A (0:23)

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. How's it going? Welcome to the Know youw gear podcast. Episode 396 in the year 2025. Sounds crazy to say already. I hope you guys had a fantastic week and can hear and see me. Fine. We'll. We'll figure that out. And let's see. Whoops. Whoops. Let's do that. All right, so we have a lot of things to talk about, a lot of cool things. Let's see. And I don't know, what do we start with? Let's start with some quick announcements. There's a few. So first, just want to thank you to the patrons, as always, and the channel members also want to thank the people who show up live. I don't know if we mentioned this, but a few episodes ago, I don't know how many back it was, but a while back we turn off ads during the live shows. I think I mentioned this. I just don't remember if I did. The main reason is it disturbs the flow of the show. Even though it. It takes a financial impact. Impact for the channel. It's just. It just works out better. So just so you know, there's no ads during the live part of the show when you're watching it live with me. The other thing is, last week we discussed the Tim Pierce course. And I just want to talk about that so I don't forget because I almost forgot last week, except for luckily when you guys reminded me. So let's share this. So the Tim Peirce course, we did this. Now, this will be the third year we've done this. Third January in a row we've done this where if you sign up for the Tim Peirce masterclass course, you get it Instead of for 150, you get it for $104 and. And you get 14 days to try it out for free. So that's how it works. And they kick a little something back to us on the channel. So it helps both this channel and his channel. And I just want to let you guys know about this course if you want to check it out. Somebody asked me this week, they sent me a message. They said I bought the course and they wanted to know what I should start with. And I was like, hey, I should start with the full hardest thing. No, I'm just kidding. You know what's funny is obviously if you're an absolute beginner, start with a beginner course. And if you're a little late, you want to do the. For late beginner, early, intermediate guitar players, great. But I'll tell you what helped me most. This section right here, the rhythm stuff. I've talked about how I've improved so much after doing the course, and you guys mentioned that over the years too. And it's in my rhythm playing, my lead playing. You know, obviously it helped my vibrato. It helped me kind of slow down and calm down and focus on things that are a little bit, in my opinion, a little bit more important. But the rhythm section is where I really found it to be super important. There you go. I was like, why is my screen so much different than it was before? Okay, there's. So I would start there for a lot of you players definitely do the rhythm course. That's what I really kind of connected with. The first thing is what I connected with in it. So I wanted to let you know about that. And for those of you just because we're doing announcements, for those of you that have any money left if you buy that course, well, we have some exciting news that we didn't know was going to happen. So it happened. Let's go back to sharing it. We have a new merch for 2025 now. We talked about doing this, but believe it or not, this is important to share. The people at Altcolor who does our merch are fans of the show and they heard me discussing, I guess last week or the week before that we need better merch. And they took it upon themselves to contact Shauna and work with her. And now we have it. We have geeky stuff hats just like mine. We have geeky stuff. We never had this before. Geeky stuff work shirts. This is a Dickies work shirt. We also have the work shirt that I'm wearing, which is right here. Like, here you go. So you're just like me and. Right. You can. I don't know why I point this. So we have those work shirts and we have a whole plethora of the geeky stuff, merch shirts, hats. Well, there's the hat, long sleeve shirts, you name it. So there's been more stuff added. There's also, I think, mugs as well. So all of this is link down below if you want to support the channel with any merch. So just thought I'd point it out to you. I will tell you though, if you're given a choice, if you're with your dollars of What? To pick 10 Pierce. Of course, if you're making that kind of decision, do the 10 Pierce course. Because that's a special. It's on special. The merch is not on special. It's just new. And because it's new, it's here. So you can hold off if you want to do that stuff. And if you don't want to do either, well, then. All right, but just let you know. But yeah, the work shirts were a big thing. And the geeky stuff hat. And now, now we have them. I'm really excited about that. So. And hoodies. Yeah, hoodies. You name it. Stuff I know someone reached out to me and asked me about stickers. We have stickers here. I will remind Sean after the show to talk to Old Color about stickers. If we can figure out something there, great. If not, we have the stickers and we can ship stickers. So we have stickers. All right, that's the announcements. We probably should get into the stuff that you guys came to see. Let's get into some early questions. Okay, so I grabbed some early questions. The first question I saw was from Fernando. Fernando. Fernando says, I feel like I'm saying Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Anyways, he says, happy Friday, Phil. Impossible question. Impossible. All right, let's do it. In your experience, what guitar model have you seen getting the most stock pickups replaced? The first one that comes to mind is Paul Reed Smith. Paul Reed Smith was notoriously known for not having good pickups. I'm talking about the core guitars. This really predates the SE stuff. And that pretty much stuck until about 2007 when he came out with the 5708. Nope, it's 2008. Why did I say 2007? Because I'm thinking seven. It was in 2008. The 5708S, if you don't know, is a 57 style pickup, like 1957, PAF style pickup that was created in 2008, 5708. Then in the following year, 2009, they created the 5909S, which is the more modern PAF that, you know, the one I prefer actually, in most cases. And from that, Pollard Smith, I think, established his pickups. Until then, it was definitely. It was crazy. People would pay, you know, two, $3,000, which, you know, now is a lot of money. But back then, we're talking about with inflation factored in, it's like spending $4,000 back then for a PRS and then replacing the Pickups. In fact, the proof in that is it's sometimes very difficult. If you go back into the 90s and the early 2000 era core PRSs, you'll see a lot of them don't have the original pickups. And so they were using at the time, they were using a bunch of stuff. They were using the Dragons and a bunch of other stuff. And again, I'm not talking about the quality of the pickups. We're not talking about whether or not they were good or not. It was just like that was the go to thing was to get your PRs and then swap the pickups because they weren't very good. And so I think it's. Although I like all the new PRS pickups a lot better than the old ones and that's just my personal opinion over the bass and treble pickups. And I, I got to say the marketing was ingenious. You know, the way Paul Reed Smith Guitars marketed the new pickups was ingenious. You know, I remember, you know, the whole we got the original, you know where we were. They. I think they licensed or leased the original winders and they got hands on the original wire and just made this whole. That's where the whole pickups are math, not magic, you know, joke really comes from. Was the whole purest guitars. In my, my mind when I think of the, you know, unicorn sauce, you know, on the pickups, it was PRS guitars who definitely marketed the unicorn sauce more than anyone else. You know, these pickups are amazing because there's this secret ingredient that's just so magical that no one knows what they have. And it's really funny to me. But the important part is the, the out. The output. Output. The outcome. And the output, if you're a guitar player, the outcome is they made better pickups for it. And I really think. I don't know this, this is not a fact. I have to just state that this is this part I'm going to give you right now. This is the opinion. I just want to give you my opinion. I really think the reason why the new pickups are good for PRs is I think Paul Reed Smith, Paul himself, I really think it bugged him on some level that guitar players were buying his guitars and yanking his pickups. It really seemed in conversations I've seen with him and interactions I had with him earlier on in those years, it seemed to be a soft spot for him. And I really think he went out of his way to. He was determined like he was gonna make it. Not Only to where people kept the pickups in his guitars, but to their were revered like the guitars. And I think he achieved that. After that, I would say, you know, the Epiphones, early Epiphones were hugely popular for getting their pickups replaced. And in fact again, since I'm going to be talking about a lot of the older guitars the next after the PRS pickup, when I think of, because I'm thinking of all the guitars I've replaced pickups, all the brands and models, I was doing core PRSEs, which is always a shocking thing to see. Somebody spent, you know, the equivalent of 3, $4,000 in today's money and yank these out and put Duncan in them. You're like, all right, okay, all right, you pay and I'll do whatever you want. The other, the next brand or model guitar that I've swapped an insane amount of pickups is made in Mexico. Fender Strats, early ones before they changed the. The pickups to be the current made Mexico ST standard or whatever you call the player series pickups are more like the old pre2010 I think Fender American standard pickups. But before that they were essentially just ceramic magnets hot glued onto some steel slugs. And they were, I always liked them. They always thought they had a very P90 bite to them. And I always, and I still to this day have a couple of Mexican made Strat bridge pickups in couple of my Strats. It's just because I like the way it sounds and but man, they were, they were just, just. That was like the thing to do. You buy a Mexican Strat and you just literally swap the pickups. Like a first thing you did when you bought it was swap the pickups. And then around that time also Epiphone was hugely known for that. You buy Epiphone and you upgrade the pickups and you have a Gibson. It's basically the logic. The reality though is this. The ability to clone things has, you know, you think of it like, you know, it's been around for a long time, but it really hasn't. What I mean by that is, you know, the ability to actually reverse engineer and make something overseas in China and Korea and Indonesia and make it super cheap is relatively new. It's not, it's not even a thing. That's really the pre 2000s if you were to look at a lot of entry level guitars through the. I mean we can't even talk about 60s, 70s, 80s, I'm talking about the 90s, even 90s. And then part of the 2000s entry level guitars. Whether we're talking Squires, whether we're talking about off brand guitars, we're talking about Hondos, where we're talking about, you know, you name it, just pick a brand that's an off brand guitar. The pickups were really usually the weakest point in the guitars because not only were they using cheap components, they were not really doing any testing. Because the logic then was, I mean, think about it. If you were them, if you were building a guitar and you're trying to make it to where it's the least expensive guitar in the store. I mean, think about that. When you think of a Honda, when you think of, I don't want to pick on a lot of brands, but like JB Player, that was one of my first guitars, you know, you think of these Series 10 by Crate Guitars, you know, you know, when you think of affordable guitars, when you think of those guitars in your head and you think the whole logic of the company is this will be the cheapest thing in the store. When somebody walks in the store, somebody walks in a store and they are broke as a joke, this is what they can afford if they can't find used, right? Like this is how, you know, that's their, that's their market. So the thing that they did back then was anything you couldn't see why make it look right or be right. You can't tell. They would spend more time. That's why I said the first thing cheap guitar companies did was fix the tops. You know, the first thing you'd start seeing was, wow, the top on this guitar looks amazing. The color on this. They started making the aesthetics look right. Way before they got the formula right to make the guitar sound good and play good. Because that was secondary. They were like, look, it just needs to look like the thing. That's just kind of like the way it worked. I've said this before. It's kind of like if you were like me when you were a kid and you got your first stereo. I didn't even get ports in my speakers. I got those fake plastic ports, you know, where you stuck your finger in the hole and it went in about a half inch. And then you're like, this isn't even a port. Like this speaker doesn't have a port and fake ports because it's just to look like the real speakers. It was junk. It was just made to look right. So that's where they focused on that. The reality though is as they got good at cloning things, they cloned the right pickups, it was just, you know, and the manufacturers by the way, in the US they were a lot. And I don't want to just say the US but definitely us. Then later, much later, Japan, Germany, you know, Europe, the rest of Europe, you name it, any of the Canada, anywhere where they were building some more high end guitars, high price instruments, they finally would let go of the reins and let the import manufacturers, the what we call the fast manufacturers, the ones that make a lot of guitars, quickly see more of the real recipe. And they would see the pickups and see them and, and so now you know, look, you know, if you, if you look at a import, I say this all the time about the Prsse pickups is a perfect example. The 85, 15 S's and stuff, they're off from the US pickups but they're off by such a small percentage. You know, I mean, yeah, maybe they're just. Because maybe there's either too much wire, not enough wire, maybe a low, A different kind of grade of wire. Not usually a different type of wire, but different kind of grade of quality. You know, it may be same thing with magnets. You know one thing that you can do with pickups that's really interesting and Gibson was notorious for this back in the days was the length of the bar magnet can dictate a lot. And you know, think about this. If I, if a bar magnet, I wish I had one. I usually have one here. So think about this. If a bar magnet, I'll just use this piece of foam. This is a bar magnet underneath a pickup. And let's say this bar magnet, you know, let's say you want to save some money. Well, who notices underneath the pickup if you just cut it short? And so imagine it's like for visual aids. Picture a two by four, right? Let's say you picture an eight foot two by four and you can make, you know, four two foot sections. And then one day they realize like wait a minute, no one can even see underneath what's there. Why don't we make them one and a half foot sections, right? Why don't we start equating it to a different measurement to where we get more out of something. So Gibson was known for this. So you know, an actual PAF pickups, USA guitars in the 60s and the 70s they were known for. You can pull pickups apart and see the magnet slightly shorter, the magnet could be thinner. There's all kinds of things and that changes things. And so overseas manufacturers have learned the same game. That's why? If you see people sometimes talking about replacing your magnets in a pickup, they're like, you're like, a lot of people are like, who cares if they switch it from Alnico 2 to Alnico 5? I'm like, well, yeah, there's a subtle difference. And to my ears, if you took a pickup with, had an Alnico 2 and you put an Alnico 5, maybe the pickup would get a slightly brighter. Slightly brighter. But however, if that magnet was a lot thinner and a lot shorter than the new magnet, you would have a different feeling pickup for sure. Notice I said feeling because it sounds a little, you know, obviously the sound would change, but the way, the way that the, the, the reactionary experience of the sound and how your pick attack is interacting, how quick the response gets, it changes. So. So yes to, in my qu. To your answer your question, man, pickups and guitars were like a mandatory swap thing. And now they're so good for the most part. In fact, I would say in, in my experiences ripping apart all these guitars for the last, oh, now 10 years, it looks like right on YouTube, you know, seven to 10 years. Seven since I was doing it, you know, professionally, I guess. 