uniform, you go to formation. So everybody go to formation. You have the Marines, the Army, the Air Force, Navy and formations. Okay? So what happened is one day we go outside and it's. It's like January in Maryland off Chesapeake Bay. And it's drizzling, it's raining. Okay? So we go outside. You have to go in formation. You have no way. Right. The, the, the instructors for the Air Force guys tell the guys that it's raining and therefore they can go. They're going back in the. Go back to their rooms and get ready for, for, for, for chow hall, for breakfast. We call it defac, but not chow hall anymore. Chow hall is like an older saying, but so the older instructors would sometimes chow hal. But we always had DFAC for dining facility. But anyways, my point is the Air Force guys went back to their rooms. They were told to square up the rooms, clean the rooms and get ready for child later. Okay, The Navy guys. Oh, you know what? I'm wrong. There wasn't Navy guys. It was just Air Force, Marines and Army. I apologize, no Navy guys. So the Air Force guys went back to their rooms. We were told to go. We went into the building. I told you was many stories. We went in the building and we Ran up the stairs, across the barracks, back down the stairs and across. We ran all. We did our PT for our. Our whatever PT we did in the building, running. So we went back in the room or the building. The Marines. Right, The Marines, the instructors. Go. Go back in the building and switch to your boots. We're going for a run. Because they didn't want their feet to get wet, so they went in and got boots on and ran in their boots instead of their. Their running shoes. And they ran out in the. In the rain and the cold in their boots. That's how I sum up the Air Force, army, and the Marines. I don't mean that to be disrespectful to anyone. I just remember that they were thinking. I remember thinking, I want. I. I really wanted to be in the Air Force that day, and I definitely did not want to be in the Marines that day. That's what I remember. And there might have been some Navy guys there. I kind of remember there being a detachment of Navy. I just don't remember what they did. But anyways, so I'm gonna give that to a Marine friend of mine. So that's my. That's the takeaway. I hope that's a takeaway we get. All right, let's. Let's polish this show up. Let's find something guitar related to talk about to finish out the show. The. The. Okay, hold on. I have. Okay. This was from our Eduardo, who says, hey, I want to sell an acoustic guitar through Sweetwater's gear exchange, but I have no idea how to proper ship the guitar, how to price the shipping, and fear it will get damaged in shipping. Those are all very, very legit concerns to have, because all three are very important and can make the whole experience really horrible for you. So let's take them out of order, if you don't mind. The first thing is the shipping price. I can tell you right now there's two, two, three ways you can approach this, right? I kind of look at shipping in my. The way I do it. Okay? Just me personally, when I come up with shipping prices, it's never actual shipping prices. It's kind of like I'm going to eat the shipping. So let's say I'm going to. I want to put a guitar for 550 bucks. What I've kind of learned, I learned through accidents. Okay? One of the things I don't like to do anymore is, like, 550 free shipping. Okay? If I do that sometimes, but very rarely, I never do free shipping. Here's Why I don't do free shipping. What happens when you do free shipping is you sell the guitar for 550 bucks free shipping or 500 bucks free shipping, right? 550 free shipping. And they get the guitar, and then they go, there's something wrong, or they don't like it, it needs to come back. And then you have to refund. And now you got to refund the whole thing. And you're going to eat shipping to and fro, right? Depending on the situation, depending on if it's defective or if it wasn't as described or whatever. The point is, is that it's really hard to negotiate anything with them on the return. You're just like, okay, I'll give you a refund. What I learned is charge something for shipping. Because then you can say when they go, hey, this isn't what I liked, you know, I want to send it back. You can say, okay, you pay to ship it back. We're talking about not like it's defective or we were mistaken, right? I'm saying, you paid to ship it back. I'll refund the guitar minus the shipping, right? And that way I'm not eating all the shipping in the mess. And that's just the way I like to do things. It just. I find it be less stressful for me. The other thing I do is also, it helps me pad the pricing a little bit. So, like, let's say the guitar. I want to sell the guitar for, you know, 550, but it might be on, you know, might be a little on the top end of the price point or maybe it's a little more aggressive. You know, it's not the bottom of the price points. It's a lot easier to say 500 plus $50 shipping. A lot of people are easy on that, and I find that people are emotional, and all of us are that way. If you charge too much for shipping, which is technically usually the right price for shipping, people go, oh, it's ridiculous for shipping. But if people see what they think is a