Fender is ready to fight the cheap amazon guitar market

Music Hey everyone, welcome to the Know Your Gear podcast on April 10th, 2026. I hope everybody had a fantastic week and is ready for some guitar talk stuff. Kevzilla says, hey Phil, it seems I can just barely afford the cheapest CS. I think it means Custom Shop Strat in America. What I look for is the lack of case or certificate certificate, a deal breaker and shouldn't I just order a Delos for the same price? Well, I like my Delos. I'm biased, of course. I do have a Fender Custom Shop Strat. I've owned three. I did not like two of them, so I sold them off and the third one I use. I don't love it. Some people have had Miracle Custom Shop Strat. My buddy Matt, he likes his and I actually like his. It's pretty good. I have not played personally a Custom Shop Fender Strat that I like the way it played as much as a Sir Classic or a Kiesel Delos. When I talk about playability, Vibe, look, Fender's got the Vibe. Custom Shop's got the Vibe. It's Fender-y. It's broken in. It's got the Vibe. And the next I like too, I just, there's always a problem, either the high E-strings rolling off the edge, which is really common with Custom Shop stuff, especially the vintage reissues. If that's something that bothers you, it bothers me sometimes. The fret work's always okay, but it's never as amazing as some of these other guys can pull off. And by the way, I should also mention Tom Anderson like that too. But again, the thing with Sir, even the Classic, Tom Anderson and the Delos, they all have a modern take on the Fender Strat. And so that's one thing that I think that if you really want the vintage-y Vibe, that's where they're tough. The Sir Classic kind of semi-relics get close, but even me, when I pick them up, I never feel like a Fender Vibe. I always feel like a really high-end modern take on it. But personally, you know, I like my Fender Professional II Stratocaster as much as I like all my strats. The only thing I could say I like better than my, on my Custom Shop Strat than my Professional II is, I like the slightly, and it's ever so slightly, chunkier neck that's on my Custom Shop Strat. But keep in mind, out of the three Custom Shop Strats I own that were 60s era, the other two had really thin necks. So the Professional II neck, I liked more. So, and you know, and I'd say one of the best playing guitar, the best playing Custom Shop I ever had was a Wildwood 10, and it's called Wildwood because it's from Wildwood guitars. And it also is called 10 because it has a 10 inch radius instead of 9 1⁄2. That wasn't anything I was specifically looking for. The neck was a little too thin and it played great. It just didn't Vibe, it didn't Vibe the way I wanted it. I wanted it to feel a little bit more, you know, a little bit more vintagey Vibe. But, but I, I, you know, look, you might have to get it out of your system too. I had to get it out of mine. I got a Fender Custom Shop, I've owned a few, I've owned a few Gibson Custom Shops. I had a couple of private stocks from PRS. I've gone down that road and where did I end? And I ended with none of them has made me think that I have arrived at a level that just everything below it is just substandard and I couldn't go back to. My favorite Les Paul, so I have three, I have a Custom Shop. I have an R9, I have an RO, which is a very special RO, very limited edition one. That's soup, it's, it's trying to say semi, trying to say semi hollow and chambered at the same time. It's change, semi chambered. No, it's just weight relieved, but it's got chambering in it. But my favorite Les Paul I own is my Gibson Les Paul Classic, which is a classic. It's not even the standard. It's not even that, you know, that expensive and it's by far the best. If I only kept one, that's the one I'm keeping for sure. I think I mentioned this before the R9, although it sounds amazing, probably the best sounding Les Paul I own. So give them credit there. You keep hearing that from people who have R9s like, man, the tone is really good. It is, it just has a really good full sound. I would say none of the Les Pauls I have play or sound better than this heritage that I have over here. The only problem is hard to say that to you guys is that this is the not the normal heritage that's $2,600. This is their expensive model, their Custom Shop too. So it's almost apples to apples and price point. So, you know, I'm not going to tell you like get the heritage because the, the hair, I didn't pay for the heritage. They sent that. So I don't have to fill the rapture. If I ever sold it, you know, the resale value on the heritage would be pretty, pretty horrible compared to the Gibson's. But speaking of resale value, that's why I still have my R9. I got my R9 for a pretty good deal, not a really good deal, but I got to pick it out, you know, and get the right one, you know, in a store, which is a very rare thing to happen. And he, and I bought it a few years ago. And I think I'd have to look at the market now what they're going for. But I would imagine if I sold it now, I'd probably lose $500 to $1,000, which isn't too brutal considering what you could lose on a Gibson Custom Shop, bless Paul. But so that's what I said. I've told you guys this many times with Gibson, if you don't want to lose money, you just wait it out. And in a couple more years, it'll be worth, you know, resale value will be worth what I paid for it. Remember, I bought it and knew I didn't buy used the RO. I did buy used the RO is worth what I paid for it. So for sure. The reason I know that is no way I would consider selling it for less than what I paid for it. I wouldn't even think about it because I it's really cool, unique Gibson Custom Shop. And so that's it. I did not keep any of the PRS private stock era type guitars and let's see. That's it. That's it. So I'm just telling you that's on the Custom Shop vibe. Let's see. Let's see. Hold on. Go this way. How do you? Okay. Kat's music journey says, how do you handle passionate negative comments? I like how you put that. I never thought about a negative comment being passionate. You know, let me just do on that for a second because that might change the way I answer the question plus the way I think from now on. Usually when I see negative comments, they're always seem shallow, you know, like there's not a lot of thought put in that comment. But I never thought about it being a passionate one. They're our passionate ones. So I'll differentiate that. It says on videos, I put disclaimers in but people don't watch and take it personally. Yeah, I'm new and my skin is still thin. Yeah, my skin is thin too. You know, when people go, you have to have thick skin. Look, some people have thick skin. I find most people lie about that. The reality is there's some secrets I've learned about trolls and how they can get in your head and not getting head over the years. I'm never going to give the exact thing that I've, you know, I feel I learned because then I'd