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Today's episode is brought to you by Patreon members. Thank you for making this possible. The Know youw Gear Podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear Podcast. The end of the year. This is the last one. 2024 was a. It was over in a minute, right? It was a fast year. It was crazy. Uh, so I'm excited. I hope you guys are excited as well. And we have a lot to talk about, a lot of cool subjects. I think a lot of cool questions already came in. And of course, we'll always have some subjects live and questions live. We should just get into some stuff. What have we got to talk about? I saw the first question. The first one was from my logify. I'm going to say MyLogify. Hello, Philip, what do you think of the Iron Ball SE you had before? Did you keep it? No, my buddy Joe has it now. Says, how did you like it? Well, you know, I said it in that video that I prefer. The Fireball 25 feature set on the Iron Ball SE is way superior. I mean, Hub Delay, Reaver Boost, you know, you know, well, Noise Gate and Attenuator are in the Fireball. So just having to delay, reverb the boost controls is really a nice amp. It's a really good amp. My critique of it was I thought the clean channel was a little too bright. And when I got the clean channel, just where I like it. And when I say too bright, I mean mostly because when you run pedals through it just the pedals just seemed a little tinny and they didn't. They didn't seem sound really great. So as a pedal platform, it wasn't, as was my favorite the. But clean, just even clean with the guitar. Unless the guitar was big and full and throaty. The guitar, the amp sounded a little too thin for me in my preference of amps where I like more of, like, you know, some of the softer Fendery cleans, or I like them prefer them. So that was my critique. But when you can get it, I could get the fire. Iron Ball. Iron Ball SE to sound great clean. But because they were sharing the eq, the distortion then was a little muddy for me, and I wasn't in love with it. And like I said, great amp, but not, hey, thumbs up, great amp, but not necessarily, you know, my favorite amp ever. And so that was my preference. So that's why my buddy Joe has it now, however, the Steve Morris amp, which is essentially the same amp with those fixes. So obviously Steve Morris has the same opinion as me. Because what is different on the Steve Morris Iron Ball se, basically is. What it is, is the things I wish that the first one had. It's just a slight adjustment. It's a little bit more punchy, gain less distortion. It's less distortion, a little bit more punchy, and the clean is just a little warmer. That's my personal. So it's just my preference. But I like the se, like I said, as an amp out there on the market. I mean, the differences between the two. And so, you know, that's just my preference. There's no quality concerns between the two amps. There's nothing between the amps except for those tonal characteristics. You could be the exact opposite. You could literally love the Iron Ball SE and think that the Steve Morris is too dark and muddy for you. It happens. It just depends. It depends on your style of playing. It depends on the cabinet you're running through it, it depends on the room you're in, and it depends on the guitars you use. So that's a big, big deal. So that's one element. And for my style, you know, that's why I preferred it. But otherwise, great amps. I'm a big Engel fan. I like Engel a lot as an amplifier company. I think they're one of the most underrated amps. They're one of those amps, like, I always love it when somebody says who uses Engel? And I'm always like, you know, what's funny is if you watch endorsements, you know, rockstar endorsements. Yeah, I guess it's who plays Engel. I mean, there's a few, obviously tasty players that are playing them, for sure. But when you look at studios, in the studios, you know, how many guitar players that you love had an Eagle on their tracks? I mean, there's. It's something. You know, everything. It's a color palette. Everything has a place and a reason. Engel is definitely used way, way more than anybody gives it credit for, especially in the studio. One of my favorite guitar players is. Is Paul Gilbert, and he uses an Engel Fireball. I believe, in the studio from time to time to get kind of like that big distortion sound, you know, just high gain, lots of gain. And then, of course, I'm. But again, so you guys know, I'm not saying, because I know some of you is going to go, no, this person uses it and this person. No, I know who use it. I'm just saying there's a lot of people you don't know using it that use them. As well. Tyler says. Did you see The Squire Paranormal 12 String Jazz Master? Any thoughts on the Electric 12 Strings? I did see it. I'm a big fan. I like. Some people don't like those giant headstocks and a lot of the stuff. I thought it was cool. You know what I like? There's a lot of things I like about certain guitars, you know, like Epiphone and, and Squire and Gibson and Fender and prs and every guitar has something I kind of really appreciate about. One thing I love about Squier in particular is it's really the like just do crazy stuff brand a Fender. You know, there's a lot of guitars that Squier makes that are really cool and then they make a Fender version and backup. So you know, a lot of them. I know they're recreations of old, old Fender ones. They're not making any anymore. But you understand what I'm saying. They do some crazy fun stuff but sometimes they do stuff with Squier and they never do the Fender version. I'm always like so sad. So. But the Squire stuff is cool and that's one of the guitars I think was cool guitar. I'm. I already got my 12 string fixed though, which is my Dane Electro right there. So that's. That's for me but for the channel. I mean maybe it's a guitar could go on a. On a geeky stuff ride, so to speak. We're starting to load up the lists now. We do the same thing as the podcast, about 50 episodes of the geeky stuff, you know, kind of Deep Dive series. And so we're loading in the guitars for the year for 2025. What you know, and then we, we try to. I try to, you know, space them correctly so it's not like too many of one type of guitar hitting you at one time. And when I say type, we do. If you haven't noticed, the. The Deep Dive series playlists are by price. So it's price is how I try to filter. So I try not to hit you with too many $3,000 guitars, too many $200 guitars in a row, stuff like that. Trying to space it out. We also space out this interesting thing. Maybe it's not interesting. I don't know if it's interesting whether you guys are aware of it or not. Lately we've been doing so many bonus podcasts for the patrons. Things come up on those and I try to bring some of that stuff back over here. One of the things that came up was I didn't know no one knew this. So this is something I guess I never thought about. I never talked about it or said anything. I never really put any thought into it. I kind of just thought. Sometimes I just think like, well it's what you see will be obvious to you what I'm doing. Not only do I do I parcel out the guitars throughout the year. Like in other words, $100, 200, you know, price point effective guitars, three $4,000 guitars, you know, small builder guitars. So in other words, like I try. I can't do everything even man, I can't. I just can't. Not in a year. But maybe over the years, you know, it'll come across even, you know, if I highlight the Fender guys, you know, the big guys, then I highlight the small guy, you know, building guitars and if I highlight a, you know, a cheap, you know, inexpensive brand, then I try to hit a more expensive brand. And if I hit too many expensive and inexpensive brands, I hit mid range brands. The other thing I do is by country. I try to get as many countries in, in the, in the show as possible. And we. I'm looking at, I have a report that I track so you guys know I'm not just guessing and shooting from the hip. We have a report, it tells us, I'm looking at right now, what videos were profitable for us, what videos weren't, what videos you liked. In other words, what got most engagement, what got most subscriptions. It all goes into a report for me and I look at it, you know, month to month but usually at the end of the year and kind of go okay, what do I need to do better or what did we do that was not interesting last year? If it matters to you guys, I just like said I never really gave this stat out before but I'm going to give it to you now. We did, I'm going to give it to. I can't give it lowest to most but I'll get you generally there. We did one guitar made in Germany. One guitar was made in Chile, one guitar was made in Finland, one guitar was made in Mexico, five guitars remain Indonesia. One guitar was made in Italy. One guitar was made in England. Sixteen guitars were made in China of course because it makes sense. 