reasonable sh. Shipping price, don't. Don't assume just because that people aren't highly informed, right? People think like, oh, ship a. Ship a guitar to. Because. Because you understand, they don't perceive it the way you do. You're thinking like, it could cost a hundred dollars a ship. What happens if they're in California and I'm in Arizona? They're gonna 100 a ship. It only cost me 50, 60 bucks a ship, right? So they think your shipping's ridiculous. But somebody in New Jersey probably thinks your shipping's a great deal, right? Because that's a lot. So flat rate shipping sometimes is problematic because if you price it too high, you're going to put yourself out of a lot of buyers just on the emotional stance of it. They're just like, I'm not going to pay this ridiculous shipping. Even if your price is really good, sometimes people will, you know, what is it? What's the saying, you know, spite your face kind of thing. They'll literally go, they'll say, hey, you know, oh, 500 is a great deal, but I'm not paying $50 for shipping. That's ridiculous. Right? So you gotta. I temper it. I've learned to just go with the emotion of it. Find something that I think is reasonable to charge. And I look at it as. I know it's not going to cover all my shipping, but at least I'm getting. Because I look at Whether you're@reverb.com or gear exchange, only thing I care about is what it says I'm going to get at the end. That's the real number for me. So it's not about what I think it's worth. I don't, I don't think what people pay. I just look at it and go, I need to get this much out of it or I'm not going to sell it if it's less than this. So if it's like, okay, 500 plus $50 shipping, and it says, okay, after fees and everything, you're going to net, you know, for whatever, 50. And I go, okay. And I go, well, and the shipping's probably going to be 70, so I'm going to have to eat 30 out of that. So for. If I'm happy with 420, I know a little 420 joke. If I'm happy with 420, then I proceed to continue on with selling the product. If I'm not, then I don't sell it on those kind of platforms. So. So shipping, it's a little tough. Like I said, I. You can do actual shipping where you say, hey, I'll charge the actual shipping. What I find is, is that I'm less prone to buy from sellers who have actual shipping. And I think a lot of sellers are too, because you did. You're like, I have to buy it and then to kind of negotiate the ship, the price. Now I, I want to just know the price when I'm a buyer, right? When I'm a buyer, I just want to know, like, $700 total. Right. Because. Because it's already bad enough. You have to kind of buy it and it's 700 bucks. And you're like, okay. And then my shipping or my tax. I'm sorry, my tax is this. So it's really 770 or 780. It's already. It's already too much math sometimes to figure out all the. All the. And then whatever they're going to charge for shipping. So I, I don't like the charge. Actual shipping. Not me personally. Again, anyone has different ways of doing that. You can put your. Your way of doing it in the comments as well. So, you know, just keep that reasonable. Boxes. We buy boxes. You can buy boxes from Amazon. They sell them in three packs. That will work for acoustics. It's really hard, but if you can, you can go to music stores and ask for boxes. But in the. You know, back in the day, we used to give boxes away in our store. Then we started selling the boxes because every day somebody was looking for boxes. So we learned we could start selling the boxes. And then I remember when people come in and we're like, we want five bucks a box. And people are like, that's ridiculous. But they'd buy them because they needed them. And then I remember, no matter how upset they were about us charging for boxes, they were never as upset when we said, we don't sell boxes anymore because we need them for when we ship now. Because all the dealers became shippers. So. So unless, of course, you got a new guitar and you always have boxes. But I would definitely, if it's a good acoustic guitar, I would double box. Double, double box it especially. Especially if it's not a case, an acoustic guitar, if it's any value whatsoever, it definitely needs to be in a case or a gig bag. If you don't have a fitted box, that's. That's a thought. And then. And then your fear it will get damaged in shipping. Well, that's why you want to take the time to. To pad it really well, wrap it really well, double box it and insure it. And so whether you use gear exchange or reverb, you want to insure it heavily. Some. I've listened to people online talk about the cheaper ways to do this and the faster ways to do this. I think. I think if you've been selling. I've been selling for so long against my will. So what I mean by that is I don't want to sell stuff. You know, I had a store, I didn't want to ship Shipping things was not my dream. When I had a store, I wanted to hang out like this, hang out with guitar players, talk about guitar, fix guitars, do guitars. Nothing about the online experience was anything that I ever wanted or cared about. But my point is, you know, we had to in the store and I didn't like it. And then now because I have a YouTube gig and sometimes the guitars come and they have to go, I have to sell them