be given it to the trolls. But what I can tell you is, is a couple things. So let me give you the advice I was once given. It does work. So this advice was not given to me by one, two, three, but four and I'm not even rounding down around and up. I'm rounding down. I should say that. Million subscriber or multi-million subscriber guitar channels that I'm friends with. They all said the same thing. Don't talk to each other. Well, two of them now talk to each other. They don't talk to each other, but they all gave me the same advice over the years. And I thought that was really interesting, which is they don't read their comments. In fact, two of them, I know for a fact, they have people that do it. They don't read the comments. They don't see the comments. They don't look at anything. They just post their video and move on. I can tell you that if I post a video and I don't read the comments, I have a much better week. Every time. It's awesome. YouTube finally, finally, finally, finally changed the app. It used to be to every time you went on your app to look at stats, you'd have to see the most recent comment and it was always like, you know, something horrible. Because, you know, or and now what YouTube does is they only filter like the best comments to the top. So when I open my app, let's let all I can't. I don't have my phone. So if I have my phone right now, I check my phone. Usually the first three comments I see are all positive because it filters positive ones to me first and then I have to go. I actually have to do two steps now to get to you have to go into the comments. Then you have to click another button. Then you have to click another button. So it's three steps to get to comments that might get to negative comments. So I don't see the negative comments as much. So you guys know. But that being said, how do you handle it? You know, I don't know. You know, it's funny. I would say as a new content creator, my advice to you would be don't read the comments. You know, there's this feeling that if you you got to read the, you know, for the community, you got to read what they're saying. I can tell you that most communities are not very good. This community is, I would say 80% I'm going to say 90 to be nice, but I'm going to say, yeah, 85 to 90. I'm pushing it now, guys. I'm really trying to be as nice as I can. As nice as I can. 80% of you in the comment sections are just amazing people. And I mean, not just live. I mean, in just on my channel. Now to the 20%, I would break them into two categories. 10% are just miserable, you know, miserable people. And I feel bad for them. They're just so miserable. And they're just, you know, trying to make everybody miserable too. The other 10%, I don't know. They're either really not good at commenting and try, like I said, I really feel like a lot of mean comments are trying to be funny, but they fail. But either way, it's just, you know, it's just how it works. I feel pretty lucky in those categories. The main, I think, I think that most times a new creator looks at comments for as you're looking for feedback. And what I can tell you is, see how I pause because I'm like, do I tell this? I'm going to tell it the feedback you need. Okay. And I say this and I very rarely say stuff like this, but, you know, is it I got a ha as someone is like, you know, you get to wherever you want to get. I'm not there yet, but I'm sure if you're a new channel, you're looking at my channel and you're like, oh, is that almost that a half a million subs or whatever. Whatever it is you perceive the success of this channel is, I will tell you this, whatever you think it is, whether it's on this channel or my second channel, whatever, it's because the feedback I really search and seek out is in the stats. It's in your statistics. It tells you everything. YouTube is, I think one of the best platforms for giving you honest and good feedback with stats. Numbers don't lie. So people will tell me all the time, hey, this video sucked. And I look at the stats and I don't mean how many views you got that views or not. What should drive you should look at your other stats, how engaged with the audience was what did they, you know, did they did you make something good? I think if you make good content, then you have, well, at the very least, if you try to make good content, you'll have a catalog of content you're proud of. I have a catalog that I'm mostly proud of. I'd say I'm proud of about 90%. Another 10% I'm like, why did I ever make that? You know, and if you're lucky, luckier than me, you'll make 100% content you're proud of. Because I sure wish I could make 100% of content I was proud of over the years, but I'm pretty close. But that's my advice. Don't read the comments, read the stats, you know, and that's it. And then hopefully you'll build a community of like-minded people, which is what I've done here. And when I say like-minded, I don't mean people who agree with you. Like I said, I don't think any comment that is saying they disagree with me as a negative comment. So negative comments to me are in the context trying to hurt someone, whether it's me or someone else in the con- or the video is about or whatever. Somebody's trying to lash out, you can tell. And so that I'm not a real big fan of. I think you could be more constructive. Okay, we- let's see. So, oh, here's one. Dale says, Phil, you have me. I have ruined the selling guitars for the rest of us. Every time I list something, I get never ending questions about the weight and people don't want anything over seven pounds. What's with that? Well, generally speaking, it's because you have choice. So, you know, this was something that has come up more than once when it comes to weight. I'm not the first channel to weigh guitars. You know, obviously, Sweetwater was weighing guitars. Our store used to weigh guitars too. We used to weigh guitars. Not because we were looking for specific weight. It's just because heavier guitars are less desirable. The reality of it is, is that if you have a heavy guitar, some people don't care. So that's what I've learned. You just list the weight. I find that whether you're a, you know, a seller, you're just selling your gear on the side or you're selling your gear that you don't want anymore. Or you're a small store or you're whatever, you know, a big store, the more information you put in your listings, the better. You know, it's very expensive returns, super expensive, especially if you're not a store. Because again, you know, you're, you know, you don't have a lot of account. You don't have an account with a mailing company, you know, and so return shipping is expensive. You know, to me, if a guitar or products coming back, there's a chance that there's going to be fraud. It's just a lot of problems. And you don't want to see product come back, whether, no matter what. And so anything you can do to, to reduce that by giving more information, I think is a good idea. I try to put as much information