10 since I was just throwing out some videos out there. I would say that some of the. I don't want to take the absolute worst is those are exceptions. But we're talking about the rule. The majority pickups, the absolute least inexpensive pickups I see in guitars on average. So we're talking eight out of 10. They're as good as most high end pickups within that. See, I don't say. I want to confuse you. They're not, I'm not saying they're as good. I'm saying they're so close to the quality and how they're made. They're just really close, closer than they ever been. And I would almost say, for the most part, almost as good as some pickups a while back. You know, some of the higher end pickups before, they got refined too, because remember, everything gets refined. Expensive pickups get refined as well too. Somebody asked me a question in this that ties into this and I'm sorry if I missed it. I'm gonna scroll back. I should have grabbed it right when I saw it. And I think it was a Ron Ellis question, and I apologize if I missed it. But if any of you saw it, somebody was asking about Ron Ellis pickups. So let me, let me share that with you. That's a great subject that ties into this and you guys could help me out, out with a thing I want to do. Okay, so if you're not familiar. Let me share with Ron Ellis Pickups. This is Ron Ellis Pickups. This is Ron Ellis himself. He's a engineer and he makes pickups. And if you don't, if you're not familiar with his pickups, you're about to be familiar with the thing that most people know about him, which is his website is not working. That's what they know about that. You can't click. I can't. Why can't I? That's weird. Are they out of business? I am literally. Oh, there it is. I was going to say, let's go to a humbucker. Okay, so you can see here, let's take the 60s. That's my favorite 60s pickup style over the 50s. But most people like 50s. So yeah, if you're looking at this, we need to share a set of these. Betty humbuckers are $850. I want the sticker shot to stick in. That's the sticker shock, right? Yeah, that's $850 US for the set is not a misprint. And they might even go up a little bit if you change a couple of these things. But I don't think so. I think they're pretty much in the $850 range. So most people who know Ron Ellis, a lot of you guys are going to know him and his company. Most people who do know him are going to know it from being $850 pickups. You know, they've, they've reached out to me. I've played a couple of his pickups in the past, and his son was nice enough to reach out to me. And we talked about doing a deep dive, you know, like comparing the pickups and stuff, and maybe doing a giveaway, you know, like, send me a set and we can give away a set kind of thing. And I don't know, that kind of fell through, but I'm kind of glad it did because one, you know, I, I'm just never. Anyways, let's, let's start with something that's interesting, though. I want to talk about something that I, I'm very confused about, the Ron Ellis pickups. So let's just start there. So I, after they reached out to me, knowing a little about him actually playing a set of his pickups before a couple set of his pickups, I really put deep dive and wanted to learn as much as I could about his pickups. And, and what I really learned didn't make a Whole lot of sense. Like it didn't equate to like, you know, a whole lot of, you know, this is totally worth it. Other than I can find random YouTubers and people saying it's totally worth it. By the way, for some reason my computer is not refreshing. So let me get back into a. A screen that helps me while I'm talking. So anyways, but I did talk to throwback pickups and if you're not familiar with throwback pickups, well, just keep in mind they're about the same price. However, throwback pickups in my mind do a lot of things that are different and this is why I'm asking you guys for your opinions. The owner of throwback pickups was, is willing to come up and do a podcast with us and come on the show and I would love to have him on. And one of the things that's interesting about his pickups are they're very expensive, but a lot of it is because they use a American made magnets, which is very rare. So you know, there's not a lot of pickup companies that I know of that are using USA made magnets because they're so expensive to make here in the States. So even when you buy a USA made pickup, you're usually not getting a USA made magnet. So you know, this. The, the more desire to have the pickup made 100% in the USA and made to the old standards and the old ways is very. Adds a lot of price. Whether I that makes it $850, I can't tell you that. But I can tell you it also has to do with the fact that I think the reality is, is that once you get the pickups to about $500 a set, which is where, you know, probably where it needs to be. The problem is that the volume is going to drop so low just at that price. You have to increase it more because you just have such a small audience. But let me know in the comments if you like this have the owner of, of throwback pickups come on the show. In my experience in this industry and you know, and I'm not, not gonna, you know, not include Lindy Frolin or, or you know, Seymour Duncan and stuff. But I just can only go off the people I know, I think of Larry DiMargio and I think of, of, of the owner of throwback pickups as two of the smartest guys in the pickup industry in different ways they think differently. This is, I've had the experience of talking to them both and, and learning from them both when they talk and they both have such a different attitude when. How they get to pickups. And yet when I go through their pickups, there's so many things that make sense in their logic. So. So, yeah, I would love to do an extra bonus podcast with Throwback. So if you're. Let me know if you guys are interested. And. And I think maybe we can do a giveaway. I think. I think we talked about that. He'll come on the show and we'll give away a set of his $800 pickups and. And watch, which, you know, I don't want to give them away just because somebody gets $800 pickups. I want somebody to actually understand what makes them great and then, you know, then really wants them. So we can give them. Going in. So we can educate you on them first. Let's. Let's do this. Hold on a second. All right. And by the way, I have Amanda's questions on the side and the ones from last week from Amanda too. So let me hop around real quick. I think we covered the pickups and guitars that get their pickups yanked. Question. We have a question from Alex or a subject he says, does excellent condition vary depending on the guitar age? Local shop listed a 2000-2004 Gibson as excellent shape, but in person, they were pretty beat. You know, I've had this. I've had this experience so many times in my life where the grading of an instrument, in other words, the whether or not it's in perfect condition or mint or whatever really has to do. I silly enough, I think it actually has to do with just the person's mentality. You know, I used to think. And again, it's just a feeling I have. I used to think that, you know, if somebody lists something as perfect condition or mint or, you know, very good, it's based on their skill to assess the instrument or maybe their experience with instruments as a whole. No, I find that if you. I find it's a. It's a. It's a. It's simple as, like, like, I guess perfect way to explain it is this. I tip even if the service is horrible, right? I'm a. I'm a tipper. Like, you give me the worst serious service ever. You're still getting a. At least a 20% tip. Some of my friends, it enrages some of my friends today. Today in a drive through, I just had to get one item, basically, and it was the worst experience ever. It was kind of funny. And they hand me the thing and they go, it's just gonna ask you a question. I still tipped and my. My wife's face was just like. I'm like, oh, no, you gotta tip. So anyway, so reason I say that is I read an article once that said tipping is really about you and not so much about the service. I think that's how ratings work. It's about the seller and not really about anything else. Like, I. My fear when I rate things is, is that I don't want anything coming back. Like, whether. When I had a store, I did it this way. Now personally, I do it even more so because it's re. I really don't want back. But if you don't want things back, you want to kind of under promise, over deliver. So you go, you know, I will. I've gotten in to the point where I've listed stuff on. On reverb and put pictures and I'll put like, you know, in good condition. You know, I'll put good condition and somebody will actually message me and go, I'm looking at the pictures, it looks perfect. What can you tell what's wrong with it? I can't see. And I'm like, ah, you know, just, you know, it's not perfect. And they're like, what's wrong? And I'm like, nothing. I just don't want you to. I don't want to say perfect. And then you find something I miss. So that's. Usually my logic is, no matter how good I'm looking at it, what if you find something I didn't see? I want. I want some play in there, right? I don't recommend doing this, by the way. This is how you kind of screw yourself out of money when you sell because you won't get the prime price. I have a friend who's a vintage guitar dealer and a used guitar dealer in California, and I've known him for so long, and he will put everything dead mint. And I remember the first time I thought he was crazy. Like, I mean, he probably is, but I mean, I thought it was like he. I don't know, his eyesight's gone or his mind is off or something. He would be like, yeah, it's perfect. And I'm like, I don't know, man. Look at this and look at this. He's like, ah, it's old, it's fine. It's perfect. So he would say that about everything. And then if you were selling him anything, he could find 50 things wrong with it. Be like, oh, man, it's in rough shape. And then once he Got it once he bought it from you or the person, the first next, you could watch it. The next person comes in and he'll be like, yeah, I got it over there. It's the wall. It's in mint. It's perfect. It's mint condition. It's perfect. So my answer to question is, you know, they could be full of it. That's a nice way to say there's a full of shit. Sometimes I'm like, I can save you guys so much time if I just throw out a cuss word and just make this the answer short. However, I find I just want to illustrate my point. So to answer your question, no, there is no rule as far as I know or agree to as a, as a, as a community that says that, you know, if a guitar is two years old, perfect condition means one thing, but if a guitar is 20 years old, perfect condition comes another thing. Usually the only thing I agree with is when somebody will sell something used and state like it's in great shape for a 30 year guitar. 30 year old guitar. I take that the same way I take it is like, you know, the way you talk about an actor or an actress, you know, like, oh, you know, how, how does he look? And you're like, oh, he looks great for 63. You know, you're like, I know what that means, right? I don't think it means he looks 25. I think it means he looks like if you look, if you picture a 63 year old person, your head, he looks really good for one of those, right? Or so I think that's, that's okay in a description, in my opinion. So if I was to say, for instance, my universe is 31 years old. If I was to say, yeah, it looks great for a 31 year old guitar, I think you know what that means. And if I, but if I was to say it looks like it was made yesterday in perfect condition, it would be, that would really set the standard. Really crazy. And then you'd find a little ding or dent or some wear or fading in the paint. So. But luckily for us on the Internet, YouTube, eBay, and reverb, all of them, they don't have considerations like that, that I know of. Like they don't say there's no condition that I saw that says, you know, excellent shape for a 50 year old guitar, a 20 year old guitar. It's just, it's, it's either excellent shape or it's very good or it's mint or you know, what have you. And they have Definitions, so you know of what they claim it to be. We've talked about this before on the time, but you can go to condition. Condition, what do we call it? Descriptions. Sure. Reverb and gear conditions. And we've talked about this in the past. Whether it's good or bad or ugly doesn't matter. At least it's here. I literally just typed it. It's reverb.com under their category of help. I just typed in conditions and it's mint, excellent, very good, good, fair, poor, non functioning. And then there's other considerations which is B stock and you know, so that. So, but notice like we talked about this a couple episodes ago about the fact that I think they should have a salvage condition for people who have salvage guitars. Because I'm seeing more and more of that. I, I talked about that a couple episodes ago. In that case, it was a broken headstock. They've been repaired. But when I say salvage, I mean there's so many guitars where they've been rebuilt back up into something. And I'm like, yeah, you know in the car industry that there's a word for that, it's called salvage title. Right. Like it was in a serious accident and it was fixed back up. But it's, you know, so I was, I was thinking they should have that. But in this case, there's none of the stuff you're talking