Best Selling Used Guitar Pedals In 2025

The Know Your Gear podcast. 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. Hey everyone, welcome to the Know Your Gear podcast, episode 444 on what are we, Friday the, what is it today, the 19th, Friday the 19th. Hope everybody had a fantastic week. My week was interesting and maybe we'll talk about it. I don't know, probably not. So we'll probably talk about guitar stuff. I don't know if any guitar stuff happened to me this week, that was special. But if I can think of anything, we'll talk about it. Jeremy wants to know, hey Phil, what do you think about relic acoustics? The year-end video had me checking out Bromo and they have a really nice, all solid relic one. I actually love the idea of a relic acoustic. I kind of find it strange that relic electrics became a thing, a much bigger thing than relic acoustics. One of my favorite relic acoustics is the Monty Montgomery acoustic. In fact, Ralph just recently bought one off my buddy Pat and let's do that Monty Montgomery. I believe they don't make it anymore. And we'll get some pictures of it here. Go here, there's gotta be a close up of it. It doesn't look very relic in that picture, but it is. Let's see if this one looks a little, doesn't have a really relic look. Let's see if we can actually see Monty's, because that's what theirs is a recreation of and Monty's will look pretty destroyed. There you go. Let's see if we can see this image. And here we go, let's go to the web. Here we are on the web and this is it. Let's see, you can see all of the stress. And so when they make the reissue, when they did, it came all relic like this. It's one of my favorite acoustic guitars. It's a Gi-Gi-Ri, so it's an Alvarez brand guitar. It's handmade in Japan, fantastic instrument, kind of pricey, but you know, what do you expect for handmade in Japan? And I don't know, like I said, I don't know why it's not a thing. I mean, you figure acoustics really lend themselves to it. One theory could be that most acoustics are mass produced import instruments and therefore they're really like, you know, polyurethane doubt. And there's not a whole lot of relicking. And you think of this, when you think of relicking, relicking, I believe one of the reasons. Besides just, you know, it has a cool factor. I mean, some people are like, they don't like relic, but I'm like, then you don't like old guitars. That's fine, right? But if you think old guitars look cool, then relicking is kind of a cool thing. But I think one of the things that have made relicking justify its price points is the fact that it's very hard to replicate inexpensively. And I don't know that to be 100% true, but it is apparent with the fact that so many companies don't do it and the ones that do most of them, it doesn't look that great. There is going to be a few out there. I've seen like SPS, the guitars, Tesser Relict. Obviously now Ola's, Solar Guitars are doing relict. Vintage, I think if they're still around or they're still around to the end of the year as a brand, they have a relic. And of course, you know, you've seen Fender do it in Mexico, but not so much Fender like having it done in their Chinese or Indonesian factories. So you just don't see a whole lot of relict inexpensive guitars. And I think what happens because of that is, when you see a relic instrument, you assume it's expensive. I think that's kind of like intuitive. And so, you know, when I say that, I want you to understand, I don't mean me personally. I just mean like, I remember days at the store, anytime we had a relic guitar, people would just kind of, guitar players would kind of gravitate towards it as a, ooh, what's that? Expensive. Oh, you got a beat up Fender Strat, must be custom shop. You know, so it's either vintage reel or it's a, you know, it's a recreation. So I think a relic acoustic is cool. First of all, I think it would look cool, but also it could, that is where I think I actually could have some sound properties to it, you know, taking away some of the finish, you know, wearing it in a little bit, you know, I mean, why not? They can age the tops, they, they, they, they torrify tops on acoustics now to kind of give them more a longer dried sound, like from years and years and years of dryness. And so, you know, they also replicate with acoustics play wear. So not only wear on the fretboards, but if you haven't seen speaking of Yee Yee acoustics, which is the Monty Montgomery one, Yee Yee does this for sure, but other manufacturer does as well. You know, one of the final processes to making a really nice, beautiful Yee Yee acoustic in Japan is they put them in a room with giant speakers and subwoofers. So the acoustics, I think sit in like the racks where they sit sideways and rows, okay? They don't hang from the walls, they just sit, okay? And rows and they play loud music, like, like orchestra music. I don't think they play death metal to them. Maybe some hip hop, some rap beats. I'm just getting, it's mostly classical. They play loud music to the acoustic guitars. And it's absolutely true. If you want, you can Google or go on YouTube right now and type in Yee Yee or Alvarez Yee Yee or maybe even Alvarez Japan factory tour. It's an old video, it's on YouTube. It's a, you know, gonna be low quality, you know, visually, but the information is still current and good. And in there, you'll go, what? They're playing music to the guitars. They play the music to the guitars for days. They just like loud music to the guitars. And it's so that this spirit of music gets into them. No, it's just kidding. I just made that up to be, be funny. No, it's because the vibrations cause the guitar to vibrate like they would if you're strumming the strings and if anything's gonna crack, like a glue joint's gonna crack or anything's gonna break loose or there's gonna be a problem, it simulates playing them for a long time, but also it's supposed to kind of break in the guitar a little bit. There's a company who sells a vibrator for your acoustic. For those that just wanna be 12 year old children right now and go and giggle, look man, I got nothing to say, I can't stop it. It's basically, yes, it looks like an Amazon vibrator that you stick on your guitar. So I'm gonna type in literally cause I can't remember what it's called, vibrator for acoustic guitar. And I bet you this thing comes up. And I'm not making fun of the product. I'm just searching it cause I couldn't remember what it's called and here we have it came up 10% off. No thanks, it says no thanks, no thanks. 10% off, let's do that. It's the tone right. Not trying to coffee on you guys, I'm sorry. Tone right for guitar, the tone right has the guitar world buzzing, buzzing. You guys are buzzing, we're all buzzing right now. It says this revolutionary play in similar is based on an observation that more that the more an acoustic instrument is played, the faster it reaches that sound potential, the play it in period and being dramatic. Long story short, this thing sticks on your strings right there and I think it's a vibrator, let's take a look. Pretty sure it's vibrator. I think it even has like look, after one week the tone right on the guitar, the voice of my whatever opened up, Bob Benedetto. I mean, come on, Bob Benedetto said it's good. I mean, that's if you guys, that's a pretty badass endorsement. So yeah, tone right applies direct vibration, not indirect vibration like if you kind of buy up one of those vibrating toys on Amazon. You could probably painter's tape one of those to your acoustic too, but this is a family friendly show. It says, anyways, the guitar, look, direct vibration to the guitar, control of frequencies simulate the effects of actual playing, many players report increased volume, dynamic range. Regardless if you believe that or not, here is the deal. Like I said, I've seen manufacturers more than just the year do something like this. Like I said, playing loud music to it, vibrating essentially. So I would imagine reliquing the guitar and then when I say reliquing, not only like aesthetically reliquing, chipping up the guitar finish and stuff, but then doing that, you know, giving it age, torrified wood and then using like a tone right. Why not put a, put 10 tone rights on it? Let's go extra crazy and break in the guitar and give it like a vintage kind of thing. Sure, makes sense. I'd like to see someone like Martin do that. That'd be kind of cool. You know, maybe I think deep down I'm more interested in a relict worn in, you know, road worn. I know that's a trademark by Fender, but road worn Martin than, you know, a road worn Fender. Because one of the things that sucks about getting a real road worn Martin is sometimes they have more problems than you want. So, so yeah, okay. All right, now that we've went off the rails. Damon wants to know, hey Phil, do you use a humidifier to keep your guitars humidity regulated? If so, which humidifier do you prefer? I normally do not, except for now there's just too many guitars here because of the channel. Like, you know, you just can't, there's as many guitars coming in and out throughout the day, week. It's just there's too many guitars. And so just like when we had a music store, we had humidifiers in the music store, because at this point you just can't, you know, there's just too many guitars, too much wood. So now I do. Did I, when I would have just my personal guitars here all the time? No, I did not. What do I use? I use a, I don't know what it is, home medics thing. You can buy them at Costco. Let me show you what it looks like. Last time I showed this, lots of people got upset and told me they don't like this thing. I don't only use it, I have three of them. So I don't, I don't run all three of them, but all right. Actually, you know what? Hold on a second. Yep, I'm right. It says home medics on it. There are probably way better ones, but keep in mind. Humidity in the room right now is 53%. So I like the humidity in the rooms with these many guitars to be at about 50%. 60% is ideal, but I don't shoot for that. I just don't want it under 40%. So once I get about 42%, I kick on humidifiers. And to be honest with you, once I get back to about 50, I don't keep humidifying. I just leave it alone. It usually kind of, it's usually fine. So home medics, humidifier. I don't want the manual. Oh, look at Costco. This is it. Okay. Here it is, right here. Okay, let's do this. Oh, look, dude, is this annoying every time? Live better with 15% off. No. Okay. This is it. This is what I have. Why do I use this? No particular reason. Back in the store, we had these ones that took gallons of water, like five gallons of water. That's not exaggeration, because I used to fill them. I think it was four gallons actually, because I think it was two, two gallon things. And that's cause you would just, the store was like 3,300 square feet. Just that's, you know, that's much space. And I see these stores not at home where it has lots of rooms. There was less in rooms, but you know, you have big, you know, you have bigger rooms. So I would use more. This one, I don't know what made me do this. I decided I just liked the way it looked. So I bought it and I tried it a couple years ago and I like it. So that's my, there you go. That's my endorsement for it. I've had no issues. Some people have told me every time I bring them, just like anything, they go, oh, I had one and it, everything was horrible and my guitar's exploded. So I don't, I don't know what to tell you. So caution, your guitars might all explode if you buy anything that's recommended to you. All right. Let's do this. Let's see. Yeah, it's nice. Okay. Let's go on to, Michael says, so it's not dry in Arizona. No, look, it's very dry here. You gotta understand. I don't believe in humidifying electric guitars. So it's not something I normally would do. I don't own a ton of acoustics. I own, I mean, more than some people, but you know, as, as for what I do, there's probably, I probably own five acoustics, give or take, maybe six, but I don't own a ton of acoustics. Give or take, maybe six, which is a lot, but it's not like, you know, the amount of electric guitars here at any given time. And keep in mind, one of my electrics is like carbon fiber. So, you know, so acoustics are way like what I'm more interested in humidifying, although I don't really humidify my acoustics. I'm very clear about this. I humidify the rooms that all the guitars are in and really when I say humidify them, I'm not keeping the rooms. Like right now it happens to be a 53% humidity. I would really not. And like I said, this isn't advice you guys. I'm just, you asked what I do. I'm telling you what I do. I just put on humidifiers anytime the room starts to break below 40% humidity. Here's why I get fret sprout. You start seeing fret sprout popping on the guitars. It's just really dry. And in the past, I never had a problem. If the room was 38% humidity, and I would never have a problem, but now with this many guitars, I'm noticing, you know, over the years, you're noticing the problem, because like I said, any one time there could be a lot of guitars in this room. This room's not very big. So there's a lot of guitars. They're all sponges, man. They're just sucking up the moisture in the air. So it's a lot of, so if it's not very humid, so that's why I like said, everybody to their own, use what makes sense. I live in one place. The problem with a channel like this, everybody can give you broadspoke advice, but I mean, you know, keep in mind, we all live different places, different climates, different areas, have different conditions, different situations. So kind of, you know, figure out your own situation. I'm just telling you humidifiers I use and why I use them. Okay. Let's go to this. The next subject, let's go into the next subject. We have a subject that's pretty cool. This one, last week, you guys, man, whoo, you guys excited about reverb stats? Like what, what was that about? So we went over some reverb stats, and you guys really liked them. When I say you liked them, you liked them on this channel. The second channel post the pod clips, man, they all rocked. They were, you get the second channel beat the first channel. I'm just, sorry, I just take a second to kind of acknowledge that in my head. That's how it worked. Okay, so the second channel beat the first channel this week. So you guys like the other channel more. I'm not hurt by it. I'm not hurt. I'm getting over it. But overwhelming comments were, hey, why didn't you do the pedals? Why did you just do the amps and the guitars? And I could say, oh, I didn't think the pedals were as interesting or I didn't think you guys, but the truth is, no, the pedal bitches come out, man. I'm just gonna, I told you, maybe I'm spiky today, but I just, I think it's because I knew this was coming up. I knew I was gonna be talking about this. And I feel like every time I've talked about pedals in the past, a bunch of crazy people come out. I don't know what it is about the pedal side of the music industry, but you are all nuts. You're just nuts, the hardcore. I'm talking about the hardcores, which is probably inflaming them right now too. I love you dearly, because you love what I love. I'm a guitar fanatic, I'm a music fanatic, pedal fanatic. I love it. I just don't understand. I get intensity. We're all intense about guitars and amps and everything else. The pedal guys are such something else. Okay, so that being said, with on, after taking the advice of council, I've decided to ignore it and still do. Let's look at reverb's artist pedals and pedals. We'll look at all the pedals. Let's look at artists. These are the best selling artist pedals in 2025. These are the best sellers. And why are they artist pedals when the first one, is that an artist pedal? Are these artist pedals? Best sellers, artist pedals. Huh, okay. For the sake of disclosure, I have not pre-looked at this list, digested any of it just like last week, because I kind of wanted to have a moment with you guys. Like I call it water cooler talk. Let's take a look. I'll react to it. The list above shows the top 20 selling pedals that newly entered the best sellers list this year. At least seven of the, if not eight of the 20, are artist signature releases. Okay, so these are not all artist pedals. They're just a most of them, it says. Okay, I just want to make sure. Because I was confused because the first one is the MXR, MX100, Rockwin X100. And that didn't think it was an artist pedal. Okay, so the number one selling was the MXR, MX100, Rockwin. I, interesting enough, see, this is where I already piss everyone off. I did not try the MXR, Rockwin X100. Let me tell you why. I went to buy one. Absolutely, it had every intention. Oh my God, this is funny. There is something on my screen, which thought, I thought, oh, what's on my face? So I had to wipe it off the screen. Okay, so anyways, that's kind of funny. MXR, Rockwin 100, if you love it, I'm glad you love it. I'm happy you love it. Let me tell you my experience of it. I went online, as I do. I went to YouTube and I watched a video of somebody using it and I went, man, this needs to be in my life. And then I go, I need, okay, I need to watch another video. I watch another video. This needs to be in my life. I'm definitely buying this. I'm about to buy it. I go on Sweetwater, they're out of stock. I go look somewhere else. Okay, there's a couple on Reverb. Okay, I'm gonna buy this. Let's watch one more video. And then I get that weird feeling. The third video in, I was like, man, this thing is perfect. You know, I don't know about you guys. I get a little nervous. Like everybody always says, like, you know, shillin' for YouTube. We all get it. I get it, everybody gets it. However, there's nothing wrong with somebody giving somebody something a shining review. Like it's amazing. Hey, look, we have a honeymoon mode. Maybe they just really like it. I like stuff. I find the most people actually kind of accuse me of ever being the least truthful is when I'm probably the most passionate about the thing I'm talking about because I'm probably acting like a salesman more because I'm so excited about it, right? I always liken the story to sometimes a gear review is gonna sound like I just started dating this girl this week and she's amazing. And let me tell you why she farts rainbows and she's perfect. And then you're like, this is disgusting. This guy's delusional. And instead of thinking I'm delusional in a review, you guys go always shilling. But really it's just I'm being delusional because I'm still in the love mode, which is why I try to wait past love mode to give the review to put it out. But that all being said, sometimes I'm a little nervous when I see a bunch of channels all say it's amazing. Best pedal ever. So I went deep into the YouTubes and I found some guys, you know, some average Joe's, they got a channel. Maybe they got 300 subs. Maybe they got 30. They got definitely 50 views. They're on the corner of their bed in the bedroom. You know who I'm talking about. They don't got the fancy wall of crap yet because that happens later. You start fixing up your room. Everybody who starts making YouTubes in like a basic room and then over time they start cleaning it and situating it. Everybody thinks it's cause like something else. It's cause everybody's just an ass about things. So over time you just start trying to make your room more presentable so that people less comments about your room, I guess. I don't know. Back to the pedal. Every single video I watched of an independent, someone who bought it, did not like it and it sounded like it did not sound great. So I did not buy it. Does that mean the pedal did not sound great? No, no, no, no, no, no. But we're reviewing the top list and I'm explaining why I didn't buy one. That's why I didn't buy one. Somebody mentioned it is an artist pedal. I think it's because it's based off the original Rockman which is an artist thing, right? But I just didn't know if the original, this reissue was still the thing. So if it is an artist thing, I apologize. Let's go back. Number two, MXR MB301 bass synth. Strange, right? But again, this is all new launches. I'll tell you the first shock I have. Let's just get to the shock and all. The fact that JHS not a Dumbbell wasn't number one is crazy to me. That to me, I think is number one. They sold a gazillion of those things, right? Way more than, you know, and they're really good. So really interesting to see. I would say, my gut would say, hey, what was the hottest pedal this year? What was the, what to me was the hottest, craziest pedal? I'll tell you. Do you know why I think it's the JHS not a Dumbbell? Because I tried to buy one and I couldn't, I couldn't get my hands on one. A couple of you reached out, thank you for this and said, hey, Phil, I got one, I can send you. But you already put it together and stuff and that's fine. And I kind of wanted to put it together too and have the full experience, you know, put some goop on it. And reason is, is because I wasn't, I'll be honest, the not a Dumbbell for $100 by JHS, I think is a great idea. The building it like Lego style, seemed cheesy and it wasn't really my thing. So I was hoping maybe I'd, you know, get one and then do it and then have that moment like, oh, I get this, I did something for this afternoon and it was nice and I showed it to, you know, my kids or something. So that's what I was hoping to have that experience. So I just get the pedal. I had no doubts that it sounded good because I don't think they would make a crappy pedal, but I hear, which is why I try to buy one, I hear it's the most amazing Dumbbell pedal ever in history. I watched a video, somebody actually comparing all these Dumbbells and I think they had the original and they were like, the not a Dumbbell was the best one. So shocking, shocking it was number one because let me tell you, couldn't find one for myself. So I was too late to the game. Then we have, oh wow, number seven, Tone King Imperial Preamp, absolutely freaking Lutely is that thing amazing. I have the Tone King Imperial Preamp. It is fantastic. If you guys want to, here, do I can I show you my, hold on a second, how does this work? Let's go here. All right, let's go switch to camera. Look at this, there you go. Look at the Tone King, there's my Burnley pedal but not plugged in. Look at the Tone King Imperial pedal. I keep this thing plugged in at all times. This is my absolute favorite thing. Had all of my situations over the years. I have my Kemper, which I love still, but I have all these things where I keep into this rig, what I'm in here, right? This is what I love. It's hooked up all the time. Look, it's literally hooked up right now. I got my guitar right here. I'll give you a little taste. There's my, turn my mute off, you'll hear the guitar now. You're still hearing my mic. I'll probably hit the mic mute for a second so you can hear it. Here's the clean channel. I knew we talked about this before, but let's cover it cause I'm absolutely in love with this and it's been a few weeks, not quite months, but weeks. So still in love. I mean, we're talking daily, right? Everything's good, still in love with it. Okay, here's the clean and I'll show you the overdrive. Here's the clean. Play. That reverb, I wanted to wait for it to end. That reverb is just awesome. Overdrive, hit the overdrive. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Play. Now, this was last time I talked about this, somebody asked, well, what are you plugging into? Aren't you plugging an amp? This is not plugged in an amp. What's happening here is I'm plugged into the Burnley pedal, which I don't have on, into the, I actually, no, the Burnley's not on. It's not even plugged in. I'm just directing the tone king pedal. So I'm in the tone king pedal. The tone king pedal is not hooked up to any amp fires. It has an XLR out that's plugged into the Rodecaster podcast interface that I have here that you're hearing me on. And that's going into my speakers and to you guys. That's it. It's all tube. Sounds amazing. It's expensive, but it's amazing. In fact, it's one of the products that, that I would actually say that when you look at it and you see the price, you go, ooh, and then you get it and then you look at the price after you bought it and you go, okay, it's a lot worth it. And there's a game you can play. There's a game I played with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago. We were talking about gear and expensive and what I said, you know, what you do with gear when you think it's expensive as you go the other way too. This is something a little, little fun fact or trick for you guys for a YouTube reviewer. I'll call myself semi professional film ignite YouTuber reviewer. You know, sometimes when you're trying to give an honest assessment of something, but also not sound like, you know, like you're shilling, you try to go, okay, look, this is, you know, $700, not the Imperial, but let's say a product, $700 and you go, okay, that's a lot. And then you say that and you realize that's not really a fair statement to say that without any reference of, okay, well, what isn't a lot. And so here's a good example. This Imperial pedal, let's talk about it for a second. It's $600, $590. You could literally buy a decent two-bamp, small two-bamp for $600. Okay. You could buy two Katanas for $600. So look, it being a pedal, even if it's a preamp, it's a proud and it has some preamp tubes, $600 a lot of money. But what is the, so if you think $600 ridiculous, I have no qualms or issues with that, right? My question would be, well then let's go the other way. Where does it get silly the other way? Okay, so it was $500, like, no, it's still kind of pricey, preamp pedal, $400. Yeah, $399 for, you know, the Tonking Imperial preamp, two channels with reverb, IRs and tremolo. Good, good, right? $300? Yeah, $300, really good deal, $200. That'd be stupid, right? Like $200, like, you know, for all of that, $100, that's like giving it away. So like I said, you kind of want to go the both ways and then kind of figure out, like, then if, if $700, or $600 sounds unrealistic and $200 is, it sounds unrealistic, where's the sweet spot? And you go, for me, I came to the conclusion, it was like $450 to $500 was like, okay, that's probably where, if it was, you know, you know, a good price. Keep in mind though, you have to have a use for this. So I have a use for it because like this, I could, if I had to demonstrate a guitar right now to you guys, I can literally do it and have great sound and not have to worry about mic placement, anything. So all right, we're off, we're off course. Let's go back to this list. Back to this list. We have, oh, the Boss RT2 Rotary, Rodeo, Rotary Ensemble, I bought that this year. So I'm part of that list. I, I'll give you that. The Strymon EC1 Single Head Tape Echo. You know, that's one on my list of things I want. The Keely Manus Overdrive, I have not tried it. The Wayhuge Deep State Joe Bonamassa have not tried that. You know, it's funny as part, I can tell you, I must not be buying pedals anymore because I don't have any of these. I didn't buy the Whamper Cryptic Fuzz. I didn't buy, I didn't buy the Alex Lifeson. I didn't buy the Randy Rhodes. I didn't want the Jail Guitar's, Jail Guitar Doors Overdrive. I didn't buy, I bought, so this year I bought two. I got the, the Tonking Imperial and I got the Boss RT2 and I tried to buy the Nata Dumble and I tried to buy the MXR100. What's shocking about this list is to see a bass synth in the top. That is pretty crazy. It almost makes me wonder if, if, because this, because again, this is just on reverb, so we're not talking about Sweetwater Guitar Center or the rest of the world eBay, mom pop stores. It makes me wonder if there was an online seller that just was, you know, killing with these. One thing that's not in here, and I've looked at some of the information is, you know, if some of these were on discount, you know, if they blew them out, that would help too, you know, that helped their sales. Let's go to best used pedals, best selling used pedals. This is where I think I'm curious. You guys are curious. I don't know if I'm blocking stuff. Let's go here. Let me, let me move myself. I'll move up here. Look at me. I'm up here. I'm up here. Everybody know. Okay. And then I was cheesing. I apologize in advance. Let's take a look at this list. All right. So these are the top selling best pedals used. Now use is important because like we talk about guitar, churn becomes a factor in this. In other words, because we're not looking at individual serial numbered items when they sell, you could sell the same product on reverb over a course of a year multiple times. So somebody could buy a, a like line ticket, check, stop, get it, you know, new sell it used. Somebody buys it used counts as one sell. They sell it used. So it counts as two sales sell to somebody else. They sell it again, three sales. So I mean, it's yeah, when you hold four fingers, when it's like this, that's how you know I'm AI because if AI was supposed to hold three fingers and I held up four, anyways, three three sales. So that's what I'm saying. So we factor churn in this one is what you would do. So number one, line six, HX Stomp. I would imagine one of the driving forces that is, I think it's become the go to for everyone that needs a mobile rig. I think if you want a mobile rig in 2025 and now 2026 coming, I would absolutely 100% tell you if you need a mobile rig, the HX Stomp is definitely the top two. Okay. So top two. Okay. No one is not to say top one. I'm going to give you the other one. The, the tone X is two. Okay. So between the tone X lens, line, line six stop. Here's why. First of all, line six HX Stomp has more features than tone X. So it has more features. It's more money, more features. The other thing is, in my personal opinion, a little easier interface in the line six. Cause, cause a tonics, I know you hook it in your computer and stuff, but HX Stomp, you can actually use the screen and kind of menu drive through it, which is pretty good. Things that you need to realize that I don't have here. Oh, right here is if you want to be a mobile, truly mobile, one of the things that makes the HX Stomp fantastic and the tonics, they give you powered by a battery. So it gets a little dicey with a Kemper player. It gets really dicey. Uh, where I use a battery to power my, my Kemper player, but it is, I'm not this one. You have to use a more, more powerful battery. Um, uh, but anyways, so you can battery power these things. One of the things about being mobile is you can take up battery power like this. This will power, you know, 10 pedals for, you know, eight to 10 hours straight. So that's fantastic. This is the Sanyo, but there's tons of them. This one, I think of this. This one is almost 10 years old. That's how long I've had this and it's still working. Um, it said when I bought it, it had like 2000 charges and then it would be tossed. So I obviously haven't recharged it 2000 times, but I do have the new Dodario, uh, you know, battery powered unit and I'm using that too, but I'm just saying, so truly mobile man, get, you know, not even wall warts, not even plugged in the wall, you know, just, you can literally go throw down a rig, plug your guitar into it, give me a line out to something, PA, an amp, whatever. So I can see the HX stomp and Tonics. What's already scary is the Tonics isn't in this list when the HX stomp is cause it's obviously more money, but, uh, MXR M169 carbon copy analog delay. I absolutely love this delay. It's one of my top 10 favorite delay pedals. So to see it being sold used, uh, average price, $89 is a fantastic price. Uh, uh, you know, same thing with the HX stomp at 490. This is where it gets a little tricky with the 490 line six, raise the price to 599, then the 649, then they brought it down. It's the, the, the companies that are using their products, like the stock market is driving me nuts. Like, Hey, our products now it's 599. Cool. Now it's 649 cause of reasons. Oh, now it's back to 549. So, uh, 490, uh, the boss blues driver, $78. I mean, that's an iconic one forever. So it's interesting. The Strymon Iridium, that's nice. That's a great pedal as well. Do I have that one out? Nope. I don't have that one out. I have my, uh, dig and I have the sunset out from Strymon, uh, boss DS one, cause it's never going away. The boss DS one is forever. It will be forever and ever and ever. Uh, it's $46. This is an average price. That's interesting. 46 bucks. That's good. 50 bucks. You know, it's funny as I think I told you guys story, story when I was a boss dealer, um, you had to buy in so many pedals to get the price rate down. And one of the tricks that you do is you could buy bricks of 10. So you'd buy like 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 DS ones because they would count as, as, uh, units. So if you're buying was like a hundred units to get the price down a step or another 50 units to get the price down again, you could throw on a case, essentially two, three cases of the boss DS ones. And, um, what was great about that was, uh, you could, uh, then blow them out. And we would blow them out for $36 brand new. So 46 bucks used now. Huh. Uh, Keely compressor plus, that's a great pedal as well. The boss, TU three, I bought one of those this year, but I bought it new for 79 bucks when they were blowing them out the end of the year. So 64 bucks used on average. So explains these, some of these things that we're seeing here, explain why some of the end of the year black Friday pricing for new pedals was so low. So why would boss drop its, uh, typical new price of $109 to $79? Probably because there was too much competition in the use market. So they wanted to move them. It's not necessarily like bosses going, Oh, we need to screw the use market. They're just like, we're not selling new product and we need to move this through. So striving big sky reverb for a $354 on average. That's really good too. Dunlop. Yeah. I had the WAP pedal. I mean, come on, cry baby. Strymon timeline delay. Let's look at the second page. Boss equalizer pedal. A lot of these are just tried and true pedals you expect. I would expect, I would bet 2026, 2027, 2028. Just like the last couple of years probably looks like a lot of these pedals cause these are the diehards, right? A boss G seven. I highly recommend this. I would say this is, if you only have one boss pedal, this is the boss pedal to have. Um, Tube Screamer. Look, some people love the Tube Screamer. Some people hate the Tube Screamer. I can tell you as a content creator, you have to have a Tube Screamer because at some point you're demoing something that's just designed to have a Tube Screamer with it, a Marshall, a PV 6505 or, you know, you're like, oh, I need a Tube Screamer to use with it. You know, cause people get upset if you don't demonstrate it with the Tube Screamer. Uh, boss noise suppressor. It's a try and true noise suppressor. The CS3 compressor sustainer, one of my favorite compressor pedals. The Digitech drop. I love the Digitech drop. Uh, I got one, but I got rid of it for the new boss, uh, uh, whatever it's called. The blue one that I bought and I showed you guys a couple podcasts ago. I forget the, you know what? I'll look up today. Hold on a second. All right. Um, boss drop. What is it? It's not a harmonizer pedal, right? Yeah. It's the XS1 poly shifter. So I bought a poly shifter and a drop pedal and then I decided I like the poly shifter. Uh, some people asked me about that. I gotta tell you, if you have a drop pedal, you know, do you need to sell it and get the drop, uh, shifter? Uh, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that, but, uh, but if I can pick one, I'm picking the boss and there's some reasons to it. There's some things I don't like about the boss. I explained when I showed it in the video. It's on the second channel. If you want to watch it on the Know Your Your channel that I have a video drop versus poly shifter, if you watch that video, all you got to know is at the end, I end up keeping the poly shifter. So whatever I'm talking about, you'll understand my logic of what I didn't like about the poly shifter, but why it ultimately won. Okay. Uh, then we have the SD one overdrive. I know and draw. I sorry. Proco rat two. Oh, the EQD plume, small signal shredder. Never even heard of this. Is that earthquake or devices? That's probably why I don't think I've ever played a single earthquake or devices pedal. And the only exception I would say is, uh, the chase bliss and earthquake or devices. And I, I'm just saying this apologizing upfront. I might have played one of their pedals once either one or both because I received a section of the largest guitar pedal board in the world. Um, when sweet water and, um, who was that was serious, uh, sweet water and Rob Scallon did the biggest guitar pedal board in the world. And they sent me a section of it. They sent certain channels, sections of it. And I think I recall one or after not both those pedals being on it, but that was my only experience with their pedals. So I'm just telling you, I've never experienced your pedals and sometimes people, like some of my friends are like, Oh, you should definitely. And some of my friends tell me I'm not missing anything. I don't, I don't know. I just, you know what it is. I don't come across them in the wild. Okay. That's basically what it is from some stuff. Almost every pedal I like, it's cause I found it one day. The universal audio dream 65. This is a pedal that I wanted really, really bad. I've talked about this for the last two years. This is a pedal I kept trying to pull the trigger on. And then to be honest, I, at the last minute, I, I, I, I, I decided even though I loved it, I tried it, loved it. I decided to get the Kemper player cause it just had more going on. And now I'm really happy with the tone king imperial, but I would say it, uh, the tone king apparel is amazing. I would say the universal audio dream is not as good in my opinion to me for my new uses and what I like, but it's not as expensive. So factor that in. Okay. Let's, before we go any further, let's jump screens back to you guys and see what you guys are talking about. Uh, which ones you guys like? Um, okay, let's see. Um, he says, uh, Luma, Luma says, Luma tour says, Hey, I'm a big fan of the chase bliss, but they are heavy, heavy, uh, list. Okay. All right. So they're heavy. Um, what else? Where else are you guys going to say? Oh, so a lot of people are suggesting the plumes to try it at some point. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. All right. Okay. That's good. See suggestions like they're now, um, some people are saying they never heard of the plumes. Yeah. That makes sense. Um, Oh, Michael said, okay, you did a video on the spinker cranker. So yeah, that would be a few years ago. And so that would be chase bliss, right? So that's probably where I remember the chase bliss. So let's speaker cranker. The, uh, I'll tell you a funny story since we're, we're chase bliss. Uh, why? Look at that. Yep. That's a chase bliss speaker. No, earthquake or devices. My apologies. So it was earthquake or devices. You're right now you're like, well, if you did a video fill, how, how do you not know? Well, let me tell you a funny story. So a few weeks ago I was buying guitars for the channel as I do for videos and I, um, I'm giving this away right now, but I just thought that would be funny. I, uh, I decided to buy the new or the newest version of the Joe Saturani guitar. And the reason being, not because I want to do a video of the Joe Saturani guitar, I thought, you know what? A lot of guitar players I like are really using sustainiacs. So sustainiacs have come up on the channel a lot in the podcast. Let's get another sustainiac. Let's do a deep dive. I've never done a official geeky stuff of a sustainiac. Let's get into it. Let's do it. So I, I find a guitar, I gotta tell you, it also was an opportunity to, um, work with axe palace. So I guys, uh, axe palace, uh, had one. So I just bought one off their website. Axe palace shipped it in a very fast meeting, uh, time got the guitar. I'm playing it. I'm in love with it. Not the guitar, just the sustainiac. Um, the guitar, you'll have to find out what I think of that in the video, but the sustainiac, I'm like, I'm loving this. Why don't I own a sustainiac? What is wrong with me? I need a sustainiac in my life. And so I go, I need to learn more about the sustainiac. So I type into Google, um, sustainiac. And I go, how does it work? And guess what? Uh, what does Google say? Google says that the most watched video about the sustainiac is this guy named Phillip McKnight. So four years ago on March 28th of 2021, I did a sustainiac video and then I watched my video and I went, Oh, this is really good information. And I'm like, that's so funny. Uh, so a reason I'm telling you that is no, I'm not suffering from any memory loss. I just think what's happens is people don't realize after a while you do so much content, you know, the ever ending grinding engine of YouTube that's just constantly makes you do content every week. It's after a while, you got to understand what happens to everyone, everyone is, is that you, you spend so what people think is you're, you're spending so much time on the product you are, but you're spending so much time editing and doing all the stuff. And then when you get it done, as soon as it launches, you got to understand, as soon as your video goes live, it's done. The internet doesn't care anymore to YouTube doesn't care anymore. You got to make another one. So you go to the next one. So it's kind of funny. So yeah, so, so that's good, good to know that I have tried a chaseless. I did like that pedal. Um, and what's funny is I, I, I'd have to almost watch that video and get to find out what I really, really think, but I remember liking it. I can remember what I don't like in that funny. I definitely remember when I don't like something. Uh, I just have trouble when it's, in fact, to be honest, I have a super love it. I've kind of remembered if I like it, I could, I couldn't tell you. I'm five months later. If I would have thought of it. And if I really didn't like it, I could definitely tell you what I want for, for years, probably. Um, so, uh, okay. And then they have a broken down by brands. Um, what is this? Why? Oh, okay. They're talking about pedal brands. Hey, let's, uh, let's finish this up. So now this section is talking about the best selling pedal brands in 2025 versus 2015. So what is a decade done for us? Well, number one's boss and it used to be boss. Number two, electro harmonics. Number two, 10 years ago, electro harmonics. Number three, MXR used to be TC electronics. You know what's great about hearing this. Okay. Let me just tell you a little bit of this. So TC electronics drops the spot. This is probably due to two things. One, they haven't been producing a lot of new products and 10 years ago, 2015, you know, that's when the tone print stuff was kicking right after that. You know, I don't remember if it was 2015, but it was definitely within the few years after that, you know, TC was definitely pumping a lot of stuff. But it's funny to me. I kind of feel as a, as a guitar fanatic, TC has not been the TC I love since Beringer bought them. It's not that they make junk. I'm not saying, oh, the old TC was great and the TC is junk. I just have lost excitement. It has nothing to do with Beringer. I know it makes sense because I have, you know, opinions of Beringer too, but it's not that it's just, I just feel like nothing has happened except for Beringer comes out with more stuff. That's kind of how I feel. If I'm missing something, I apologize, but it's just not, you know, nothing, nothing I've seen. Okay. Let's go back. Uh, so MXR goes to three. TC loses the spot. TC goes to four and MXR had gained a spot. Makes sense. Number five, JHS, JHS, which weird to me to think of is that JHS was in the top five 10 years ago. I guess if you ask me 10 years ago about JHS, I don't want to say like, didn't they just start? I know they've been out for a lot longer than that, but I just think of them as like a really new, new product. Um, when I think of 10 years ago, uh, pedal companies, you know, obviously I think of the mainstays boss, electronics, uh, MXR, TC, um, Keighley, full tone, Digitech, DOD. Um, but I don't really, and Whampler, but cause I kind of think of Whampler earlier on way huge, which is, you know, off-shoot, you know, basically MXR at that point, but I think of JHS, I think of, um, some of the other ones like that chase bliss, like, uh, uh, earthquake or, uh, you know, audio, you know, all that stuff, I think of that as later, but maybe I'm, you know, I'm obviously remembering it wrong. Number six is Stribin. Uh, and then it was Digitech. And again, Digitech, well, think of this, since this Digitech is closed and then since come back, so that makes sense that they lose us, lose the list all together, um, cause they were number six, they're not even on the top 10 now, and that makes sense, but they're coming back. They're coming back. You guys don't know. Cortech basically owns Digitech. So that's, uh, if you haven't figured out, Cortech, uh, does everything. So, which is why I wanted to learn all I could about Cortech, since most likely everything we're buying will probably be Cortech in 10 years. I'm being a little sarcastic, but not a lot sarcastic. Okay. Uh, number seven, earthquake or devices and now earthquake or devices maintain number seven. That's awesome to hear because like I said, I know, I don't think of earthquake or devices or, or, uh, death by audio. I don't know why I associate those two brands for some reason. I always associate those two brands. I confuse them. So, uh, I don't know why. Uh, number eight is, uh, war with sorry, war with Walrus Walrus with a hard hell, come on, man, Walrus audio was striving. Interesting. It's interesting. Uh, and striving has moved up. So, you know, striving was a slow burn for me. Um, because the fact that I didn't want to buy striving for a long time because, um, I was traumatized by striving since we're telling stories. What, what, why was I traumatized by striving? I cannot remember what the old brand is. What was striving before? What it was, it was, uh, watch what? Hold on a seconds. All right. Let's try that. And if you need. Um, damage control. All right. So let's talk about damage control. All right. How, why, it's striving, by the way, don't take this personal. I love you guys. Now I have, I have your pedals. Look, I have so many striving pedals. Now look, already here hooked up plugged in lots of striving, lots of striving. Striving, look, lots of striving love. Okay. By all my striving pedals. Okay. However, striving pedals before was company called damage control. I don't know how connected that is. I don't know the history of it. I'm not, I don't even know if it was just ownership. I don't know what it was, but I just know that damage control pedals, um, was striving and why is that traumatic to me? Well, when I had a store, okay. And, uh, I became a PV dealer, PV, I guess was the distributor of damage control and PV told me that I could not have PV unless I bought damage control. And damage control were giant pedals. They were huge and they had two tubes. They were huge. They look, all of them look like different colors, but they all look like basically the line six kidney bean size. Like they're huge. And this thing is one 19 years. They were all at that thing with us back then. We're talking 2000, whatever, 10, 2010, 15, years ago, right? 15 years ago, they were like 350 bucks then, which was insane. And I bought them all. I couldn't sell one to anyone for anything. I couldn't sell them for cost. I couldn't sell them for less than cost. I couldn't include them with a guitar like, Hey man, instead of a discount guitar, how would I give you this $300 pedal? Nah, I'd rather take my 50. I had a guy take a $50 discount instead of the pedal. I was like, Okay. So then what happened was Strymon pops and I'm like, what's Strymon? And then my friend who's obviously into worship music and plays in a worship band is like, Strymon is the greatest thing ever, man. You need a Strymon. And I'm like, Okay. And I look and then I'm like, I go, I talk to a friend as I do in this industry and I go, Hey, have you heard anything about Strymon? And they go, Oh yes, the guys from damage control have turned into Strymon. And I'm like, Oh no, no, no, no, I fell for that once. No, no, lost thousands of dollars. No more, no, no, right. I know no, no more, means no more, but I just like the joke. Okay. So, um, uh, okay. No, no, so anyways, what am I trying to say? So it took me a while to finally try Strymon. And then I tried to Strymon and I was like, Oh yeah, this is not damage control. And by the way, the damage control pedals were good. I, I plugged into them. I liked them. I just couldn't get anybody else to buy one. So, uh, Moto plus says repackaging save the company. Absolutely. There's no way, no way damage control survives. No way, no way. Aesthetically, they look horrible. Sound wise, I thought a lot of them sounded good. They just weren't there. Right. So, uh, okay. So, uh, I don't know why. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just had a traumatic moment with you guys when it was reliving that, reliving that. Okay. So back to, back to Strymon. Uh, okay. So Strymon six, then earthquake or devices, then while we talk about that. Keely, Keely's number nine. Uh, where was Keely before has Keely, Keely. This is so weird to me. This is why I don't understand the pedal market. So I think Keely, I think Keely, I think Keely's, you know, okay, I would put Keely. Okay. Screw this market. I put Keely above TC electronics in a second. I put Keely above GHS, JHS. Look, when it comes to JHS, when it comes to Josh Scott, is he, is he smart? Absolutely. Is he great at marketing and building stuff? Sure. Is he the dominant force of probably pedal influencerism? Sure. Pedals. Sure. Great. Everything's great. Keely, I think of Keely as being higher. I bet you Josh Scott would agree with that, that Keely is higher up in stature. But what's crazy is I don't know what best pedal brands is. Is this sales? Because I would imagine Keely sales more too. So it's kind of weird. So just my thoughts. I'm just saying anyways. Number 10 with Digitech used to be Ivan is. Yeah, I would imagine Ivan is can only sell so many tube screamers. And then, you know, it's everything chips out. You, you know, you can get caught. You know, they say, um, uh, what is it? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Yeah. But imitation also puts you out of business. So I think Ivan is has been copied so much on the pedal front that, you know, there's so many versions of a tube screamer and really Ivan has never really had anything really bigger than that. All its other pedals were, uh, accoutrements. In other words, they did okay, you know, as a, you know, you go in and you go, maybe I'll get another Ivan is pedal because I have this one, but ultimately kind of stick with the tube screamers. Uh, number 11 Dunlop used to be line six. I see that number 12 is line six. I don't even think a line six is a pedal company. I don't even know why I don't even know. I think of the HX one. I love the HX. I guess the, the Helix HX stomp, but I think it's the modeller, but I guess it's a pedal, but then isn't a model or peddler. You see how wacky this is? I bet you, I bet you right now, somebody's screaming at a screen at me. Cause that's how the pedal guys get. They get really intense going. Phil, you don't understand the difference between a modeler and a pedal. It's a box that does a sound on the floor. Why isn't a model or a pedal? Isn't, isn't, uh, an axe effects like a big pedal, isn't the Helix stadium? Isn't that just, isn't that just a big pedal? Like, so I think of the HX HX stomp. It's a pedal. It's just a big pedal. I don't. So why is the HX stomp a pedal, but yet the other bigger effects, pedal isn't a pedal that's a modeler. I don't really understand some of the logic here, but that being said, I don't really consider line six, uh, a pedal company for the most part, cause they only have a few pedals, but maybe they sell in those pedals really. What, as you know, HX ones, probably one of my favorite pedals. So maybe that's the point. Uh, they replaced don't, Dunlop. Ivan is goes to 13 exotic. I'm a huge exotic fan, of course, but exotic. It's got a couple of things that I just love. A couple of pedals I love. Whamper is number 14. Keely used to be number 14. Well, that makes sense that Kaley, Kaley moved up cause Kaley should've never been 14. Keely should've been way higher. So, uh, universal audio. Okay. I can see, I would say UA used to be 15, R is 15 and it used to be Catlin bread. Catlin bread is another one. See, this is another brand that like throws me off. It's Catlin brand, earthquake or devices, chaseless. No, nothing wrong. I, I like, you know, I like, I like. pedals, man. It's not that hard. Um, but I could, um, for some reason I get confused with the brandings. And I don't know why that is. Um, anyways, so Catlin bread is now 15. No, it used to be 15. Now they're 17. So they lost some, some, some there. Whamper's come up. That makes sense. He's producing a lot of different products. Behringer's 18. More used to be 18. So more is no longer on this list. Interesting. So that would be more as when 2015 is what I would say the big cheap pedals hit the market, right? I think we're taking too long on this list. I would definitely say the big pedals, the big cheap pedals hit. In other words, like all of a sudden you could get $99, $69, $25 pedals. Like crazy. Uh, Fender and number nine is now 25. I would again, shocked to see that Fender is now on the list. Um, they have some good pedals. I've reviewed some of them. I really like them, but I would think they would have. Falled back, not gained up, but that's okay. Jo-Yo used to be Jo-Yo's another pedal. Same thing. Jo-Yo, look at this. This is, to me, is this more and Jo-Yo being on the list in 2015, but not in 2025. I think the main reason, even though I think more and Jo-Yo make fantastic more, more, that's how you say it, more. Um, um, more is, by the way, if you don't know, it's really an interesting, fun fact. More is Chinese for magical ear. Anyways, Jo-Yo, uh, I really like Jo-Yo. I like Jo-Yo too, but Jo-Yo and more, I think we're the, when they popped in 2015, around that time, when I was 14, 13, they were the king of like, how, oh, how could they do this? So cheap. Now everybody has something so cheap. It just, it doesn't matter. Exotic, uh, is now number 20. So they were 13. Exotics fell back. Okay. And then ZVEX, dude, ZVEX, that makes total sense that they were hot thing in 2015. Uh, again, this is how I piss off everybody. So to say it, I love ZVEX. I have a ZVEX pedal. ZVEX was definitely like one of the first boutique pedals I ever remember getting or seeing like hand painted like, whoa, what is this? It's a boutique pedal. What's a boutique pedal? Um, why I'm going to piss everybody off is like, I couldn't tell you if ZVEX is still in business. I assume they are. And I'm sure they're doing great. I'm sure like they're hot thing, but as I'm a fan of their product, but I haven't actually bought one in a decade. So, or seen them. Uh, yeah, ZVEX has fell off hard. Yeah. I just don't see them. In fact, I was looking at pedals all black Friday, not only to show you gear of the week, but also to look at stuff for me. And I bought a bunch of pedals, but I didn't see a ZVEX anywhere I looked. So again, if you told me they're not around, I'd be like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And if you told me they're doing great, I'd be like, well, that makes sense too. Cause I don't, I'm not up to date with the pedal market daily. So that's my, my thing. Uh, so interesting. Uh, not exactly, not exactly what I would picture. I would think I saw. So, so, you know, pedals, companies are doing great. I didn't think some of them. I thought, okay, I didn't really see it coming. So it's fun. I'm sure I'll get blasted into the universe for talking about this because they, like, said they get mad every time you talk about them. And you don't, they're really intense dudes. Okay. Let's, let's do this. Let's see what you guys want to talk about. And then we'll go to the next subject. Um, let's look at, um, some questions. We'll kind of change it up a little bit. Uh, this one was a grab from Amanda says, um, uh, says it, I'm not going to give that one. It's an advice. It's, it's not something I specialize in. So I'm not going to talk about it. Um, uh, let's see. Okay. All right. Here's a guitar question. Uh, Phil, how are, how different are PRS semi hollow bodies from something like a Gibson semi held, they're not even the same. They're totally different construction. Uh, yesterday, five versus PS hollow body. So first of all, totally different construction in the concept. Okay. So we're talking about PRS core hollow bodies, not the SES. Unless you're talking about the brand new SE that just came out this year. Otherwise we're not comparing SES. PRS SE hollow bodies, they would be constructed exactly like how Ibanez or Washburn or Epiphone or Gibson or anybody who's doing a laminate, uh, constructed, uh, instrument is being made. A PRS hollow body is a carved top and back. And what that means is they take a solid piece of wood and they carve out the top like a bowl, right? So it's like carved out and then they take another solid piece of wood and they carve that out like a bowl. And then they, they take another solid piece of wood and they carve out the center of it and then they glue it all together and it's a, and that's why it's more expensive. First of all, it's a lot lighter. Um, callings does that. I think Eastman, uh, does that as well. There are a few brands who do that as well. Do a full hollow body carved top and back. Um, is there a superior already to that? I couldn't tell you for sure. I couldn't say like, Oh, the tone wise is superior or wow. I don't think like that in that regard. Here's a PRS hollow body. This is a carved top and back instrument. And then this is the new SE that's also now new carved back and top, a top and back. Um, for 2025, uh, so that they're just differently constructed. So, uh, so the answer is there are very different in that construction process. The process is done. Um, when we talk about bent top and back guitars, uh, kind of like I'm now pointing at this Hagstrom body, which is constructed like a Gibson used to do five. Or, you know, an Ibanez or whatever, uh, they take, they take sheets of, of essentially like maple thinking usually woods, but a lot of times it can be maple. They glue them together like plywood and they essentially bend them. They wet them and bend them, sometimes steam them to different ways of bending them, constructing them. I'm not, obviously I've never built a hollow body built a lot. I think it's not a hollow body and they form them and that's how they get the shape. Um, and so like I said, a carved hollow body is like I said, it's all carved out. So it's totally different. Um, I've been told, which makes sense that it's more expensive to do it carved. My guess is cause one, it probably takes a little bit more time to time being time, not in time to construct it, but in a man hours to do it. Also probably throws away more wood. And then of course you have to use better quality of wood, no, which you're using solid pieces and not ply. Um, if you want to pay for that, that's fine, but I can't tell you like, wow, you haven't experienced life until you've gone full, you know, carved, hollow guitar. Um, you know, it's just not, um, so that's, that's the thing. Um, this call, this one is from Quetzal. Nine, nine, six says, Hey, what's that pure ass looking thing next to your Nuno? Well, ironically, that is a pure ass, but that's probably not you're talking about cause you probably know that's pure ass. That's a pure ass hollow body to single cut. They no longer make that. I know that's what you're not asking, but I'm giving you more than what you're asking. Let me move my mic stand a little bit. So right here, what I'm pointing at, everybody is up here as hollow body to single cut. They don't make those anymore. Does it make it collectible? No, but you can't get one anymore. There's the Nuno he's talking about. Next that is a nags. So that is a nags sovereign sovereign. I'm trying to open him saying it correctly. What is a nags sovereign? Nags, Joe Nags was the main builder at PRS who did the cuss, the private stock stuff. And then eventually him and Peter Wolf broke off and become nags. And so Nags is a PRS, ESC offshoot of pure ass from two ex PRS employees that make essentially more expensive guitars than PRS. If you can imagine such a thing, that's what they do. So if you think PRS is a pricey, you should go look at a Nags. Because it's more pricey. You'll be like, wow, it's more pricey. No, I'm not saying PRS doesn't have guitars that are as expensive as nags, nags, but nags are pricey. If you want to watch the full interview of me interviewing Joe Nags and Peter Wolf, it's on the Know Your Gear channel and you can watch the interview. We talk about that. Even see Peter Wolf where I'll help some feathers in the industry for sure. With some comments. I still like look back and think about how people, I got screamed at by that interview and by people in this industry. How could you publish what he said? How could you do that? I don't know because he said it. Anyways. Okay. What are we going to do now? I know what we're going to do. Not that one. This one. And now it's time for Gear of the Week. Okay. Now it's time for Gear of the Week. Gear of the Week. Yay. We need clapping. Okay. So this week there, it's a week, essentially the week before the week before Christmas. Nobody's putting out no new gear. Are you getting what for? You can't get it in time for Christmas. People aren't going to buying. There's not a whole lot of releases this week. And if there was, they weren't super exciting. Oh, there was one. There was one. It might have gotten on somebody's radar. It was the new John Mayer, uh, Neural DSP. Let me just go up, pull up John Mayer. I'm sure, I'm sure you've already watched 50 Hot Takes on this. And now you're going to watch my Hot Take on it. Cause I have a different one. And that's with, oh, look at God Tark. And that's with the fact that, um, I don't think, uh, I heard anybody talk about this. And I thought it was strange and I'm just, this is my observation. So first thing. So this is it. Neural. Enter the chance to win the plugin. There was a pop up. So John Mayer did the architect archetype X, John Mayer X, John Mayer iconic tone. So what it is, is, um, I don't want to watch the full video. Let's look over you. What it is, is you can get all of John Mayer's most important, famous, exciting, amazing amplifiers in a plugin. Uh, for those of you that don't know what plugins are, essentially they are like a multiprocessor, but for your computer, you can, uh, not yet. I guess not yet, but you'll eventually can load these. You can purchase them and load them into like a quad cortex or something like that. Right. But essentially right now there's for the computer. Now what is this? This is they capture John Mayer's most iconic amps, his amazing sound. They capture it, his effects, and then you buy it for $169. Unless you get them on sale, there's sometimes you can get deals on these. My understanding is they don't give deals for the first 90 days. You buy it, you put it on your computer, you can use it, you play, you play just like what you heard me doing with the tone king of Peril through my monitors. You get John Mayer's amazing tone through the monitors. And of course I watched the video like a lot of you and it was amazing. Uh, because obviously, God, what is wrong here? Go here. Okay. What is, what is most likely of course is, I'm sure it sounds fantastic. They're really good. The technology is really good at capturing the sound. And of course John Mayer's fantastic. What do you get? Let me go back. You're going to get his, his hair. Let's pull this. What do you get? Let's tell you exactly instead of pictures because then I don't want to read the ad copy. I want to look. Okay. So what is this? This is John Mayer's 1964 Fender Vibro Verb. It's a vintage American amp with a warm, clean, dynamic response. We know what it is. What's the next amp you get in this pack? You're going to get his Dumble. You're going to get the Still String Singer Dumble, which is interesting because, um, this Still String Singer is a really loud clean amp. It doesn't really overdrive at all, but very clean. So it's really good for pedals, really good on stage. Oh, why I'm saying this really strange thing is someone who's played either Still String Singer copies, really good ones, four or $5,000 copies and played an original one. My take on them is they're really loud, clean headrooms like a Fender Twin, but bigger. So really good for on stage. I don't know why you would specifically want that in a, in a plugin, you know, for a clean tone, but, but I don't know. He's John Mayer. He's smarter than me for tone-wise. Next, you get a copy of his signature two rock that I believe they don't make anymore. As far as I know, they don't make this two rock anymore. And it wasn't even his, and I think he was with two rock when two rock was not the two rock that it is now. But again, I'm just kind of glazing over this. Uh, it's a two rock, two rock prototype signature number 83. So even a special one, it's a special number 83. Cause it was the, they made 82 prototypes and they all, they weren't as good as number 83. Do you guys think, you're like, could you imagine if they made them 82 prototypes? I'm just like, they're not, they didn't do it. Okay. So it's custom two rock model tailored. Here's what's interesting about this. So that's the rig. You can play each one. You can play them all together in a combined rig like he has and sound amazing. And then add effects. There's ton of effects that comes with the two. It's great. Look at this. All this stuff, 170 bucks. That's a, that's a Euro. I don't know what that is. Let's say $150. Maybe you can get it on a discount and you can get it for a little bit less. And, uh, look, it's the price of a pedal. You get the effects. Some of you guys are, now it's really bright. Uh, some of you guys are probably like, I don't want to pay 150 bucks for a software. I get it. You know, some of us are still old enough to think that software is not tangible. It's like, it's not real. But of course you could record an album with it. So it's real in my opinion. Uh, so what's my take on this? Was this a big FU to PRS amps? Like it was a weird take I have. Okay. Weird. So I got to, I've, I got to see John Mayor. I've seen him live three times, but I got to see him. In fact, that's how I met Mary Spender was I went to a private PRS event. Okay. Why I remember it. It was right at the beginning of my YouTube career. It was the first time anyone had invited me to anything, right on YouTube. Somebody was like, Hey, Phil, come to this private event. I'm like, private event. Why? And they go, because you're a YouTuber. And I'm like, I am. And they said, you're an influencer. I'm like, that's me. Let's go. And, uh, I got to see John Mayor and Mary Spender was there and she asked the first question at the event. We were in this room. Everybody was dying to get in the room. We were in the room packed and John Mayor speaks and John Mayor tells us that he's done looking, searching for unicorns. He's just wants, you know, an amp that he can get anywhere. And it's amazing. It's a very common speech we hear. I just want to be able to walk into any guitar center and get the guitar and the amp or the pedal that I play. Like you guys walking. I wish musicians would stop using that thing. It's, it's, look, I'm, I'm a huge John Mayor fan. My amp that I have here, my Amplify nation amp. This is literally cause it's the recreation of like a John Mayor tone. You know, as a double sound. This is how I get my John Mayor sound. I'm a huge John Mayor fan, like massive, like I said, seen him three times, have every album, uh, like every middle aged dude. I love John Mayor. Uh, so, um, anyways, why this is funny is, uh, he got the new PRS amp. They made him the PRS amp. It was the greatest amp ever. It wasn't like six grand. I was like, wow, he got the great amp, six grand. And now he can walk in it. He didn't say this by the way. He might be walking into guitar stand and get it. It's just, he was saying he wanted something obtainable, you know, instead of the unobtain him. And then so I saw the architect thing and I'm like, oh, they sampled all of his rigs. And I'm like, oh, well, they must have grabbed the most, the best amp he's ever played, which is the PRS. And so I watched it like you guys did. And I go, of course it's amazing and he's charismatic. Okay. So first of all, he's just, he's just really good. First of all, not a great player, not only a great player, but very charismatic. Right. So you just, you're kind of like, ah, he's got, I know I'm going to need whatever he says. Right. Um, and then I was like, where's the, where's the John Merr PRS amp? Why don't I get a neuro, why don't I get a model of that? Why don't I get the, the plug into that? I'm like, it didn't rate. It's what happened to it was the, he said, I was there. He said it was going to be, it's the, he doesn't have to chase unicorns anymore. Really. He's given us unicorns, but not the PRS amp. So is the PRS amp not that good? Did it not rate? Um, by the way, I'm giving, I'm, I'm making a little lie to this, but I, I'm telling you 100% this is what I thought the whole time I was watching the video. I thought I'm like, I was literally like, I thought, I guess he, I guess the PRS thing's over. In fact, for a second I was like, is he back with two rock? Am I, and is he the goodest? There's a smart part of me is like, are they going to about to announce he's back with two rock? Now don't get me wrong. I don't think he doesn't not love his PRS guitar. I think he's in love with that guitar. And I think that relationship is bound for a long time, if not forever, but the amp thing, which I always felt was, here's why it's problematic for me. I've always felt like in my opinion, and this is my opinion and I lose the friends I lose when I say this stuff was whatever, I really feel that the John Mayer PRS guitar relationship is, is genuine, honest. I believe he is congruent. He walks, he walks, he talks, he talks, he loves the, the Silver Sky guitar. I feel that comes across. I think John Mayer seems to like certain things and he uses them and I believe him. I've never really believed he liked the PRS amp. I don't know why. I just never thought he did. I thought, oh yeah, he likes, I think he likes Paul. I think he likes the company. Here's why I'm saying this. I'm in that same situation sometimes. I know I'm not John Mayer. That's not the point. The point is, sometimes I love the owner of a company, but I don't love the product. Sometimes I love the product and I don't love the owner of a company or the employees. And I'm just a guy in my bedroom on YouTube. So you can imagine if you're an artist, I'm sure you amplify that problem, right? But what I'm saying is, I always, I don't know why I have no inside knowledge. There's no secret that was been whispered in my ear. Like John Mayer secretly doesn't like those amps. Nothing like that. I just always felt like, oh, I don't think he really loves those amps. As much as he says. And it's not like I think he's lying to sell out for money. I just kind of like, maybe he's trying to talk himself into it. And because here's what happens. Maybe my gut said, he liked Fender, but he didn't like the Fender arrangement for a lot of reasons. And then so he leaves Fender. And then he likes Paul and he likes the Pyrrhus guys because they're very likable. They care. They're passionate about guitars. And they made him a great guitar. And that's easy. And then I think he was happy or somewhat happy. Seems like he liked his two rock sound, but he's kind of realized he's just going to play his Dumbles. And so I don't know. I think he gave it a try with, with a Pyrrhus and I don't think the amp took. Now there's also another part of this, which is simple. He's also a marketing genius and he's a smart businessman. And he's probably like, no one's going to buy a hundred and sixty dollar plugin of a Pyrrhus amp. Nobody. Right. He's like, he's like, look Paul, you can make a fake Dumble all you want. But no one's buying a plugin of it. So let's, let's clone the real thing, the real Dumble. And that could be that too. But that's my take on it. It's not a negative take. I think, first of all, I love plugins. I love this idea. There are so many of us that will eventually evolve to playing music on a computer. That's where I think a lot of us go. As you age, you're not, you know, you're not hitting the club every week playing gigs. You know, you're, you're playing at home more. If you're a hobbyist or hobbyist, it makes sense, you know, that you don't need, you don't need an expensive amp in a bedroom. It's almost borderline silly. If you can afford to do it and you so choose to do that with the money that you've made working hard for yourself, do it. It's your money. Enjoy it. However, we're not talking about joy. We're talking about need. Joy, do whatever you think want. But need-wise, do you need an amp that you barely can turn on the volume past one in your room? No. So the fact that you could have that plus on a titanium, I mean, John Mayer's rigs on a titanium. Think about this. How many of us could even claim that we even heard it in the same room or heard it at all? Now there's of course a recreation of it on the computer that's, it's good enough to where John Mayer saying it's good enough. And I would assume whatever he's making on this, which I'm sure is very lucrative because we already know. If it's the future for income, everyone wants a plug-in or a lesson course or a digital product, a digital product. Everybody needs and wants a digital product. If there's one thing that I'm sick of hearing from companies that I have to talk to behind the scenes with you when I talk to them is digital products. So many companies are like, oh, we're looking into digital product. Oh, we're going to make a digital product. Oh, we're getting a digital product because digital products don't get tariffs. Digital products are easy to ship. Easy to deal with customer service issues because you're like, what is it wrong with it? You didn't download it right. It's probably user error. It's your fault. Go away. No, I'm just saying you don't have to take returns on it as much. And if you do, it's, it's easy to do. It's a higher margin of profit for, for, for what you're doing. Obviously has a lot of upfront costs, but then those upfront, upfront design costs slowly go away over time. So digital product is definitely, yeah, somebody says, Dirt Razor X says mailbox money. Dude, mailbox money. That's what I see everyone focused on. For sure. Obviously we talked to, we, you know, I talked smack about the, the, the new boss pedal, because again, it's kind of turn trying to take a physical product and make it a digital product. Again, everybody trying to turn something into a digital product. Think about how many companies are just trying to attach an app that doesn't need to be there so they can charge you for the app. I mean, it's the same kind of concept. However, in this case, I think it's cool. Why? Because I think that if I didn't have the opportunity to own certain products like this, look, this Imperial is amazing. I told you about the pedal, $600. I mean, and it's essentially, think about what I'm doing. I'm plugging in this two-pramp pedal, which is $600. That's going into this interface that I have to have. So you have to have the interface for this pedal to work, to go into the computer. I have to have the computer. You could argue, why even have this pedal? Why not just have? John Mears plug-in and just having the computer. I could plug in right now and perform it for you in the same way. It would just be in my software. So for a fraction of the price. Yeah, I don't get to resell it, but I also don't get to lose my ass on it too, because I saw a lot of people complaining about the price point of it. Like, oh, for $150, I could buy this. Yeah, I get it. However, like this pedal is $600. If you sell it, you're getting $300. You essentially pay $300 to use this for a time where his unit, you could pay $150 and essentially have it forever. That's just some thoughts. So basically, that's my way of arguing both sides of that coin is what I'm trying to say is because there's some things that I like and don't like about it. But the main thing I want to talk about is like, I thought it was a weird choice to not have any of the have his signature PRS on his signature plug-in. And what's funny is as much as I said, you know, he's got the, you know, the exotic two rock that he had in this, you know, his real Dumbled and stuff in this vintage fender, you know, you can't even, they don't even make his signature amp from PRS anymore. Well, I don't know what they go for. Can we look? Does anyone, can anyone look that up when I'm looking up John Mayer? Are they worth anything? Mayor. PRS amp. Okay. Come on, reverb. Is there one on reverb? No listing is on reverb. What about sold? Any sold ones on reverb? And you result? No, sold ones on what? Show more. Pick up, pick up options. Years, buying options. I don't see completed sales. Is anyone seeing this? Okay. PRS J mod 100 signature amp. Let's try a different search. Yeah, none for sale. Filter it. Show more. I can't find a, I can't find any, any for sale or that had recently sold. So, so basically that's my way of saying it was $6,000 new and you can't find one now they could have done a, that would be a good, uh, plugin because, uh, yeah, Mac 57 music has one sold for 6k. Right. It's a $6,000. It's, that's, that's a very expensive amp. And again, very few people have played one or heard one. So, um, it's like I said, I saw it was weird. Now, of course, could they do another plugin with him and maybe they just wanted to wow it, Powit, like I said, again, you know, uh, I'm being a little sarcastic and all this, but ultimately I'm just telling you the takeaway. I thought I just, I just remember when I, I was really impressed with his speech that day about how, yeah, I'm done chasing unicorns. I just wanted an amp that it's obtainable and I can get like, okay, that's cool man. Cause yeah, yeah. So I don't know. So it's funny. Okay. Let's, uh, let's go on to, uh, what you guys want to talk about next. Okay. So this is, uh, from, uh, man to grab this question. This one is, I got into guitar again this year and I have my Ivan as Gio GSA 60. It's a 2005. Do you think it's worth trying to upgrade or buying a new, new or use something around $500? If so what? Okay. So first of all, two, two ways of approach this is super easy. One, absolutely. You can buy an amazing guitar for $500 now. So there's just, and there's no Ivan as Gio GSA 60. That's ever going to be in the league of anything you can buy right now. If you do some smart shopping, that's $500. I mean, guitars for $500, you could buy a guitar that's a lifetime, perfect, professional, great instrument at $500 now probably used, but even new, you can find some really, really interesting instruments. The, the, the, the math, the way I would, the math, the way I would think of, uh, maybe keeping the Gio GSA is if you want to get the experience or knowledge from upgrading it, absolutely would not take it to your local tech and pay them, uh, of rate and put all the new parts in it and try to turn, uh, you know, there's a sort of like polishing a turd. I would not fix it up that way. But if you want to put some time into it, you will get an education out of what you learn from doing that. And that's really interesting. Or if you want to learn, or if you enjoy working on things, that's the, that's the benefit. However, if you just want to play guitar, cause you're back to guitar again, and you don't want to deal with all this crap. Cause you know, look, not everyone wants to want, not everybody wants to be the roadie. They just want to be the rock star. Right. If you don't want to be the roadie, you want to be the rock star. I would say tread that in 500 bucks, get yourself something really good. Pick what you like. There is definitely $500 used. You could find something that is. Out there, perfect instrument, no problems. And I would move on, but again, if you want to be more of the roadie, then maybe work on it and learn something too. Uh, next, what do we have? It says, Hey, is there a safe way to remove finish from a quilted top? Okay. I believe the top is very thin. Okay. So you're talking about a lamina top. That's a different thing because a quilted top, um, like a solid top would be a quarter inch to an eighth of inch thick, most likely a quarter inch thick. Um, unless it's a PRS, cause it's going to be a half inch thick to quarter inch thick cause they cut, they, I don't know if you guys know this PRS takes their tops as a half inch and then they cut them at an angle and flip them like this, like a butterfly out. And so they're core, they're half inch in the center and quarter inch on the sides, a little fun fact for a PRS, but, um, most other companies are going to be a quarter inch. Um, if it's not an actual top quarter inch top and you have a veneer, which is going to be super thin, I mean, as thin as a piece of paper. Yes. You could tear through, burn through that easy. Most likely though, if you have a, uh, if you have a laminate top, you most also have a, most likely have a polyurethane coated finish, which is going to be thick and hard. So you're going to sand through that like crazy. A lot of plastic smell. It's going to smell like the pool section at Walmart, like pool toys. You're going to be sanding through that stuff. And then yeah, you could accidentally burn through the top because it's so thin. Um, you have to be wary of it. Uh, so, uh, you don't want to make a mistake. Well, then what you have to do is it's just pay attention. You'll know you'll, I mean, look, there are people at the factories. There's people who do this for a living, like Nathan, like my buddy, Nathan, and even he doesn't want to do stuff like that. Cause of what you're talking about, cause you can easily burn through something and ruin it. Cause once you sand through that top, then you're going to have a spot and you're going to be looking at the wood that's underneath, which, you know, like a mahogany or something. Um, so it's not the, not the best thing to do. Um, you know, somebody says wear a mask. I absolutely wear a mask. Make sure it's a ventilated area and wear a mask and eye protection, everything. Keep all that stuff away from you. Um, but you can look at, um, chemicals that help you remove the finish and try to remove the finish chemically. So you might want to look into that. I would suggest that maybe over again, use protective equipment, you know, uh, find some, some people on YouTube don't necessarily, when you, here's what happens when people ask me a lot of Finnish questions and I always think it's funny cause they connect finishes to guitars and you have to understand most Finnish workers I know in the guitar industry can't build a guitar to save their ass. They do finish work. They could do finish work on cabinets or furniture or guitars. They, they just know finishes and wood. I don't know finishes and wood. I can fix the guitars. So, uh, so this is what I'm saying. When you go out there looking, don't necessarily look for a guitar authority of repair or manufacturing or building like a Luthier, you know, don't go to their websites or their YouTube channels as much. Try to find Finnish experts, people who do woodworking finish and, um, and then they're going to, they're going to be more helpful for sure, uh, for getting that insight. It's where I would go if I had, if I had the, a project like yours and I'm like, oh, I got to remove this finish off. The first thing I'm doing is searching online for a fit, somebody who does finish work or somebody who refinishes, more importantly, refinishes wood to give me some insights on how to remove the best way to remove the polyurethane finish off a, off a piece of wood. At that point, we're not even talking about a guitar anymore. It's not a guitar. It's just wood. We just need to get the finish off the wood. So, um, uh, uh, crazy blade 15, cause there was 14 other crazy blades before him says, Hey, Phil, what's the humidity at the guitar factory? Uh, I think it should be much lower. It depends. So I think like Taylor runs 60% humidity in their factory. Different factories run different humidity, uh, uh, levels for sure. Some factories don't do anything. Most factories though are climate controlled, uh, interestingly enough. Um, the, uh, the Cortech factory doesn't really have a climate control because it's in a tropical climate. So it's just humid and hot and the bays are open, which is a very weird experience because if you've been in the United States, the OSHA guys, they kind of make these factories like seal up, you know, like everything's sealed tight. Everything gets filtered. The, some of the air that goes in the fender factory in California has to come out cleaner than it went in. So, so that's how that works. Um, where, uh, obviously, uh, uh, Indonesia didn't have like a, uh, an OSHA, uh, obviously like that because we would walk right in. If you saw the, if look, if you see the footage, it's out there. No one was hiding it from you. If you watch me walk in, I'm just walking into a giant bay doors are open and you just walk in the factory. If you see my other factory doors, every one of them was like, pssshhh. Did you see me go inside the factories? Cause they're climate controlled in every way. Even so, you know, the sweet water warehouse is totally climate controlled. Um, where they control the humidity and the temperature. Most guitar factories are climate controlled for sure with not only, uh, moisture, but temperature. Um, they have a consistent temperature. They keep things at, I think I'm doing off memory. And if I'm wrong, I apologize. I'm pretty sure sweet waters is like, uh, 50 or 60% humidity is 72 degrees. And then what sweet water decided to do as a choice, even though the building is 500,000 square feet, that's that is exact. And that only a portion of that warehouse is guitars. So I want to say 25, 35%. So it's not the majority of the fact of the warehouse. The entire factory is climate controlled with humidity and, uh, temperature. And the reason being is in case like busy season, like Christmas, they have to take in even more guitar inventory. They can put it anywhere in the factory they want. Or if they have to have an overflow of employees working in areas, they don't have to worry about it. Plus they said it's better for the employees because that way all the employees work in the same environment, which is a pretty nice environment. 60% humidity is 72 degrees. Pretty nice. So, um, but yes, most guitar factories that I've been to are, are keeping a climate and, uh, and, uh, climate control and it was a temperature and humidity. Uh, uh, factory like Warwick was off the charts. They're using like Mr. Systems throughout the, throughout the building and you'd be walking and all of a sudden it's like, you just missed, could come down on you. Like what is going on? And that's how they keep missed. They keep missing in the air. You know, there's all kinds of stuff because, um, because at, at Warwick, the problem in Germany was it gets so cold in the winter that the air is so dry in the facility. That's why they have it that way. So, um, uh, Morton guitar says, Hey, Phil, does court make Harley Benton? Did you see any in the, there was no Harley Benton that I saw at the Cortech factory. So, uh, if I looked at a Harley Benton, uh, Sierra LeBron, I could tell you if it was court at all anyways. But, uh, no, I don't believe so. Keep in mind, court's not the only factory in Indonesia. There's a bunch. So they're just the biggest. Um, okay. Let's see. Um, okay. Let's go to the, oh, next one. Let's do this one. It's going to keep jumping screens. Perfect time to drink some water. Okay. All right. Hunter wants to know, Hey, Phil, can you speak on expensive custom shot value and investment? They're not investments, man. They're horrible money dumps. Uh, looking at an aerial, I must say, Possen guitar. I'm put, I don't know, POS again. I don't know. Strat, uh, six, it's $6,000. It's crazy. Uh, he goes, do you think, think the value will hold over time? No, absolutely not. You buy it because you love it. You buy it because you have money. Cause what else are you going to do with your money? You buy custom shop because what else are you going to do with your money? You buy, you buy a sports car. Look, I'm not, I'm not rich by any means. So I can tell you, but I have rich friends and I know some of my rich friends, they buy Ferraris and literally I always thought it was like a big money dump. And they're like, no, these are, they make money on their Ferraris. I was like, what? Like, yeah, buy a, they got, it's a waiting list and they get a Ferrari. And then they guess they drive it for like a year and then they sell it for more money and they paid and never telling me this. I was like, what? This is crazy. Um, I just thought, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong. I guess they're a monster to upkeep stuff. I, again, I'm not versed, but what I can tell you is custom shop instruments, you know, private stock PRS is custom shop vendors, um, high end, Lutherie guitars, you know, Luthorie guitars, um, Gibson custom shop, all this stuff is going to be high price and it's going to, it's, it's not going to hold money as well as a production and instrument, uh, by a, by a powerful brand. The point is not about, you know, making money on your guitar or breaking even. The point is, is when you approach a custom instrument, whether that be, uh, you know, the brand you're talking about, another brand, um, you know, there's a, uh, there's a lot of Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick Uber, Hoover, Nick, Hoover, um, Nags, right? Um, and those are known ones and there's unknown ones, right? When you approach a custom builder, when you approach a custom guitar, maybe having a custom keys will made, if you don't approach it with the idea that this could lose a lot of money, if you're not okay with that, you probably should stay away from it. You, you know, you, um, you don't know if you're going to get, you know, what you want when you do custom, you don't know how it's going to feel. You don't just don't know. Okay. They can be the best builder in the world, but guitars are so personal that it can be the strangest thing that makes you love or not love a guitar. And, and so that's why I caution you, same as the vendor custom shop, Gibson custom shop, PRS private stock, you buy that stuff because you have the money to do it and to you, it's probably no different than buying, you know, whatever it is that the majority of us are comfortable buying. I, I bought those guitars. I do everything as like, I kind of like, look, I got, I got in this weird gig where I am on Friday nights and I'm at, and you guys are talking to me and I'm talking back and you know, I've worked really hard for these years to not just pull stuff from my ass to throw at you guys. You know, oh yeah. Why don't you do that? I try to be versed in it. Uh, I'm not smart enough to give you smart advice, but I can live and give you a, uh, experience advice like, Hey, this is what happened to me. Um, I bought a, I bought them all. I bought a custom shop vendor. I bought a custom shop, Kistam Gibson. Um, I bought, you know, uh, the NAGs is I bought all these guitars. Okay. For this, for the sake of education for the channel, I look, I know it's a benefit to me sometimes, but every single one of them, you're never getting anything close to what you paid for it. They're great guitars. And if it's what you want, you should do it, but I'm telling you, you better go into it going, uh, so if you're buying a guitar for $6,000, most likely you're going to lose a big chunk of that. If you decide to get rid of it, if you don't love it. So you just, and if you, that scares you, you don't need to buy it. There's no, there is no guitar that I have played. That is four, five, six, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000. And I'm, I'm telling you this for a reason. Cause somebody were like, what about one, two thousand? No, listen to me. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, $1,000. No guitar I've played that I was like, man. All these peasants out there, what are they missing? They're missing out. No one's missing out. The, I, I had a theory when I started this podcast, I used to tell you my theory. That was a theory. I'm telling you now, it's my experience. My theory was custom guitars are about being able to tell people you're the only one with it. It's more of a status than it is a physical need of perfection of the instrument. You can get a perfect instrument at a fraction of those prices. Perfect. First of all, if you watch all the deep dives, you know that all perfect is almost impossible. I have a guitar, I have a guitar video that comes out next month. The guitar is $8,200. It's an iconic instrument. Everybody loves. I could not keep it in tune for the first week. Is it a great guitar now? Yeah. After a couple of adjustments, I already knew when I was making the video, you guys are going to go $8,000 at a woman's day in tune. Yeah. Because it's a guitar. Some guitars are perfect out of the box. Some guitars are not more, most likely cheaper guitars will have, you'll discover more defects with cheaper guitars than expensive guitars. But to say that expensive guitars won't have defects or that they're perfect is an impossible situation and an impossible mindset. So back to your question, my, my answer to you is if you have the money and you want to buy it, enjoy it. If you are concerned about the money, I would caution you to stay away from it. You will not, you, you know, I'm not saying you won't get it and go, Phil was wrong. This is the greatest guitar ever. I'm saying that there is a likelihood that it won't be the greatest guitar ever. There's no guarantee in it. So I don't know. There you go. Um, I don't know. Somebody's asked me a question. I don't know the answer. Okay. Um, yeah, Alex says, Hey, about a Gibson R9 used from Chicago Music Exchange, Prackley knew. Yeah. Used is a great way to pick up, uh, of a high end instrument because of the fact that you can save a little money, but most, more importantly, if you decide it's not for you, you know, the, the, uh, the pain is reduced when you don't get all your money back. So something to think about there. Um, the doctor says, uh, what is this? Okay. So, um, I think I, I think I'm, I'm, I'm reading this. Okay. So a bean recipe. Okay. I'm trying to read it correctly. So he's saying a bean recipe video. So a recipe on like beans, like maybe like bean soup or just whatever beans, uh, from a food magazine on YouTube said, uh, had comments saying that's a recession indicator, in other words, people buying a lot of beans and making bean soup as a recession indicator, uh, the comments saying recession indicator, anything similar with guitars to look for? In other words, are there keys in the guitar? Is there cues, cues? Are there things that indicate recession in the guitar market? Um, I'm sure there's recession indicators anywhere, you know, everywhere and anywhere. Um, what I will tell you is if I, if you're asking me, and this is probably the most important part, the status of the guitar industry right now from my, my perspective, what am I seeing? R- it was a record year for everybody. It was dodgy. There was a lot. When I say everybody majority, more companies were up this year than down. Some companies, it's almost like, and I told you again, I can't talk to the recession part, but I can tell you this part. I think we talked about this a year ago, two years ago, when the COVID thing cycled out and then the market started slowing down, there will be some losers and there'll be a lot of winners or a lot of losers and a little bit of winners, but that's how it works. Um, you know, for G and L closes, but another guitar company I talked to was up 300%. So it's crazy, right? Um, so I mean, it's just, it's just how it goes. I think the, I think the takeaway on this is, um, if you make a good product and even after the market slows, people are going to, as there's less customers, there are still customers and the customers still go to the best product. So that's just how that goes. And they buy less. So the people who don't make as good products feel that when they're not buying. Um, I don't know if anything I've seen, uh, you know, that's like made me go, Oh man, people are now buying cheap stuff. I will tell you this, this Christmas affiliate numbers for the channel across all the, uh, platforms was the first time I've seen those numbers since the absolute boom of COVID. I've never seen that many purchases and since then. I never thought I would see those numbers again. I don't think I'm going to see them next year. Um, and I, and, but I was shocked to see them and it started in November. People just buying like crazy. It's all of a sudden you would just see. So how it works is I have affiliate links like all the channels and I've told you guys this before, but I just want to clarify for the new people on the channel. I don't make money if you click the product I talk about. I make money if they capture your cookies. Okay. So give me example. Hey, everybody, check out that imperial that I talked about. I'll put a link to it. Some of you might click it and buy it. Very few of you, but some. Some will click on it because they maybe are curious about some information I didn't cover and some will click on it because they're just curious about it. They click on it. You don't buy it, but. Barring some things that happen. There's a lot of reasons where this won't count, but let's just stick in a perfect world in a perfect world barring that nothing else external forces don't imply. For the next, whatever I've negotiated with the company, let's say 14 days, whatever you buy from the company, I get a piece of. So the most famous way to explain this is Amazon. Hey, check out this battery on Amazon. You click the battery, you don't buy the battery or you buy the battery. Let's say you buy it. I get a piece of that. And then Saturday night, your wife's like, Hey, we need dog food. You're like dog food and I get a piece of dog food. I get different percentages for different product skews, but I get all the things. Right. Okay. Then what happens as all these companies pay these little. Penses to channels for having these links everywhere. We can look at the analytics and see what you guys are buying. Right. Now I could go one by one. That's horrible, but we actually copy pasted into a report. And then we actually, I just something I want to know. I want to know what you guys are buying in the price point you're buying. Now some companies are a little bit more difficult. They don't tell me exactly the product you bought. They just tell me the price points because obviously they have to tell me what you spent because that's how they're explaining what piece I'm going to get of it. Some companies actually give me the skews. And so I get to see that too. And so two things I will tell you. Everyone was buying, like I said, it's the first time I've seen these numbers since COVID, the COVID boom. And I would say it was in the most extreme categories, meaning that you are buying lots of stuff for 20, 30 bucks, like cables, picks, accessories, a lot of inexpensive things, which is you're like, Oh, ha ha, Phil. See, people buying cheaper stuff. But then lots of $4,000 things, lots of high end stuff. It's like literally people are buying high end stuff and inexpensive stuff. The middle is seemed to be where I noticed the biggest dips consistently. And there's this is where again, kind of like with reverb's reports, this is where this, this information could be very hard to interpret because we could say, Oh, well rich people are buying expensive stuff and poor people are buying cheap stuff. This is true. There's always some kind of analogy or assessment like that. I shouldn't say analogy has our assessment. Um, however, there is something that could be in play, which is where things were discounted the most. That could be the driving force. So whoever was giving sales the best you guys bought in the sales. So maybe high end was selling the most and accessories were selling, giving sales discounts the most. Maybe that's what did it. But the point is shocking to see those numbers had, uh, I had a bunch of conversations with friends throughout the industry, pedal builders, amp builders, pickup makers, um, you know, you name it. And, uh, everyone reported a uptick in their black Fridays and uptick in their sales and, um, and also all of them alluded lower profit margins. So they made less, they sold more, they made less. And that's cause costs went up and they haven't, not all of them passed on the cost to us, which is why a lot of us are kind of thinking maybe there's going to be some price increases next year that's going to suck cause, but that's where I'm at. So, uh, aside from that, I don't know. And it's the holidays and I don't know what that means either, but I'm just giving you the information I have. Uh, and, um, another reason why we capture all that information is cause sometimes when I'm talking to a friend in the industry and they're going, Hey, what do you think's going on? I go, well, when we talk about on the show, this is what came up. And by the way, this is what the numbers are indicating. So interesting. Speaking of which, let's, um, let's do this. Let me do, let me give me this. Refresh. And, um, so this question is about signature guitars, like an LTD guitar holding, holding its, uh, its value better. A lot of value talk. Um, the one I was talking about only has a hundred made. Okay. So this is a follow up to the, uh, to the high end, 6,000 dollar guitar. So what about instead of the 6,000 dollar guitar going to an LTD? Um, were they only made a hundred of them? Um, this is where we're going to, so Hunter, this is where it's going to get a little tricky. The whole, uh, you know, yeah, I guess limited edition is always more probable of holding value than a production instrument that's not limited. However, you just have to accept that some things are going to, you know, if you just want, let me put it this way, if you just want to make sure that your money is best served buying an instrument that it's going to hold value. Like if you're trying to find an heirloom type instrument or an instrument that maybe is a, is a hedge against inflation, you can't, you, one, you know, if you can do it, teach it to me. That's great. I'd love to know. And then I'll teach it to everybody. But the second thing that's more important is that most the instruments that will, will do the best in that category still aren't guarantees. And they're most likely not the instruments you'd want to own because that's just how that works. So, um, just find the guitar you, you love that you are happy with the amount you spent and, um, and if you, the only thing I caution you is if you're on the fence, like I said, take a second, cause like always tell everybody your money and run out before the deals ever do. There always will be another guitar and they'll always be the thing you want. We'll always come. That's how, that's what I've learned. There's no reason to ever panic by. I'm not saying you are. I'm just saying there's no reason to ever just buy something you, you can wait. You just wait. There's always something better around the horizon. There's a lot of guitars out there and there's always a better one. Let me, uh, let me switch gears and we'll finish this up. I want to tell you a funny story. I promised my wife to tell you this story. Uh, and some of you may like it and not, I don't know. Uh, there will be some cursing. Maybe I don't know. So just let you know. So I had some interesting things happen this week. They were kind of funny and they're not guitar related, but I thought they were interesting. So, uh, so I go to a trainer now, like twice a week and so, and so does my wife. So, um, sometimes our trainer appointments are aligned and we go together and then sometimes they're not, it doesn't matter. It's like once a week they are and once a week they're not. So I'm going to train her and as you know, if you're going to, you're going to pay all this money for a trainer, you got to eat better. So, uh, I, I, uh, Monday, Monday, I'm busy. I'm doing stuff and I don't have a time and I, and I, uh, Sean is with me and I said, Hey, let's, you want to grab some lunch? She's like, sure. I said, um, you want to get chicken salad and share it, right? Grilled chicken salad, you know, it's supposed to be good. Let's go. Okay. So the Chick-fil-A by our house, it's close. It's being, uh, it's being expanded, making it bigger. So, okay, I can't go there. Okay. Cool. So we, there's a habit, habit burger. They actually have a chicken salad. It's grilled. It's pretty good. We've had it before. So I pull into the drive-through and the, the signage in the drive-through looks so strange. I go, that's really weird. Weird. I don't see the menu, but it's kind of weird. Pull up a little further. Person comes on the intercom. They're like, can I take your order? I'm like, no, that's not what they said. See, I set you all up. See, this is why she wants me to tell you a story. That's not what they said. They said, um, do you have the app? And I'm like, no, I don't have the app. I just want to get a chicken salad. We're only taking orders on the app. I'm like, what? Yeah. We're only taking orders on the app. Um, I go, so I can't order anything. I go, not unless you have the app. I'm like, okay. They go, they go, we can take your order, but it takes at a minimum of 30 minutes. I'm like, okay. Now the funny part is I'm trapped in the drive-through because there's no way to get out. It's not one of those ones you can just pull away from. I'm trapped. Like, like I'm in the, I'm in the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland. I'm just stuck in this thing, riding this thing out. Just like, what the hell is going on? My problem isn't that they have to have the app. My problem isn't their, their policies. My problem was the, the fact that the employees pretend like this is normal, that they don't take orders. I'm like, you don't take orders. Like, no, they don't take orders inside either. I couldn't park my car and go inside. They're like, no, you have to have the app. So I'm like, all right. The reason I tell you the story, that's not the story. That's the precursor to this problem or this funny story. I don't know if it's funny. So now it's Thursday, yesterday. Uh, I have an appointment. I have to go and, uh, so you know, I go to the doctor to get my, uh, they took my blood work and all the stuff because I'm doing this stuff. Right. So make sure I'm, I'm good. I'm healthy. Uh, and for the record, if anyone cares, I'm 100% healthy, which is strange. I think it's strange. I thought for sure they'd be like, well, work on this. No, they're like, everything's great. So I leave now. They only have 30 minutes to get to our joint, uh, appointment with the trainers. And I go, okay. I go, Hey, you want me to grab something on the way so we can eat? Cause we haven't eaten. Yes. You want a chicken salad? Yes. I'll get it from a cafe Rio, cafe Rio. If you guys don't have a cafe rear, it's like Chipotle. Same concept. It's a Mexican food, but they do the salad bowl burrito. I said, I'll get us a chicken salad. Okay. Great. I pull up to the drive-through and the person says, by the way, this is the important part of the story. I'm on the speaker in the truck. Sean is on the other end. She's talking to me. The guy comes through and he says, can I take your order? That's what he said. Not like the last time. Not do you have an app? He's like order. I'm like, I'm already winning. This guy's willing to take my money. This is good. I said, yes, I would like the salad with grilled chicken because you can get shredded or grilled. I go, grilled chicken. I said, I don't want beans and rice. Okay. I don't want the tortilla strips that they put in it. I said, I just want the, the pico, the guacamole and the, and the cilantro. He's like, cool. I go, okay, that's what I want on there. I don't, that's the stuff I want. He's okay. So he tells me the price. I pull forward. Person comes to the window. They hand me the salad. I put it on the passenger seat. I get my drink, put the drink in the cup holder and I give them, you know, give them the card. Actually, you know, it's a, I don't know if you guys see now, uh, the drive-through is like a hostage negotiation now. They never want to give you anything till you give them some money or card first. It was like holding the drink. Yes. This is how I don't know about you guys, but in Phoenix, this is how it works now. They hold the drink and they're like, here's your drink. And they're like, like this, they're like, and they get your card. They go, oh, here you go. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Once we got your money, you can have some stuff. So they give me my drink and my thing. I give them the card. And I get the card and I'm talking to Sean and I go, okay, cool. I'll be there in five minutes. We'll eat. We'll go. She's like, great. I'm pulling forward. There's no one behind me pulling forward. And I go, wait a minute. I look at, look down. There's no lettuce. It's just a big foil bowl with some chicken, some cheese on it. Guac, pico, cilantro. That's it. I put the truck in reverse, back up, go to the window. The lady comes to the window. I go, hey, there's no salad in this. And she's like, hold on, because, you know, we need a manager now. The guy comes, the guy took my order, the kid. I don't know. He's like, he's 20s. And he's like, can I help you? And I said, yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no lettuce in this, in this, in this salad. He's like, you didn't ask for lettuce. I go, no, I wanted the salad. He's like, yeah, but you didn't ask for lettuce. I go, oh, I just thought the salad came with lettuce. He's like, I only put in what people say exactly. And I'm like, can I get lettuce? And he goes, well, I already, I already rang you up for what you have. I'm like, can I buy some lettuce? I go, I'll buy lettuce. Right. I'm cool with that. He's like, I'll get you lettuce this time. I go, OK, cool. So he gets, he comes back. By the way, I asked, I got dressing too. So he gave me dressing earlier. So I got the dressing. So he gives me another bowl, like another thing, foil thing, and it's full of lettuce and I go, cool, I think that cool. Sean is laughing. She's laughing in the speaker, right? The kid's looking at me. I'm looking at the kid. I'm pulling away. She's like, what was that? I go, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I said, I said, here's the irony though. I said, again, this is like the app. We're just going to pretend that this is all normal. Like this is how, like I haven't ordered 300 chicken salads in my life. That all came with lettuce from multiple restaurants, including that one, by the way, and this is the first time anyone's said it to me, but I'm not going down that road because here's why. Um, my favorite part about this is you can get a salad. And I, by the way, I'm also very aware of the fact that the word salad does not always mean lettuce. You can get potato salad or macaroni salad or fruit salad. Not just, I'm not implying salad means lettuce. I am implying though that if you get a salad, a bowl or a burrito at cafe Rio, they all three come with lettuce. That's interesting. But we'll go ahead and assume that cause I didn't say lettuce. I don't get lettuce. I get to the house. Sean is like, what was that about? I go, I don't know. And she goes, that's crazy. You weren't upset. I go, no. She's like, why aren't you upset? I go, here's why. When the kid said, I don't put anything in there that you don't say. Okay. I took that as somebody once went to cafe Rio. See your first inkling. This is why the story. She wants me to tell the story. Your first thought is F this kid, right? Right. This F and moron can't make a salad. Who can't make a salad? Chicken salad, right? Grilled chicken salad. It's the easiest thing to make. This moron can't do it. That's your first thought. Here's my, here's my thought. Who the fuck chewed this kid out for giving him lettuce once on a salad? You know, that's what happened. The kids like, here's your, and then this what happened. The kid handed somebody a chicken salad once and they went, what the fuck's with this lettuce buddy? I didn't say put lettuce in it. And then they ripped him sideways and he's never doing that again. He's like, he went home that day. He told his girlfriend, he's like, honey, she's like, how was work? He's like, tomorrow from now on, if they don't say what they want in their salad, even if it's lettuce, I'm not putting it in. I'm never putting anything in the salad again. I don't need this crap. And he cried for a while. At least in my theory, he cried for a while. They worked it out emotionally. The next day went to work and he's been amazing ever since. My problem is instead of being mad at him, I'm just like, who traumatized this kid? And the only thing is I'm very aware of the fact that in a couple of weeks, if I go back to Cafe Rio and I order a salad and the kid's not there, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get lettuce. And I know what's going to happen to me and I will keep guys updated when it happens. I told Sean, I go, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go there and I go, yeah, I'd like the salad would let us and they're like, sir, it comes with lettuce. I'm like, you would think, you would think. So that's my, uh, that's my grilled chicken story. Uh, that's, it's been a tough week to get grilled chicken. By the way, for the record, Sean has just made me grilled chicken. So that's how we're dealing it now. All right. On that note, I want to thank you guys all hanging out for me, uh, with me, hanging out for me, hanging out with me, talking guitars. I hope everybody's aware to have a happy holiday. Um, there'll be some videos this week. Um, same bat time, same bat channel for the next week's, uh, podcast. I don't plan to take breaks between the end of the year for the podcast. Um, and then we'll talk next week, we'll talk about some of the cool things that are happening in 2026 because there's a lot of announcements that come in 2026 and we'll talk about those. I think it'll be fun guitar talk as well. And on that note, I want to thank you all for your time. And until the next time, know your gear. If you're learning something or having a good time, don't forget, you can subscribe for free and help this channel or for $10 a month. You can join me on patron for live clinics where you can ask questions every single week.