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The Know youw Gear Podcast the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon Members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 415. I hope everybody had a fantastic week. Ready to talk about guitar. Especially because we're getting towards the end. Next week is the last day. June 6th. We're giving away Guitar center and us are giving away a two thousand dollar limited edition Fender Ash Telecaster that's chambered, it's sandblasted ash with a roasted beavel neck. I'm pointing at right here by the way with two Seymour Duncan pickups and a hard shell case. Um, so if you haven't entered, please use the link down below and enter. And something came up and it's. I, I did some verifications just so there's no confusion. So I had a patron member, which is fine, to say that they didn't like giving their email address to a third party to be sold. So I reached out to the company that I hire that they. What they do is they do two things. They input your email address only and they put it in a randomizer so that I can't, you know, pick the person I want. It's just it randomly selects an email address. I pay for this service. So I asked them about that and I have their response and I'd like to read it to you guys to be very, very, very, very clear. So here is their official response to my inquiry about selling your email addresses. Okay, so I can't find it. Oh, here it is. No, it isn't. I can see I should have had it queued up. I'm going to have to do it from memory. If I don't find it on this phone fast enough, I may not be able to find their response on my email. Hold on a second. Oh, okay, cool. Ready? No, we do not sell email addresses. You pay for the premium package. You own the email addresses. If people are basically, I'm going to paraphrase a little bit. They're saying if you are getting an email from them, it is most likely because you entered another contest somewhere else that they did not pay to hold your email addresses. So in other words, yes, in that case they would get your email addresses and they can solicit you, but they said you would get a disclosure saying that. And, or, and or if you are getting emails, um, it's because that other entity that's holding the contest, they're email blasting you. I have never Email blast. Anyone ever on this channel. In other words, I have all the emails from all the contests and all the things I've ever done and people on my website, but I don't see. I don't send an email blast. So what's my point? My point is they're not doing it to you, and I'm not doing it to you. So if you're getting it done, it wasn't from us, even if it's from that company, because you could have entered other things in the past. So that is the official answer. In case you're concerned, I'm the only one that sees your email addresses. In fact, they said they can't even see them. Only I can see them. So. And I only see the ones that I. That randomly picks you as the winner. That's the one I see. I don't even go look at the other ones. All right? That's the answer. So join the contest if you so wish to. To win a $2,000 Telecaster. Here's what's interesting. It has the. It's. There's. There's not very many interest. Comparable. Comparable. You have a very good chance of winning. Even if it doubled, you'd be doing pretty good. You have a pretty good odds of winning this guitar. Um, it would. I normally wouldn't condone, you know, hey, gambling or whatever, but in this drawing case, a $2,000 limited edition telly for this many entries is. Competition is very low. So there you go. That's the. That's the official answer. I just thought I'd let you know that I did look into that, and that was what their official response is. Okay. Which is what I understood when I paid them for the service is why I paid for them. Because you can get the service for free. And it does the same thing. It just. It apparently doesn't protect the information. Okay, what do we got? We got so many things. I got early questions. I got subjects. I got a guitar of the week with an interesting. What am I trying to say? Problem. I want to say problem, but I don't know whether. I mean, it's like credibility issue. Problem. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. Okay, topic number one. I got topics. You guys were sitting topics today. I thought that was great. I love it. In fact, from now on, if you're asking a question, put a question mark first. And that way Amanda can see that and grab that for you and send it to me. Or you can do a super chat if you want to get it in the colored, you know, kind of in my face thing. Or, or you could start the subject with topic tell me know it's a topic you want to talk about and that helps me understand what I'm getting into when I start. Uh, this first topic became came from Karen who says hey for Phil it's for me says I fell in love with the lo fi sound of Dane electro guitar but I'm worried about the short scale Tellies and Strats but I but I want to swap a lo fi guitar like a Dan. A Dan Electro. Suggestions? No, I don't think you're going to have any issues at all. Most players do not interpret the shorter scale especially like 24 and 3/4 to 25 and a half to the. You know. So think about this. The Fender 25 and a half to PRS 25 to you know like a Gibson 24 and three quarters or, or even that, that T15 that I did that PV that's 23, 23 inch scale. I was 23 and a half. I can't remember 23 and a half. It was short a Mustang at 24 even. I think most guitar players are not going to interpret that scale as being dramatic to them. You know, it's not like it's going to be super foreign to you in the idea that it's like oh I can't, I can't form chords or I can't do that. I don't think there's anything to worry about. Some players what I notice more so and I think most guitar players look a lot of players are going to have a lot of theories but I'm talking about and I want to tell you where I get the information from. It's the years and years of setting up guitars for players and what they reacted to and what they see and how they feel. Most players seem to react when it comes to scale length, to tension, the feel. Which is why sometimes like I said you can change strings to. To also get that same kind of effect Most players when they pick up a Strat it's not so much. It's longer to play for your fingers as so much as that when you bend you feel the tension, you feel it. It's a little harder to bend than let's say a 24 and 3 quarter cell guitar scale guitar. So I think that's where you'll notice it most. And then if you do, for instance if you notice, you know that the. Let's say you play nines on your Fenders and you notice the nines are just really rubbery on a. On the shorter scale guitar, maybe you should up to tens and that's one way you can kind of adjust that. So it's just, it's, it's just a. You know, I wouldn't over kind of, you know, think about it. Wendell says 24 and 3/4 is cramped. But wait, but my hands are unusual. So it's true. I mean if you have a bigger hands, it could be a thing. Sometimes players will actually say the opposite. You know, shorter scale is more difficult to play than a longer scale. I don't, I don't necessarily, you know, I don't necessarily notice myself. I don't seek it out. In other words, I don't seek out certain scale. In guitars. I have both. 24 and 3/4, 24 inch scale. I say both. That's two right there. I gotta say more now. I have all the scales. I have 25 and a half. 25, 24 and three quarters. 24. The only thing I'm not a big fan of is, is I'm not a big fan of the 26, 27 fan scales as much. You know the fan fret systems, they're fine, but I don't downtune that much. So I don't think you're need to worry about it. I would do it. That's my two cents. Let's see. This is a good one. Randy. Randy's music and recording says, hey, I'm putting a new volume pod in a made Mexico Strat. Could not get the solder undone. Iron was hot to too hot. About 900 degrees. I'm assuming you mean Fahrenheit. I run mine about 8,820 degrees Fahrenheit. So I run my soldering iron hot. Everybody can run their soldering iron how they like. That's just. I'm telling you how I run mine. About 800 degrees. Why does this happen? Obviously I just cut the wires. Plenty of wire available. Okay, sure. You can just cut the wires. Here's a couple things. First of all, let's talk about the three most common things when you' Unsoldering, desoldering a piece of equipment out of an instrument. And we're talking about guitars, I'm not talking about amplifiers. Anything else. First of all, always make sure you make a solder to solder connection. In other words, you want. So sometimes when you put the soldering iron on a glob of solder on a pot, it is a lot, a lot better to go ahead and put some solder on the Iron first and then put the solder to solder connection. So the solder is already kind of liquefied. Always just kind of go to solder to solder connections. That's the first and probably the most like that's the best advice I could give anyone. That's 1, 2. It could be the solder tip you're using. Some use a point, some use the. I don't know the names of the soldering tips. I should. I probably did at one point. The one I use looks like a flathead screwdriver at an angle. So I'm gonna say it's a flathead tip. I used to use the point. I prefer the flathead tip. A bigger soldering tip will give conduct more of that heat, disperse more of that heat to the existing solder. Especially if there's solder on that tip. That would help you as well too. The last one is sometimes especially, you know, because you said made Mexico. So I'm like, it's obviously not like a 70 year old guitar, 60 year old guitar. It could be lead free solder, which is really hard sometimes to liquefy. And that becomes a little problematic as well. And so yeah, it takes a lot more heat. And that is also a problem. So you could be having that issue as well. This is real common. So, you know, the biggest problem usually players have for an issue with soldering is desoldering the two globs of solder on the bottom of a humbucker where the, where the COVID solders to the base. It's really hard. And I've had to actually use like a dremel, you know, one of those cutting wheels and cut them out sometimes and just kind of grind it, grind it all out. And you know, sometimes you have to do that. So like you said, you could just cut all the stuff out. But I would definitely make sure that you're using a solder to solder connection and then use a larger tip to disperse the heat out better instead of focusing. Because what happens sometimes if you have a very focused point, you're focusing all that heat in one spot. And as it's liquefying, the outside is not liquefying. And then you kind of move it and then that hardens back up and that's kind of where you get trapped in that. But so that's. That's Matt Harrison said lead free is no bueno. You know, I can't stand it. I can't stand lead free solder. It's such a pain in the ass. So, yeah, and noise Bloom says I use a chisel tip. That's probably, that's probably what my tip. That tip is called. I'm sure it's mine. It's what it reminds me of. It's kind of flat. I use it. But the main thing you're worried about is this. As you leave that, you know, 900 degree soldering iron on that glob and it's not, it's not liquefied. What's probably happening is it's transferring all the heat. That's why you want solder. Solder connections, because it's going to transfer all the heat to the pot and then it's going to cook the pot out and then it's ruined. So that's number one, I'd say, out of all the things people solder. And I see burn marks on, like, I see a lot of burn marks on switch tips or switches, the actual switches. I see burn marks on output jacks. I've never seen any damage from those burns. But a potentiometer, man, you can cook that out in it, like. No, no, no problem. You can make that to where it's literally, it's no good anymore if you overheat them. So that's why a lot of people suggest you use a lower heat setting. I, I always just suggest. I've seen it all, everybody's. I find that people just use the temperature they can work within. I move pretty fast and I don't have any problems, so I keep my iron a little hotter. But I have, I do turn it down from time to time if I know I'm going to have to put it on there for a longer period of time because again, I don't want to burn up. The other thing you can do is you can use alligator clips as, like, heat sinks. So, you know, you can use those little alligator clips that I always suggest you guys have. And you can put them on certain components around where you're soldering and they'll suck up a lot of that heat. Literally. They'll just, you know, I don't know I'm using the word suck up the heat, but you get the idea. They'll, they'll, they'll contain a lot of that heat and reduce how much, how far it disperses and how much of it disperses that heat. So there's some quick suggestions we have. I don't know. I got more. Sean Brooks. Hey, Phil, why doesn't Fender Custom Shop carry the same stigma as PRs when it comes to being the dentist guitars? You know, that's a great question. And I actually have a theory on that. And why PRs and not even Fender Custom Shop, why does PRS have the dentist lawyer stigma? But like Gibson doesn't. And you could argue that PRS is on average cost more than Gibson's, but Gibson's are expensive too. Like, I don't know how to make that, that kind of assessment. But I think there's two things right? Cars are that way too. You know, I was at the mall. This is like two years ago, three or three years ago. Because it was during COVID and there was nobody in the mall. It's like nobody. Sean and I walk in the mall and they had some BMW sitting there and it was for sale. And you know, and she walks with the BMW and she's like, I think she says something like $80,000 or $75,000 or $80,000. She's like, that's crazy. And I look over and there's a Dodge truck sitting, you know, also in the mall. You know, they haven't displayed new cars, you know, like go to so and so courtesy, you know, Dodge and courtesy BMW or whatever. And I said, I bet you that truck costs more. And she goes, no way. And she walks over and she goes, that truck's 85,000. I go, yeah. So the point is, but if you see somebody in BMW, you think it's a rich person. If you see somebody in a truck that costs $10,000 more in BMW, you don't think anything of it. I think there's a little bit of stigma that happens, not so much with the cost of something, but just the appearance of it. And here is my theory why PRS gets the dentist. Lawyer rhetoric. Somebody is going to say, they're going to say in the comments and you're welcome to it, but I got to kind of hit you ahead of time. They're going to say, well, it's because real players play Gibson and all the. No, real players play PRs. But of course I don't really agree with that. I think more studio musicians and working musicians play PRs than probably any other brand next to probably Fender. No, I think it's because PRS guitars look like fancy furniture. That's what I think. I, I, I. When I went to the, to the PRS event, the first time I ever went to a Pierce event, I think only been one or maybe two. But anyways, I was at one. I was with a friend. We're walking up and down looking all these gorgeous guitars and I said, oh, that one's nice. And he goes, yeah, I guess. And I go, do you like PRs? And he goes, he looks around, he goes, this just looks like fancy furniture to me. And I'm like. And when he said that, I couldn't unsee it. I'm like, yeah, every PRS looks like. Like the most beautiful piece of furniture you could put in your house is what I'd want that to be. Look like, I don't do that. But I'm just saying, I have IKEA furniture like most people. Just the reality of my life. It's like I feel like I've gone fancy whenever I have furniture that I don't put together. I feel like I am literally a billionaire. Just so you guys know, I'm like, if Shawna says, hey, I ordered a new desk, I'm like, okay, I got my Allen wrenches. But when you don't put it together, I feel like I don't know about you guys. I feel fancy. Like when a moving person comes in, you know, drops off the penis furniture and leaves. And I'm like, is that already put together? Who did that? Back to prs. I think that's what it is. That's. I think they're furniture. It's my, it's. It's not my thing either. Again, looking at it, just a smorgasbord of guitars behind me. Yeah, that German made Framis has a beautiful flame top. And I guess the Gretsch, I mean, it doesn't have a flame top. And oh, the, the Heritage has a nice top, but other than that, red painted Gibson Sunburst yellow Ibanez, obviously the Ikea casters red. You know, my copper Strat Ardellos, Strat of sunburst Strat, a blue headless guitar. I mean, I'm just not really into the fancy, fancy woods, which I think PRs are known for. And I think that's why they get hit with the whole doctor lawyer, because it's a fancy guitar for fancy people. I feel like, I feel like if you own a prs, you should be drinking tea like this. Be like. In fact, if I ever see somebody do this, I feel like the next thing I'll say is, What. What model PRs do you own? It's the Gray Poupon of guitars. But sadly enough, that imagery of PRs, regardless of what anybody says, is followed by some of the best bus construction and execution of guitars on the market. They set the standard for what most guitar companies should be doing when it comes to quality. If you say they don't do anything for you totally understand. I have owned a gazillion. PRS is trying to find one that does something for me. You know, it's funny. I've owned more. I owned. I have owned more. How many want to say this? I want to say it the perfect way. Because I want to say it. It's 100% accurate. I'm gonna tell you. PRS has a special. Like, if I was gonna give awards to guitars that I've ever had, PRS has a special award. I have churned more PRSs than any guitar in my entire life. In other words, I have owned more PRSs that I've gotten rid of. In other words, out of all the guitars I ever bought, I have bought and flipped and got rid of more PRSs than any guitar brand. Not even a close second. No close second. I mean, it's double the next runner up. Because I can't find. It's hard for me to find egg purest that I like because I appreciate their quality. I've been to their factory three times. Four times. Sorry, four times. I appreciate their craftsmanship. I appreciate their mission. I appreciate what they're trying to do. And like a lot of people, I play them and I go, it's good. Now here's my crappy Strat, right? And that's just where I go. So I've owned a lot of PRS's. And where I've landed, which is what is sad for me is my favorite PRSs are the one that Nathan made me, which is not like anything they currently make or ever made in the past. My S2 that they no longer make, which is the S2 semi hollow, which has a lot of defects, but I just like the way to end my mirror, which they no longer make as a core model. That's the PRS's I like. Yeah. So I always tell. I have said this to the PRS guys every once in a while when I bump into them at like a show or something, I'll say, you know, every PRS I have, you don't make anymore. It's like I'm a curse. In fact, actually, I can beat that. Check this out. I have a PRS S2 semi hollow single cut. They no longer make it. I have a PRS hollow body two single cut. They no longer make that. I have a purest Mira core guitar. They no longer make that. So it's like. It's like if I buy a purest guitar and it's sticks and I like it, they're gonna stop making it. So if you guys want any PRS guitars to go away, if you want a strategy, just get me to get one. And as soon as I buy one, they will no longer make it something instinct. I don't know what it is. So. So that's my take on PRs, which is funny, because I think that's why people think I like PRs the most. Because they're like, you always have another prison. Like, yeah, because I'm always looking for that one. I'm looking for. I'm looking for a fancy one that I love. I. I just never found it. But I like the quality, and I like the company, and I like. I like the mission of making a great guitar. This will really hit harder later. This is called foreshadowing. When I show you the. The guitar of guitar of the week, you're gonna be like, okay, I see why Phil thinks the way he does. Okay. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll be totally off. Okay, let's go. I again, I'm still on the early riser questions. These are questions that were put in before the show even starts, and I want to thank you guys for doing that. It's a nice way to have some topics to start the show off with. Jeremy says, hey, a topic for discussion. I really like the Spark and other modeling amplifiers for practice and for trying different tones and effects, but I find they all make. They make. They. They make all my guitars sound essentially the same, regardless of the pickups. That is exactly what a lot of modeling does. And the reason why I was told by some of the modeling experts that build these things or help design them or design is that a lot of it is because it's in the program of the effects. In other words, a way. Let's talk about this. I have two amplifiers behind me for today. A tube amplifier would work is, you know, you put a hot pickup in front of it, it's gonna push the input stage of the. Of the amp, and the amp starts to distort a little bit and break up a little bit. And, you know, you roll the volume back off, and it cleans up a little bit. And that's just how it's reacting. Where if you put a hot pickup in a modeling amp, the modeling amp may dampen that down a little bit. But if you put a weak pickup in a good modeling amp, it might push it up a little bit. So in other words, like exactly what you're saying, it's kind of the whole point of a modeler is to give you a quote, unquote, perfect Sound right. I would say one of the things that people hate about modeling technology is the same thing that people hate about compressors, is that they make everything sound, you know, perfect, which is sometimes not a great sound. You know, the idea that, you know, you want the, you know, you want some of the inconsistencies of highs and lows and, you know, sharps. And I don't want to say I'm sharps, but you get the idea. Highs and lows and loud. You know, let the amp distort a little bit, break up a little bit, hit a little harder, breaks up. But I do believe that even though you're saying that, I agree with you, the amp still does do a good facsimile of what it's supposed to be doing. The one thing I will tell you is, is that you can roll back your volume knob and that really tell you if, you know, the amp is really reacting to you because if you roll the volume back halfway, the amp should really clean up a lot. So it's just one of the things that's a drawback of that technology. It's not necessarily. I will tell you one thing that I've learned to cure that for me when I'm using whether it's a solid state amp that also has that kind of problem or a digital amp or digital product like I use a Kemper. Most of the time I'm playing through. Anytime I'm playing personally, I'm playing through a Kemper. But I, I use a boost pedal and compression type pedals like the Servo by Taurus or the Enhancifier by. I don't know who's buys Enhance Fire. It's an Enhancifier and there's tons of versions of those pedals. These kind of boost compression type pedals. I like them in front of digital and solid state amps because of the fact that they kind of give me that, that same. They put back some of the experience that I told you that I like, which is the, you know, the reactive part. The fact that it feels like, you know, that there's something coming back and forth between you and the amplifier. But yeah, it's, it's. And it's just, it's so Michael says, hey, my fractal doesn't do that. All my guitars sound different. I don't use a lot of effects, just an amp cab and reverb. Yeah, I mean, I would say, actually I would say my Kemper doesn't do as well. That would be obviously the reason why they're so much more expensive because of the fact that essentially when you buy a modeling technology, you're buying a computer. It's why, you know, if you really, you know, you're really into that stuff, and, you know, then you know that that's why some of them will use multiple effects processors. That's why they'll. They'll offload. So, for instance, like, somebody like Larry Mitchell will use his. His fractal, but he'll use another unit for some additional effects because he doesn't, you know, doesn't want to overload the processor. That's really dumbing it down. But at least that's a concept I get from him, is that he wants, you know, he doesn't want to stifle the unit because again, it's. It's. It's like a computer. So you're playing through a computer. So. So Dexter says Phil still uses a Kemper and shit talks. Modeling. My age is showing, Dexter. It's not. Well, my age is showing, because what it is showing is, is that I am very open to all the ideas, which is a very, very hard, almost impossible thing to do on the Internet because everyone thinks that the world can be fixed with a hammer. This idea that there's one way to do something, you either use an expensive amp or you use a cheap guitar. You use an expensive guitar. This idea that there's one thing for everything. The reality is that modeling is very good, which is why I say it's very good. And tube amps are very good, but they don't all have the same needs. I would say, without a doubt, in my personal. My personal needs is this. I wouldn't own a single modeling unit or plugin or profiling unit ever in my entire life if it wasn't for the fact that I record so much. And when I record, everything goes into the computer and into my monitors. So I'm already there listening to the monitors, and I'm listening to a drum track or a bass line or whatever I'm mixing with it, right? So to me, it's a. It's an easy process. It's like. And it almost feels silly sometimes to take the time to take a nice tube amp, mic it all up, put it in a different room, and then listen to it through monitors. I'm like, when I can really. At that point, I can't really tell what the tube is doing anymore from the modeler. So that's what it is. It's a usage thing, and that's what it is. Everybody should just Find if that's how you want to. You know, when I say that how you, I mean the Internet, whoever is out there that has these harsh opinions are like, hey, I like this and everything else is a bad idea. If that's how you want to roll, roll, go. But I have two things. Two. I have two sides of my life. One is I make a living in music. Whether people think so or not. It's music. I, I have, I spend more time. In fact, a friend of mine and I had dinner a couple weeks ago and he said, do you still like playing guitar and do you get sick of playing the guitar or do you get sick of doing repairs, you know, for videos and stuff? And I said, I said that's not my job. I said my job is 90% of the time editing, recording and editing. That's like 90% of what I do, record and edit. So that's my job. Do I like it? I like it fine. Did I ever see myself as a recording editing person? Hell no. People will always see me as a repair person in a video because that's what I'm doing in the video. But if you take, I mean, obviously, let's do some math. And it's just, I think it's because maybe this is insightful. If you watch a video that I put out that's 20 minutes long, let's say a deep dive, and I tell you guys honestly and truthfully that it takes me two days to do that video. And two days to me is a six hour plus day. Okay? So I'm saying one day could be a six hour day and one day could be a ten hour day. It doesn't matter. I just look at the day as like I start the day and end the day and that's just what it took. So six to 10 hours. That's how my schedule could work. Let's just call it eight hours a day to keep it easy. So 12 hours. I spent 12 hours making that 20 minute video for you. No one really believes that I filmed 10 hours of footage. That's insane, right? How would I edit down? That'd be like editing down. I mean, 10 hours to two hours would be a lot. 10 hours to 20 minutes is silly. So filming wise, a 20 minute video, the max I could have in footage, the max is two 40 minute files, maybe, maybe playing for 40 minutes, doing stuff for 40 minutes. So when I tell you guys that it took me, you know, 12 hours to make a 20 minute video, you can do the math now in your head going, well, let's see, give them for. For argument's sake, we'll give them two hours for filming it. So what was they doing the rest of the time? It's research. It's editing. Right. It's a lot of editing. And. And that's where you spend your time. So same thing with recording. You know, when I record now, it's why all these musicians are doing what they're doing. It's like, do I want to spend my entire day trying to get this amp, the sound is good on a. On. On the computer as it does in this room, or do I want to push a button on my profiler and I know it's gonna sound like that does. And it's just the decisions everybody has to make. And when somebody says, oh, I have to have the real deal and I have to play the real thing, I totally understand. But I will tell you this, and I've said this as clear as I can and say for almost five years now, out of the many years of doing this, I would use a Kemper for 100% of everything I do, including YouTube. And I'm sure a lot of you, because you always do, you say nice things like, I wouldn't care if you did that. I'm fine with that. But the majority of people who respond to the videos that you, that you put say, oh, no, I wish you would have used a real amp. So I have a real perspective. I don't have that device or I don't know that device. So that's why I do it. That's why, like this week, if you notice, I did two deep dives this week. I did the. What did I do? I did the thousand dollar basic EBC rich. I played that through a 1500 dollars Synergy amp. And then I did a $200 Firefly, and I played that through, you know, let's say a $200 PV amp. Just, just for. Not so much for comparison, but so that when you're watching it, you don't feel like, oh, he's stacking the deck, right? So that's my. My 2 cents on that. But like I said, use the tools that work for you and don't. So don't screw yourself over. Ego. That's the only good advice I could ever give. And it'll never get better than that on this channel. Literally make a workflow that works for you and then do it, because while you're doing it, people who are not doing it are going to sit there and critique you. But doesn't matter at the End of the day, you're the one getting it done. So get, you know, do that. Wizdog says, hey, Phil, did you ever get those UA pedals you said you might check out? I didn't. So if I get them, I'll probably pick them up used on Guitar Center. One of my patrons reached out and he's got one and he can either loan it to me or he'll sell it to me. And the problem is I only need them if I'm traveling for something and I have a traveling project maybe happening. So it's like, it's one of those things. I don't know if I want to invest in them if I don't do that. Well, I know for a fact I don't want to spend even a couple hundred bucks if I don't use them. I physically need to have a reason to use them for a compact rig. So that's all that's about. Oh, okay. Irregular star. Good question. Man, I like this. Hey, Phil, I recently bought some nut lubricant. Yeah, this changes the whole channel today, doesn't it? But I had trouble applying it to the B and the E strings. I'm so. And it's the high strings. So the high B in the high. Well, the high B is the high B high E in the B string. What do you do to make sure the lubricant gets in there? So if you get lubricit K I T from d' Addario, it comes with these little stick swab things like micro Q tips that will help, but I don't use those. Here's what I've learned to do. I take the. The. The. Just when you lift the string out of the nut, I put a little bit of the lubricant at the. At the part of the nut that is closest to the bridge. In other words, closest to the fretboard. This side. And then I put the string back in. And then you tune up the string and the string brings the lubricant through. That's if you, if you. Or you can literally take and put. It's just. It's basically just Vaseline, guys, right? Like it's some petroleum based lubricant or whatever, nylon base, whatever it is, don't eat it. But it should not cause any problems with your skin. Read the packaging correctly. But I guess I should actually be more accurate. I've put it on my skin and I still have skin on my fingers. So obviously it didn't dissolve and kill me. So I put a little bit on My finger and I can actually put it on the underside of the string again. That's another technique. Just right underneath the string, right before the nut. When the string is down, tuned and then tune the string up, the string brings it across. It doesn't need much. No matter how much you use, you're overusing it. And I overuse it every time, too. Everybody's overusing it. If you go to what they. What you really need, it's almost nothing. So it just requires so little because there's just so little contact in there. Dr. Frankstein says you can just use a graphite pencil. You can use a graphite pencil. The lubricants will work better. They just will. The graphite pencils work fine. I've said in the past, the only reason I don't use them is they make a mess a little bit. And if that bothers you, don't do it. And if it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me and don't really care. But. And also, as I've also said, I usually adopt a lot of things because I was working on people's guitars for decades. So just that wasn't something that people don't want to really get a bill for 125 bucks and then go, oh, you stuck a pencil there. Like, right. They like to like, oh, I use lubricant. I like. Right. We polished it. You know, they want to know you use the right stuff. At least I feel like they should. I should give them the value of that. Let's see. Yeah, Grumpy. My guitar said a little dabble. Do you? Sure, of course. So it works. Let's see. So on a side note, so this is where it gets troublesome on the. On the live show because we get into topics and I just don't have any information, but I want to read it, so I read it. So Rich is saying the Earthquaker Devices, which is the pedal company, is in bankruptcy. Is the pedal space in trouble? I don't know. I did not see that they were in bankruptcy. I did, however, and the reason I'm reading this from you is I was just more curious. If anyone else has heard anything, you could put that in the comments down below. I had seen a clickbaity news. I don't know what it was. It came in my Facebook feed or something, and it was a clickbaity and it said it looked like it was the owner of Earthquake devices saying the tariffs are going to put them out of business and they're going to file bankruptcy. That's what the clickbaity title said. And I clicked on it and I didn't really get. I don't remember what happened. I don't think it took me anywhere. So I wasn't sure what was going on with that. So I haven't heard. So I can tell you this. If you haven't noticed that the pedal companies are all giving you deals right now. There is. The market is not the boom anymore. It's over. Regardless of all the political stuff, regardless of the market or the tariffs or whatever you guys want to talk about. The reality is, before that stuff even came into play, we had already seen as an industry a huge slowdown, obviously, because we were in a huge boom. And I say that because it's very important. When I talk to companies, which I talked to quite a few, they all seem to fit into three camps. And I've added the third camp recently since I've talked to the patrons about this. They're not doing well. They're. And it might be the end. That's honest. I've had at least three conversations now with companies that are literally have said that in some way or another to me, and it was stressful to listen to. They're not doing well. They're booming, and