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Know Your Gear Podcast
Why Fender's New Guitar Line Failed / Building A Brand Vs Destroying It
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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 making this possible. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw Gear podcast episode. What are we on? 399. What is that? Almost 400. 399. All right. Mr. Mont says. Hey, Phil. So what's your take on. On why both Gibson and Fender created guitars to compete with their budget brand? Just an experiment to see how much people will pay for the name on the headstock? You know, that's a great question. I don't know. Well, we know why they both did it. They're both basically corporate entities that are in it for the money. You know, that's what they do. They make things we love. But you know, there's tons of corporations that are mainly in it for the money. But do things make things that we love? As a hobbyist, as a passion artist, you know, as an artist, people are passionate. The, the funny thing about this is, if you haven't seen, I did two deep dives of the Fender standard Telecaster. Fender Standard Stratocaster. You know, I told you guys, we have a bunch more videos coming this week. I mean, it's cool, you know, and of stuff from the NAMM show. Like I said, instead of paying to go to the NAMM show, I took the money for the hotel and the, you know, and the travel and the, all the expenses and we threw that into buying the gear and actually doing real videos, deep dive videos that we normally do. And you know, I gotta tell you, I'm perplexed by the Fender standard guitars. I know it's been discussed in Debt to Death on the Internet. But when I say I'm perplexed. I don't know why it's not great. I mean, I do, but I mean, I didn't know why I should say, you know, I like that it's made in Indonesia. I like that it's pretty much made by Cortex. I'm pretty sure it's Quartec making it. I like that the specs on the neck profile, especially on the telly, were very close to the usa. Made Mexico one. I like the price point five nine nine. I mean, yeah, do I want it to be cheaper? But everybody wants everything to always be cheaper. So I, I was asking myself over and over again, especially when you think about this, you know, they were 599. The what is comparable out there? Okay, so let me, let me. If you don't mind. Indulge me for a second. I want to show you what I think. If you had some money to buy your first upgrade from a beginner's level guitar, where you should go. And the first guitar I want to show you is the Fender standard. And here's why. I think you'll understand where I'm going with this, because I think I watched. I don't know why I did, but I watched a lot of people talk about the standard series, and I think they were missing it too. Like I was missing it. So let me explain. So here's the website. This is the Sweetwater website. This is the guitar in question. All right? I want to show you this guitar for a reason. So let me. Let me. I know I did a deep dive of it, but this is something gives me perspective after doing the videos and watching your reactions. Because the ultimate reaction. Overall reaction was negative. So here's the question. 5.99. Okay? Not cheap, but not horrible. It's not $1,000 made in Indonesia. Not horrible. They look good. They look the part. And yet the basic consensus of the Internet is not that they hate it. It's just like, nah, I'm not interested. Meh, meh. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's a repackaged Squire. But now let me show you this, okay? I'm gonna show you who they're competing with. And I think after looking at who they're competing with, we might have some understanding of what they did and why I think it's overall failed. Okay? Look at how I make a loser. Okay, so let me show a competitor for this. Okay? Now, keep in mind the volume of their competitor. This competitor is much smaller. But let me show you. This here is a competitor. Okay? So here is a GNL tribute. This is also made in the Cortech factory. So essentially, it's made to the same spec. It's $50 more and sometimes $99 more. I think the butterscotch, to be accurate. Oh, no, the same. I was going to say some are 699. So look at this comparatively. And you think, all right, now I know what you're thinking. Better materials. But look at. Let's look at the materials. Looking at the materials, we have a hard maple neck. That's the same as their neck we have. The body is, I don't know, sassafras. This is sassafras. I don't even know what the. Dude, I swear to God, if Sweetwater was punking me right now, I would believe it somebody out there, you know, I know you guys, a lot of you guys are way smarter than me. And I have no idea what sassafras is. I feel like that's a thing my grandma would say to me. It's got a lot of sassafras. I'm like, okay, this car's got a lot of sassafras. This has sassafras. Okay, and where's the, where's the, the blue one? Because it's got a rosewood. Which is it rosewood or is it Indian laurel like the Fender? This, this guitar is Indian. Oh, Indian rosewood. Okay, so it's not Indian laurel, but here's the difference. This actually has the USA GNL pickup in it. And I think to myself, I go, okay, well, is that a big deal? And I think, hold on, I'm going to get there. And then when you think of this. And this is actually the most requested. So the most requested guitars I got from the NAMM show was the standard series. The second most requested guitar that I got asked to do from the NAMM show, which I'm doing is this guitar right here. And here's what it is. It's $549. So $50. Again, $50 less than the Fender. The other one was $50 more. This is the Ibanez AZ and its specifications. Let's look at the specs. The specs on this guitar are it's a Jatoba fingerboard. Okay. It's a roasted maple neck. Right? Roasted maple. The body is solid. No. What does it say, body shape, body material? Alder. So it's Alder body, stainless steel frets. Okay. And then of course, just basic Ibanez non branded hot muckers. Okay. But here's the part that's different. This guitar is made in China, so it's not made in Indonesia. So again, different manufacturer origin. And then the last one that I want to show you, if you don't mind, and is this guitar right here? This is the PRS Satin 24. I have a deep dive on this guitar. So soon I'll have the Arizona one and soon I will have the G and L. I will be doing deep dives of all these guitars. 499. This is $100 less than Fender. And what do we have the specifications on this guitar? The specifications on this guitar is we have a rosewood fretboard. We have. What's the neck? The neck shape, materials. Maple and maple neck, which is the same mahogany body. And of course it's their import pickups. But they're designed after theirs. They're not like a cheaper version or a change version. They're just a less expensive version. When I mean cheaper, meaning cheaper materials. They're not using different magnets, instead stuff. Using the same style of magnets and stuff. This also comes with a deluxe gig bag. And I, I sat there and if you've watched those two deep dives I did, I'm usually way more forgiving in the commentary than I was in those guitars. And I thought, well, you know, these guitars aren't horrible. They're $600. They're made in Indonesia. They say Fender on them. Why. Why did I feel. I felt wronged. I'm serious. Like, I, I felt the rapture of like, man, I don't love buying these guitars. So, you know, I bought them to do videos with. But I. In the back of my head, I'm thinking, these are going to be great. I'm going to keep them. It's going to work out because I'll get videos out of it. I'll keep the guitars, you know, that I bought instead of lose money on reselling them or whatever. And I figured out what's missing. They didn't try at all. Yeah, they picked a great manufacturing facility. Right. They picked a place to do it that was great. And the price point's not horrible. I just don't think it is. But then there was no effort after that. Nothing about the guitar makes you feel like you have anything other than the cheapest thing they could make. And that's what it is. It's the cheapest thing they make. It's. I don't care about the poplar body. I don't care about it. I don't care that it's four pieces. I don't care, you know, that it's Indian laurel fretboard. Some of you guys get bent out of that. I don't care. I don't care what it's made out of. I only care that it's. They use the cheapest materials. I don't care that has ceramic pickups. I just care that they use the cheapest materials they could. And they didn't try a little bit. And I think they should have tried a little bit. And the price point, I think, was a great price point. I don't think there's anything wrong with the price point. I don't mean to price on that guitar. I mean the price point. Having a 599 is a great price point. Having a great price point, you know, making something available and using Indonesia over China, I think were two great moves that I really, really liked. And then everything else fell short. And, you know, I'm curious to see. My gut says the line does amazing and it becomes the hottest seller. And that this year at the end of 2025 on Reverb, they'll be announcing that everyone bought more Fender standards than any Fender guitar ever in history. It always goes like that way, right? It's like when the John Silver sky came out, everybody hated it, yet it became the best selling guitar for PRs. You never know how this is going to go, but I really feel like. I really feel like the end result is this. I really can't wait to see the AZ standard and get a deep dive on it. I'm going to be doing the GNL as well. And then with those, all those guitars in the deep dive and category and put in the sheets, I'll give you guys on the show my honest, like kind of assessment of which one of which one of those would I actually buy, you know, if I was going to buy. But I think all of them are pretty good, you know, just looking at the specs and stuff. But man, I. Yeah, I mean, wow. You know, and I can't tell you why I know this, but I gotta tell you one thing to point out that's really cool is when the G. The thing that made me happy about the GNL guitar was, you know, using a USA style or USA made pickup. The thing that makes me happy about PRS is putting the actual same gig bag, the same neck profile. In fact, I thought about it going, you know, I really wish Fender would have took the PRS approach. They could have just ripped off the idea because that satin 24 is doing killer numbers. So imagine if Fender did the standard series, but they did it in a satin finish. Remember when they did the highway ones, the USA ones in a satin finish. Imagine a satin finish butterscotch telly, but in a two piece alder body with some upgraded pickups again. So, you know, when I say upgraded, they don't have to be USA made, USA made. They could just make really nice pickups. They could clone. They could take a really good custom shop, Fender Custom Shop Al Ninco 5 Alenko 5 pickup and then clone it and go, hey, we cloned one of our best custom shop pickups. We shoved them in there, we reverse engineered it. Obviously, you know, the manufacturer makes those guitars, makes a million guitars a year. They can clone a pickup. Obviously. Trust me, there's no issue there. Put a better pickup in it put a better material in it, but save the work time, right? Like. Like, you know, maybe don't, you know, maybe, like I said, make it satin finish. You know, don't gloss the headstock. Who gives a crap at the headstock's gloss? You know, I saw 18 people mention how cool it was. The headstock was gloss. And I was like, really? I would rather the headstock be satin. A lot of people are upset with the logo being black. I still don't care. I don't care if the log is black. But the thing that pissed me off was that it's at that price. There are better products made by Fender for less, which is crazy to me. Like, if. Imagine, if you will, if PRS was to come out with a custom 24 that's, you know, got gloss finish and stuff, but it's, you know, it's stripped of all the things that you love of it, and it's a couple hundred bucks less than their Fender satin finish. You'd be like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Right? So I just think. I just think the way they executed it was bad. Fu man poo. Jeez, that's funny. Says, where is the PRs made? Indonesia. So Fender. So. So if you haven't figured out. Okay, let me. Let me explain. If you haven't figured out. There used to be a saying 20 years ago that all import guitars, meaning the majority, were made by Samick and Cortek, or Court. We used to call it Court, then Cortech. It was always Cortex, but we used to always call it Court C O R T. So, you know, not court, like going to court. Now, I don't know how big Samic is still, but Cortek is even bigger than it's ever been. And so, yeah, if you're building guitars right now in mass numbers, you're probably using Cortec. If you're using quality manufacturing and. Or you're using a big manufacturer in China, that's pretty much where it is. So Indonesia. Yeah. So essentially, think about this. And interesting enough, out of the four guitars I mentioned, like I said, the Ivan is AZ's main China. And which is funny to me. You know what's funny about that? By the way, on a side note, out of the four guitars I just mentioned, the GNL, the Fender, the PRS, and the. The Ibanez 3 are made in Indonesia. The Ibanez is made in China. And the only thing that's funny about that is Ibanez claims. I don't know this to be True. They just claim it. They actually claim it publicly that they own a factory in Indonesia that builds only their guitars. So, you know, that were trained. The employees were trained by the Fujijin, you know, employees. So it's weird. Like, okay, you know, so you're not investing in your own factory by expanding it and making. I don't understand. I don't understand. But who. Who knows? Like I said, I guess at the end of the day, the other thing is too, you know, I wish. I don't think the moderators can. You know what I want to do? I'm going to start a poll. Okay. And let me do this real quick. What is more important? Okay, let's do this. Country of origin. Let's ask. Okay. Or what do we want to say? Materials. Okay, copy that. One second, please. Thank you guys for indulging me on this, but I'm really, really curious. It's going to drive me crazy if I don't know. All right, let me launch that. Start a poll. There we did we start a poll. So I want to know from you guys, and I'll announce it at the end of the show. Really, what matters to you in a musical instrument? Is it literally what it's made out of or where it's made? Would you rather buy a guitar made in a place you like? Right. Or are more connected to or think has better quality just because of the perception of it? Or is it the materials? I would love to know that. We'll talk about that a little later. And you don't have to put it in the comments. Don't read it. Just answer the poll, click the button, and we'll know. It's a nicer way to have a percentage thing. Okay, so I'm sorry, who said that? Somebody said something and then it scrolled out of the way. Uh, let's see. Bill. Bill says Samick is busy making all those Zagger guitars. That. That made me laugh. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate that. For those that get it, laugh. For those that don't get it, it's not worth knowing. It's not that important. Um, but. Okay, so let's, uh, let's, uh, let's get into some. Some other topics, questions, since I went on my little tirade there. On a side note, while I'm looking at questions, Monday is a really crazy video that I hope you're excited for. It's a deep dive of a vintage guitar. It's gonna be the very first deep dive vintage guitar with a twist. Because trust me, if I do a vintage guitar it has to have a reason. And I hope the reason is interesting. All right, Fred says, hey, Phil, two questions, right? Two for the price. One. Should we stop this? You do a super chat and you only pay one time. You get two questions. I'm just kidding, guys. Question says, looking for an 80s style guitar, but not with the ultra thin neck. Any idea? I love rg, but the. But too thin of a neck. Okay. And then he says 2. The new fender better than classic vibe. No, the classic vibe is definitely, I feel, is better. I my only so out of order. So, you know, Fred, I'm answering out of order. I sometimes I film a lot of stuff when I'm making a deep dive. And not everything makes the cut. Okay. So sometimes it's just hours of footage. And then it's just what you see is the. The pacing to keep the pacing. Right, right. It's like making a short movie. I want to make it interesting. I actually messed up the, the. The Fender standard videos in the idea that I did not film my reaction. I filmed the unboxings. I let the unboxing of telly go. The unboxing of the Strat was boring. I did not feel my. I did not feel my reaction. I usually do, even though they never make it in the videos. And this time I'm like, oh, they never make in the video. When I plugged into the standard series and I played it, I felt it. I thought, oh, this feels good. When I plugged into the amp and I hit the first chord, I was just like, this is not good. It just didn't sound great. So to answer your question, that's why I like the classic vibe better. I like the classic vibe. I think the better pickups, I think the standard is you just upgrade the pickups. The electronics are fine. You saw what I did when I went through the electronics. Me personally, I would upgrade the pickups. I like those pickups that style. Ceramic pickups with metal slugs typically, you know, sometimes has a very P90 kind of punch to it. The Strat pickups actually, I thought sounded better than the Tele pickups, which is odd. And. But either way, I think honest, honest, honest, honest. I would replace the pickups in those guitars. Just. Me personally, I just didn't love them. It was just. It wasn't the type of pickup. I really don't care, you know, what a pickup's made of. I just care about the end result. And the end result to me was kind of dark, kind of muddy, and, you know, I don't know. Doesn't wasn't there. Okay, so back to your rg. Looking for a thin neck. You know the Jackson stuff, the Jazz series. Jackson doesn't have the super thin necks like Ibanez. Also keep in mind Fred, the more expensive an Ibanez the thinner the neck. So if you get into the RG350s and 450 series, their necks are much thicker and I think play better. I wish like my ultimate dream is to get like the highest in Ibanez. You know Japan, Japan made Ibanez but with the more of the, you know, the RG350, 450 neck series but a lot of stuff like that. The Charvel necks are a little on the thinner side for the most part in my experience, like the DK stuff but pretty cool. And then what else? The, the Harley Benton necks aren't super, super thin. The ones that make our 80 style. And also, you know I, I didn't think the Solar necks are super super thin. If you like the Solar guitars. So those are some places I would start looking there. Also ltd same thing. I don't really think of those necks. It's really just Ibanez and a couple other brands that are just do those ultra thin necks. Everybody else is pretty with pretty much within reason. Litv says hey Phil, now that you've played both, is the neck of the universe really the same as the 7620? Have you ever played a hardtail version of the. The 76 21? So if you guys don't know what he's talking about. So behind me I'm pointing at a 1991 Ivan Edge universe in original Squirrel Steve I guitar. That's a seven string. It's the essentially the first seven string. The Ibanez Universe production solid body guitar. The first one being black with green pickups and then the swirl was for 9091 or 91 92, 93. They only did it for three years and made like I think 1300 of them or something like that. So if you. I have this guitar but I also have the Ibanez RG7 620 which is a production 7 string guitar that essentially is like an idea. The same thing to the Ibanez gym to the rg. In other words it looks like the universe. You guys have seen it in my videos. It's black. Mine's black with white pickups. They also make a hardtail version. I have Litvay. I have played the hardtail version. I like the hardtail version as well. I just the main Japan hardtail version. The neck on the Indonesian one is too chunky for my hands. It just gets too thick. So I'd have to thin it down. But to answer your question, is the RG 7620, and by that means the 7420 ibanez. Because I've owned all the Ibanez. I've owned all the Ibanez seven strings, all of them. And none of them, none of the necks are as thin as the Ibanez universe that I. The Swirl universe. In fact, I've had the Ibanez black universe with green pickups. And I've had the Ibanez universe, which is the black with the pearloid triangle and then the mirror Picard. And those necks are both thicker and in the case of the mirror Picard, wider than this universe. This universe neck is the closest Ibanez neck I've ever felt to feeling like the music man petrucci7 string. In fact, it makes me wonder if later you should watch my 7 things you don't know about the Ibanez 7 string. Because in there I talk about why they changed the seven string. Because of the band Korn. The structurally, they changed the guitars, the neck and stuff. But. But the. What do you call it? The. The Ibanez. I'm sorry, not ibanez. The Musicman 7 string Petrucci. Those necks are super thin. And I really believe they must have used this as some kind of template for that. They almost felt identical to me. So really crazy. So it's a super. I love it. I love that neck. And that's why I'm not keeping my RG7620. I'm not going to keep anything. I'm going to keep my Petrucci and then. And then that. And then maybe in the long term, if I do one more seven string, I would like to have a Keisel, probably headless, but I really want to put my hands on the necks first. I think. I think I like the thinner neck, but I don't know. And then Ron asked, been looking for an RG550. Can you comment on those? I have an RG550. The necks are super, super thin. The Genesis are not as thin as the reissues in the originals, so the Genesis are slightly thicker, but it's a thin neck. I would say thinner than most necks you've ever played, but not the super wizard thin stuff. That's just crazy thin. Like, I have a prestige. And I also like, said I have an older reissue 550 that has a much thinner neck, but the genesis are just a little thicker, which is cool. Which is why we invested so much time and money into the new studio so we can increase the amount of videos because we want to archive the sheets, right? If you guys saw the new videos, there's a new sheet that you can let me share it with you guys. If you go to know your gear dot com, this is the preliminary way we're doing it, so we'll eventually change it. So what it is, is. There it is. You go to geeky PDFs, you click that and then you scroll down and this is a template PDF. And then you just go right here. And then in order, this is it. So this is the Fender Standard Telecaster video on the date. And then this is all of the measurements I got from it, by the way, if anything was wrong, because stuff gets messed up sometimes in a video. We. We adjust the sheets so that they're correct when you see the sheet. So if for some reason, and here's the Stratocaster, for some reason, if it comes up in the future, if you ever watch a video and something's out of whack and you go and download the sheet and compare it, trust the sheet. Because we actually go and re edit the sheets to make sure they're right. If we catch a mistake sometimes. Too late. Somebody catches a mistake. It was too late. For instance, there was a mistake in the Stratocaster video, but not a mistake in anything I said. Not any measurements I did, just in the sheet screenshot I gave you guys in that video. The screenshot was a sheet before it was updated. So if you caught that for a second, like it's literally for two seconds, for two seconds, you might have caught something that says something different in one category. It's correct there. But the point is, we're going to do more, more, more deep dives. The goal is to do two a week, which is what we did last week, to tell you guys what's going on. Just so you guys understand the pain. I spent what I feel is a small fortune and of money and then a small fortune of time to redesign the studio, redesign everything so that the process can be sped up. It was a giant cluster F to the point of insanity in every way. Every problem that could happen, happened. Plus problems that you just couldn't even like. It's just crazy after. And so what ended up happening, so you guys know is the videos that went out that last week or this week, I should say the standards, those are not the New system. Those are videos I hodgepodge together from my old rig and new rig that took me twice as long as normal to make just so we could get these out and get them to you. The hopes is that this week the new system will be working and everything will work the way it is. We unfortunately couldn't debug some of the problems and all of the tech support. You can imagine the world, all the help in the world and still the problems just came came up. But the good news is I think I almost don't want to curse myself. I think we caught it all and we fixed it all. What this will mean is literally faster. The same videos you saw, the quality doesn't change. That's the style we're going for. More information, but it will speed up the time. All I'm trying to do is make sure that there's no overflow. So for me, if it takes two days to make a deep dive, physically make the video, that's four days a week. I can make two videos a week. That's perfect because I do the Friday show too. And then. But the problem I've been having in the past is sometimes a deep dive takes three days and once one takes three days, I can't make a second one. I just don't have enough time. And so. But anyways, so like I said, thank you guys for all the kind compliments of the new videos. But please understand they're going to be better soon. So hopefully better soon. Okay, let's see what Amanda's pulling up for me. Amanda's always working away pulling up stuff for me. I appreciate that. Let's see. I also. Hold on a second. Where are these? Okay, the first thing I do want to say, unfreaking believable, told me to remind you guys that Larry Mitchell, a good friend of us are of the channel. Everybody knows Larry, I hope. Grammy winning artist, amazing person by far amazing player. Right. You know the nice thing you can say about him is he's as nice as he plays good on guitar. That's insane to say, but it's true. He's that nice. He's doing a clinic at Zim's Guitars in Mesa next Saturday. Not this Saturday, next Saturday. Let's get the date that correct. That is February the eighth. February 8th. So at February 8th and hey Brian, could you do me a favor and could you, if you can go to Larry's Instagram or his Facebook and grab his, his poster and tell me the date or not date the time so I can Tell everybody what time. I plan to be there for about an hour or so. So if you go, you'll probably bump into me. So that's there. I don't know if that's a bonus or it makes it worse, but there it is. So. But just let you know if you want to see an amazing clinic. It's free. It's a 100% free. And he's the best clinic you can watch. He teaches you a lot. He talks a