B (13:39)

Cameroon is the last place to buy ebony legally in the world. I sat down with the subcontractors that cut the ebony for us. How do you tell if the wood is good or not? Well, we have to cut down the tree. We cut it down with our chainsaw and we look at the the stump and if we see the streaks in it, we don't take it. So you cut down trees until you find the black one that our customers want? Yes, that's the only tree that can be used. How much wood do you need to bring in? Well, it's a lot of work, but we have to bring in six tons of load. How many trees does it take for that? It takes two trees. Can you tell me how many trees do you need to cut down to get two black trees? Well, we cut down 20 trees. Is that right? Do you cut down 20 trees? Yes, we cut down 20 trees. And you? That's about right. We cut down 20 trees. I can't in all good conscience know that we cut down 10 trees to get one black one and let that happen over and over, every day, every month, every year so that we as guitar players can have ebony that's pure black. It's just wrong.

A (14:50)

My point is, is that when you think of companies that are well liked by their employees, by their customer base and by the industry, Taylor Guitars always comes to mind in the top five. That's just an absolute fact. And although some people will still have criticisms, my only thing I want to say to you with extreme criticisms, besides please make sure you do your research is compared to who. Because as someone who's essentially traveled the world now looking at manufacturing and work with companies in a lot of different ways, they are more unique than you think as a company. And so the guitar was fantastic. It's a USA made Taylor that played and sounded great. It was made to be slightly more obtainable than some of the other more expensive tailors and really like the guitar. However, I have a tailor that I have bonded with and I've been using that one for years and that's the one I kind of stick with. But I highly recommend checking out the Studio series still just because like I said, it's a high quality instrument. But I have to say the Taylor made Mexico series is just killer. So make sure you check those out. Then I did a Fender Professional 2 Limited Edition Telecaster that had two humbuckers, a sandblasted chambered ash body and a roasted flame maple neck. And man, this guitar was I would say one of the coolest Fenders I've seen in years. The three dimensional body looked amazing. It was super, super light. Two Seymour Duncan pickups. The neck was the star of the show. There was kind of one thing is, like I said, an opportunity lost. I really think they, they should have added a coil split. It just makes total sense. You have two humbuckers that are already four wire. So you could do that if you wanted to. You could put a coil split right here. This is a push pull pot that is made by cts. This is the one. Let's coil split the neck and see how that sounds. Even though these guitars were $2,000, they came with a deluxe case, locking, tuning key, Seymour Duncan pickups. There was just a lot of cool features. I want to say this guitar was definitely a memorable guitar for the year. Next up we had a 2025 Beast Rich Gunslinger with Floyd Rose 1000 and a Seymour Duncan Humbucker for $950. And let's just say it didn't go well and it cleans up right about here. So the neck needs a little bit of relief. The problem is we straighten the neck and this fret is high and yeah, I'm gonna say not so great. As you can see right there, it's really just kind of tearing this. I mean, you can hear it. One thing to point out is how well they did the paint job. You can see it looks really good. Everything looks really nice and clean. White guitars sometimes are a little harder to paint and this looks great. To give you an update on this guitar, Beastrich reached out after the video and we talked on the phone for hours about issues with guitars, things that they have done to rectify these kind of issues. And we're actually going to be doing some more videos of some more BC Riches. It makes me pretty hopeful because like I said, they really seem to care that this did not do well. That is always great to see in here. That brings us to a firefly guitar. So if you don't know what firefly guitars are, they're essentially guitars that make copies of all kinds of instruments, including a lot of artist signature style guitars. And they make them under $300, sometimes as low as $200. And they load them with features like roasted mahogany body with a kill switch, which is a cool feature three way switch. Up top you have a rosewood fretboard with abalone dots. You have 22 medium jumbo stainless steel frets. You have obviously a mirror pickard. This is actual metal, not plastic. And it's a one piece that goes here. Bone nut that stain red. We'll check that. Locking tuning keys. And don't