it's fine. In other words, either they're doing okay right now or they did so well in the past that they got the money to sit on and they're fine and they're just going to wait it out. That's a. That's a. I would say the bigger majority. And the third category is now slightly paranoid from what they're hearing. In other words, they're doing great or they're doing fine and they have money, but they're hearing things, you know, and that's making them nervous. And, and that's. And that's, you know, that's the downfall of that boom market where, like I said, we mixed, you know, essentially boredom, fear, money, you know, and we all bought and they sold. And a lot of them beefed up their size of their companies, which makes sense. But a lot of them made decisions, in my opinion. And I say this again, and I mean nothing disrespectful, but I wish all the best for every company. I'm a guitar player, and I want every guitar company to do well because I'm. I'm a freak for guitars and pedals and amps. But I will tell you, there's a bunch of companies that I talked to during the boom that were so, in my opinion, incredibly wrong about what they were seeing and doing that I'm not shocked when I hear they're the ones doing badly. And what I mean by that is, I said this at the time. I'll tell you the quote I kept saying. I was like a broken record. I said, everyone's a genius in a bull market. They would go, phil, they go, we'd love to send you this item to do a video, but, man, we're sold out for the next 10 years, and we're making so much money, we're actually telling our customers. You know how many companies told me they were gonna punish their customers? This is an actual thing. The first time I heard it, I actually thought, what an asshole. And then I heard it again, like, a week later from another company and another company. I'm like, wow, what is going on here? And it was like, yeah, I'm telling my company, my customers, basically. And a lot of them are talking about dealers, right? They're like, if they're not gonna give me the next five orders right up front, right now, in full, I'm not even gonna think about taking their order. And I was like, what? And then they would say things like, the guys, this old direct customer is like, yeah. One of the customers asked me a question yesterday, and I'm like, I just deleted his order out. And I'm like. And I go, man, you know, it's great. And you're in a bull market. You're gonna punish the customers, and they're gonna punish you back later. It's how it works, right? In a seller's market, the buyers suck it. In a buyer's market, the sellers suck it. It all goes in circles. You know, that's what I've kind of noticed right now. It's the buyer's market. It's not the seller's market. It'll kind of go that way. So, like I said, I hate to hear any companies are doing bad, but a lot of them. I can't say I'm shocked. Earthquaker. I have no input on. I have no. I never worked with them. I think I played one Earthquaker pedal that was on a pedal board that Sweetwater sent for. For that pedal board, for. They did the. The world's biggest pedal board contest thing, But I don't think I've ever actually played one of his pedals. I hear nothing but good things. But, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, so we'll see. We'll see. But I'll. I'll keep tabs on that. I would really hate to see that they go away. I hear it. Like I said, I hate to see your quality products go away. Okay, hold on. Okay, what are we doing on time? Oh, we're doing good on time. Okay, so I can hit another subject. Let me grab one of the things Amanda sent me. She sent me this from Scott says, hey, Phil, what are your thoughts on the high pass filter switches on the purest custom 2408 John McLaughlin style switches instead of a coil split? They're fine to me. I really kind of like a lot of stuff like that. I think about just my ears versus anything else. I don't really need to know. I don't have a specific way. I like things done, you know, to me, if I. If I play it and it sounds great and I hit a switch and it's like, give me a tone. I like. I'm good with it and I just go with it. So there's no, no particular that, you know, thing like that. Just like coil split versus coil tap versus all that stuff. There's no specific thing I like over the others. So that's, that's that. I don't know. I. I think part of the thing is when I do the deep dives and it's. And that's. It's a fair assessment. So I obviously, I own it because I've created the problem. So for myself. And that's fine. Which is the deep dive concept is that you can't touch this guitar and I'm acting like a surrogate for you. In other words, I'm going to show you this instrument and I'm going to show you as many details about it in every good and bad way there is so that you can have as much information. I'm giving you information that I want if I was going to buy something, but necessarily when I'm touching it and playing it, I don't need to know half that stuff because I'm like, I pick it up and I go. Plays good. That's all I needed to know. But I can't. If I can't touch it, then I want to know, like, what are the components? What are they using? Right. Try to. Because you're just making assessments of the quality. But yeah, when it comes to switches like that, I don't care which ones they. How they do it. Michael says, hey, is it safe to put nines on a PRS custom 24? Sure. Of course, originally PRS would put nines on the custom 24s and 10s on the custom 22s. I think that's the Way I remember it, you know it's funny is I was going through some paperwork, old paperwork a few months ago of the store and I was looking at prs order forms and it just. At first I didn't even almost, I almost, I gasped when I saw it. I was like, wow, I forgot when we ordered PRs, all the options you used to get to do. So like think about this, think about like 2006, 2006, 2007, when I ordered a PRS, like let's say a custom 24. PRS on the form when we ordered it as a dealer would be like, oh, do you want a pattern, a wide thin or a pattern thin neck? So in other words, a thin neck or a thick neck. You get to choose. And then it would say, do you want a rotary five way switch or a three way toggle switch or a blade switch? Right? And I was like, oh, do you? Right? So it was all these options on the custom 22. It's like, do you want hardtail or do you want tremolo? Do you want rotary switch, three way switch or blade switch? Do you want thin neck or thicker neck? And do you want dots, you know, moons in other words, because they do moons. But it was like the dots or do you want birds? These were all the choices they gave you to make the guitars when you were building out the guitar. And then you got to choose the type of pickups that went in them. And that's just how you built PRSs. As a dealer, you just customer could order any of that stuff. That wasn't custom shop. That was just how we did it. And then now when you look and they go, okay, now the custom 24 comes with a pattern thin and the custom 22 comes with a pattern regular. And that's just how things are now. It's kind of weird how they streamlined it, which is, which is where I think every company eventually goes. They streamline it because they, the more options they have, the more things to mess up, the more things to slow down is just how it goes. Streamline the process. Okay, yeah. Sean says, I feel like those options are still there just in set models. That's exactly how it works, Sean. It's, I mean, private stock, you can get whatever you want. But yeah, they decided to streamline it into set models. So. And again, just to speed up the process of building and make things easier. It was a lot. One of the other reasons too was it was really, it made it really tough to have the right guitar in stock for a customer. So a customer come in and go, hey, I saw you're a PRS dealer. I'm looking for a custom 24. And I go, okay, there's six on the wall. Now, again, our store, we carry like six or seven of any one sku like that max. And they go, cool. I'm looking for the green one. I'm like, I got it. And then I go with the thicker neck. I'm like, oh, I don't have that one. So you always didn't have what they wanted. So it was a lot easier once they streamlined the process a little bit. So that's another reason why I think they did it too. Just to keep things a little bit, you know, easier for everybody. Dealers them. Let's do this one. This one's from Amanda. Says, hey, this is from, well, irregular Star, but Amanda sent it to me. Thank you. Amanda says, hey, Phil, I recently bought a nut lure. Oh, we did his. Okay. Okay, let's do this one. That's funny. I have no. This is crazy. Okay, so I'm going to answer it. Why not? So Amanda sent me this one from Tricia. It says, it's Trisha Johnson. Art with Trisha. Says, phil, last week you mentioned eating mashed potatoes. I did. And not liking gravy. Holy crap. I talk about anything. I'm just filling time. Trisha, it's two hours. I gotta get. Fill the time up with something. All right. Anyways, it says, I know this was an example, but in our house, this sparked a debate. Can you clarify position mash with or without a gravy? Yeah. So my official position on this is actually controversial in my home as well. It's controversial with my wife's family. Even. So, my wife's family is Southern now. My family on my side is, I guess you would say, one generations remove Southern. Does that make sense? So, like, my grandparents were Southern, right? From the south, but my parents were like, California, right? Because their grandparents moved to, you know, California. And that's okay. So. But Shawna's side of the family is all Southern. This is a big deal because, like, they like gravy on things. It's a biscuits and gravy. That's like a thing, right? And white gravy. The first time it ever happened, I guess they didn't know anything, you know, we didn't know. We. I'd like to point out, like, I. 10 years. Like, I probably knew them for 10 years. Been, you know, so. And Shawna's mother asked me one time, do I want brown gravy? Or white gravy on something. And I said, I don't eat gravy. And she goes, you don't eat gravy? And I go, no. She goes, well, I'll make you biscuits and gravy. Gravy with sausage. And I'm like, yeah, I don't. I don't eat gravy. And she goes, why? And I go, I. This is. Honest to God, this is true. I go, I don't eat things that are not. That are not foods. So, for instance, I don't eat Kool Aid. I don't drink Kool Aid ever. The first time somebody offered me Kool Aid, you like red Kool Aid? Or do you want, like. I don't know what the other Kool Aid colors are. Is there blue Kool Aid? I don't. Whatever it is. I was like, what the hell is red? And they're like, oh, it's like cherries or strawberries. Like, you don't even know it's a color. I don't drink a color. That's crazy. So when I told Sean's mom, I go, you brown gravy, white gravy. What does that even mean? I go. And then she said, it's not a big deal. I go, if you said, what kind of meat do you want? Right? What color? I'd be like, what do you mean, what color meat? I want either beef or. I want chicken or a pork. I like. I literally want, like. So I don't. I don't eat gravy. That's. That's what the answer is that she. Her mother tried a couple times. They had me taste it. It was fine, and I was fine. It was fine, whatever it is. But I don't eat it. I did it that time to make everybody happy. It's not my thing. Nothing against it. So that's my. So mashed potatoes for me. I just put pepper on them. That's how that works. So, yeah, gravy is. I don't eat things that are named after colors or that somebody can't explain to me very easily what it is. And then you can imagine how well that process of thinking was problematic for me when I had to go visit some of the. Some of her family in Louisiana. I did not do well in Louisiana when it came to food, especially the rural areas. Some of the food. What I mean by that is not because they didn't have names for it. It's just they couldn't really tell me articulate very well what was in it exactly. They would give Me like, well, it's got all these things, and I go, which ones are they? Okay, that's that telly driver says plums. That's a color. Sure. Of course, we could argue orange is a color. But here's the thing. An orange is an orange. You get where I'm going. There's no fruit called purple or red. So I understand. Like, I think the fruit is. The fruit is a plum. And we'll call a color a plum. Right? We'll call a color an orange. But, like, we don't call bananas yellow. And again, I don't really care anymore. I'm just telling you. She was just asking a question about gravy. I don't eat gravy. And that's why. And it was presented to me. My mother did not eat any of that stuff, so. Any of that stuff. So it was not presented to me as a child. Okay. Sean Brooks says, hey, Phil, did you see the giant price jump in the tone master amps? Also, I see used basement reissues going for cheaper than use tone master basements. Okay, so let's compartmentalize that. Sean, first, I agree with you. That's why I didn't buy the basement tone Master. I can ride a real baseman for less than the basement tone master. And that is just crazy to me to think about. I did not see the price jump. We'll look right now. I did, however, this week, buy guitar strings and went, what the hell happened there? So. And this is a good subject to talk about, and I just want to clarify. I'm going to share with you guys right now. So I'm on Sweet Water. Let's see what Sweetwater's doing. Oh, so the twin reverse 1299. So what was that before? Tone master Deluxe reverb is 1249. Yeah, I feel like these are up. Weren't they. Weren't they originally 900 bucks? So it could be that, you know, the tariffs, because the stuff's coming from China. Could be just Fender. You know, here's my thing about this. And. And this is where, you know, you always run the risk of politics and pissing people off, and it's not. I don't talk about politics because I don't want to piss anybody off. I piss people off every week. It's just. It's just I don't know anything about politics. Not something I'm super interested in. I generally get a. Just of what's going on in the world every. You know, and then it doesn't. I don't really want to Speak to it in the idea that you might think I'm an authority of the subject. However, that being said, what I will tell you is, is that it seems like to me, it just seems that, like just with COVID and stuff and the, and the cost increase and stuff, it seems like certain companies are sure know how to go run right fast to the price increases. Right. Like I look back now at the guitar boom era during COVID and you can see which companies were the first to raise prices and the most to raise prices. They just were right on it. Fender was definitely one of those ones. So I'm not here to villainize them per se, but just, you know, like, it doesn't shock me that like, yeah, they're the first ones to throw the price tags out if it's what it's connected to or not. It just seems like literally it's the first first. It's always the same damn companies throwing out the price increase. So here's the price increase I saw. That was crazy. Tell me what you guys think about this. So I want to go back a second because this is something I talked to the patrons about and they had an interesting reaction. So I'd like to know your guys reaction and maybe, let's see. Hold on a second. I'm going to do a start a poll if you don't mind, so that way we can know. Hold on a second. Oh, well, let me do all this. Oh, cool. Okay, so I'm gonna put out a poll right now maybe. Okay, there's that. Let's see what happens if I do that. I don't want to add an option. I just want to start the poll. Is it too many words? Oh, there it is. Nope, I still can't do it. Okay, I apologize. Trying. I should have thought of this. Doing this ahead of time. It won't let me do the poll. I don't understand. Create a poll, huh? Yeah, I, I, yeah, I did that. I did that. Hold on. Cut that out. Let's try this again. If it doesn't work, I'll, I'll go, I'll move on. Guys, hate to kill the show over this. Ask a question. Oh, and it won't let me copy paste. Oh, it does. There it is. Okay, so let me tell you what happened. So a couple, I don't know if it's gonna let me start the bowl. I apologize. Oh, there it is. Okay, so a couple months ago, I've been using daddario strings for as long as I can remember. And a couple months ago I Was playing a guitar, and the high E string on my daddario strings broke. And I thought, oh, that's weird. I haven't broke a string in, like, years. Couple days later, I'm playing another guitar. D addr strings, string breaks. I'm like, wow, this is weird. Must have got a bad pack. So I don't have any singles, so I literally go out and buy some more packs of DDR strings. I order them from Sweetwater. I get them. I'm putting them. I'm putting them in on another guitar, and I'm filming a video, and literally the string breaks. Now, I know what you're thinking, you know, not the same guitar, different guitars. Was it break? I didn't take notice if it broke from the bridge of this tuning key. I feel like it was always breaking from the tuning key, but it could have been from the bridge. And I just feel like, what is going on here? So again, I thought it was a bad batch. A couple weeks go by, I bought some d' Addario strings from guitar center and I put them on a guitar, and that was like, the fourth string I broke. And I'm like, I literally. I'm not kidding, guys. I have not broke a guitar string in a decade. And now I broke, like, four in a period of, like, you know, three months. So I thought that was really weird. So I. I went ahead and I bought a bunch of Ernie ball strings. So I just ordered a bunch. I order them in the 12s. You know, 12 at a time, 12 backs at a time. And what gauge? It depends on the guitar. So it's all gauges. Because I do 9-42s, 9-46s, and 10 to 46, depending on guitars. I don't remember the gauge. Just remembers different packs from different suppliers. Could have been from the same batches of d' Addario. That's. That's. But