as possible. Even I sometimes don't put everything in the thing, but I'll answer a question if they send it. If it's specifically a piece of information that they need about the guitar or the amp or whatever. I definitely recommend trying to do it. It's tough. Like I said, some people message you at like three in the morning and I'm like, I don't even see it till the middle next day. And then I'm like, do I, do I respond? Is it too late? But that being said, I think actually it doesn't ruin guitars selling. I think it makes it better. I think more information. I think in the context, if you're trying to say that if you have a heavy guitar, everybody now is looking for a lighter guitar. Everybody's always been looking for a lighter guitar. That's how it's always worked. No, it's always worked. No one's really looked for, I mean, George Lynch, he's like heavy guitars. That's about it. Some players do like heavy guitars, but majority of guitars are always like lighter guitars. That's always been that way. So, I mean, it's just how it goes. And then of course, you know, a lot of us are getting older and stuff. So, and I don't think it has to do with anything like physicalness, you know, at all. You know, people talk about like, why don't you let's lift more bro? And I'm like, yeah, I guess. But if you don't, you know, I think my problem, I've said this before is, you know, if all my guitars weigh about seven, seven and a half pounds, eight pounds, and I have a 12 pound guitar, I'm just not likely to pick it up. That's just why would you? It's not as exciting. So, um, I don't know. So if I was, if I had a contribution to you having trouble selling heavy guitars, I'm sorry. I understand. I've sold many heavy guitars recently. So they buy them. Uh, let's see. Um, what else? Okay, let's see. Yeah, that's funny. Cause I was late, I was late to the show. And you guys are like talking about why I was late to the show. I was late to the show because, uh, last week OBS did an update and when it did the update, it took my streaming key and it deleted it and I had to put it back in. Yesterday, OBS had another update to fix some kind of problem that was with last week's update. And so again, it deleted my streaming key. So I had to find the stream key to put it back in to OBS. So, uh, and then double check to make sure all my settings don't get deleted or, you know, well, it's mostly deleted. Um, so, uh, uh, let's see. Okay. So deja, deja, deja YouTube, I think that's what I'm saying. It says, Hey, do you think the, do you think the crazy cheap Squire Sonic series and Gretch streamliner jet clubs are clawing back ground for FMIC from the Superbike? Budget brands, notice insane discount sales, uh, at ATM, I guess ATM down under. Um, yeah, that's what I think is going on. Sure. Of course, you know, the, um, the entry level guitar market is, uh, it's always been a tough, easy market simultaneously. It's easy because there's always, um, somebody looking to start guitar or looking for an entry level guitar. It's hard because they make so many of them. They make a lot. I mean, a lot, a lot. And, uh, and, you know, the real question is, is not so much, is are people playing guitar anymore or are people learning guitar? But the question really is who's really buying the majority of the guitars right now? Is it the, you know, these middle age, uh, people who are, you know, lining them with their walls? It's definitely a, definitely a thing that's happening. Um, and, uh, or is it newcomers? And of course during COVID, they go, Hey, it's mostly newcomers. I still think it was the collectors buying up the guitars mostly. Um, the, cause I think the logic they were using, a lot of them were applying to the guitar boom sales during COVID was, you know, people were trapped in the house and they wanted to take up on a hobby and a lot of cheap guitars. I think that was totally happening. But at the level that they were claiming, I think what was happening is, is they don't understand, cause in their brain, they don't understand. And I mean this as a, as a, as guitar companies don't understand this person that exists that buys $100, $200 guitar and then buys another one and buys another one and has like 10, $200 guitars. They, they don't understand that. To them, you buy a $200 guitar, then you graduate to a five, $600, $700 guitar, then you graduate, you know, and then they think you're all going to $3,000 guitars. It's really consistent when I talk to companies that they all seem to have thought this for decades now. That is the evolution of guitar players. They just buy more and more expensive guitars. What they're missing, what they're missing and they have been missing for years is, um, first of all, not the economy. That's the thing. But right now, and I'm just going to go when I say missing, I could go 40 years back, but let's go 10 years back in the last decade. What they're really missing is YouTube. YouTube has provided so much content on how to make inexpensive guitars great, whether it's from a Luthoria channel or a Parachannel or just a guy going, hey, this weekend I bought a guitar and here's what I'm doing to it with my screwdrivers. You know, they, the ability to fix and modify inexpensive guitars and make them great is so easy that people like buying guitars and kind of modding them up a little bit. And there's nothing wrong with that. But they think when they sell 10 inexpensive guitars, they thought 10 new players took up and I'm like, no, that's not, I don't think that's gonna happen. I think when 10, every, for every 10 inexpensive guitars, I don't know the ratio. Let's throw a guess. Four of them, I'll just be safe. Four of them were new guitar players and six of them were rebuyers. In other words, they were buying guitars. They already, they already have those guitars. And the reason I have that philosophy is this reason and this reason only. When somebody says who buys $10,000 guitars, I've always, I've always said this. I'll say this forever and ever and ever, which is the person who buys 10,000 guitars is just like the person who buys $100 guitars. They buy lots of them. Everybody just picks a comfort zone and then they just buy that. And that's what I learned. And because what's, what's funny is because they're owning a store when I would actually do one-on-one sales everybody. I always thought, you know, everybody would just graduate like the, the industry keeps saying, oh, you know, somebody bought a square off me and then they bought another. The spires a little nicer and now they'll buy a main Mexico strat and then they'll buy an American strat and then they'll buy a custom shop strat. You know, and then they'll get a Nash and then that's just how this will evolve. And then one day you realize a couple years gone by and you're like, man, Kenny owns like 27 squires now. He could trade all those squires in and get one custom shop easily. You know, and he doesn't want to do it. And I'm like, what is that? And I see