25 guitars made in USA. I know, I was shocked because I usually do slant the two more USA made guitars on the channel. Like I told you, it's just a USA pride thing. I try not to do that too much. This year was definitely the most amount of USA products to where it was the by far dominated By a large. A large margin. So that's. That's something I'm conscious about. So next year, I'm not saying I'm not going to do it. I'm not saying I'm going to decrease things by mass amounts, but I will try to even out, like I said, the price points, the type of guitars. There's a new big change coming. You know, I leaked you guys last week that it's coming, but I won't tell you it is. That it's going to make it to where it's just going to be the coolest thing ever. I don't know how. I don't. I'm. Like I said, I'm so, so stoked. It's definitely one of those things. It's either going to make the channel level up in a way that you're all like, yeah, or y'all hate it. And then I'll have to go back. Okay. All right, let's. Let's go to a Guitar mods. Music says, hello, Phil. What is the difference between 85, 50. Oh, did we do this last week? Is this. Is this Bleed Over? Hold on, let me. This is Bleed over, right? No, it's not. No, this is from today. Okay. All right, let's go back to it. Guitar mods and music. Guitar mods. Music says. Says, hey, Phil, what is the difference between 8515s's made by GNB that are in my 2017 S2. And the ones with the plain black. Plain black on them with just a sticker. Bought a pair thinking it would be identical. So they are. They, meaning Paul Reed Smith, are the most difficult when it comes to pickups. I don't know if, you know, they don't really give you a lot of information about their pickups. They keep that stuff very close. In fact, it's. Sometimes it's very hard to get specifications even on what magnet is in what pickup. Of course, I go on forums and I can read information, and I have friends that work at prs and I've gotten information over the years. But specifically to have it, like, stated in marketing materials, like, this is how we make our pickups. It's very difficult. Let's see if things have changed. Because sometimes I hate it because I'll say something and then they've made a change. And then you guys go, well, I went on their website, so let's go to PRS right now. Guitars and Pierce Guitars and let's go to. I'll share with you guys in a second. I just need to get there, if you guys don't mind products, we're going to go to accessories. I can share with you guys now. Let me stretch that out so you can see that. That's weird. Okay, let's go products by category. Pickups. Let's do something like the. I know you said 85 15, but let's take something like the 5909. Let's see what they're giving us for information now, so. Oh, I'll not go too. So now they are telling us. So that is interesting. So that's cool. So they're. Now they're giving us more specs. They used to not tell us what magnets and stuff were in there. So I was just wondering if I could check because here's why I'm not saying anything. But this is a conversation I had with a bunch of them a while back about how not having information. So I. And they seemed not like they were. Like nobody could know. They were just like, why would anybody care? So I was wondering if it maybe got updated or changed in this. I'm not seeing the 8515s listed here. I wonder. So it's something we can figure out. So the changes. So, you know, let me get out of the screen because otherwise I'm looking at the wrong stuff. So back to your question, so to speak. Let's go back here. The difference is, I've noticed they've changed things over the years, but I don't know if it's because they've changed manufacturers or if they've changed formula. Look, it's very common for companies to modify and change things. So to answer your question, I don't know. I just know that they've. In personal conversations with them, they've talked about how they've really spent time voicing the pickups for the guitar series themselves. So it's not so much a direct clone as a clone, but then with a voicing change is what the impression I got from the conversations, if that helps at all. Bill says my boss IR2 introduces much noise on some amps. Yep. Any ideas? Yeah, it's because. It's because I have the same problem. My experience with boss pedals that I absolutely love and still use is amps like Mesa Boogies. Man, they just could get really. That noise level that hissing can get really high just having them not on, but on the pedal board, just a buffered. I think it has to do with. I'm not an expert in that category, but I would imagine it has something to do with the buffered pedals just sending, maybe juicing the signal and making the amp just reacting to it could be something else. But that's what I've always took it as. And the reason I say that is I've just kind of learned like these pedals not for this amp, so to speak. And I use different pedals and the more I find the more you use of those type of pedals with an amp like that, the louder it gets too. So it gets problematic. But yeah, so yeah, you just have to adjust. That's as far as I know. There's. Well, actually let me give you the real technical crazy pedal answer, which is there are pedals that you can put those pedals into a loop. And so when you, you turn those pedals off, they're true bypass. They're just like boxes. There's all kinds of stuff like that. That's where I'm not a huge, you know, I'm not into that per se. Right. I'm really into keeping my pedal board simple. So that's where I would definitely check out some of the pedal driven channels that like to give advice on like more detailed pedal information. I, I've done a lot of pedal videos and I'll do more too. But I just, when it comes to complex pedals, pedal boards, it's just, it's just not my thing. I like, I, I don't think I've ever had more than maybe eight or nine pedals on a board max. And that's usually, that's like a lot for me. And I like to keep my rig as simple as possible because of my lifestyle. My lifestyle is I don't, you know, I don't have usually a sound check. Usually if I'm playing with somebody, it's very fast. It's like I need to get up, play, get off. And the last thing I need to do is figure out which pedal is causing a problem or what cables loose or whatever. Just keep things easy. Fast. Fast and easy. All right, let me go over here to. Ah, see this is all nice. I'm like sometimes my screens don't work. Sometimes they do. They're working now. Alex says how do local shops appraise my used guitars to determine what they offer me in, in a trade. Also, what do they look for when they inspect guitars? Okay, so this I've done so many times when it comes to trading and, and buying guitars, mostly, as you guys know, I mostly did trading more than buying. But it's the same, same thing, same logic applied. You have a Sense. This is why, like I said, you have to think funny. Funny thing. Let me, let me tell you an insight that I got since doing the Guitar center trading video, okay? So when I went back, as you guys know, if you watch that video and if you haven't, shame on, you should watch the video because it's fun. It's a fun video. So it's. Anyways, when I did the video where I went to Guitar center, traded in some guitars and got a guitar, I, as you guys saw, that Telecaster was on pond clearance. I wouldn't, I couldn't have it for like a couple more weeks. So I had to go back a couple weeks after the video and go get it. When I was there, I got to talk to a couple customers, but also a couple employees, including the store manager. And in the discussion with the store manager, he said something, although he said a lot of things that was really cool, but he said something that really made it click for me and probably is going to make it click for a lot of you right now that have watched that video. I traded in the Harley Benton, the Squire and the Epiphone. And a lot of you, including myself, were shocked that they gave me so much value for that Harley Benton. And what he told me was he has a local guy who loves Harley Benton and comes in the store and buys up pretty much every Harley Benton they get on trade. So he's got, he's just a big Harley Benton fan and he loves Harley Benton's. And this is what. When he said that. So, you know, I was like, okay, now everything's clicked in. I had that same kind of situation in my store. Sometimes you have a customer and they're just die hard. Like they like a brand or they like a type of guitar or they like a certain thing and they come in all the time looking for it all the time. They're like, to the point where it's, it's in there. It's in there. Hello. Like, hey, Phil, any got any new boss pedals lately? You know, like, they're just always looking for a type of product and you just know it. So when a customer comes in to trade you in something, sometimes the value isn't just off of like, oh, on reverb, they're selling for this. Like you, you already know, you're like, you know, I'll just assign a name. Mike is always looking for a Harley Benton and when he sees this Harley Benton, he's going to want it. So I'm going to give, I'm just going To I'm going to look up, get a general idea of what they go for, and I'm going to give this guy max power for it and just have it happen and quickly. So this is where I've talked about. I've said the saying before many times, that taking sand to the beach, when you take stuff in to sell to a ME store, especially me store, not so much pawn shops, but pawn shops too. Mewstore. Remember, they already have this stuff, right? So you either have to give them something that they think is interesting, that they know that it's different than their current inventory, and they can sell it. Not something different than their inventory because they don't. They don't sell and they don't want that. Or you have to give them something that they flip a lot of. Right. If you want to get good value for it. And that's why you have to sense that. So to the heart of your question, which is really, how do they determine it? It Sometimes it is as basic as we did a search on ebay, Reverb. This is what they're going for. We'll give you half of that or 60% of that. And that's the simple equation. But let me give you a scenario where I would do this personally to my own customers. They would come in with a guitar, and it doesn't matter. It didn't matter. I would pull up the guitar. I already know. Like, let's say I'm trying to think of a good example, because there would be guitars they'd bring in, and I would go, I know if I pull up on Reverb, these guitars are all day selling for 600 bucks, right? Okay, so 600 bucks. And on trade, I want to give them 60% of that. Okay? But this particular guitar, I just know I have no customers for. I don't have that kind of person coming to my store very often. Right? Whatever it is, maybe it's like a dobro. You know, a dobro is a pretty example. I never had a ton of dobro players. I even had a dobro teacher, and I still didn't have a ton of dobro players. It was tough. And I told him when we hired him, he was an amazing slide dobro player. And I told him when we hired him, I go, you know, it's gonna be hard to get you students. You're gonna have to do other stuff besides dobro. And then what happened was exactly that he got half a dozen dobro students. The majority of students were just traditional guitar players. Dobro comes in Even if it's cool, I'm like, just, I don't have the customers for this. I don't have that. Cat's not walking in the store very often. So I don't want to be into it too