lot. He plays amazing. He'll share anything with you, including his own guitar. He'll let you play his personal $7,000 knacks. He's funny. He'll just hand it to anybody. It's the craziest thing you ever seen. All right, let's get into some other questions. The Tumbleweed rancher says, this came from Amanda, by the way. Says, hi, Phil. Have you ever finished a guitar with nitrous nitrocellulose lacquer? I can't say no. The answer should be no, but technically I would be not 100. Correct. So I'll explain a second. Let me get to your second one. Looking at a British racing green metallic from Oxford Guitar Supply. I have never finished a guitar in nitrocellulose lacquer. However, I have. I have finished on guitars nitro. So in other words, I've repaired enough broken headstocks over the years that I have repainted headstocks many, many times with nitro. I'm good enough to hide the mess. That's it. Like, I. That, you know, it's like, it's, you know, it's like anything. Like, kind of how I told you guys how I got into pickup making. I just did it to. So I could finish a job, right? Like, I'm doing the repair and I was relying on somebody, and it wasn't working. So I'm like, I'll do the pickups. I'll rewind this guy's pickup. Same thing. I used to have a finished guy, and then sometimes he would be busy or out of town. And I just taught myself how to refinish headstock so I can refin headstock a small area as I just know how to blend it out and do stuff. I learned just enough to do that. And by the way, hate it. Hate doing that kind of work by any means. It's real simple to understand. It's like, I don't like doing paint work. Everything that's finished work, I don't like doing that. And the reason is, is I don't Enjoy anything where cleanup is longer than doing it. That's kind of the logic, right? It's like, I have a lot of friends in construction, and they hate doing drywall work. And I did drywall work a few years back and during the pandemic because I couldn't find anybody to do it. So I was like, oh, I'll do it myself. And I'll tell you right now, I heard them bitch for years about it. And after doing it, I'm like, yeah, man, that is. For every hour of work, there's two hours of cleanup. And I feel like that's not even the ratio. It's like five hours of cleanup for every hour. So I don't enjoy things where I spend more time cleaning up or prepping for what I'm going to do. That's basically what I've learned about my personality. So that's why I don't, like, finish work. I don't like. You know, so I like stuff when I'm done working on it, I put it all back together and I'm done. I feel a sense of completion. And I kind of tend to put my tools away as I go. And I. You know, so I very rarely have a small, you know, If I do two, three hours worth of work or eight hours worth of work, I have maybe 30, 40 minutes of cleanup and prep to do. I do not want to work for an hour clean for two hours. It's not my thing or prep. I'm laughing at Kevin's question. Kevin's question says, does paying $7,000 for a guitar make a 7. Make it a $7,000 guitar, or did you simply pay $7,000 for a guitar, Man, Kevin, that. That. That question is great. I feel like we all should be high to talk about it. But more importantly, I felt not that pain, but I felt pain like that. Like, I've, you know. Yeah. Have I paid something for a guitar that. I don't know if it's worth that. Yeah. Just because I thought I really wanted it. But I don't know. I'll stick with what I always say. I really believe this. People just spend their comfort zone, and other people try to always rationalize it, but always filter through your comfort zone. It makes more sense. Reason I say that is, it's because, like I told you guys, if you, you know, let's say for argument's sake that I've sold a million dollars worth of guitars one person, handshake at a time. Let's just say that. Cause it's true. Right over A period, I mean, obviously way more than that, but in a period of like 13 years, right? So I, one person at a time just added up. That's a lot of guitars. I mean think of this. I didn't sell $20,000 guitars, right? I mean high end guitar for us would be like two, three thousand dollars. And that was, you know, obviously we were mostly in the thousand dollar range, so. So it's $500 guitars, $300 guitars. You know, you're selling a lot of guitars 1% time. What I learned, selling guitars to people, all kinds of people, all walks of life, all, all genders, all, all, all levels of playing all this stuff is people spend. Absolutely what I'm saying, their comfort zone. And here's why I mean that, okay, People, people will have hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds in their bank account just sitting around and yet would not spend $500 on a guitar. They just would not. I don't mean like for their kid, I'm talking about for themselves. Like they just don't own guitar. That's over $500. They might own 50 $500 guitars, but they're not gonna buy a guitar for $600. In fact, I'm not even typing, I'm not even talking hypothetically. This is a for fact. I know I have a customer who's kind of a friend because we really know each other from the years. And I say we're friends, right? We're acquaintance friends. And he, I know he could go right now and write a check for a house, cash. He would not spend $600 for a guitar. And he'd look at a guitar for 629 and go, if it ever goes on sale, think about it. He just wouldn't spend the money. But on that note, for a person like that, I can tell you the other person I know a person who would spend $1,000 on a guitar, not only did they not have any money in their bank, they were putting it on credit. They weren't even know, they didn't even have a job. They were like, like I literally watch people go, okay, I want this guitar. It's a thousand dollars. I don't have a job. I have a credit card. I think I can get a job and get a paycheck in the next 30 days and pay on this credit card. That's a comfort zone. That, that statement alone right now, when you're listening to that, some of you are going to go, yeah, I do that. And some of you gonna go, oh, I understand that. And some of you gonna go, that would give me anxiety to insanity. And also some of you are like, I would not. Not buy what I want if I had the money in the bank. So again, I've just learned that it's the comfort zone. It's really hasn't. I thought people always talk about means, like, who's buying all these $7,000 guitars? Like, it's all doctors and lawyers. I'm like, no, it's dudes who have figured out how to do it as well. Like I said, if you've worked in a music store for any period of time, any of you, you all. I don't care how long you did have seen where somebody comes in with a bunch of gear to trade a bunch of it. Like, they want a guitar. It's $2,000, and they have 10 things to trade. They have rolled up pennies. They have a Starbucks, $3 left on a Starbucks cart. I'm not kidding. Like, four pieces of bubble gum, right? They just have, like, whatever it takes. They're just gonna figure it out, how to get that right? And they're like, hey, I'll clean the bathroom while you're ringing up the guitar. Can we make this deal work? And so I learned from. From that is guitars are just the comfort zones. Prices are comfort zones, and some people just like owning what they like. I don't know. So me personally, I fall into the category of, you know, other than the exception of the crazy universe, that's it. That's. I mean, I got. I mean, a couple crazy guitars, but, I mean, that's the craziest guitar. And that was pretty much my wife's doing, so. So. Which is only impressive because she's way cheaper than I am. I'm pretty cheap, but she's cheap. So just. Just to get. For reference. Just for reference, to get a sense of reference, maybe to maybe. I don't know why this would matter or be entertaining to you guys, but think about this. Within 60 days of buying that universe, my wife and I spent 20 minutes, 15. 15 minutes in a grocery store discussing which product we should buy over another product that was $2 more. Like, this was a big deal. We were just, like, figuring this out like this. Should we get this product? And they're like, well, that one's $8, and that one's $6. And we. And then we're both. I'm reading the information on the $8 thing. She's reading on the $6. We're reading back and forth to each other. This is a big deal. We're literally going to solve the. Should we spend $2 more or save our $2? And by the way, what makes this even worse is we had a little party at our house, and it was going. The party was happening, like, in an hour or two, right? And we had to run the store to get this item to come back to the party. And here we are, like. And how it ended, by the way, is after about. It was probably 10 minutes, but you get the idea. It feels like forever, right? After 10 minutes, I was like, you know what? I don't even know what we're doing. It's two bucks. Let's just get the hell out of here. We gotta get back to the house. We gotta get ready for the party. So, yeah, so it's weird. Hockhead says most rich people are pretty frugal. You know, I read a thing once that said they asked all these millionaires if $100 was a lot of money. And what they learned was every millionaire. And I'm paraphrasing this whole thing, but trust me, you're gonna get the essence of what I'm saying. They said that the millionaires who were poor growing up thought $100 was a lot of money, and the millionaires who were millionaires their whole life didn't. And I kind of feel that way, that it doesn't matter how, you know, how much money I make or how well I do, I'm still anchored into. You know, Shasta is cheaper than Coca Cola. So we got Shasta. Yeah, right. That's just how it works. We grew up, you know, So I don't know. That's. I. Anyways. All right. I don't know. We got off tangent. I need to get back. Oh, let's see. Hold on. Okay, let me. Let me switch over to another one. This one came from Amanda as well. This is from DL Says, hey, we'll pick up. Will pick up. Where the inside of a coil is hot. Have interference when you touch the magnets. If there was been corrosion and the wires are contacted magnets, will it pick up? Okay, I understand what you're saying now, Dale. You're saying, will it pick up? That has the inside of the coil is having. Yes. So, yes. You do not want bare wire touching the magnets. Ideally, that's not what you want, especially this. The magnets or the metal slugs. Most people, when you look at. Just to keep things easy for you guys, if you've ever made a pickup or you haven't, you know that the wire, the 42 gauge wire is about the thickness of a human hair or something like that. Right. 43 gauge is even a little thinner. 42 gauge wire is very thin. And so if you see a spool wire on your pickup, what you don't understand a lot of times is that's coated. That's not bare wire. There's coating on there. So when you wind a pickup, one of the things you're gonna do. There's two things you can do. One's bad and one's good. But I'll give you both. One thing you do is you take an X Acto knife and you scrape a little of that finish off before you connect it to the. To the eyelets on the pickup. So you solder it on. Okay. Or if you're lazy, which I don't recommend, you can run your soldering iron a little hot. And when you solder it, the heat will melt off the. The coating around it, which I don't recommend. But I'm not saying, you know, just saying there's lazy ways to do things too. But anyways. So, yes, technically, if that coating was to wear off and touch, there could be some kind of problems. There are different problems or different scenarios, but you would have problems. It's. It's possible. So in that case, in your. In that. I'm not saying your situation or whatever you think is happening is happening with that pickup, but in theory, if the coating had corroded off and the wire was touching and stuff, that's when we would rewind that pickup. When I said, I've rewound pickups before, that's essentially what I was doing. A pickup had an issue where the wire either had corrosion or the wire had snapped or something had happened. And so we unspool the copper wiring off the bobbin and. And we rewind the pickup and make a new pickup out of it, which is very easy to do. Okay, let's go to Luciano. Luciano says, hey, Phil, have you ever tested Laney Lionheart Foundry series? I think so. I'm pretty sure. No, I don't think so. I did the other one. I did the Iron Label Solid State series. Right. Gotta do this off memory. Let's paste. I'm pretty sure Laney had me sent me and had me do the video for the Ironheart. Yeah, I did not do those. I did the. The Iron Heart Iron label once. So to answer your question, no. He says, okay. And the Cub series and. No, uh, I'm. I'm thinking about buying a cub head 15 plus cat plus cab or a foundry. Thanks. I really like. And he says, greetings from Brazil. So I really like Laney stuff. Funny thing that happened with Laney is funny. Not haha funny funny. Odd is I was working with Laney Amps and we were getting some product on the videos or, you know, on the channel and the videos. I thought the videos did well. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in this industry. The person I was working with, who's a great guy, you know, he moved on, right? So he moved on. And so I had to restart, like, the relationship. That's how it works. Even though it's the same company, if they restart the relationship, like, what are we doing? And they. We did a video after that, I think one video after that. And I think it was like a favor thing. I think it was like the, hey, can you get a video done? You know, we want to get this product out and get some excitement about it, let people see it and stuff. And I did a video of it. But long story short, my long game with that idea when I was wearing Laney was to eventually get a Laney, right? Like, find a Laney I like. That's one of the reasons. That's one of the appeals to me sometimes to work with a certain company that I'm interested in. Like, that is, you know, it's a lot. It's one of the benefits of this job is that, you know, they can send a bunch of products over time and I get to try them all. And at some point I go, oh, this is the one I really like. Allah. The Amplify Nation, right? They sent a ton of amps. I like them all, but I. From playing them all, I kind of figured out, like, well, if I can only have one, what's the one? And it's this one. Not because it's the best, it's just because it fits, you know, everything checks all the boxes for me. So. So I love Laney, is what I'm trying to say. So maybe they'll contact us again. Or maybe I should reach out to them and see if they'll let us do some videos of their stuff. Dan says, hey, Phil, have you ever seen a Gibson truss rod spin inside the neck? I have. Is this even possible? It is. Also, is there also if there are a bunch of threads sticking out past the nut of Gibson truss rod, is that a bad thing? Well, I'm trying to visualize what you're saying, but here's the answer for you. I mean, I don't know the situation. I'm assuming, uh, it's broken. You know, the end of it's broken. And there is a. There's a fix for that. Uh, so one of the things you can look for to start your journey. Well, first of all, you can reach out to a tech. But Stu Mac, like I said, always use Stu Mac as a reference. Like I said, whether you want to buy from them or not. Just go truss rod wrench. Nope, we want truss rod. There we go. And I'm not. I don't know your situation completely because again, we're talking verbally and not. And I'm more of a visual kind of person. That's what's tough about this. I want to see this. But something like the Trust Rod rescue toolkit is good. It's possible that might be your situation. There's a ton of things like this, and that's how I fix things like this. This stuff is very expensive, which is why sometimes it's better to pay somebody because, you know, I mean, you know they're going to charge you a lot less than that to do it. But you don't have to buy from Steam. I can look out there and too. Or watch some videos of truss rod repairs, especially on Gibson's. There's. They're pretty more. They're more straightforward, I want to say, than some other truss rods. I have never done a video of that because by the time I was doing tons of content, I just never had that situation come across the bench. And so that's one of those things. Like, I would need the situation to do the video. Maybe. Maybe we'll do that. Right now it's just our focus is on some other repair videos. But. But in the future. Yeah, like, otherwise, I. Trust me, if the timing was right, I'd love to tell you, like, hey, let's have you send them in that guitar and let's. I'll fix it and we'll do a video. But I mean, I. I'd be. Right now. I'm also. They moved it. But there's a board here that has my workload and my workload is till April, so it wouldn't be something I could. You know, I would just hate for you to, you know, to tell you, yeah, let's do it. And then I'm like, literally, I'm locked down until April, so. But you can always reach out to us personally with pictures to ask, know your gear and stuff and we'll see. Like I said, I. I'm definitely have more repair video content coming. We. I thought it doesn't do as well as the other sensationalized content. But it's what I really enjoy and you guys seem to enjoy it, so let's. I want to do more of it. Okay. We have Richard, who says, hey, I'm truly sorry to the community. I thought I was just sending a warning to. I wanted people to keep from harm someone somehow. It's okay if the creator does not. Does not. But not an individual. I just become me. Sorry. Okay, So I don't know why you're sorry, Richard, but I appreciate you saying sorry for whatever I. The community understands. We have a very good community here. So whatever it is going on, I'm sure it'll get resolved. Are usually. Yeah. So also, if you need help, you can always. If you're having issues, you can always reach out to the moderators. Keep in mind is the moderators are here for the community. That's how this works. They're not here to kick people out of the. Of the thread, although they have to do that because like, like, you know, there's sometimes there's people that are just acting a fool, but essentially the moderators are here to. To facilitate this show, to help do it. And they do a great job. I really mean that. They get the links to you guys. They get me questions that I'm missing. They tell me things after the show that I missed that I may need to pay attention for for next week or, you know, like I said, the last thing. Look, their job shouldn't be to kick anyone or to have to deal with the rowdy people at all. It's not their job, unfortunately. But rowdy people make it their job. Does it make sense? But that's not their. That's not why they're here to hang out with us. They're here to hang out with us because they care about all of you. And, you know, it's a thankless job. So, like I said, it sounds a lot of people are. And for the record, I should also say this too, just because I don't want to get preachy. But I just want to say, you know, I've had a lot of moderators over the years and everyone wants to be a moderator. But, you know, so, you know, Mrs. McKnight, she's a moderator too, but mostly what she does is she just keeps an eye on everything for us so we can make a great show. But more importantly, she gives me the report. She's like, look, this person's on it. This person's on it. This person's on it. And that's why the moderators at Stay Stay because they're literally working their asses off and I just can't thank them enough. There's just not enough thanks for that. I wish there was more so then thank you. But there's not. So Mr. Doctor. Not a Mr. Sorry, Dr. Moblaz. I don't know. Sorry, Dr. Mab. That's what I'm calling you, buddy. Says my 95 Riviera can buzz near 13th Rivera. Sorry. Can buzz near the 13th and 15th frets. One hour, then no buzz the next hour. Fret rocker says a few frets are up and high lifted. Is this very climate sensitive neck coupled with need for fret work? It is possible the think of it this way. The fret work can be more problematic the closer it gets to the 12th fret. So on acoustic guitars it gets worse. Electric guitars is pretty bad. It's right around that area is where. Yes. If you're going to have problems and it could. Like I said, the movement can be enough to where the problem is. You know you. Yeah. Could the moisture in the room, the temperature in the room, how hard you're hitting all that stuff could be changing it all the time. Um, I've said this before. I have a PRS mira a core, one that I love. But it's very temperamental. It's. It's not bad. Otherwise I wouldn't keep it. But it's. It is not a guitar that I like. If I grab and pick up right now, I don't even know where it's at because the humidity's been so bad here. Cause I like this time of year. I like to keep the windows open in the house. It was like 30%. It was 26% humidity downstairs last week. And right now I have the room back to 51%. So. So who knows how it's reacting to that. Ray says, hey, why is the Gibson R7 and the R8s not much better than standards? Is Murphy Lab the way to go? I think it's all just the thing. I don't. I. Look, I'll say it before I. I have a Fender custom shop. I don't know why I bought it. I would totally love to not have. I would love to have not had bought it. I have a Fender. Sorry. I have a Gibson R9. I should point this out. I have a Gibson R9. I don't just have a Gibson R9. I have an amazing Gibson R9. It's eight pounds in weight. Eight something pounds. And it's. The neck plays amazing and it's great I mean it's a cherry picked guitar. It's not better than my standard Les Paul. It's not. I don't care what anybody says. It's not. I have a Gibson RO that is ultralight. In fact, it's behind me. There it is behind me. It's 7lbs 4oz. It's got a funny story too. I should tell you guys one time. But anyways, plays great, sounds great. Not better than Mike Gibson's classic gold top. It's just not. When I say better, I mean marginally, sure, maybe it's a little better, but it's not enough. Uh, so I think, you know, the law of diminishing returns happens. Uh, I. And so somebody's always says whenever somebody say this, they're like, oh, I have a custom shop. And after you go custom, you can never go back. Ah, you know, everybody's different. It's not that. I'm not saying custom shop stuff is not good. I'm not saying it's not good. I'm just saying that I don't love it more. Right? I just don't. I don't pick up the guitars that are more expensive. I bought them because of the fact that I've been playing guitar for a long time, collecting guitar. I have a YouTube channel and somehow I rationally rationalize purchases because I have an addiction. And sometimes I rationalize a purchase and sometimes it's two beers in and then I get it and I go, well, the best part I learned is that I didn't need to really worry about it too much. Everybody's mileage will vary, but that's my mileage. So my answer to you, if you're asking me if buying an expensive guitar and it's not great, the fix should be buying a more expensive guitar and it'll get great. Is my guess is it doesn't get even more great. That's my, my guess. So I don't know. Shane says Phil's best guitar is as Ibanez. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm curious. It's interesting when you guys say which guitar you like the most. People hate the Ibanez. Most people like some of the other crazy guitars. A lot of the craziest guitars. We'll deal with this one day. They don't get on the show, they don't get on the channel. I don't know why. Oh, I know why. Because they're not in this room. They're in another closet. We need to figure that out. Like when I. How I store stuff clown of house cats. Why? Clan of house cats. Give me a second. He says, hey, tried a seven string Nebula Music Man JP15. It hurt my index and my wrist after 15 minutes. It's super thin man. The necks are super thin. My painted neck. Mm. Majesty is perfect. I can play it for hours. So if you so you so you're aware with the Music man, if you've paid attention. Why. I don't know why you pay attention, but on this channel, if you notice I've owned a bunch of Music man, seven strings. It's because of that reason. It's because the necks go from like so thin I just can't play it to just a little thicker. And then I can play it and I finally, finally found one. My JP13 is where I landed. The neck is the right thickness. I had a majesty and the majesty had the right thickness and neck. But I just wasn't feeling the shape so much. Like I said, it was comfortable. It was great guitar. It was fantastic guitar. I just really liked the, the, the JP, you know, 15 and 13s more than the Majesties. And just the, you know, more traditional like the more traditional shape just appealed to me. But I was, I just had to keep finding go to find that neck. My first Music man, which was this amazing green one. If you watch my very first videos, you'll see in the background. You might have seen me use it in a video too. I bought it. I got a smoking deal. A guy bought it brand new and he ruined it. He sanded the neck and when I say ruin it, like you're like, oh, I don't mind the finish being off. No, he made the neck super, super thin. So I got it for the smoking deal, but it was just too thin. I couldn't take it. So after about a year or two, I was like, ah, I'm just not. Every time I play it, same thing. I'm like, ah, man. It's like just not feeling good. So I, I got a thicker neck one and went from there. So like I said, when I say that neck's thin, it oh the universe. Next thin. It's thin, but it's not like as thin as some of those get. Let's go to the next subject or question. What do we have from JD Says hey Philip, pickup Resistance varies meaningfully based on the temperature it can. So resistance varies. So if, if you ever seen obviously I. When I wind pickups, what happens is after you pot them, you wait for them to become room temp before we test them. So for instance, if you ever had a Blackstock pickup? You'll see that yes, we test them. In fact, what's tough is before when we originally do them in the shop that wasn't air conditioned, the problem, the summertime was the, you know, they would cool down from the. The wax bath, so to speak, right. From the wax potting and that in the room. Because the room was like basically between 90 to 100 degrees. They just, they would not meter. So we had to take them into the air conditioning area and let them cool down. We wanted them around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. So you guys know and yeah, to, to. To get an accurate measurement of them. But yes, if, like for instance, if you were to take a pickup and throw it in the freezer and then test it, it would be different than if it was. If you warmed like we used a heat gun, which is not a good idea. Cause you can melt the wax. But if you heated up the area around it. Yeah, you could change it. But let's get to what he means by this. He says, does this mean your guitar tone changes with the temperature also? Or is the resistance or semi. Or is the resistance a semi meaningless measurement? It's not a meaningless measurement. It's because here's the deal. The, the resistance measurement is not a measurement of tone, right? It's not a sound thing. The sound is cumulative of all the components, right? So think about this. The sound of. It's like saying a microphone, you know, if I make a microphone cold, is it going to change the way it sounds? No. Moving