about. The dealer is just probably, you know, they're trying to sell you a guitar. That's the nicest way I can say that. They're trying to sell you a guitar and, and then once they sell it to you, it's your problem. What? I find my best advice to you, Alex, and there's more. I think you have another question too. But my best advice to Alex is when it comes to a store or a reseller selling guitars, their description to me is usually connected to their return policy. That's a good way to look at that. I find that if they have a no returns, no, no, no, you know, no exceptions policy, I find everything is mint and perfect and great. But if they have a 30 day return policy, I notice all of a sudden the description is a little bit more accurate because it can come back. So I don't know. Yeah, all right, we beat that to death. Let's go to another subject. This is also from Alex. We're just going to hit up a sec. He said a second question. He said, hey, I got offered some hash and cannabis products. This is the wrong channel, but okay, we'll go with it. For my main Japan telly on Facebook. You're taking me back to high school. This is literally high school. Like, dude, I'll trade you that PV amp for a bag, a dime bag. That's a. That's a real conversation. I was standing next to. Happened once in high school. Anyways, okay, so. Okay. Anyways, he got some hash and cannabis products offered to him for a made in Japan telly on Facebook. Even though I say no trades, just selling. Got any wonky trade offer stories? Yeah, I once. My first. Actually, it's my first experience on Craigslist. My first experience on Craigslist should have been a never on Craigslist again experience. My very first experience on Craigslist is I put a guitar for sale and a guy. And you're probably not familiar. Obviously not everybody's from Arizona like I am. I don't know how to explain it to you. So for the people in Arizona, I'm gonna explain it to you, but go back, like, not quite 20 years, but whenever Craigslist started, right? So 15 years, whatever ago, there was a. There's a. There's a freeway called the 60 and it just goes east and you keep going east. And then eventually you leave Mesa, Phoenix area, right? So wherever you live, just picture there's a freeway and then at some point, you're not in your town anymore, right? Your city, okay. And so on the outskirts, right. So on the city limits then back then, there was. There's a. There was all these. What do you call, off ramps at the end of Mesa, Arizona, which is basically, like I said, just picture you have whatever town and city you live in, the road you just drive until you're pretty much either at the last exit or one of the two last exits before you're out of town. So I go and put my guitar on Craigslist. And the very first email I get is. And I responded to it because I'm an idiot. And so the guy, really, he's like a guy sends me an email and he says, hey, man, that's a great guitar. Would you want to trade for a.38 special? And I was like, what? Like you. I didn't have trades that listed. I was like, this is a random thing to, like, offer me as a gun for this guitar. This is a strange thing, by the way. In Arizona, if you're not familiar, you can. You don't have to have a permit or anything. And you can just do that. So what's funny is. What's funny was. Here's my response. This is Honest to God truth. I respond with, yeah, let's meet up. I'll be the guy with the guitar. You'll be the guy with the gun. We'll be in the dark. What could go wrong? And. And. And then he sent back. I don't remember what he said exactly. Something like, not cool, man. I'm just throwing offers. And I'm like. And then I felt bad. So then I responded. I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing this. I'm not meeting you. One, I don't want the gun. Two, I don't want to meet somebody with a gun when I have a guitar. That's like. That's like literally the Untouchables. Like, you know, bringing a knife to a gunfight. I'm not bringing guitar to a gunfight. So, yeah, I had a weird. No, not.38 special. The album or the band. Guys, it was a 38 special. It was a Taurus 38 special. So if you know the brand. And. And by the way, I think I was offended by the value of the gun to the guitar too. Uh, that was wacky. But anyways, yeah, you get weird stuff. What I find is, is you were on Facebook where you were. Where were you at? You were at Facebook on sales. Here's what. Here's what I'm saying. I said this years and years ago. Is one of the very first podcasts ever. Did Craigslist should have a. If I was the marketing guy at Craigslist, I would. I would create a slogan. The slogan would be Craigslist, where people with no money go to shop. And, like, literally everything is either halfway, half it's a scam, and the other half is some kind of trade proposition or somebody lowballing you. That's like the majority of what's out there in those environments. But, you know, we trudged through it. I heard Facebook, Facebook, Marketplace, a little better. I've had good luck. So, you know, I've good luck with Facebook and Craigslist as a whole. I mean, I say that, but, I mean, I don't think it's been 50. 50, but 60 of the time, it's probably not a great experience. And 40% of the time, it's perfect. And it just kind of goes that way. But, yeah, you're gonna get that. And no trades means nothing. You understand? It's like putting no trades on your thing is putting no soliciting on your door. I once had a friend who sold door to door, and he said a no soliciting sign means that they can't say no. And they, they're so they're putting that so because they know they're gonna buy whatever you come and sell them. So that's why you definitely knock on that door. And I remember thinking, I don't think what that sign means that. But here's the funny part about that now. I kind of think when you put like no trades. No. Was it no trades, no low ballers, no. No scams, you're like, that's not, that doesn't say. That's not going to tell them no. The people who weren't going to do that, they don't do it. And the people who are going to do it anyways are going to do it anyways. You can't stop them. What I do is I don't put any of that stuff. I, I just delete it. So I just delete their emails when they come in with their crazy stuff anyways. Okay, let's, let's. Thank you. Amanda. Grabbing question. I have no idea the answer. I'd love to know this answer. Create a lot. I love it with a cool letter number eight and the thing create a lot of sound says, has anyone ever made a solid ebony neck? I don't remember ever seeing one. Not an ebony neck. I've seen all the others I've seen. Obviously I've owned a ton of them too. Solid rosewood, you know, I've had, I mean, you know, you name a ton of woods out there. Everything from, you know, avonkul or woven cool to. To. I'm trying to think one Purple Heart, you know, paduk, you name it. But I don't think I've ever seen a solid ebony neck. So I don't know if anyone makes one or not, but I've never played one or seen one. I wouldn't imagine it would be too good of a neck wood. Ebony is very hard but very brittle. And I like ebony necks. Sorry. Ebony fretboards. I really like them. Personally. I like the way they look. I love the jet black look on a fretboard and it's just me, but for the most part, I've never really liked the way ebony fretboards sound, if that makes any sense. Like every, it's. Every time I get a guitar with ebony fretboard, I never really like the way it sounds so much. And I'm always fighting it with changing pickups or doing something. Something happens to make the. The attack different, you know, like a snappier. It's a snappier attack that it doesn't have as Much fullness in the notes. The notes seem thinner and they snap a little harder. It could be in your head, you understand, as much as this stuff could be real, it could be placebo and stuff. But that is the. That's the issue I deal with to the point where. Like acoustic guitars. So we don't have to talk about the electric guitar tone wood debate on acoustic guitars. It's the same thing with me. Ebony fretboards on acoustic guitars. I just don't like the way it sounds. It doesn't work for me. The one exception would be classical guitars, but that's because you kind of want a little bit of a bright snap because the strings are a lot warmer, especially after they've been played for a little bit. A little bit. So. But yeah, I couldn't imagine if they did make that neck. It would be good, but who knows? Okay. Okay. J. Smorey Music says acoustic guitar setup. So he's playing acoustic guitar. He says, I play a bit of bluegrass. Which means thick strings wearing down at the first four frets fairly quickly. How do I avoid a yearly refrat? So the things you can do to minimize the refret is coded strings help. Believe it or not, some coded strings will be nice because again, think of it like lubrication. The coating on the string is going to be essentially a friction reducer. And so part of the reason you're chewing in your frets is not just because you're pushing down on them. It's because you're slightly giving vibrato. I know you're not really playing vibrato with that stuff, but I mean, you are, right? Your fingers never stay perfectly still. And it's. Think about, you're taking a piece of metal, pushing into a piece of metal, and then if we put it on a really. One of those really expensive slow motion cameras, you slowly see you're doing this to it, you know, especially because the string's kind of, you know, oscillating too. It's like going in a circle and it's wearing. And it's like literally wearing on that fret. So something to reduce the friction would help help with that for sure. I've experienced that. I've seen that with players. There's. If you don't want to use coded strings, I understand you can get string lubricants. And a lot of times people use them for their. To put them on the top of the strings for your fingers, but you can put them on the bottom of the strings and same thing again. Just think about it like Reducing friction. Right. That's what's doing it. Right. It's not anything else. It's not like the strings have little mouths and they're biting on the frets and eating the frets like termites. Uh, it's just friction. And the friction is. Is so the more you reduce the friction, if you think like that, the more. The more you'll reduce having the frets get divots. And the divots are what's causing the refresh. As you put those divots in there, they get pretty deep. The other thing you can do is polish your frets pretty much every time you restring your guitar. And if you don't restring your guitar ever, then I would polish your frets anytime you see any kind of crusty oxidation or anything. So again, just minimize the friction. I find that really works more so than anything else. The other thing to factor in is the type of strings. But so if you don't want to coded, which coding just helps. Because if you do elixirs or any of the coated brands, again, you're just putting a layer of essentially, I don't want to say plastic, but plastic between the string and the fret. So I mean, that's where that's nice. You'll even see. You'll see, by the way, if you look after, oh, probably just a couple hours of play, you'll see where the coating between the fret and the string is worn off or worn down. So don't worry about it being gone. It's still there. But I mean, it's worn a little bit it worse fast. That just shows you how much fast it can wear down. So reducing friction is huge. That makes a big difference. And the type of string material that you have, because a lot of times somebody will say, well, restring with stainless steel frets, but on acoustic, I understand why that can be problematic because, you know, it'll. It'll make the guitar sound a lot brighter. And a lot of traditional guitar players are definitely not into the brighter stainless steel frets. So you can change string materials so you can look for softer string, look at the metals that are softer. So to me, 8020 is harder than the phosphor bronze. So the phosphor bronze strings, which are. Will wear faster against the nickel frets. So like, again, we're like, think of it like, you know, I like analogy. So think of it like a big semi truck hitting, you know, you know, a Kia Soul. It's like, who's gonna win? It's the Same thing. If you go with a softer string material, then the fret can win a little bit in this friction fight. That's another thing. But the. And then somebody's asking about WD40. WD40 was a remain water. It's not a lubricant. Okay. So when lubricants, you can use whatever lubricant you like. I'm not a big fan of putting WD40 on my computer guitars. I use WD40 though, on Spinal cloth to remove like, almost like gooby gone. I use that to remove stickers and. And stuff off guitars. But I clean it up very thoroughly. But again, I'm not telling you, not that anything bad about it. I'm just telling you I don't use it. So it's like I can't recommend things I don't use for. For anything involving a fret or the string. I just use like fast fret that works really good, really well, you know, and there's a couple others that are out there that are string lubricants that you can use. So I would say those things pretty sure. And then I think that would be. That would be enough. I mean, you should, you know, if you're playing a lot, there's just nothing you can do. You're going to chew through those damp strings. But those things will definitely slow the process down. It will do it. I. I know because you kind of. I don't know you per se, but I have, you know, I had years and years of customers who were just like. Like you playing bluegrass. Just playing and bluegrass. So, you know, I'm just thinking this because when you say bluegrass, when I think of my bluegrass customers that were for repair and they play a lot, they. They go four or five hours a night just jamming bluegrass, you know, and so it's like that's just a lot of hours on the frets. And the way you think about frets is way you think about tires. It's how many miles can you put on these things? And some people, you know, Some people take 10 years to put enough wear and tear on a fret to have a crown level, much less a refrain. Some people can do it in one year. I've never really met a whole lot of players. Well, I've never personally met a player who could do it faster than one year. Not that I can think of. And when I say that, I mean, maybe it was eight or 10 months or something, but I mean, I'm. Now, I never remember having to refread a guitar every Six months for any player that I've ever had as a gigging player. But the players who get the most refresh in my world were always the, the, the massive giggers, the ones that gig like six nights a week, you know. Right. But really it was open jam night guys, the guys that host open jams because you know the open jams go for five, six hours and they do three, four of those a week. And it's just again, it's miles on the road, man. It's just how many hours on those frets? They just. So there's nothing you do. Although if you ever want to do stainless steel frets, you put them on there. I can tell you right now you're not going to chew through those in a year or two. It's not going to happen. Let's see. Let me, let me grab Christian. Christian Daring says, he