heavy. So I would be a little light on the trade value. I'd be like, they're going for six. I want to be into it for 250 because I might have to go 350 to get rid of it. And I know that the exception to that is you can throw it on reverb and stuff. And that's a bigger factor now than before. But that's not usually what they want to do. I didn't want to do that because reverb introduces fees. It's. I mean, think of this. There's so much cost. And again, I'm just, I can only tell you about my store at that time, not stores now. At that time, the cost of running my store was so expensive. The idea to have to pay somebody else fees to get something sold after, I'm like, dude, I'm in a high traffic shopping center. I'm paying $7,000 a month rent, you know what I mean? Which for me was a lot in rent. You know, I'm like. And plus the expense of the employees, plus the expense of electricity, plus the expense of the inventory is like, I didn't want, you know, I didn't want to have to go through a third party seller to sell this item. Because, you know, the whole point is I want people to come in the store. Plus, you know, the way I looked at it then was a customer in the store is a customer possibly for a life. A customer on reverb is just a customer on reverb. It's just, you know, I mean, I could just sell that crap out of my house to people online. I don't have to have a physically have a store with a community and a personality attached to it. So anyways, that's my whole point with that. That's those things. And the reason I tell you that is because there's, that's the. All the intangibles to a trade. So there's so many things factored in. So there's also other things factored in by, by the way, if you've done modifications to it, the condition of it, of course, but also how many they have at that given moment. As you saw with the guitar center trade, which is why I like videos like that. The thing they undervalued the most, the epiphone. Any one of you would agree out of those three guitars, the most valuable, coolest guitar was the Epiphone. But guess what? They were saturated with them. They had too many epiphones, too many used too many new. Last thing they wanted was another epiphone. That epiphone, if it's sold, it's selling in the place of 100 other epiphones they want to get rid of. And if they get rid of the 100 other ephones, it's going to take forever to get to that one. So that was sand of the beach. That was the one they didn't want. That factors in that illustration. I couldn't have wished for a better illustration video on trading because of the way they valued those three trades and how they looked at that. That was a perfect example of, of we want the Harley Benton. So we gave you value for it. Which we didn't know at the time of doing the video. Right? We didn't know that. But now knowing like they had a customer for that, so that's why they were high on that value. The Squire, they gave a basic value, but again it's a basic product. Okay, fine. And then the upphone, they gave away low value because they didn't want it. That was their go away price. So that's kind of how it illustrated. You know, there's part of me that wished, and I've told you guys before, that I didn't trade in the Epiphone only because then in the video it would illustrate like you don't always have to do a trade. But you gotta understand in my logic, I just wanted to complete the transaction. I'd already put in the time and energy and, and I wasn't into those guitars very much. So. So that's the way I've decided to do it. Again, it was based on the situation. But that's all the things that can factor into a trade or buy on a guitar, whether it's a store or not. Keep in mind they're a business. So you add that in. But their guitar players add that in too. One of the best trade deals I ever got at a guitar store ever was actually at a guitar center. I traded in a guitar. Never forget this. It was a Parker. I had, I had a Parker. It's a very long story because I've always had a bunch. But I mean I had this one in particular and I was like, I just had that and I forgot what else? Like two or three other items. There was a Gibson Les Paul at the Guitar Center. I'm Pretty sure that Gibson Les Paul is the one that Ralph currently has. It was like a smoking deal guitar deal. And I just, I was like, I gotta get this guitar. It's a great Gibson. It played amazing, sound amazing. It was just ridiculously underpriced. And so I traded in this Parker. And I remember they gave me way more than I thought. They were like, the first price, I thought for sure I was gonna have to do a reaction thing. Like, they gave me the price and like, oh, you can do better than that. Instead, they gave me the price and I was like, wow. I didn't, you know, I didn't, I didn't show my card, so to speak. I went, I went, oh, okay. Any better than that? And they're like, no, man, that's on the high end. I'm like, okay, yeah, it was on the high end. Thanks. And here's why. The guy behind the counter bought it. So he gave me a price. He went to his manager. I found this out, actually, as I was in the store later. We found out before he even left, before we even left, he went to his manager and said, I want this guitar. He goes, I want this personally, and I don't want this guy to leave with it. He doesn't want me to get upset and go, I'm not taking that and I'll leave with the guitar. He wanted it. So he gave, he, they, they up the, the fair value. And I think he only had to give them 10% over their. Whatever they bought it for as the employee discount deal. So that's how it worked. So I thought that was really funny. So I also had another experience like that at Guitar center where. With an amp. Where they had an amp. And they took it on trade and I, I went to go buy it and they told me like, oh. They're like, the assistant manager actually wants it. And I'm like, oh. And they're like, but you know, if you want to buy it, we have to sell it. Because we didn't, we didn't put it away yet. And it was kind of funny. And when they took it on trade, that's what happened. They. They got it because they wanted it. So all those things factored in. So let's see. Fret level Midnight says. So he lowballed you because he wanted for himself. No, he highballed me. No, he. He gave me. So you give me reference. He gave me a thousand dollars over what I was thinking they were going to give me. So that's. So I just give you a reference. I Don't, I don't remember all the detailed prices, but just to say when he gave, when they gave me the price, it was, it was just, I say a thousand, I'm rounding up. It was like not 8, $900 more than I thought they were going to give me on the trade value. So I was like, oh, let's see, hold on a second. Just none of your business says. Is the Tim Pierce course, guitar course, still around? Yeah, it's, it's called the Tim Pierce Masterclass. You can go to it. Most likely we'll do something with them in January. Something, you know, I like to give them a discount because they give you guys a discount. So they give you guys a discount and we kind of pass that along to you. So you guys understand because I promoted that. I, you know, I've never had as many people ever since I've been doing YouTube compliment my playing as much as they have since I took that course. And I've talked about this before. It's not like it was the technical information, it was just the. Almost like his philosophy on things is what did it for me. So anyways, we will get a deal from them and pass it on. It's very important to me because one, you guys saved some money and two, whether you realize it or not, this year I just watched a documentary. So you guys know I watched a documentary on Christmas Day about all of these horrible, horrible criminal. Basically, allegedly, I better. I'm not gonna say their names cause I'll get in trouble. Allegedly criminal companies who pretty much advertise exclusively on YouTube. And you guys can feel free to put in who you think they are because you guys know who they are. If you watch any YouTube, you've seen all these companies, all of them, I don't want to say 100%, but if there was, I think there was 10 companies or eight companies out of that. Oh, almost every one of them. Maybe one, maybe one didn't approach me in the last two years or last this year at least, and offer me huge dollars for me. Huge dollars. I mean thousands of dollars. No, hundreds of dollars. We're talking thousands and thousands of dollars. And sometimes not tens of thousands, but you know, let's just say in the five figure range, right? You know, so now you're talking five figures and I was offered honey pot. Yeah, honey was one. There's a lot of companies. And again, allegedly. I'm not saying they've done anything wrong. I'm just saying there's all this, I watched this whole thing about all of the things that are out there with these companies. And we said no to all of them. So. And I say that for one reason is like, I don't know anything about those companies and I don't use their products. That was the main thing. It wasn't. I'd like to give you this, like, oh, you know, this health company was, you know, it's not like, oh, we don't. We know they're shady. They just seem shady. Everything seemed legit. It's just I wasn't versed in their company and the amount of work it would take to Dee Forbes says the name of documentary. When I say documentary, it's like one of those YouTube long videos. I will put a link to it in this description to that channel. And again, allegedly, Allegedly. I don't need to get sued, right? I'm just telling you, I watched a video and only reason I say anything is because I literally was like, oh wow. Oh wow. Like wow. Because those companies came at us with some pretty big dollars and this, this video talks about why they're offering YouTube channels so much money. And some of the issues, and some of them are legal issues and some of them are really sketchy sounding issues. And anyways, my point is, you know, this year the only like paid. What do they call it? They call it integration. You know when I'm like, hey guys, click this link and do this thing. Was the CM Country Music Association. Because only thing they asked me to do is suggest that you guys go to their YouTube channel and subscribe. That's