and get rid of guitars because that becomes some kind of compensation for me. That's how I'm getting compensated. Or better yet, I'm churning the money into other videos. I have to sell things. Again, it's not something I want to do, so I don't want anything to come back. So again, this is where I'm cautioning you with my advice. A lot of the things, especially the people who bought for me, a lot of you guys are the, you know, my patrons and channel people who watch show. You bought a lot of guitars for me over the years here, you'll know. It's like I tend to not I tell you that it, you know, it has this stuff, but I don't. What I'm basically saying is I always under promise over deliver a lot of you bought stuff and found out like oh, he didn't say it came with all this extra stuff or oh wow, the case is in way better shape and oh wow, it's double box and oh wow, right, because, because again, I just, I want whatever when I ship something out, I never want to see it again, like ever. It's gone. I went and I'll go through the time to make sure it's right and make sure it's packed right and it's what it is and shipped. So my other advice for you, Eduardo, which is my best advice is if you've never sold anything online, I would not sell something that's difficult. Sell something easy first. Sell a pedal. Sell something easy. That's highly what I recommend to everybody. First of all, it's not going to do you any good anyways because if you have anything of real value and you're a first time seller, most buyers are going to be a little cautious that you don't have right good feedbacks or any feedbacks. So that's going to make them nervous. You know how many times I come across a guitar and I go, wow, I really want the guitar. But for $1,500 I'm not buying from a first time seller and I wouldn't even buy from them for a $500 guitar from a first time seller. So where I would buy a $99 pedal or something like that, I'll take a chance because I know it's protected. So I would suggest selling something easy first. Something you can box, you can obviously get a box for a pedal. If you don't have pedals then maybe something else, I don't know, guitar straps, something. You should sell something easy first and get a sense of doing it and, and kind of learn. That's how I would do it. That's my, my advice. You can also hire services like UPS stores to do it. But it is super crazy expensive and you're not going to get very much money unless the guitar is very expensive. And I will tell you that I have sold, when I've sold guitars that are super crazy expensive, everybody's going to have a different perception of what that means to somebody. I'm like, they mean, they think I'm talking about 800 guitar. And some people think, I'm thinking $8,000 something is, people think I'm talking about $18,000 guitar. So whatever makes you think whatever that is, you just process that yourself. What I'm trying to tell you is whenever we've sold something super expensive, we have absolutely paid for a third party to pack it and ship it. And I can tell you right now that that is the best way to go with something super expensive. Have a professional packet and ship it. That's also because, because if there's any issues, there's no question, right? So like for instance, if a UPS store packed and shipped my instrument and shipped through ups and UPS is saying oh no, you know, they're fighting the claim. I'm gonna be like you guys did it. Plus the UPS store sells you insurance too. So I'm just saying on the high end we've done that in the past so. But luckily for me we don't do very much high end, high end stuff. Usually I don't, I don't have a whole lot of crazy, crazy stuff to sell. And, and Brian says I have paid UPS to double box stuff guitars after I super pack it first. Yeah, of course. Like I said, I, I, I, I am in shock every week when, when companies send me guitars and sometimes I get the guitars and I open the box and I go, I didn't know how I got this. You know what happened today? I'm not going to tell you the music store, but it was a mom and pop. I bought a guitar. Since the end of the show. I'm gonna share with you. I Bought a guitar today, and I. I'm like, these guys just. I can't believe they shipped it like this. So I bought a. I bought a guitar for a video. Okay. It's not a video that I think a lot of you want to see. It's a video that I thought would be good. It's. It's. It's interesting to me. Okay. And I'll show you the guitar. So it's the end of the show. Okay. So obviously it's a Keisel. So anyways, I ordered one of these new Ibanez guitars that people are saying are ugly. Look at this. Pearl blue look. I shouldn't really show too much of it because I really want the video to do. Well, this, to me, regardless of the model number and stuff. This was the Alex Skolnick guitar from the late 80s, early 90s that people really wanted. So I bought this. This guitar to do a video because I. I don't know, I thought it was interesting. And I actually, when it came out, I saw a lot of the comments on the Ibanez pages, and I thought, oh, I'm kind of curious what a. You know, I want to do a deep dive. I actually have seen two negative reviews of this guitar already, so I'm like, I think a deep dive will be interesting. They didn't. Let