it all the time. You know, I see, I heard a term the other day and it was bougie blue collar and it made me laugh my ass off. It was basically talking about that the back to middle-aged men, mostly middle-aged men, it was taken on the middle-aged blue collar men with expensive hobbies pretending that they don't have expensive hobbies. Like they're like, yeah, I don't buy expensive things. I just got my truck that cost, you know, 80,000 and I just, you know, and they got their little trailer that only cost like 25,000, right? And they only got 162, $400 guitars. Like I don't buy any guitars over $500, but you have 400 of them, right? And you're like, if you add that up, you have, you know, right, you have a lot of money invested into guitars. And so what I've learned is that, yeah, if you buy a, on average, I'm not talking about all of you, I'm not pigeonholing everybody here, but if you buy a $200 guitar, you're going to buy 10-ish, you know, right? Or two or whatever. Just pick your number. And then when you upgrade one of those guitars to a $500 guitar, what's going to happen is you slowly just upgraded all the other ones. And then you got 10 $500 guitars. And then when you buy a thousand-dollar guitar, you're going to have 10 $1000 guitars. Now, there'll be other anomalies. Everybody's like, not me, Phil. I got 18 Gibson Les Pauls, but I still got three squires. Like I understand there's going to be outliers in the collection, but honestly, I'm telling you. And so when you see someone, when you meet somebody and they tell you they got a $5,000 guitar, trust me, all their guitars are probably $5,000 guitars. It's very rare to see someone who buys a couple high-end guitars and does not expand their collection to that level. That's how it works. So for the most, again, I'm just talking generally speaking. So back to Fender and what they're doing. Yeah, they're definitely competing with the Amazon stuff for sure. You know, those inexpensive low-cost guitars, which is why I like doing videos about them like everybody else. Man, they're fun. They're the funnest videos. Look, when I did the Novo, just pick it on the Novo video. When I did the Novo video, it's not fun. It's exciting that I get to try things and take them apart and share it with you guys. But fun? No. Is it as fun as a Firefly video? No way. You know why? Because in a Firefly video, I'm the whole time trying to understand what it is that I'm doing here with this. I'm like, this guitar is $300. If it just can stay in tune, it's already a win. Novo at $4,000. I'm like, it better be amazing. See, you see what I'm saying? It's almost like you want to pick on the expensive guitars, but the inexpensive guitars, you just want to make sure that they have a couple basics and when they have those things, and they're even better sometimes, you're like, wow, this is crazy. And then you get to wonder why you buy what you buy, which is what I'm constantly always doing. Why do I own what I own? Except for, I've told you guys, and I'll tell you guys again, I collect too. So when I have a nice guitar, it's usually because I'm collecting them too. I enjoy this industry a lot. I love guitar. I love music, and I collect it. So... By the way, when I see comments, everybody saying, you know, first time on the live show or a fan, I appreciate that, guys, so much. I almost wish I could, sometimes I go, I want to read a bunch of those, but I just know for flow purposes, it won't do well on the rebroadcast. You got to understand, you try to keep it to subjects. Yeah, Michael says, us old guys are used to cheap guitar being terrible guitar. Sure. I mean, I've, you know, I spent a long time working on cheap guitars, making them playable. So it's crazy to me when I take cheap guitars out of boxes now, and they're actually playable. It's crazy. Let's see. Um... Okay, hold on a second. So let's do this. This one came from Amanda. This came from Alex. Says, hey, Phil, can accurate intonation be done with a Peterson clip-on tuner? When playing the 12th fret, the tuner doesn't even register. I played a note. Do you think the Fender Tune app is okay? You can intonate anything with... I mean, obviously, you know, the tuner has to be accurate within so many cents, but you can intonate anything with anything that will work to get you generally close there. Okay? So there's... The reason I say that, notice that, is because there's different levels of players. First of all, and I'll say this again, most players can't hear intonation at all. It's... Anytime I see somebody comment in the comments, they'll say, oh, the guitar was out of tune. You probably can't tell. It's hard to tell what's making your guitar out of tune when somebody's playing it. First of all, some players just pull guitars out of tune in their playing and their style. You know, I... George Lynch once told me, which I'm not name-dropping, I'm just saying it was kind of funny thing to say, he said, he said, I said, what's your biggest regret? And he said, not using a tuner in the studio. He said because when they would go to do retrack, when they would do tracks, he was tuning by ear and they'd have to retune off the track by ear. So, I mean, you know, there's tons of instances like this. There's also famous recordings where the guitar was not intonated correctly. So, with all kinds of artists. So that is not always the case. In fact, think about this. One of the things that's interesting about singing and playing is now that with auto-tune and all the ways to correct things, sometimes when some sounds so good, you kind of think it sounds fake because you're used to hearing some kind of flaw in that. So, the reason I tell you this, Alex, is that, you know, intonate with whatever you got with clip-on tuners, sometimes they are tricky because again the guitar, the vibrations, they're not very sensitive. I can tell you with clip-on tuners a couple things, experiences I have, and especially even if you have high-end tuners like the Peterson, they get less accurate when the battery gets weaker. So, first thing, right? I mean, that's just there sensitivity. The second thing is, and this is a theory, there's no proof in this, but I have a theory that you can only drop a clip-on tuner so many times. And the reason I say that is because when we would have clip-on tuners in the store, we would go through them like crazy and we would do and we use all the brands, Korg, you know, Snark, you name it, we would always have them brands because we'd always get a deal and I'd buy like a 10 of them on a deal for the store and we'd open them up packages and just have them around the store, have them in the less rooms. And here's what we would notice. Over time, you know, you drop them, customers would drop them and then all of a sudden they just didn't work as well as you remembered and you're like this is really strange. And I think it's because obviously if it's sensing vibration, this is just my theory, okay? I need to probably take a