it. Funny story. I don't know if I'm allowed to tell funny story. I'm trying to think I'll keep it. I don't want to get out because they were really good to us and they've sponsored a lot of videos. I don't want to say anything. The only thing was funny was they only asked us to suggest them to subscribe to their YouTube channel, which is totally free. They just want. They. I don't think they asked me to, but I don't think it was. I think it was. I got the vibe I'm not supposed to say it's free even though it's free. So my point is, um, that's the thing we did because that was the integration because I was like, oh, Country Music Association. Believe it or not, I'm a huge country fan. Used to be in a country band. I told you guys I worked at Old Tucson. I didn't tell you I used to be in a country band. Should have told you that so. And by the way, my Spotify list. You guys know I like punk rock, by the way. You'd probably all be shocked how much country I consume on a daily basis is insane. I am from Tucson, Arizona. I'm sorry, guys. This country is just part of the thing for me. But anyways, my point is. Yeah, so Tim Pierce, we'll. We'll try to do a promotion in January. Because I love Tim and I like his lesson course. I use it. If you guys have other lesson courses, please use them too. But I've used his lesson course and you, you guys, I mean, literally, I've never had so many compliments doing anything. And I've. Since I've been playing guitar since when I started doing his stuff, so. All right, let's see what else? Let's see. I'm just seeing if you guys are clicking in on any of the subject matter, if there's anything I want to highlight. Sometimes I try to see if there's anything interesting that you guys have to add. Besides, we should drink eggnog. Fast Teddy. Fast Teddy333 says. Phil, when's the last time you picked up your 12 string? Probably, I'd say this morning, but that doesn't really count. This morning was for about maybe 15 minutes, so probably yesterday for about an hour was recording with it. So some guitars here on the walls, as you know, they're sometimes. Sometimes it's like that looks cool on the wall for the show. There's a little bit of that, but a majority of this is just what it is, is there's the thing you don't see, which I showed you guys a couple episodes ago. The closet. The closet in the rack. This is like how I pull guitars. I pull guitars from the racks and then I play and then I hang them here and then I just kind of alternating a lot of the guitars. So certain guitars I like for certain things. I'm still recording a lot of tracks and doing stuff, so. But yeah, I play that 12 string a lot, especially since I restrain it with eights. I have eight gauge set of Ernie Balls on it. Ernie ball makes an eight gauge set of 12 strings for it. Literally that set on that guitar, it's like effortless to play. Although. Although I was scared to death when I ordered them and put it on because I was like, oh, God, look at eights, huh? But nope, sounds great. Plays great. Dougl Dog wants to know if I had an experience with the Dane Electro Longhorn basses. Yeah, I did a video of one. I really Liked it. As you know, I'm a huge short, short scale bass fan. I play mostly 32 inch scale which is medium scale and short scale 30 inch bass. The slowly what turned into my pole position bass. The bass I play like the majority of the time now is a 30 inch scale bass. That's the bass I'm playing all the time. So I just like them. I think I've said this before. It's because I used to own a fretless. I played fretless for a long time and then now I like shorter scale basses because instead of a fretless I use more vibrato when I'm playing bass and I can get a fretlessly fretless E kind of vibe and sound from bending. I really like it. So there you go. Oh, okay. J Smorry Music says, hey, have you found dirt pedals, distortion pedals and overdrive pedals that sound okay on their own but come alive when stacked with another pedal? Oh sure, sure. Just got the victory v1 jack which really shined once you put the cocoa mid boost in front of it. I find for most the pedals, overdrive distortion pedals, I like just like amps, a boost pedal, some kind of either whether I'm a regular, a regular boost or a clean boost pedal. I really like stacking overdrives. The literally the rig I was using this morning all morning for recording is a stacked stacked pedals, two stacked on top. I love stack pedals. So you know that's also how I like to run fuzz pedals. I generally don't run my fuzz, my fuzz pedals by themselves. If I'm running fuzz, I'm an overdrive pedal or I'm running fuzz into an overdriven amp is how I like like that sound. So stacking pedals is for sure something I like. I like the chaos of it. I like, I like when two pedals are going. Usually you have a lot of stuff going on and you're fighting it and you're trying to control feedback and craziness and there's just something in the energy that musically moves me than everything being tight and very clean and like a noise gate where it sucks down real quick. Noise gate to me is my most. I hate it the most. I use noise gate a lot because I do YouTube so especially like today I'm having noise gate today. That's why you're not hearing the amp running right now for the video when we do the gear of the week. I'm choking everything Down. I don't enjoy that, but it is a functional tool. I know some people use noise gate as part of their music and style, but I don't have a style like that. So noise gate to me is a necessity tool. But it really takes the. To me it sucks my energy down. It just. I like like the. The chaos of two pedals or two amps or two things happening on top each other. Just the. I like it to go crazy. Christian says, hey Phil, got my work bonus in Amazon gift cards. Ah, then nice, nice. Bonuses are nice, right? For those people that don't have a choice. What sellers do you like besides gear nuts on Amazon? I kind of a psa. I really like the music zoo. I'm not really familiar with who all the sellers are on Amazon. With Amazon for me, I try to stick with companies I know because, you know, Amazon is to me is not as bad as ebay, but it's worse than reverb when it comes to. I'm freaked out about getting some fraud stuff, you know, know, I. I had this. I had this happen to me on Amazon. This is funny. This is a story we were just recently talking about with the patrons. Is it Copicks? Is that what it's called? Copics with an X? No. What is it called? I can't remember what they're called. Co. Pix. Pins. Copic. Copic, yes. Copic? Yes. My daughter got into this thing called Copic. Is that what they're called? I think that's what they're called. I don't know. I'm messing this up. They look like whatever I'm looking at. Anyways, my point is my daughter got into these pens and I bought some on Amazon and they didn't. They didn't work that great. And so we found out they were kind of like. They're like fake or something, I think. Right. So my point is, is, you know, you can get fake stuff on. On Amazon. So I'm. I'm weary of sellers that I don't know that. That don't sell off Amazon that I don't know. So that's. I would say, you know, stick with the sellers you do know if that helps. Chicago Music exchange is good. I've had good experiences with them overall. And so, you know, I had one not so great experience with them, but I mean I had 10 good. So that just, you know, I'm just highlighting. I like the law of averages. I don't have a burn a bridge off of one bad experience. To me, if like the sum is Good, then I'll keep going. Guitar Grumpy Mike Guitar says thanks for the great content in 2024. Can't wait for all the KYG goodness coming in 2025. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I'm excited too. Couple changes coming to the podcast for 2025. Nothing that's going to be super different. A couple things to improve, of course, but some changes. I don't say a lot, but some changes to the review content that I think is going to make it better and more diverse with the amount of gear we. We hit. So that's the big thing, right? I'm trying to. I'm trying to hit more stuff. I told you guys the stats earlier about, you know, where guitars are made and the price points, but you know, we try to introduce as many new brands as we can. So same thing. We're trying to interject more new brands next year. Midnight sun says, what kind of amp is that in the background? It's so pretty. That is a Amplified Nation. This is the Amplified Nation Wonderland Overdrive. I have to look at it every time because I don't know if it's the Overdrive Wonderland or Wonderland Overdrive amp. This. I have reviewed so many of the Amplified Nation amps and I gotta tell you, every one of them was in my opinion, just an amazing sounding, stellar sounding amplifier. Ample phonics and gain is definitely one of my favorites for sure. And you know, as I would go through this series of amps as they send me different amps, you know, here's the weird thing about this because I'm just going to tell you this connects to this, to the Amplified Nation, especially because I had this conversation with a close friend as recently last week and I thought it was funny. He was like, which amp did you like best? And I go, well, I like this amp the absolute best. This is my amp. Like when I say my amp, I mean, I'm not saying it's the best of all those. I'm not saying it has the best distortion. I'm not saying it has the best clean. I'm not saying it sounds the best. I'm saying like for me, what I do, my style, my feel, what I want out of an amp. This, this is it. This is absolutely it. No questions. Holy grail. Amplified Nation amps and maybe even amps in general. However, this is what I told him. I'll tell you, I could have stopped, like any Amplified Nation amp they sent me. I could have just. If I never heard another one, that one amp would have been the Same. I would be saying that too, and I would be fine with it. It was only, it was only as I tried all their amps and then you go, oh, okay. And I kind of learned from trying them all, which is like, okay, the still string singer, which I think is the rising phoenix now or something, you know, ultimate clean. Not a lot of gain. Just sounds huge, you know, Right. Throw some pedals in front of it. It was