here's the weird part. So I buy the Ernie balls. I put them on the guitars. No problem now. So I've been playing Ernie balls for the last two months. Almost all my guitars, I keep buying them. And so, like this, talking to friends, a couple of my friends go, yeah, that happened to me recently, too. D' Addario. I had a couple of strings break, and I'm like, what? I'm talking to my patrons on a Zoom call hangout. Couple of them, like two or three of them. Like, same thing. Wow. Yeah. Happened to me. Now, again, that's not a lot of people. It's like five people total. Five people have had this problem That I know combined, including myself. But I was like, this is weird. So I thought, oh, maybe I'll ever. I'll have a situation where I ask you guys, you know. So I put on the poll. You guys, tell me if you've noticed that the quality of d' Addario strings have gone down or changed. I'm just curious. But look what happened to me. So I had to buy some strings this week, and I think I had shock. Okay, ready? Seven nine. I was like, is that the seven string pack? Seven 99 for a pack of Ernie Ball strings? Like, holy crap. So I bought the 10. The. The 12. I bought the 12. That's weird. They don't have. They have the singles, but I bought the 12 packs of them. So 12 packs made it 583. And interesting enough, when I bought these. The hybrids. I bought the hybrids. They didn't have 12 packs, but I bought two five packs. That brought the price down to 599. So I don't know how out of touch I'm being right now, but I was like, I really remember just buying. Actually, you know what? I don't have to remember. Let me. Let me look. You guys just gave me a great idea. I can literally look in my account because I buy them from Guitar Center. I buy them from Sweetwater because of the. My affiliates, you know, links. I can. I get it. I get strings cheaper from Guitar center than Sweetwater, but Sweetwater gets them to me faster. So it depends if I need them fast or not. If I need them fast, I go to Sweetwater if I want. If I don't need them fast, but. Okay, hold on a second. Do this. Come on, Sweet Water. Stop messing with me. Let me in my account. Okay, let's open up the account and see what I paid. Order history for the last time I bought Ernie Ball strings and how long ago that was. I would have swore they were 4.99 a pack last time I bought them. So looks like I bought them in bulk packs too. Then I don't buy singles, so I'm opening up. Oh, hold on. So I bought Ernie ball strings in January 23rd, so obviously. So since then I must have bought them from Guitar Center January 23rd. And according to this, I paid $4.99 a pack. So let me go back to you guys. So I feel like 7.99 is a big jump from 4.99. Yeah. Wisconsin jet says four nine a pack sounds right. I would have swore 499 is what I just paid. So I Mean obviously in January, but I bought some since then too. And so when I saw $7.99, I was like, that's a pretty big jump in string prices. So Matthew says, what is String Joy? So why is. Why? I think he means why? Why is String Joy so highly regarded? I use String Joy as well. String Joy is a lot more expensive. But I like them and I've said this before, I like the guys at Stringjoy. They're really cool guys. They're. They're basically a mom and pop. In other words, they're a, you know, owner operated business and they make a good quality product and they, you know, it's a support, not a local business because they're in Tennessee and I'm in Arizona, but you get the idea. So supporting a small business is where I try to support them and I like them. So I will buy them too. It depends. I buy custom packs from them because there's certain things I want. So certain things I'll buy from them for custom packs. But let's look at the poll. The poll says no. So 56% say no. I'm gonna end the poll that they. The quality has not gone down. So I don't know, maybe it's just like a bad, bad thing. So I'm gonna do two things. I'm gonna read a super chat. I saw it and it's gonna tie into the guitar of the week and then also in issues. So this came from. Who did it come from? This came from Litvay. Litvay says hey, new guitar day 24 fret Pierre shaped Amber Gold Aria AR CST with a Les Paul style bridge. In my teens I had a green one with a tremolo. Never seen seen a photo of the green one. Nostalgia hit hard. Overpaid but okay. So you know what's funny is Woodlit Faye, congratulations on your guitar and overpaying on it. I did the same thing. I bought a green aria. You're gonna. No, I'm just kidding. No, I did a guitar. I did a nostalgia buy guitar. So I don't know why I did this. I just did this. So guitar of the week today is a two two fold to share the guitar with you. So I'm gonna start with all the good. We'll end with the bad. There is some bad, but we'll get into that. So what is the today's guitar of the week? It's a Keisel. No, it's a Washburn. So here's the guitar that I just idolized and wanted. I used to own one, but a different version of this. And I don't know, got in my head to get this. I'll tell you the whole story. How I bought it, what happened and what's wrong with it. There's something wrong with it. So what is it? It is a Washburn Nuno Betancourt Padauk. That's right. Like the Duke. It's Padauk. Solid body guitar. Two piece body of Paduk with a two piece neck. There's a scarf joint right there. It looks like a little frowny face with two eyeballs. And the Bill Lawrence pickup in the bridge. Funny, we were just talking about this guitar. And a Seymour Duncan 59 three way switch. One volume knob. This is the Floyd Rose 1000 and that's it. Ebony fretboard, 22 nickel silver jumbo frets, I believe with the Stevens cutaway, which I think is probably the best handshake thing that there ever was. I mean, look at that. So, so great. So I don't know why I just needed a Nuno guitar. I have the swirl Nuno guitar and I was like, I, I need this guitar back in my life. I want the Paduk one. I got it in my head. I was listening to three sides, every story and how I needed a Paduk one. And I went and looked and that's what this guitar had. Interesting. So I'm out there looking. There's some used ones, there's some new ones. Most of the new ones are pre orders. They don't make very many in fours. We talked about this. Maybe I was telling my patrons about this, but. So you know, they make about 20, 20, about 250 currently USA production in fours a year out of the shop that Chris makes the guitars for Washburn. Now I'll demo the guitar, we'll do the fun part and then I'll. I'll ask you guys some opinions on some issues. Okay, so let's switch camera sides. Here we go. Let's situate myself. We have the guitar. I'm running through my. What am I running through? I'm running through. I didn't even look. Oh, funny enough, I'm running through my Engel Steve Morris amp. So into a 112 cab with a Creamback selection and mic'd up and a delay, which is the Nux delay. Somebody was just asking me a question I didn't get to, but I'll say it now. Somebody asked me if I really like the Nux delay and if I still have it, I still have it, still love it. Use it all the time. So let's demo the guitar. Side camera right now. I'm like, how far can I play this without a copyright strike? Hold on. I switched on the amp. Alright, let's try to play this with no copyright strike. Okay, here's the neck pickup. Sam. Okay, so that's the guitar. Let's talk about what happened. So I need to do a little, if you don't mind. I was not prepared. In fact, this guitar got here today. So I wasn't planning on this to be the guitar of the week, but it is. So let me go ahead and do this, this, this, this, send this and once interesting, sending. Okay, so what I want to do is talk about two things. So this guitar. And I want to tell you the story because I want your input on this interesting thing happened with a guitar. So I was online looking at this. The N4 Padaux. These are usually very heavy guitars. Some of these can be £10£12 because the wood is very heavy. This one was listed at £8. It came in about £8 2 ounces. So it wasn't too far off when they said, which is fine. The dealer, there was a dealer that had the guitar on sale for 10% off. So I was like, okay, 10% off on reverb. I actually messaged them straight to their website and said, hey, just so you know, I bought guitars from you before and you know if I buy direct, you know, you don't have to pay fees. And it was good for me because I don't have to pay sales tax. And they said, look, no matter what, you got to pay fees. So they said, just buy it on Reverb. So I bought on Reverb. They got it out pretty fast. It was a holiday weekend so it took a couple days but they got it out. The guitar shows up, it was double boxed and it was packaged very well. However, this is what happened. So let me share this maybe and I don't know if it's going to screen share with you. So we'll see. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't. Oh, there it is. So guitar came, no big deal. Strings broken, right? Okay. So I go, okay, strings broke. So your G strings broke. And then this happened. I look and the pickup is falling inside the cavity. Okay, so here's my assessment. Looking at the box, it got hit, you know, in shipping. The box got dropped or whatever it was and the guitar got hit hard enough that the string snapped, which it does, and the pickup fell through. Now after going assessing it, here's what I learned. First of all, their. Their amazing packing job saved the guitar. Good for them. The string, you just loosen it up, and I clamped it back in the bridge. But the bridge. The problem with the bridge was that the builder of the guitars, the Washburn guys who built this guitar, they use the wrong screws for this pickup. This pickup is a Seymour Duncan 59 with long legs, and they short screws. And so I had to take the short screws out and put long screws in because that's why it fell through. The screws are just too short. All right. It's just better to use the long screws with long legs. So no big deal. A few minutes. It took me about 10 minutes to assess everything, go through everything. The guitar was set up. Well, everything's good. And then I noticed this problem. Now, this guitar is rather expensive. On sale. I got this guitar for $2,300, not including shipping and tax. So let's. You know, this guitar is normally like 26, $2700 made in USA. So when I was looking at the. Within a minute of playing it, I noticed this problem, which is if you look here at the neck, you'll see the Floyd rose nut is sticking out. Look how far it's sticking out. It's sticking out on this side and sticking out a little on this side. See? Right? So a little bit there. A lot of it there. Look at that. I mean, that's pretty dramatic, right? So I. I go, okay, that's. That's an issue. Now here's my problem. I love the guitar. It plays great. It sounds great. I'm happy. And that issue doesn't seem to affect the way it plays. I'm sure if. Maybe if you played some kind of weird chord up here, maybe it's poking out and it'll stab you a little bit. But it doesn't seem to affect me, and I don't want to send the guitar back because there's really not a whole lot available right now. And really all they can do is either give me a full refund or send me a replacement, which could take some time and. Or, you know, and what happens if I get the replacement I don't like as much. So I was thinking about this, going, why maybe I should do guitar of the week because I have it, and then also discuss with you guys, how do you handle a situation like this? I mean, think about this. The dealer gave me a discount, right? I didn't ask for it, but they gave it, which is nice. They gave good service. They shipped the guitar in a timely manner. They packed the guitar very well and the guitar arrived with the issues. The issue of the pickup falling in because the wrong screws and the nut sticking out, well, that was the manufacturer's fault. But in my opinion, the re. The retailer should have caught the issue with the nut. That is definitely an issue. And I don't plan to get rid of this guitar because I already had one a long time ago. I regretted getting rid of it. And so this is a really, like, not only a nostalgia play for me, but it's just like I really, really, really want it. Somebody says, wrong nut. I don't think it's the wrong nut. It could be, but it looks to me, just looking at it and all the thousands of guitars I went through, it looks like somebody, when they sanded this, they got a little aggressive with the. The sanding and they sanded it down. And then that could be a problem because that could be what I like about the neck. Maybe it's a little thinner than it should be around here. So I think what I want to do is I'm going to reach out to them, probably not after the show, but tomorrow, and I'm going to tell them, the dealer, thank you for the good. The great price, the good service, the excellent shipping. However, this was missed. And I would want. I want them to reach out to Washburn and let them know that they have an issue, especially since the builder, Chris, is a really accomplished builder. Maybe there's a couple out that are out like this and somebody else is going to have this problem, you know, issue. And I'm going to ask that. Maybe they ask Washburn to see if they'll give me a 10% discount from the Washburn side. I don't want the dealer to give me more discounts, although the dealer should have caught that, you know, the reality is I can send the guitar back at a full refund and the dealer can, you know, go on his way and disclose that, you know. But what. Ha. Here's what I think is going to happen because again, I was a Washburn dealer, I sold these guitars too. So I can tell you, here's what I think is going to happen. They get the guitar back and either they a. I don't think they're going to do this, but, you know, if they're not reputable, they'll. They'll just relaunch, sell it as it is and not say anything. They could disclose it and then have to discount it and then they could reach out to Washburn and Say, hey, give us a discount because it's a B stock item now, basically. Or they could send it back and get a different one exchange. Those are all their options. I think. I think a fair way to do this is. And I'm taking a risk as I'm telling you guys this because I thought this would be interesting. I'll give you guys an update next week or the week after, whatever happens. And I'm taking a risk because there's probably not a good chance. There's a small chance that Washburn or the dealer is watching this podcast or sees this podcast after it. So I'm telling you guys what I'm going to do, which means they're going to know what I'm going to do, which is I'm going to say, hey, why don't you give me 10% off from the manufacturer? In other words, I don't want the dealer to eat it. I want the manufacturer to pay it to the dealer and the dealer can pay it to me and we'll all be happy and we'll all move on our way. And if basically they say, no, I'll just keep the guitar. So I don't want to return it and I don't need to go through that stuff and they don't have to go through anything. So, yeah, it's, it's. And I didn't tell you the name of the dealer because I figure I'll. I'll save that till later to see how it all ends. But I thought, you know, I thought about, well, I can make a deep dive video and do all this stuff. And I was like, ah, I could do this, but I go instead, I really want to do this differently this time. Just tell you guys, look, this is the problem. And I think I have a reasonable answer. In other words, a reasonable request. I think, you know, let's make a lot everybody's life a little easier. The manufacturer can eat a little bit of their, their profit and that way the dealers. The dealer's already eaten some profit on this. Between the reverb fees and the discount. The dealer did not make very much money on this guitar, I can tell you right now. I mean, they made money, but not a lot. So, no, it wasn't while. So you guys know, it's not a really known dealer. You guys, you could put out 500 guesses and you wouldn't even get it. So when I was on their website, again, this isn't a major dealer. This is the one that had it. And also, keep in mind, you know, I. This was one of the only dealers that listed the guitar with the weight. Every other dealer didn't have the padaux with the weight. And I had an email each comp, you know, each store going, hey, could you tell me how much this guitar weighs? I want to buy this guitar. And one company made me laugh. They sent me an email two weeks later. I'm not exaggerating, it might have been two and a half weeks later saying, well, this is a pre order guitar. Which they didn't. I didn't see that in their listing. And it said they're probably nine pounds. I was like, well, thanks one, for the late reply. Two, that's not even the right. Wait, wait. And three, you don't have the guitar. So I just thought I'd be easy. But hey, we got to see the guitar. It's still new guitar day. I'm still very excited. I don't mind the issue. I, I just, like I said, I always, I just love Nuno so much, you know, this guitar is just iconic to me. The Padauk. If you don't know anything about Padauk, what's cool about the. The wood is, it's, it's. Well, originally, if you get it from Africa, it's really dark. This isn't from Africa, but it's really orangish color and red. And over time it gets darker and darker and darker and darker. So as oxygen gets to the wood, it just gets darker. Did it have a case? Yeah, it has a full washburn case. So yeah. Somebody says Horsehead says more than turds. Yeah. Do you think you could fix the issue? No, because here's the problem. You have two choices, your choice. I mean, obviously you can't build up the wood, you can't put wood back. Which is why I was cautious with you guys telling you guys. You know, when you remove material, you can't put it back. Could you get a more narrow nut? Probably. There might be one out there. But my problem is that again, this is the spacing. This is what I like. I would not want to mess with it. I'm fine with it. And this side actually doesn't look that