tuner apart when he's clip-on tuners, you could probably tell. But I'm imagining that in that technology is some kind of, I'm going to call it a filament, right? Something that obviously, something that vibrates. It has to be able to, something physically in there has to be tracking the vibration. That's how it's, how the sensor would have to work, some way of that. And I would imagine that if you drop it and jar it so many times, it may get damaged or become less accurate. And that's just a theory I have. So something to think about. And so just be aware of that. But back to your situation. Look, if you're, if it's not reading the note, then it's not reading note. I will intonate using the Boss app on my phone. There's a Boss tuner app on my phone and it works fine. And again, you know, if you put it on like my nice strobe tuner, would it be, oh, you know, slightly off? Yeah, of course. But slightly off of perfect, not off of what some human ear could detect. You know, I've been around and here's how I know so many people are full of shit about being, you know, like doing donations off. I've met, I can't tell you the number. I don't know. I could just make up number 12 or 20 or 10, whatever. People who have that kind of hearing, they hear it. It's crazy. Perfect pitch hearing. You know, professional musicians, studio musicians, just dudes I know that teach guitar lessons. You know, I told you once my wife decided for fun to test all the teachers, there was, I think at that time, like 17 teachers. She tested them all for perfect pitch and one had perfect pitch. His name is Mario. He was our bass teacher. He's from Chile and he was amazing. Actually amazing bass player. Body bass player. I thought it was funny. He had perfect pitch. He was the closest. I think Chris got second, right? And believe it or not, two of the best guitar players we have that I would say are just on, you know, the highest level of playing, you know, they didn't have perfect pitch or anything close, relatively close to it to detect whatever this test was. I took it. I didn't get perfect pitch either. So my point is, is that when people tell you that hear stuff, sometimes they don't. So yes, will your tuner be less accurate than a more professional grade tuner? For sure. But will it get you get the job done? Pretty sure. Right. I told you, being in Arizona, most of my guitar customers were going to be hobbyist, right? It's not Arizona, especially the Phoenix area. It's not really a professional great area. It's not like I'm in Hollywood or Nashville or anywhere in places where there's a lot of, there's a scene of some sort. And, but there is, there was, when I was doing it, there was a small group of players that were Nashville type players. And I told I've said this before on the show many times. I used to get highly stressed when I would do the work on their guitars. They could detect everything. Like I said, you knew it was serious when they came in and they would always have their tuning, not, not, they wanted their tuning and how many sends off each note or each string. You know, they knew exactly how they wanted this one guitar. And so I don't want to be clear. I want to be very clear. I don't mean like they wrote it on a list and like do all my guitars. Like each different guitar, they knew exactly where that guitar needed to be tuned or intonated slightly differently for that guitar and that string and that, you know, thing. And those kind of players were, were tough. You know, you, you know, you, you know, they could hear the mess ups that you made. So you had to do a good job. Okay, so next, hold on. Okay. Oh, uh, yeah. Um, this is Joey, Joey Jojo says, Hey, Phil, what speaker do you think works best for the Fender Princeton 65 reissue? The stock Jensen sounds a little brittle to me. And then yeah, I'd say it's on the brighter brittle son, maybe a Sleshen G to what 10 gold. I'm not a huge fan of that speaker. If that's the problem you're trying to solve for me. I actually like the cheap Sleshen speaker that they put in the Princeton 68. What is that? Let's look real quick. And also I like the cream back 10 inch speaker and even maybe the green back, but I would probably prefer the cream back over the green back. They're going to darken up the amp a lot in my opinion. But the Princeton 68, one of the reasons I like that amp is, is it's got some mods, but one of the mods is it's got the Princeton 68. Did I? Hold on a second. There we go. There we go. Sorry about that. I don't know why I did that. The speaker that's in that, I'm going to show it to you. Sleshen speaker. Jesus says Sleshen speaker. Are we serious? That's all I was going to say. The 1030. Sleshen 1030 and I'm pretty sure they sell it and I'm pretty sure it's inexpensive. And I like that speaker because here we go. Oh, I don't even see it. So maybe they don't sell that one. Maybe it's too cheap. Sleshen. 10 inch. We'll do this. And then I'll share it with you guys. All right, ready? Okay, let's take a look. So this is like the gold you're talking about. I thought this was on the brighter side. I think this is the gold. I thought this was on the brighter side. I think this would warm it up a lot. This will warm it up a little. This is the green back. The cream cream back with a C will warm it up more. I like the 45 watt one. And then they don't sell it anymore, but the cheap one that they put in the 68 I liked. So if I couldn't get the access to this cheap one, I'd probably get this the cream back for this. If you're talking about warming it up, I think that will warm up the sound. Give you more mids and more warmth and the notes and more punch. I mean, you know, it sucks. I hate giving advice like that because you know, you get it and be miserable and speakers suck because you buy it and you're stuck with it. There's no real real returning on speakers. But you can go with the gold. But I've tried the golds and you know, I think it's great. You know what? Here's how I can help you. I think the gold, if you, when you watch players go, oh, go with the gold, El Nino gold or even El Nino blue, especially when I talk about 12 inch speakers. I found that they're really talking about distortion. They want the amp to break up, you know, and the green back would also be a little bit for overdrive to the cream back is going to hold the amp cleaner. So I'm assuming because you're saying it's bright. I'm thinking you want to run pedals through it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're you're running the distortion is too brittle and too bright. So if you're cranking the amp to distort, maybe go with the gold. If you're trying to keep the amp clean or you're holding the clean line to run your pedals through, I would go with the cream back. That would be my suggestions and I feel pretty strong that I somewhat close to somewhat, somewhat hopefully, you know, get you in the ballpark. So I wanted to play a game. And so we're going to play a game. This is like a game show