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Phil McKnight
The Know youw Gear Podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast, episode 407. And I'm excited. I was gonna make a joke about 407. I don't have one. I'm like, maybe at 409 we'll be like, 409. Episode 409. Okay, so I hope everybody had a great week and is ready for some guitar talk and some. Some fun to start the weekend. And, uh, before we get started, just a reminder, as you guys saw this, this channel is sponsored by the Patreon members and the channel members. I want to thank you for that. Plus I want to thank the moderators and people who show up live. If you show up live, there's no commercials. So it's just. We don't turn on the commercials after the live show is over. And I want to thank you for coming live. It's really important to me. In fact, I gotta say, it is very important to me. I've been thinking about it because of the fact that we've been analyzing. Again, we did this before. We turned off the ads during the live show. We analyzed it. We. We put them back because it was just, you know, didn't make sense financially. Now we're taking them off again and looking at the numbers. It doesn't make sense financially to keep them off. But, you know, we're going to do it, so that's what we're going to do. So thank you for joining me live and enjoying the no commercials. So let's get into a bunch of topics. We got a bunch of stuff going on. This was a good week for topics. Let's see. Chad wants to know what happened to the guitar know youw Gear 8 intro jingle. I think you're talking about the Guitar of the Week jingle. I still have it queued up. It's right here. It's in the. It's in the buttons system. I just always didn't use it. You know, that's how it is, you know, too many things to track. It's just too much to track. When I do Guitar of the Week, it's like, you know, shut off this mic, turn on that mic, set this up, you know, and then there's meters I have to watch, make sure you guys are hearing what I'm hearing and vice versa. See? Okay, let's do this. We already talked about that. Some of you guys are asking questions, but it's kind of tough because we are talking about that. Let's do this one. This one came from Antique rocker who says, hey, we want to host a guitar restring and setup clinic in northeastern New York. Do you have any suggestions, syllabus, handouts, or lesson plans from your past clinics? Any help is greatly appreciated. Well, you know, I can only tell you that for a restring event, you know, a clinic, it's. You definitely want to be organized, very organized for a ton of reasons. One, you're going to have a lot of people bringing their instruments into probably a music store, assuming that's where you're doing it. But if you're not doing the music store, it's not going to be as problematic. But we were doing it in music stores, so it was very problematic. We had to make sure instruments were tagged so that they people weren't walking out with the store's instruments. Also, you know, if you get backed up, it's really problemless. You know, it's a big problem for me. It's a different thing for me. I don't know your particular situation. In my particular situation, the problem was some people drove four and five hours to come to the event. And then, you know, we got backed up. And so they're waiting three or four hours and they're thinking about the fact they got a three, four, five or four or five hour drive home. So, you know, we at some point would prioritize distance. We would say, hey, look, if you drove here, you know, a long distance, we want to make sure yours gets done in an earlier fashion than someone else's, you know. And most people are very understanding, you know, so, you know, I don't do anything without kind of getting the sense of the permission of the, of the room, so to speak. Does anyone have a problem with that? Let me know now. And we just kept it very organized, made sure everybody had, we gave them sheets to fill out, I think that said like what strings you want? So we knew everything. So. And then I had, in most cases, I had somebody helping me. A lot of times it was Ralph, but somebody was helping me prep. So they would go, okay. So they would, he would be like, I'll use the Ralph one, because that was a really popular one. He would ask the person, okay, what strings? What do you want? What do you, you know? And he would do all the questions and make sure the sheets right before it handed to me so I could just talk to them and just do the restring event, if that's what you're talking about. And we handled that pretty fine. Some of them got crazier than others. We had one where I think we had 200 people. And then we had one where they had 50 people. Either way, I can tell you right now, anything other than 24 people, it was pretty hard to manage. I mean, for very long days. And we get asked sometimes to do them again. I just don't know, to be honest with you. I just don't know it's a thing anymore. You know, when I did them years ago, this is obviously way before COVID At the time, it felt like a great idea to go out there in the world and, you know, meet the viewers and meet people. And I think it worked. Over time, I think people have become. Which is probably great. I think it's good news. People are very, like, casual about YouTubers now. That's how I feel like I don't get a whole lot of, like, oh, you're on YouTube kind of things anymore. It's kind of like everybody is kind of familiar with me, and so the draw doesn't seem to have the draw it used to. I don't see people coming to things, but I could be wrong. What do I have? What do I know? But. But that's just some suggestions on how to do it. Phil Engel. This came from. Where did this come from? Oh, came from Amanda. Sorry. Amanda says, did you see the new. The new music Nomad guitar tracker app? No. Okay, so here's where it's easy. Somebody asked me a great question. Let me ask. Let me answer it. And it ties into your tracker app. There's. Okay, so I have to go into my phone and find. Came in a question. It says, okay, let's see. Hold on a second. Where did I save this guy's question? I even said, I'll answer your question on the next show. Okay, so he says, question was from Steve Walker. Says, Phil, why don't you use headphones? Why don't you wear headphones? Why don't I wear headphones? I don't like headphones for a ton of reasons. One, the main reason I don't use headphones is because when I'm playing a recording, well, it's a little different now that I have kids in the house. But I get really into what I'm into to the point where I'm tuned out. And so people get right up on me, whether my kids or my wife and, like, touch my shoulder or they have to get my attention. I always jump out of my skin every time. In fact, it pretty much happens when I'm playing. I'm very focused on what I'm doing. Once I'm in. Once I'm doing something. I'm super, super focused on it, and it's hard for me to kind of acknowledge anything around me. And so headphones make that situation worse. So I'm not a big fan of those. That's the main reason. Now, why does that tie into. Whoops. Why does that tie into Phil's question? I don't like apps either. So as soon as you guys say apps, you know, I tried. And being on YouTube has made apps worse. I was never a big fan of apps, but here is my experience as a YouTuber with apps. I'm gonna say 50% of the time, the company screws up the app, and it's a disaster. Apps. I think the problem in this industry is there's just not enough people, not enough tech, not enough customers, not enough anything to get apps working for most of the time. In fact, if I would have published the video, all the videos I ever did working with companies with apps, you guys would hate me probably to this day. You'd be like, I downloaded that thing. It's a nightmare. It was a nightmare. The YouTuber part of it made it worse where literally companies would come to you and go, hey, we have an app. Here's the product. They send you the product. They send you the app. By the way, I'm not the only YouTuber that thinks this. I've never talked to a YouTuber who has a different opinion than this. You get the app, it doesn't work. You tell the company, they say they're working out the bugs. I've had companies say, well, just launch the video anyways, and we'll have it all worked out by the time the viewers see it. I'm like, hell, no. Right? So I'm not a big fan of apps, and even when they work, I'm not a fan of it. I'm not a fan of being around my phone any more than I absolutely have to. It's just not my thing. I make a living on a phone. And if you do that, it's like people who work all day on a computer terminal, the last thing they want to do sometimes is go home and work on the computer. Some people work on cars all day. They're mechanics. They don't want to go home and work on their cars. Some people are different. Some people like to come home, work on the car after they worked on cars all day. Some people want to sit on front of a computer after they. I sit at a computer all day at work. I am not that person. Whatever I've done all day, I Kind of want a break from that. So my music time is really not about apps for me. So I'm not really into apps at all. And I used to do videos from here and here and there where a product would have an app and I would say like, oh, I'm not going to go through the app. And you figure that on your own. But I don't even kind of do that now. In fact, just recently I had two companies reach out and like to also point out the app companies tend to offer more money, you know, but I just, it just, I just don't like apps. So headphones and apps are just not my thing. If you love headphones and apps, I'm, I'm actually jealous of you. It's not that I'm so much like, I hate them, I just don't. They don't work for me in my life experiences. So. Ben Coombs. What's up, Ben? Ben says, from the Ben Coombs channel, he says, why are Explorers so rare these days? Phil? I'm gonna put that now again. We're gonna, you know, just like, we're gonna just pontificate. You know why? I think it's because Gibson and Fender, like all large smart corporations, learn that if you try to push items that are not your big ticket sellers, right? You know, strange colors, you know, offerings, strange model offerings, you, you can try and push that on somebody all the time. And you're always gonna be pushing marketing because you gotta understand like there's a, there's a. Ben, think of it this way. There's a built in joy in knowing that you don't have to really promote or market a Les Paul, okay? I mean, think about that. Like think about you guys. I want you to think about when you go in a music store, how many Les Paul's and how many Strats and Tellies are on the walls. And I mean literally not Fenders, Squires, Epiphones and Gibson. I'm talking about all of the fakes and copies and all the, you know, the, you know, tributes and all the different brands. I mean it's essentially, it's a, it's a, let's just say, I like to say it like a