the microphone away from the speaker is going to change the sound dramatically. So like I said on a guitar pickup, same thing. Moving the pickup away from the strings will change the sound more dramatically than warming up the room or cooling down the room by far. Because physically you're changing, you know what it can magnetically, the magnetic field, right. Because it's turning this into essentially a signal and sending it to your amp. The point of this. Let's just keep it easy because I don't want to get too crazy. Let's keep it easy. The easy way to think of this is, is that the things that will affect the sound of the pickup are more of where it's positioned, where it's positioned on the guitar, right. That's a huge factor of it up and down. And then of course, you know, the type of magnet, because again, that changes the field. Everything that changes the field, the, the wire, the resistance is just going to tell us essentially one thing that we. Only that we focus on which Is how hard is it going to push the amplifier? And that's not even the only factor for that. Because again, the magnet has some, has some say in this as well. So that's why we use it. Because it's not. Because it's a, it's a tell all, be all of the story. It's. For the longest time, the guitar player as a whole, the majority of guitar players, not all guitar players, majority have sought to distort their amplifiers, right? If you think about everything we do as a communication, as a guitar players, as a community, with tech nerds, guitar shredders, you know, right, Everybody, it's all about how do you push an amplifier, right? For the most part, rock, blues, we're really focused on the same thing. So it's all about getting more signal to the amp, getting the amp to do what it, what we want it to do, which is overload, essentially, right? Distort. And so the, so the resistance tells us how much wire's on there. And that will tell us two things kinda. One, it'll tell us how much, how we can anticipate what the amp's gonna sound like reacting to that. So in other words, if I put a crap ton of wire on a pickup, I mean a crap ton, let's say. Good example. When I say a crap ton, let me give you an example. If I took a standard humbucker, okay, and I wrapped. Well, no, let's just do a single coil. Make life easy. Okay, let's say I do a single coil and I wrap 7,000 winds of 42 gauge wire on a single coil and I plug it into an amplifier. Now imagine, okay, I take another single coil, same, same magnet, same everything. And Now I wrap 10,000 winds, which can be tough with 43 gauge wire. In other words, smaller wire. That's why I'm going to be able to get more winds on that bobbin. What I would anticipate is that when we plug them both in, the amp, the amp, if it was going to break or distort, it's going to do it from the one with the 10,000 ones. That's generally speaking what we're anticipating. So that's why we're paying attention to that. We're paying attention to that number. It does not tell us anything. Because get this, you can trick people. Some pickups are a trick, for instance. Some pickups will say 4K, right? And we'll be like, oh, that's not a whole lot of resistance. So therefore it's not pushing the amp and it's slamming the amp because of a design difference. So there's things that we can do, but we're always speaking, generally speaking, especially since, like I always say this realistically, in my opinion, this is definitely my opinion. There are only essentially, like I said, four real humbuckers in existence. And then everything's a variation of those. Like there's only a couple that were the start of it. Obviously the PAF is one, obviously the super distortion is another. And the Bill Lauren style pickups, which are the heavy wound ceramics, the jb again, another voiced pickup that's notoriously known for having a certain voice. But my, my, my answer to your thing is it's not meaningless to know the number. The number. Reason, other reason why I pay attention to it. So let me just tell you why in a video, I pay attention to resistance. Because what I'm paying attention to when I'm doing cheap guitars, and this is why we're doing charts and this is why we're changing a little bit things. Because what happens is when I started doing the videos, I actually set up a ton of channels for failure. I watched them. I didn't realize I was watching a bunch of channels. I got an email, I got an email from a viewer who said, hey, there's like these Teemo Temu versions. This is what he put. He put Timo versions of your channel. I'm like, what is he saying? And I understood what he's saying. He sent me a bunch of links and I watched some channels and there were some channels. I guess they thought I got views because I was like measuring inductance and resistance. And they were like, well, I'll do it too. And I'm like, that's not what's going on here. What's going on is, you know, we're, we're telling a story about the guitar through the video and the importance of it. I wasn't really explaining why I was looking at some of the things. I was just doing it because I wanted you to see what I was looking at. So we're going to be explaining more why. And one of the things that's important is when people say ceramic magnet pickups suck, they're right and wrong. They're wrong because there are tons of amazing pickups that use ceramic magnets, including jazz style pickups that are just fantastic from the 70s even. You know, there's all kinds of pickups, they use ceramic magnets that are great. However, however, the way a manufacturer can make something cheap is magnets, especially ceramic magnets, especially like, you know the junkie magnets, they're so cheap to manufacture that you can put a big magnet on something and a little bit less wire and you're getting a lot of signal to the amp. It's just really not a pleasant sound in my opinion. It's going to have a really harsh peak to the highs. It's like, it's all over the place, right? It's like, it's like, it's like a drunk friend telling a story, right? You're just like, I don't know where this is going, right? It's all over the place. And so when, sometimes when I'm testing pickups and videos, I'm testing a cheap guitar's pickups. Even though I'm doing the same test, I'm looking at it differently. I'm looking to see did they throw really cheap pickups in this? And one way I'll tell is if the inductance is really high and the resistance is really low, that tells me they didn't put it. Use a lot of, use a lot of wire, they use a lot of magnet. And generally speaking, that's not going to be a good pickup, generally speaking. Because again, formulas, like I said, these are all recipes. Some people figure out ways to do all kinds of stuff. So it's not that it's a meaningless measurement, it's that it's not going to tell the whole story. And that's why we need to hear the guitar after I do this, that stuff, and I go, let's hear it. And I actually have another test that I do that we weren't putting in the videos that's coming to. That's going to tell you a little bit more about the pickups too. And, and the reason why I wasn't doing it was I just wasn't sure if that was too, you know, you make the videos too nerdy. No one, no one stays to the end. The average viewer taps out. They're like, I don't need to see all this stuff. So we've been, I've been working with it, trying to get the flow right. So go back to your. Excuse me, Go back to your question. The temperature changing. The resistance of a pickup is so minimal. It's so minimal that that's like saying that for instance. Let's do this. Let's give you an example. Let's say we have a pickup and it's 8.2k, right? Resistance and we heat it up and it changes ever so slightly. Well, the reality is this. If I was to. And you're like, well, now it's slightly different. It's gonna sound different. Well, I could tell you for a fact, for a fact that if you took 10 Seymour Duncan JB pickups and put them on a meter, they're all going to have a variance. They're never going to be the exact I. It's almost impossible to get pickups that consistent. It's really. There's a range you're going for, and it sure as hell isn't like 8.2k on every. Every pickup, right? One's going to be 8.4, one's going to be 7.9, one's going to be 8.3. Like, they're going to be all over and there's going to be within a range and, you know, of a little lower, a little higher. So that's why if you know the temperature change, your pickup isn't going to change anything because there's already a variance like that. You could have two guitars identical with the same pickup in it, and those two pickups are going to be slightly different in that resistance variance. And so that's why it doesn't matter. It's where I always tell you I like that saying. It's a little too much in the weeds. This stuff is great topic to talk about on a Friday show, but don't, don't worry about so much of that stuff. I'm not saying you are, but I'm just saying other people don't worry about that stuff because it's one of those things where if we worry about, like, the temperature changing. Let me ask back to what I'm saying. If you worry about the temperature change in your pickup sound, you should probably worry about how much your pickup moves because of your neck movement, right? So think of this. If you're. If the. We were talking about this earlier with somebody was talking about the moisture changing, you know, humidity changing, temperature changing, the neck moves. It gives you a little more relief. The strings come up a little higher. The. That little bit of height coming away from the pickup have more effect than any temperature I can think of on a pickup because again, the placement of the pickup is going to be more dramatic than the temperature of the wire and the. In the metal. David says, oh, and that's the other thing, too. This is important, especially because there's a lot of great pickup people out there that talk about pickups all the time. And you got to understand there's a difference between making something and. And using something. And that has to do with amplifiers. That has to do with guitars, right? Manufacturers, people who make things hyper, focus on things because they need a consistent product, you know, every time. And so if you watch them, always take that in mind that you're. When you're watching somebody that makes something talk, they're talking not so much about the end user. They're talking about their, like I said, how, how to get it. Like a perfect example is all the deep dive show. Pretty much all the guitars come with 2 millimeters off. The 12th fret is action. That's because all the manufacturers know that that delivers in the mail very well at distance. It doesn't mean every manufacturer thinks that's a great setup. It just means that's what they, that's as low as they can go. And, and, and, and believe that the guitar will get to you without the fretboard. The strings laying on the fretboard. David says, hey, I have the chance to buy an Nos 20, 23 PR special semi hollow 10 top that has picked up a ding in the back of picked up. Picked up a ding in the back. What is a fair discounter to ask since it has a blemish and it doesn't have those dynamic musical pin pickups? Well, I don't know what to say about the pickups, but I. Here's the thing. You have to understand. When you buy a guitar new, it's immediately, as soon as you own. It's like a car. As soon as you buy it, it's worth less because it's used now. And if you buy a guitar new with a ding, it's worth even more, less. Does that make sense? Like it's gonna drop. Think about this. If you buy a guitar new and you try to sell it used, think how much you lose if the guitar is mint, right? And even if you tell people, and the worst thing people do, the worst thing people do is they go, they put in the comments like, I bought it, but it already had this damage when I bought it new. I'm like, that doesn't mean anything to anybody. They don't know that. They don't believe that. They're like, he probably got it and he dinged it, right? And then it's, it's damaged. It's used and damaged. Even if it's Nick. So I'm not telling. I don't know the number. I don't know what the percentage is. I just would say what I would like. Here's what I would like. I'd like to pay used price for it. That's what I'd like to pay. I mean that's ideal. I mean, so if it's not what percentage off a new is it? It's just like what can you buy a used one for? That's what I want to pay for one with the damage on it because it's damaged. So I don't even know how to weigh damage versus used. Which one's worse? But I'm gonna say damaged, right? Like let me ask you this. If that guitar that you're talking about was sitting on the wall, two identicals, identical ones side by side, and one was used in mint perfect condition with no marks and one is new with a damage in it, which one's worth more to you? I would argue the used one. I would rather have a used mint guitar than a damaged new guitar. So I would definitely want to pay at the very least used pricing. And then that way that's where I would start my investigation to educate, you know what your offer should be. And they're probably not going to sell it for that because. Because you know, they paid, you know more than that. What they go for used. Let's see an ax to grind. That's a good sign on. It says my question. My Jackson USA SL 2mg has razor sharp frets. Help. I will help you by putting a link to a video where you can learn to do your fret ends. And I would. And if you're concerned because you have a nice USA Jackson, you want to damage it, then I would take it to someone who knows how to do it. But I have a video on how to do it and it's pretty straightforward and it works and it's got hundreds of thousands of views and it's worked