a great amplifier to me. The amphonics gain has the higher gain sounds, which is great. And then an amazing clean tone and a great reverb. So I was like super happy. This, to me is all about that Robin Ford, John Mayer, Joe Bonamassa thing, whatever you want to call it. That light, light overdrive where the, the note just sings even though you can't, even your ear can't detect distortion. You're not hearing overdrive. But the, but the tone is good. Sean says plug into it. Well, we've. I've done a ton of times on the podcast, but there'll be an official video of it. But again, stuff like this, I like to really not be in honeymoon mode. And I was in honeymoon mode until about a month ago. And then I think now I'm more realistic with it. When I say realistic is like, I told you guys, I don't think you can review something if you don't have something negative and positive to say. And to me, a lot of times it's not that I, you know, I want to pick things apart, but I want to be able to say like, you know, I like it. But also, here are some things you might want to know. I like to give some pushback on it. And I find that when you first get a product, you're in love with it. So everything's positive, it's the honeymoon mode. But also the negatives are just what you're experiencing because it's new to you. And maybe that negative, I'll just tell you from my perspective, I've. Long time ago, years and years ago when I do a video now, back then, sometimes now, looking back, going, God, I said that was a negative. But now it's my favorite thing about the product. I wish I would have waited another four months or three months or 20 days or whatever it took. So really, really cool. So I'll have a video that will be in January of this amp and discussing it in detail and what I like about it and also, you know, what I learned from it, because this amp taught me more than probably any amp I've ever worked with. Or owned in dialing in other amps or pedals to do what this amp does. So the good news is, even though it's a super expensive amp and a lot of you are like, man, I don't know if I'm ever going to throw down the kind of cash for that. What I learned from this amp is I'll just. I think I said this before. I learned that most people, when they build up, most of us players, when we're building a pedal board, even though we've never really heard this amp, that's really what we're trying to get all the pedals to do is what this amp's just doing on its own. So you kind of realize, like, you actually know how to make stuff sound like this. It's just really nice to plug in that and have it do it without any other help. So the other thing too, so, you know, fun, since we're talking about it, is when I was working out, because I don't do scripting, I don't write a script, but I do write bullet points so that everything gets covered in the video. So I kind of don't have to go back and go, oh, I never mention that. Let me go and add that in. When I was kind of bullet pointing ideas out, one of the things I thought was, you know, I used to try to think of, like, things people are going to ask. And I'm like, oh, well, they're going to ask, obviously, if you're playing the John Maramp, are you running a clone through it? Well, as you guys know, I'm not a huge clown fan. And then I go, I mean, I don't hate the clown. I'm just not like a. Oh, the clown is the greatest thing ever. And I was like, oh, I probably should run a clown through that. And then that started a whole problem of, well, what clone do I run through it? So I had to go buy a clone. So I recently did that, bought a clone to run through this amp so I can demo a clone through this thing, because you get the idea. But yeah. So to answer your question, it's ample phonics and gain. It's the Wonderland Overdrive. Had it done in blue because of the song Neon by John Mayer. I was like, I wanted it, like, neon blue. I wanted it. I said that in a video and somebody's like, it's not neon blue. It's like. It's like turquoise. I'm like, yeah, I know. But I. What I. When I told Taylor Cox at Amplified Nation, I didn't Tell him that color. I said I wanted it bright, neon blue. And then he. He picked a color that made it look like that. So K Dub says, any nautical will do. You know, I was going to get a nautical, but they were still backordered when I did it. So I got another one. It's fine. What I got is. Is acceptable. It's fine. This comes from Michael, who says, hey, thanks for all the great content. I gotta use Jaguar and adjusted the truss rod. The next day, the action was off again, and it seemed like the truss rod needed adjustment. Should I be concerned? Um, well, you. You. Yeah, a little concerned. A little. Because that doesn't mean anything yet. If the truss rod is slipping, in other words, like you're turning it and then it's basically coming undone, it's not really the correct term for what it's doing, but you know what I'm talking about. Like the. The relief is coming back in after you've straightened the neck out. It. It will be a. It could be a problem. However, however it. You adjusting your truss rod and then the guitar neck moving is not a concern. First of all, like I said, the guitar neck does not want to be straight. Okay? That is not a. It's not what the. The piece of wood wants to do. As you guys seen, if you give. If you kill a tree, cut up pieces of it and lay it out, it's not. It's natural. It's natural thing is not to stand perfectly. It's not to be a straight board, right? Go to Home Depot and find a straight board. I know we're talking about different grades of wood, but you understand what I'm saying? Like, try to find a straight board. It's a pretty hard thing to do, right? Especially on its own. So the truss rod is there to kind of make it be straight, right? Just kind of force it into that perspective. So the fact that it moves back, it's not a big concern. If it continually does that over and over again, then we might want to look at the truss rod, the end of the truss rod in that particular guitar, it's going to be a cap on the end of the rod itself. And that could be stripped or slipping. There could be issues there. So you might want to take a new cap. But I would take the cap off the end piece of the truss rod, take that off and look at the threading on the actual truss rod itself, the rod, and make sure it's fine. But not again. It's. It can be fixed. The only thing I'm Concerned about sometimes is sometimes the truss rod's broken and you don't know it, but it. What I mean by that is it's not very common. Again, these are very uncommon things where, you know, usually if it's broken, it's going to free spin, it's going to be really easy. But sometimes, because there's like wood dust in there and wood chips and things, and it's bound up and it's tight. So when you're turning it, it feels like it's tight, but really it's been broken and it's just kind of free spinning a little bit. Don't freak out. Okay, that's. Again, that's the one in a million thing. Well, one in a thousand. That's one in 10,000. It's one in a 10,000 thing. Okay, not likely to be your problem. But I need you to be aware that this is what you need to look for these kind of issues. But adjust your truss rod and your neck moves back the next day is not a big deal. Adjust it again and, you know. And wait. It happens. So, you know, sometimes you have to adjust two or three times for it to kind of settle out. Because again, it's got to settle. You don't have to wait three weeks. As we all know from a master. Master luthier. Dad, do a neck adjustment. But sometimes a neck adjustment doesn't take right away. It's not super easy. Fenders, to me, in my experience, are the least problematic. So these are not likely to have that problem because, you know, the maple is really, really hard wood and the truss rods are really good on a Fender guitar. So I would say make the adjustment again and pay attention. That's it. That's it. Why? Okay, there. Banana bread. Banana bread. That's a great saddle. Banana bread says, I got a Telly, Strat and a semi hollow Les Paul. What other kind of guitar would round out the collection? Love from Canada. So you got a Telly, a Strat and a semi hollow Les Paul. I don't know. A metal guitar. Get a headless guitar. Everybody hates it. When you say that, it'll change your life. You get a headless guitar, It's. You get a good headless guitar. They. You play it all the time. So easy and so effortless to play. I would say if you got a hollow body and you got a Stratton, a telly. I don't know. I don't know. You didn't say acoustic. You got acoustic guitar. That's definitely. Would definitely round out the collection here's my actual advice. I could name 50 guitars and none of them would be relevant. Here's what I will tell you. I would say I have found with me personally more luck in finding the slightly different guitars than what you have than the dramatically different. In other words a 12 string, a baritone. Those are a little too much, you know, like you don't need to go that crazy to those extremes like a. Like a. Like I said, a dobro or a sly guitar. I would say if I had a hollow body, a telly and a Strat, I would probably. Whether I played metal or not, I would probably want something a little bit more like maybe a Schecter or like something like an LTD or something just maybe not metal but something a little bit more modern. Think modern guitar. Don't think metal, just modern feeling instrument to see. It's a nice little change. Yeah, I like doing that. Sometimes I play the modern feeling guitars because I play a little faster. I play a little f. More effortless. It feels really good than the vintagey style guitars. I. I think it's because for some reason when I play vintage style guitars I slow down. Like my playing slows down, my thinking slows down. Everything just kind of feels more like spiritual where modern guitars feels more technical feeling to me and I just immediately like my. My mind and my body switch to that when I pick those instruments up. So something a little bit more modern. Will says thanks to you and Mrs. McKnight for all your great content this year. I bought a Les Paul classic this year. Gold top with 60s neck. Hard to find this combo. Yep. What's your favorite Les Paul neck? So my favorite