pickup truck. It's a pickup truck market. In other words, it's a built in market. Everybody's looking for. You know, Dodge does not make a different looking truck than Chevy, than Ford. They essentially function all the same. They have a bed behind a cab, you know, that you put, you know, stuff in it. It's A very accepted product by the, you know, by the community or the consumer. So the same thing with guitars like that, they don't have to promote them, they don't have to push very hard. It's built in, you know, you just kind of make them and then a new color is an exciting thing and you know, it's easy. Now the other shapes, the other colors. So some of the strange colors and then of course some of the strange shape guitars. This takes promotion, this takes work. And the problem is the roi, the return on investment promotion. I've said this a million times and people, sometimes people shun it on the channel, I don't really care. Marketing is the most expensive thing. It's the absolute most expensive thing. It's literally the thing. Think about this. When I talk to small businesses every single day, marketing is the reason they're failing every single time they're marketing. Like if I go, how much you spend on development? How much you spend on employees? If they're not, if their marketing budget isn't one of their biggest expenses, then I'm like, well, right, you know, that's why you're not selling a lot. You have to get this product in front of people, okay? Because the fact that there is, let's just say there's a built in audience for Strats and Tellies and Les Paul's, right? I mean you got to get your guitar in front of people. So I think the strategy with Gibson and Fender has always been release limited runs of those things. And Disney does that the same thing. Think about it this way. It can't be coincidence that all companies have the same strategy. Take something that doesn't sell that well and release it in limited runs here and there. And the, the, the unlimited run gets excitement because the, the return on investment on the marketing is very easy to get, right? Because you pound out some marketing, you go, okay, we're going to make a thousand units or 10,000 units, we're going to spend, you know, six figures on marketing for a guitar company and you know, maybe half that because again, it's the guitar industry anyways and put that out there and then we'll sell through and everything be great. And if you don't, and I can understand why some people may don't think this opinion of mine is that maybe, you know, some people are probably like, yeah, sounds fine, some people are against it. This is why I think left handed guitars and all things are also same thing, always pushed to the side. It's just too hard. You're talking about an industry where the big players really don't have to work that hard in the marketing business. And they do market like crazy. Obviously we know that. But they don't have to work as hard to market the mainstays. The, you know, it's the, it's one of the best things. I mean, think about this. They're like, I just, we're talking about Gibson, but let's just talk about Fender for a second. Their main product has not essentially changed since the 50s, right? I mean, at this point, if you don't know what a Strat is, there's probably not a whole lot of marketing that's going to be able to help you go, oh, you know, hey, maybe if we finally, you know, market to somebody, you know, you know, this way. I mean, people have kind of figured it out. So I think that's why Explorers, Firebirds, you know, all of the, you know, the V, all that stuff, it's why they do that. And also that's also why the benefit to them is by limiting them, not only do they, you know, decrease their costs, their overhead of the marketing, they also get to put a premium price on them and charge more. So I don't know. That's, that's my theory. It seems to apply many times over to many, many different companies. So it's interesting that way. Let's see. Wait, hold on, hold on. This game From Super Lead 100 says, I thought the made in Korea PRs you first pulled out was the, was really nice looking guitar. So obviously this is about the. I bought a guitar collection. You know, that video. There was a lot of discussion in that video. When I made that video, it was originally 34 minutes long or 38 minutes long. And you know, and then you edit and sometimes I edit for flow purposes. I'm just trying to keep the, the thing moving along. You know, obviously you'll see where I'm like, I didn't, I edited out the parts where I walk. Those guitars were in a different room. So I had to go to a different room and bring a guitar almost each time, you know, because everything was stacked up around me. And so, you know, there's these, you know, minute gaps in between, you know, guitars where I'm just walking back and forth. But some of the stuff I edited out was like the whole deal and how it worked out. And some people are curious about that. And I find, what I find about that is some people are curious about it and some people are not curious about it. And so I figured that's what the podcast is for. If you guys want to talk about the, you know, why that worked out and why do I do those deals? If you notice, I do them quite often. Um, I would say once a year I buy a collection of guitars. It seems to be that way. I used to do it much more, but I used to have a store at some point, so of course the store was doing it all the time. But I mean, I've just done this as a strategy and. And it's just a way I. I think the reason why I share the video with you guys and we'll go on. Let's do this. Let's talk about that for a second. So those who didn't see the video, I bought a bunch of guitars. And I've done a bunch of these videos where somebody has a guitar. And particularly the. In the guitar video, I was showing off this lime gold setzer. As you can see, I might have a lime gold issue I never intended in my own three of them. The irony of this is. And then on a side note, can we just. On a side note, the irony of this. When I went to G and L and I think 2017, and I toured their factory and we. And I had them custom make me a guitar, which was the. Or, you know, just make me a GNL ASAT hh. I had him do it in the margarita line because I always wanted this color, like the Parker and the Gretsch. So literally, this was my like, oh, I'll get that. And that will scratch the itch of always wanting this lime gold, you know, color guitar. And then when I got the orange Parker, I was like, oh, it's cool. It's not as cool as the lime gold, but it's the orange one. It's really good. And then when my buddy was like, oh, I'm gonna. I'll sell you the lime gold. I'm like, oh, now I got two lime gold guitar. Like, this is crazy. Okay, cool. And then when I saw the opportunity to buy the lime gold sets or I was like, okay, this is. Now it's going to look like a problem of guitars. Okay, so here's how I want to explain this to you because a lot of people had some interesting comments on that video. So essentially how it works every time, the videos are always the same, because it's always. I always work the same. Somebody wants to sell a guitar or a bunch of guitars. And I want to be clear, it's not always like, hey, somebody goes, hey, I want to sell you 20 guitars. It's not that. Okay, it's. Think about this. I see it all the time on Craigslist. I go on Craigslist, and you can just all of a sudden notice, like, there's 10 guitars listed on Craigslist, but they all have the same backgrounds. The same front room or the same bedroom door. The same. The pictures are similar, right? So you're like, oh, this is one person selling all this stuff. And sometimes it's easy, right? Sometimes it's as easy as, you know, they want $500 for guitar. And you're like, okay, that's a. That's a good price. And I'll. I'll reach out and offer it. But sometimes when the market gets like it has been, where it's almost like the stock market, you know, right? Every day, what's your guitar worth? Who the hell knows, right? Things are just in flux at all times. And everybody, of course, has these strong opinions. The market's down, it's over. You know, you can buy things for nothing. And then people are like, I can't find anything for nothing. And you're both are right. The mark market is been extremely different. And it's been a lot different because of the fact that we have all these platforms to sell. And everything gets different. You know, everything's just so many avenues to sell stuff and then depends on what you have. But one of the things that I've learned over the years, and I use this perfect, because this is a perfect story that happened to me. I found this Heather pink Gibson Les Paul that I thought was just the coolest thing. This was a very expensive Les Paul. It was a. But it was like Heather metallic pink. Okay? So think of it light metallic pink. And I just thought, oh, isn't that crazy? You never see that. I thought that was so fun. And the guy had it and I go, you know, he's gonna sell it. And I bought it and I thought, this is really cool. And the problem is I didn't love the neck. So the neck was kind of chunky. And over time, I just wasn't feeling the neck. And I would play the guitar because I just thought it looked cool, but it just didn't get on with the guitar itself. And. And it's one of those things like, I'm not taking this expensive guitar and sanding the neck down. It's just not. It's not gonna make sense to me. And I don't even know if I'd like it if I sanded it neck down. So what happened was I went to sell it and it was a horrible experience trying to sell this Heather, Pink, Metallic, Les Paul. I mean, nobody wanted it. And anybody willing to take it was only willing to give me like nothing for it. It was just a very. Like what we talked about earlier when I was talking about Ben Coombs and the Explorers, like it's just not a desirable guitar. It's a lot easier. Like if you, you know, getting rid of a guitar quickly, get yourself a sunburst, anything, right? Get the traditional boring guitars, everybody will buy them. But the odd guitars they are typically cost more and typically less people will buy them. So therefore you'll lose more. And I lost a good amount of money. I lost I think a thousand dollars on that guitar selling it. I just waited and waited and I think it probably took me about eight months, so. Eight months and I still lost $1,000. Just no one wanted this guitar. And so from that I kind of learned one thing, which is it should have been don't buy really strange looking colored guitars or strange odd guitars. What I learned is don't pay premium for them because if you decide you don't like them, down the road you may come out ahead. Sometimes they become very desirable. Most of them, they're not. So to me, like a lime Gold Setzer is just a cool guitar. I always wanted one. But it's just as you guys see. Like if you look at the comment section, it's a perfect example. Half the comment section said that guitar is awesome. Half of them said