today. We're going to play the game. It's called this or that. Okay, so let's start. Okay. Okay. Okay, give me a second. I hope this works. I have no idea. Okay, ready? Start at the pole. Okay, so we could do something live. We have a community here. There's 1200 of you, 2198 people here. And I thought, what can we do with this group of people that we can't do with a pre-recorded video? And I was telling my friend of mine the other day about how I don't like it on YouTube videos when they go, hey, they be something, but they don't tell you what it is. And then they go, wait to the end of the video to find out what it is. Or they go, see you next week and I'll tell you what it was. I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound fun. And so what's fun is I thought, let's try this game. Okay, so we have the guitar. I have it plugged up, plugged in. We're going to do, turn this off. There we go. We're going to go to camera 2. What? And I told you, I hit the camera earlier. This or that. We have no, no theme music. This is totally, look, dry erase board, a guitar pick. Here's what we're going to do. No tricks. Okay. I'm not tricking you guys. I'm not like that. This isn't like I'm going to show you a cheap pedal and an expensive pedal and you got to figure out which one sounds good. These are two pedals that are comparably priced. Okay. They're comparable in a lot of ways. In other words, by again, first of all, there's about the same price. They sound similar, but different. And I'm going to play them each one. And then you guys in real time are going to vote which one you like better. But wait, there's more in this purple marker. I am going to write on the back of the board. And I told everybody next week, or next time, if we do this again, I'm going to write it on the board and then put it behind me so you know I can't change it. So, but just trust me, I'm not changing it. Okay. So I got the board. Okay. All right. I'm right on the back. Which one I like because I've been playing them all day. Okay. So here's the question. Wait, did I just, did you guys just see it? You didn't see it. Okay. So anyways, if we did, maybe I'm tricking you. Okay. So anyways, my point is the question is, what you guys will you vote for it and will you vote the same as me? Will we all think together? Can we discuss it at the end? So let's start. I'm going to play a little drum. I got a beat buddy to drum machine thing here. We're going to turn that on. I'm going to switch cameras to the camera. You can still see me. Here you go. Watch this. There you go. That angle. We're going to start with this pedal. It's going to be a high gain pedal. So if you don't like high gain, you know, vote however you got to vote. But you heard the clean channel that I'm playing through so you know what it sounded like earlier. Here we go. Ready? Music Okay. So, alright. Look. Alright. So we played this or that. Let's take a look at the poll. Did I click it? Can I click it? Can I see it? No, I don't want to end the poll. I want to see it. Alright. Why is it that I cannot see the poll? Okay. Here it is. Alright. Ready? I'm going to end the poll right now. How many people voted? 255 votes. Any 263? 63. Throw them in. Whatever vote you guys got. Last, last in. Let's see. I'll end it at, let's see if we can get to 300 votes. 300 votes. 277. 279. 285. 289. 291. I'm going to end it at 300. Get that vote in. 293. 95. 97. 303. I'm ending the poll. Alright. Now, where did it go? Okay. Here's the final results. Ready? Which, let me copy this so I have it. Which, do you guys like more? You like this at 64%. And that was at 27%, 9%, none. So, ready? What was it? That's right. It was the boss. Waza Craft Metal Zone versus the EVH 5150. The reason I came up with this game idea was I bought this pedal, this one. And my wife, Shana, goes, did you buy a metal zone? And I'm like, yeah, she's like, why? And I go, it's the Waza Craft one. She goes, it's going to sound horrible. I'm like, and I got it and I played it and I go, it sounds great. And I'm pretty sure she's like, he's just saying that to justify his purchase. And I'm like, no, it does. It sounds great. Now, for fun, I want to do something fun. Okay. Which is, this is in the Waza, is in the custom mode. This is the new modded mode. This is the vintage metal zone. Okay. So, we're going to do it again. We're going to go back to this or that. Okay. Let's start another poll. Hold on. Let me do this one. And we don't normally won't do this, but I think this is fair. Okay. Ready. Hope you guys are having fun. Start a poll. This or that. This time, we won't do it as long this or that. Okay, we're going to do this. I would really, really cool if YouTube would A, let the moderators do the poll, or B, let me preload them. Okay. But it doesn't. All right. We started this time. Okay. We're doing it again. But this time, now you're going to be, now you know what they are. Well, it doesn't matter. Yeah. You need to see what they are. We're going to, now you know what they are, but you're also going to be listening to the vintage metal zone. I would say this is cheating, except for, I think you're going to hear what I hear. So, let's just go with it. Okay. Okay. So, a couple of things. To note, let's go back here. Hi, it's me. And then back to this camera. There's a lot of stuff going on now. I feel like I've made a technology nightmare with the cameras and the microphones. Okay. So, this or that. Let's go to this poll. Let's see if I can open the poll. This time, 60% picked this. Still this. Okay. I'm not crazy, right? I'm going to end it at 200. It's 207. We're going to end it. So, okay. Ready? Now here comes, what did I vote? Ready? Set. So, you know, no, it's this. This. I, we agree. We agree. This is totally funny because I was even telling my friend and another YouTube buddy. It was, it was Michael Nielsen. I was like, I was like, wouldn't it be funny if they vote totally different than the person playing the stuff? Because you hear it differently. You're hearing it. Because I hear this all the time. It's all compressed on YouTube and it doesn't sound the same. And I'm like, it doesn't, but it's ish. It's kind of like it. So obviously you guys, look, you guys absolutely, look, did I end the poll? It's like not ending. Okay. Absolutely. I would say we all agreed. I would say majority, majority of us voted that the metal zone. Let's go to this one right here. The metal zone. One over the 5150. Let's see. Let's see if I, if I'm correct with my assessment. Okay. The metal zone, which I'll share with you guys right now. When you go to the web, the, this one was 157. That's what I paid. Guitar Center has them on sale for like $7 less, like $149. So you know, I didn't buy it on sale. And I haven't decided if I need to contact the Guitar Center, go, hey, you guys dropped the seven bucks. We price match. We price match. And then 5150 pedal is 229. Whoa. Okay. So I was off. I didn't know. Look, my, my 5150 pedals from, I