Les Paul neck is. Is a 60s neck from like 2005 to 2008. I have really. I used to think that was a crazy thing to say out out loud, but it's absolutely true. I have found that I keep finding Gibson Les Paul's from the 2005-2006-2007-2008 era of Gibson's. Doesn't matter if it's classic or standards, as long as it's 60s neck. That neck Gibson's are all over the place. There's just, you know, I mean you can pick up four 50s, 2024 50s Les Paul standards. You can grab four 2024 Les Paul standard or Stan Les Paul 1960s. And the necks are slightly different and thickness and stuff. Just there's a lot going on. Remember, it's all at the end of it, at the end of its journey. It's handmade, right? It's A lot of, a lot of machinery, but then hands on and that hands, you know, they're, they people have different hands. So I just find for some reason I like those necks. I recently just got another 60s Les Paul and it's got the same neck as this over here, this gold top that I, that I like so much. In fact, they have almost identical necks, which is really crazy. And I had a feeling it would. So like I made the. I made the craziness to purchase it, and that's what I like. Does that mean I dislike all the other necks? No. Does that mean if. You know. So you know, I don't know why every time I talk like this, I get comments like somebody's like, oh, Phil, 2020, you don't understand. I'm like, look, I'm not saying this isn't good or bad. You asked me what I like. These are what I like. I've learned through trying so many guitars. This is the neck profile I like. And for some reason, Gibson did that neck profile those years. And whether you realize or not, different product managers take over in different parts of the companies. Look, Fender, Gibson PRs, you name it. Everybody has a product manager. Everybody has different insight. They do different things, different years. They. They change things about the guitars. And sometimes the neck profile changes because they're like, this is more like the 60s neck. Well, this is more like what we want the neck to be. Now, there's all kinds of reasons for what they do. I don't know what it is. I'm not super gonna deep dive into that. Maybe that's a trogly thing. Maybe on Troggy Channel. He explains why they're so dramatically different throughout the years with the Gibson necks. I don't know. My theory, my working theory with necks, just the thicknesses and how thick necks are and how thin necks are and just necks in general is. Comes from an analogy that Dana Carvey, the comedian Dana Carvey, gave about doing impersonations. And he said this thing, and I thought it was interesting. He said that when you impersonate a celebrity, eventually the celebrity starts leaning into the impersonation and becomes like an impersonation of themselves. So he was saying that at some point Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't even Arnold Schwarzenegger anymore. Anymore. When Arnold Schwarzenegger talks, not in even either acting as a character or in person, he's more like the impersonation of himself. It's his theory. And I thought that was interesting. And in other words, the exaggeration becomes the norm. Okay? And I've seen this theory before, by the way. They were saying, I watched a thing once, they were talking about like Bart Simpson from the Simpsons. Like he said I carambo once and it like landed and it was hilarious. So then the next episode, he had to say it four times. And next thing you know, he's just saying that all the time, right? And so again they, they, they just, you know, become the character themselves. The reason I say that is I think necks work like that too. I think what happens is you play a neck, maybe it's slightly thinner than like, let's look at this way, like in the 80s, you pick up an 80s guitar, you pick up the neck and the neck is probably like maybe an eighth inch thinner than a thick Gibson neck. And you're like, wow, this neck's thin. And then years go by, maybe you don't own that guitar anymore because that's what really literally what happens. And when you talk about that guitar, the story gets exaggerated, right? The story is like it was as thin as a saltine cracker. Like it was super, super thin. And then when guitar manufacturers recreate the neck and they make it exactly like how it was, you pick it up and go, no, this, they didn't do the neck, right? It was way thinner than this, or it was way thicker than this, or it was way different than this because you're remembering the exaggeration. So my theory is that guitar companies sometimes make the exaggerated necks because that's the feedback they get from the guitar players. I think this actually goes more to necks that are more than necks. So, you know, I think pickups do the same thing. I think pickups, one pickup was a little hotter than the standard pickup. And then people go, oh, it was like a flamethrower. And then the company reissues that pickup and they're like, this is not it. And so then the company over winds it, right, and does all this stuff to may give you the exaggeration. I, I find it, it happens in everything I've talked about in modelers and effects units. Same thing. You, you, you go, I've, I've talked, I've interviewed companies who design effects processors stuff and modders, modelers, and they've talked about this, that a lot of the factory presets are designed to sell the unit like in the store. Kind of like, like you plug into it and you strike chorus and you hit it and it's just over. No one's using this much chorus. It's just ridiculous. And it's like chorus delay it's just out of control. It's everywhere, right? Ping pong, delay, it's like bouncing all over the walls. But it's not there to make music with. It's there. So you go, wow, that's intensely different. I need this. And then you go home, you go, this is crazy. And you start dialing everything back and you dial the distortion back. So I have a feeling that that's how a lot of things work. And so I think necks are definitely like that, that like I said, things companies start making the, the exaggeration, the, the impersonation of themselves. It's kind of like my theory. I've had it for many years and I've seen so many examples of why I think it could be actually true. These silly things. Mukbang Fatty says, he says, will the Gibson and Fender custom Shop make any shape you want? No. The way I think of Fender Custom Shop and Gibson Custom Shop is the same way I think of Paul Reed Smith's custom shop and pretty much all the custom shops you can imagine. There's production guitars that they're calling custom because they're, they're made on either smaller machines, like smaller CNC machines with our older equipment that was more traditional to the originals. Fender's notorious for this. They use a lot of the older equipment to make some of the custom shop guitars. They have a smaller crew of people so there's less hands on your guitar. So in other words instead of 40 people making a guitar or 30 people making a guitar, there's like four, right? So they go oh, it's custom because less people were involved and therefore those less people were maybe more highly trained. That's definitely true. Some of the custom shop people are definitely the better. I mean it takes some of the better employees and better, better artisans than the factory workers. You know from them, they promote them. I'm just filling up my water guys and that makes a custom shop. Then there's another level of custom shop they all seem to have where it's literally now it's made by one or two people like, like let's say master built by Fender. Still it's not made by one person entirely. They still have an assistant or they have helpers and there's still people doing certain things but definitely more focused in being unique and therefore it can be more of a one off thing guitar. It doesn't have to be necessarily a mass produced like they making 10 or 50 or 100 of these. They're only going to make one at a time. So they only make the one or are a little, maybe 10. Either way, a lot less. And then the last custom shop that they all have is really for real for artists. It's not for us. And this is not new, by the way. You know, interviewing guitar players from back in the 80s, they were notoriously known for sticking all kinds of crazy looking guitars in catalogs that they never made. They made only prototypes for artists. They never had any intention of making them for average people like us. But they would put them into catalogs and we'd open them and go, whoa. And then, yeah, somebody bought one because they were just finally offsetting that guitar. There's a. Some companies are known for putting the same guitar in a catalog every year. And you think, oh, they're using the same picture. No, they just took up another picture because they still had the guitar. They never sold it because it was like I said, only made for the rock stars, the artists, you know, the famous people. So it's, it's not always, you know, so it's, it's not always as the way it seems, I guess. But my back to your, your point. Custom shapes and styles. No, they'll. You got to be somebody to get that kind of stuff to get somebody to, to build you something from scratch from those kind of companies. So that's usually how it works. They're usually not going to do it for just one of us just because they don't care that you're a doctor or lawyer with a big pocketbook. They don't give a crap. They're right. You can just buy the expensive, semi slow, you know, small production guitar from the custom shop. So that helps. Maybe it doesn't. Chris says, hey, Happy. Wait, was there a second part of that? No, just other than the Olympic thing. Mukbang. I don't know, I would imagine they still make guitars and basses. It's one of the few. I mean, I love Stanley Clark, but I never bought an Olympic bass. Olympic. Chris says, hey, happy New Year to you and the family. It's coming. Time to change strings on my JB Vader. What can I use to block the trim? I didn't see a foam block. They usually ship with. You definitely need to stick something underneath there. I would use a foam. Use foam block, man. Whatever they're giving you is just foam. It's not special. So just cut a piece of foam and put it in there. But you do need to do something because that