forget a roasted flame maple neck. You have a spoke wheel truss rod which is dual action. You have really nice red binding around the guitar. Now there's no dead frets. And why that's important is we just did a video the other day of a guitar that was $900 that did some fret issues. So we'll go here and we're going to call that a 5 out of 5. Heat up the stick pin. You don't have to get crazy. This is. You heat it up a little bit and then try to poke it. I would say do it from the side or somewhere inconspicuous, but in this case I'm going right to the top. What that shows us is that if it was plastic, we would have melted it. They say this has a compound radius fretboard. Let's confirm what that is. We're looking at nine and a half inch radius. And looking at the 12 fret, we are 12 inch radius. So it is compound nine and a half inch to 12 inch radius. I liked the Firefly guitar so much that I ended up buying a second one. I got a George lynch style Bones guitar that says Firefly right here. And this one I showed you guys on Halloween. I did go ahead and upgrade the pickup. I put a Seymour Duncan pickup in it and. And other than that, I blocked the trim so I don't have to deal with that. And this is just my fun, you know, guitar. This guitar was like $290 shipped. And I, I don't know. The Firefly guitars are very, very good for the price. Keep in mind that the Fender Telecaster body is public domain, so Firefly can make that. And it looks like they changed the headstock just enough to where I think they're skirting it on the, on that guitar. I don't know the issue with the Bones guitar when it comes to trademark. Keep in mind, I. I once had George lynch do a clinic for me and he even explained this is a little messy for him to talk about. So. So Firefly guitars, very fun, definitely for now, seem to be really good value for the dollar. I mean, they're the price point of some guitar pedals. And these guitars out of the box most time come out playing fantastic, sometimes needing a little setup. As I say over and over again, when it comes to inexpensive guitars, these are high volume guitars, which means you're gonna see problems eventually. It's. You're playing a little, you know, kind of like roll of the dice when you're talking about 200 guitars. That being said, I'm giving Firefly best variety of affordable guitars for 20, 25. And if it sounds like I made that category up, I made them all up. Just like the guitar magazines used to make them up. It's all made up. This is all made up. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the video. Kiesel came out with a new guitar this year and they sent one and it's called the Kyber, named after the Kyber crystal. The crystal that they put in a lightsaber from Star Wars. A little bit of a departure from things they've done in the past because it has a lot of crazy features. They made the guitar body thinner. It does two things. One, it makes it really comfortable. I'd say like an sg, just really nice and comfortable for those kind of players. The other thing does, it reduces the weight. This one coming in at £9. Just kidding. £6.25. You have to have it in the right balance point. So if you have it here, you can see it's pretty good on the strap because the bout is so long here on the strap, as we know. As I showed earlier, it's perfectly balanced on the strap in your lap. If you put it forward like here, you can see you get a little bit of nose dive, which is where I usually have it. So you let go, you get a little bit of that. If you put it here, no nose dive. What did I think of the new Kiesel Kyber? Well, I liked it so much I decided I wanted a seven string. And then when I found out that they came out with a headless, I ordered it in the headless. So this is the Kiesel Kyber headless seven string. And I got to tell you, I now that I got this headless, I like it a lot. But I think ultimately if I would have got the one with the headstock, I'd been just as fine. It really doesn't seem massively different to me being headless, except for obviously it's about that much shorter, but other than that, man, just fantastic. Thin plays great. The neck is nice. I went with the thinner carve. I did the roasted maple neck. I don't remember what I did for the body. I just remember I had it painted in the rainbow crackle and fantastic instrument. This one balances really well. Does it balance better than the other one? A little better, you know, right? A little bit. So there's not as. Obviously there's no headstock. So there's no. Not really any headstock dive. But again, different players, different positions, different styles, but for me works out perfectly and is an absolutely fantastic seven string guitar. I really like that. In 2025, Kiesel came out with a sixteen hundred dollar guitar that comes in a headless or headstock version guitar with all the important options like