they're made puke emoji faces. So you can imagine if I go to sell this, that's exactly the market I'm in play with, right? You know, Gretsch is known for being like, you know, black or white or orange, right? Or maybe red. So anyway, so what I've kind of learned is over the years is that when people have eclectic guitars that I'm after and stuff. So in this particular case, he had the Gretsch. So when I was looking at his collection of guitars, I was like, I was like, okay, I kind of like the Gretchen. I kind of like the idea of owning an EVH amp that, you know, head N 112. I thought that'd be fun. And so I shot him an offer for it. And he was like, yeah, I kind of will take that. You know, he's thinking about it and. But he's like, but he said, but I'm gonna sell all this other stuff, so maybe I'll see what the stores will give me. Maybe, you know, he's gonna Figure out all these avenues. And I said it in the video, you know, be a solution. So look, here's what's going to happen, okay? People are gonna cherry pick out his collection and then he's gonna be stuck with all the dead stuff. In other words, the stuff that's a little harder to move. And what you can do, sometimes it's a lot smarter than lowballing something on an offer or, you know, or just paying premium is saying, hey, look, what do you want for everything? Let me figure it out. Make your problem my problem. And I'll put in the work, I'll put in the sweat equity. Now, somebody pointed out in a comment in that video, yeah, you got to kind of have the money to do that. You do. You have to have the money to do that. I mean, now keep in mind, so, you know, I guess it's my brain, I kind of see solutions more than I see problems. When I used to not have the liquidity to do stuff like this, I used to do it on not credit. I would do it on their credit. Like, let me sell the guitars for you. I'll sell them all for you, right? And then as I sell them, I'll pay you for them, right? And so I would just do it that way, and that's how I would do it. And let me give you example of how it worked the last couple orders. Last couple, not orders, but what do you call it? Deals. The last couple of deals. It works the same way. I make a little bit of money, which usually covers my time. And then the guitars I want, I didn't pay anything for them, right? That's the ideal deal, right? So imagine, let's say I pay 5,000. I'm just giving generic numbers. I pay $5,000 for his guitars. Let's say I sell it for, I don't know, let's say I sell them for $6,000. Okay, so, so I make $1,000. But of course, keep in mind, all the time I'm shipping, packaging, you know, you know, talking back and forth, you know, the time it sits, you know, with this gear versus your money. I made myself $1,000, so I make $1,000. I feel like I've gotten compensated for my time and efforts. And the guitar I wanted, I don't have anything into it. That's just the bonus guitar. And that's nice because a lot of people have talked about this on the channel, like flipping guitars and stuff, you know, like, oh, did you get rid of it? I'm like, well, a lot of Guitars I get rid of. Cause they come for the channel. But a lot of the guitars I've had forever, I have no desire to sell them because I don't have anything into them. You know, I've worked out kind of so many of these deals over time. And it's just a way of. I guess it's because I didn't have anything when I started, so everything was like a trade deal. So, like, my first. And I'll get off this subject, but it's just an interesting thought. My first real bass amp. When I, you know, as, you know, I'm a bass player. My first real bass amp. How I got it was a guy put an ad in the paper. I think I've told this story for a bass amp, and it was just so crazy. Too good to be true, right? And I remember. I'll remember two things about this. One I had to go tell, you know, my wife, like, hey, at the time, she's my girlfriend, Hey, I want to go buy this amp. And it's in Scottsdale, Arizona. And it was in a really nice neighborhood. They were like, in a really nice house. So I just remember that. And so what happened was we drove and I. We drove and I bought the amp. I checked it out, and I go, okay. He wanted 350. I said, would you take 300 for it? He's like, yep, I get $300 in the amp. And she's like, you know, I remember on the way home, we're driving, she's like, are you happy about the amp? And I go, I don't even want this amp. This is just such a good deal that I'm going to sit on it and wait. And what happened with that amp was, it was. I think it was two months later, I was at a band rehearsal and another guy in a band had a bass rig. And he was like, yeah, I'm going to sell it. And I said, what do you want for it? I think he said, like. I think he said $1,000. And I said, I got this Ampeg head. I'll trade it straight for you. And we. We straight traded. So I got like a. I think is it. He said he wanted a thousand. I think his rig was eight. Worth 8, 900 bucks. I mean, however you look at it, I got a $900 rig, which I couldn't justify spending no matter what, especially in those days. I didn't even have it, much less justify it. I got it for 300 bucks. And that's just how I would kind of, you know, do things and then so you just kind of, you know, you, you traded into your gear, you found scenarios where you could get the thing, you know, upgrade, upgrade kind of thing. So I'm still kind of think like that maybe Mark says I got more time than money too. You know what's funny is, is I've learned that and this is just again just because I want to be very upfront with you guys. What I've learned is, is that it doesn't matter. I've talked about this before. It doesn't matter how much money I have or don't have. It's just the way I kind of got here and this is the way I kind of still see things. You know, there is no, there's nothing in me that says I make this much a year and I deserve this x dollar price guitar. Everything in me is, you know, there's better things to do with my time and money. And this is, if I'm going to do this, this is how I'm going to justify it. I'm going to justify it with, you know, however, you know, I come up with how to justify it. Uh, my, it's more of a guilt thing. I, it doesn't even matter at, at this point. Think with this for, I mean, gosh, for almost two decades I've been literally making a living in the, in the guitar industry and I still have trouble justifying guitar purchases of any kind. Let's see, the question was from Dale says, hey Phil, do you believe the claims of some retailers and channels that direct sales by Fender and Gibson is putting some mom pops out of business? Um, I, it's not that I, I believe that that's putting them out of business. I believe that it's because they're of business. I believe that direct sales to consumers are reactionary model. The reason I believe that is because if Gibson and Fender actually knew what they were doing, they would have done it a long time ago. Okay. Direct to business. Direct consumer business models are extremely profitable. And wow, you know, now on that scale it's a different animal. Okay. You know, it's a, it's a hard thing. You have to have physical stores. I mean look at Apple. Apple can sell direct to consumer and via the Internet, via their stores and still have to sell through Best Buy, Target, you know, everywhere else. You know, I mean they need all these avenues because they're so big. But in the guitar industry, the direct consumer business model, when it started rearing its, its ugly head in our industry, man, it took over and it took over fast. Here's, here's the thing to understand and this is what I, I kind of want you. I've talked about in the past. So let's just talk about this as a whole and maybe you all be better informed for it. I've said this before, Gibson and Fender and all the people who are going direct. It is a reaction to decrease in sales in an area, okay? It's not a, hey, we're going to get more sales, okay? Fender and Gibson, as you guys know, and I'm just, just picking on them because they're large corporations really don't. They're not innovative. They're not on top of things. They're not really figuring things out. You know, Fender does music lessons only about a decade after a billion people out there basically created lesson programs. I mean, Fender didn't really go, hey, here's an idea no one thought of. You know, it's, they're, they're always reacting to the market. So what's happening is they're reacting to the lower amount of sales. And let me, let me explain it to you from their point of view and that's really what you really want and you'll understand why they do what they do. So you have these mom and pop stores and they are the majority of the sales, okay? And that's the important part that still the case to this day, all the analytics I've seen in this industry doesn't really show that, that it's totally shifted yet. So you don't have Guitar center and Sam Ash and Amazon or not Sam Ash, I'm sorry, Sweetwater. So Guitar Center, Sweetwater, Amazon for the US and of course Toman for Europe and then you know, all the other platforms. But in the, in the U.S. those three entities, the Sweetwater Guitar center and the Amazon, they have not, they are not outselling the entire mom and pop section of the industry yet they are collectively doing it. But not individually, no individual. So here's my point. My point is, is that as the mom and pop sales decrease, two things happen, okay? It's not just the decrease in sales. The cost to work with mom and pops goes up. Okay? Here's what I mean by that. Shipping a truck, a semi truck full of guitars and amps and product to a store has a cost, but it's a lot cheaper than shipping four guitars at a time through FedEx UPS. In other words, think about this. Logistically, Fender has an outsourced in Ontario, their shipping. So there's a giant warehouse, it's a fulfillment center. For Fender, Fender doesn't even ship anymore to dealers because it was too expensive. By the time you have to pay, you know, your, your warehouse workers, you know, the warehouse space, all the overhead, and of course, all these tickets that they're picking of small orders. Right. Essentially a lot of dealers are buying, you know, essentially $2,000 orders or $4,000 orders. These are much smaller orders and they're consistent orders. In other words, they're constantly small orders. So this gets expensive. It's expensive. More expensive them to finance it. It's more expensive them to ship it. It's more expensive to them to pick it and do it. And, and then on top of that, those orders are smaller. So that's why they're being picked like that. So, you know, that's the benefit. So they're losing the, the, the. I would call the mid tier mom pop stores, right? Which were the ones that could still. Yeah, they're not Sweetwater. Yeah. They're not Guitar Center. But they're still putting in a decent size order, though a lot of those stores have disappeared to where now you have a small, a smaller platform of stores. So the orders are much