for thousands of people. So. So I'll put that link now. Farad says, hey Phil, I have a Charvel DK24 USA humbucker single. Single. When I move my hand up and down the neck, touching each fret ends produce a static pop. Oh yeah, that happens. It's worse with single coils, but doesn't stop when I touch strings. Sure guitars get static charges. This is an argument I have with all kinds of guitar techs around the world. And remember, guitar techs are not so much like smarter or dumber than each other, but they're where confusion I think happens is they live in different parts of the world and have different types of problems to deal with, which is very probably unique. Probably not unique for anybody. Right? I'm sure mechanics where it's cold and snowing all the time have different problems with cars than mechanics that live in the desert. My point is, in the desert where it's super dry, okay, all the time, static electricity is an issue. And so we get a lot of guitars with static. And so what causes static electricity on guitars for the most part is gonna be a couple things. Metallic finish paint jobs start. They get static. You have friction between your body. Believe it or not, those metallic paint jobs, they. They create static right between you. You, you have static. They pick up the charge. It happens. It's really weird, but it happens. Plastic components pick up static charge really easy too. So pick guards, back plates, all that stuff. Pick up static charge really easy and it transfers and then it gets in your guitar and then so you know your strings and it just gets anywhere. I've heard and I've seen dozens of texts say, oh, shield. Shield the cavity in your guitar and you won't have static electricity. I think shielding the cavity in your guitar is a good idea. However, I can tell you right now, nine out of 10 times, for instance, if they're shielding or if they're static charge, there is shielding. It doesn't. The shielding doesn't cause it, but the shielding doesn't stop it the way people think. The reason I think people think that shielding is a big deal is because Gibsons get a lot of static charge a lot less Paul's and they don't have shielding. And so the math I think is like, they don't have shielding and static happens. It's just like I said, gold top less Paul will get more static than regular, you know, wood top one. So I use fabric softener static guard. You can get dryer sheets, however. Dryer sheets. The only thing is you want to use unscented sheets because they have this cakey stuff and you just don't want that on your finish, right? It does not work. So if you can get an unscented dryer sheet that doesn't have any like soaps or all that crap on there, fine. If not, just get yourself a flannel cotton or microfiber cloth and spray it with static guard. Just spray it on there and I pat it with my hand just to dry it out. Because you want it to be not moist, right? You know, just dry and then wipe the guitar down. The here's what it will do. It'll go away and it'll come right back. And then you do it again, and you'll do it again. And you will have to do this until it stops. This could be from now on, every time you Play your guitar, you just pick up a sheet and do that every time. Or you could do it once or twice and it never comes back ever again. Or you can do it once or twice and it won't come back until next year, next season. Either way, that's what you're going to do. I've done it so many times, thousands of times for thousands of customers, for myself, for everybody. It's just something that happens. It's just a real thing. It happens all the time. And there is nothing, there is no guitar that is immune to the problem. If you're like, oh, I have had a guitar and they're had static on it, that that doesn't mean anything. It just means it hasn't happened to you. But it happens all the time to all kinds of guitars. Certain guitars are more notorious for it. The and then somebody, I think Nell is trying to say, I saw your post. I think you were typing too fast. Will it harm a nitro finish? What I would tell you is if you're worried about your finish or your guitar, especially nitro, what I would do is like I said, make sure that you pat it out so it's not damp, wipe the guitar down and then you can use another cloth and guitar polish and just clean the guitar and it will be fine. Come off. I've never had a problem with it. So again, don't spray static guard directly on your finish. Don't put it on there wet, don't leave it on there wet. And if you're worried about it, then you can clean it off. I always clean it off just as a. Because if I'm dealing with a customer's guitar, it's just instinctive to me to always wipe the customer's guitar down. But that's what I recommend to you. It works really good. The static guard I use, if you look in my any of my videos, you'll see shelves behind me with all kinds of chemicals. The one I use the most is a static guard that I buy at like Petco or whatever. It's made specifically for pets. I don't know why I use it. That's just what I got and I like it and that's what I use. So. But like I said the other other thing I heard, but I've never seen it work is somebody says if you do get the dryer sheets that have the cakey perfumes and stuff on them, you can put a paper towel over that and then have that between the paper. I don't know if that works but. But I Said I used to use dryer sheets when you can find unscented ones. But it got harder and harder to find those, so I just gave up. Okay. Randy crooks says, lost 26 guitars in a house fire on January 1st. That is horrible. I'm sorry to hear that. He says to start the collection once again. Started with a PRS cesc. That's a good guitar to start with. I got the blue one again. Absolutely love this guitar. Yeah, you know, it's been. It's been insane watching that, you know, from Arizona. You know, like everybody, we're just watching stuff on the news with these fires and stuff, and it's just. I don't. I don't even know. It's. It's that. It's that thing. I don't even know. I don't know how to filter that in a way to where I can, you know, other than say I'm really sorry that happened to everybody. But I don't know how to, like, you know. Oh, well, once something like that happened to me. And this is, you know, I'm like. I've just. It's crazy. It's been so crazy. So. So that's cool that you got the blue one again. And you like it. I like the. I have the satin blue one. I love it. So you said. You said blue and you didn't say satin, but I have the satin blue one. I really like it. I think of all the SEs I've ever played, my favorite SE PR guitars, I don't know if in order, but I'll say it just in this order, is the PRS Satin Standard 24 and then the PRS Hollow Body CE R SE. Those are by far the two, my two favorites of all time. Where I really feel like all the other SEs are really great. The John Mirror is great, a lot of them. Dave Grissom, Fantastic 594. But for some reason, those two guitars just feel really good. And every time I play them, I just. I feel like they. They punch way above their weight kind of thing. Bennett says. Hey, Phil, I'm following up last week's question about the sg. Have you ever tried the Nags Honga? I have. Definitely over my budget, but looks awesome. I love the Honga. So if you guys don't know the Nags Honga, all the Nags are named after rivers and I guess so Honga must be a river on the East Coast. The Honga has got a very SG kind of vibe to it. Let's look it up. Let's share it with you guys. I have played two Hungas. Both were customers that needed set up work and I set them up. And here's one on reverb. Here we go. This one's used for $3,900. You can see here very SG looking. It's a red SG. Some of them are lighter than others. This one is 7lbs 2oz. I've seen some like 6lbs. I loved it. I thought it played great. The neck was a little chunky. So if you like the 60s style SG neck, this is a little chunky. This is more like the 50s era neck. It's not as thick but it's a little chunkier. And then for me it was exactly what you said. It's just the price. Like this is a lot of juice, man. You know I really like my sg. So it's like I'm into my SG for like a thousand bucks is what I paid for that SG. So it's hard to go, oh for $3000 more I can get one that's like it for its, you know, it's just, it's tough but, but yes, I played the Hungas. They're great. I mean Nags you know, as a whole are great guitars but Hunga was really great. Just like I said. My only two critiques really like you really expensive and the next a little, little chunky, but comfortable, but a little chunky unplayed. Video games says you had said there are oh foundational pickups and every other pickup is a tweak to somebody's personal taste. What are the four or five main tapes, types of pickups all the other pickups are based on. So like I said, so in the humbucker world we're definitely going to go like I said, with the paf. That's where it all starts, right? They all kind of start with the paf. And then funny enough, think about this. It's kind of like think of pickups like this. You have the very first humbucker, you have the PAF style pickup first for, for the most part when I say first meaning this is the first one everybody know, kind of knows. Then I think of like pickups where it's like now you have a hot rodded paf. So think about this. So the hot rod of PAF becomes the next lineage. So almost like think of like guitars, you have the Strat and then you know and then or you have to tell you then you have a strat, then you have like the hot rod strat, right? It seems to go that way. So to me, like, a JB is essentially a hot rod at paf, right in. In. In the. In the concept of it, right? That's how I look at this. Like, this is like if you said, hey, what's a really good pickup? I'm like a PF style pickup, okay? I want something more than that. That's gonna be like a jb. It's gonna be a hot PA pickup. Then you have the Super Distortion, which is by DiMargio. And that's a different design because it is a. Not only is it a ceramic magnet, which is very powerful. So again, high inductance, you know, high, high magnetic energy. It's usually 43 gauge wire. So a lot smaller wire, lots more of it. So a lot resistance. It's like a lot. Think about the quest. The quest was. And I literally. This is a perfect. This true. Larry DiMaggio told me this when he made that pickup. He didn't like his PAF style pickups. He was like, I want something different than this. And so he was like, I want to make something that he thinks is better than this. Better meaning something that he could throw in front of a Marshall or something and really get it to go. So it was like, use a big magnet, powerful magnet, ceramic. Use a lot of wire, see where it takes you. And two rows of adjustable pour places. Because he said he didn't understand why one side of the pickup wasn't adjustable, but one size was. That was weird. That's definitely a unique pickup. It's. It's like the Bill Lawrence pickup again in the idea that it's a different, different animal out there. Then you have the TV Jones, which is a humbucker. That's a different animal again. So those are as are a totally different pickup style. There's a lot of variations. I like to talk about those four all the time. Then. Then you're going to get into I'll ngo eights, right? You know, pickups. Or you get like the invaders. And there's different. All different ways to approach the pickup. But essentially what happens to me is over years and years of testing hundreds and hundreds of pickups. As you guys know, at one time, I think I had 400 sets of pickups in the shop. It was getting ridiculously out of control. And, you know, trying them all and just like trying all the pedals, if anyone's trying. You don't have to try all the pickups. Because if you have a lot of. You tried all the pedals, you kind of know after a While you're like, okay, you start figuring out there's like a couple dozen pedals, you know, like overdrives. There's a couple of. There's a dozen overdrives and that's really what it is. And then there's all these variances of that. That's how pickups work too. So those are the ones I kind of, kind of focus on. For me, the. And then Chris. Chris. Sean says, what about the wide range humbuckers? Sure. Like, yes. And again. But see, what's funny to me is this is where I say we're getting off in the weeds. There's going to be weird pickups. There's all kinds of strange pickups, humbuckers, all kinds of cool stuff like the, you know, like the miniature humbuckers. Right? Mini humbuckers and stuff. But to me, I'm just talking about the pickup that we all kind of know, which is the standard shape humbucker. So the reason I think like that is just like I said, after a while I kind of learned like, I love the JB for me, I don't know about you guys, but like pedals did the same thing for me. I tried all these pedals and where they really came down to is I like certain ones and the variances of those ones and the pickups are the same way. I like certain pickups and the variances them like, I love the jb. It's one of my favorite pickups, so. And on the dimarcio side, I like the tone zone. And there's a lot of things that are similar about them and only a few things that are different. Shield 400 says where to active pickups fit. That would be probably that I keep saying there's like four or five. That would probably be the fourth or fifth one. So active pickups. And that would be of course now the EMGs and then of course the fluents and then of course everybody doing copies of that. That is a different concept to pick up altogether in the idea that an emg. I like using EMG as for example. There's a couple things that EMGs are kind of funny. People always think of EMGs as being hot, high output pickup, really powerful. It's