carbon fiber rods, dual action truss rod, stainless steel frets at $1600. And that's why I'm going to give them best obtainable USA made guitars award, because I think that's pretty cool in 2025 to see somebody at least trying to hit some kind of price point. Next up, we have the most watched review video of the year, which was the new PRS core Herman Lee Clio guitar. This guitar was amazing. It's a quality instrument. I have to say it's one of the best playing guitars I've ever played. The interesting part was PRS had sent me the core guitar after they Sent me the se. So I actually had the SE first, then the core. One thing that I can tell you, having played and compared both and gone through them in detail, and they're one of the few guitars, it's not so much that the import version is a discounted version of the guitar. They're just different. In fact, if you would slightly change the body shape on them or do something so esthetically, they didn't look the same, they're just not the same guitar. And I say that in a positive way. I could see where someone who didn't like the core would like the SE and someone who didn't like the SE would like the core. Me personally, I like things about them both. The big deal though, is both the necks feel almost identical. So that was really cool. But for me, ultimately, I kind of like the SE more. It just kind of felt more comfortable overall. Aesthetically, I think the core just has a lot going on, a lot of carves and cuts, but the SE just feels more streamlined and I liked it more. This next guitar is tough for me. This is the PRS SE NF53, which, by the way, according to Reverb, was the third top selling guitar this year. Not only did I do a deep dive into this guitar, and not only did I go to Indonesia and watch them build these guitars, learn all about how they fabricate the pickups from scratch, all of the details they put into this guitar, which are very impressive. I still just cannot fall in love with this guitar. And I don't know what it is. I don't know if the neck is just slightly too chunky for my hands or what. I love the dog hair finish. I love the vibe of the Telecaster feel. I think deep down what it is is I've just not fell in love with those pickups. There's a part of me that just wants to try different pickups and see if that's where it kicks. For me, I could see why so many people went with it. I like the bridge, I like the look. The neck feels great. It's just really thick. It did well on the review, so congratulations for them doing so well on the Reverb listing. Next up, we have the Oterra guitar. Now, if you're not familiar with this brand, this is a brand new brand launched this year. What it is is it's a collaboration between Cortek and Samurai Guitarist. Samurai Guitarist decided to start his own line of guitars and design it from scratch. Do a bunch of prototypes. And the interesting thing about this is when he reached out to me to see if I was interested in doing a deep dive to see how good the guitar was. When I found out it was made in cortex I said hey, I'm actually going to be there in a couple weeks. And I actually found some of his guitars when I was at the factory which made it kind of fun. Although this is a limited run of 100 guitars that sold out, I think he's going to do other production runs slightly different or variations. Be really interesting to see what he does. I'm hoping something will come out next year. Not only was the quality beautiful, but I love some of the personal touches he put on it. With the limited number of guitars and the price it sold out in a couple days which was great. The next guitar was a little different. This was the new Orangewood Clementine. Now this is a brand new electric guitar from Orangewood for this year. So this is a carved mahogany body and then this looks like a maple cap. So this is not your traditional hollow body, semi hollow body guitar. This is more like you see Collins or PRs doing where they're, they're carving it out. And a fun fact about this guitar is it's made at the Cortek factory in Dalian, China. So different than the Indonesian factory. This is where they make hollow body and high end acoustics. Let's just say the next video didn't go as planned. This video did not end the way it was supposed to. This was the 20, 25G and L made in USA 24 fret Rampage guitar. And it's one of the last guitars that have now been made out of that factory in California. Originally I wanted to celebrate the fact that GNL came out with a 24 fret rampage and put a Cahler back in it. I remember when I toured the GNL factory and how amazed I was with the quality of the guitars. One of the most exciting things from that trip was to sit in Leo Fender's workshop and sit in his actual chair and see his workbench and to see Pict where they basically discarded that stuff. Now we don't know if they eventually picked up