bad. It's a little bit over on this side. Like I showed you guys, this side is the one that's really wacky. Look, you can see probably the shininess from here. It's so weirdly. See, look at that. See how you can see the silver? You should not be able to see this nut at all. And you guys can see the silver on both sides. See that crazy. So. But I don't know. I like everything else about it. So we'll see. We'll see how it gets resolved. I don't know. You know, really what it comes down to is. Is it really comes down to what we seem to see over and over again, which is it's really getting hard, apparently, for companies to make a good guitar and send it to you at any price. I mean, it doesn't seem to be. And this is where I like to share this stuff with you guys. You know, I see people going, hey, I bought a guitar for $300, and it has issues. I'm like, you buy $3,000 guitars that come with issues. It seems like you can't. You can't shake it. So Jeremy says, you should have bought a Kyber. There's no way I would buy a Kyber. Just kidding. Hold on a second. I have a Kyber here, by the way. Where is it? Is it in this room? It is not. That's funny. Where is it at? Hmm. I'm not kidding. I would show you the Khyber, but it's not here. It's not in the racks. I have no idea where we put it. We have a deep dive of the Kyber coming. Oh, I know where it's at. Hold on a second. Okay. I made a short little video for Jeff Keisel, and I sent it to him, and he responded, and he said, so rad. I found something weird about the Kybers. Kyber guitars. So. Okay, let's go, let's go. We'll get into that subject, but I'll button this up. If you guys didn't hear, Keisel came out with a new kind of guitar. It's a new model for them. New, and it's lighter, and it plays a little easier, and it's a little bit different design. They call it Kyber because Jeff Keisel is a huge Star wars fan. It's Kyber crystals, like, from what they put in lightsabers. And I. They asked me. They sent me one, and they asked me to do an unboxing and send them the unboxing reaction. Because they. That was just. Hey. For. For them. They wanted to see what I thought of it. I made the unboxing reaction. I put it. So you guys, if any of you are curious, it's on my Patreon, and it's free, so it's free patrons. So if you want to join Patron and, you know, support the podcast for $5, great. I appreciate that. Hold on one second. We had technical difficulties, you know, 415 episodes, which I don't know how many years that is. I've never had anybody knock on the door while I'm doing the show. And the door just knocked. And I literally probably just had a heart attack. I was like, why is somebody knocking on my door? So the reason somebody was knocking on my door was somebody handed me a Kyber guitar. I'll say so, Shauna. She handed me a Kyber guitar. This is the new Kiesel Kyber guitar. I am going to do something for you guys. This is how much I love you. Because I am screwing myself. Because I've only shown Jeff Keisel this. Okay, so Kiesel guitar sent out the Kyber. The Kyber is a new model from Kiesel. It's a little bit more ergonomic. It's a smaller body, it's thinner. It's a thinner guitar body, and it has a base price of $1550. Keeping in mind, this guitar is probably two twenty two hundred dollars because of. Think of this. These little bevels right here. This little bevel right here, not this arm card. This little bevel right here is a 200 add on. So if you. I don't even like the bevels. They're fine. I mean, they're fine. Like for 200 bucks, I would not get the bevels. But they sent this to me, obviously, for to reaction. This has a maple fretboard with a roasted maple neck. It's an alder body. Locking keys, a truss rod delete. But you can get this guitar with a hardtail, hipshot hardtail, and I think a non roasted neck. And it would. You'd be like 1600. Made in the USA with a. With a gig bag. It looks like a bag comes with a three way switch and a push pull coil split one volume knob. This guitar weighs six pounds. In fact, they guarantee that all of them will weigh about six pounds. But they didn't even know this. They put the strap buttons in back. And he designed the guitar to be super balanced, which is why the headstock looks like this. They actually removed headstock material to make the guitar balance really well and keep the guitar super light and playable and funny. That Susan says kind of vibes like a parker. Because this is what I'm going to show you. I showed it to Jeff Kiesel Literally 30 minutes before the show. That, yep, it balances perfectly like a Parker guitar. In fact, you can do with your pinky. Whoa. I'm just kidding. This is my pinky. I don't have A strong pinky. I don't want to. So it's perfectly balanced and plays and sounds amazing. But I'm not going to show you on the guitar of the week, because I'm doing a deep dive. So I figured a new guitar like this needs a deep dive. I don't think it's a custom color. I'm pretty sure that's tropical. The color is tropical. And it's a satin finish. So Donald says, I see Ormsby in the headstock. Look, they talked about this. It's basically like mine is Ormsby they're going after. The more it's look when I go on Instagram, like some of you do, somebody said the weight, the. My knees hurt. This guitar is like six pounds. Like six ounces, maybe six pounds, eight ounces, something like that. When I see young players playing all that the Ned Flanders did a little. Did a little diddle do stuff. Stuff, this is what they look like. They're playing stuff like this. Guitars like this very modern, very, you know, kind of sleek. And so obviously Kiesel's going, hey, we can make a guitar like that. So that's what this is going after. So very, very cool. It's got the new neck joint. So I mean. And they decided to do it at a lower price at 15.50. And the way I explain it. And then, then we'll go on to the next subject. Pat says, way better deal than Washburn, isn't it? Thank you, Pat. As much as I love Nuno and as much as I love this guitar just right, I have the Jason Becker. You could get the Jason Becker. I don't care what anybody says is the same basic guitar as this. It's essentially an unfinished wood guitar with some. Some Seymour Duncan pickups in it. And the Jason Becker would cost about 500 less than this minimum to 700 less. So, yeah, but you know, you know, your heart wants what your heart wants. And my heart wanted a Nuno N4 in Padauk. But anyways, back to the. The Keisel 1550. If at 1550, this is the way, I just want you to understand it. At 1550, you get the. The same gig bag, you get carbon fiber reinforced rods, you get stainless steel frets, you get cortisone next the next record song and you get the. You get the same pickups. So if you want to spend more, it's just for looks. That's what I'm basically saying. There's. It's. It's like. It's like saying, hey, look I'll sell you this truck for $30,000. But it comes with airbags and all the safety features and. And, you know, lane. Lane assist and all that stuff. And every safety feature you could ever want is in the truck and the engine, and it will tow. But if you want heated seats and, you know, and if you want a cool paint job and you want, you know, power windows, that's more. That's how you look at that. So the reason I say that is because there's some confusion. People are like, it says 1550, but it's like $2,300 or $2,900 by the time I get the one I like. Well, that's because you want heated seats and power windows. And, hey, if you got the money, you deserve them. And if you don't money, have the money. Finance it. That is a Ruthless People joke for those that know that joke. Who cares if it's the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and cost as much? When you're dead, they can bury you in it. And if you can't afford it, finance it. If anyone gets that quote, that is one of my favorite scenes of a movie of all time. So I think they were the Dominator 3000 speakers. These are the Dominator 3000 speakers. But my favorite part is my favorite. Check it out. Don't watch the movie Ruthless People. Just go on YouTube and type in Ruthless. You know what? I'll do the clip right now. I'll timestamp it right now. It's Judd. I think it's. Is that Judd? Judd, right. Hold right. Ruthless People speaker scene. Sure. Okay. Dominator mx. Yes. We can't watch it. I will. I am. I'm doing this right now. Okay, hold on. I can't play it. I'll get in trouble. It is 1 minute and 54 seconds long. I am doing this because I love you guys in the chat. You should be watching me because I'm so cool. And this is. But there's the clip, and I will literally timestamp it for those. Watch the replay. It is my favorite scene. It's a guy selling speakers, and my favorite line is. And I can't help it, is if you can't afford it, effing finance it. It's great. All right. Danny DeVito. Yes, Chris. Unfreaking believable. Danny DeVito's in it. Crap. It's Danny DeVito and Bette Midler. So. All right, we have Nuno has nut sprout. That's funny. Yes. We've seen Fret Sprout We've never seen nut sprout. So Derek Savage says, is it stainless steel Fretsville? The keisel is. This is stainless steel frats. The Nuno would be nickel silver. So Keezels. Keezels come standard with stainless steel frats. Unless you took advantage of their discounted anniversary sale. They did earlier that year. Earlier. Earlier this year. That's the only time I ever seen that. But yeah, very cool. Balance looks great, feels great. So really cool. It's cool to see people trying new things. Look, they said it was their biggest, best launch ever in their history. As. As Kiesel as a company. It's. That's the. So I'm glad to hear it. Like I said, out in the market right now, it seems like everybody's either killing it or they're getting killed by it. So, you know, it's. I like to see people doing well. Let's get to back to guitar questions. Otherwise we won't finish the show on time and. And then you guys will be in trouble. I don't know why, but I just feel like somebody will be in trouble. Okay, we have antique rocker says, hey, what's your opinion on luthiers who use. Who whose unique guitars are fine works of art? Example Tracy Cox guitars. I like Tracy Cox guitars, by the way. Hanley's cigar box guitars. I'm not familiar with that. Languiduck. Well, Languiduck's on a different world of it on its own. Super expensive and very unique. What do I think of luthiers who make art type guitars? I think they're cool. It's just not my bag. As I've said, I'm more of a. You know, I mean, look at this. Think about this. If you want to sum. I. I use all these examples, like, oh, I like Strats and I like paint. Just keep this in mind. One day, the people at Kiesel were like, we'll make you whatever you want. Now, keep in mind they have like seven flame top, seven, eight flame tops, and exotic woods and crazy everything and crazy paint jobs. You know, paint jobs with the crackle and paint jobs that, you know, do all this stuff and every. And I was like, make me a Strat. You. You don't think deep down, somewhere in Jeff Giesel's brain, he's like, Phil McKnight could have anything I make. And he's like, I have a brown Strat. I mean, I know it's copper, but it's a brow. Strat. Strat. That's what I picked. You could make me anything. And I said pick, make me a Strat. That just tells you exactly what I think of all this stuff. So yeah, so when it comes to the luthiers that make a gorgeous instruments like that, I think it's really cool when I go to the NAMM show and I go down that one row where all the really amazing luthiers make these really amazing artistic guitars I'm at all. And I always, I always take pictures of them and look at them, but it's just not like a daily player kind of thing for me. But very cool. And if you got the money for it, hell dude, there's worse things you can do with your money. Absolutely. Say no to drugs, kids. Anyways, Randy says, hey Phil, who did base amp? Who? Why not who? Why do base amp manufacturers put the controls on the top of the amp rather than the, than the front? Well, because bass players are tall. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know. They do. I mean Ampeg will put stuff on the. Well, not announced so much now, but SVTs are on the front. I don't think it's necessarily guitar manufacturers. There was actually a reason for it. I don't think bass manufacturers really look at it anything other than practicality. I guess the way you look at it is if you're going to bend over, you put the knobs on the top because that way you're looking down and you can see them. And if you're, if the rig is up tall then you put them in the front. That's kind of the way I would think of it. But I don't, I don't think it's actually done for any specific reason other than maybe functionality, cost and aesthetics, which are the three factors that they probably focus on. So if it costs a little less to put it that way, they'll probably do it. If it functions a little better, they might do it for that reason. That's, that's it. I don't think there's any other really big play in that. Charles says, what are my thoughts on the Marshall Studio JTM and Studio vintage amps? I've owned them all and I've gotten rid of all of them. They are good amps. There's nothing wrong with them. They just didn't fit my needs, which is I wanted to have a Marshall sound at a more reasonable volume. And here's my thought was if I'm going to run a 20 watt Marshall because I didn't like the 20 watt vintage Marshall in the 5 watt mode. I didn't like any of them. The 5 watt mode. I thought the 5 watt mode was too thin. So if I'm running them 20 watt Marshall and I have to run it through an attenuator, I can just run a 50 watt or 100 watt marshall through an attenuator. I don't necessarily need a smaller footprint for that. Once I have to add something to suck up the power to make it more reasonable at lower volumes. That's kind of the. My thought process on it. And that's it. So I like them. I prefer Friedman. That's, that's just the reality of that. If I'll say this, if you're looking at the JCM800 studio or the Silver Jubilee, I would look at the Little Sister or the Dirty Shirley and the Pink Taco. Even the names are horribly stupid. Sorry. That or the, or the Runt. Any of those. Jerry Contrail, all those things. You know, that's kind of my thought process. Are they super Marshalling? No, but they're made in the USA and they're quality and they're gonna price out at about the same price. They're Freeman's. About 300 more than the Marshall stuff right now. Which is, you know, especially with, with the, you know, with used. Because you can get stuff used. Todd0864 says runt are the Pink Taco. I prefer the Runt. I bought the Runt first. I did gear math. Gear math did not serve me. Gear math was, you know, if it's, if it's, if it's good, more expensive is better. That's the, you know. So I did the more expensive better. So I go hey, you know what's better than a circuit board runt is a hand wired pink Taco which at the time was called the PT20. But then they had to change the name back to Pink Taco. If you guys don't know the story of the Pink Taco, it's kind of funny story. So Dave Freeman has the sense of humor of a 12 year old. I'm just saying that this is my personal opinion. I respect him. Obviously. I got nothing but great things. I think he's got an ear, magical ear. And I think he's a talented person and I think he makes amazing amps. But his amp names just tell me he's got the mental jokes of a 12 year old. So the Brown Eye, the Pink Taco. Right. I mean it's so horrible. So anyways, so anyways the pt, it was called the Pink Taco and then they got a deal for Sweetwater Carry them. Sweetwater at that time would not carry the hemp because it was offensive, because Sweetwater, Chuck Surak, the owner of Sweetwater, is religious. You know, hey, there's nothing. There's no shame in that. Everybody's got their thing. And so he had his principles, and that was his principles. He's like, I'm not going to carry the amp. So Friedman, because they're smart, because he's big buyer, they changed the name to the pt20. And then what happened was Pete Thorne came out on amp and it's called the PT20. So sir asked them if they would, you know, if they could use the name pt20. And then Freeman let sir use the name pt20 and then put the name back to the Pink Taco. And Chucks Orac's not running Sweetwater anymore. And I guess Sweetwater doesn't care, so now they carry the Pink Taco. That is your quick history lesson of why the name was the. So if you own. If you go out there and so reason I'm telling you that is if you go on reverb right now, you can find Friedman amps called the PT20 and ones that are called the Pink Taco, you can find both versions. So back to your original question. The Runt. I would pick the Runt, actually. So, you know, the Jerry Contrail is the best amp they ever did out of those amps. Here's why. The Jerry Contrail amp is the Runt with more gain. It is the exact same amp. They use the exact same platform. It's the same clean channel. Nothing is different. In fact, I'm not even sure that the Jerry Contrail amp is the Runt with more gain or it is the Runt without being restricted. Right. In other words, like, the run could have more gain and maybe they're cutting it back and then when they did the Jerry Contrail, they let it open up a little bit more. I don't know. My guess is, you know, maybe, but probably it just has more gains. So if you get the jerrycontrol, you get the run, but you get more gain and you can back the gain. Back off, you have more, you know. So think of it like, you know, it's like a V6 versus a four banger. It's like if you get the Jerry Cantrell, you can go a little faster, you can get a little bit more gain or you can slow back down. You know, just because the engine goes faster doesn't mean you have to go fast. You can turn gain down. So. So the JJ Jr. Is, is in my opinion the best one they put out there. Some people like the Jakey Lee, that's a great amp too. They're all great. But like if you want a good Freeman amp, I would look at the JJ Jr. For sure. And then Brian says they'll probably