would say, he says, hey, Phil. Two parter. Okay. He says, one. Do you think we will see slightly more premium brands such as D'Angelico, follow PRS and make under $500 models to attract more buyers in 2025? The inevitability of every company that ever does an import is to do more imports. That is my, my. I don't have any, I don't have anything that shows me different than that, that I've seen. So I say this all the time. The inevitability of a premium brand making an import, a more affordable import model is eventually that's the only thing that exists in the import model. And, and, and here's why I can say that. Look at, look at the Gibson and the Fender model where their import line is Squire and Epiphone for the most part. You know, if you look at, like I said, if you look at companies like Paul Reed Smith, we say this all the time. Paul Reed Smith, they live off SE now. That's their money. That's the money. They can't let SE die. If PRS was to let Essie die, they would be in a bad situation as a company. Gnl, the import line, import is a big part of their, A big part of their year is those import, those, those tributes. We see it over and over again where companies make the import line and the import makes so much money. Because you gotta understand the main thing is, is the import lines is like a perfect world if you're a business and I don't. And please understand what I'm saying. Okay, I'm not, I'm not. Obviously I'm against it for the most part. I don't enjoy this. But, but I understand it like there's no osha. There's no, you know, there's no workman's comp. There is no, none of that stuff. You know, you're having it built by a third party. You know, you have them. The only thing you have to be really good at. Think about this. If you want to get in the import business as a, as a guitar company, you got to get really good at the prediction business. That's it. Like how much stuff do I need to sell? Like how many do I need A half a container guitars? Do I need a whole container guitars? Do I need two containers guitars? Like how, how do, how many guitars do I need? Because that's what you're in the business of is sell through where in the manufacturer business model. You're in the keep up, you know, keep up on the orders, right? You got to get them out. So they order and then get them out where? The import business. It's they order up front and then you got to get them out the door. Sold. You got to figure out what to sell them. But if you look at the import business model, once you have a lower price point, you can sell to way more, way more guitar players and the margins tend to be better. I mean that's just how it goes because you remove so many expenses like livable wages and osha. Repeating myself again. And workman's comp. Right? All these things. And so the problem is it becomes really if they can master it because that's where sometimes there's an exception. They're not really good at the predictive business model if they can figure out the predictive business model. In other words, how many guitars are they going to sell and how to get them out there and sold then slowly. What I notice is eventually they don't even make the USA stuff anymore. And there's so many brands like that. First of all, there's a lot of brands. Washburn Guitars, BC Rich guitars by the way, BC Rich and Washburn Guitars is actually an extra great example because the Washburn and B Search guitars are essentially made by the USA Ones are made, they're ghost built by a third party. So there's no USA Washburn Factory and there's no USA B Search factory. In fact, if there was a video recently, it was a great video. I think it was Masters of Shred. Great channel. If you haven't checked it out, especially if you're a nostalgic for a lot of the 80s 90s stuff. Very great channel. They did a walkthrough of the Washburn facility with Nuno and if you look in that video, the thing that kind of struck me as funny and I remember I'm a huge, remember this huge Nuno fan, huge washroom fan as I had. Right. And I like the Masters of Shred channel. So I don't, I want this to be very like specific what I'm saying. But the thing that made me chuckle was there was a wall and it was like all these pegs in the wall. It's like my walls. If you, if I turn on the camera today and all the wall, all the pegs were empty. It was all empty. And like. Yeah, it's because they don't want to put all the other brands, I'm guessing. This is what I guess. I'm pretty sure I'm right though. They didn't want to put the other brands on the walls because they were like, they're showing Nuno's guitars in the Nuno shop. So they're ghost belt. There's nothing wrong with, by the way. Ghost building has been a standard in this industry so long that it's just part of it. Most, not most. A lot of high end guitars you own, especially from the 80s and 90s, are ghost built. But my point is, is that those companies, they do the import lines and then they have the, they don't even have their USA facilities anymore. It becomes real common and so the inevitability is that imports is more imports, so to speak of D'Angelico do. Yes, I know they're going to do lower end models. Not because they told me that just seems to be the business model at large. It's. They, they got to get, they get into the predictive, the predictive system. Right. How many can they flip and how can they flip them and they get that strategy down and, and lowering the price helps. Yeah, I think it's a, it's a, it's definitely a thing. I think the business model that I've seen that doesn't seem to work, but everybody seems to try it first and God bless them for that is the expensive import business model. And you know, you can insert the brand, there's always a brand that you can think of where they're importing the guitars, but they're putting them at the most premium price point and it's kind of like, you know, that's the, you know, can they make that work? And over time, again, like you said, will they go cheaper? Yeah, they end up always going cheaper. Strandberg is a good example to look at his first thousand dollar guitar. Strandberg I think was the worst decision they ever made. I really, it took me a while to come to that. He didn't come to the conclusion easily by any means and it pains me to say it. I love Ola Strandberg. He's on my second channel as a podcast, my favorite podcast I've ever done. Ola Strandberg. Super honest, super sincere, humble is all get out. And you know I, I love it but I mean I would be, I would be remiss if I didn't say what I think which is the new thousand dollar strand guitar. You know I couldn't figure it out at first. I told you guys, I'm like it doesn't have the fan fret. That's kind of weird. But that's okay. I think where he screwed up and I think where they screwed up is that guitar should not have the indoor neck is what I've come to the conclusion. Here's why it's. It throws you off after a while. What I mean by that is I've heard and seen a bunch of my friends who reviewed them say that the thousand dollar Strandberg is not only as good, it's kind of better or they like it more than the more expensive Strandbergs. And then my brain's like so to answer questions, no one asking right now is am I going to review the new $1000 strandberg? Sure I am. But I'm trying to sell my expensive one right now first. Not because I'm anticipating that one being better. It's because I'm afraid that if it's as anything as good as this one, that was $3,600. I mean that's just crazy. They're, they're made, both made it by Cortech. So and I think this, that's the first nail in the Strandberg is probably going to have to make more affordable guitars price thing because that's like they open up that can of worms. So we're seeing it. So hold on just looking at comments to see if you guys have any thoughts too. Sometimes I'm like Andrew says Reverend Reverend is a good example of making a really nice quality guitar. So I consider Reverend in the same category as Schecter guitars for the most part. I say that because Schecter Guitars, unlike Reverend it keeps doing this thing where they make an import. Not import but a lower priced guitar. They just recently did this year. Again it's a bad move. I was there when they did sgr which is their lower affordable price. I think it's a horrible idea. Schecter should not get into the cheap guitars. You know what Schecter is good for is what Schecter should do. What Reverend is doing, which is Reverend only has good guitars. Like you don't buy junk Reverend guitars. There's no 399 junk Reverend guitar. There's no affordable streamed down Reverend guitar. You just get a good quality guitar. You know what you're getting. You know it's made in Korea. You know it's good. And there's something cool about that. Something cool like on, on a show like this, we're like hey Phil, you know what's a good guitar for about a thousand dollars? And I go oh Schecter a Reverend Right. Those are great guitars. Great guitars, thousand bucks, trust them all day. But then Schecter's sometimes dips into the lower price points which is what Ibanez and other companies does do. And then, then do you guys remember there was a time where like Ibanez was a brand? Like I felt pretty confident. Tell everybody every Ibanez is great. Now I talk about Ibanez the same way I talk about Epiphone. They have some great ones and then they have some okay ones and then they have some ones you should probably stay away from. Right? That's kind of the way you think of it. But Reverend is a great example of. And by the way Andrew also proves my point because Reverend was a USA brand that no longer makes USA guitars. Perfect example of why make them here when we can just make them over there. And that's. I said that's the inevitability of all of it is the brands that will probably stay anchored in. Look at Framis in Germany. I would not be shocked to hear a Framis stops making German made guitars. Warwick is also famous. But think of it separate, okay? Warwick's its own thing. Even though the same factory. I would not be shocked to see one day that they pretty much don't even want to make famous in Germany. It's just all made in China. I wouldn't be shocked at all if that happens. I like said I keep seeing that story. It's the story oldest time. It just keeps coming over and over again. The import version makes more money. It's easier to sell because it's lower price point has less overhead and expenses. As long as you can get the predictive part down. The main screw is when you get a container full of things you can't get rid of. That's that doesn't make any of the other things I said, that saving you money worth it if you can't move your product. So. So I don't know. All right, I'm just getting water, guys. I'm never gonna learn to mute this when I'm pouring the water. So you guys always hear the water, and I can always get it. I get a random email every few months from somebody going, I can't stand you pouring your water on the show. And I'm like, yeah. I actually started. I started laugh. I won't say it. I was gonna start laughing because I saw you not a YouTuber, a podcast channel that has, like, millions and millions of subscribers say that they got the same critique. One day. They were just talking about it, and I was like, oh, my God, I got that same critique. So he's got a second part. Christian's second part is, would you be open to the idea of building your own Texas Toast guitar and making a series similar to the Gianiro series with a build tour? Not really. So here's. Here's why. I have. I have two Texas Toast guitars here. I have a video coming about the Texas Toast guitar, and I think it's gonna answer a lot of questions. A lot of people have been curious about Texas Toast Guitar, and I. And this is. Came up with a company recently that didn't. It didn't go well. The conversation didn't go well. And that's okay. I don't mean, like they were jerks or anything. Just. Just. I don't want to say we're butting heads. They just weren't understanding. It was like. It was like I was given directions, and then they're like, where? Turn left. Where? I'm like, no, you go straight. Just go straight. So here's what's happened to me over the years. I've made all the mistakes that I want to make. I've made a lot of them. I'm kind of done, right? I'm too old. I'm too tenured in YouTube. I got too much optics now. It's almost like I can't, you know, look, the dream is to put out a video and have a lot of people watch it. The curse is to have a video and have a lot of people watch it. Because now whatever you do wrong, it's just there in time for everybody to see. More people get to see it. The. You know, I used to actually put out videos. It's funny. When I first started putting out YouTube videos, I'd put out a video and then Somebody would message me and go, hey, Phil, just so you know, this is wrong in this part of the video. And I'd look, and I had, like, 300 views, and I'm like, okay. And I just delete the video and I go fix it and I go relaunch it. And I remember the first time I put out a video and somebody said, hey, Phil, this is wrong. And I looked, and it had 4,000 views already. And it's like, oh, my God, it's just been up for like an hour and a half. And so I was like, what do I do now? So my point is that when I deal with newer companies, younger companies, smaller companies, look, when I deal with PRs, when I deal with vendor, when I deal with, you know, heritage, you know, name the big brands, right? You know, you know, Gibson, you name it Epiphone, I don't have to vet a lot of things. I just have to worry about the focus of the guitar. What I've decided to do over time now is that anytime I deal with small builders now, anytime I deal with new companies, I do. We do so much vetting process now. The we. We. We actually talk to their customers now. We, like, reach out. Hey, did you. Did you buy from these people? What was your experience? Like, we kind of get a sense of where they're at. The reason is, is because I find that, you know, I used to just treat everything the same, and it's really, really not the right way to do it, which was, you know, put every guitar on the bench and just give you an assessment of the guitar. And then later I'd find, like, people go, oh, I, you know, like I said, I've talked with this many times. I've did videos of companies, and then the company just closes right after I do the video. And I'm like, well, that's horrible. Not only for them, but it's horrible for you guys. Like, I just told you guys all the, like, hey, check this out. And then you guys, literally, they. They, you know, they don't. They don't deliver because they don't exist. So I've been spending a lot of time with the Texas Toast guitars because I want. I did the, you know, guitar of the week with it. It's on my second channel if you want to see the impressions of it. That's an impressions thing. But the time I spend with it is not just like, oh, their fret work is good. It's everything I want to know, you know? And when I say. When I say these bigger companies, when I say I don't have to vet them as much. It's also because I've been working on them for so long. I've worked on, I don't know, let's just say safe. I've worked on a hundred of everything that's major. Ibanez, Washburn, you