some of those things but I mean there's Leo Fenders chair that I sat in just discarded over to the side was a very upsetting and very hard to make this video knowing how everything was kind of falling apart. When this all happened. The video was actually completed. So I just went ahead and decided, you know, let's put it out. It's going to be one of the last guitars that we see from the GNL facility and the future of GNL is still an open book. But I'm sure of one thing. I don't think it will ever be what it was. And I think guitar players like you and I will always revere those old gnls as being something a little special. So then I did the Ibanez Power series. This is new for 2025. This is the 540P3. This is a made in Japan Genesis series guitar that's trying to recreate a guitar that is long lost, I guess from the late 80s early 90s. To see Ibanez bring it back, considering it doesn't have a huge market, has been really impressive. So I bought this one in the purple because I thought it'd be cool and the video was well received. I thought it was pretty fun video. A couple things that shocked me. The highlights on the guitar were what looks like they just drew the template reverse. They didn't. They actually elongated this even longer and to give it some more dramatic dramatic effect. When you hold the guitar it feels rather small. I'm six foot, so it just feels like the guitar you can see kind of looking at myself in the screen, you can see I'm kind of bunched in already. Not something I thought. I thought it was going to feel bigger or as big as a normal traditional RG shaped body, but I feel like this is small. In fact, I kind of don't like how I kind of feel brought in like this on it. One of the things that would upset one of the die hard followers is the width of the nut. This one has a 43 millimeter nut where the original had a 44.5millimeter nut. When we buy guitars, borrow guitars, or get guitars sent to the channel, sometimes there's a part of me it's like maybe I'm going to like this and maybe I'll keep this one. And in this case, this was one of the few guitars this year that I think this might be my next Ibanez. And I have to tell you, I didn't love it. It was a very nice guitar, but I didn't overall love the way it sounded. But I really just didn't like how it drew my body in when I was playing it. It's not a comfortable position for me. The good news for you guys is if you like it, it's really easy to find deals on them now. This next video is probably one of my favorites of the year. My wife was watching the comments in the podcast and she said, hey A lot of people asking you to do another kit build guitar. And I said, okay, well I've done a couple. And she said, well, what is the best kit build guitar you can buy? And I said, I would imagine it have to be Warmoth. My wife took it upon herself to reach out to Warmoth and ask them if they would supply us with a neck and body. And they did. When the neck and body came in, this video was probably even going to be a two and three part series. To my amazement and shock, I put the entire guitar together with almost no effort in about four hours. And that included painting the headstock and doing some rounding of the frets. These parts came out as good as you could expect. And so I like this video. Plus we thought it'd be funny to brand it Moon Pie. If you guys know the Moon Pie story from this channel, you know why that's really dear to our hearts. As a humorous story. A gentleman came into the shop. I have the greatest guitar ever made. All the guitars here are mediocre. He might have said crap, but I definitely called him mediocre. He said, no guitar is better than a Moon Pie guitar. He's like, maybe one day I'll bring my Moon Pie guitar to you and let you see it. But he always stuck out to us. As this customer that came in, it was like, you know, Moon Pie guitars. Then about two and a half years later, ish. And he's like, you remember me? We're like, yeah. He goes, I brought one of my Moonstone guitars and we all went moonstone. It was Moonstone. We just couldn't remember. We just remember Moon, Moon, Moon Pie guitars. Now the next video, I did Jet guitars. Now, I did two this year. And this is because every time I did an affordable guitar, the comment sections would light up with, you got to check out Jet. So I got two jet guitars, a 301 and a 501. And I gotta tell you two things. The truly unique thing going on here is the necks. The neck just feels like an expensive guitar. Although I can say nice things about a lot of brands, especially in the affordable category. When it comes to the components they're using and the overall fit and finish, especially for value for dollar, Jet just wins in the idea that when you pick it up, if you have played $3,000 guitar next, it just has that lots of hands on time feel to it. Now here's a guitar I truly did not see coming in 2025. It was the new Gretsch Streamliner Jet Cub 1. Now this is a guitar that comes in three colors. And they do make a version with two pickups and they even make a little higher end version that has a carved top. This guitar comes in at $189, which makes it absolutely my favorite guitar. In 2020-25, that's under 200. Why? It's because it sounded and played amazing. Now I'll let you know. I bought this guitar from Guitar Center. That means it wasn't set up or inspected before it got to me. And it still came out of the box. Really, really nice. If this guitar has negatives, it's only 2. 1. In the Gretsch marketing ad copy, it says it's a mahogany body. And although it's a Philippine mahogany body, it's really on the low end. And I just wish they would call it Philippine mahogany. And I know what you're thinking, but Phil, it was only $189. So why you complain about the wood? I'm complaining because when manufacturers make guitars that are affordable and claim things like mahogany but don't explain what type of mahogany it makes the high end company seem like they're taking advantage because they're giving you the thing for a lot more money, when really they're giving you a lot more for a lot more money. Now starting to round out the year, I did one that was a little different for me. So this is the Rabier music man Sterling guitar. Now, this guitar wasn't on my radar, but Rabir had mentioned on a live stream. So I'm hoping we can get a guitar to him, check the quality and help you guys from an unbiased standpoint. And I know Philip McKnight's really good for that. Like he just goes through every single possible detail of the guitar and gives you a great rundown of it. So I work really hard to do a video that is as accurate as possible, giving you the information and to have someone request it and say, hey, take the gloves off, hit us where you can. It was great. So some things that were fun to point out about the guitar. Robert had mentioned that this was going to be an alder body like his USA model look. The body is made in Naito, which is in the mahogany family. It's not as good as Honduran mahogany or African mahogany or sapele, but it's in the mid tiers. So it's a little better than some of the lower grade woods that they still try to call mahogany. You also have a five way switch volume and tone control with a push, push control, unlike Push pull, where you've got to pull on it. This one you just constantly push down. These are more expensive than push pulls. However, they also are known to kind of go bad a little faster because sometimes they stick. But this one, I've been doing the Ikea furniture test to it and it's been working great. The last guitar video isn't really about the guitar. This was the $3,000 court KX700TT guitar. This is a guitar I saw at the cortex factory. And I was aware that they were doing stuff like this. And I know what you're thinking. How many people out there are going to buy a $3,000 cork guitar with true temperament frets? Well, they only made 20 of them. You know, if you were to ask me just a couple years ago, do I think court the brand court would come out with a $3,000 street price guitar, I'd be like, no. But I also wouldn't have predicted $189 Gretsch guitar as well. So it just shows that the market's all over the place and everybody's just trying new things. Now some of you are going to be asking right now, wait a minute, how come it was only guitars? How come no pedals and amps? That's because this year the stuff videos are now on the Philip McKnight channel, but the pedals and amps are now on the know your gear channel. We did that because it helps with editing. It takes me about three days to still make one of these. And that was after we built the new nine camera rig system. Now, keep in mind, between making the scorecards, doing the research on the guitars, verifying that the guitars have the features that the manufacturers are claiming, then filming the videos and then editing it is a long process. And just to tell you, because we're kind of impressed with this, this year, 27 things that we reported to you in our videos different than what the manufacturers had stated. And of those 27 things, almost 80% of the manufacturers either apologized or corrected it. You know, it's. The research sometimes takes longer than anything else. In my world, the filming is the shortest part. The research is the longest, and the editing is the second longest. And to get to spend, you know, an average of two to three days, which is basically four to six days a week, to try to knock out these videos is just too much. And then try to throw in amps and pedals and everything else. So what we do is I still do the other videos, but someone else edits it on the second channel. Okay, thank you guys so much as always for hanging out to the end of the video and as always, know your gear.