bought it in 2000 when it came out. I think it was like 2016 or 14 or I don't know when it came out, but it was, it was before 2017. I know that. You know how I know? Cause I bought it for myself. I bought it at my store. So, and I stopped going to the store in January of 2017. So it's been since then. And I thought I paid 150 for it. I can't believe it's all 230 now. So yeah. So I would say the metal zone one and not only sound wise, I preferred. So you guys know just for your record, I preferred the modded metal zone by far and I've been having fun with it all week. I will tell you one thing. The amp I'm running through is a super clean high headroom amp. And, and so some amps, the fizziness in the metal zone just and so same as the 5050 5150, but the metal zone just gets a little fizzy. So you definitely got to match it to the correct amp. So I thought this was fun and I thought like I have all kinds of pedals that we could do this with everything from chorus pedals to you know, Iconically, you know, those pedals that you know, no one can afford to get because they're super expensive. But then I have the, the, you know, the affordable version too. So if you guys like this idea is doing this a segment from time to time on the podcast, this or that segment like this and then getting real time discussion of it. And I'm up to do it. But real quick, we got to do this real fast. We got to do the thumbnail for guitar of the week. This one's going to hurt everyone's eyes. Look at that. Yep. That's a good one. That guitar. So this was guitar of the week. This is my nags in neon yellow. So my very first real guitar was an Aria pro and neon yellow. So that's why I have a thing for neon yellow guitars. Because I don't know, it wasn't my first guitar. My first guitar was a black JB player knock off strat. But my first guitar that I picked, you know, that I wanted was a neon yellow Aria pro. And so, and funny enough, the reason why I was I wanted this was I, I like, you know, your guitar collection can't get too big. It's too crazy. But sometimes if you can have a guitar like a nags in your collection and play it, that's great. But also I have a neon yellow Ibanez that I don't play that I have just strictly because it's neon yellow. And I thought, well, then I could get this and get rid of the, you know, the Ibanez. Like I said, something comes in, something's going to go. But maybe next week we'll do the other guitar I got, which I think will be the guitar that will be more interesting and crazier. So, so, oh, a challenger. Challengers Cat Pack 50 says I voted that but then changed my mind to this. Yeah, it's, it's a, it was really shocking. I think it was fun. I hope you guys had fun. I wanted to do it because I think it's fun. We can try different stuff. Keep. Okay, so let's get back to stuff you want to do. Since I've gone on my little tirade. Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh, Arthur, Arthur says, hey, Phil. Morning from sunny Queens Cliff, Australia. Do you still recommend the Inya Nova Nova for a value couch travel guitar? Absolutely. Now, I know, I think there's a newer version. Somebody told me it's even better. I have not. But that Nova guitar and like I said, I had two, they sent one and then it was so good. I bought one. And this is the important part of the story. So they sent me one and I smelled a ringer. I know you guys are like, they sent you, they sent you, they cherry picked you one. Look, I've been around long enough to know what people, you know, you get. Okay. So sometimes when you're like, yeah, I go, it's good. And they're like, well, that's because they picked you good one. I'm like, no, this company generally makes good stuff. So I'm not really nervous about that. Or I know something that you guys don't know, which is I know that, you know, they shipped me a B stock or they don't even care because a lot of times the companies don't even care. But in the Nova's case, that guitar was so good. I was convinced it was a ringer. So I bought one and the one I bought was very good, but not as good as the first one. It was really good though. And that's the one you see in the video is the one I bought. So and the reason I say that is I think if you go back, I don't know. I think it says it's sponsored, you know, because technically it was because he sent the guitar, but technically I bought it. So I just left it as sponsored. But I want you to know that that's so I still love that guitar for practice around the house. Sounds amazing. Take it on the go take it in your RV taking the you know put in the trunk of your car. That's how good it is just abuse it. So the price is great and it's a it takes abuse. Arnis says hey Phil I'm going between PRS or Magami guitar cables any recommendations. I've owned both. Essentially they're the same. They pretty much are using like the same kind of cable and then they use the same cable ends. I probably go with Magami if you're going to spend the kind of money. I don't know. So Arnis I'm not I don't know if I want to pull up prices for all that stuff. I can tell you what I'm using because I just bought these and I think they're pro-coast and I bought them from Sweetwater. So hold on a second. All right what do I got? I got silent cables. These are noitric ends. So I use so you guys know I use all noiseless noitric ends. These are the ones where you push it in it works and it doesn't work when you pull it out. And then I hoping it says on the cable it says pro-co. That's what I did. That's what I went with. Made in the USA cable. I don't know what that means but it and why did I do that? As you guys know I've been using the clutch, clocks, clocks cables. They sent me a bunch and I've been using those but I need some shorter cables and I bought some. And then funny enough this nice gentleman sent me cables. I'll share that with you guys. He sent me a nice ladder but unfortunately he sent them and it's not his fault by any means. I mean it's a nice gift. I appreciate it. I will get to them. I had bought all new cables about a month or two prior. So his name is Ken Hicks and he just said he wanted to send me some cables. He makes cables and does he say where? Cables? I'm looking for the... Huh. It doesn't say where. Ken Hicks. I thought he worked at a store. But anyways these are the cables and again it's the cable lens I use. I don't know what wire he's using but it looks... I mean this is very comparable to what I just got at least feels like it. Except he's got these cool leather ends. He put the Know Your Gear logos on them which was really cool. So he sent me a cable and then he sent me these short cables. Right? Like this. And is there information on here? Nope. It just says made exclusively for filming night. So Ken I appreciate the cables. I just don't know. I thought it said on the letter that he works at a store and he makes these cables. So if I find that out to be true I will share with you guys so you can support him if you would like. And I