discontinue it because he's moved to Bogner. That probably. Right. I could see that doing that. They might discontinue it, but they might just reissue a runt Runt plus right. And give you something a little bit more. I now have the small box and the small box is great but again I should have just kept it runt. This is good. So my only complaint about the runt I only have one is that in the clean mode it only has two controls. So you have a volume control, it has three. So in the clean section of the runt, if you're not familiar with the amp, which I did a review so you can watch my review, I talk about this. It has a volume knob, it has no 3 band EQ that's only for the gain side. And it has a little switch that lets you go like bright, super bright or a little dark. It's really like I'm unhappy with every switch. But also the presence control because that's assigned to the power section works on the clean channel as well. So you can use the presence troll but it affects both clean and dirty. So those are some suggestions for that. Or you can always just, you know, get the studio. If you get the studio Marshall, if you get a good pedal in from it, I think you'd be fine too. I would have kept it out of all the Marshall studio amps. I would have kept the Plexi vintage, the vintage Plexi style amp and run a pedal. But I have a 2061 which is a hand wired version of that and I'm not going to sit here and tell you the hand wired versions better. I couldn't really decipher a real big difference between the two as a whole. Maybe I give the edge to the hand wired amp, but they don't make the hand wired amp anymore and it's unique so I might as well keep the unique one than the mass produced one. No other thought put into that than that why I did it. Johnny says, hey, I just want. Oh, thank you for the super chat. By the way. There's a large one. Thank you. John M. Says, I just want to show my support you. Thank you. I remember watching you being happy about hitting 100 episodes. Still going strong. Thanks. Yeah, you know, it's funny. It's like, you know, because the Internet, they don't cancel your show. So my show could have got canceled. No, actually, you know, it's. You know what's great about 415 episodes? I could sit here and go, man, we made 415 episodes. And maybe, you know, and the reality is I can make up. I can make a thousand episodes because I just put them on the Internet and if no one watches them, who cares? If somebody watches them, who cares, I guess, right? Like, I can make them. But what I'm super proud of, and I really am, is 415 episodes and they've been funded by patron this whole time and still funded by patron. My patron. That's crazy to me. I mean, it's the equivalent of saying like, well, it's better. It's better than even saying like, hey, this show is sponsored by this, you know, this company and has been with me from the very first episode. And wow, I'm still have the same sponsor and they've supported me this whole way. That would be impressive, but not nearly as impressive as, hey, my sponsor. Are people who elected to just sponsor this, even though they don't have to. Thank you so much. This is just patrons and members. Thank you so much. So I don't know why you do it. I appreciate that you do it. I appreciate all of you actually supporting the channel, watching all the stuff too. But it's crazy to think all these years, people still. I have it. It's crazy. It's crazy. So, yeah, so I'm. And thank you for supporting it and 100 episodes. Yeah, it's crazy. The whole thing's, I'd say surreal, but it just doesn't make sense. I try to. It doesn't make any sense when I try to say it out loud to people. Aaron Short Music from the Aaron Short Music Channel says new Stratocasters rarely stay in tune on arrival. Do I need to have a nut filed or will lubricant survice. Survice surfice with S not a V suffice. And which brand do you suggest? Okay, so the way I look at it this way, lubricant, whether you're using the Big Ben's Nutsauce lubricant, all the other stuff, Vaseline or a pencil. It is just a band aid for the problem. It's not gonna fix the problem. Okay. It's just gonna. It's like literally like using a jump starter to jump start your car real quick, your car still has a dead battery. Okay. Or if your battery's dead, you still have a bad battery. Your car started now, and so you need to go get a new battery. So if you have a nut and you get a good Strat and you're having issues, the reason why I lubricate the nut slots is to see if it fixes it. If it fixes it, it just tells me that now we need to polish out the nut slots. If it doesn't fix it, it tells me that I have a bigger problem. See? And that's how. So it's. So it's a quick fix, but it's also a quick test. So that's why it's nice to do something like that. It's going to help you. So, Aaron, that's what I would recommend. You know, as you know. Yeah, you get a new guitar, you. You really need to do a setup. That's why when I do the unboxings, you know, Aaron actually had this great question a while back. And Aaron, you probably remember asking me this. Sorry. You said, you know, because in the deep dives, you know, I just play the guitars as they. As they are. You know, I pull them out of the box and I assess the setup, and then I play them the way they're set up, and then I give you the assessment. And his question was great. Back then, he said, you know, don't you think that every guitar needs a setup? And I'm like, yeah, they do. And he goes, well, you know, shouldn't you do the setup? And I know Hawkhead says you need chapstick. I do need Chapstick, but I didn't realize I need chapstick until the show started. So anyways, and by the way, that tells me whenever I have chapped lips, it tells me when I look at the. Right now, we're at 39% humidity, which tells me that humidity is getting dry. It's getting dry in the room. So. So back. Back to Aaron's assessment. I don't remember what I told you then. I'm pretty sure I told you what I'm telling you now. But I just thought about it when you were saying is that the reason I do that is because I realize everybody's buying guitars out of boxes now. And that's kind of like the thought process. Look, to me, if you buy a guitar from a store and it's set up and it's fine, then it's fine. But to me, if you buy what I think people really want to know Is if I buy this guitar out of a box, what am I looking at? And then I try to give you the assessment of where it's at. And it's interesting. And I really believe this. I really believe that the companies have watched more of my deep dives than probably. I don't want to say any other YouTube channel. That's not what I'm getting at. But the amount of companies who have reached out to me and apparently have said that they've reacted to these deep dives in the ways that they reacted, which is almost like now they really understand, not so much what every guy, everybody's pulling out nylon socks and rubbing their guitars and putting calipers on them, but it's almost like they understand now better. What they've all. A lot of them told me is they understand better what the delivery aspect needs to be to succeed, which is apparently 2 millimeters off the 12 fret. And your frets can't be sticking out, and you should be able to play some chords and some basic stuff. So. But yeah, I would. I would. I would put the lubricant on it. And then, of course, your guitar needs to set up, as you know. Did you get another Strat? I thought you got a Strat a while back. And so you must have got another one. You must be a Strat guy, too. Although I know your main thing's acoustic. Milo the giant says, hey, Phil and everybody. So this is to everybody now. He says, I just got my first Strat. I'm thinking of swapping out the string trees for a brass bar. Is there a difference between installing the bar parallel to the nut or an angle? Well, you don't want to do it parallel to the nut. You want it to have down pressure. The whole point of string tree is put down pressure on the nut. So on the string, through the nut, that's really what you're trying to do, which is why they do staggered string trees. String tuning keys, man, you can tell when I get to the second half of the show, my brain's cached. So the reason we do staggered tuning keys is again, we're trying to keep down pressure. We want. As soon as the string crosses the nut, we want that down pressure on the nut. It's going to help it for intonation, it's going to help for tuning stability. It's going to help in every way. Some people don't like the string trees because when you use the tremolo, you know, they add friction, which causes binding. And then therefore, the guitar's Tuning stability is compromised. Me, what I've learned is, funny enough, it's not really hard to figure out. I like a string tree on the E and the B string. I don't really care for the D and the G string, but if I do put a string tree on the G string, I don't put it on the D string because the D string is wound. It makes perfect sense that the wound string should not cross the nut or the string tree. Unless maybe it's a roller nut. Roller string tree. So, yeah, you want the downward pressure. And it's up to you to, you know, whatever you feel works for you. What material works? I have found that there's no when people go, oh, get a roller string tree, or get the new bone or the graphtec. And you know what I've learned? Even the rusty, crappy ones work. It just depends on the guitar. So it's if. If my journeyman custom shop, Strat, has a string tree that's rusted because they said it's, you know, that's how they make it. They make it rusted and it stays in tune. So, I mean, obviously you can use a rusted string tree and it's fine, which is crazy. But I think the big issue with string trees is the D and the G string. That's where the problems come from. Okay, so we have co Head. Coheed. Coheed. Cast Andy Coheed. Like Coheed and Cambria. Raising a little. Raising a little one. Running out of space. Yeah, that'll do it. Have gear. Definitely not using, but worried I'm going to miss. Get sentimental. Help me, Phil, or you're my only hope. Oh, that's funny. Like, I love the reference. Look. Well, first of all, congratulations on the little one. Nothing. Nothing's cooler than, you know, having kids, in my opinion. For those that have kids, great. Those that don't have kids, nothing cooler than having a dog or cat. And then if you don't like dogs or cats, well, then, nothing cooler than being alone. I don't know. But anyways, I'm trying for the joke, guys. So, yes, that's exactly what happens when you sell stuff. You. You get sentimental for it and you go back to it. You. But you have to. You have to be. I can tell you this, I don't regret when I buy something back. Like, I had a Paducan 4 before, and now I have another one. This one's better than the other one. The other one's neck was a lot smaller than this one. That's why I said, I like this neck better. The reason I got rid of the other one is the neck was really tiny on that one, and that was a little lighter, but also came with black hardware. And I like the chrome because it looks more like what Nuno had. But I. I don't know. I. I really. I really. I try not to, you know, tell you, like, don't sell your stuff. Keep it forever. Because that's a. There's a downside to that. And if you sell your stuff, are you gonna buy back? Probably. But I don't think there's a win here. You either have stuff stocked up that you don't need, and then 10 years from now, you're like, why did I keep this? And if you sell it 10 years from now, you're gonna go, I gotta buy it again. What I will tell you is this. If you think you're ever going to buy it again, don't sell it. That's one thing. It took me a long time. Shawna topped that to me. She fights me on stuff. And so, you know, my wife has been so nice to me sometimes that I've gone to sell something because she knows I'm not using it. And my logic is, if I sell it, I'll have the cash and I'll buy something else, and life will go on. And she'll take it and go, I'm keeping it. And it works. Because then a year later, I'm like, can I have that guitar underneath the bed? Because I miss it. So I. I don't know. But it's up. It's up to you. There's a. Yeah. God, I wish I had a better answer. I'd love to see some of you guys feedback on this. The whole selling stuff and buying again, it's really the dumbest thing we do as. As guitar players sell our stuff and buy it again. The same stuff over again. It's a really a bad move. So if you can avoid it, don't do it. If you can't avoid it, well, just understand. Everybody does it, and there's a little bit of financial pain to it, but it's not the end of the world. DWC says, hey, Phil, how does Firefly deliver the quality that new Fender standards cannot? You know what's funny is I'm glad you asked that, because here is a funny part of that story. So I've thought about this long and hard, and I have a theory, and I'm gonna give it to you, and it's probably gonna cause me pain. And right now, My wife is wincing. She's not here, but I know she's wincing when she's. Because she knows what I'm gonna say. Okay, so you guys saw I interviewed Gabe, the CEO of Guitar center, and in that interview, he said something that has just haunted the hell out of me, and it will not stop playing in my head. It's probably because of my age. And I watched the Brady Bunch as a kid, and all I always hear is like, mom always said, don't play ball in the house. And I'm like, I can't stop thinking about what he said. And if you watch that interview, he says, when I was talking about competition online and competing and. And Guitar center being competitive, he said, we're not interested. I'm paraphrasing. I'm messing up the exact quote, but I'm going to give you a general idea what he said, because you can watch the interview. It's in. It's in the interview where I did it. He said, we're not interested in competing with toy guitars. That from Amazon. Now, I want you to understand something. Yeah, I owned a store, whatever. And I worked on guitars 20 years, whatever. Okay? None of that stuff matters. What really matters is this. I. I've reviewed so many. I've taken apart all these guitars. I put them back together. I know what everybody's got. I know how everybody's doing it. And here's what's weird about that. He's wrong. He's super wrong. And I'm like, why is he so wrong? This doesn't make any sense. Here's why he's wrong. I reviewed all these guitars I reviewed. I review Fenders and Squiers and Epiphones and Gibsons and PRSs and PRSSEs and, you know, D' Angelico and, you know, you name it, just keep going down the thing, right? Heritage, gnl just. I've reviewed everybody but all these Amazon brands, these Fireflies, these, you know, you know, you insert the brand at the time. All these off brands that eart guitars, ert, whatever you want to call them, right? They are delivering on dollar for dollar. The best quality for dollar. Even when I'm like, oh, look what they messed up. Well, you know, here's 3,000 or, sorry, $2,000. It's messed up too, right? Anybody can mess up a guitar. The crazy part is how, like you said, how do they get a guitar for $200 with all those features? And it not come out to be a crap shoot, you know, crap show. When you pull out of the box. But the bigger question is, why doesn't Guitar center have that? Because when you go on Guitar Center's website, and by the way, this sounds like I'm bashing Guitar center. Not. Not watch. So go to Guitar Center's website. I dare you. Go right now, type in 100 to $200, maybe 100, 250 and see what's out there. And you're going to see not Epiphones and Squires. You're going to see Epiphones with no finish, with no features. Squires, again, slightly thinner bodies, no features. Ibanez, you know, Geos just again, low on the features. Right. You're not going to see. There's no such thing. Not new, used, used. There's tons of great deals. You can go to Guitar center use and get great stuff. But new, you're not going to see stainless steel frets or roasted maple neck compound radius, you know, Al Nco pickups. Everything you're seeing at these price of 200 bucks. And then here's what's funny. He's like, oh, that's the thing about Guitar Center. But go to Sweetwater. Same thing. You don't see it at Sweetwater. Go to Sweetwater. See, Jeremy says Mitchell. Look at Mitchell feature for feature. Let's look at a Mitchell. Let's do it. We're in real time. The show is going to go in overtime today. Sorry, guys. Because I got it. Okay, watch this. Let's look at a Mitchell. We will do this. I hope I'm wrong. Because if I'm wrong, I'll actually be in a good mood. This will make me feel better because I. Okay, so we have Mitchell guitars and we're looking for guitars electric. I'll show you guys as soon as I'm in the right category. Electric guitars. Let's look at a Mitchell guitar. Okay, I'm not going to go through every single guitar. The first guitar I see right here is this guitar. Mitchell MD 2000 for $229. The literally the same price as the Firefly I reviewed that came out yesterday. Let's see what Mitchell gives you what Guitar Center's brand gives you for $229. Let's look at the spec sheets. Fret size, narrow, tall, fine. Doesn't say they're stainless steel. So they're not. Because just like anything else, they put their best foot forward. The neck is shallow C. It's rock maple. That's not a thing. It's just maple. So maple. It's a dual action. Truss rod. Give them credit quality for that. Pickups, Mini HH and mini Real humbuckers. You know what? They're ceramic. I don't even care. We'll say that they're somewhat on the same layout. So this guitar, basswood body. Okay, now I want to say. So there's no confusion. I like basswood bodies. I have no problem with what guitars are made of. You can make a guitar out of plastic. I can really care about. The question isn't what the materials are made out of. The question is what is the cost you're assessing to the materials. Basswood is cheaper than alder. Alder is probably cheaper than mahogany. And you know, plywood is cheaper than all those. Right? So here's the thing. So for $229, Guitarseno will sell you a guitar that has a basswood body, which is fine. A maple neck, it looks like. Is that a rosewood fretboard? Let's go back and look at the neck. Does it say. It doesn't even say, oh, fretboard. Oh, my God. Are you serious? You can't make this crap up. Fretboard material, select hardwood. Thanks Guitar center, for that detailed analysis of. You see why I do deep dives. I'm glad they have select hardwood. I'm like, so that sounds like a flooring company. Hey, you should rent this apartment. It has select hardwood floors. So anyways, so my point is that guitar versus the Firefly, sure, we could say they're almost on par. But I will tell you that the standstill frets, the spindle, the spoke wheel, truss rod that lets you adjust it. The compound radius has value. Again, does a beginner need this? No. Roasted mahogany body on that guitar. Do they need that? No. And what else? Obviously, we already just. And again, it is executed. It was good. My point is that I can buy that type of guitar, that Firefly guitar, different brands. Eart guitar, same thing. And if I put an E art guitar against this same thing, I can buy that from Amazon with a amazing return policy. No issues. So I get it. And I have issues. Goes right back, no questions asked. Just like Guitar center, right? Just like Sweetwater. Sweetwater doesn't have anything either. In fact, Sweetwater doesn't even have the Mitchell line. And then you have to ask yourself, with guitar center's buying power, why isn't the Mitchell line much better? The Mitchell line could be Firefly. Why are they losing to the toy guitars? Like, again, he said, he implied that the guitars that. That are on these Amazon sites and stuff that these off brands they're not very good. But the truth is, no, they're, they're much better than the affordable brands that you're carrying. And so you know, Mitchell is the Guitar center one brand. Sweetwater doesn't even have that brand. And then you have to go look, well, okay, here's something that's weird. So you have the two largest retailers in the United States, Guitar center and Sweetwater. They really don't have anything that competes with that. But then if you go to Tolman in Germany, Thomann has that. Oh yeah, can't stop playing music says, don't forget locking tuners. Yeah, the Firefly had locking tuners. So Harley Benton, if I was going to the Harley Benton website right now or Tolman, I think, and I'm not going to do it because I really believe I am right. Because I've done enough of these reviews. I really believe Harley Benton has something comparable to the, to the Firefly guitar, in other words. So Toman recognizes that they have to have something competing with these off brands that are throwing all these really nice features. And, and again, you could say that some of them are executed great, but a lot of them have been executed really well. So the question really comes down to basically, how does Firefly do this? Price Point? Well, they're selling direct to consumer. So you don't have to add in a retailer. Retailer wants at least 30 to 40 margin. That's at least I would guess. I'd be shocked. In fact I, I'd be shocked if I, if Guitar center was to tell me that Mitchell wasn't a 50% margin. So let's go back to this. So I can't imagine what's the point of owning the brand if you don't get double the margin. So that means they're into this for $115. So they make 115 from the sales. It's got a. Look at that. It's got a four star review. That's not actually too horrible. So, so my point is Firefly does it because they go direct, they don't have to add in the secondary seller. They keep their marketing budget low because they work with smaller YouTube channels, as you know. And then I go, okay, so the question is. So then the question isn't how does Firefly sell is so cheap? I don't think that's the question. It's a great question. I don't think it's the question. The question is why doesn't Sweetwater and Guitar center have comparable instruments? Why doesn't. Look, I go to Kirkland. I'm on a rant, apparently, right now. I go to Costco, right? And Kirkland. There's a lot of great Kirkland stuff. I could buy Kirkland batteries. I can buy all kinds of stuff. And most of it's just repackaged from the actual brands. It's generic. You know, I grew up with generic. Does anyone else grew up with generic? When it was generic was a white. The packaging was white and either had a black or only a blue stripe. And it said generic on there. So, like, if you got soda, it just said soda. I'm just flashing back to how I grew up. That's what I got. Like, I. When my mom went to the store, we got cheese. It just said it was white. And it's just packaging. It says cheese, and then we got a soda, and it just said soda. So anyways, and then later, they started putting their brands on it. Like, we went to Safeway, and they put, like, Safeway Select. So it made it sound like it was something better, but it was, like, still just generic. But anyways. Kirkland bourbon. Thank you, Tumbleweed. So the question is, why don't they have a better selection? And I have a theory. And here's my theory. The one way I explain Tolman. And again, this is all theory. I have no proof of any of this. I'm just trying to. I'm trying to assess in my head what I see and why could. Why it exists the way it is. So my theory is, when somebody asked me and I said, oh, I went to Toman for a week or two weeks, and somebody goes, what's home? And I go, it's like the largest retailer in Europe. I mean, it's in Germany, but it's not the largest retailer in Germany. It's the largest retailer in Europe. And they go, oh, how big is it? And I go. And this is what I say. I swear. I swear this is what I've said to everybody. Anyone who's met me personally knows I've said this to you because I say it so much. I go, imagine Sweetwater if they never had Guitar center as a competition. Like, if Sweetwater just was just Sweetwater and there was no Guitar center, how big Sweetwater would be right now. That's how big Thoman is. It's like, Thoman is what happens when you have a big retailer and there's just no other giant big retailer to punch back. Like, there's not. And so I go, so Thoman basically dictates the world in Europe. And in my opinion, right so imagine if you want to sell your stuff in Europe. I mean, I know I have friends that had in this industry who their wholesaler is Thoman. So not only do they sell to Thoman, but they sell to Thoman as the wholesaler that sells to the other stores in Europe. So where in the US you would have wholesalers and then there would still be giant retailers. So my thought is, I'm like, I wonder if, if, if the reason Guitar center, just, just a theory. The reason why Guitar center and Sweetwater, it's not that Firefly and those guys, how do they sell it so cheap? It's the reason why they, they are the reason why the retailers like Sweetwater and Guitar center don't have something just like that guitar is because maybe the brands don't want them to have it. Maybe, maybe Squier and Epiphone and those brands, they don't want Guitar center and Sweetwater to carry a better quality product at a lower price point in the name of hitting a price mark. Right? But I think just like, and here's why, I know there's Sam's Club and I know there's competition, but just like Costco, I imagine Costco says, hey, we want to make a Kirkland version of this product and if you don't like it, suck it because we're the biggest ever, you know. Right. I don't know. Maybe that's it. Maybe gcn Sweetwater, maybe they, they are divided. Maybe, maybe GC goes hey, let's, let's carry a guitar with stand still frets. And so you know, the big deal in the Firefly is not the stand still frets, it's the, it's the, it's the wheel truss rod adjustment because you can't screw it up. So even a beginner doesn't need a setup. No, no. Guitar like that should need a setup. You just adjust it. The only problem is if it needs fret works. So I could imagine like Toman, if they go, hey, we're going to make Harley Bitten a version of your guitar. And the company goes, we don't like it. And Toman's like, well you can always not sell to us. And then what we going to do? I'm not saying they do that, but wouldn't it be funny? But here's what I'm thinking. What if Guitar center goes, hey, we're going to make a Strat looking guitar with stainless steel frets and Al Nimko 2 and 5 pickups and you know, a wagon spoke wheel truss rod and locking tuning keys and we're going to make it 199. And then the Squire's like Squire, Fender and all those guys. Like, we don't like that. And we'll just sell the Sweetwater then. And then. So maybe Sweetwater and Guitar center pitched against each other. I don't know. I just thought it was weird. Here's why this whole theory exists. I thought it's possible to see Gabe. He's a very smart guy. I just want to tell you this. My assessment of the CEO of Guitar center is very smart. Obviously he was smart enough to know that when I went on a tirade on my show, he said, come out and talk to me. Because of course I have to now. I can't slam somebody publicly and then go, hey, I want to talk to you, and go, nope, I had to go. And in that assessment, he gets to tell his side of the story, which was very important. And he was, he was able to communicate to me his. His thoughts and. And vice versa. Smart guy is what I'm trying to say. So when I see a smart guy say toy guitars on Amazon, I gotta tell you, it's in my face. If you watch the show that, that interview, you could see my face reacting like I don't know what I'm. I don't know how to process what you're saying because I either come to one, one of two conclusions. Either A, he's never tried any of these inexpensive guitars that are really good, or B, he doesn't want to. Right. And that's. And that's what I was thinking. So to answer your question, how do these companies do it? They do it because Firefly doesn't have a brand. They don't have anything. They're doing a. Small quantities. They're selling direct consumer. Consumer. And they're keeping the price point low. Do I think if. If Sweetwater or Guitar center can do it? Probably because Thoman does it with Harley Ben. And do I think Sweetwater and Guitar center should have their own versions of Harley Benton? I don't know how I feel about that. However, I will tell you this. The biggest thing I have to deal with as a YouTuber when. As a. Not a YouTuber. Screw that. The biggest thing I have to do deal with as trying to be a credible person on this platform when it comes to you guys is I stress and I ache over all these inexpensive good guitars and when I review them, because I'm constantly know that they're. The Firefly guitar sold out in three hours yesterday. I Don't look, I don't get anything from them selling the guitars. But, and that's not the point. The point is, is I want you to have a good experience. I want you to have. If I have a bad experience, I don't want you to have a bad experience. I just want you to be aware. You can. If I have a good experience, I want you to have a good experience. But it's a lot easier to deal with companies that are more credible mentioning like, hey, Guitar center has given us a $2,000 guitar to give away to you guys. That's really cool. They, they sent me the guitar and they're like, hey, send it to you and then we can give it away to a customer. So I would rather Guitar center in Sweetwater have a version of Harley Benton because it's not like I don't want these small guys that are selling these off brand guitars not to do well. I just would really, it would be a lot better for me if you guys go, hey, I got one of those Mitchells that you talked about that had stainless steel frets and a spoke wheel, truss rod and locking keys. And it was horrible. And I go, oh, and what happened? You got screwed? And you go, no, I walked back in. Guitar center gave me a full run, full refund and I bought some strings like that would give me like, oh, that's so much easier to deal with. So to answer your question, I don't know how. Well, I know how Firefly does it, I explained it. But I don't know why they don't see them as competition. I absolutely see all these inexpensive brands that are throwing all these options and executing really well and they're just getting better. Every brand that I can think of, and there's probably an exception, every brand I can think of that's an Amazon brand that I've dealt with in the last say six years, makes a better product now than it is six years ago. So they are getting smarter, they're getting better. And that's problematic because their prices aren't really moving. If you, I, I, I'll tell you, I'll end on this section on this and then I gotta wrap up some of the last super chats. The very first Firefly I ever did was like four years ago, four or five years ago, and it was $179. I did a Firefly video yesterday, it was $229. That's not a huge increase in price compared to what you've seen in the last five years in prices. So the fact that the guitars got that much better and the prices didn't move, I think is problematic for a lot of part of the industry, especially when we're talking about Fair and the idea that I said it in that video yesterday. Yeah, the Firefly is made in China, but so is the Squire and Epiphone at that price point. So are the competitors at that price point. We got to get through these. We got to do. Clan of House Cats says, hey, we saw Metallica for the first time. Weird to say as a huge Megadeth fan. Oh, yeah, hold on. I got something to say about that. Now I've seen all the big four bands of thrash metal live. Now I'm curious what the other two are to me. I'm going to screw this up. I can make a whole. I can make all of you mad and unsubscribe. Right now. I'm gonna say, since you mentioned Megadeth and Metallica and you said the big four, I'm for me, the big four on that genre. It's gonna be Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. Please don't kill me if that's not your. That's my four. But his funny story is that you say that huge Megadeth fan. My buddy Ralph. You guys know Ralph. Ralph is a huge Megadeth fan. And Ralph is such a huge Megadeth fan, he will not acknowledge Metallica. Anyway, I. Metallica came to town, I offered to buy him and his girlfriend and Shawna, all of us, nice tickets. Like the nice ones, expensive tickets to the show and have a great night. And Ralph said no. And his girlfriend's like, what? I want to see Metallica. And Ralph's like, Ralph's die hard Megadeth. So no Metallica. So I'm proud of you for being a Megadeth fan and going to Metallica. So. So it's a thing. Is there an opposite to that? Is there Metallica fans that won't listen to Megadeth? I don't know. Does that exist? To me, it's Megadeth fans don't like Metallica as a whole. Like, I'm a Megadeth fan that likes Metallica. I like them both. But I think there's some that. But I don't know of a Metallica fan that doesn't like Megadeth. I don't know if it works that way. And please, no one send me emails because I've had this happen to me before when I'm like, I go. When I talk about mega Metallica Somebody will say, some mega fan will send me an email explaining to me what all the horrible things Metallica did to, to Megadeth and, and I, Dave Mustaine and stuff. I'm like, I, yeah, I understand. I, I, I know the whole story. I know all the stories. I've. I watched the documentary where they all cried and re. And, and therapist saw. I, I get it. Jeff says, hey, Phil, are the setup files still available? Setup files? I don't. Jeff, do me a favor. Can you send me an email to what that is? I don't know what that means. My setup fails files are still available. Any files I've shown on my channel should be still available on the. On either. The three sources I've used is Crimson Steel, Mac, and Music Nomad. Those are the three biggies. Although I have a new company that I'm gonna highlight because Patron asked me to check it out and I bought one. Pearson Instruments says, hey, Phil, just seeing if the Hyper B deep dive is still in the works. I'm looking forward to it. So if you guys didn't know, Pearson Guitars, they make that aluminum guitar. And they said when I checked it out on the live show. And then what happened was they got in a fight with another YouTuber. This is my understanding. So a YouTuber got their guitar, said that there was some design problems with it. There was some kind of public kerfuffle. I try not to get in the drama of it, but that's my understanding. And it was over the design issue of the guitar. I personally did not have that issue with the design. I, I, I was aware of the design issue, but it was one of those things like I. It's a, it's not a. It's not a typical quote unquote, like Strat, you know, like, like Strat is all about function, you know, form and function. Where this guitar was, like I said, it's almost our artistic piece in the idea that it's just unique and different. So having something weird about it. So they redesigned the pick guard and he sent me a new body. So to answer your question, I have not moved the new. I have to move the neck from the old guitar to the new body and then put it together and figure it out. We haven't got that far yet, so we'll probably do that and then knock it out. But interestingly enough, I was going to tell you now that I understand, I thought you'd redesign the body or the guitar. Now that I understand you redesigned the pick card. Should have just sent the pick Guard. So the good news for you guys is that we're doing a giveaway with that guitar. So that's why I got to put it. I got to make sure it's right because we're giving that guitar away. That's what we had talked with Pearson is that if he sent a guitar, we would give it away. So we'll do a giveaway with that. Bilbo Naggins. I think Negan's Bilbo Naggins, like, okay, Bilbo Baggins says honest review of throwback pickups. Is it worth it and what kind you have? So honest review. I did not pay for my throwback pickups. So that's about as honest as you can get. So look, I don't care if a company sends me a product to review. And you know, like I told you guys, the only