me tell you what they did wrong. They didn't double box it, which is, I guess, fine. They packed it. Okay. But they didn't lock these down. So if you're not familiar with the Floyd Rose system or the Edge Trim hello system Bybanous, they have locking nuts, right? So here's the. The piece of metal and the locking nut, right? And when I grabbed the box, I heard, you know, bouncing around, and I got it out, and Sean goes, how is it? And I go, it's fine. And I go, these were just bouncing around in there because this. These are all. Were so loose, but this one had fell apart. And these two. These are Bounce around, and they didn't really pad the guitar very well. So luckily, these did not bounce and hit the guitar. This is basswood. It's very soft. So if one of these just would have hit anywhere, a corner, it would have chipped. And this is a professional store, right? It was a Mom and pop, but it was a professional store. So, you know, like I said, I find, you know, that would have sucked because if I would have got it and it was damaged, I mean, think about what they got to go through now. I got to go, hey, you. The guitar is damaged. You need to send it back. So I think. Let me hang this back. So basically what I'm trying to say is watch it. You know, I, somebody said Trogly has a video on how to box guitars. I, I almost caution, caution. I caution. I haven't seen it. So I don't know if I should recommend something I haven't seen. But I'm obviously, I assume he can ship guitars effectively since he sells a lot of guitars, I would imagine. But I would just say, you know, it's not, it's not a fun experience to ship a guitar and it get damaged. Especially when it's your fault and you have to eat everything because it's sucks. Just let's just. That's just the answer. It sucks. Okay, I think we've done it. I hope you guys enjoyed today's show without super chats. Like I said, we didn't activate them for the second half. We were thinking, we're thinking about doing that. The reason why we're thinking about doing that is just to vary the amount of people. We pulled some stuff from the patron members. The logic being, I just want to you. The logic. The logic was, you know, some people are super chatting us five, $10, everyone's about $20. And there's a couple things going on. The main thing is, is I thought, you know, people pay me $5 to ask me a question, but they could just be a patron for the month for $5. And so we wanted to give people who are paying $5 for the month to give a little more access. So in other words we pull a couple questions. But more importantly, if there was no super chats, we could be more real in real time with the comments and the sections and I, I gotta tell you, the super chats have never been something I've been interested in. It was just an easy way for me when I'm doing the show because they're brightly colored and when I'm looking for a comment, a question and there's dead air, it was always easy me to grab some kind of comment. And funny enough, odd that when people pay a dollar or five dollars to ask you a question or comment, it's usually not rude, right? So I'm not worried about reading a question that's like, you know, kind of a gotcha. It's usually a legitimate question because for some reason trolls don't spend a dollar. So anyways, but now that we have the, the moderators here and they're helping so much, the question became, you know, with all the help and Them helping me find questions. And so when I'm looking for questions, what I can do now is, you know, you have Amanda or you have the other moderators sending me questions here on another screen so I can go to those, like, super chats. And so. And they kind of know what I'm looking for. They're looking for topics that are more universal. You know, a topic that's not so much specific, like, I bought a guitar in 1982, and it's like, you know, just a specific problem that maybe only you have, but something maybe, you know, like soldering. Soldering. A lot of you maybe think about soldering. So. So I wanted to try this. So I've turned it off. It. Obviously it decreases the revenue of the channel, but you know what the. The reality is, is this. We're very fortunate to have the show and, And. And does as well as it does. And so I just want to thank all of you because it is a. It is the community effort that makes it worth it. And so let me know in the comments if you like it this way. If not, if you think we should bring them back. If you think it should be back, like I said, for the second half or maybe once a month, we do them. I. I don't know the answer yet. As long as you guys enjoy the show, I think that's all I really care about. So as long as it's making the show better, not worse, I'm for it. And you guys can let me know in the comments. I'm sure you will. On that note, I want to thank you guys for your time. And until next Friday, know your gear. Oh, and Turn it to 11. Drink it to 11. Drink it to eleven. Look at that. I don't know why I can't find the 11. And also, thanks chips in for the gift pack. All right, guys, you have a good one. If you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget, you can subscribe for free and help this channel, or for $10 a month, you can join me on Patreon for live clinics where you can.