know, Fender, Gibson, Epiphone, Squire, 100 everything. And it's really, it's thousands but 100 everything and then other brands I've. The only one I've ever seen is the one that were sent to me and so I take more time with it. So I love the idea of a build process concept. I would love to work with them on some level of doing something like that. Not like necessarily that kind of build video process but, but there's a deep dive coming and I think it's going to be really fun. And, and, and also I want to make sure it's accurate too because when they're small companies I don't want to do anything wrong because you can help them, which is great and you can hurt them, which is not great. You know, just kind of balance it out. So that's just giving you some insight in that stuff. So the GNL thing was. And then think about this. If you watch my year end review, the GNL thing got a little messed up, which is funny. Not funny haha funny strange. Which is so strange. The whole thing was strange still like the GNL guys just that part was strange. Craig says, hey, I want to order a Fender Mod shop telly. If you guys don't know what mod shop is. Fender has like a plug and play system on their website where you can essentially build a parts, a caster, you know, Telecaster, Stratocaster with their parts and then they put it assembled together and they give you a little certificate and they send it to you. It's essentially like semi custom custom shop. He says, what? No neck profile would I recommend if my favorite neck is a Gibson SG Slim? I don't know, I don't know. Fender Mod shop. Let's see what next they're offering. If it's easy enough, I will do it. I will look. Let's see, let's take a second. We're going to look. I'll share with you guys as soon as we get there. Tada. Okay, so it's thinking, okay, here it is. So this is the mod shop you can start building. He was saying a Telecaster if I recall. Oh, you can do it. You can do a mod shop of the Acoustic Sonic. All right, that's something I'm gonna be interested in. I want to try acoustic sonic like a personally and spend some time with it. There's a Telecaster. Get started. All right, we're getting started. Okay, next shape. Didn't. Wouldn't do the deep sea. Wouldn't do the deep sea. I wouldn't do the. Okay, all right. Solid deep sea. The modern C. The modern C is not going to be like the sg, but the modern C is thinner. Modern C. The C to D. I don't know. I'd have to look at the stupid jerks. They're not giving you the. I want the depth of the first fret and the 12th fret. It's not there. So I don't know about the C to D. I mean the D. Here's the deal. The D shape would be closer to the SG 60s SG neck, which is like the slim taper neck in the shape of it. But I don't know how thin it is. So if it's the shape you're really interested in, that C to D would be closer to the shape feel. But I would say the modern C would be closer to the thickness but still not as thin. The, the slim Gibson neck will be thinner by far than that C, but. And again, you know, you know your, your mileage may vary, but in my experience, my experience with my personal guitars, as you know, I really like my Gibson SG, which is the 60s neck, which is the slims that into the American professional 2 neck which is slightly thicker. They feel they, they're close enough. I don't go, oh, this is so horrible. They feel pretty darn close in comparison. I don't know. Maybe we should build a mod shop guitar. Anyone interested in that? We'll do a live. You know, we did the pedal board build. We'll do a live build. The only problem is we'd build the guitar and then it would take, you know, forever months to get here. It would, I don't know. Maybe we'll figure something like that out. Okay, let's go to a question Amanda pulled. This is from Rob and I don't know the answer, Rob, but it says Phil. How do I judge what a fair price is to sell my 2018 PRS Silver Sky? I almost tell you not to do it, man. And do you think used American made guitar prices will go up? Well, the answer is yes. Used American guitar prices will go up inevitably. I, I have not personally looked recently in depthly at the silver sky prices used, but my impression is they're, they're Cheap right now. I hate the. You know, hey, look, you know, it's a buy sell market, right? This is not the time to sell like you're the. You know, it's like if you're. This is a stock channel, I'd be like, hold on to that stock because it's not the right time. I can't imagine Silver Skies will go down even more. But I feel like. And here's why I say that I sold two of my Silver Skies. I had two USA ones. And I know I got way more than what I see people asking now. So, yeah, Sean Brooks is saying a 2018 Silver Sky. 1800 to $2,000, depending on condition. If you get two grand. Yeah, I would say that. Do that. 18's pretty good too, from what I've seen. I've. I've. I've seen where I can get a new Silver sky for that. So recently I just. Out there, you know, I. The reason I know that is because I, I really like my Silver Sky. But like I said, I, I moved from it towards back to my Fender style guitars. And I remember at some point I saw a couple of new prizes. I was like, oh, maybe I get another Silver sky again. Don't do it. Never go back. Never go back. But yeah, so Sean's saying 18 to 2000 is good price. I would. I. That sounds like a good price to me from what I've seen. If you could get that. Jack says, hey, is it okay to hang guitars on drywall only? I don't have studs in my wall there where I want to mount my guitar. Can you describe how your guitars are mounted? Yeah, so the way I mount them is. I have two. There's two. Two ways you can mount your guitars on your wall. Three ways. Three ways that you can. It's technically two, but I'm just gonna go three. Three ways you can mount them on your wall. First of all, if you can hit stuff, that's great. But obviously looking at my guitars, there's no way. Like I, I live in a. I don't live in a new house, but it's from the early 2000s, so it's modern enough. There's no. There's not that many studs. They're supposed to be. There's. There. There's probably four studs in both those walls. So what it looks like anyways. So, yeah, so a couple on studs. That's great. Don't use. And don't use the anchors that come with string, swing or in. Unless I haven't Seen, you know, all the other wall hangers in the wall walls. But don't use any of this. This the anchors that they sell. Get the good anchors. Go to Home Depot and get real anchors. The one. Not the plastic ones that when you spin, they just spread. Get the actual. I get the butterfly ones, man. I just, I'm just. Why I don't trust the drywall. You know, I think Brian, he had a flood in his house and then the water went down his walls and it delaminated and everything fell down. That's not a common thing to happen though. But especially to me since I'm on the top story. So I don't think the water is going to go that way. But anyways, my point is I would get the better anchors if you're going to do it. However, if you don't want to put giant holes in your walls and put giant anchors, there's a second third. The hell's wrong with me? It's counting to threes. Getting tougher and tougher, man. I'm just telling you. There's a third thing you can do. What I like that works really well is you can go and get quarter inch fiber board or ply board. I don't know what you call it. Let's look, let's. Let's do this. All right. Low density fiber board. Is that it? I don't know. I want to double check quarter inch. That's not what I want. Wanted. It's the stuff that basically it's. I don't. Yeah, it's got to be fiberboard. It's essentially the stuff that they, they you get. If you get tackable fiberboard. It's fiber board. I mean, that's basically SO4 by sheet fiber board. Hold on a second. 4x8 sheet fiber board. All right, there it is. So Lowe's has got it. I go to Lowe's because it gave me 10% off for being military. Home Depot used to. And then stopped. So then I switched to Lowe's and then somebody said home Depot is doing again. But now I've been. This is it. This is the stuff. This is 48 inches by 96 inches, smooth brown hardboard wall panel. So wall panels is that. This is what I recommend you get this stuff. Here's what you do. You get that stuff and you, you put that up on your walls and you use wood screws to screw that to because you'll find the studs for sure on that. And then you. I use wallpaper. And then you wallpaper over those. Right or you can just paint them and then you screw your, your wall hangers into that. And I, I've had good luck with that too, using oversized screws. So those all are ways to work to, to make it work, if that helps. But the best takeaway advice is don't use the anchors that come with the ball hangers. Get quality ones because you don't want your guitar to fall. Pond Hopper TV says, hey, Phil, I picked up an Ibanez Jim Jr. And I'm going to swap the pickups with Seymour Duncan Invaders. Many are. What many are. I don't know what this word is. It's many are. I'm gonna say warping. Warping out the term for Godo too. Is that really necessary? Minimal use. Oh, I think he's basically saying, should he change out the bridge to a Godo, you don't have to. I think they're probably doing that because the Godo's is, I think personally go to is a better quality trim tremolo than what's in the Jim Junior. It's an upgrade. It's 150 bucks. I mean, do you have to do it? No, I mean, you know, how much do you use the tremolo? First of all? That's the main thing. So if you don't use it a whole, whole lot, you're not likely to knock it out of tune a whole lot. But, you know, this is, this is one of those I really falls under the if it's not broke, don't fix it kind of thing, which is you replace a bridge when you have a problem. So I know, I know a lot of people get fixated on the whole tone thing. Like, oh, this bridge is pot metal. And I went to the stand up steel one or the brass one. It sounds better. You know, I don't, I don't do that. I'm not. I've done it so many for people. And I know people, guitar players like it, and if you want to do it, do it. But to me it's everything is a problem. So when people say, hey, I want to swap out my pickups, and I'm like, oh, you don't like your pickups? And like, oh, no, I just heard that you should swap them out. Like, no, you should, you should fix things that are broken. So if you don't like the pickups because they're too bright, go with something, you know, that has a little darker sound. If you don't like the bridge because it won't stay in tune, get a little better. You Know, get a better bridge. So. But the, but the Godo bridge will be a drop in replacement. So you just, you know, just put in the new posts, stick it in there, it's good. It's like the 1996. You'll be fine. Okay, okay. Sorry. I usually don't like pre read the question. But this is when I started doing it for some reason and it made me laugh. Benjamin made me laugh. It says, hey Phil, I started hanging my guitars on the wall in the living room and now they seem to be out of tune much more than they did while on floor stands. Is that normal? Do you need a humidifier? Okay, so the reason why it made me laugh was because what I read was I put my guitars in the wall and now they're out of tune. I have nothing. Think of this. All guitars pretty much start their lives in guitar stores hanging on the wall. So I've never had any problems with guitars hanging on the walls and it causing any tuning issues, particularly over a guitar stand. I've heard people talk about it, but in my experience, like whether I put them in the side racks where I put them in a guitar stand, where I hang them on the wall, it seems like they're all the same. The ones that stay in tune, stay in tune. The ones that don't, don't. And it's just how it goes, you know. But like I said, your mileage might vary if you're finding the experience that they're going out of tune. Maybe you can go back to the floor stands, but I don't think you have to. Essentially what really caused the guitars to go out of tune is the second part you're talking about, which is it's getting too dry, it's getting too wet in the room. And like we said, the instruments are wood and they literally, you know, hot to cold is not great, but it's not as bad as dry to wet and wet to dry. Currently in this room it's too dry. I can tell because my lips are dry Again, I can always tell when this room's drying out really bad. So this room is 42% humidity. Generally speaking, 40 is the minimum. Allow the room to get humid because there's just too many guitars in here. Now I've talked about this over the years. You guys asked me before if I was using humanifier. I wasn't because I didn't have that many guitars in the room. Now there's so many guitars. The more guitars you put in a room, so, so this is the thing you have to Think about. Okay. And Benjamin. Sorry I had to go back and look at your name. I wanted to get your name wrong. Benjamin. A sponge sucks up more moisture faster and more than a rock. I know that's dumb, what I'm saying, but just. Just think of it that way and just life goes easier. At least it does for me. So if you want to suck up room and moisture in the room, throw some sponges in there, right. They'll suck up more moisture than rocks, right? Well, wood, Right? Same thing. Wood's more than. It'll suck up faster than rocks, but not as fast as sponges. You see how this kind of works? So. But the important thing to understand is that all these guitars hang on the walls. That's what they're doing. They're sucking the moisture in the room. So if you've got a lot of guitars, and especially if you're hanging on the walls. Yeah. And you live in a dry place like I live, eventually you will need a humidifier. I don't like to humidify the room and the guitars. I try to do it as little as I can. So this year what happened was, was the first time I pulled a humidifier out in, oh, six years because the room dropped at 32% humidity. Because the weather's been so great, I've been cracking the window in the room in between the window, the outside air, sucking humidity out in the guitars. It just got too dry. So I put a humidifier back in the room. So I'm humidifying again. And I've been keeping it about 50, which is very hard for me to keep 50. Humidity is very tough in my climate in this room. But like I said right now, I haven't humidified in a week, and it's at 42 forties, the minimum. I would say anything under 40, you're going to start seeing issues with your guitars. Probably 50s ideals. If you have a lot of acoustics, 60s, even better than that. But I don't like too humid because. Because again, the problem is if you make a perfect environment for your guitars, in my experience, once you take them somewhere, if you take them places, they're gonna move as soon as they dry out. So I don't want it to be too humid. So 50 is good. I like it between 40 and 50. For me, again, everybody kind of figure out their own sweet spot. But in your case, if you're noticing the guitars are knocking out tune and you put them on the walls, just keep in mind you just hung them like 10 sponges on the walls and yeah, they're sucking up the moisture in the room. And so you might want to get a humidifier. I use a cold, misty humidifier. It's not special. It's not great. The one I like is, I got it at Target. I have a couple of them. And home media. Is that what it's called? Let me look it up. The reason I like these. I'll tell you what I look for in a humidifier. Humidifier, I look for. Ah, so here's jerks. All right, here's one on Amazon. I'm gonna get the link, too. All right, so this is the one I use. By the way, the reason I said this is jerks, I paid Target sucks. I paid $89 for this thing. And then. No, I paid $79. I paid $79 for this, and then I needed another one, and then I went on a couple months later, and it was $99 at Target, and it's here on Amazon for $65. So I'm doing this real quick because in case any of you guys want to buy one, I'll get so much money. I'll have so much money. If you buy this. I'll put the link here. Paste. There you go. And I'm going to save it for later. So anyway, so here's the humidifier I use, and I'll tell you why I use it. This is it. And that's the link I made for you guys. Let me get rid of that. All right, so this thing, 65 bucks. Why I love it. It sits on the floor. It sends out a cool little mist right here. It doesn't have a remote. I think there's a version with remote, has a little nightlight, whatever. None of that stuff. The reason why I do it, reason why I do it is that big tank, baby. Look at that. Look at that. That thing. I don't know how much water does it. Oh, 1.47 gallon. There you go. That's all you need to know, dude. This thing, if you put it. It's got three speeds. It's got one, two, and three. One, three is too much. Don't do three. That's too much moisture coming out too fast. You don't want the guitar sucking up too much moisture too fast. One, if your humidity. If you're living in a place where maybe it's like. Like right now, if it's at 42% humidity, maybe on 1, it's good. If you were at 30% humidity or something like that, I put it on 2. But what's great is if you don't get a big tank like that you're going to be filling this thing all the time. It's going to drive you nuts. And it comes with a. It comes with a. A little floating tablet thing. Not a tablet. I don't know. This is blue stupid thing. You throw it in there. So it's to help it decalcify the water. So you get hard water and stuff. But I have, I have water purification throughout the entire house. So my wife is crazy about water. I have all the water. I don't know why we live in a desert. She picked the wrong place to be. She. My wife loves water. Like when we were kids in like high school and junior high she only drank water. And this is before there was like bottled water. There was like ev on. That's it. Anyways, my reason I tell you this. We like have a water softener. Then we have a water purifier and then we have an under sink purifier. Then we have an external purifier that adds the minerals back in and makes the water cold or hot. And what we have all these one on the spot. I just. So I don't have. I'm just telling you that. Just telling you. One because it's just funny. But two, it's also because that's why I don't add the tablet thing. But I would definitely add the tablet if you're using tap water. But yeah. And for those that you have to. Don't worry about this and you have to dehumidify and stuff, that's fine. But for the rest of us, that's the humidifier I like. I've tried a bunch. That's the one I like. It looks good. It sits good on the floor. I keep it minimum of five feet from any guitar. That's what I've learned works. All those things work. And yeah. And size wise you also have to factor that in. I think this one is like 400ft square. 400 square feet. It's more than enough. Again. More than enough. These things are more than enough. I use it all the time. And if you have a preference of your own personal humidifier. There you go. I'm just giving you guys a reference of it for 65 bucks on Amazon. That's legit. If I might buy another one. Also thinking like when did I buy the last one? Can we take that back to target? I paid $99. Stupid target. Anyways, history will vindicate Thrawn. I'm pretty sure that's what it says? Thrawn says Uncle Phil been using a Tonx for the past few weeks and I missed the feel of my Blackstar HT5 combo. Someone recommend a JHS Morning Glory to help the sensitivity response. Any thoughts? Using a Fishman Fluence pickups in my, in my. What I use. So this is what I use. I. I don't know. The morning glorious. I don't know. So if they're giving you a recommendation, you can always try it and give it a shot. So I'll just show you, throw you my recommendation. Whether I'm playing a solid state amp or just an amp that feels a little lifeless, like it's not giving me the, the, the to be, you know, thing that I need to happen or I'm running through my camper or, you know, something, you know, like the tonics or, you know, Helix or whatever it is. And I'm like, I'm not feeling it. I use a compressor. Compressor is just really, really good. I, you know, pick your poison. Which compressor you like? I like the Gaia Tone one. I like the MXR one. I like the Keely one. I like the Wampler Ego one. So, you know, the compressor that I use the most is the Veta compressor. Ah, damn it. I gotta go look. Okay, it's the Veta Comp. It's in the HX Stomp. So you guys know I did a video with HX Stomp and that's the line six that has all those pedals in one. And I'm using the Veta Comp in that, which I think is a Line 6 compressor. I don't know why that's one I use. But so I'm telling you that if you have the HX Stomp, use that. Because that's the one I use. Or at least use the compressor in that. I would try a compressor pedal and the key history will vindicate Thrawn. I'm just going to call you Thrawn. I feel like we know each other now. So, Thrawn, the key to compression is a little goes a long, long way, right? I always tell people like distortion and compression, if you're going to give. We like the analogies here on the channel. One analogy. I like. It's like, it's like pick your sauce, man. I don't care if it's hot sauce or mayonnaise or ketchup or mustard or A1 or whatever it is you like. Worcestershire, whatever. A little goes a long way. Like don't sauce, don't over sauce your food. Right. Don't. Don't know. A little compression, a little bit distortion, Just a little bit. Do a little bit of compression. Just enough. In fact, how you do compression perfectly for playing is you don't turn it on and get a reaction. You turn it off. So you put it on. You adjust it down right to the point where you're like, I don't know, it's not even doing anything. And now you play. Okay, once you think it's not doing something for you, or it's just mild play for, I don't know, a minute, two minutes tops. That's all. Two minutes, good. Turn it off, then play. And you'll go, oh, it's missing. Whatever. I like it's missing because that's what it is. It's not so much. It's not. It's not so dramatic. That's how you do it. Just a little bit goes a long way. And like I said, put it on and then take it away. And if you take it away and you're like, ah, it's. I don't notice it. Then give it a little bit more and do the same thing again. So you guys are still talking about WD40? Yeah. You know, it's funny is Sal says sale. Sale says Sal Slingstrom. Singstrom. Sail. Singstrom says, do you have any great Poupon? You know what's funny is I love Dijon mustard, and I didn't try Dijon mustard until I was 40 because of grey Poupon commercials. Like, the great Poupon commercial was like, do you have any Great Poupon? But of course, I was like, oh, that's the rich douchebag thing. I was like, oh, that's what I thought. I just thought. I go jerky. People probably like this. That commercial didn't work on me. I was like, oh, those are the people I hate. I'm like, I'm not gonna try that. And then. So I never tried any of that stuff. I was like, oh, that's just like snooty people drive. And then one day, somebody put Dijon mustard on one of my sandwiches. And I was like, what is this amazing stuff? And they're like, it's mustard. And I'm like, wait, I'm used to mustard. Cummings. Like generic frenches. We didn't get real Frenches growing up. We got generic mustard. We got the. I buy Frenches now, though. That's how I roll. I get. I'd like to say I get real ketchup. I don't like ketchup. So it's too sweet. So Jeff, Jeff says, hey, looking for a case or gig bag for my Epi ES335. What brand would you recommend? You know, I like for gig bags. I like gator. I like mono, but super expensive. And I like trying to think. I don't know. But here's what I'm going to tell you. Check this out. We're going to go epiphone. I stop it. You know, is anyone else really sick of every website you go on this Sweetwater. And as soon as you go to go and type something, the stupid little coupon things are popping up. Can I just take 12 seconds to say how absolutely annoying every website is? Every website I go to, literally, you go to type something or go look and the coupon thing pops up. It's just constantly, constantly. Now it's like, we get it. You need to sell stuff. We get it. All right. Epiphone ES335. Okay, we're gonna pick one. This is one we're gonna go to here so you guys can see it. Here's one. This is for you, Jeff. You go to. You go to sweetwater.com. this is now sponsored by Sweetwater. It's not, though. You go to your guitar and you go here where it says certified fit cases. And these are all of the CAs. See, it says. See how we do it. Nope, don't want to see that. They only have the cases listed, not the gig bags now. But that's the cases. So I would say look at the gator condom case. Look, we know. We know Sweetwater bought gator, so of course gator is going to be the best deal every time now. But I'm bump. Of course it is because it's their brand. Anyways, they got one for 129. I would say this case is fine if you want a case. Yep. Gator case. This is 129. It's great to see a case. Not $200 right now. Cases have been crazy. Here's a slightly better one. It's deluxe wood case or 149. And then they have. I don't know. This is. It's a bit. These. These are fine. And then for a gig bag, I like. Like I said, I like gator as well. And then I wonder if we just type in this. I'll type it in, we'll copy paste it, and we type that in. And the word gig bag, what comes up. And yeah, there's a gator icon. Icon series. It's the same price. Gig bags are 130 bucks, 120 bucks. World tour. No said mono is 269. I would say, yeah. I mean, I'm not seeing anything exciting wise. Those would be my recommendations. But I would definitely check out the. The other thing is too is you can also call the Sweetwater guys and say, hey, even if you didn't buy the guitar there, say, hey, I have an ES235amPhone and I need a gig bag. What one's fit. And they'll give you a list. They'll tell you the phone. So. So I would do that. Jeff. That's a good way to start and get a feel for it. But the certified fit thing, what's great is the reason I suggested is like I said, I was at their facility and I documented that with video and I. I researched what they were doing. Those aren't cases that the guitar fits in. Those are cases that they. They are telling you that if you put the guitar in there, the guitar will be safe. Like, they throw the guitar with a case. They smash the case. They do. Like, it's like they, you know, they're mean to it. They call it bad names. They. But anyways, it doesn't matter. It's a certified fit. It's a really cool thing. It's a cool service, man, that they do it. So it's. It's a good. It's a good way to do it. If you want a case and then gig bags. You know, like I said, anything that's really thick and that's padded, it feels good. My problem is I need to do some gig bag research and talk about gig bags. Maybe do a video about cases and gig bags, not cases, because I think that's covered by Sweetwater. Just go there. But maybe we'll do some gig bag videos. This is from Phil says. Hi, Phil. I just got a sire H7 one hour ago. Like, he literally just got it it. Like he. He got it. He got it. The show had started and he got this guitar. He says, what's your feeling about this model? I did the Sire guitars. The videos did great. I would be willing to do more of them if you guys are interested in them. The H7. And I'm pretty sure my video fixed the guitar. This is a perfect example. So this is the H7. If you look when I did the video, one of my complaints was the neck is very narrow and the nut was very narrow. In the comment section, it was very heavy. Commented that the neck was super narrow. And they have since changed it now Maybe they just plan to change it. But yeah, the net width is wider now than it was really narrow when I did it video. And so. And then I've now since seen people say they got the guitar and they're like, mine's not as narrow as what you're saying. And I'm like, well, the one they sent me was narrow, so. And I. I know the owner of Sire Guitars and I know he watches the channel. He's really cool. He sends me. I think I've told you guys before. Super, super kind guy. He sends me. There's a Korean holiday. It's like Thanksgiving but for your friends. And he sends me a gift every year on the Korean friend day. So he sends that. Super cool. So I know. And he's a fan of the channel and the podcast. That's how, that's how come they send a guitars. They were just. They're like, hey, I like what you. He's like, I watch your show. I like it. It's like June. June Parker, the owner of Cortex, same thing. I got an email one day and he's like, I watched the podcast. I love it. You know, and they just like, it's really nice. Like I said, it's nice when you get reactions like that. And so, like, so, you know, so Sire is like those brands where if I reach out, they'll send me guitars because, you know, they. They're fans of the show. I just don't. If. If you guys aren't asking for it, I don't ask for it. So. And you know, I'm just letting you know. So we can probably may do an update on that Aussie English says, hey, Phil, you'd be proud of me. All right, let's see. He says he un. Douched himself. This is going so weird already. I don't know. Okay. Anyways, it goes. I found a PRSS Tremonti that I blew my two customers. Wait, that blew my custom. Two custom 24s away. Okay, so he's got an SE import. It's blowing his two core guitars away. Resonance sustain, more articulate pickups. Sold my customs. Thanks again. I am proud of you. I don't know if you induced yourself though, but I am proud of you because, like, I've said this before, it's hard to go back down the ladder. It's hard. It's like, it's, it's. It's. It's the one thing. If I could give one piece of. Of like experience, like one thing I've done personally and go, man, don't, don't be cautious is go up the ladder of expensive guitars. Because what happens to. To me. What happened to me and what happens to a lot of people I know that does it is at some point you go one or two past where you were the most happy and. And then you're like, well, I was happy then I should have stopped. But now you have the more expensive model. But the problem is now what do you do? Sell that at a loss and then buy the less expensive one again. It's tough, right? It's tough for me. PRS is a good example. I'm fine with S2. Everything S2 is fine with me. I don't ever play a core unless it's a feature set in the core that S2 doesn't offer. I've never played a core. Just me personally, I've never played a core and thought, man, I'm so glad I don't play my S2 anymore. Every time I play in my S2 PRSS and those style ones, I'm like, it's fine, it's good. So. So I find it happens a lot. Yeah. Unfrequently says gear math. It is gear math. That was the episode where we talked about that was the gear math was if you, if you like it, then more expensive thing will be better. I have gear math with Friedman. The Friedman thing was. I've said this before. I bought a runt and you know. Cause it's the first, you know, it was the first affordable Friedman. I bought one and I did a video on it and I was like, this is great. But I didn't love the clean. But I love the amp. I just didn't love the clean. Okay. And then I thought, oh, well, this is good. But the, you know, get the pink taco because that's hand wired. So I got that and I thought the gain on that was better than the runtime. I was like, yeah, absolutely love it. And I go, but there's no clean channel. And this guy who's on YouTube, earlier I called eBay YouTube. Now I'm calling YouTube eBay. Weird. Anyways, this guy was on YouTube. He's not a famous YouTuber, so there's no way to name him. But he said he's a jerk. He did a video and he's like, it cleans up great. It does not clean up great. I don't know what he did in that video, but it did not. Does not work. And they know it too. That's why they made switches now for it. Anyway, so the pink Taco was great, but it didn't have a clean channel and you can't clean up very much. So I got a dirty Shirley mini and the dirty Shirley mini didn't have the high gain, but I preferred the gain on that. And it cleaned up and I thought, oh, this is good. But then I got the J.J. jr. And the J.J. jr. So you know, the Jerry Cantrell is just the runt. It's exactly the run, same clean channels runt, but it's got more gain. And I go, yeah, a little nicer gain. Maybe I'll deal with the clean channel. But then gear math kicked in and I thought, oh man. But if I get a small box 50 that's got two channels and that's got a good, better clean channel and a better, I get the small box 50. And honest to God, I can tell you that I really think the dirty Shirley is too different. So that's a different animal. But with the small box 50, if I, I would pick. Now if I walked in a store today and I never played the small box 50 or the JJ Jr and I walked store and I plugged into both and I looked at price tags of almost $3000 for one and $1400 for the other one, I would definitely buy the JJ Junior and be happy and never look back again. And yeah, so Brooklyn Garage says Pink Taco. Yeah, I don't name this stuff, man. It's dumb. It's the dumbest name. They're all dumb names. I don't know why he names this stuff though. That's the worst name. It's. And I always say this, it's not because it's offensive. I mean it might be. That's not why I think it's a dumb name. I think it's dumb name the way like it's 12 year old humor to me. So it's like it's supposed to be edgy and instead it just comes off like what a nerd would think is edgy. I really don't like the name. So, you know, so they changed the name to PT and because Sweetwater wouldn't carry it when it, when it was called the Pink Taco. And then, and then when the sir came out with the Pete Thorne, they change name back to Pink Taco. Because then the PT, whatever the Pete Thornton's now was called a pt and then for some reason. Oh, I know. I think Sweetwater didn't have a problem with the name being offensive now or whatever. So now they carry it. But yeah, the be Is called the brown eye. See, same thing it says. That's what I'm saying. It's 12 year old humor. It's like it's his thing, it's a brown eye. But now he calls it a be lot. I don't know. You know what? Great ant builder. Not. Not the best naming person, I guess. Stupid. It is stupid, Susan. Trust me, I know. Look, I know it's and. But I filter correctly. I like said. Sometimes I gotta think like, because I remember my. I have a. I have a young lady who's my daughter and I think like I wouldn't say that in front of her. That's just bad. I know what bad is. But then I also know what stupid is. This is not only probably bad, it's just stupid, stupid thing. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. And now the 12 year old humor is going to come out of the comment section. I really hope you guys keep it to a minimum. Keep in mind, not everybody here thinks it's all funny. So I'm not trying to say, not trying to tell you guys what to do. I'm just saying it's nice when we take the high road sometimes too, right? So Christian's got a comment. He says scenario. You lose all your gear in a wildfire. That's not a great scenario to talk about right now with the fires, man. So you guys know somebody asked me earlier about, about Tim Pierce. I reached out to my buddy Steve and I asked you how he was doing because he lives there too. He's. He's fine. And that's as much I want to say. He's fine. He. As far as he knows, Tim's area is fine, so he's fine too. I saw Doby Dos today. He said that basically there's fire all around him and he's. He's gonna, he's going on the road. He's on the road. So as far as I know, he left today or he's leaving today. He's the one on the road. My heart goes out. I don't even have to comprehend this stuff. I don't even know how to comprehend it and I don't know what to say or do about it. And I. So I'm just trying to do a show where we can all talk about guitar and stuff because I just don't know how to process all this stuff right now. I feel like it's like every time we turn around there's some other horrible tragedy and I'm. I just, I feel for these People. So. But anyway. So we'll just say I lose all my gear. Sure. We'll just say we lose all my gear and I only have three grand to build it all back. Do you go for quantity or different tone or whatever? This is a scenario I get asked a lot. It's a real common thing. I. I get it. Everybody's just curious. Because I want to and I hope you guys don't mind. I always take liberties when I do this stuff. It's because I want to break the question down to the interesting part of it. That would be a discussion for guitar players like oh, that want to hang out and talk guitars on a Friday afternoon. It's really like you have so much stuff. This is how I really trick this. When you're asking me. It's not like I'm asking like some. Some random person. You don't know what to have. You. You guys see there's a lot of crap here. There's a lot of crap. I have all the stuff. I have all the things. Like I've curated a really nice music store in. In my home essentially. Right. Nice collection of amps and guitars. And if it was all gone and had to start over again, what. And only had a limit of what I could get, what specifically would I get? Specifically and with three grand, first of all, just like I did the first time, everything would be used because I'm gonna save money that way. And I would stick to the core. What I need and for me what I would absolutely need is I would either get absolutely either at Princeton again, budget. Budget restraints. Totally. So if I could get a Princeton for a thousand dollars or less. Thousand dollars. Princeton Either a 65 or 68 ratio. Can't get the high hand wired 64 that I have. But you know either one fine. Preferably the 68 but either one fine thousand bucks. I do that. Or if I thought I could get the Steve Morris Englehead and a cabinet which it's just not likely even you used. If you can find one you use. You wouldn't. But if you did it'd be 1200 bucks or a thousand bucks. And then a cabinet be $1500. That's half your budget. So I. I go with like the Princeton something like that. Just something I really enjoy as an amp and I would get. So I'm just giving you. This is what was why it has important. So a thousand dollars I get the Princeton. I would buy a pedal, just one distortion pedal. Just something that gives me the higher gains or mid gains. I need that I couldn't tell you what it is. I would be. I would go to stores and plug in and I would just find what I like. So let's say, let's call that 200 and that's really, really up, you know, because they'd probably be a hundred bucks. So pedal and amp. I get a two notes captor X something that's attenuates and send signal into I. Into a. Into my computer. Absolutely. It would be mandatory for me. So I get that. I. I would be sad that my aux is gone because I love my aux. But it, dude, I could get the, you know, the two notes known for a few hundred bucks. So you figure. I think I could do that for fifteen hundred dollars. And that's kind of really being aggressive, but I think I could work it. So 1500 bucks. If I did that, I'd have 1500 left over for guitar. I'd love to get my PM Delos, but I. I probably can't find it. And I'm not interested in a regular delos. I'm only interested in my wired up. So I would just recreate the delos in a Fender Strat. So I'd get a Fender Strat usa. You saw I was at guitar center, I did the trade. You can find them for a thousand bucks all day long. Thousand bucks. I would, you know, assuming I still have winding equipment, I wind up two pickups and put them in there. Or I would buy two pickups and you know, and basically do that. So anyways, I would. That's the rig. That's what I would need. Because remember, my brain is like, I still gotta, you know, film, content stuff. And the thing that sucks for me that you guys don't get to see is I have so much money in the recording aspect of making content that if all my gear was gone tomorrow, that's the real problem I'd have. I can't make content anymore. So I need something that gets that going again. So. And I definitely couldn't buy all the mics and all the, all the pre's and all this stuff. I just. No. All right. Oh, that was. That was fun. That was fun. We just went shopping. In my head, Parker says, hey, have you ever sprained your finger on your fretted hand and had to take some time off playing. Any strumming hand exercises to practice in the meantime? No. The only things I've ever done to my hands that permit me from playing is when I was 20, because I'm an idiot. I went on a jet Ski every Horrible story starts that way, right? Like, it should be like every Jet Ski story should be like. And then we had a fun and. But instead it's always like, and then we ran out of gas or then we wrecked or then so on and so got drunk. And then this happened. So what happened with me on the Jet Ski was then I had. I had a friend. I don't have that friend anymore. They went jet Ski riding. They brought the jet Ski back. We were sharing it and it came back and it had no gas. I did not know they brought it back with no gas. So I got on the jet ski and rode off into the sunset. Anyways, I was Washington, riding the jets, getting ran out of gas. So somebody had to tow me back. I'm 20. I've grown a little. Okay, so what happens is they throw me a rope. Rope. I live in Arizona. Can I mention how, like, I don't have a boat. Like, I don't know about boats. Like, I don't know what you do with this rope. So I knew enough. I didn't know you're supposed to tie it off. I knew enough that I'm not just supposed to hold it because I'll be like, pulled off the Jet Ski. The guy who's also a moron, apparently, but he's nice enough to come get me. So I don't, you know, I got like, I don't know who this guy is. So just say thank you for coming get me. But also, it would be so great if you weren't a moron too. I don't say anything to him. You know what I do? I go into the water. For those that want to know, this is. Anyways, doesn't matter. I go in the water and I grab. There's a handle at the front of the Jet Ski. I grab the handle at the front of jet ski and I hold the rope in this hand and I wrap it around my hand and I say, okay, because now he's gonna tow me in this Jet Ski back into shore. What really happened is you, those of you who are not morons, you already know how this ends. It crushed my hand so I couldn't play. That was my right hand. And that's when I was gigging all the time and stuff. So that I duct taped a pick onto my hand. That's how I got through those gigs. So I think you're talking about your fretting hand though. So. Right, watch. Sprain your finger on your fretting hand. Yeah, on my fretting hand. I've Never sprained any fingers. What I can tell you to do, if you break your arm or break a wrist or mash up your hand, is this is. This is a perfect time. It's. I'm serious. It's the best advice I can ever give you. It's a perfect time to go academic. Don't worry about your practice time. Worry about your academic time. Learn more theory. Learn more about notes. And, you know, if you don't know the notes on your fretboard, that's time to learn them. If you don't know, you know your modes, time to learn them. If you. What you don't know academically in your brain. Right. Because here's why. Oh. Oh, Siri's talking to me. Great. She's always listening. It's creepy. Anyways, Alexa. Okay, I'm just checking. Anyways, Academics. So that's what you do when you can't practice physically. Always. Just go ahead and remember, you can practice with your brain. So I would focus on the academics. It doesn't sound sexy. It doesn't sound amazing. I know you don't want to hear this, but trust me, you should do it. You will be happy you did it. This advice is because we gave this advice all the time to students that came and they would come to the lessons and. Same thing. Broke their wrist, hurt their hand, got a. What do you call it? A tongue depressor taped around their hand, their finger, and they're like, I can't play. And we'd go. We'd always say, this is what we do. This is best advice we ever gave. We said, here's what we suggest you do. Because they come in and they'd always say something. I need to take three weeks off because I can't play guitar. And we would always say, I'll tell you what we'll do. Go into lesson with the teacher. Do an academic lesson. If you don't like it, you don't have to pay every time. I don't. Every time's too much, right? Nine out of 10 times, like, 90% people came out and they go, you know what? I never understood that. Now I get it. Because you know why? Because you didn't want to learn that. You want to learn the. You want to learn the rock, man. You want to do the guitar playing stuff, so do the academics. It's the best advice I could ever get. So, yeah. So I don't know. I'm looking at you guys, what you're saying, oh, my God, some of you guys. Yeah. Susan says ear training Exactly. David says take up slide. Those things work, too. You can get new work on new styles and stuff. But, but like I said, all those, all that advice, whatever it is that keeps playing and having fun, just do that. But like I said, I, I, I'm sorry. I got sidetracked. PC501 goes, this is why Phil went in the army and not the Navy. Yeah, I'm deathly afraid of water, by the way. So. You know, the only thing funnier than that story I told you about the jet ski is to understand that most, most my friends, none of my friends, including my wife. I bet you my wife doesn't know that jet ski story. And they would all think the same thing right now. You win in the water. I don't go in the water. I don't like water. I like, I like, I like drinking it, and I still like being in it. Okay, so clown house cat says, I hate those website