thing I can't tell you if I didn't buy it, I can't tell you the rapture, what it feels like to buy that. That. Here's the problem with throwback. I have a full detailed review of the pickups. It's done. My patrons have seen it long time ago. I haven't released yet. I'm still working it out, massaging the how I'm going to approach this. Here's my problem. So and, and this will help you, I think understand the problem. I'm not going to tell you that throwback pickups are the best pickups I've ever played there. It's not that they're. They're really cool because what they are is a replica of original PAF pickup. There's a very expensive pickup and a very unique pickup. And they do it a very unique way. And it. And here's the good. So let me give you the positive, the biggest positive. I have two Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul's. I have one Gibson Classic Les Paul. So if you look at the Classic, there's the studio, the classic, the standard, then like let's say called the premium. And then we'll go to custom shop right price wise. So understand the second to lowest, the Classic. I would absolutely, without a question right now, sell my two Gibson Custom Shop less Pauls. Absolutely. Okay. In fact, anyone who want to buy them and as long as you want to pay off the right price, you can DM me tomorrow. I have a. I have an RO and an R9. I love my classic better. The throwback pickups, which are 900 basically a set is crazy to think about. But keep in mind that 900 added to a classic Guitar price, now that I love that guitar more than a custom shop is half the price of a custom shop. So if you ask me, would I pick a Gibson Les Paul standard and put throwbacks in it over buying a custom shop? As long as I like that guitar, yeah. But the problem I have is I didn't pay 900 bucks. He sent them to me. So the problem I'm having is it's hard for me to say, buy this pickup for $900 when I didn't. And. And my problem is is that if he. If John would have sent me the pickup and let me try it, I would have bought it. But he was nice enough to let me have it. So. Yeah. Do you need them? It depends what you value. If you want a really good pickup, you can get a Lindy Fran set for $300. That is fantastic. You can get. Look, I. I like the Seymour Duncan's, you know, I like. So, I mean, those are great, but a bare knuckles, right? The Mules, fantastic pickups. But if you want to have a pickup that is literally a replica down to the craziest detail of what original PAF is that? Now go for 9,000, $10,000. Yeah. Oops. I say, yeah, you should do it, but it is a luxury purchase because I can't tell you that his pickups is better than anyone else's. It's just. It has a unique approach and. And that's where I'm at with it, so. And yeah, that's it. So highly recommend it. So would I, after I sell my two custom shops, would I buy another set of throwbacks and throw them another Gibson list? I might. I almost want to buy a set and throw them. That's what I've been trying to figure out. I almost want to buy a set and throw in my ro and keep the ro and get rid of the R. Nice. I don't know. I have no idea. The good news is this. I don't know if they're worth $900. I don't know how to explain that it's so expensive. I just know they're really damn good. They're really damn good. And so when somebody says, I can find something as good as that, I don't disagree with them. But the question, the real. The question for you might be, if you bought them, would you be disappointed? You would not be disappointed. You just wouldn't have $900 anymore. Okay. Jeremy says, hey, what if modelers had a pickup selection tool? If they can model amps and cabs, why not pickups they, There is, there might be. There's. I did a pickup modeler. There's a, there's. There's tech to do pickup modeling as well. So I mean, it could do that as well. But like we've discussed earlier that with the modelers that the really expensive ones really don't have some of the issues that some of the lower priced ones have when it comes to reacting to pickups, that's my experience. I, I don't notice like if I plug my, If I plug a, a PAF style pickup and then a super distortion pickup into my kemper, my kemper reacts to that. It literally does. It just. It's the same thing. Like it's the same as an amp. But I notice on my Spark, which I absolutely love too, it doesn't react as. As much. It seems more. But that's okay because when I'm playing through the Spark, I kind of want everything to just sound good at. And I don't really, I'm not really doing anything, you know, over the top recording with it or anything. I'm just playing and practicing. Christian has two questions. Do you ever see PR selling direct to consumers as the market gets worse and worse? So let's. And okay, so let's handle that question. Never say never. But I can tell you right now, they really, really, really don't want to. So I will tell you a story since we're way into bonus. This is gonna be the longest show I've ever done way into bonus. And since it's kind of. We're losing people now because it's so long, it's probably the best time to tell the story. So Fender decided to. They had some. If you guys remember, right, the boats showed up late and Fender had, you know, millions of dollars of inv. The dealers weren't taking. Accepting the, the, the product. Cause the market had slowed down. This is just like a year and a half ago, two years ago. And Fender started. Fender sells direct, but more importantly, discounted everything and selled everything discount direct to consumers. And I bashed them publicly for it. I didn't think it was fair to the dealers because I, they, they said Fender's excuse was that the dealers canceled the orders. My excuse was no, you made the dealers, you put pressure on the dealers. You made them buy the. Order the stuff, and then they can't afford to pay for it because the market slowed down. So I'm not, I'm not saying, I'm not assigning the blame. I'm just saying it's not as easy as Fender made it out to see, in my opinion. So what happened was Fender sold direct at a discount. In fact, they. They gave 30% off and they sold direct, essentially selling to US customers. What dealers pay for stuff. Screwing the dealers. So I batched them publicly. So this was never disclosed. I'm not under any DAs, so I'm going to tell you. So the. So the people at PRS reached out to me after that podcast, and they said, can we talk to you? And I said, sure. And it was really brief conversation. I don't feel like anything is wrong telling you guys this. They said, look, we have an overstock of SEs. You guys might remember this about one Christmas ago, we have an overstock of SES and we're were thinking about discounting them, and they were contemplating against. They said they never want to go direct customer, but they're contemplating going direct customer and they want to know how I feel about it. And I was like, what do you care what I feel about it? Well, look, it wasn't said. It was implied. Well, we really don't want you to bash us publicly on your podcast like you just did get Fender, right? And they said, we're thinking about giving the dealers a rebate. Right? So basically what their plan was, they said, what do you think about us selling direct consumers, but also given the dealers a discount too, so the dealers can sell too, and kind of work it out. And I said, well, that's way more than Fender ever did. So, you know, I guess if you ask me and it comes up on my show, that's what I'll say is that they did, you know, you did way more than Fender did for your dealers. And they said, thank you for the feedback, you know, but what do you think? And I go, you know, I think you should just. Just give the discount to the dealers. Let them reorder, but do whatever you want. You got to do whatever you want. And if you guys recall, Christmas, not this last December, December 4th, when they did that, that's when they were blowing out of the SEs. Remember that you can get SES for nickel. The dealers, they went through the dealers. So PRS decided to go through the dealers. PRs told me that it is. They just don't see. They don't want to go direct to consumer. They like supporting their dealers. They like their dealers. They want to stay that way. So the answer to your question is never say never. But I've seen now that they've really tried to hold on to the dealer network and keeping things going and keeping their integrity as much as they can. That's what I noticed. That is your second part of your question is how much capital do you think you would need to open a music store in 2025? How much capital you need? Well, first of all, if you open a music store, I think you should use gear. I would stay the hell away from most brands. This is, this is the, the Internet is going to win. Do I think mom and pops are going to die? No. But if they don't adapt, they're going away. I think use is a bigger thing to get into. How much, how much would I suggest? I would suggest that you have a. Well, first of all, you have to be smart and you have to get, you go out there and get the, the, the product, you know, used. I would say again, I don't know what state. And I'll tell you what I would do. If you ask me like right now, if I decided to open a store, which I wouldn't, but if I was gonna open a store, I would take probably $50,000 of inventory. That would be kind of what I'd focus on. And I'd have six, three to six months minimum of expenses covered. I'd probably go six just because I'm, I'm a nervous person by nature. You definitely need three, but six. And like I told you before, and I've said this before, when it comes to opening a store is no different than opening anything else me store. It's all about how you negotiate your lease. Your lease is going to make or break your store. Especially if you're now again, I'm assuming you're trying to open up a little store where it's just you and you just want to sell store, you know, stuff and be your own guitars. You're talking about a real store where you're going to have employees and all this stuff. That's a totally different conversation. But, but I would say $50,000 in inventory is a good thing to shoot for. That's what I would definitely have. So you have something. That's what I would open with. I would have a really good lease negotiated for sure. Because that's your basic biggest expense and then some working capital in case you're, you know, to help you through this, through how rocky the first half year goes. James says Music Go Round has the used only market well covered. No, James, there's not a Music Go Round in the city of Phoenix. And I live in Mesa, which is the fifth largest city in the country. There's no music around here. So the thing about used gear is this. Online, it's definitely all covered. Reverb has it all covered online. And then guitars. But reverb, no, that's the best thing about this. People are. Because here's how it works. Why you need $50,000 of inventory, it's not to sell to people. So if you were going to open a store. So back to your question. You want to open yourself a little music store? Okay, a guitar store. Let's just stick to guitar stores. You need some inventory to entice the. The trades and the buys. You need some capital to buy, because people are going to seek you out real fast. They're going to come in your store and they're like, I want to sell you this squire. I want to sell you this guitar. And you're like, okay, you got to be able to buy them. So you need capital to buy used gear. You need inventory to trade. So that's how you're going to get your customers. You're going to say, hey, come in here and trade in your used gear and get some better used gear. Something else you can use, something you want. That's how you entice it. I would say you could do that with $50,000. The reason is, is because everybody's going to say a number and the number. I don't know where they base it off of, but how I base the number off of. And again, what I don't know, Christian, is if we had a real serious talk about this, I'd have to know a lot of things. Like. Like how much is your mortgage? How much do you need to make a month? How much money do you need to make a month? Then I can tell you how much inventory it takes to make that monthly after costs, because that's the real number. To me, though, Rye came up with $50,000. I'm not looking at a calculator right now, but if you had $50,000, you're gonna flip about 15 to 20% of the inventory a month, period. That's just how it works. So if you had $50,000 of inventory, that's what you paid for it, you're going to try to sell that now for $100,000, right? Because the whole party uses double your money. So if you have $100,000 of inventory and you sell 15% of it in the first month, you have sold $15,000 worth of product, which is essentially $7,000 net. And then you're going to have rent, and your rent can be anywhere from $500 to $3000 depending on where you are and how much traffic. So again, and then you're have credit card processing, electric bill, some ta. Well, your sales taxes are separate. That's not in those numbers. So like I said, the whole point of the inventory is to figure out. You have to figure out how much you need to make and that's going to tell you how much inventory when you're starting out. But more importantly, you have to have choice inventory. You have to go out there and find it really, really well. So yeah. And again, this could, that could be a whole two hour discussion of how to do that. That. All right, then we're gonna finish up with Mr. Oh, sorry, we got grumpy. My guitar says, just wanted to say thank you for hosting this amazing guitar nerd gathering every week. Even though this one went long. And Mr. S says, yep, those price hikes are greedflation. Absolutely, man. Nuts. Nuts. You know what's funny is, look, I'm not here to villainize everybody that's out there raising prices. Some of it's legit. Some of it is legit. And my heart goes out. Look at. I don't want to pay more. No one is ever happy about a price increase. But you know, if they need to raise prices, they need to raise prices. But man, I just, like I said, I just feel like the same culprits pop out. Like really, you're the first to raise prices and the highest every time. Wow, what a shock. So it's always like, I don't know. All right, Devil chicken. Funny name. Says Phil. What are the main differences between a bad cat v and the Era 30? Besides being designed by Mark Sampson and the ability to combine channels in the era, I don't know, all the. Look, all the bad cats. Let me just, let me just do this and make things easy with Bad cat. Out of all the bad cats I've ever played, the Mark Samson era is uniquely different than the others. Notice I didn't say better. It's a great amp. I even said it's one of my top five best sounding amps I've ever played through. It is a different animal than the other amps. So the reason I tell you that is if you've never played any bad cats, first of all, you need to get your hands on some and try them. But if you have understand that if you played the. The cub, if you've played, you know, the, the black cat, if you played, you know, the. What's wrong with the metal one, they're not like the Mark Samson one. They're just different animals. The Mark Samson era is really nice amp. It's like I said, it's. You know what it is the era 30. I would say when it comes to Vox clones, amps that are like voxes but do what I like. It's kind of like how I praise Friedman over the Marshalls. If I'm praising the. The Vox guys over Vox for me. And there's a lot of great ones but I'm just going to tell you the two that stick them in Dr. Z and the bad cat era. Those two amps to me are the first ones where I plugged in and go, wow, this is the Vox thing. And it works with my playing and it works with me and I like it. So that's just my thoughts on that. And then we'll thank you Christian for saying last super chat. And this one is Arnis who says for the overtime. Love the show. Thanks for all you do. Thank you. This was overtime today. I'm sorry it went long. A lot of cool subjects though. You guys are awesome. I will have the. The Kyber Deep Dive for you guys. It's filmed, I just haven't edited. I got to put it together and I'll finish that up. It'll be this weekend. My hopes and plans is for tomorrow. Worst case it will go to Sunday and then. But worst case. So if you guys are curious about the. The new Kyber and Deep Dive, I I hope you guys check it out and. And I want to thank you all. And then if you're a patron or think about patron Friday. No, Sunday, Sunday's clinic. So we have live clinics every week on patreon if you're $10 and above. So if you're interested, you just pay $10. You don't have to pay for the year, it just gives you a discount. If you do, you pay $10 and you get to see live clinics. And then all the clinics are backlogged so you can see them all. Plus I do some instructional videos. The point of the clinic is I do a clinic, a theme every week and then you can ask me questions. And it's not like here the last. The biggest one we had is 13 people live at that time. So let me just tell you, you're getting your questions asked. But this Sunday's clinic, I'm just telling you so you know, is how to set up a Paul Reed Smith Tremolo Bridge. And the only reason I'm doing this is because the patrons asked. But also there's not a whole lot of videos on the Internet about this. So I went and looked and I watched them all, and there was like, six, and none of them were detailed. So I. I really feel like this is gonna be really cool. So if you're curious about that clinic, I'm just letting you know that that's how the weekly clinics work. As always, guys, I wanna thank you so much. It was such a good show. And I'll let you know what happens to the N4, how that all plays out. And the rest of you, go play guitar now. Maybe spend some time with your friends and families and have fun. All right, guys. Thank you guys. And Know youw Gear. The Know youw Gear podcast. The Know youw Gear podcast is brought Patreon members, channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible.