The Cheap Guitar Companies Are Eating Themselves

The Know Your Gear podcast. Hey everyone, welcome to the Know Your Gear podcast. I have no idea what episode this is. I think it's 449. So I think we're just shy of 450 episodes. Let's get into things. We're going to go a little out of order. Of course, the big thing, I think the big discussion will be NAMM, but then the second thing, Kiesel Connect. But first, I want to talk about a couple of things that came up. So this was talked about on the 60s cycle home show today. I saw them talking about it as well. And it came up so much last week. And in fact, we didn't have a Friday show. We didn't get to address it. And it actually is an interesting topic because if you guys hadn't seen the news, Harley Benton has disbanded or stopped their reverb store where they were selling in the United States. Now you can still get Harley Benton direct from Toman. And the reason I want to talk about this is because of a couple interesting things that had happened right before this announcement. And it prompted me to do a little research. And this research yielded some interestingly crazy results. So I feel like, and I'm just going to start right here as we know, we don't talk politics on the channel, one, because it's a nightmare out in the world. And this is our time away from that. But sometimes, sometimes, political things change the guitar world. And we got to talk about that, the changes. And so Harley Benton, when they made their announcement that they're leaving the US, they tagged as one of the key factors as tariffs. Now, I actually agree with the 60s cycle hum guys. I was watching their thing today. It's kind of a little cheating, but I didn't mean to. I didn't know they're going to be making the video today. That really, I thought the Harley Benton thing was a test in the first place. They tested it late last year to see how it went. So the fact that it got already thrown is because the tariffs seemed a little like really, I mean, you didn't even know if it was going to work at all. But here's why I mention it specifically. I think a lot of times, like when Hoffner said, because of tariffs, they're filing bankruptcy, and G&L kind of threw a little bit of like tariffs as part of their problem. And then, of course, I always mentioned Guitar Center, when they filed bankruptcy, they cited it as COVID. I always find that it's an easy thing. I'm not accusing them of lying. I'm not accusing them that this not being true. I'm just saying it's always easy to take the current factor of the market and say, oh, this is why it's not working. And that way you don't have to go into a long discussion. It's a really nice little way to say, everybody can understand like, oh, yeah, that's a problem for you. However, I think there's a bigger problem with Harley Benton than people probably know about. And here is why. I obviously went to California and I decided to spend some time at some music stores. I went to a lot of music stores. I went to a lot of guitar centers. And I heard a lot of things that were a little interesting to hear. And it would be one thing if I heard it, you know, two times, three times. But when you hear it almost everywhere you went, and it had, and these places are not connected in any way, the first thing that ties into this was with the Harley Benton thing. First of all, I just got to say, you know, Toman is probably the largest retailer in the world. They're definitely the largest retailer in Europe. And technically, I think they're slightly bigger or definitely bigger than Sweetwater, probably not bigger than Guitar Center as a whole, as dollars. We're talking about dollars. You guys can Google that if you want. I would say I would have, I would pitch your Toman and Sweetwater being a billion dollar a year companies and then Guitar Center is about a two billion dollar company. That's by gross revenue, all in stuff. Either way, very large company. And for them to say that they can't make it work in the US selling on reverb is kind of funny because I'm like, there's a lot of companies. I was like, well, first of all, that doesn't make any sense because I physically, the Firefly guys, you know, they're doing fine in the US. Hill's guitars, doing great in the US. Even lowered prices recently, you know, through some adjustments. Tees guitars, I've seen the owner of Tees guitars talking about the fact that the tariffs he was going to have to pass it on, but he talked to the manufacturers. This is kind of like the same thing I heard with Hill's and Cortech guitars, by the way, have mentioned this and essentially Firefly, that if they increase the volume with the manufacturers, they could get their pricing down and essentially eat the tariffs and I and keep the pricing more aggressive. And I'm not saying Harley Benton didn't think of this or doesn't care. What I'm saying is, is it's weird to see someone who's very small. Hill's guitars very small company. Tees, super small, basically running it out of an apartment in New York. And no offense if he's running out of business too, but I kind of, that's where he makes his video. So that's kind of where I think about it. The owner of Firefly, super small operation here. Okay. So the fact that they are able to bob and weave and make it work, doesn't mean it's not an indictment on Harley Benton. It's just like, really, you got, you know, I want Harley Benton to hear this, like, you know, you, you know, if you want to, you can make it, you know, a tariff doesn't mean you can't sell. It just means it's going to add cost. And that's the real question is, by adding cost, will the consumer go away? Well, here's the piece of information I thought was crazy to hear. I heard a bunch of dealers tell me, was we were talking, because I do so many deep dives across other, so many guitars. But I've said this for years, even though last year, just like every year before that, 2025, I did more USA made manufactured guitar videos than any other country of origin. China was of course second, and then Indonesia third. The inexpensive guitars go viral. That's just how it works. You have a, you have a base that will watch a video and more people are curious about a $300 guitar being good than they are if a $3,000 guitar is being good. I think it's because not because everybody can't afford a $3,000 guitar. I think that's a big factor. I think it's because when you see me go, Hey, this $3,000 guitar is pretty good. You're like, no s Sherlock, right? It's only interesting video if it's bad. In fact, just so you guys know, virally speaking, in videos, all of the high end guitars are done. They've only done banger numbers if they were bad. So like it's almost in my, it's almost in my own benefit if every big, if every expensive guitar does bad, it will do better. But anyways, and, and there's a couple of things that I think people are confused about. And then of course, we'll get into that too. But also I want to keep going down this road about the, what I kept hearing everywhere. Everywhere I heard from the independent dealers, they don't want to take Harley Benton's on trade. They don't want any Fireflies on trade. And I was like, Oh, that's weird. That's weird. You know, and they're mentioning that to me. So you know, they're mentioning because I've become like a poster child of cheap guitars like, ah, you, you made that video and everybody bought one. Look, a lot of people make videos about cheap guitar. But I get it. I get it. And, and that's kind of how they sought me out in these areas. They were like, Hey, I saw your video on this, you know, Hills guitar and now everybody has one. I saw your guitar on a ER guitar. Now everybody has one. And, you know, okay, I understand that. But when they were all saying they don't take them on trade, but then I heard something that really blew my mind. Somebody said something at a guitar center to me, an employee. And I was like, Oh, he probably doesn't know. I go, I just thought that. And then I went to another guitar center in a different state. And they said the same thing. And it was, they are not allowed to take a Firefly guitar on trade at guitar center. Now I know what you're probably thinking. Somebody right now, there's 800 of you. Somebody's going, I traded, I sold a guitar, a Firefly guitar center. Let me show you what's going on. And when you see it, you can't unsee it. Okay. So here is guitar centers use website. I pulled up Firefly for you guys to see. And I want to show you some guitars. Here they are Firefly guitars, you know, very good guitars, I think for the money. Like I said, if you're, if you're trying to scratch the edge of a, of a good guitar at an expensive price, this is a fun thing to do. Let me just show you these, these guitars are here. Here's a, essentially a John five copy, 450 bucks, 450 bucks, John five top two of them. One's in a Dunbarie, Connecticut. One's in Greenville, South Carolina. Okay, let's keep going. Oh, here's another one, $500. So usually how this works is either somebody valued it differently. Or if you notice, cause they have one that's not selling them, I start valuing the next trades lower. This one's $500. This one's in Augusta, Georgia. Okay. Now that's a second page. Let's go to the first page. Let's see if there's a, here's another one. This one's from, I don't know, not Monroville. If I'm saying it wrong, I apologize. Pennsylvania. And here's one from Greenwood, Indiana. Here's another one, 550 bucks. I would like to take you to the Firefly website where it is available right now brand new for $229.91 cents, that same guitar. You have to admit how bad you would feel if you went into Guitar Center and spent $500 and this guitar is $230. And the reason why this is becoming a problem, and I think Harley Benton is in the same boat, I think all of these cheap guitar companies are in the same boat. What happens is they sell us a guitar. It's pretty good, right? Harley Benton, pretty good, pretty good. I feel like it's a little dark in here. Pretty good, really cheap. And then we, they buy them all up and then they're out of stock. And then people start putting on reverb for more money. And I think what happens is, is Guitar Center is going on reverb because they usually use their internal data or they hit reverb, or they do have an AI for this too. And the AI is basically doing what AI does, it's scraping the internet. It's going out there and looking to see something. If you haven't tried it yet, it's kind of fun if you go into AI and say, hey, I want to sell these 10 things, tell me what all of them should sell for used in these conditions. It'll find it for you and give you suggestions. But back to what I'm saying, you know, they're scraping the internet going, yeah, this guitar is selling for, you know, $500 used and one sold in the history on reverb because somebody was really panting for it and they were out of stock at Firefly. But they don't understand is Firefly, like Harley Benton, like Hills, is doing small order batches constantly. They don't do big orders, right? They don't know when this trend's going to die. They don't know, they're always putting their feet in the water. Like, will somebody be interested in this color? Will somebody will be interested in this guitar? When this dies, they don't want to be sitting on a lot of inventory. Clearing out inventory is not something that's very effective for someone with a low margin, low price point guitar. It's not the fashion industry where, you know, they sell a $3 t-shirt for $30 and then when they get to the end of it, when the fashion ends, they blow them out, you know, for $2 a piece and then when they look at this, they net high. These guys can't afford to go and say, okay, well, blast these out a half off, right? You could say Firefly cannot sell a guitar for $115. It just can't do it. It's not even worth doing. So they really can't be sitting on a bad inventory. And so what happens is they bring them in small batches and it's been throwing this market. It's like almost like that market has become the quintessential stock market, right? It's the, oh, buy low, sell high, oh, do you sell your Firefly at the right time? Good for you. Oh, no, you got the Firefly. Now it's back in stock. Now it's worth nothing again. And they're not flipping, as you can see in the inventory. If you look at Guitar Center, this, in my opinion, sitting on way too many inexpensive Fireflies and Harley Bentons and guitars like this. And then on top of that, the craziest thing you can think of is, you know, these guys are getting so desperate for ideas. And I say these guys, I'm saying all these brands, all these off brands, you know, you name it, E-Art and Hills. And as you know, I'm a fan of most of these brands. And they're getting so desperate to copy guitars. They're running out of guitars to copy because the only thing that appeals to us musicians is us, guitar fanatics, buying guitar fanatics. Let's not call them musicians. Good, buying guitar fanatics is something new, right? It's got to be something new. It's got to be the guitar I don't have. It's a guitar I haven't seen that it's at this price. It's got to be exciting. They're not only copying high and guitar, they're copying each other. Like, like, uh, six seconds ago, I was talking about this, like, you know, Agafish made a guitar with a Harley Benton and then Firefly copied the Agafish model. And that's essentially, you have a company copying a cheap guitar because of, not because somebody can't afford the Harley Benton version, because again, the small batch runs. And you might start seeing this actually more of a trend. It's like, hey, look, this company put out a model, it sold out really fast. If we can get more of that model looking guitar in the market, we'll sell really fast. It's definitely creating an crazy market. And I think Harley Benton is getting smart enough. I think they're smart enough for two things. One, to say that it was a tariff problem, because that's just an easy blanket like, yeah, it's tariffs. And we all understand tariffs because everyone understands like, yep, it's affecting everybody. It's been crazy. And, but not actually address the bigger issue, which is it's, it's getting to the end of these cheap guitars. These guys are going to have, you know, there's only so many $200 stainless steel for a stretch you can sell, you know, and it's going to be, uh, there's an old saying and it says that basically when markets change, when the world changes, this is the way it was kind of presented. Uh, you know, when they had buggy whips, you know, horse and buggies, somebody made the whips and this is the joke. Uh, and, uh, and at the end of the horsey horse and buggy era when the auto industry was coming in, there was probably only one buggy whip company and it was probably the best buggy whip company there ever was. They probably made the best whips at the best price and they were the best. And they looked around and they probably, hopefully were smart enough to realize they should probably make steering wheel covers now, but instead they probably thought, wow, we are the best. And what they really didn't pay attention was they're the last of a dying market. And you don't want to be the best last of a dying market. It's not where you want to be. So my point is, is, uh, same with these guys there. It's, it's a tough market because it's kind of deflating. One of the things that was interesting, I saw some things on the interwebs, uh, a lot of people talking and there was some confusion and that ties into two things that we're going to tie this question into. Uh, uh, 60 cycle Steve sent a question to Amanda or at least Amanda pulled something he said. I don't know if it's specifically for me, but I want to talk about it and it ties into two things. One, this wasn't part of his question. So let me get this out first. When it comes to tariffs, uh, I have been working with, um, a dozen, at least a dozen, 12 guitar amp pedal brands in some capacity. And so let me just tell you what I've seen with how the tariffs have worked in this particular way. The tariffs are definitely confusing. They were all over the place. There's a lot of different chaos going on, but there is one thing that's been holding pretty much true, which is the tariffs are assigned to the menu country of manufacturer, not the country that this, this product is shipped from. So basically what I'm trying to say is, is that when Harley Benton ships a guitar from Germany to the U S, they don't pay the Germany tariff, whatever that is, they would pay whatever tariff the product was manufactured. So if the Harley Benton was made in Indonesia or China, they would be paying the Indonesia or China tariff. And that's important to understand. So here's a good example, a little, little way to understand this. If I, uh, in the U S, let's say there's a tariff, because there's a tariff in the U S on Canada. Okay. If I go on reverb right now and I find a Canadian dealer, uh, that's selling guitars and they sell, let's say a Nags or a Novo or a Fender American Strat. If I buy it and they ship that guitar from Canada dealer to the U S, I pay no tariffs because the product was made in the USA and there's no U S tariffs on U S. So that's how that would work. Okay. I don't want to get too confusing. Let's keep it easy. So that's why I basically want you to understand that's exactly how now I am not a tariff expert and I don't want you to think that I know something no one else knows, but I'm telling you what all the companies have said consistency. And what I like is when I talk to like, in this case, at least 12 different companies who don't know each other, who are operating totally independent of each other and yet they're all operating the same way and thinking the same way, then there's probably some, uh, some accuracy in that. So, so I just want to let you know, because I heard somebody loosely mentioned that, uh, hey, the United States is going to put tariffs on Germany for all the crazy reasons that everything's just happening every day. And, uh, I'm like, well, that wouldn't, shouldn't affect a Hartley Benton that's made in China, Indonesia, because the tariff would be assigned to that. So just to be clear, a perfect example of that is, is that, uh, if you guys watched last week's deep dive, I did the hollow body to carve top, uh, court guitar, or sorry, court made PRSE guitar and it's made in Indonesia, something that I'm in the, I'm in a gray area, what I can disclose and not disclose. As you know, I was there and I was privy to a bunch of information. Here's the, I believe this is the grayest area I can, I can, I can touch in for you guys, which is that guitar was going to be built in, uh, Dalian. Dalian is the, uh, core tech factory in China. So there is a court factory, there's one in China, one building. It makes acoustics and a hollow body guitars and only high end acoustics and high end hollow body guitars, high end, meaning, you know, between probably, let's say $700 to $2,000, $3,000. And they were going to make the new carved hollow body, uh, PRSEs. But at the last minute, uh, court and PRS came together and decided to make them in Indonesia. So they moved to Indonesia. They didn't move to Indonesia because I had to like, uh, like capacity or, uh, training or anything like that. If anything, it's a little burden because they had to get the, the Indonesian factory up to speed on these guitars. They did it because with the current tariff climate, it was probably going to be $18.99 like it is now, made in China. And I think their logic was, and this is where I'm saying, this is the gray area, they didn't tell me this. I'm just telling you what I think their logic was, is that although $1900 for an Indonesian guitar is a hard pill to swallow for most of the market, the guitar buying market, it's a lot easier pill than made in China because there is a, just like Japan and Korea, there's a little bit of like a, you know, uh, uh, you know, like, oh, Indonesia, the core tech Indonesian factory has a really respected, you know, uh, reputation. So therefore it, it might be easier for it to command a $1900 price, price point than the China factory. So like I said, there is adjustments out there and there's stuff going on. I thought I would talk about that. Uh, so that's what's going, that's my take on the Harley Benton. What's I take on it? My take is, is I think that there's more to meets the eye. That's funny. I'm making a transformer reference wearing a GIG Joe T-shirt. It's funny. Uh, I think it was more than meets the eye than that statement, just like with, uh, with, uh, you know, GNL statements and, uh, obviously Hoffner statements and even guitar center statements back in the past, which is the current market, is changing. And, uh, there's just not the newcomer market, the new beginner market that there was during COVID. And let's just say a lot of guitar players have had their bellies full of guitars, you know, uh, I think at first, I think one of the things that got me excited about inexpensive guitars and like a lot of you is there was so many things that could never afford or have for a long time when you all of a sudden can have it, whether you start making more money or just the price on it comes down to something reasonable, it was easy to go. Yeah, I'm going to get a bunch of those. So, uh, so yeah. Uh, so that's the, uh, that's my take on that. And that ties into Steve at 60s.com comment question that Amanda sent to me. Uh, and it was about the PRSSEs specifically, because I think they know, I know the answer and I do. Uh, the question was, uh, let's see on their podcast. Okay. So I, Steve didn't ask me the question. It looks like Amanda saw Steve talking about it and she thought maybe this would be a good topic for us. So thank you, Amanda. That's a good idea. Go out there and steal ideas from other channels. That's amazing. I love it. Just kidding. I love it. Okay. It says, uh, when court makes a PRSSE guitar, uh, or any brand guitar, uh, does it get shipped to PRS than the guitar center or directly guitar center? Okay. So here's how it works. So this actually is important to know because again, it ties into the tariff thing too. Um, PRSSE, let's just talk about them for a second because they're easy. You don't understand at Cortec. Every PRSSE that is made at Cortec, whether it's in Dalian in China or in PT court in Indonesia, that is, uh, that is going to be sold in North America, which is Mexico, United States and Canada is shipped to Maryland to, uh, PRSSE's Maryland factory. Every single one, no exceptions. They're all shipped there. Okay. What happens is the containers show up in Maryland and they inspect the containers. Now this is a little interesting thing about how, uh, I'm going to give you PRSSE and I'll give you how the other companies do it too. They do a spot check on the container. So they'll probably pull a sampling. Okay. So I don't know how many, uh, they don't tell me, uh, but they're pulling so many, maybe a dozen or half dozen guitars and they just make sure everything's fine. There's no issues again, checking for issues on in the container itself with the build quality. You name it. If everything's fine, then they okay the shipment, then it continues on its way to the Maryland facility, uh, factory where there's a team of people who set up and go through every single PRSSE and they're, and they do every single one. So if you get a bad PRSSE to understand that it not only was, uh, checked in Cortec, but China or Indonesia, it was then double checked and set up even a little better at the PRS factory. Now they do, uh, so once they're done doing that, they ship whatever guitars to Canada, whatever guitars in Mexico and whatever guitars US. If Canada necessarily has a tariff on the US, they don't have to pay that because the product isn't coming from the US. The product is coming from Indonesia. So if like, let's say Canada doesn't have a tariff on Indonesia, what I d and US does, Canada would not have to pay that tariff. However, what I don't know, and I actually asked, and they didn't know either, was I said, does, does the product come into the US and then it all get tariffed and then everybody's kind of eating that now. So does Canada and Mexico kind of have to eat a little bit of that USA tariff from coming from Indonesia and, uh, obviously logistically in a company, there's a lot of different roles and no one really had exact answer on that. So it's possible that Canada's paying and Mexico's paying a US tariff against Indonesia. This is why the displacement goes. But again, things can change because keep in mind, what I'm telling you is accurate up to August of last year. So you understand as these things are, this is a fluid situation. So PRS have made it adjusted. So you don't have to debt. What I will tell you though is, is that if, uh, is that that's Northern, uh, Northern America, uh, the guitars that are sent to China, believe it or not, China gets guitars from Indonesia, SE, uh, to Malaysia, to, uh, to Czech Republic. I'm trying to think of all the places where they shipped to. I saw India, um, you know, obviously Europe, all over Europe, Germany, uh, those guitars are sent straight there. And then usually what happens is either PRS in some cases has a facility that will then do all that checking of the guitars, or they have a distributor, which is set up to do that as well, because it's required by PRS that every guitar gets checked before it goes to a dealer. That's how they do it. There are other manufacturers. Okay. Um, GNL is gone now, but I can tell you, because, uh, the McLaren's told me this, the owners of GNL at the time told me exactly there, and I have the footage of it too. Um, they got their guitars from court and they went through every single one as well. And, uh, and then they had a reject pile. So they would have, you know, dozens of guitars that they say these don't come to, to snuff and these go back. Um, so that happens. Some manufacturers don't do that. So some manufacturers do what I said earlier, which is a spot check. So they may say if they got a 300 piece order, which is a smaller order, they might go, let's pull 30, 10%. And then what happens is if the 30 of a percentage of the 30, or all the 30 look great, they just go, okay, we're going to ship them. The dealer's life's great. If they get a certain percentage, let's say half those 30 are bad. They then pull a bigger sampling, maybe a hundred pieces or 200 pieces. Now they'll start pulling. And then same thing. If a percentage of that sampling is bad, then they just do the whole thing. They go through the whole thing. But a lot of manufacturers are not taking the extra time to go through each guitar. So I can tell you one's notorious. They known for it. Shector goes through almost every single guitar. Actually, Shector goes through every single guitar and Shector not only does that, but when they go through guitar and it's bad, they label it B stock and go on. I've told you guys this before, PRS actually has B stock as well, but instead of selling that directly because they don't get a whole lot of it because they got their scrutinized pretty heavy, um, their B stock, instead of selling it to stores for the most part, they send it to artists so that they go because the artists you're going to perform and play with the guitars. So they send it to influencers and artists. Sometimes I've received PRS B stock guitars and videos and people are like, they cherry pick you one. I'm like, no, they just use their B stocks. And then I got a, I just, that's why specifically, if you see me do an SE video and I'm not specifically saying something about something that happens in a lot of videos where I'm like, I sometimes think about, should I mention that this is a B stock or sample or something wrong with it or a prototype or should I mention it? You know, and I just don't know and maybe I'll do a better job at that. But because sometimes I'm not sure too and believe it or not, when you call them, it's not, they're not always eager to give you information. So, so, uh, to, to that Steve's, uh, uh, subject, uh, that's how PRS SE does it. And that's how the whole process does it. And, um, what I will tell you is, is that it's funny, like Schechter and PRS SE and a lot of companies, I know their process because they, I find this, the better a company does and the harder it works to make a great product for us, the more they want me to see it, the more they want to tell me, I have companies, when I talk about a company like I just did, like, you know, like PRS SE, I'll have companies reach out again, usually I say on Monday, but today's Monday, a couple of days later and they'll fill, we do this and this is how we do it. And they start sending me information. I've had manufacturers send me documents, like pictures of documents and text them, like, here's our documents, here's our stuff, because they want me to praise them like I've praised other companies. And I always appreciate that because for every company that does that, there's two or three companies that just not only won't show me or tell me, they don't want to talk about it. So it always tells me like, oh, I know how you're doing it. So, um, but, um, but anyways, that's, uh, that's the answer to all that stuff. Okay. I feel like I was going a mile a minute. I'm going to take a sip of water. I did get some sleep yesterday because it was a crazy weekend and I'll go into that. So let's, with that being said, let's do this. And now it's time for gear of the week. Gear of the week. Gear of the week is the NAMM show. We got to talk about the NAMM show, right? Um, and if I'm missing questions and subjects, I will promise I'll get to some, but it's going to be crazy. Let's do this. I did this fun thing. Uh, I went and I created a, a, go here. I created a list of stuff at the NAMM show. Uh, so I want to talk about some of my favorite stuff, some of the stuff that I thought was weird. Uh, and then my whole assessment of NAMM, which is not going to be a very positive thing. So, uh, I just warn you right now, the, well, the gear will, will excited about the NAMM. I'm not excited about. So we'll get into that. Let's talk about some of the new gear. A couple of new things. I thought Reverend came out with a bunch of new guitars that were really cool. This was the Reverend Roundhouse H90. I love this idea, a little hitting poly theft there. You know, I'm not saying he's the one that came with the idea, but obviously, hitting was the first one to start, should get, uh, you know, start talking about a humbucker and the bridge and a P90 neck and, and, uh, but it was great. Uh, and this is the copper. Look, this is like a film, midnight, hitting concept. Come together, do it in copper, put a humbucker and the P90 and, and, uh, and if it had purple knobs, it'd be the, the accumulation of that. We should get some credit for that. Maybe we get a royalty, but, uh, 1299, main Korea, I love Reverend. And so I love this idea of this guitar. Look really cool. Uh, metallic bronze is what they're calling it. Oh, that's kind of funny. You know why? My copper strat, my fender copper strat is actually bronze. So I think I've told the story. If I haven't told you the story, uh, uh, it was kind of funny. Jeff Kiesel had to deal with this problem with me. So I had a copper strat. I have it still. And, uh, it, uh, I had Fender make it for me and I said, Hey, I want a copper strat and they sent me this color sample and it was pink. It was like a pink, it looked like Bonnie pink. And I go, that's Bonnie pink. And they go, no, that's actually copper. Copper has pink in it. I'm like, no, copper is like brown, right? The, the, my state's Arizona. So the Arizona flag is like orange, blue and yellow. And then there's a copper star and the copper star is like brown. In fact, when I was a little kid, you, you know, you know, you, you know, in college, you know, in school, you, you, you colored your flag. I colored it with brown. That's how I remember it was brown. It was a brown and, uh, caught, Fender goes, no, it's not. It's, uh, it's actually like a pinkish color. So I had my copper straight, uh, strat, uh, done in bronze and then we called it copper. And, uh, and, uh, which, uh, Fender was okay with us doing that. And so when I showed it to Jeff Kiesel and I said, Hey, why don't you make me a copper Delos? Uh, he said, that looks like baby poop. He didn't say that, but his face said that. And that's why the copper penny metallic Kiesel is that orange, your kind of copper. He made it like a really nice copper penny. Like I was like, Oh, cool. So that's why they, so funny that they, uh, they did the same thing. They said bronze. So I just let you know I'm calling it copper because now my brain thinks that bronze is copper. All right. Uh, the Vella to S2 Vella came out with, uh, the, um, the tremolo. So they've added the tremolo to the S2, uh, PRS that was new. Now this is stuff, a lot of stuff. You're gonna go, we knew about this before this came out before the NAMM show. So I thought this was a cool move. You know, I always liked the Vella, uh, and they're, you know, the tele style bridges on it. I think the tremolo is a way to go. This is a beautiful way to get an offset, you know, kind of guitar from PRS. I think the Vella is one of the, the better, uh, you know, alternative vibe guitars. I thought this was cool. This was a new amp, uh, from Blackstar that I saw. This was the TV 10. So it's a 10 watt, uh, EL34 green, uh, amp fire and green. Pretty straightforward. It's got reverb, tone control, gain. It's like, you know what I love? I love it. It's like make a one, you know, one channel, do it all kind of amp, hit it, but also digital reverb. Come on guys. I tell everybody, just stick digital reverb, everything and then make a bypass switch if you don't want it. That was cool. NAMM show. I like that. By the way, these are all my highlights. I highlighted this all from the sweet water, what it could from sweet water. Uh, the, um, this was also really cool. The new Yamaha Pacifica tele style. Uh, and I loved the body contour. It kind of looked out really cool. This one's 2199. This was the main Japan one. So yeah, main Japan. And of course, I believe there's a more affordable version or if not, there will be one. So really cool. Um, and I thought they did a good job with this. Nice sampling of colors. You know, gotta do black, gotta do white. And of course, uh, I don't know what that is. That's like a really bad version of Butterscotch. I didn't see one in person. So that just looks not great. The sunny orange. Um, maybe it's just more orange, but it doesn't look, it doesn't, you know what? Maybe that's, maybe that's why I don't like it. Cause as a kid, we, we had Sunny D. Orange was too expensive. So we had Sunny D growing up. Uh, it's like, uh, eventually, um, eventually we graduated to, uh, concentrate. We could get it in, you know, in the frozen thing and we got orange juice concentrate. But as kids, uh, man, my mom loved to buy the Sunny D. And I always thought it tastes like milk and orange juice together. I hated it, but apparently I learned later it's cheap. So that's why we did it. And orange juice was expensive. Uh, so it reminds me of Sunny D. That finish. Uh, Jackson came out with a pro origins 1985, San Dimas in the bangle and a couple other colors. I also liked this, uh, Jackson pro plus soloist. Um, you know, uh, $1400 and $1900. I thought these were pretty cool. Uh, Roland cube street mini, uh, multi-instrument combo amp fire. I thought this was cool. 200 bucks. Uh, this one was actually, uh, sometimes I think that some of the small stuff gets through at the damn show. I thought this was pretty cool. Pretty straightforward, right? You got reverb echo. You can plug your microphone in it. You got reverb and delay for your guitar tone. You just go USB C, which is important and, um, for charging it. And it's actually thinner than a looksie. And it's a kind of get, get it and go for 200 bucks. I love stuff like this because, you know, I just don't love five, $600 things that are portable to me. Portable, you know, um, whether you're a musician or a content creator, whatever you're doing, everything that's portable is possibly still in or lost. So whatever makes that pain more acceptable to see a $200 item thing walk away, uh, sucks. But when stuff's like $6, $700, $1,000, it's just gut wrenching. Um, and, uh, and I'm sure a lot of you are like, it all hurts, but for me, it's like, well, I made $200. So I'm like, if I lost $200, I flat lined it and I'm not really happy. But when I lose a $1,000 item, I'm like, holy crap, I'm going to have to do 10 more things. Well, five more things to break even. And that just gets really sad. Um, there is two, I'm going to show you this one. There was two new processors besides, we'll get to the other one, uh, boss GX1 for 229. And then new X came out with a new modeling processor that does, um, not modeling, sorry, does profiling. So I thought that was really cool too. And I thought that was in the $500 range. And, um, what I was going to tell you was one of the videos, there's a lot of videos, and I'm sure you watched tons of them on YouTube. One of my favorite videos as Aaron Short Music did, uh, the video that I wish more channels would do. This is a good time segue into tirades. Let me go on a tirade for a second about your NAMM show. And it's tough, man. I always hate this because here's what it's tough. Half the people I'm talking about are my friends and I, and I love them. And then I think they're great people, but some of the content is just mind numbingly horrible. To me, the NAMM show is not a party. Although people say it is, it's not a, it's not a, you know, it's not the, the Grammy Awards. It's a trade show where you get to see cool gear and business happens there. But more importantly for the us, it's about seeing the stuff. We're going to, what's new? What am I going to, what am I going to want or how, you know, what is new exciting? And so Aaron Short Music did one of those great videos. I'll put a link to it where he just walked through the show. Like it's like, Hey, he came in early and he's like walking through the show and you can sit there. You can turn it off. You don't want to hear him talk. That's fine. I actually liked him talking to a couple of people, but turn it off and just watch the show that virtually you could just walk through the show and see. And that's all you really get to do when you're there. So you know, you get to virtually walk there and that's it. It's not like you get to go in there and have an intimate moment with a product. In fact, if you're like me, I used to try to pick up guitars and you couldn't get a sense of it because it's loud and chaotic, but now I don't touch that stuff because all that stuff has nantrax on it. That's how I look at everything. Everything is just poison. You sort of touch anything. Right? So, um, so walking through is what you do anyway. So a great video Aaron for doing that. And I love those kind of videos more so than some of the videos. I really appreciate the people who try to do a gear demo or highlight a booth and I was watching them and just either something sounds bad or the whole thing just feels awkward or really the sales guy that they leave in those booths. I think some companies, you got to stand in 2026 even, we got half the NAMM show putting really smart people in their booth. So if social media people come or dealers come, it's like, this person's engaging. Let's get the, they'll get them excited. And then the other half of the companies treat the NAMM booths like booby prizes like, Oh, Dave's the worst. He works the booth. And then I'm just picking on, sorry, no, no, I'll say Phil. Phil's the worst. And he's just sitting in the booth. And then they interview this person who's just a bump on the log who's regurgitating something that the company told him and it's just horrible. But that's still not the worst video. The worst video is the, Hey, look who I'm with videos. And I really appreciate that you might be excited. I'm excited to see my friends when I go to these events, but I just don't care that you, I don't care that you saw somebody you know, I don't care that you two are having a blast at the NAMM show. I really don't care. Other than, Hey, I like, you know, like said a lot of my friends, I'm happy you had fun, but I don't want my time stuck on that. I want somebody show me products. So Aaron, thank you for just sticking to walking through the, walk through the show. Right. Really great. And for those that also do that, because a lot of you guys did it too. And I didn't mention it. Like I said, you know, thank you for doing it as well. If I didn't mention you specifically, but for some reason, Aaron's came in my feed the first and that's where I kind of cleaned it. And I get, I learned more from walkthrough than I learned from anything else. Scope and scale. What I learned from Aaron's scope and scale was the show was much smaller this year, a lot smaller, less boost, smaller boost, smaller sampling is a product each booth. That doesn't necessarily mean bad. It just is like, it just lets you see, you know, hey, how's, how's everything going and what was important. And, you know, you might not know it for those that you haven't been going to the NAMM show for a long time. It used to be they brought everything their current lineup plus the new stuff. And now, and then it kind of got focused just the new lineup. And now it's just the top selling pieces in that new line for most companies. Very few are still doing the big Ivanist style booths and stuff. Okay, let's go back. Next, the next thing we had was the new synergy send 20 combo. So what's cool about this is, is it comes in multiple finishes. You can get it in tweed, or you can get it in this draft driftwood oxblood, or you can get it in blue snake skin or other snake skins or other materials. This is essentially the same as the synergy head. My only thing about this, I know someone's going to ask, am I going to get the combo? I am not going to get the combo. The reason I'm not going to get the combos, it doesn't have reverb. So to me, a combo, to me, the synergy combo magic would be that I wouldn't need anything else. So to me, like I could take and throw in a Marshall module or my, you know, Friedman, BEDLX deluxe have two, three great channels, go jam with some friends, go play some music and just be there's my clean with a little reverb and, you know, I can make it all happen. And this is great. However, you know, I have to bring some kind of pedals. And so to me, my brain is broken. Because to me, as soon as I'm like, well, just bring a reverb pedal, that's what you guys will say, we'll bring a reverb pedal. I'm like, I'll bring a reverb pedal. I'm going to bring a reverb pedal. I might as well bring a couple of pedals, like maybe a couple of overdrive, I might as well just bring a pedal board. And then at that point, once I bring a pedal board, I don't care about the amp anymore. The pedal is the pedal board is the real source of sound for me. So I could just bring a, you know, Supersonic 22 or any kind of a fan, anything, really, I could bring a katana and just shove pedals through it. So and I go down the road. But I really love that they did the combo. I think that a lot of people that are holding out for the CEN 20 head were hoping there was a combo and that and this shows that they're listening because I think this was a big, big deal. It has all the features. It's really cool. Like said, next version, I'd like to see reverb. That's all. Other than this, it's a great and like I said, when I say I'm not going to buy it, I already have the head I bought the head last year. If I didn't have the head, this is what I would go for 100% even with all the things I said, because but I'm not going to sell my head and lose $200, $300 on it and then buy this. It's just not, it's just not enough. It's not enough to make me go through the pain of that, right? The pain and suffering of that. And then that ties in a question I like it when we can segue correctly. This one came from Hello Cleveland 22. And he said, Hey, Phil, I want to understand what amps work for me, but getting Saldanos and Freedmen's and Dr. Z's and et cetera is a serious investment. Hell yeah, it is. This is how close can I get with synergy and don't sugarcoat it. Don't sugarcoat it. Okay. Here is my non sugarcoated opinion of the synergy CEN 20 head or maybe the CEN 50. Just synergy as whole, but we'll talk about the 20. It's the best fake amp you can get. I consider myself friends with the owner and knowing him, he probably doesn't find that a compliment. And so I'm kind of in my head going, dumb it. You know, I'm not going to say his name. It's going to say, Hey, I, you know, I love it. That's why I bought one. But synergy, what is it? It's the best copy you can get. Here's why the companies believe it's the best company, our best fake you can get. That's, I mean, Marshall put their name on a module. So this is to be very clear about the modules. Okay. The modules, I'm looking at them now. When we sell the Saldana module, when we see a Freedmen module, when you see a Dr. Z module, when you see a Tonking module, we see the Marshall module, when you see the diesel module, module, module, these are not like, you know, synergies just putting their names on this. And it's not a licensing deal in the way that it's like synergy just does what they want. And as long as somebody gets their royalty for putting their name on it. These are modules that were designed and co-designed with those amp builders that had to approve every single thing that's done. And those companies finally get to a point. In fact, I believe there was supposed to be, as I told you guys, there was supposed to be another module leaked out for NAMM. And it's not out. I'm pretty sure, I'm guessing I'm pretty sure the reason is, is because the manufacturer they're working with still hasn't approved it. So when that Marshall module comes out in the synergy, I just want you to know Marshall approved that. Mike Saldano approved the Saldano module. He said, yes, that's right. Let's go with it. Now, does he think it sounds exactly like his amp? Does Marshall think it sounds like exactly like the amp? Probably not. But it's enough for them to say, you know what, our names on this, and we're good with this. And a little fun fact for you, not only does synergy get the permission and work with the companies that they put those names on, that's why technically there's the vendors are called the B-man and the Tweed and stuff, because they don't have a relationship or they have not synergized with Fender yet. Maybe they will soon. You never know. There's a bunch of companies we'd like to see. They have to make then like their best version and, you know, of course, then dance around the whole naming structure because they don't have the rights to say the name or they use the company's branding. But another little fun fact about synergy is really cool is one of the mandates synergy puts back on them. So in other words, not only these companies have to approve what synergy does to make the best fake amp there is in the market, synergy requires them to all hold the line on the pricing. So if you notice the Saldano modules, the same price of the Friedman is the same price as the Marshall and the same price as Dr. Z. But if math wise, if you go out there and look, those are amps are vastly priced differently. But it's because synergy wants everyone to have access to all of these brands at the same price. They don't want you to go, oh, I'm going to buy the synergy module that's synergy branded over the Marshall because I'm not going to pay the extra hundred bucks to the Marshall. So that's a real requirement. Now, when there is a module that's more than the 399, it's because it actually has more costs, maybe an extra two or other components, but otherwise, they hold the line on that. So a little fun fact for you there. I don't know if that's out there. It's probably out there, but a little fun fact. I always thought that was cool, man. I thought that was cool because you can imagine. I don't know for a fact because I'm not privy to it, but I would imagine Fender and those guys really are Fender, Marshall and Saldano and stuff. They would love, you know, Friad, they would love for their stuff, Friedman, they would love for their stuff to be a little bit more premium over the next guy. And I think the reason they hold, the synergy who makes that policy is because they don't want that, you know, it's like, think about this, their synergy is essentially making a show with all these high bands, right? These high tier bands, and they don't want to play the who's headlining and who's opening crap, right? It's like, everyone's the same. You're all going on stage. You're all getting the same show. You're all the same. So same pricing. So I think it's smart. So, so that's my, what did you ask me to do? Would you say don't sugarcoat it? That's my unsugarcoated thing on the synergy. So yes. And here's the deal. If you have the money for the real amps, they're better. If you have the space for the real amps, they're better. But the whole point is synergy is a compromise from day one. You're compromising because you don't have space or money. And the question you're asking, really, you're asking me is, how close is the compromise? I believe it's close. I believe it's the closest you can get and still get and get those companies to sign off on it. Okay, speaking of other amp companies, Orange OR 60 V 360 watt amp far head by Orange. I thought that was pretty cool. $2,500. I'm assuming this is made in England because it's 2,500 bucks. But when you go, you can't really see. And somebody was asking me, like, how was it, you know, like, because they say I mentioned it a lot on the show, and how important is it to be where it's made? And I said, it's not so much as important to the quality. I think you can make quality anywhere in the world. I think that just as the world understands economics, I live in the United States, different states have different economics. It's more expensive to do something in California than Arizona and it's more expensive to do something in Arizona than Indiana. That's just the reality of life, whether you like it or not. Let's just use a house, for example. It's how same house in California cost more in Arizona, the same house in Arizona cost more in Indiana. I know that for a fact, because I looked at them. So, so that's my point. And when we look at manufacturing, we look at sometimes not so much the hierarchy of quality. But hey, when we see a price tag, we're like, Oh, that kind of checks, you know, what you don't want to see is, you don't want to see a $10 million, what I'm trying to say. I don't want to see a house in Indiana that costs twice as much as California. It doesn't seem to make sense, right, based on the market. So anyways, okay, so that was cool. Anyone excited? Let me go back to you guys. Okay, since I'm going through this so fast. Anyone? And also, if any, I asked you guys earlier, any cool products? Oh, okay. Our name music. Thank you. It says it made in England. Yeah, I just assumed at that price point. So that's awesome. I would say, as someone who's never really had an orange amp, this is probably on my, you know, I'd like to get into this amp kind of thing. I looked really cool. I don't know if I need a rocker verb. And, and I think one of the cool appeals to it, let me go back to the back. Oh, see, I thought I had IRs. I thought they had upgraded to IRs and stuff. That would be really cool, but it doesn't have that. Maybe there'll be an orange synergy and I'll solve all my problems. Okay, next, we're getting to some of my faves here. Okay, the next big one. Okay, so obviously the Ed Sheeran, you guys saw, I leaked it. And a lot of people were like, hey, Phil, my favorite comments on that video were, hey, Phil, it literally says Ed Sheeran on the trust rod cover. If you guys didn't catch it, I was sworn to secrecy. So I, they didn't, they told me, it's like you have an embargo date. I was told there's an embargo date and then Ed Sheeran went out there and showed it. And then I'm like, well, I don't want to not talk about it because it's obviously looking at it, you know, you'd have to be dumb. You guys saw it too. But I was also under a, you know, obviously an embargo on that because I saw the, in fact, so you guys know, here, let me do this, share it with you guys. Ed Sheeran, when he played his, I got to check his out. The, where's it at? His prototype. So I actually checked out his prototype before he did. So, so if Ed Sheeran ever watches the channel, because you know, you never know, if there's a Nick in the right hand corner, Ed, that was me. I'm just kidding. Oh, that's funny. Do I not have it now? I was going to pull it up for you guys. And I think I, I don't have them. I apologize. I thought I had all the pictures of the, of the prototype Ed Sheeran model and now I don't see them. So I must have cleared out my cache a, when I went on the trip, so I'd have more room in the phone. I apologize. Yeah, I'm just double checking to make sure. I don't have it, but I will show you guys next week then. The, they had to get a special machine, special. They had to get a machine. It wasn't special. Cortech and Pierce had to invest in the machine that puts this as a vinyl applique. So they put this underneath the finish. So this is a, essentially a, like a, like wrapping a car, it's wrapped and then it's, and then, but it looks fantastic in person. That's why I want to show you the pictures stuff. So this is a baritone hollow body. For those that are like, I hate Ed Sheeran or whatever, fine, but just understand this is a baritone, hella body. A lot of people are very excited about this. One of the things that's cool about artists and what people sometimes don't realize about artists, any artist doesn't matter who you are, is artists can get companies to do things that we ask them to do all the time. And, you know, they don't know, you know, they don't know you from Ed Sheeran. So they're like, you know, if you go, Hey, if you made a baritone hollow body, everybody buy one, you're like, whatever. But when Ed Sheeran says, Hey, I think everybody will buy one. They go, well, I don't know if everyone's going to buy one, but I'm pretty sure he can sell one. So, uh, if you ever wanted, I've had two viewers, Rich out and sad, I always wanted a baritone hollow body, which I thought was, well, you and Ed Sheeran. So now there's one. And of course, I think the graphic was great. Okay. The big upset of the damn show, of course, the thing that got everybody's attention was the new neural DSP, Quatex, Quad, Quortex mini modeling effects processor. Um, this thing made me laugh because I have a friend who, who once said this thing that he said, all technology eventually evolves into an iPad. And he says, like, think about when you go everywhere you go, everything you go to eventually is just an iPad. Right? I'm like, I'm like, yes. So when I saw this, I go, Oh my God, it's an iPad. It's not, it's a thicker unit, but you understand, it's all screen. I really appreciated Ola England's video. If you didn't see it where he stepped on the hell, he stepped on it to show that he couldn't break it. One of the things I didn't like about the Quad Cortex was guys like Rabir and stuff, they always bought these plexiglass covers for them. And I thought, oh, I gotta worry about that. So I gotta buy it and then I gotta get this cover for it. This is something I'm excited about. I have no, I have no idea if I want this or need this. But I think if I was to go down the Quad Cortex route, this is something I find I can use because it's smaller. It seems really cool. And I think, I think, you know, everybody in every market, somebody starts dominating it. And Quad Cortex, I think is the first one to kind of like the, you know, the first horse in the race, it's literally starting to stick its head past everybody else. I kind of think they've outdone what Line Six has done. I think they really kind of starting to outdo with AxeFX and definitely what Kemper's done. And for those of you who are fans of those other items, I'm not saying like it's better. I'm just saying by marketing, by design, by implementation, I think they're just becoming the front runner of that. $1400 a lot of money. But here's the thing about this. $1400 is what you were paying for some Line Six product, you know, like the Stadium, you know, Line Six at that price point. I'm 14, for the many QuadTex for me, Cortex for me, I'm more interested at $1400 for that than I am for $2,000 for a Line Six product. Another launch that was pretty cool was Eastman guitars did the Fuller Tone Offset 62. A lot of offsets this year. So I saw that. So obviously update on the offset of the of the of the PRSS2. And then of course this a little bit more of an offset, a little crazy. Got that Novo thing going. Pretty cool. As you guys know, I've reviewed one of the Fuller Tens and that guitar was pretty dang great. So $999. These are main China, but they're made and as you know, is a much higher standard than than most guitars, period, much less guitars made in China. And then that kind of segues to this. And I'll talk about Kiesel Connect after this. But right now I want to talk about I thought the most exciting thing at Kiesel Connect, but also Kiesel was the new Mark 66 guitar. This is if you guys don't know Mark Kiesel, that's Jeff Kiesel's father. Mark Kiesel, you'll be seeing it. You'll have to see it on the second channel. I'll put a link to it. I did a hung out with Jeff and Mark and we did a kind of I want to say an interview, but it was a discussion on a stage in front of everybody. And I got to tell you, it's been killing me for years, knowing some stuff that I just couldn't share with you guys. And to watch Jeff and Mark finally talk about some things that I was like, Yes, please get that out there. You know, the fact is is that whether you know it or not, it's it was said by them. I've so I know it to be true in the industry. This man right here, this Mark Kiesel right here, he saved carbon in the 70s. He saved carbon guitars. It was going away, whether you're not the other, you know, carbon as a company was going to shelve the brand and be done with it and Mark saved it. And then whether you know it or not, Jeff Kiesel and his dad saved it again in 2015 with Kiesel guitars. So a lot of people have a lot of, you know, of a, a lot of people just believe things because it makes sense when you look at it. They're like, Oh, they offshoot from carbon. And this is what they did. And the reality was this, there's two times in carbon's history, 80 years, carbon's been around. They started actually right before Fender and the 80 years of carbon's existence, two times the guitar division was going to be chopped and killed. The first time was in 1970 when Mark Kiesel said, You know what, I'll run it. And they gave it to him because it was failing. And they said, Go ahead, just run it because it's failing. Who cares? And he saved it and he turned it into the carbon that we all know and love. And in 2014, essentially that happened again, where carbon guitars said, Yeah, we think we're going to kill the guitar division. And Jeff and his dad said again, No, no, well, then we'll offshoot from it and we'll keep it alive. And it was really nice to see them talk about that. I really highly, highly recommend you watch that interview. But more importantly, it was great to see that, you know, sometimes a lot of you, when you're watching Jeff's designs, you know, they're a little more modern, you know, obviously, you know, just a little bit more modern and some of us players, you know, like the modern, but some of us also like to have something more retro design. This came out great. I got to play. So, you know, I played this one, I played this one, I played, I showed this one at the factory toward everybody. And then there's another one that's not here in this picture that was really amazing. And it was fantastic. And like I said, we're not doing the Kiesel Connect yet, but I just wanted to talk about this guitar. This guitar has a street price of $16.99. This is what I thought would be interesting to share with you guys, because Kiesel is a little hard to figure out because they're pricing because, you know, it's a custom design. So what I want to show you is, is that this, if I was to make my own, can you see that? Here we can. Let me see. Try to make it to where you can see it. If I was to make my own Mark 66, this is what I would make it look like. So there's guys know. So Cream P90s, you know, vintage look, that's, I love that. That's the way I would go. And I did this on purpose. I built it out on their builder and the price came out to $2,249. If you go that, like I said, has a basis, $16.99. So $2,200, that puts it in the vain pricing of, so you know, of the PRSS to lineup. So, so like the Vella. So this is really a good competition for Vella, because it's, you can get a comparably equipped Kiesel Mark 66 for the same prices as to Vella. So, so, but just I, I'd share that. All right. We're still talking about NAMM. Let's get through this stuff. And next we have the Reverend King Bolt air 390. I thought this was great. I don't know what it is. I got a thing now for like three P90s in a row. Ever since I played that Reverend at Sweetwater, and I decided that was the best guitar for about a thousand bucks. I was like, this is killing me. I love this stuff. Wilkes and Tremolo. I think you're going to see a lot more Reverend on the channel this year. I should guys know they're another brand that we just don't work with on the channel so that they don't send stuff. So we just buy them and put them on the channel. And I've bought a few in the past and put them on the channel. I'll be buying some more this year because I think they need to get under our radar. The other big thing was I was in shock. Why? Not because Dose and Abasi did a collab with Cordoba because now, so now he's got Abasi and of course then Music Man and now Cordoba. I was shocked Cordoba was still around. I thought we had just discussed and I think I remember us just recently discussing the fact that Cordoba got shelved. There's something, but here it is. So they made a Tose and Abasi Cordoba guitar. And this is probably, in my opinion, to piggyback on the huge success of the Tim Henson Ivan S classical style guitars. These players, I think it makes sense. These players, the Tose and Abasi, the Tim Henson stuff, that slappy-tappy, go crazy, technical prowess, amazing virtuoso stuff that we watch. I actually, it appeals to me more when it's on a classical style guitar. They were already kind of playing them clean. So it was always like slapping and playing on clean. I don't know if I told you guys this story, but when I interviewed Tim Henson and Scott from Polypia in Germany, one of the things that blew me away was they played, let's see if I show this picture. Here's the picture of us from the event. Oops, I don't know why I'm just doing it. I should just screen share with you guys. But they played everything clean. And it was really crazy to watch because they play clean and then they ran, after they played the entire song, they ran that through Axe of X, like re-empt it with distortions and stuff. So they just prefer clean. So it makes sense that they're playing clean. So I think that was cool. Somebody said, slappy-tappy. It's slappy-tappy. I like the Ned Flanders, the 80s guys are diddly-diddly-diddly-dos. So I'll diddly-diddly-diddly-diddly-doo, and then the new guys are slappy-tappy. I feel dumb making fun of them because they could all outplay me 10,000 times over, but I'm not really making fun of it. I'm just trying to illustrate it verbally. So I thought this was cool. $1,500 bucks. It's different. It's unique. This is one of those things you guys would have to tell me if you think this is something worth doing a deep dive on. I'm up for anything I'm showing you guys. The reason why I'm showing this stuff, and some of you are going to go, well, you missed this, you missed that. I'm not showing you my favorite stuff. I'm showing you stuff that I would be interested in getting on the channel. So if you guys let me know in the comments, like definitely do that. Here's another thing that came out. So MXR released the red channel version of the Blue Channel, MXR. They call it the Modern High Gain. They kind of, they caught the high gain distortion pedal, but obviously it's, everybody kind of figured out it's the, it's the red channel off the amp. So I thought this was pretty cool. As someone who really likes the EVH current pedal, I was a little bummed, you know, for the branding. Why not put the stripes, you know, but maybe because they, because maybe because the phasers red with stripes, they didn't want to do that. I just thought this looked a little, you know, blah, but then maybe that's what happens when Eddie's not around. He has no input in it, so they just did it and then there's nobody to go, Hey, yeah, we need to make this look a little bit more exciting. And then for fun, I thought this was funny. I'm not sure this according to Sweetwater, I put this all on a, what do you call it, a wish list. According to Sweetwater, if I buy all this gear, it's going to cost $23,842. For those that were curious, how much does all that new gear cost you? That's what it would cost you. So I thought that was pretty cool. Some other things to share that I thought was cool was MusicMan has done a 30th anniversary access, so they've reissued the access. Everybody saw a lot of comments. I agree 100% on them. You're going to reissue it 30 years. Just come on, man, put that switch back there where it goes right there. I have one as you know, it's behind me. It's over there, right? And it has the switch in the wrong spot. And it's like, I would, I would love it to be in the original spot. And maybe they can't do it. Maybe it's a design trademark thing. I don't know what it is, or maybe they just don't want to piss off the EVH family. I don't know what the deal is, but I would like to move. But I love that they did the original colors again. So for those, these are hella expensive, $3,600, I believe, is the street price. But before any of you get your panties in a wad, I got to tell you, if you want to get one of those, not even the original ones, those are off the charts expensive. But again, these aren't the original clones. They're like the clone of these. These are still pulling in good condition in those colors. And access can pull good money, a used one. So, you know, at least you're buying a new one and you're paying a little bit more, but you're not necessarily, you know, and I don't know why, but I skipped this. I apologize. They came out with the EVH Stripe Frankenstein Frankie Relic. Two things. I don't know why I missed this. One, why did I think this already existed? Is it because it existed as a relic, but not in this fashion, like the original Frankenstein? So it's the Frankenstein yellow stripes? But the other thing is, is it me or did I not remember these being 20, almost, well, that one's $2,099. So that's what first of all, I thought these were $18. So they're $2,100. But so they're yellow ones more? Why? Why is the yellow one more? You know what Fender does that drives me nuts? Like if there's two things that Fender does as a Fender fan that drive me nuts, first, any excuse to pass a price increase. Like, like if tomorrow they mention there might be a 1% addition tariff and Fender will have that price by tomorrow morning, they'll have it up. They just pass the prices, whatever, whatever price they're gonna pass it. But the other thing is, they can add, they'll add to a price for no logical reason. There is no logical reason. If you watch, I have, I have video footage of them making these guitars in Mexico. And let me tell you, this version takes more work than this version. This is, because they do this in reverse. So you know, they don't paint this red, and then they paint the stripes on. They had the reds last. In fact, it's, I'll show you just in case you see it. See where I'm hovering my, let's do this. Let's see my mouse. See where I got my mouse right now? Right here? If that, if you look at it right, it stops looking like red. It looks like a red, see a red shape just floating on the finish. That's because if you, if you see them do it, that's how they're doing it. They stencil paint this in layers. So like the first layer is like, I think white, then they stencil on the black, then they stencil on the red. And so it's, it's more work when you watch them do it than the yellow. So now they're charging more for the yellow than for the red. And you're like, and, but no reason why. And also while I'm talking to you guys, I'm also looking to see, because I didn't think to share that because I didn't know it was going to come up. Let me do this. I'm looking, I will, again, I'll make notes for next week to share some stuff with you. I will share the footage I have of them painting the red guitars. Little fun thing. Now, like I said, sometimes I'm begging on Fender, but as you know, I'm a huge Fender fan. Fender did something cool for me when it came to these guitars. I did a five things you don't know about the EVH tribe guitars. And when I do those five things videos, they're vetted very hard. Like I've never put out one that I didn't vet with the company that it's about in every way. Like, hey, I reached out to them, I go, this is the video. This is any of this incorrect, you know, I wanted this. And at the time EVH was putting graphics, they said graphic, they said EVH graphic on the guitars. And I said, are these painted or these a graphic decal or these wrapped? And they said they're painted. And I said, I need proof. And Fender did this cool thing. They had an employee in Mexico take their cell phone and film it and send it and text it to me in real time. They just texted to me right then. And I had, so that's how I have the footage. And I'll show it to you guys because it's really funny. And because I told them, I told Fender, I go, I'm not going to release this video if you don't prove to me that they're painted. I go, because I don't like the word graphic. I go, why does your website say graphic? Why doesn't it say paint? And they go, well, because it's the Eddie Van Halen graphic. I go, yeah, but when we say graphic, we usually mean decal, not paint. It doesn't say custom paint. It says custom graphic. So, so I give them credit for that. That was really cool that they did that. Okay. And by the way, right now, right about now, Brian says tariff yellow paint. Yeah, this, I don't want to do this, but the joke is just too, it's low hanging fruit. You mean tariff orange paint? Okay. So I'm done. That's the only joke I'm going to make just because I couldn't help it. Game on my head. And I said it, please don't, no one dog pile on that. Let's just let it go. It was my bad dad joke to give. And that's the end of that. So, as soon as this field is connected, you know what, you know what? I wish I was connected that way to get stuff done, but at least they did that for me, which was nice. And then what else? So right now is a perfect time you guys put what are the things you saw at the NAMM show that were really exciting. The other thing I thought was exciting was the new Magnetone amps. Amps, Magnetone, Magnetone, specifically the big, the big hitter was they came out with a new slash little Viper amp. See the amp. Lil, Lil Viper, Lil, Lil Viper. This is a 180 inch speaker amp. I'm excited, but you, but before you get excited, well, don't because when you hit the price tag, this is $1800. So this is a hand wired main USA, little practice amp that Slash wanted. And, you know, these rock stars, they live in a world where like, here's how a picture it goes. And as a huge, massive slash fan and massive Magnetone fans. So you understand when I say this is with love, but it's like, I could just see Slash calling him up, you know, right. I just can see, I can just see him calling Granville going, Hey man, I need a practice amp on the bus. And he's like, Okay, he's like, Yeah, use a Katana. He's like, Yeah, I'm not doing that. I just need a little, I need a little eight inch speaker, eight watt version of my half stack. Okay. But if we did that, it'd be like two grand. That's fine. Anyways, fantastic. They really said only comes in a combo doesn't come in ahead. I'm excited about that. But that's not the big thing that I was excited about. The big one was the Kingston. So a little fun, fun thing is the Kingston is a big deal. This Kingston is their version of a Princeton. And they're saying, Hey, it's so good. It's a Kingston. This has digital reverb in it. So I'm interested about that. I think that's a good move. But why I'm really, really loving it is I love the Panoramic Stereo amp. When I have friends over, which is not very often, but actually last week, right before I went to California, I had a dinner party and I had some friends over and, you know, the Amphi nation, you know, synergy, you know, freedmen's, I'll show them some amps, you know, but the amp that always steals the show, the amp that literally sucks the breath out of someone's chest is the Magnitone Panoramic Stereo. Everyone who plugs in that strums one chord, even if they like death metal and they go, Oh my God, that's the most beautiful thing ever I've ever heard. And I go, Yeah, and it's so expensive. And all magnetones expensive, but super expensive. And the reason expensive is essentially it's two Princeton's. It's two independent 12 watt power amps with two 10 inch speakers and it has reverb and tremolo and it runs like two. And so, so the point, I'm not going to tell you the price. I'm going to tell you what you imagine what two hand wired Fender Princeton's cost and an AB box. And that's what that cost. It costs about the same to get that. And it's amazing. So what I'm hoping is this is essentially half of the Panoramic Stereo. That's what I'm hoping it's going to end. So it's going to be expensive, but it's going to be a little bit more obtainable. It's going to be out of the, but, but I'm just excited about that. This is a good time to drink water. Ah, cactus peak. That's best dad joke. He said, go, so it's a Prince twin. Yes, it is. What ha, I don't want to read the story because I have a, I have that panoramic, panoramic amp video coming out and it's going to, it's a funny story. It's fun. It's a fun story. So let's see. Oh yeah. So somebody's bringing up free, freeman. I forgot about freeman freeman came out with the new Felix amp. You know what's weird is, is some companies like sweetwater and guitar center and anitins, they had like the Nams, so stuff, which is what I did with sweetwater, but then certain stuff, even if they carry it, there was no discussion of it. So freeman amps came out with essentially a couple of things. The first thing they came out with was the new Phil X head, the mini head. And is it on their website? Dude, you guys suck. Just put it on your website. That's it. You guys get to put it on your website now, because now I got to go search and find it. So the new Phil X ad head is going to be like, like the jakey lee. It's like, it's just a smaller version of his bigger head, I think, or maybe it's a little voice different. I don't know. Felix freeman 20. Come on. Just images. Someone, someone have a picture of it? No, that's all the 100 watt head. Here's one. We'll just steal this one. Okay. Premier guitar. And it's, oh, maybe there it is. I can't. It won't let me. So there's no real pictures of it that I didn't grab because everything was just a picture of the name. It's all about the, oh, here's one. See, somebody leaked a picture. I was going to say somebody's got to have a picture of it out there. This is audio fanzine. So thank you audio fanzine. Everyone want to check out that website. This is it. So this is a 20 watt head, two channels. It's the philx. So he got his own signature amp in the 20 watt raid, the PX 20. So signature philx philx head. I would imagine it's good. As you know, I'm a freeman fan. So I think all freeman stuff would be good. They also came out with the freeman machine learning power amp. I gotta tell you, it's really cool and hard to understand. I don't even want to go down that road. I feel like Michael Nilsson either did or I think he did a video. I think I watched Michael Nilsson's video and I still, I loved it, but I'm still like, I'm slightly confused by it. Like I get it, but then I'm also like, how do I use this? It's, that's what it is. I understand the concept. I'm like, how, but how do I use it? And so I really love the idea. I think it's amazing, but I'm not really fully understand how I would implement my rig. Another cool thing came out was Wampler's new power amp, essentially kind of competing with Seymour Duncan's pedal power amp. So it's a pedal power amp. That was really cool, but it's ultra light and it puts out a lot of power. 67 goat said, hey, I'm holding out for the Benson 880 watt head. You know, the thing about the Benson 800 watt, 880 watt head, it was, and again, maybe I'm just sticking them on and I'm okay with that. You know, I'm okay with being boring and lame. I told you, I feel like a lot of the content that a lot of the influencer, there, cause there's definitely gear channels and then influencer channels and they both run around the NAMM show. So like there was influencer channels running around and they were like, let's find all the speakers that look like buttholes. And I was like, you know, I'm sure this is fun and great. And I know I'm like old and lame now, but if I was 20, I would still be like, I don't give a shit about that. Like I just don't care that you can find buttholes at the NAMM show. Like I'm, I'm too into gear. Like this is too, you know, right? I'm like not into, I don't need jokes. I don't need stuff. So again, no, no, no issue with that. I'm glad they had fun. And to be honest with you, it's content. So I can, I watch a few seconds of it and I go, okay, this isn't really what I'm interested in. And then there was like guitar sex toys. I'm not making this up. And then the Benson 880 watt amp and I'm like, and I feel like a lot of companies and I mean a lot more than usual, we're making stuff or presenting stuff that was just a shock factor as to go, oh, wow, what is this? And then it'll get clicks. And I'm not really excited about a world where the product, the guitar products that I'm interested in are more interested in just like, this will get viral clicks. I'm like, you know, as a content gear channel, I'm trying to get views too, but I'm trying to get views on a certain thing that an audience has an interest in. And otherwise, I would just make, you know, sensationalize like, I don't know, you know, this amp gives you cancer, you know, whatever, you know, come up with some craziness. So I didn't really enjoy some of that stuff is what I'm trying to say. And not so much because I didn't understand it or like it. I just kind of, you can smell the future. You're like, this is what the NAMM show will turn into. And just so you understand, this is my negative take, I told you it'd be a negative take on the NAMM show. They asked me to come and interview the CEO of NAMM. And I just thought about it. And it was really, it was really hard for me. I processed it and processed it. And I just really come to conclusion that NAMM isn't for me. You know, you know, here we are, it was an accumulation, you know, a culmination of all these products. And that's great. But I feel like all this stuff, half the stuff I showed you was leaked either before the NAMM or shown outside of the NAMM. So you didn't really need the NAMM. And we could talk about it now. I didn't have to go. I didn't have to get sick. I didn't have to listen to loud music. I didn't have to do all stuff. Richard Nugga, Mr. Stu. 582 said, did you see the Dweezel Zappa shark guitars video? I saw, obviously it's got a viral video. So I saw the thumbnail. I knew what it was. Shark guitars had reached out to me probably two, three months ago, maybe four months ago, about doing a video for Shark. And I let them know I was interested. And we've been having discussion. I want to be 100%. This is usually the opposite of what you hear me say. I always go, oh, and this company blew me off or this company's not talking to me. It's the opposite. I've been really dragging with them because I just, I'm just like everybody. I'm like looking at it going, I don't, at first, my first instinct is kind of what Dweezel did. I think is like, oh, this is content and is we shocking. And we can talk about this craziness. But I did a lot of research on it. And I think there's so much innovation in the guitar and their factory, by the way, footage of their factory online is next level. I'm, you know, as you guys know, I'm been to so many factors. I can't say I've seen a factory more high tech than their factory. It's pretty intense. But I'm also apprehensive of guitars that are, you know, three to $5,000 that are strange like that. Cause it's like, okay, you know, is that, you know, it's, it's, but it's, it's something up my alley. So I'm still talking to them. I plan to keep talking to them. I'm trying to work out, you know, how to get the video out and do a video, a deep dive of it, take it apart, take a look at it. I'm really interested in the concept of it. It's, to me, it's in the vein of like true temperament frats, or, you know, the Evertoon system, or, you know, the Endurant Endurant by Stramberg. This is a, you know, so many crazy things happening in a guitar. And I think that even though it's not going to be a mass thing, you know, not every guitar player is going to want it or need it or understand it. I think there's a small group of players out there that are like always looking for the next thing that can be innovative and unique. So I think there's a coolness there. Okay, let's do, let's refresh this. Okay. So Jonathan says, Hey, have you ever, I'm going to pour water and do this. This is, today my water comes from a, I bought a bunch of these when I was on the trip and we had some come back. So I, so just let you know, because it's cold. It's good. All right, let's try this again. Jonathan says, Have you ever upgraded to the point, to a point and back step because the cheaper option was just good enough. I just sold a Mesa Filmwork 25 for a blues deluxe. Yes, absolutely. So I, Jonathan, that's a perfect way to explain it better than the way I've done in the past. So I have definitely, and I get to blame the YouTube channel a little bit, which is great, but some of it is internal. It's me. So I should be, you know, I accountable to myself, but I have upgraded and upgraded up amps, pedals and guitars to insanity. Okay. To the point where I'm buying gear in a tier upper tier echelon that is in the, the 1% of gear buying public. It's not the crazy vintage stuff yet, but it's in the highest points. And, and I will tell you, I would do that and well, because I'm a guitar freak, but also because I was like, I want to know how does this compare, you know, how does it work? You know, and, and so when somebody asked me on Friday, like, Hey, is this amp much better? I can say, Yeah, it's great, but also. And so yeah, I've definitely upgraded out of, at a point to, or shouldn't say out of, to a point where, like I said, five steps back was fine. And where I'm at now, still to this day is all my favorite personal guitars are half the price of most of the high end guitars. And amps though, some of my favorite amps are super expensive. So, but that being said, that being said, I will tell you that the, like I told you the Magnetone amp that I show my friends is mind blowing, good. The Amphi Nation mind blowingly good, super expensive. You know, it's got a little bit of a power factor, but I'm still plugging into a Fender Princeton and I'm still plugging into, you know, a Fender 65 Deluxe reverb. I'm still still plugging into stuff that is not inexpensive in today's standards, but still not the crazy price of this stuff. And I still like the hot rod deluxe, still an amp that I still like. So yeah, Gerald says, Hey, sound bite, pretty good, like bird for gear reviews. Like, okay, pretty good. Yes. I'm with you. Jedi Sparky says, Hey, I got a, a, a Freedman BE mini on blowout. Can't figure out, can't figure a good cabinet for bedroom players suggest that I don't cost 10x more than the mini. Definitely when buying a cabinet, this was a conversation we had at the Kiesel Kinect with a lot of people. So Jedi Sparky, dude, go local, go to guitar at the local, at the Guitar Center in Phoenix right now, there is a 112 Aignator amp for 150 bucks. It's a fantastic cabinet. I say amp, I meant cabinet. So 112 cabinet, deep ported cabinet sounds great as good as close as any Mesa Boogie cabinet. I'm not going to say it's good or better, but it's really close and quality for what it does. And for 150 bucks, you can't go wrong. You got to, for you, for guitar cabinets, you got to buy them on Craigslist or offer up, find local, find people who don't want to pay to ship them, who don't want the headache and know they're going to take a bath. Then if you can't find that deal, Guitar Center used. You're not going to find a better deal on a guitar cabinet than Guitar Center used. They'll ship at dirt cheap. You can return it with no questions asked. And that's the way you go. Go to Guitar Center for use cabinets. Go on there, look, type in 112, you do a category used, find a good cabinet. You'll find a great price. You won't find as good a price as someone who's really to dump a cabinet. But right now in today's A&A age, think about this, Jedi Sparky. If you told me I had $100 cash right now and you told me, I know for a fact I can find a 412 cabinet. It won't have great speakers in it, but it will be a good cabinet. I can throw that mini head on a 412. You can find a cabinet for $100, $200, no problem. I would say 200 is a better number though. I mean, 100, I'd be pushing it to see what I can find, but I can find a good cabinet for 200 bucks all day long. Think of this, I've sold good cabinets in the last year for 200 bucks, because the same reason I don't want to ship them and I don't want to deal with them. So I just, so I dump them dirt cheap to somebody. So, and that's why I try to stay away from buying cabinets. They're huge money pits. Wild, I don't know, Wild Rift Playa says, want first guitar, which brand fretboard do you recommend? For your first guitar, what fretboard? I like Rosewood, but that's just because I like it. I like the way it looks and it feels good to me, and but there's no necessarily no real little reason. Happy Good Thing says, hey, nice meeting you, Shauna and Shauna and channel members at Kiesel. They talk about the Kiesel Connect that was Saturday. I always add water to Jews thinking it's too sweet. Ah, that's funny. Last week, my sister told me I only started doing that because our mom had to add water to the juice, so because it was so expensive. Oh yeah, that's funny, right? It's totally funny how you realize, like, my mom was definitely a stretch, stretch saver, right? And so yeah, there's certain things. I think a lot of things are too sweet, too, too rich, too thick. I'm always thin and stuffed down. It's always just like kind of funny that way. I had a great time. It's by the way, Happy Good Thing, not only thank you for the compliment, but also for the segue to the Kiesel Connect. So the Kiesel Connect was great. I had a blast. I break it down to you. So I was there from 9 a.m. till 5 30. I want to thank Shauna. It was for those that are going through the storms right now and the Midwest and the East Coast and stuff. My heart's out for you guys, and I want to, I hope everybody's safe and out there. And I'm saying that one because it's important, and I should have said at the beginning of the show. In fact, I'm mad at myself right now, had a note, said, be safe in storms right here at the front of the show, and I told you, I'm moving too fast, so forgot. But I got to tell you, not only be safe and I hope everybody's out there. Keep in mind, we have a lot of family, Shauna's dad's right now. He's a project manager, and they have the site shut down for today where they're at. He decided to do that for safety purposes. So, you know, be safe. I tell you that because what I'm about to tell you is going to probably upset you slightly, and I don't mean to. Remember, I am from Arizona, and so is my wife. Keele Connect was amazing, but Shauna was hanging out with every you guys, but she kept disappearing. So you guys know she was going inside, and she was, they would let her sit in an office because even the way the artist room that they had was too cold. It was just too cold for us. I was there all day, but I got to tell you, I was freezing all day. It was so, it is not, it felt like it was 40. Somebody told me it was like 62. 62 is like freezing for us. So it was really chilly, and I had layers of clothes. I did that really great. So what I'm trying to say is, Keele Connect was amazing, but the cold thing was a factor. So speaking of that, I got to meet so many of you guys. You guys got, it was, it's always an interesting time because I don't know what I'm doing there. I'm going to do some segue stuff, some funny stuff. You know, I'm going to share some stuff with you. So I got my Keele Connect badge. This is my All Access badge, and this is a big deal for me. I collect these. So you guys know, these are all of my badges throughout the years. I have every single one, every event, including the one I like my favorite. I mean, as much as I love Keele Connect, my favorite still is the Gibson party that I crashed, because I wasn't invited, but I went anyways, and I stole the badge. By the way, since then, I always like for transparency purposes, Gibson reached out after I told you guys that story, and said, we would have invited you. So just let you know, they did say that. They didn't say you had a crash. They're like, you didn't have to crash it, but I still did. So anyways, these are all the things that, in fact, I actually have my, not only my dog tags, but my original dog tabs from Basic Training, because I'm like, to me, that was an event. So yeah, so Gear Fast, you know, all the things. And so I attach it. I have this little carabiner, and I attach every time I do an event, I attach it. But what's funny is not only do I get to keep all these little things that are cool, this one is always, always so weird for me. I still feel like I'm an outsider. I still feel like I'm still crashing everything. This one, it was crazy to see, you know, has these names on the back. And it's like Eric Gales, Greg Howe, Steph Carpenter, you know, right? Justin McKinney, Jessica Lynn, Phil McKnight, of course, of course I'm on the list. Like, yeah, I'm totally like these people. Thank you guys, Kiesel, for thinking that I deserve to be on a list. Thank you for that. That's crazy. To this day, I still see it. I always see stuff like that. Anytime I see this stuff, I always go, this is just so like, like I said, it feels like I'm, you know, I broke in. So that was cool. So I had a blast. So of course, getting, whoops, getting to see Eric Gales and Greg Howe perform was amazing. So you know, I met a lot of great, so I'm going to start with the influences first. I made a lot of great people there. Emily from Get Offset was there. So I got to see Emily again. That was great. If you guys don't know her channel, check it out. And then I actually got to meet another channel, which was really cool, which was, it was Steve Starlucci. So, Starlucci, it's an ER effect of Star, not Starl, look, Starlucci, Starlucci. Lachi, Starlachi, Steve Starlachi. I knew, I knew, so you guys know, I have Steve's name phonetically written out right now. So when I'm jacking this up, I want you to understand, I'm reading it as I'm, because I, because there's a problem to me all night, he was a Steve and I'm like, oh, how do I say his last name? And it's Starl, Lachi, Starl, Lachi, Steve Starlachi, great channel. I will timestamp it right here. Reason is he's a great channel resource who does this modelers, the stuff that we all don't understand. That's what he explains. Like, if you want to understand tonics, you want to understand the quad cortex, he can explain in a practical sense. He's a touring musician. Obviously, his wife is also a very talented touring musician. And they were super nice and amazing. And like I said, I loved hanging out with all of all these people. Because you always, to me, it's a, it's a day out of the house, but more importantly, it's a day out with people who do what I do. So there's always a connection there. So now you're saying, no, not Starlachi, it's stir. I'm pretty sure I heard him say it. I was paying attention to what he said. I'm sure, you know what, he could text me if I get it wrong, I'll correct it next, but I'm pretty sure it was because I was paying attention. So anyways, what's my point? So it's always great to meet people that do what you do or have a reference of what you do. Because most of my conversations with people is, is like talking about it like in this weird like, what do you do? I have a podcast. A fun, since I'm talking podcast, I'll tell you a funny joke. Do you know my daughter who's most funny is, I said, once asked her, because you know, because people ask about time to your kids, what do you kids think of what I do? And they think it's weird. They think this is weird. They think this whole thing's weird. So when somebody asked my daughter, you know, what do you think of what your dad does? And she's like the podcast. And I'm like, yeah. And they said, yeah. And she's like, it's fine. And I go, and they go, oh, you don't mind it. She goes, I just like him to make sure that when he says he has a podcast to let people know it's not political. So, so I've been in public and talking to somebody and they go, what do you do? And I go, I host a podcast, and then she'll kick my shoe. And I'll be like, it's not a political one. It's a guitar podcast. Just be clear. I'm not don't have that. So anyways, so event was great talking to you guys all. I spent the whole day with you. It was fantastic, of course, Kiesel dropping some new guitars. And the event, I think was a huge success. Because at least to me, because, you know, it was it's fellowship. It's a bunch of people getting to talk about things they like, you know, and obviously they like those guitars, they like music. There was a lot of artists that were talented playing. It was just fantastic. It was a fantastic time. Now that being said, thank you guys for the event and all the good time. I got to tell you, I want to thank Jeff and Sean Kiesel for having the after dinner. They have an after dinner for all the artists, anyone who performed or anybody was there at the event. So again, I get to spend more time with Steve, more time with Emily from Get Offset, more time with some of the people I know already. And that was really fun. And then and then later, I went to Jeff's house and I drank all his liquor. So I want to apologize to Jeff one for drinking all his late but also I also want to tell you for one of the greatest guys at Kiesel, there's so many great guys. There's Chris, Hung, there's, you know, there's Flock, there's Brandon and I'm gonna be there's Cal. Cal's back by the way. Those of you guys love Cal's customer service, Cal's back, but he's not customer service. His artist relations now. So anyways, so many great people. But a little special shout out to Macklin. Macklin not only helped me because they had me do a tour for you guys. Any of the patrons or anybody who wanted to do a tour would just me. But I told them, I said, I mean, I've walked the facility, I've been in the facility, but I mean, God, I don't know your tour. And they go, I'll just figure it out. And I said, well, I said, how about this? I said, why don't you get somebody to just do it with me and I'll just be this, I'll be the side help. And so Macklin volunteered. Macklin, my favorite part is when Macklin told the the viewers, you guys, that he is the guy who signs the quality assurance card on every single guitar. He's the quality assurance for every single guitar. And I was like, oh my goodness, don't tell people in the public. So now everybody knows they're going to know soon that Macklin is the quality assurance guy at Kieselso. That's a, but he, I want to tell you, he's an amazing kid. I say kid because he's like 27, 28 years old, and my son's basically the same age. So that's why I think of that way. But also Macklin, not only did you do an amazing job, I mean, it was flat out amazing. And I talked to the group, it's not just me being nice. And not only did he give an amazing speech, which I would have paid any amount for to tell the audience about how he says I and my, me and my channel affected his life, which I'm not going to repeat because it's just too amazing. And I think it should be special to the people that heard it like me. But Macklin is the reason why I got crap faced drunk at the Kieselso's house. And here's why I was pacing myself drinking and I decided to have a bourbon and I was sipping my bourbon and hanging out with Greg Howe. You know, that's a story everybody has, right? And I was talking to Greg and I was talking to Steve and having a good time. And then Jeff explained that Macklin on the side also makes bourbons or whiskies, whatever it was, but it's 120 proof, something like that. I don't know what any of that means. I just want to let you know I'm not a, I'm a, I'm a, I can drink, but I'm not a drink. Anyways, and so I topped out the night with some of that. Macklin, tastes great and I don't remember my name. Sean had to draw me back to the hotel and took care of me and that was great. I didn't get sick. I don't get sick. I don't drink that much. I don't drink to get sick, but I drink enough to order, um, uh, 60, oh, is that what it means? Susan means a 60% alcohol. Okay, cool. So a 60% alcohol. So, um, yes. And I just got to tell you, cause again, I always try to be transparent with you guys. I, um, I have a breathalyzer that I have with me anytime I'm going to be drinking. I just have it, not because I'm going to drive. I just like to know, uh, I like to know when I'm drinking throughout the night, I'll sneak it. I'll do a breathalyzer test and just go, where am I? Cause I, I, I can generally now I've been using the breathalyzer for so many years that I kind of know, like I can, Sean will actually go, what are you? And I