bridge will pop off those posts. It'll make it. It's a nightmare. I don't by the way, I like to point out I don't own a Kiesel headless guitar with a Tremolo. This has come up three times, weirdly enough, in the last few months. And again, I have to adjust myself to the world that I live in. And I understand. And now I understand. Maybe sometimes I need to make a video explaining something. When I'm in the video explaining it, I always, just, like I said, assume that if you see me do something, then that means I do it. And if you don't see me do it, that means I don't do it. I use hardtail bridges on headless guitars because I'm not a huge fan of the Tremolo systems on headless guitars. That's why I don't, don't review them. Companies didn't send them. So I don't really, you know, I didn't buy one and demo a guitar that I don't use. But maybe I need to do a video of that tremolo because it came up a lot. People asking a lot of questions about the Tremolo. I'm like, I'm. I. So, you know, with Kiesel, I don't think I've ever played a headless Keisel with a Tremolo more than just, like I said, just picking it up maybe at their facility or just whatever. I'm just not. I'm not interested in it. So. But I do know very well that not only do you need the foam block to change the strings, you usually want to put a foam block underneath it when you're traveling with it, because it can those, it can bounce hard enough. You bump that guitar in that case hard enough, they'll bounce off the post. I have done those kind of late night calls with friends where they're having an issue with their bridge. And I'm like, okay, here's what you can do. See if that helps. Old Man Bird. Old man Bird said 10% off Martin D28 and 7.5% off Triburse Gibson Les Paul at Guitar center with a little to no fuss, 48 months, zero financing. Made out. Made it out this year. Thanks for all the inside info. So in other words, he. He's saying he went to Guitar center and he asked for a deal and they gave him the deal on the guitar. Martin D28 is a great guitar. I mean, come on, right? That's just great. I mean, I'm going to try Burst. Les Paul is great, but to me, I'm Martin D28 and D18s. I just love them. I just love them so much. Just one of those guitars, every time you strum a chord, it's like, I don't know, it just takes you somewhere. It's amazing. He's got a follow up. He says, philip, I added a Floyd Rose to my USA Silver Sky. Action was horrible. Tried to fix it with shims. I made it didn't work. Bought wooden ones off Amazon. Worked. But is it okay to use plastic neck shims? Yeah, you can use plastic. Look, this is where the argument is, right? They're gonna go, hey, if you put, you know, plastic, you're gonna lose tone. I don't know. This is where, like I said, I, you know, I've shimmed so many necks, I don't know what to say. So, you guys know, one of the things that probably concerns me the most is the statement that if you shim a neck, you're killing the tone of the guitar. I watched a YouTuber explain that if you don't push the neck while you're tightening the bolts and get the compression, then you're losing sustain because it's not touching. I'm like, jesus, this is crazy. This is crazy. I'm like, you know how many guitars I've set up and shimmed and how many hundreds of guitar luthiers have done the same thing everywhere? Shimming guitars. You know how many factory workers have shimmed guitars? Do you know how many guitars, dude, Jimi Hendrix guitar has probably got shim in it, shoved in. It is very rare to find any Fender Strats without a piece of sandpaper shoved in underneath the neck. So I don't know how to talk about that whole argument of, like, it kills the tone. Oh, man, if you shim it with something, it's like the tone is gone. I'm like, it's possible. But, oh, my God, all the guitars are like that. Like, that's the majority of the guitars. That's why they did the micro tilt. I personally think the micro tilt probably still is more sustained than probably a piece of sandpaper or wood or plastic, but. But who knows? But no, I don't really. Let me put it this way. It wouldn't bug me if I shoved a business card or an old, like, if I had an old gift card, like a Sam Goody gift card, plastic gift card. I know they don't exist anymore, but you understand I cut that up and shoved it in the neck. Yeah, I wouldn't. Wouldn't care less. All would matter to me is I don't see it from the side, as long as it looks nice on the edge, that's fine. As long as you're uniform, I don't really care. So me personally, I would find that there's, like I said, and things to worry about with the guitar's sound and playability, I wouldn't care. Greg says, hey, Phil, My Ignator Rebel 30 is finally acting up. So I'm starting to eye an eventual replacement. For me, the clean. For me, the clean is the Rebels main event. Should I be looking at anything Besides the Morris 20? Well, I mean, yeah, there's so many great amps. I mean, you know, you're looking at the Rebel. You know, you have a rebel 30. So I would say. And you want a clean amp. I mean, I like the Mark 525. I like the recto verb because you have. The Rebel 30 has reverb. I'm assuming that's something that matters to you. So I'm not going to mention the amps that don't have reverb. But for a small clean amp that has great clean Supro magic. The magic box. What am I trying to say? I mean, there's so many. Like I said, they're great. So, you know, The Ignator Rebel 30, I had that amp. I really, really liked it. I like the rebel 20 size more and I like how. But it didn't have reverb. I like the rebel 30. So, I mean, there's so many great amps. But like you at least assuming we're like the same each other, where we both want reverb and reverb small amps. I mean, all the ones I mentioned are good, but there's so many. I mean, right now I'm not looking at the comment section, but I'm sure it's exploding with people saying this one, that one, this one. I mean, there's so many. There are very few, actually. Think of this. The shortest list I could give you is a list of small tube heads, like 20 watt tube heads that I don't like. The clean. I mean, it's a short list. And so, you know, a majority of them are mostly because they're missing reverb. So the last question is from Jason. It came from Amanda Ford. This to me. Thank you. Amanda says, hey, Phil, I decided to create my own guitar brand. Any advice for beginning company trying to keep things local and small? Well, keeping things local and small is about as easy as it can get. It's the opposite. It's hard. Keeping things small is super easy. You don't Even have to try. It's going to happen. On that note, the thing I talked about last week was we were talking about Ovation and where Ovation is now and how it happened. So if you guys didn't catch last week, at the end of the show, somebody asked me, we were talking about Ovation and we were talking about how Ovation had changed and why. How companies change because of things like buyouts. So let me give you the history that that is Ovation in the. Where I was connected to this. Okay? So I want to give you. The story I'm giving you is not something you Wikipedia. It's not something that you, you know, you read somewhere. This was just. I was involved with this. It was something connected to me I had to deal with as a store. Here's what happened. So in the early 2000s, as you guys know, Fender acquires Jackson Charvel. But also Fender also acquired a company that had the brands Guild and Dearman. And they also owned Sun S U N N amps. And if you go through all Fender catalogs, I've told you guys, I have almost pretty much every Fender catalog there is, from the day I started playing guitar till now are, you know, till. Till recent years. And if you go through Fender catalogs, you'll see that for a while, Fender had sections of their catalogs that had the other brands in there, right, Besides just Squire and Fender, it had the other brands that they did, which was, you know, eventually was SWR and a ton of brands. But let's talk about Guild. So Fender buys this company. They have Guild. Now they have D? Arman, which now they're making bases out of D? Armon bases. Some people know the Ashberry base, which is a little base with silicone strings. And they're making sun amps, which are mostly bass amps that they're mostly making. And they start making the Guild acoustics in the California factory, the guitar factory. And they're not very good. The dealers are upset. Guitars crack. They're not playing right? They're just. Fender isn't somehow making an acoustic, a good acoustic. The guilds are not there. You know, guilds are highly respected. So, you know, guilds are not only highly respected, they're known as one of the best recorded acoustics, acoustics of all time, and the one of the best 12 strings of all time. So many artists, even Tom Petty, who had a Martin, I think, endorsement, played a Guild 12 string, right? So it's like, it's really common for artists who only play, like, certain acoustics still to have a guild 12 string. So this isn't going well. So Finder realizes they have to get a factory and put Guild in this factory. There was a factory in Washington. Tacoma. Right. Which is, oddly enough called Tacoma. So Tacoma acoustics. I was a dealer for all of these things at the same time. I was a dealer of Tacoma. The Thunderchief and the Papoose were some of the best selling guitars I could sell in my store. I loved that, that. That was the best acoustic bass that you could probably ever get. And that was. The Papoose was like before everybody was making mini travel acoustics. The Papoose was like the thing to get. I loved Tacoma acoustics. No finish on the guitars. Bolt on necks. They played great. They love the desert, you know, and so they were made in Washington. Well, what happened was they went defunct. They had to file bankruptcy. Now, allegedly the owner absconded with like the money or something and left back to Korea or something. That's allegedly. That's something. So you understand where that came from. A rep offender told me that. Okay, so I'm just telling you why this all matters. So Fender buys Tacoma instruments in Washington and starts training the employees on how to make guilds. Which is tough because Tacomas, as I said, don't have any finish