pops ups, too. Yeah, it's like it used to be a thing, and then now it's everywhere all the time. It won't stop. It won't stop. All right, Amanda's been loading me up with questions. Let's get subject from Amanda. So this is from typo. I think it's typo 1980. Could be, yeah. Typo 1980. Kind of going with that. Says, what happened to solid state combo amps? Most amps are all digital on modelers these days. Look, the future is not looking great for solid state. It's barely looking good for tube amps. The main takeaway now is, look, why have one amp that can do okay when you can have 50 digital amps? If you don't like digital, I understand. Right. But the digital amp thing is here. And it's, it's a, it is functional and practical, and that's what it is. It's the practicality. You know, it's, it's no different than so many other things in life now that it's like the convenience of it outweighs everything else. So, you know, the idea that you can have a great, you know, clean tones and effects and everything with you and you don't have to haul tons of stuff. It's big thing. So, I mean, you're not going to see a whole lot of companies investing in solid state amps. The, the, the, the, the, the. When we talked last week, just some insight. When we talked last week, we did the top 20amps sold on reverb. And one of the things that's interesting is if you reflect back at the top five Amps in order. I believe they were the quad Cortex. That was number one. Number two was the Sparks. All the sparks. Number three was, I believe, the Helix. And again, if I have these out of place, don't, don't worry, it doesn't matter. Number four was the Oxbox by UA Audio. And number five was the Katana. Essentially. I think that's what I remember, right. It could be slightly off, but doesn't matter. They're in the list. Heavy on the list. Think about that for a second. Okay. We talked about the sales in the future and all that stuff. Just think about what those four amps represent. They actually represent every kind of guitar player that exists right now. So you have the quad cortex. What's the quad Cortex? It's a modeler, but it's also a profiler. So if you have an amp like. So if you're like a kemper and a quad cortex, if you have an amp and you want to profile it, copy it, you can do that. So that's the kind of guitar player that's out there. The Helix, it's a modeler like the Axe FX in those. It doesn't copy the amps, it just has the amps already in them. And there's people who like modeling. So that's modeling. The practice amp market, which the Spark and the Katana come to is the practice amp market that always exists. The Katana is really in the small gigs market. I mean, I think the biggest problem that the Katana has brought. I mean, screw the modeling. This is the biggest problem the Katana has brought. There was a time where like if you were in a gig, you know, in a small bar, the go to's for affordable. Affordable, right. We're talking about, you know, right. You just want to amp to. You're like hot rod deluxe PV classic, right? Some kind of 50 watt ish 112 tube thing, right? That's affordable. Maybe a Bujera, maybe a black Star and the Katana. Because after a while it's like, yeah, but if I bring the Katana, I don't have to bring a lot of pedals and I can still use pedals in front of if I want to. And so you see that the, the fifth thing on the item was the aux, which is essentially a way of taking tube amps and making them digital. In other words, you take a tube front end and you make a digital back end that you can interface and send out to a mixer or to your interface in your computer. So you essentially see where guitar players Are thinking, now there's tube guys who want to make. They want the tube sound, but the convenience of digital. That's why the aux is doing well. You have the tube connoisseurs but realize the function of digital. So they go with the profiling stuff so they can take copies of their exact amps. In other words, like, clone your own amp. And then you have the modeling guys who just want to, you know, again, they just want good sounds, and they just want to dial them up. And then you have the practice guys, and then, of course, the affordable, you know, take it to small gig guys. That's where everything is going. I mean, that's. If that doesn't illustrate what that is, I don't know what does. That is a perfect example. And there's really not a whole lot of room if you're those five products that I. The irony that they were the number five. The top, top products really do kind of encapsulate what I would consider the 5amp buyers right now. For the most part. That's for the most part. Let's see. We're almost gonna button up. Two more questions. Then we'll end the show and have a great weekend. Do some crazy stuff. Mr. Al, how many licks to the center of. It's not what he said. Mr. Al says, hey, Philip McKnight. He saved my full name. All right. Am I in trouble? So, Philip, people always ask me, is your name. Do you go by Phil or Philip? I'm like, well, it depends. How pissed are you at me? My mom, I was Philip if she was pissed, and Phil if I wasn't. So if my mom screamed Philip, I was like, ah, crap. So to this day, I don't mind which one you call me, But I literally think, like, depending on which one I'm getting, it's like the serious level goes up. I'm not saying I'm in trouble. I'm too old now to be in trouble. But if I hear Philip, I'm like, this is serious. They're going to sell me some insurance anyways. I'm sorry, Mr. Al, let's get on point. It says, do you have the guitar mat available? No, I do not. So what you're asking about is, we have a mat. It's in my videos. My wife made it for me, and we're trying to reproduce it. And actually, we want to reproduce it a little better than the one I have. It's. It wasn't a priority. It's becoming more of a priority to make it. Does it make sense? Like it's. The priority, of course, is like, hey, if we make it, people will buy it. We make money. But also you gotta have free time to do that. So we're getting there. We're getting there. So trust me, we know. We're not. We lose money when we don't have something like that to sell. Because you guys, obviously a lot of people would like to support the channel and that's something fun to have support the channel. So we're on it. But quality is very important. Let's see. David says Ron Ellis is the epitome of secret sauce marketing. You know, before I say anything else, I'm just impressed that I could say epitome because phonetically that stuff makes my brain broken. But anyways. Oh, it's epitome. I did on purpose. I had to do it anyways, anyways. Secret sauce. Yeah, a little bit of secret sauce marketing. I mean, it's definitely the unicorn stuff, right? For sure, right? I don't know. Okay, that's not a question. We'll do one more sub here. Let me scroll through a couple of these. Sean's Sean Brooks question says Phil Gibson's most prized years are the mid to late 50s, while Fender's most prized years seem to be the mid-60s. Do you think that is because the quality of the instruments or the artist. I don't think it has anything to do with the quality instruments because the majority of people have never played those real instruments. The irony. The irony is this. The irony of our. And well, this is a great note. Great question, Sean. Great subject. Because it's the actually funniest thing. The majority of guitar players have never played the most iconic things. When you list off a Dumble, a Marshall Plexi, just 100 watt Plexi, what an iconic amp. Most of you've never played one ever? Not, not a real one and not, not, not intimately. Not, you know, and when I say played one, I mean play one period. But then some of you only experience with it was for a few minutes a 50s era Gibson Les Paul, any 50s. 57, 58, 59. Then he played it. And again, if you have like, like I have played a few, it's in brief interact actions. It's limited. It's not like, you know, not very, you know, in depth. Same with 60s era strats. Right. And then plus on top of that, if you do get your hands on one and do play one, most of them you haven't. They weren't there. Wasn't probably the best one to play anyways. There are so many things that this industry, we, we covet insanely, and yet we've never tried the original. So how do we know it's good? Well, we know they're good. We know Apexi is great. We know. So, yeah, probably not going the way you guys thought I was gonna go. You thought I was gonna be like, you guys don't even know anything and you just love stuff because you're dumb. That's not where I'm going. No, because you don't love a Plexi. You don't love a strat from the 60s and you don't love a 50s Les Paul, and you sure as hell don't love a Dumbbell. You love the musicians who use them and made amazing music with them. And I have a theory, and we'll end it on this. And it's a theory that I have really cultivated in my head over this whole time. Doing these almost 400, coming up with 400 podcasts. You can't talk for two hours, 400 times and not have some reflecting to do. And here is my thought. I think the reason why so many of us, not all of us, but so many of us, even young players, really love and focus on specifically 50s, 60s, and 70s and barely 80s gear. Okay? Barely 80s, okay. And 80s. I want to take that separate. So we're going to talk about 50s, 60s, and 70s gear. There's a reason why we love it so much because there was no trickery that we know of in the studios. When you, when you saw a musician, right, and they played a VOX amp or they played a Plexi, or they played a Strat and they recorded it, you know, when you heard the recording, at least you think, you know, it doesn't matter. Again, we're not talking about facts. We're talking about the feelings, the emotion, the impressions, you know, in your, in your, in your heart. That's what it was. You can hear it in the album. Think about this. Once multi track recording became a thing, once digital became a thing, once they could manipulate to where now, I mean, think about this. You, now you, you talk to like if you've had the luxury like me to interview guitar players from the 90s, the 90s era, guitar players, they can't even tell you half the time what they recorded with because there was like, oh, we did 18 tracks, we did two maces, four fenders, eight marshals, six these a high watt. We did. Right. We did a lot, right? And then what of that blend got to our ears. Who the hell Knows, right? And so it's almost like those. There's a romanticness to the 60s, 7, 80s or 60s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Because like I said, you hear it and you go, that's a Strat through a Marshall. I can tell where, you know, you might like. I like Neil Zaza's great guitar player. And he did a song and it was great, it sounded great. It sounds like a Strat through a Marshall. And it was a E, it was a PV Wolfgang through a 5150, right? Like. But he just rolled out the volume and cleaned up the amp and made it sound like a Strat going through Apexy. But art through, you know, made it sound like a Strat through Apexy. So my point is that you romanticize that the 80s, the trickery started for sure. And don't get me wrong, there was all kinds of studio tricks throughout the years. But we're just talking about the fact that it's just when once tracks weren't a commodity. Because keep in mind, look at all the great bands that really. Four tracks, eight tracks. That's all they got, right? Sixteen track, reel to reel, right? That's all they got. Once it became infinity and they could layer and do all they want, then it's like, well, who the hell knows really, what's in this album anymore? How many guitars, you know, did they use? How many amps? And the 80s, why I hold the 80s and say kind of the 80s. The 80s is a different element, although the studio becomes a little bit of that. You know, what did they really use? Although we have some documentation, we know that stuff. They were on stage. And then notice how. Notice how differently we covet the 80s gear. It's almost by imagery, the way it looks over the way it sounds. And again, just my working theory, my thing I've rolled in my head. Notice how. I'm not saying it's 100% true in either one of those categories, but I'm just noticing, like, wow. We really focus on the looks of things in the 80s when it was MTV generation. And we really focus on the sound of things in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Because the truth is, a lot of people didn't get to see the ax in the 50s, 60s, 70s. Some of you guys were lucky enough to see the Stones and stuff like that. A lot of them just saw a glimpse of them on TV for a second. So I think that's why. Sean, the reason why people want 60s, strats and 50s is exactly that. It's just the instruments. It's the artists. It's what the artists used and it's the. It's the ingredients in the recipe of the thing that we love. And that's where the desire comes from, more so than the actual quality of the instruments or the type of instruments. And not to say those instruments aren't dripping with mojo for that reason, but it's. It's mostly the artists. Artists drive all of this. The player drives this. Not the, you know, not the gear, but. But the gear is fun, too. It's fun to talk about. It's fun to check out. This is a reminder, by the way, if you want to sign up for the Tim Pierce masterclass, there's a discount to you guys. You say 50 bucks, but you kick something back to the channel. So this is the important thing. Not only are they giving you guys a discount, but they're still kicking something to us. So we get. We get paid for sending you their way, which is really nice, and you get 14 days. And by the way, you know, just like I told you before, Tim doesn't. Doesn't care. Just if you want to check it out and you don't find it works for you, then it doesn't work for you. He's not going to make it complicated for you to back out or anything, so give it a try. I recommend some of you guys just giving a look at it if you haven't done it before. He's a cool guy, cool channel. He's a friend of this channel. And I use the class. So like I said, I mean, that's the best testimony I can give. And then if you want to see the new merch. See, I'm remembering right now. I'm talking to my wife. So you guys don't know it. See, I'm remembering this. Mention the things. I tend to never mention the things that money. The channel needs your money. It's a. You gotta remember to sell things. You got to buy stuff. You don't have to buy anything, guys. Just have fun and play guitar. But thank you guys for considering anything. On that note, I'm going to let you guys go, and I will see you next Friday. But there will be videos. The cool thing is the new videos will be the new system, new rigs. You'll. So let me know what your thoughts when you see the new videos. If you like the new format, new style. Not a lot of it's subtle, but some of it, you'll notice that things got a little better. Change a little bit. All right, on that note, I want to thank you guys for your time to the next time. Know your Gear the Know your Gear Podcast Today's episode of the Know your Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon members, Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe. Thank you for making this possible.