go, I'm, I'm a, I'm a 0.02. And she's like, oh, okay. So I was 0.05. That may not seem like a big deal because I think that's half the notes, a 0.08 is drunk, right? Drunk, uh, you know, illegal, whatever. But for me, 0.05, I was like, talking in cursive. I'm, so it was good. It was a good time. It's what I'm trying to say was good time. And thank you for the Kiesels for hosting us at the, not only at the dinner, but also letting us hang at the house. And, uh, and I got to see Jeff Kiesels new Star Wars bar, which was pretty cool. He has a Star Wars theme bar that looked amazing. So, um, yeah, Mr. Zombie says, did Sean, I have to hold back your hair back? No, uh, no, I'm, I'm, I'm never, I never get that bad. Like I said, I get a little cursive talking, like you can just tell all of a sudden just, you know, things are happening a little weird, but it was good. So that was a great time. And that leads me to, uh, this, what does it lead me to? It leads me to, hold on a second, let me make sure. Yep. It leads me to something I want to share with you guys that happened a couple of weeks ago on the show. And, uh, and, uh, and again, I just want to make sure I, I, I tell you how crazy this is. I had something happen to me on this show live that I cannot believe happened. Um, I had an epiphany, uh, a life changing moment in my life. And I'm, I'm, I've, you know, I've had some crazy things happen on the show, but I've never had a moment where the glass crashed. And all of a sudden I was like, what is going on? So a couple episodes ago, or I think the last one, actually the last technical, the last episode, somebody asked me a question on the episode and they asked me if I was interested in the new Nuno guitars. This isn't going to go where you think. And, um, I said no. So if you guys don't know, Nuno is no longer with Washburn. He started his own brand of guitars. It's still the same person who's building the Washburns. The guitars now break down into essentially four categories. They have the new thoroughbred USA ones that are $5,000. They have the stable series, which are also made in USA. But obviously they have the traditional one. These are 28, 29 and $3,200. So they went from basically $23 to $3,000. So these are huge price increases. And you could argue that adding the wood maybe did something, but obviously this is, this is $2,200 bucks. And, um, I think if this is the relic one, it was pretty much that anyway. So not a huge difference there. Uh, and then they have the Colt series, which are as imports. These are imports and the imports are going to be about $1,000, $1,200, $1,300, but new looks. And then of course they have an acoustic. And the acoustics are $600 and $1,200. Both are made in China, but this is a laminate and this is solid top. Okay. So the question was super. It was so nothing. It was a nothing comment. It was like, Hey, you're going to check out, you're going to get the new Nuno guitars. And I said, no, I'm not interested in that. And a lot of people knowing that I'm a huge Nuno fan was like, I can't believe Phil's not interested in the Nuno guitars. He's such a Nuno fan. And I, I did some talking and I said something and when I said something, I said, no, I, when I think of guitars, I like, I think of the guitars like from the nineties, you know, and I put, I strategically put them here today. So, uh, there's a, an axis, it's not from the nineties, but it's a recreation. The nineties, I have a floral gym. There it is. And I have the Nuno in four. There it is. I have the Steve Eye universe. There it is. These are all four guitars that are essentially from the eighties and the nineties. And I have a few guitars, not a lot of eighties nineties guitars, but I do have a few. And I was saying, uh, well, the only ones I see, I want are the ones from those eras, you know, I don't want anything new. Like I'm not really interested. I think the new EVH guitars are some of the best guitars that Eddie Van Halen ever did when it comes to neck feel playing style. But when I think of an Eddie, I think, uh, when I think of Eddie on my age, I don't think of Eddie with the striped guitars. That was what, you know, older kids liked, you know, like my sister's age and her friends like, uh, to me, it was foreign lawful calling, not carnal knowledge. That's like my real exposure to, to, to Van Halen, right? As, as a musician, not as just a kid singing music on MTV. Nuno Bencourt, it was pornography. Dee Steve Eye, it was white snake. It was, uh, it wasn't even Roth. It was a little Roth, but it was mostly white snake. And then, um, you know, for guitars and it was a passion warfare. And, uh, and then in this discussion, after the show, uh, cause that was all it was said, um, I was discussing with friends as you told you had a dinner party and something hit me and I never realized it. And I, I was like, this can't be true. I can't, what I'm saying can't be true, which is every artist's guitar I own, uh, which by the way, I've owned like a Silver Sky. I don't have it anymore. I've owned some other other artist's guitars and I don't have them anymore. Every artist's guitar that I own that I've had for any length of time, I've had the gym now for about seven years, right? Um, the universe knew that Nuno in fours I've had for, uh, at least 15 years. Every guitar that I love and own was on the cover of a guitar world, not that model, that guitar. So you see the purple right now again, I know this is the original one of mine's recreation, but look the universe, the universe again. That's all. Hold on. I don't want to show you that one yet. The gym, floral, notice I don't have the green gym, although I think you did a cover too. Um, the Nuno, which I went to grab it and I don't have it. Watch this. Nuno, okay. Images. Okay. Share. I tried to grab the magazine before the show started. Nuno with N4. I'm like, no, it can't be that easy. It can't be that silly. And I'm like, it is. I own the stuff and I pine after want desire and fan boy after stuff was on guitar world. So then that led to an a crazier thing that I'm going to share with you. So I told you and I'm, I'm embarrassed by this. I'm embarrassed by what I'm about to tell you. I, and it's going to, it's, so you know, it's what they sometimes are going to, it's going to sound like a humble brag because it's a braggy thing, but it's so dumb. So I only care about apparently the guitars from that era that were the guitar players I liked that were on the guitar worlds. I never really thought of it that way, but that's probably how the marketing stuck, right? It's like just, you know, because you got to understand for the record, not that if I saw it on a cover, it was important to me. All those guitar magazines I showed you, I've read a thousand times until there was an iPhone or a droid phone that I could stare at every single day. You're in the restroom or wherever you're at. I know it's tacky, right? Wherever you're at, I just guitar world, read them over and over again. I would read a guitar world, every guitar world issue. I would read it cover to cover at least 20 times before the next issue came out. And so it really stuck with me. So then I was going through guitar world magazines and I was like, no, there's got to be an exception. I'm like, no, there's no exception. This is how it works. Oh my God, this is silly. And same thing. I've gotten a couple of their artist guitars over the years and I liked them, but I didn't keep them. But again, they were never on a cover. And then I was in the hallway, which I'm going to grab in a second and show you. And I was looking at a picture and I was hearing something and I've told you guys this before. Larry DiMargio has sent me some photos over the years, some actual photos. And he sent me a photo of Van Halen on tour from the Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour. So I have those. I've shown you guys those are actually photos that he took of the tour. And I knew, I knew that Larry DiMargio had done many guitar world covers, right? He had done some guitar world covers. And I was in the hallway out of nowhere thinking about guitar world covers and how, you know, it affects me. And I was like, well, wonder why, even though Eddie Van Han was on the cover, probably more than any other artist in the world, how I got stuck on that one and not on the striped guitars. And then I was looking through magazines, you know, to confirm this, to tell you guys this, and I found this magazine. Okay. And this is why how bad I am. So I found this magazine and I go, oh yeah, this is Eddie Van Han on the cover. And I'm looking at it and thinking, well, I was also thinking 350, 350 for that magazine. Okay, anyways, that was cheap. And I was like, oh, and I heard this in my head, I swear. By the way, I've never told, I haven't told Larry DiMargio this because I, after this happened, I went to the shows and I haven't talked to him since. So I said, it's not the one we picked, it's the one I like. I heard that in my head. I go, it's not the one we picked. It's the one we like. And I'm looking at this picture. And I think, I know this picture. Why do I know this picture? I'm going to show you why I know the picture. Hold up. This is a picture that hangs outside my office that Larry DiMargio sent me. This is the actual photo. This is the photo of the shoot. I looked in this magazine, it says credit cover, Larry DiMargio. This is the photo. So I hear Larry's voice going, it's not the one we picked, it's the one I like. This photo is the one that Larry DiMargio wanted on the cover of Guitar World. That's why he sent it to me as a gift. And I was so stupid, I never knew that. I was like, what? Look at that. So it's the same guitars, but slightly different with the sunglasses. So I was like, that's not the photo we picked. It's the one I liked. And I run to Sean and I go, it's not the photo we picked, it's the one I liked. And she goes, what are you saying? And I go, the photo in the hallway outside my office is not the photo they picked. It's the one he liked. I thought it was weird because he sends me these pictures, but I was like, I liked it. Obviously I paid to have it framed. He sent the photo. And then I had this other funny thing happen. So I was looking at this photo and I go, this looks really familiar to me. Like really familiar. This look. And I go, so I'm going down, I have other pictures that Larry sent. I go down the picture. I told you this is going to be like a humble brag. It's not meant to be. It's just more for entertainment fun story. And I go, hold on. And here's another photo that I have that Larry took. This is the actual photo. And he sent to me and it's Steve by the Hydra. And I always thought it says to fill Larry de Margeau. And I go, you know, hey, he sent this. It's the Hydra, Steve by the Hydra. I didn't know this. I apologize. Larry, I know you don't watch the podcast. But if you see this, I apologize, dude. I was like, wait a minute, what? And then I go look in the magazine. It says cover art Larry de Margeau photo. This is the photo. This is why he sent them to me. See, Larry sometimes he does stuff and I go, I just assume there's a reason, but I didn't really think about it. He sent this because this is the cover of Guitar World, the actual photo. And then he sent me the one with Eddie Van Halen, which by the way, which is funny because this, I told you the end of the show is going to be a little show and telly. Then I go, this is how I hit me. All of a sudden I go, oh, it's the same, it's the same photo, basically. I was like, oh, I get it now. So anyways, that's my epiphany. I learned that I must be addicted to Guitar World covers and guitars. And now it all makes sense. And it's been a very therapeutic thing that's happened. And then of course, on top of that, because I had to drive to California and drive back and I've had a lot of time to process it and think about it. And I'm like, I can't believe it's that simple. It's that simple. Guitar World programmed my brain and I'm stuck as a middle-aged man, stuck just thinking about what it is they did. So I don't know if that was funny, but it was a good time for me because I was like, this is crazy. And I tried, trust me, I didn't, I wasn't just going to do this. I was thinking about going, this is not true. It's something else. And I'm like, it is that simple. So that is my summation of the NAMM show, my summation of, well, what's going on with Harley Benton and my summation of the Kiesel Connect. I gotta tell you again, thank you guys all that came to Kiesel Connect. I know all of you couldn't. So, you know, and also for those that were at Kiesel Connect that are watching this later, hope you all get home safe. A lot of people, so you know, at the event, artists that were there and viewers could not fly home. Now, being trapped in San Diego for an extra couple of days is not a bad thing, but I'm sure it's a little concerning when you're worried about your home and your family and other things. So I just want to hope you all get home safe. I hope everyone that's out there, you know, I, it's one of those things I wish I could, you know, you know, I live in Arizona. We don't have earthquakes. We don't have tornadoes and we don't have cold and storms. We got dirt, and that's about it and heat. So I really feel for you guys, I wouldn't know what to do and any of that stuff. So again, hopefully everyone is safe. Everyone is, everything's going to be good. And I'm just going to hope for the best like everybody. And I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the week. We'll have the normal Friday show like we normally do this Friday because like I said, this one got pushed back and we'll have a deep dive in the next day, I think by Tuesday, tomorrow Tuesday, oh, so Wednesday, deep dive will be Wednesday. So look for that. I appreciate that. I want to thank the moderators. I want to thank you guys all for hanging out and dulled in the show. And on that note, thank you guys for your time till next Friday. 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 Patreon for live clinics where you can ask questions every single week.