the opposite. Very low magnetic field, very low output. Right. The idea of an EMG is not to make metal. The IMD idea of an EMG is essentially to like really like think about the Grateful Dead. It's like, how do I get a. A sound from guitar to go through 150ft of guitar cable, right? Across the stage, a giant stage. So what they did was. And more sustain, right? So think of it like David Gilmore. Think about their focus. Their focus, like David Gilmore. More sustain. Really big, long, you know, holding notes for a long time and sending signal down long, long distance of cables. So what EMG did essentially was just smart, is they decreased the magnetic field. So there's less it when the strings. There's less magnetic field for the string. So it's not slowing down the string. When your string spinning each time it passes the magnetic field, essentially it's being pulled down. So it slows down. Right. Does that make sense? So you're losing sustain every time it spins, it's losing its energy. And especially since it's being pulled down. So if you can decrease that magnetic field, the string technically could spin longer and sustain longer. But the problem is if you decrease the magnetic field right, then you're getting less signal to the amp. And we don't like that. Whereas guitar players, I told you, everybody's focused on how do I throttle the amp, right. I want more going to the amp. So what EMG does is they do a weaker pickup. In other words, a weaker meaning a smaller magnetic field. They do. They basically make a pickup that could sustain more and then they run a preamp behind it, are in it, kind of both. And then they shoot that signal using power like a 9 volt battery. So that's why the amp thinks it's getting something hot signal. Because it is. Essentially it's no different in theory than taking a really weak pickup and throwing a booster pedal on it and shooting out your amp and going, wow, this pickup has a lot of juice. It's really pushing the amp, but it's really the booster that's sending it to the amp. The pickup's not doing the thing. So that's how you think about it. So that's essentially why the EMGs work the way they are. And so Charles is saying EMGs are super clean. Exactly. This is the funny part about it. EMGs, it's a branding thing, right? EMGs just got adopted real quickly by the metal guys. And so you had Carrie King and you have, you know, Zach Wilde and you have Metallica, and they're all using MGs. And your brain just goes, oh, EMGs, they must be aggressive for metal. But really what it was was, yeah, it's aggressive because the preamp is sending a lot of power out. But the pickups sustain really well. That's why David Gilmore likes them. That's why, like, it goes to the to the extremes with guitar players. So it's. It's. And then Shane says EMG sound better than most people think. I absolutely agree. I think most people in a sound test with EMGs and passive pickups will constantly get them wrong. They'll get the concept wrong. And. But. But there is some truth to the MG is being aggressive because that boost, right? It gets aggressive. That's why I think some of the fluent stuff is really cool, because some of the fluent stuff is voiced in a way that kind of gives players more of taste of those active pickups. But. And then so, you know, just. Just we could cap it off. A lot of people will confuse a lot of things with bass pickups. And when you think of bass pickups and active bass pickups, most bass. Most basses. Bass guitars don't have active pickups. They have passive pickups with active preamps. So like a Bartolini is a passive pickup with an active preamp. So a lot of bases like Fender basses, they don't have active pickups. They have passive pickups. And they run it through an active preamp. No different than running it through a preamp pedal. It's just built into the base. So a lot of people, when they say active, this base has active pickups. It's just a misnomer. We're saying it wrong. We're like, oh, does this base have active pickups? No, it has passive pickups with an active preamp, but we just call it active. There is an exception. EMG does make active pickups for base. So you can run an active pickup without the. Without the preamp. Or it has to work in conjunction with the preamp. But in most cases, bass pickups are passive. And that's where another. Again, it gets confusing. Again, people are confusing active pickups versus active preamps. I don't know. I always tell people, try an emg. I always tell people, pick up a guitar and play AMGs. They. For some reason, I feel like I have to have one guitar with the mgs in it always. And that's how it works for me. And I pick it up and play it, and I love it. And. But I like everything I get. Like, that's cool for a while and then I'm done. I'm doing something else now. Eli says, hey, Phil, is it really worth chasing the perfect neck if it pigeonholes you into certain specs? Yeah, you know what? That's a great question. Hold on. I've fallen in love with soft V necks and super jumbo stainless steel Frets. And now I feel like my only option is custom necks. Yeah, the worst thing you could do to yourself is fall in love with a fret type and a neck type if you want to own a lot of guitars. I, a good friend of mine, he loves jumbo frets, only, not medium jumbo jumbos. And so every guitar, when he gets it, he, he has it refreaded with jumbos. And you know, that really hurts the resale value for him sometimes, but he just has to have jumbo frets. He can't play anything else. And, you know, that's what's tough. You know, I, I, I can play a range of frets. I just can't play really small, vintage, small, low frets. Everything else in between is fine with me. But. Hold on, but, and neck profile, same thing. I like medium Cs. I like it medium thickness, but I could play a little chunky neck for a little while, play a thinner neck for a little while. But look, you gotta, you gotta play what you like. That's just how it works. And, but yes, you're really lucky if you don't care. I, there's a lot of guitar players that don't learn about necks and fret wire and all that stuff. They're better for it. What's the saying? Ignorance is bliss. I've seen it come, I've seen it come unraveled on somebody. I've seen people in the music store over the years learn about what we're talking about every week. And as they learn it, they become more miserable, not more happy, because they were so like, they'd pick up every guitar and to them, every guitar was the same. They didn't know there was a difference. And now as they slightly figure the like, oh, I never, I hate this. Yeah, so, but some people makes it easier. It does make some people happier because now you can figure out what you really like. Lorenzo Dude, 1966 says, hey, Phil, just bought a Princeton from, from 1974. It came with a Jensen special design. Red, what would you do to upgrade, like, jazz and rock? There's a, there's a video of a guy who goes through all the Princeton 10 speakers. I have a Jensen in this one that I like, but I don't love. But I'm not gonna swap it. Like I said, I really like the selection. Gold. It's gonna make the amp a little dark, not darker, a little, little louder. Just a little louder, which is weird, but a little louder because it lets, and it's gonna be a little Darker, which is really, I think, a nice combination for the Princeton. Take some of those highs out. And if this is your first Princeton, I would caution not to change the pickup before you learn the amps controls. So here's the trick. Okay, here's the trick. The trick is. What's the trick Here, let me show you. I can do something that's pretty cool. So I'm going to. Oh, hopefully not mess this up. Okay, hold on a second, Eli, I'm gonna help you with something, okay? You guys can still hear me? Don't worry, you'll see in a second. I'm showing you the amp, okay? So you guys can see the amp. Now, this is the Princeton. So you see where I was playing earlier, the volume is just above 2. Okay? My treble is at 4. My bass is at 3, right? Reverb is at 3. And then, of course, I have the tremolo off. Okay? Now the reason I tell you that is you gotta understand these controls always start with a Princeton or a 65 Deluxe. Reverb always start on zero. And in fact, this is just a trick with all amps, okay? Every amp, always start with your tone controls at zero. And here's why. If you turn off all two or all three tone controls and you have no sound, that means even each tone control is adding gain as you turn them up a little. Interesting. Fun fact. Everybody always goes to five. And that's great, but this is just another way of looking at it. So what I do is I take an amp like this and I go, oh, it's too bassy or too bright, but I always take an amp and I go, go. I know it's hard to hear me because I'm far away from the mic, but go to 1. I know it says 0, but you get the idea. 1. And then, like I said, make your adjustments this way. Way. And you'll find what you think. Because you. Everybody, when you go here, your brain says, I only have this much travel to go on my controls when you go from the center point. But the reality is you have lots of travel. So go back. Look at that. I'm back. So I hope you guys can hear me. Okay, I know I'm getting far from the mic, but my point is. Oh, if I don't lose my voice. All right, so my point is, is that learning the tone controls on an amp is something as basic as a Fender. Excuse me. Okay, better. Now, the tone controls on a Princeton, which is just bass and treble, most people are like, oh, there's not A lot of control. There is a massive amount of control in that amp. Keep in mind the thing about Fenders, again, you might be a Fender, you know, a player. And so I'm not telling you anything new, but I'm just telling you guys something. This also goes for the 65 Deluxe amps. The other misnomer is that you only have a treble and a, and a bass. The truth is, that amp does have a mid range control. It's just fixed. So there is mids. It's just it fixed into a position. Essentially they just put a. You know, so I'm not an amp guy, but you just have to understand there's something in the amp where your mids are fixed. So you do have mids. So with Fender amps, I always start from zero. In fact, all amps just start from zero. Zero out your controls and move from there. If you find a great spot on it, it sounds great. You don't have to buy a speaker and that will help you. And then if you don't, then try speakers. I like the slashing gold. I like the slushing green back. I like the slushing greenback and tension. Obviously I must like slash ins. So that's what I recommend over, you know, other speakers. But you know, like I said, salt to taste, do it, do what you like. But I like slashians, especially in those amps. I have a selection in my 68. Well, not anymore because I turn into a head, but I run it through a selection. That's why I like having the original speaker in this, because this is my original sound. So I don't have a. I have like a modded and unmodded Princeton in my mind. By having the speaker, Destructo says, hey, Phil, I'm getting an acoustic this weekend. Something to play around the fire. Okay, I. I live in the Midwest, so all four Seasons. What should I be looking for? Well, there's two ways you can go about this. Get yourself a cheap acoustic and don't care. Right? Get yourself a $99, you know, $149 acoustic and just who cares? Or, you know, I really like those, the Martins that are the laminates, you know, laminate guitars, you know, the man made materials. I did a video of that. You can check that out. But essentially, cheaper guitar acoustics for campfires, for travel are better than expensive ones because you want laminated tops, laminated back inside. You don't want anything solid. Don't get a solid top, anything. Don't get anything solid. Okay. Solid isn't Going to take the weather well. Okay, the. More sheets of wood and glue, right? Yeah. That dampens the sound. Yeah. It affects the way it sounds, but it makes the instrument take more abuse. So you definitely want to go with a more price point friendly laminate back and sides and top. And then pick your brand of choice. I like Yamaha. I like Washburn. I like for that price point. Fenders are good. And that's it. And then me personally, if I was going to use it for that stuff, throw some elixirs or coated strings on there and they'll last forever, too. So little, Little, that's what I would do. Cheap acoustic, nice strings. Don't have to overthink it. All right, no more super chats coming here. Trying to button this up. Mr. S says Ryan Fluff, the Fluff. He's talking about the channel. Fluff rocked out his sweet new Sterling Music man signature at nammy. He sounded great. Kicks, Kicks, rocks. Oh, Kick rocks. Gibson. Sorry. Yes. I heard, you know, out, you know, through the grapevine of, you know, YouTube and stuff, that Fluff essentially and Gibson are not getting along or whatever. Well, he's been with Music Man. I get the whole thing he was talking about. My understanding is he was saying that they basically fired Randall Smith. This. This the owner of. Of Mesa Boogie. So the story goes, you know, Gibson talks to Randall Smith about buying Mesa Boogie, they buy Mesa Boogie, and then after a couple years, you know, he. He either retires or they fire him. And then there's all this argument I saw where Fluff said that he talked to the employees at Mesa Boogie and he was definitely fired according to how the employees feel. And then whatever he said apparently upset Gibson and I. All I can say is join the club. I've effectively pissed off half the companies that exist out there on this channel with this show every Friday. And mostly, for the record, which is even funnier for me, is not even saying anything, just repeating what you guys say. I