smaller. So if you were them, if you were Offender Gibson and you were in a meeting, you would be freaking out. You'd be like, okay, wait a minute. Okay, we're losing this market. And what's left of it is costing more to sell to it. And not only, by the way, not only ship. Let's talk about this mom and pop stores. Let's, let's. Let's just put it out so you guys understand all the numbers. It's not only more expensive to ship smaller orders to them and finance them, it's also more expensive to collect on them because now you have to have a collection department, like vendor has to have customer service collections in Arizona. Calling stores like, hey, your account's past due. Are we going to get that payment? And we want to release another order to you so you can pay your payment. We'll release the order to you. That's another expense. By the way. You have to pay not only your sales reps, which are per diem to drive. They have to go to these mom and pop stores. Okay? It's not like you're sending one rep and flying them into. Well, by the way, there's a st. There's a rep, offender rep, and Gibson rep at Sweetwater physically on the campus. Right? That's how much business they're doing. So you have to send these reps out and these reps have to get the stores to reorder and reorder and push on them to reorder. And so those expenses go up. But the biggest problem is not the expense. The biggest problem is the lack of orders. So as the orders dry up, they came with the idea like we'll go direct to kind of cinch that up. I think that the online direct business model for Fender and Gibson isn't to put mom and pop businesses out of business. It's to be ready for when. No, it's to be ready for how the mom pal businesses keep shrinking. And they keep shrinking. This month, which is March is what today's the 28th. Three music stores announced closing that I saw in this country this, this month. Three decent sized stores have all put out. Like hey, we're, we're closing. So stores are closing. And so, you know, where's Fender and Gibson going to get that market share? You know? And also keep in mind the fear of having all your market share in one location. Do you really want Sweetwater and Guitar center to be, you know, 80% of your business? I mean that's very scary, you know, So I think that's why they're doing it that way. But I'm sure the mom pops looking at it logically saying hey, they're competing against us and therefore they're hurting us. It's not, unfortunately they're right, they are. It is hurting them and is competing against them. But it's not because of them. It's because of the other mom pops that are not performing and going out of business that this is happening. So that's why that's happening. It's going to continue to get worse. And then add in the fact that online direct to consumer sales is very profitable. When you figure it out, the one thing I will tell you is there's, you know, you guys, if you're hanging out here, you know, there's a thousand of you, whatever, 1100 of you hanging out Friday. Let's just assume you watch a lot of gear channels, okay? Or YouTube channels and you see them all doing the same thing. Hey, click my affiliate link down to Sweetwater. Click my affiliate link down to Reverb. Click my affiliate link down to Guitarson or whatever. And I've said this before with those affiliate links, I know in my case, I know something that maybe, Maybe the other YouTubers don't know it. I don't know. My store, which was a mid tier store, right, did mid volume business. It would do seven figures a year gross. Now don't get carried away. Seven figures is gross. And it's not like millions. It's like I broke a million every year, like one point something million in gross revenue for the store every year, which is a lot of money now, net, not very much, but gross. You know, as you hear it all the time, you hear that the music industry is a, is a low margin business, like a lot of low margin businesses. So you, you sell a lot of gross to get your margin. My YouTube affiliate link does what my store does every year, not even trying. And it's been that way for 10 years now. I make less off my affiliate link than I did owning a store, but also I didn't have to physically be in that store. But my point to you guys is if you think there's, I think there's 500 gear channels, if there's 500 gear channels and each one is selling affiliate links in the dollars of mid tier music stores, which is What I said 10 years ago, by the way, that this was going to be a problem. You can't, you know, it's too easy. You're, you're, you're watching a video and the link is right there and you click and you know, and there it is. A sale moved from a physical store over to an online entity. And, and Covid was crazy. Now keep in mind, I've never done the numbers I've, that I did in Covid. Those numbers were nuts. And those are five times normal numbers. Now I'm back to normal numbers. If you look at my March numbers, affiliates, I would say it's identical. Maybe up maybe 5, 10% from March of 2019. But I'm four or five times less than I was 2021, March of 2021. So I mean, it's a different world. So I would say, and that's why I say if you're a mom and pop, and when we call mom and pop, we just mean small business. If you're a small business, you have a store, look, focus on the things that they can't do. Focus, be the, like I said, be the answer to your customer's problem. You know, you know, do that used gear that, you know, it's nice to touch used gear and put it in your hand. You know, if Fender and Gibson, they don't need you, so you don't need them. That's just how it works. In fact, here's the best advice and we'll end this, this section of it with this tall. All the small businesses out there, you don't need anybody who doesn't need you, I promise you. Right. And it doesn't feel intuitive to think that way, but it's absolutely true. If they don't need you, then you don't need them. And so you just find your way. Customer service, you're gonna have to do things, you know, repair. You're gonna have to do setups. You're gonna have to change strings. You're going to have to be polite. You know, a lot of mom and pop stores that went out of business, I mean, you know, look, when they were the only deal in town, that's where I went. You know, their personality, I didn't miss. You know, there's a lot of stores that unfortunately have closed that I miss, that the store is gone. But the people there weren't that enjoyable to interact with. So I think of this. I was talking to some friends. This funny. This is a true story. I was talking to some friends literally a week ago. And we were counting. I was counting and talking about, for reference, how many times I have been scolded in a music store by an employee. And then I was trying to relate to how many times I've been scolded at a Target. Sir, sir, please don't touch the blender. Sir, sir, please. Hey, are you going to buy that roll of toilet paper or just look at it? You know? Right. Like, literally, I have hundreds of stories and music stories of being scolded, reprimanded as a customer for not being the right customer. And. And you wonder why a lot of them didn't make it. And so I'm just saying. I'm not saying you have to be a Fluffy and nice. I'm just saying maybe don't be an asshole. That's probably not going to go over well anymore. Where it used to go over well, it used to be fine. Used to go into stores, and the guy was curmudged, and you were like, I don't know. This is where the cool stuff was. And you got it. But now your cool stuff's on your phone. So I think, like I said, I don't think all mom pops will close. I think it's just they'll keep shrinking until the best ones are left and the best ones will stay. Let's jump to another topic. This one came from Amanda. From Ed. Says, phil, I thought you had a Mesa Boogie Mark five amp. I do, he says, but I have not seen it. Seen you use it for quite some time. Do you no longer have it? What model is it? It's a. It's a Mesa boogie mark 525. So that's what it is. And then I have a mesa boogie rectover25. You guys don't see my amps because I don't do any footage in the amp area anymore. That's just how that worked. That's it. I still have an insane amount of amps that I don't really want. I've sold a bunch. I've sold a bunch of more to get rid of. But yeah, I have amps. Just here's the irony of this. You know, my world is partially the things I love. And then right now, let me just put it this way. In this room that I'm standing right now, my office, I absolutely. This is my personal and I love my amplified niche amp. This is my amp. They've sent amps in the past, but this was specifically an amp I wanted. And this amp is because I love it. This is an amp that specifically has nothing to do with. I have never even made a video of this amp. I will do a video of this amp, but obviously I'm just waiting for like, no, do it today. I'm in the. I've got to get in the mood for it, but I'll do the. Do the video. That's an amp I love. I have a Fender Princeton right here. Because this is an amp I love. And I play it. Okay, in front of me, next to me, I have my Engel Steve Morris amp. I have a Marshall 2061 little head. And. And then I have a Morgan PR12. That's what I have these three amps right here. So this is what amps are in this room. These are the amps I use. Those amps are on the regular. I use those pretty much every day in some way. Right? Then there are samps I use for videos, and then there's amps I just have. Because, like a lot of us, I got it, I like it, I'm not using it, but I'm not getting rid of it yet because I still. I still like it. But anyways, my point is, that's why you don't see all the amps. I don't put all the amps in the. In the videos anymore. I don't put all the pedals in the videos. If you notice now, if you most will haven't even caught onto it. I'm actually purposely not showing you any guitars in the Deep Dive videos. If you look at almost every Deep Dive video, there's no guitar other than the guitar that's in that video. Not a single one. Except for at the end. I should take that back because I still film the end in here, but I've been actually moving that away too. And then in the play part, I'm only showing the 2amps that I'm using. And, you know, no particular reason. I just like the flow of that, you know, better. You know, I've been very upfront about this over the years. This background that you see behind me for the podcast is for the podcast. This is for your enjoyment. I, I literally, if, if I, if I did not make videos, I would not have a wall of guitars behind me. It's. It's not something that I. I would put them sideways in racks and then you guys would go, what's that? What's that? And I. So I hang them and I think it's nice wall art. It looks great. And if I could think of a better background for a podcast, a guitar podcast, you know, trust me, some days I think, well, why don't I just put a giant know your gear podcast sign behind me? And I'm like, ah, they probably won't like that. They probably like seeing the guitars. So that's why it's there. This is the guitars. So the Richard says, where's the synergy? The synergy is in the playroom. So we have different rooms because it just for function. As I've told you guys have I redid everything for flow purposes so I can make content. This week in particular, had almost no time to make content, but I still got a video out this week, if you guys notice. Without a doubt, five months ago, if I would have had this week, there would be no video of the week. But the fact is I'm not missing a week anymore. And sometimes doing multiple videos in a week because the flow is much easier to knock out a video in a day or two days because it doesn't take much for something to go wrong in your week. And all of a sudden you're like, okay, this video gets hold up. Jeremy wants to know, are the Fender Champion amplifiers any good? I've played a few. There's the Champion twos now, right? There was champions and then I had frontman before I was thinking about buying a champion 2 4. So I've talked about this with the patrons. I just haven't pulled the trigger on what to do yet. In the playroom, the room I do the playthrough of the deep dives. In there is the Synergy amp, which makes it easy for me because it's got basically four channels So I can just. And it's all mic'd up to one cab. So it's like I can just, you know, knock out the sound portion. But I like the idea that when I'm doing guitars that are two, three, four hundred dollars, maybe not run them through a, you know, fifteen hundred dollar head. And so we were thinking about putting a more economical amp. On the other side of me right now there's a Fender 65 Deluxe. And we were, that's what I was thinking about doing was a champion. So I was like, you know, do I do a catalyst? Do I do the champion? I don't know. It's just suggestions. If anyone wants to make a suggestion of what they think I should put there, I'll. I'm open to the suggestions. Clan of house cat says. Hey, is owning a Kaizen going well? Yeah, I've had it for a while. I like it. Obviously I did the original. I did the very first review of a Kaizen. I reviewed the very first prototype, as you guys know or maybe watch podcasts know, and I've been wanting one ever since and so I got that one and I've had it again. We've talked about this. I never thought about it until probably in the last couple months, more and more. But I think a lot of people, when I get these questions, I've noticed more and more the questions are like, hey, I don't see this or do you still have that? And I'm like, oh, I guess like I said, is it, is it. Should I rotate more stuff? Rotate so you can see the rotation. I'm like, to me it's like, I don't know, it's. But yes, yes, the Kaizen is, is a great guitar. I love it. I, it's my, it was, it was like I always wanted a pointy kind of B.C. richie kind of guitar and it was kind of there and it's a seven string and it's cool and I love the color and so yeah, love it. I'm not a huge fan of the pickups, but there's no way to really swap them because they did their own weird goofy spec, size and shape pickups. But I, I've learned to, to, to deal with it. It's not so much that they're bad, it's just they're not to my taste. But you know, overall the guitar sounds and plays good. Brian says, Yep. Changing from stock nine and a half to compound nine and a half to 12 inch radius fretboard. Okay, so he has a nine and a half inch fretboard, he switched to a nine and a half to 12 compound radius. Okay, so for those that don't know what we're talking about, it means it's rounded. The fretboard's kind of rounded. And as it goes up to the 12th fret, it's going to get flatter and flatter until eventually it's. It's 12 inches, which is like a Gibson Les Paul. So it's going to flow from a Fender Strat vibe to a Les Paul vibe as it goes up. He says it's on a telly. And now I have some strings laying on the frets higher up on the neck. Okay, is this due to a flatter radius? Is it? And is it fixable? It's not due to the flatter radius. The flatter radius would have. Would have made the strings not as close to the fretboard. My guess is, first of all, there's a couple things. Your neck might not be compressed tightly enough in your pocket, so it might be lifted up a little bit, or if you didn't use a caliper and check, your neck might be thicker. The actual neck block might be thicker than the old one. So it's higher up. And of course, you know, it's adjusted or just the end. If that's not the case, it could be as simple as, you know, swapping the necks. This one just has a different amount of tension on it, and so therefore it's. It's got some backbone. It's pulling the strings in and more down. But either way, the easy fix is. Well, first, make sure your neck is installed as tight as possible. That's a pretty easy one. It doesn't really matter if it's thicker than the other one. Just. It's more of a, you know, just. If you known, you would have adjusted. The only thing you have to make sure is there's no gap in your neck. Okay. Just to make sure there's no gap. That's pretty easy to do. And then, you know, can you loosen the strings a little bit and tighten the screws a little bit and just make sure there's no gap in there? And if you feel there's no gap in there, when you're looking right now, you can. You'll. You'll visibly be able to see something. And. Because sometimes. I was going to tell you sometimes what happens, because there's always. There's always, like, pieces of wood chips and stuff around, sometimes a couple wood chips. When you take the neck off, you don't realize, like, something Gets there and it goes. And then the neck gets. It doesn't get as flat as it needs against the body but if you confirm that you're just going to raise your saddles, that's all. And then you can radius your saddles however you wish. You can radius them to the nine and a half or you can radius them to the 12. That's, that's up to you. It's a preference. I've done it both ways. Somebody asked me how do you radius it to a. A compound radius neck? You know there's a correct way. I'm sure if you google it comes up. But over the years I just had customers tell me what they wanted and me personally, I just radius everything to as as. I radius the bridge as round as I can for feel. It's. I have a weird thing about high ease. Just if they feel higher than the rest of the strings, that just feels weird to me when I touch it. So I just like the have it as low as possible. So I tend to, I tend to round my radius a little bit. Me personally and that's what. It's fine. Like I said, if it's playing fine, it's working fine. You know, everybody has their own preference, but most customers would probably ask you to radius it to a 12 inch radius radius. But either way, raise the saddles and just make sure you use radius gauge, you'll be fine. Dennis says, hey, I love the podcast. Thank you for saying that. Says, yeah, you and Shawna get out those E bikes and go get some ice cream. Thank you, I appreciate that. It's, it's basically yesterday was 90 something degrees, today it was a little cooler. But today I'm doing dad stuff. Today was dad stuff. I'm the, my, my, my daughter is a daughter. Right. So basically what happened was we were like, hey, you need to have your brakes checked. And then some time went by and she didn't do it. And we're like, hey, you need to get your brakes checked and she didn't do it. And so we went and checked and we're like, okay, now you get your brakes checks because we don't want her rotors get damaged, right? So, so she has to go to work, she has no time to get a brake checks. We're like, we'll go do it. But her car was filthy. I have a philosophy that I've held. I've found that it works for me and I use it, I've used it my whole life, which is never take a car to any kind of repair I don't care what it is. Not an oil change, anything, unless it's spotless. The reason being. I'm just telling you guys, hey, I'll be. I'll be. You know, I'm dad day. So here's some dad advice. Here's the best dad advice I can give you when it comes to this. And you know what? Use it for everything. Not just your car. Never let anyone touch something of yours, whether they're fixing it, repairing it, cleaning it, adjusting it, whatever that gives the impression you don't care about it. That's just my personal opinion. Right. That's just the way I like to do things. So if I bring a car in for service, I want them to think that I take really good care of my car so that they will take really good care of my car. And. And I also find it makes life easy if there's a problem later when you go to pick it up, you know, it's a. You know, you don't want them to go, you know, hey, what's with this? You know, spilled coffee on my seat, and they're like, oh, it's like the other 10 cups you spilled on your seats. Who cares? You know? Right? You know, so that's just. That's just the way I think of things. So we had to clean my daughter's car today, and it was. It's pretty horrible. It's pretty bad. I'm laughing because I'm almost having PTSD over. Was that bad? You know, what, to be 20 and busy, I guess again, you know, I guess that's what it looks like when you're. She's very busy, so. All right, and see, there. There you go. It's a good. Maybe that helps. I don't know. Let's. Let's do another one real quick. This one came from Amanda, too. This is from Sydney. Sydney Allen says, hey, finally got enough credit to finance a guitar for $800. What should I go with thinking about a Fender Strat? Well, you know, I'm not a big fan of financing anything, so I'm like. So I always. Look, I. I'm conflicted. I'm always conflicted. Okay, so let me just tell you first. I really don't like telling anyone to do what to do with their life in any way. And then. So then I break that rule with the next thing I say. Right? But I'm just saying, look, whatever you want to do. But I will tell you that before. I just feel like. I just feel like I got to give this advice, you Know, look, Fender Strat's a great guitar, and I know for a fact you can get a really nice Fender Strat for less than 800 bucks. And if you have the opportunity to maybe get one for $400 and not have to finance it, that's always an idea. But hey, if you have to finance it, what should you go with? You know, especially financing, because you're going to be paying more for the guitar. You know, that's the. Even if you get zero interest, maybe, you know, things go awry. So I just, I would look for a really good deal. That's what I would do, you know, to offset anything else. That's my thoughts. But, you know, I always think it's just because it's a gear channel. And I can tell, and I know my community well enough to know that most of them are going to agree with most of this, which is nothing wrong with financing, and do whatever you want. Like I said, it's, you know, everybody should live the life that they the way they think they should live it, right? But the cool thing about a channel like this is the discussions, which I think you learn is there's definitely so many deals out there that you can find a way to get a deal and not have to, you know, finance. It's not the only option, but it's, you know, I would say, but offender brand and instrument is probably one of the best purchases you can make when it comes to a forever guitar, a lifetime guitar, a guitar that you'll stick with long enough to get, you know, to make it make sense, you know, that's, that's the, that's the way to do it. So that's what I would consider. That's, you know, just the thought. I mean, like I said, I'm not a, I, I, I, when American Musical Supply, I used to do there. Like they used to have, instead of financing, they had rent to own, basically, because it was not rent to own, but you would buy it under no financing and then they let you make payments. I remember that was like, great. Get in a lot of trouble with that. Okay. A regular star says, hey, Phil, what are your experiences about? Lifetime warranties. When it comes to guitars, basses and equipment like cables and amps, have you ever seen one honored or is it just a gimmick? I have seen both scenarios. I've seen them being honored and I've seen them weasel out of them. I've seen way more weasel out of them than honor them. You know, one of my favorite things that, hey, it's A store story. Hey, cool. I'll tell you my first experience as a retailer with warranties. And so here's how it works. So, so you guys know I started my store 2004 and I said, okay, I gotta, you know, get some product to put in the store. Right? Gonna have a music store. You gotta have some musical equipment. And so the first brand I went to was called US Music, which was at the time was Randall, Eden Parker, Washburn, which is why I became a Parker dealer. And so I reached out to him and said, hey, I would like to carry your brands. I see you have no representation in the state of Arizona. I'd like to carry your brands. I said, sure, we'll send a rep out. They sent them to my house and the, the rep, the rep shows up and we discuss everything. And I say, this is the date I want to open and this is what I want to carry. And so I was like, they were great. Because US Music at the time was like a. Not a one stop shop for me. It was like, okay, Washburn had acoustics. We have acoustic guitars in store. Good. And then Washburn electrics, like electric guitars. But then we had some Parkers, which were kind of premium, you know, because they had the import Parkers in the US one. So we'll have some premium brands. Right? That's cool. And then Eden, we have some bass amps. They had at that time, they had the Nemesis line, which is affordable bass amps. So we have affordable base amps. We have the more expensive base amps. And then we have Randall. Right? And so Randall amps. I was like, oh, cool, Randall. And you know, so I'm like, all right, cool. You know, so we put in the order, we order the stuff and get the stuff. And I was so excited because I, I thought I was so smart. I'm so smart. That's what I thought. I go, I'm picking all these brands because I literally went to every music store in town. I go, what don't they carry? Where's the holes in their armor? You know? Right. And they're like, oh, they don't carry Randall. Like, everyone was carrying Crate. And I'm like, crate, what about Randall? Randall's cool. So I get Randall and I get Parker and Washburn stuff and stuff. And store was like two weeks old and a customer comes in and says, hey, you're a Randall dealer. I looked online and you're a Randall dealer. I go, I am, I'm so excited. You gotta understand, like this, this is a big deal for me. Okay, this was like, I'm so smart. I picked a brand no one had. And now look at this customer walking in my store that didn't exist two weeks ago looking for a product. I'm gonna sell him a Randall. Life is great. I'm so smart. And he goes, yeah, I have a Randall in my car and it's defective. And I'm like, oh. He's like, yeah, it's got a five year warranty and I've had it for, you know, like four years. And I'm like, okay. And he goes, yeah, it's not, it's not turning on. And I'm like, oh, now here's my opportunity, guys. I'm like, okay. Because I remember, I look at life through solutions, not problems. I'm like, okay, not gonna sell an amp today, but I'm gonna work. I'm gonna work. I'm gonna make this customer happy. He's gonna be a customer for life. He's gonna buy 18 Washburns and Parkers from me. Life is gonna be good. We go out to his car, we get his amp. I go, I will take care of this. Let me get on the phone. I get on the phone, I get my Randall rep and I get, I go, hey, I have a Randall warranty issue. He goes, okay, no problem. You call this person in house. I call the in house person. They get me on the phone. I said, hey, my name is Phil McKnight, I have a store, I'm one of your new dealers in Arizona. I said, I have a customer. He has a warranty issue with a Randall. It's a five year warranty. Looking here at the receipt. He bought it three and a half years ago. It's not turning on. Do you want him to send it to you? We'll send it to you. Or do you want us to send. Do you have a service center? How do we handle this? Okay, now you get to have the fun part, you guys. And you get to guess how I wish I had a drop down menu of like. He gave me one of these three answers, right? And here's the answer he gave me. So since I don't have that option, I'll just give you the answer. He says, oh, yeah, no, we bought Randall, but we didn't buy any of their warranty interests. And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, we bought Randall two years ago, so we own Randall now. And I'm like, uh huh. But when we bought Randall, we didn't buy any of their warranty interests, so we're not Responsible to warranty any of those amps. We didn't buy their interest. And I'm like, what. What are you talking about? And he goes, yeah. He goes, when we buy the company. We didn't buy. Like, you have to. You have to. How you buy the company dictates whether or not you're responsible for the warrant. We didn't do it that way. We just, you know, we bought the name and stuff. We didn't buy their. Their amps and interest and stuff. I'm like, but it's under warranty. And he's like, yeah, it's not under warranty. I go, well, who's. Where's the company? He's like, the company went bankrupt. We bought the company. I'm like, right, so we're going to warranty this for him. He goes, no, we didn't buy the warranty interest. Now, I'd like to tell you this goes on for a little while. It does until I give up. Because that's essentially what happens, right? They wear you out with their stupidity. And then you're like, look, this is. There's only some point where I can only talk to this moron any longer, but I've definitely concluded that I'm not going to be able to warranty this new customer's amp. And so I remember looking at the customer face, and I just could not say that stupid thing out loud. I was like, I just can't. I just came from a corporate. I work. Well, at the time, I was still working for a corporation. I'm like, I work at a corporation. I have to say stupid corporate stuff all the time. So I said, okay, we'll. We'll warranty it. And then I had to find. I think, you know, I say, I. I want to be very clear. Then my wife had to find some amp repair center in town, and we sent the amp and had it fixed. And we never told him. That's a mistake. So, you know, the mistake I learned in business from that? You learn all your businesses, and you. In business, you learn your mistakes and you move on. The mistake I made was I should have proudly said, they're not warranting it. They're dumb. I'm sorry. I'm going to warranty it because I'm a dealer for them, and I'm going to take care of you, and I hope that you know, and I'll make sure you're okay. Instead, what happened was. This is what happened instead. I sent it to a repair shop to fix it. I paid for it out of pocket. Don't remember what it cost. Doesn't matter. I just remember them taking a couple weeks longer than they said and that guy come and lighting me up for it. So I remember handing him his amp that I paid whatever I paid, you know, maybe it was 100 bucks or 120 bucks, whatever, to fix it. I remember paying for this amp. And I remember he never came back to my store again because he hated me. He was like, oh, you took forever to fix it. I'm like, oh, yeah. No. So I learned a lesson. So we all learned a lesson. So to answer your question about warranties, they're exactly what you think my experience is. So in the store, I use that as a reference because obviously, like I said, I talked about the volume that we would do in the store. Ibanez would almost never take care of us as a warranty. They were horrible. To this day, my as, it's, it's a. The curse is, of course, Ibanez is my favorite brand. Like as guitars. I just like them because I was a kid. I always liked Ibanez and I own a lot of Ibanez's. But my wife always, she's, you know, she was the business, you know, you know, side of it. So, you know, paperwork side. So to her it's just all the annoying Ibanez, you know, never taking care of customer problems she had. And, and that was because Ibanez had a third party handling their stuff for a long time. And then they were a problem and then they got rid of them. Then Ibanez problem Epiphone was horrible. I remember when we were at Gipsy Epiphone dealer, I remember I sold a customer an Epiphone and I remember the guy had it for like a month and a half and the neck twisted. And we called warranty at Epiphone and they told us they weren't going to. They weren't going to take care of it. So I remember that Fender was always the best. So, you know, now that could change. That could be not the case anymore. But I'm going to tell you, back in the day, we would give Fender more and more business each year because of the fact that Fender would rarely say no to us for problems. So for any issues. So if customer had issue, we could always get it resolved in some way to the point where we would fix issues for other dealers. Like, you know, I mean, literally a customer would come in with a problem from a Fender they bought at a guitar center. And we were like, well, you know, we'll, we'll Take care of it. Because we'll just call Fender. They'll take care of it. So they were really good at stuff. So when it comes to warranties, you know, I would say the. What it says isn't what I would take. Take. You know, take in. I would. The company's integrity, how they work, who they work with. And it's not hard to figure this out. You know, I remember when I was talking to older dealers, they would tell me PV was like the best ever. And then they told me PV was horrible. So, I mean, you know, everything changes throughout time. But when it comes to warranties and stuff, the warranties as good as the paper it's printed on and who's going to take care of it? And then that's why that's one. One of the best things about retailers is that sometimes you can get the retailer to take care of it. Me personally, the more expensive something is, the more I like the idea that I can get the owner on the phone. So it's just something I've learned doing reviews in YouTube is that watching feedback from you guys. Like, I do a video of a product and then you guys buy lots of it because we're all obviously gear freaks. And then I watch reactions and problems over time because you guys always send me stuff. You guys say, hey, I got this, and here's the problem. And what I've kind of learned is the more you can get the owner on the phone, the less you'll have an overall problem for the most part. Now, of course, again, there's exceptions to that rule, but I find that to be pretty, pretty good. Usually. I think that's just life, a life thing. Usually the higher, the higher up you can get somebody in the company to listen to your problem, the more, more likely you're going to resolve. Because higher up people don't want to spend time talking to you about your problem. They want, you know, they got other stuff to do. This One came from Vim 69. Hey, Vims. He says for ad free live shows. Oh, thank you, man. You don't have to do that. I appreciate that. The. The yeah, don't. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you, but appreciate it as always. That's it. I'll just say thank you. How about that? Sun Bass says for no ads live and thoughts of the new Tobias Bases. Oh, you know, I saw something about the new Tobias Spaces. I have not looked at them, so I'll have to look further at them. I'm a huge Tobias Space fan. Tobias Bases were a, you know, that's the base I wanted as much as a Warwick. So to me, it was like Warwick and Tobias. It was like, those are the two. And by the time I got to the point where I could buy a Warwick or Tobias, I bought Warwick because Tobias had kind of disappeared by then. You know, Tobias was this thing. I would always walk into certain guitar centers and there would always be one Tobias hanging on the wall. And they let you play it. So you'd pick it up and play it and go, whoo. It's amazing. I don't have this kind of money. Guess I'll go back to my sound gear, you know, because I played an Ibanez sound gear forever, you know. And the funny thing about basses is it's just like guitars. I find that I. I played an. I've been to sound gear forever. And then I went to a Fender jazz bass and then Fender Fender Jazz and sound gear basses. And then I got all these boutique basses like everybody else. You know, you. You know, you. You get to a point, you're like, I'm gonna get these expensive ones. And I just lie now. I go, I don't know. Are they better? I don't know. It's like all the high end guitars, are they better? I don't know. I don't know. So sometimes, look, I like, I like this journey. I like learning about guitars. I like, you know, doing all this stuff. I. I have the. The addiction. But sometimes I kind of let go. Sometimes the guitar is more about just like this is the representation of how hard I work. More so than it's, you know, really a good guitar or not. So I don't know. Scott, thank you. Said just because a scent of a wheelchair pillow says, kick some. Kick some partiers out of an Airbnb this morning. Nice. Along with their lady of the night. They left behind a rolled up hundred dollar bill. Wanted to share the wealth. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I got a dad joke for that. For that. This. Okay, let's see if I can remember. It was good. It was. I was in the parking lot and this woman came up to me and said, I'm in a. You know, okay, I got the joke ready. Woman walks up to me in a parking lot holding her kid and saying, do you have any money you can. You can give me for gas? I'm totally broke. I lost $300. I don't. And I just need some money to get some gas to get home. And I thought, you know what? I definitely got to give her something. So I gave her $50. It's the least I could do because I found $300 earlier today. So anyways, that's the joke. Thank you. Sensible wheelchair chair pillow man. See, I need to look at it to say scent of a wheelchair pillow. Thank you, Ross did. Hey, where are you on your journey to find the perfect Les Paul single cut? I have my perfect Les Paul single cut. It's my gold top one. You know, I got the ro. It's great. It's. It's light, it plays amazing. It sounds amazing, and. And I like the gold top. Somebody asked me earlier about the throwback pickups. So you guys don't know. The main audiences know, but I installed throwback pickups. So John at Throwback sent me a set of pickups and was really, really nice. And I did an install video and threw it up on Patreon. And I go, okay. And haven't released the video of the, you know, review of the throwback pickups. And here's why. I really feel like when you're talking about $800 set of pickups, I. I just can't be like, they're amazing and you need to get one, too. There has to be, like, you know, where am I at with it? You know? You know, it's just, again, I kind of take, like, reviews like that extra seriously. Like, you know, everything that's super expensive. It's. How do you justify it? You almost can't. So I'm not going to try to justify it, but at least got to explain to you articulate what it is I find good about them. They are really clear, and they're really clean. So what happened is, as you guys know, I have a gold top classic that I bought from Carter's vintage guitars. I absolutely love it. It's my favorite Les Paul. Love the neck, but I did not love the pickups. And so it came with 57 classic, which I love those pickups. But for some reason, the guitar was just too dark. It was too muddy. I press them, put some pro buckers in it because I had them. They were same thing. The guitar was just really dark and muddy. I talked to John at Throwback. As you guys know, I was going to throw a set of northern lights, but the northern lights, to me, they bumped the mids. And this guitar's got a lot of nasal mids. So I was like, I don't want to do that. And so when I talked to John, I said, hey, I have this guitar I love. And, yeah, John's a fan of the podcast he knew. And I said, you know why? I have a problem? And he said, hey, maybe it's just the bridge is so bright and extreme to the neck, it feels muddy. So he sent me a set of throwback pickups that are really balanced out. I put them in, and I almost kind of miss the neck. The original neck pickup not being so bassy now because it's a lot clearer, but the bridge sounds so clear and blended. They sound great. So I'm loving the guitar, in other words, but I just want to be very clear. I would love that guitar, I think no matter what pickups are in it. I just like the guitar. The pickups were not a huge deal breaker for me, but I like the throwbacks a lot. And I guess the answer I can give right now is yes, if you buy $100 set of pickups, throwbacks, you will like them. Will you feel like they were worth $800? I don't know. I didn't pay $800 for them. They sent them to me. That's what I told you. That's one thing about reviews that suck. It's like, when I buy something, I can tell you, like, man, I don't know if I'd do it again. I will tell you. I think the real answer is, would I buy a set now? Now that I've tried them, and I think I might, but I'm really trying to reconcile that price tag, as you can imagine if you watch the podcast with you look, I think he clearly demonstrates why they're expensive to make. And I think if you're the kind of person that buys that stuff, I think he's definitely explained it to a point where I think you're. You're going to be rational and fine with it, but it's still a little bit of a Lamborghini. Talk to me. In other words, it's still a little like a. I don't. You know, I love. I love him, and I love his company, and I think he's doing the right thing. And the pickups are quality. And it's not about whether or not they're worth 800 bucks. It's whether or not I can find something as close as good as that for three, four hundred dollars. And I think I can. So it's about just wanting the pickup, but they're very good. It's really tough. It's a really tough thing. I don't know. My biggest fear is I was gonna get them and not like them, so. But that wasn't the case. I really like Them. But anyways, back to single cut. Yeah, my single cut. I. I really like my. My gold top. I really like the. Is the heritage. Yeah, the heritage behind me. I really like the heritage. This next. Just a little chunky. I like my single. I like a lot of single cuts. Like, a lot of great single cuts. But I think the gold top's still my favorite right now because it's when I play the most. Okay. The, you know, oh, Wisconsin Jet says I'm still trying to get my head around him covering the Randall. He means me. He means talking about covering the cost of repairing the Randall when the actual company that bought them would not look. It's. I could say it was good business at the time. And this is where it's nice to have, you know, be a little older and reflect and, you know, lived a little since 2004, right? Since. So 20 years. 20 years has gone by since that incident happened. I will tell you this. Maybe you could give me credit because that I was like just being a good person. Maybe I was a good business person going, hey, take care of a customer is really smart. I told you the mistake as I should have told the customer I was taking care of it. But. But looking back, you know, the question is, would I do it again? I would absolutely do it again. I would definitely tell the customer to this then. But I'll tell you that the biggest motivation, which is interesting that you don't realize at the time is I was embarrassed. You know, one of the things that happens. It's just the human nature of things. One of the things that happens when you make a good decision when you do something, when you're. When you. Like, I. I'm like, this is. I'm so. I'm so smart. I'm so talented. I did this right? You feel. I feel like, look, I picked this brand. I have this. This was the good decision. And then when I heard that, I was in shock, you know, of like, this is crazy. And I. I tell you right now, I think it was part of me wanting to be a good. To be a good business obviously went over customer. Part of me is just. I'm. By nature, I'm like, you know, but a part of it was. I was embarrassed. I just didn't want to say it. That's so stupid. And. And I. So I was embarrassed. That's part of it too. I'm just telling you. But, you know, I don't know. Like I said, you learn. You live and you learn, and I don't regret. Not from that okay, so what do we have? Okay, we have another question. Comes from Ross says, hey, where are you at on your. Oh yeah, we already did your question. Steve. Steve says new Engel Iron Ball se. My question is for home use, to utilize the IR balanced out on the back, do you just plug in an XLR cable out of that into my interface and power soak the speaker off? Yes, that's it easiest. That was the easiest $10 ever made. That's exactly what you do. So yes, you just plug a XLR out into whatever interface you have and you can leave the amp on or off, it doesn't matter. But if you, if you attenuate it to speaker off, you'll just be hearing it out of whatever you're listening through for your interface is how you do it. Hold on a second and let me pull this one up. It would help. Okay. All right. Sorry guys, I'm trying to read this stuff. Okay, go here. Okay. Okay. So we have the next question. What do we have? We have. The next question is from Richard. Richard says, hey, I received one of the new Heritage Ascent H137 P90s made out of China guitars. Wow. Incredible guitar. So if you guys don't know, Heritage has a line of an inexpensive made in China guitars and they have a deal where if you buy one you can then trade it up later to a. To a USA made one you have to go through. So if you guys aren't familiar with Heritage guitars, besides the fact that they're Heritage guitars. Heritage guitars owned by a company that owns them. Harmony Guitars, Mono gig bags and this retailer. We can find the article. I probably have it saved. Let's see. Okay, hold on a second. It would help if I go here and so I can give you the name of the retailer and then I'll keep the comment section out in case you guys come up with it just as fast as me. Okay. Nope. Where is it at? And you know what I'll do is I'll find it and timestamp it. But they have a retailer that you have to buy from, which I think is pretty easy because it's the exclusive. In fact, let's just look up Heritage Ascent Guitars. Let's try that. I think that's what they're called, right? Nope. Standard collection. The gear page. Let's try this guitar. Heritage Guitar Standard collection. Nope. Huh. Does anyone have the store? Let's just look. I'll go back. Anyone put in the comments too that they sell them from. So like I said, you have to buy these Heritage Guitars from this one particular retailer. But when you do that, you can trade them up for USA1 later, which is their kind of their big marketing push. So let's do this. Let's try this. Okay. Hmm, I don't see it. Yeah, yeah, I don't see it. Does anyone see the dealer? Okay, so anyways, I'll timestamp, I'll find the dealer because I remember reading the article about it because they did a whole article about this. So Heritage is obviously getting into the import line. You know, it's interesting, you know, it's pretty cool. I mean to me I don't look at it any different than like how GNL has an import line. It's good to have feedback that you liked it. They're between the 200 and 500 price range if I recall. Right. So the one you guys probably closer to the 500 range. So Parker says, hey Phil, what's your opinion on the Tone King Gremlin? I've never tried the Tone King Gremlin had a Tone King Imperial. I really, really liked it. In fact I liked it to the point where I almost thought about getting rid of my 65 Deluxe because it's just got a kind of that same vibe. But I've kind of like said it kind of settled into what amps I'm playing now. But I've heard nothing but good things about the Gremlin from my buddies who've tried it. Christopher says, hello Phil, I have the new 2024 Gibson Explorer and I was trying to replace the mini Grovers with key type Clisson tuners. My tech said he can't do it because they need spacer and said it's a downgrade. I don't, I'm not familiar with that. So I don't know one, I don't know why it'd be a downgrade, but I don't know. Look, I probably never even worked on those tuners. Those style tuners. The. My Explorer has the typical Grover 18 one minis that doesn't have the ones my, my Kaizen has those type of tuners. I've probably worked on one or two of those guitars and I've never had anybody have me replace them. So I'm just not familiar with them. Just not something that came into my purview. So I'm not really familiar. But hopefully somebody in the comment section will have some feedback for you. I really would curious what you don't like about the current ones. Because the ones I've tried, I like those tuners. Lock sustainer says, hey Phil, love the show. Could you please mention again your favorite bass strings? Would like to try something different. So it's not so much my favorite bass strings, but the bass strings I use the Dr. Stainless Steels, 40 to 1/00. I'll use those a lot. For the slap based stuff I use the D'Addario tape wounds which are, you know, the black plastic looking ones. They're like a cloth. I'll use those. And that's pretty much it. I was gonna say I, I kind of was using a couple of different brands, but that's really kind of what I've kind of done. Even on my 30 inch scale base I was doing 45 to 105s but I'm back now to 40 to 1/ hundreds again. Just kind of like, like touch small strings. Short scale makes it easy for me. Toxic Treasure says, how about know your gear auction hour every week. Yeah, you know it's funny was, you know, we pitched an idea, me and a couple YouTubers, we pitched an idea of doing that, you know, like an almost like a QVC online a lot because we have the live ability. Right, so you do live, like could you imagine if like Sweetwater or come like that did a live show and it was like, you know, you know, here's the deal for the next 10 minutes. Oh, one more left. Oh zero. Okay, let's go to the next product. And it'd be kind of fun and great way to do that. I always thought it'd be kind of fun to do, to do that I guess. But the problem is the back end for me it's not the, it's not the doing it on the show. It's the. I got to ship everything and I got to make sure it gets all out and stuff. Destro. I'm gonna say Destructo with a Z. Destructo says, I've seen this name before so I don't know why I'm having trouble with the nail. Says hey Phil, I don't know if you're big into multi tools, but if you had to recommend one guitar roadie work, what would you use? So multi tools, obviously. Funny for me personally, I like Leatherman's and, and Swiss army knives, but that's not for guitar tools. For guitar tools. For. I don't really have a multi tool guitar tool. I'm looking at my drawer right now like I have the Ibanez one and have a Keisel one. You know, these kind of good tool things. I find myself rarely using them, if that makes any sense. You know, they're kind of nice, you know, like I said, I. So I guess that's a recommendation. Gibson has one. They're all there. There's. Like I said, there's a ton of them. I've. But I just find myself, like, if you're not just looking for something that fits into the gig bag, I'd rather just have a couple of the right tools. But the. For multi tools, none of them stick out. I used to have a. I think it was called Ktool, right? It was a multi tool called Good Tool. But then every company, like I said, like Ibanez, you know, Keisel Gibson all made a version of it. And so I just have their versions laying around and they work out pretty good. I like. For screwdriver sets, I still use. Look, I still use my Stu Mac. Oh, it's worn off. It said Stumac on it before, but this is a Stumac screwdriver set. This is what I use. I have one of these everywhere. They're super expensive, but I. If you get them on sale, you can sometimes justify it. But I keep one in my shop. One here and then one. Oh, no, I actually just. Just the two places now. I used to have three spats for them, but now I just have the two, so those work great too. DJB says. Hey, Phil, any thoughts on buying a guitar off Reverb, but in person? Pickup only. The seller has never sold anything before. Zero history. I have bought stuff off Reverb and met with people. So, you know, not a huge deal. I bought my CE24 semi hollow, what they call it reclaimed. I bought that off Reverb and met the guy and picked it up probably in 2016, and that was fine, you know, so as long as you do it in a safe place. He happened to actually be a lawyer and I went to his law office. Well, I don't know if he's a lawyer. He worked in a law office because I went to a law office. Maybe he was a criminal. I'm just kidding. But it'd be kind of funny, right? He's like, yeah, I met my lawyers. Come here. But, you know, so, I mean, if you can find a safe place to meet somebody, I don't see the problem with it. Zero history and stuff. I mean, that's tough. Think about this. You know, it's. It's problematic for both sides because I think he has to have you do something so it shows that he delivered. Otherwise he has no proof he gave you the product. So you have to. Because I. When I I don't think I've sold anything and then had meet somebody. But I have, like I said, I've bought and met somebody and I know I have to put something in there that lets Reverb know to release his funds because otherwise, you know, he. How they get their funds released is they ship it to you. So when you pick it up, you have to say, yeah, I picked it up. So I think there's a little bit of it, like it's, it's built in to protect you a little bit. As long as you don't get mugged or killed. So Red Eye Bloom says, hey, new base day. I made the jump to the five string court Artisan C5 Deluxe. It's just me or the strings on new guitars. Always dirty. Yeah, they're, they're horrible. It says These ones are Daddario EXL170. First of all, I like Court as you know, I like Kort Tech, the company, you know, so I know that a lot of people there and so, you know, I'm not saying anything about them that I wouldn't say about every company, period. I kind of have a. I kind of feel like nobody is giving you the strings they claim. I don't know what it is. I've never, never received strings in the condition that I've received the strings from a guitar that's apparently new, right? And I mean this. Like think about this. I've received guitars where it says like it was built three weeks ago and then apparently so, okay, so it was restrung, put in a box, shipped to me and now the strings are crusty. Like I just feel like they use either the wrong strings or they're using copy strings or they don't store them properly because they buy them in bulk. I don't know what it is. It's very rare that I keep the original strings on a guitar. I try to because it's, you know, why waste the money if you don't have to? But I kind of feel like when I get a guitar I always feel like it's, that's the. I just don't trust it. I just don't trust it. So I wish there was a way to know for sure, but I just don't know. I don't think of this. I was told once, like in this industry, I was told not only they use fake strings, but a lot of companies. And again, I don't think Court would be this. But they're definitely the smaller brands, you know, unknown brands, they use fake hang tags. So like, you know, so not only, you know, not only can they be using a real hang tag that says, you know, equipped with d'addario or Elixir, and then putting the wrong strings. Some of them can just be putting those fake tank tags on there now. So it's like, I don't know. So. All right, on that note, I'm gonna let you guys go. I hope you guys had some fun guitar talk and a little bit of YouTube talk at the end. As always, I want to thank you guys for your time, and I'll see you guys next Friday. And as always, 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.