on the. On the acoustics. No, no lacquer, nothing. And they were bolt ons and not glued in necks. But the glued in neck's not so much a problem. It's the finish work. So they start making guilds in Tacoma. Now keep in mind, they're also making guilds like in China and overseas too. But we're talking about the high end guilds. So then what happens is they start making less and less Tacomas. All of a sudden I'm noticing like, I'm not getting Tacomas delivered anymore. Like, hey, I got two Thunderchieves on backord. Hey, I'm not getting my Tacomas. Like, I'm like. The Thunderchief was like a hot seller for us because every acoustic bass player, you know, that's the acoustic bass to get. And as they pushed Guild, they eventually stopped. They shelved Tacoma, by the way, my understanding probably has not changed that Fender still owns Tacoma Instruments as a shelved brand. In other words, they own the brand, but it's not doing anything. It's like sdbr. They own SWR as well. It's a shelved brand. Okay, so then Fender, by the way, that factory wasn't owned. It was leased. So they didn't own the building. So Fender then acquires a company called Kaman. C K, not a C K, a M A N. Some people call it, pronounce it other ways. So, you know, my rep from Command always call the command. That's why I call it that. If that's wrong, I said it in a video and somebody said I'm saying it wrong. I'm like, well, they took my checks and that's how I said it. And that's how they said it back to me. So I don't know why that would be wrong. A lot of you guys know the Ovation story. The creator of Ovation owned a company called Command who made helicopter parts. And then he started making acoustics. And that's why the bowl of the Ovation is based off the seat in these helicopters, apparently. So anyways, they acquire Command and Command has a ton of brands, but one particular brand that's important is Ovation Hamer, which is made in a factory in Connecticut that is owned. They own the building. And so now Fender can move Guild to Connecticut, which they did, and start building acoustics in Connecticut. And they have the asset of owning the building, which is good, right. Instead of owning a lease. So they started making Guild. Well, guess what? I was a Guild. Same thing. I'm a dealer for all these brands, right? So we get our. You get your Ovations from Command. You get your. You were very rarely. Were you getting any hamers, right? But anyways, you're getting these brands. But more importantly, as the Guilds came, again, the same story with Washington, or in Washington, Wichita, Tacoma, all of a sudden, less and less ovations to the point where they only made two Ovations in that factory. I think there was only two. They were whatever they were, they were only artist guitars. In other words, signature artist guitars were coming out of that factory. All the other Ovations, and if you remember, for a long time, Ovation was made in the usa and then there was applause, was the import. But then all of a sudden Ovation became an import as well. And then applause fades away a little bit because why have a sub brand made in China or Korea if your main brand's now made in China, Korea, it didn't make sense. You can get more, more sales out of having the Ovation brand for the same pricing. And by the way, when that first happened, we sold the crap out of that. Because having 200 and $399 ovations, like people come in. I remember the first $399 ovation we sold it was to a guy who said, I bought one of these in the 70s and it was like three grand. Then I'm like, really? I mean, I think he said $2,000. And I was like, that's crazy. And he. He was just like, this is crazy. And he buys it. But of course, the one he bought then was made in the usa and this one was made, like, in Korea. So slowly over time, you just. Elevation fades away for Guild. And then Fender sold Command. So then Command goes away. And Guild. I forgot who Guild. I think Cordoba bought Guild, which is funny because I'm pretty sure the president of Cordoba was the son of the president of that time offender. So that makes sense why. Why they would make that move. But interesting enough, now, Ovation is owned by a German company. And I believe, if I recall, I can never say their name right. The name is. Hold on a second. Now I gotta look it up because I'm gonna. I'm gonna mess it up. And I apologize. This. But I'll give you the spelling at least. You know, I have no idea how to say this. Giwa. Giwa. G E W A Gwa is the company. They're a German company that own Ovation. According to my understanding, in 2022. 2022, they acquired them from whoever Fender sold. So I don't think Fender sold the Ovation to this company. I think Fender, like I said, they sold off Command. And then I think Command. I think it was Music Corp. Or whoever ended up buying that then sold it to this company. This company has went back to Connecticut. I don't know if they're in the same building because I don't know how that works, but apparently they do make Ovations. And just to give you a reference here, let me show you. Here is an Ovation. This is at Alto Music. I pulled this up so we could share it. Here's an ovation for $2,500. This is the USA Pro Series Elite E. So Ovation is. And that says. Says on order with manufacturer. So it's back order. So again, this is where it's always concerning about this stuff. Like, are they making these guitars? Are they back order on these guitars? Are they not making them? I don't know, but I know this. If you go and look at Ovation import line guitars, it's f. It's like there's a bazillion. So you can find tons and tons of them that are made overseas, but finding USA ones is pretty rare. So I know I said last week I would tell the story today, so I told it. And As a dealer, it was always a very, very frustrating experience because like I said, you'd have this product that you loved and the customers loved it and they'd fade it out. There was no Tacoma did not go away because people didn't want it. At least for us, people wanted it. It went away because, like I said, this is how that story unfolded. And I remember every time the rep, who by the way, is a great guy and he's since retired, so this is really great. There's no backlash can come to him for all this stuff. I remember we would sit in my store and we would just talk about, like, how this is all unfolding. And he'd be like, I know it's crazy. And by the way, he was acquired. He was acquired my Fender, he's called a specialty rep. So he's everything that isn't Fender is what they call those reps. So he sell. He sold me everything that wasn't Fender. So he sold me EVH and Jackson and Charvella and Guild and Gretch and Tacoma. And, you know, you get it, right? Everything that wasn't Fender, groove tubes, anything that's not Fender but owned by Fender is what he was responsible for. And he came from guilt. He was. When they acquired the company, he was a rep for that company. That's how he got. He got with Fender. But we would sit and talk about this and has it like it was crazy. And so it's. It's an interesting thing. It's weird to hear stuff like this, I think, because people speculate. And when you see this stuff, I always tell people, Wikipedia is written by the winners. So Fender doesn't tell the story. It's not. It's not the shame Fender or anything. It's not a shameful story. It's. I don't think it was malice. I don't really feel at the time it was malice. I don't think Fender was like, out to destroy companies. You know, a lot of you going to have a comment because of course it makes sense. A lot of them are like, it's corporate greed. It's corporate this. I think it was not only corporate greed. I think that always factors into that, but I think it was more mostly bad mistakes. It was, you know, And. And in my experience in this industry, I have still not met a single company where the owner. The. The owner is the creator and the owner are the same person or the family, right? Where it's not connected to a person, where it's invested, where the company is connected to some kind of investment firm where the passion is there at that level. So that's what happens is really what happens. It's not only the greed, it's just this without the, the passion, you know, this, these, these decisions get made. And I don't know, I don't know, maybe that was interesting. I don't know. But that's the story and that's how it happened. And so now I will see you guys next year, next Friday. Then we'll be our first episode of 2025 and in between then we should have a couple of videos for you to enjoy on the channel. Please check out the second channel if you haven't that hit 20,000 subscribers. Holy crap. By the way, can I just say on the last note, I know every YouTuber and all of us do the same thing. Like, wow, I hit this number. This is crazy. This is a number we hit. Wow. We hit a. You know this because it's. Again, it's, you know, you feel good when things go well. The second channel is averaging 300,000 views a month, which is over a quarter million, obviously. And 20,000 subscribers is just beyond crazy to me. I don't even know how to explain that. So thank you for supporting that, by the way and supporting this channel and everything else you guys do. You're just freaking awesome, by the way. I'm toying with the idea. This is the last thing. Please put in the comments because I haven't convinced my wife yet that this is a good idea. I'm toying with the idea. I have a pedal board that I have to build, put this thing together. I'm toying with the idea of doing a live stream on New Year's Eve. Like a two hour livestream. An hour and a half to two hours live stream of building the entire pedal board and maybe fielding questions and talking to you guys while I'm doing it. If you think you would be interested in that being doing that, let me know in the comments so I know. And then Guitar Quackery says what second channel? It's just filming night two. Just the number two should be dose, but it's two, so film ignite two. There's a link in the description, takes you to the second channel. Thank you guys so much for that. As always. Till the next time. Know youw Gear. The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members. Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for.