used to think I said things, and I go, I'm kind of nice. It's weird that they get so mad. But then I've had a couple companies who are upset and talked to me, and the things they said I said, I go, I didn't say that. I read somebody said that, and I reacted to it. So apparently they're like, yeah, but you could have not read it. I'm like, all right, so now I'm in trouble for reading what the community thinks and says. Okay, so, yeah, look, I don't. I don't know, you know, the truth. Is there are companies that like their guitars and there's companies that like the people. And sometimes when you're lucky it's both. I like Fender guitars. I don't know anybody offender anymore for the most part. So I don't really can't like or dislike the people but same thing, there's companies. I like the people, companies like their guitars and sometimes I like both. So. But yeah, I, I saw his new guitar. It was a sterling, right? So he had, he had a music man one from, from Sweetwater and now it's a sterling one. Pretty cool. Plexigo says. Hey Phil, what are your thoughts on the two piece versus three piece bodies? What about the weight as it relates to tone? So on the multi piece body thing, I have no, I do not care. I only care in the concept of cost. Right. So in other words it's, it's like this. I. I like. Okay, so just as stupid analogy, just like please work with me. I like a cheeseburger and I like a steak. I do not want to pay. I mean not, I don't mean an expensive cheeseburger. It's just like a basic cheeseburger. Okay, I like cheeseburger. I like a steak. I don't want to pay premium steak price for a cheeseburger. It doesn't mean I don't like cheeseburger. I just. You see what I'm saying? I'm just looking for the analogy. I think it makes sense. Right? So I don't care if a guitar has a five piece poplar body. I just don't want to pay for the same price as a two piece or one piece alder body or mahogany body. Does it make sense? That's my logic. So I, I would love to tell you there's definitely people out there and there's lots of them on the Internet and they're. And they're going to sell you like this is the tone difference. And one piece of body resonates different than two. And glue. Each piece of glue in between each body resonates different. And I'm going to go kind of like back to our pickup talk earlier tonight, which is sure I don't disagree. Does three piece body resonate differently than one piece piece body? Whether I know for a fact or not, it doesn't matter. I could definitely think just like hypothesize. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Okay. Even though I just played an aluminum guitar that's mostly air by the way. This guitar isn't even a tone aluminum. This is tone air. If you look at this guitar, it's 50 air. It's my sarcasm, right? This guitar is. This guitar is missing more than it has. So where's the tone coming from? But, but back to your point. So if you said, yeah, is it going to be tonally different? Tonally different, Sure, I would give you something. But again, I would argue this just as an argument if you gave me a choice between a four piece poplar body and a nice set of pickups that I like. Like. It's a telly. I like the BG 1400s from Seymour Duncan. They're some of my favorite telepickups in the world. They're powerful, they're punchy, they're noiseless. I love them. If you said four piece poplar teller body on a telly with BG 1400 pickups or a one piece beautifully picked by two virgins on a, on a, on a full moon from the bet from the most from a blessed tree by two monks alder body. Right. But it has crappy pickups. I'm picking the good pickups and crappy wood. I'm just doing that. So my point is again is, is that I really like to say I always. It's the price point. It's. To me, I understand the brand. Brand value, you know that a brand brings value. So a name on a guitar should hold a certain amount of price to it. Except for. I have a caveat to that. If you say to me that a Fender guitar. Okay, okay. Fender, the brand, the Fender brand is more valuable than eart art, right? Okay, lose E art. Screw it. Firefly. Fender is way more value than Firefly. Not even the same league. Not even the same. Not even, not even playing a game anymore. Right? Firefly guitars versus Fender guitars. Not even the same league when it comes to brand value. And so if you said, if they make comparable. The same guitars, ideally the same guitars. This is my argument. Firefly makes a guitar, same specs, Alder body, bone nut, stainless steel frets, maple neck. Right. Alnico 5 pickups, right. CTs, pots, you know, switchcraft output jack and switch. That's the Firefly in theory. And the Fender is exactly the same. Okay. And they make them in the same country. Let's say they both make them in China. So we're talking about two guitars made in China, same spec sheets. Once it's Fender, one says Firefly. I will, I will gladly tell you 100% the fender is more valuable. Whatever the price of Firefly is, the Fender is more. It is more because it has More brand value. But if you say to me, Firefly has all that stuff and the Fender then has the four piece poplar body, the crappier pickups, crappier electronics, right? The nickel frets versus standstill, plastic nut versus bone, and they're the same price. I'm like, no, that doesn't make any sense. Here's why. The reason we trust brands, the reason we brand value is because you trust the experiences you and others have had in the past. Brand value is a reminder of like when you're driving down the street, okay? And perfect example. Better yet, for me, when I'm driving through the country and I see a Starbucks, okay, it's probably not gonna go where you think it's gonna go. I don't think, oh, great coffee. I think clean restrooms. So I can stop, buy a coffee that's not that great and pee right, and not have to worry about a stinky gas station bathroom. And that's so. That's so the brand could be more than just coffee, good or bad. It could be, like I said, clean restrooms, you know, and so that's where I go when I'm driving across country. I get coffees at Starbucks because I stop at Starbucks and I get a coffee and I. That's where I pee, right? Because their bathrooms are clean and they do that on purpose. McDonald's. And so, you know, Starbucks are notoriously known for having clean bathrooms because they know that people will stop and use the restroom and buy something. My point is brand, brand value, right? You see the brand and you know what you're going to get before you purchased it. That's what brand value is. If I go to Starbucks and their bathrooms are just as dirty and crappy as a gas station bathroom, and now I'm paying for an overpriced coffee, I'm not gonna keep going. I'm not gonna be like, wait, the coffee's not good and it's expensive and their bathroom smell, at some point, I'm not going there anymore. So this is my point. Back to this. And I know I'm on a, on a tirade. This is my point. Brand value. Fender. So this is why I critique the Fender and I critique companies the way I do with the multi piece bodies. If. If Firefly can give me a guitar or if a company comparable, like if PRS can make a $499 Indonesian guitar with a mahogany body, maple neck, rosewood fretboard, and a quality gig bag for $500. And they are a peon to Fender. So you know, Fender PR is huge, super tiny to Fender. Not even the same league. We're talking about $80 million company to a $800 million company. Perceivably, Fender could easily. Perceivably 10 times larger than PRs. My logic when doing the video review to give you guys information is to acknowledge that, well then Fender is not giving you the best value, are they? Right. So where is the brand value in that? If it's, if you get lesser because you went with a better brand, that makes no sense. Right? Kind of like the logic of it makes no sense. It makes no sense that I would pay more because there's a label on it and it's crappier. That's like, that's, you know, so. So back to your question. That's why I don't really care about the multi piece bodies and stuff. But there are arguments that they sound different. It's just not my focus. My focus is just on like for instance, notice how when I review a $99 guitar, I don't emphasize how many piece body it is. At a $99 guitar should be a 50 piece body. I don't care. Who cares how they did, right? Who cares? But if I reviewed a $3,000 guitar and it had quality, you know, component, lesser quality components, I would definitely emphasize on them. I show you everything in the videos, but I'm emphasizing, in other words, not just showing, but sometimes I say something behind that. That's why I'm saying so. I don't know, I feel like I'm like, okay, I feel like I'm yelling at the clouds. Okay, so we got to get through these last two super chats so we can start our weekends. This One is from Mr. S who says, Hey, $800 Eastman Fullerton guitars were favorite at Nam. Yeah, I saw those. They looked fantastic. When I played one, I didn't realize it was a new affordable version of the custom Cali made 3K models, two versions, telly and Strat pickup layouts. So I saw that too. If you guys didn't see that, that the East Eastman F. Fullerton guitars were announced. I saw some videos and stuff of them. I. I don't know how or when I'm gonna have the time to do this, but it's on my list. It literally is. I'm sharing with you guys the guitars. This is it. Let me share with you right here. Okay, so this is one Eastman floor tone guitar. This is the one that's like more like a Strat. I love this crazy two bolt thing. I Love this. It's really cool. Roasted maple neck, rosewood fretboard. Wow. It's almost like quality stuff here. And what's the body? Does it say body style, body material? I don't know why we care, but I don't know. If you guys see the body there, you can see it. I didn't see it right away. My. I'm going to reach out to them. I hope that they're interested in having the channel do a deep dive. So that would be a guitar. So when I made purchases, as you know, I strategized for the channel. I was like, I purchased Marshall. I purchased Fender. I purchased Ivan. Is. I purchased the company. These companies don't work with the channel. So I was like, okay, there's no way we're gonna get them to loan us anything. So I just buy it. Like I said, the irony is it sucks. It's like I have to give the companies who don't support this channel money. And the companies that do support this channel, I don't have to give them money. It's not fair. But, you know, it's the business model I'm in. And so I, I will reach out to Eastman and see if they're interested in getting a guitar on the channel. I would love to. To have that guitar on the channel and do a deep dive. So we'll see if it can happen. And then the last super chat of the day, last comment is from Dan, who said, yo, all right, we're ending it on a good note. Yo. The deals are there. I got an Avatar Cub this week for 10% off from Sweetwater. This thing is probably the best sounding solid state amp I've ever played. Thanks for the videos and hanging out with us on Fridays. No, man. Thank you for the large super chat and thank you for reminding. I always love it when you guys bring this up. I always tell you guys, always. It's like Sweetwater. I hear it all the time. Sweetwater doesn't give deals. He just got 10% off. Sweetwater always, always ask for deals. There's nothing wrong with that. Reach out, you know, email. If you're not good at talking email, just email. Email your Sweetwater rep and say, look, I appreciate you guys using the affiliate links when you do, but like I told you, the amount of money they give me is minuscule compared to what you guys can get. If you ask for a deal. I'd rather you get more money in your pocket than put a little in my pocket. That's just. It's like I said, so Always remember to ask for deals. On that note, we definitely have to end with the poll. So if you guys don't know the poll was what is more important ter country of origin or the materials that the guitar is made of? The Kyg Live Crew, the hangout here. Thank you. Over a thousand of you said, oh, so you know, 1,244 votes. So 1200 of you voted. 80% said the materials matter the most, 20% said country origin. That's exactly how I feel as well. I think. I'm glad. I'm glad. I feel, I'm glad I'm not out of touch with you guys, you know. Right. I sometimes I worry, you know, that I'm, you know, am I, I'm out of touch, am I losing it with the community at large? And I felt the same way in reference to the offender standard series, I feel like I like the fact that they made it Indonesia, but also I would like it if it had better materials, better components that would be better. So I agree. I agree. So on that note, thank you guys so much. Two videos coming. The Marshall JCM 900 video is coming soon, very soon. And also please prepare for Monday's video, which is the first vintage guitar deep dive with a twist. A twist meaning no trickery, just it's not going to go the way you guys think, which is maybe entertaining video. And if you haven't checked out the standard videos, check out those. If you didn't check out the last chance to get the Tim Pierce lesson program for 30% off and kick something back to this channel. So not only you saving money, but you're actually so understand Tim Pierce is giving you guys a pretty good discount because remember the discounts to you and to me. So he's helping both out and he didn't have to do that. It was really nice. So. But this is the absolute last weekend for that. Thank you guys. If I missed anything, I didn't get to a lot of the mana stuff, I apologize. But you know, it's a. I it. The show went amok. All right, guys, on that note, thank you guys for your time to 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 making this possible.