will use these cables soon. I'm actually putting together a bigger pedal board so maybe that will... Where I'll use them. Trust me so you know Ken. When I got him I was like that's awesome and I was like I just bought cables. Everybody hates buying cables. So I will definitely be using them. Okay let's... Okay nope. I didn't see the new DoD Morley pedal. Hmm. Somebody's asking me about a pedal. I don't see it. Is it a new pedal? So Mr. Austin Music says I only use HOSA audio cables. I've used HOSA a lot too. In fact a lot of my cables are HOSA. I don't necessarily have a brand over the years. I told you I really like the Didario cables. What it is is there's a cable I like and then the price goes up and it goes up and then it eventually boils me out and go okay I'm going to find the next tier down and cable. And again I buy the same quality of cable every time. I just don't buy the same brand because again I'm kind of comfortable in a price range. And I've told you guys many times because I had the store for years. I never had to buy cables. They would just give them to you. Sales reps would bring in cables. Samples. And then on YouTube I've had a couple companies send cables but not very many. So you guys know early on I try to get something going with cables to be like the official cable of know your gear and I would just use all their cables and then that would fill my studio with cables. And they would get promotion out of the deal and I would just go hey guys it's the only cables I use but I like to say that no one good enough sent me cables but the reality is no one really sent me cables. It's basically Ken and Clotch. Clotch cables. Everything that puts him to send me cables. So maybe Ken's cables will be the official cables of know your gear. I don't know. Okay. Brian says I like lava cables. I used to be a lava cable dealer. I like lava. So I used to use Georgia. Then I got lava and I stopped using both and it's not their fault. They get a lot of crap for no reason. Everybody will tell you. I want to say everybody. A lot of players will tell you that the cables you know when you pull on them they you know they disconnect they don't work. It's true but that's because you're an idiot and you're just pulling on them. When I say that I'm an idiot and I pull on them too. I've said this before I never realized my whole life until I got it. I bought an expensive first with Georgia then I switched to lava. I never never understood until I spent hundreds of dollars in cables building a pedal board and then finding out they don't work because I was pulling on the cable and not the end. So you got to literally when you unplug a lava or a Georgia you got to pull it from the jack right you pull it out like this. Okay. You not like this case. You don't pull it out like this. Okay. Now the reason I say it's an interesting thing is for my whole life my mom would yell at me for yanking the cable to the power cable from the vacuum out of the wall. I just pull it out of the wall like this and every time she's like don't do that. You're going to ruin it. I'm like whatever. I didn't say that to my mom. You think I'm kidding. You're going to smack the head but I thought it in my head and be like whatever's and then when I broke my cables I go. My mom was telling me the whole time not to do that and I did it. So you know so you know so basic what I'm saying is if you want to get lava or George L's listen to your mom or listen to my mom listen to somebody's mom. Whoever's telling you not to pull cables by the cable but by the actual end that's the way to do it. But and then for those of you who are going to say well Phil do it the right way. Yeah. If my mother couldn't get me to do it you guys got no shot. None. So so there I'm just that's my answer and I know you're thinking what about Shauna. Shauna doesn't let me touch the vacuum. Maybe she talked to my mom. I never asked her. Maybe maybe there was a I never thought about this. I know I'm curious. You think your wife gets a debriefing from your mother before you get married. A lot of things would make sense right now if that's true. Like if there was a debriefing a lot of things that Shauna like some of the guidelines or rules in the house would all of a sudden make sense like yeah yeah. Like a management transfer. Now I'm curious. OK. OK this one's from Jose who says hey Phil. Oh I'm sorry it's not Jose. It's Joseph. I didn't see the PH at the end. I saw. OK. Joseph says hey Phil. Thoughts on Vox amps and boss pedals being sold through Costco over the Christmas season. Tried asking me for since then but kind of like I'm not sure. OK. Joseph says hey Phil thoughts on Vox amps and boss pedals being sold through Costco over the Christmas season. Tried asking me for since then but common always got deleted. That's because somebody doesn't like you. I don't know. I'm just kidding. I don't I don't know why we get deleted. Thanks for driving the dump truck. Hey you're welcome. Someone's got to drive the dump truck. That being said you know I didn't know that they were selling that stuff at Costco but I'm not shocked. Last season there was a lot of panic so I'll be really curious to see what happens this season because there was a lot of last season the deals were pretty aggressive. There was a lot of overage of stock. You know there was a lot of chaos that the manufacturers weren't ready for. So I think a lot of them just did whatever they can anyone who will buy this stuff. You know so I don't think a lot of times manufacturers have rules you know obviously to be a dealer and what kind of dealers they want to see. Obviously they have a brand image to uphold and they don't need Walmart or Costco or you know chain stores or whatever. And they don't certain like mom and pop shops they don't want certain little mom and pop shops carrying their brand because because again it might devalue their brand. You know I told you guys this music man I think I had they told me I had to be in business 10 years before I could be a dealer when I reached out to them and I was like really that's crazy. And so anyways my point is is that what I've learned is all of those rules are immediately invalid and don't matter once the economy slows a little bit or there's a little bit over just Doc. So I remember when I opened the store in 2004 and I remember 2004 5 6 7 you know the boom years I remember everybody was like oh man the buy-in is this and maybe if we approve you and maybe if you do this and if you carry this and there was all these rules. It was like I was joining fraternities is like oh I want to carry your product here's my money and they go oh no we have rules for how your money comes and we're like what and they would they would tell the rules. And then by 2009 it was like hey you just want to buy one or if you just you know hey if you just want to put this is actually a true story you know the recession got so bad that you know brands would tell you that you could just put them. You are a dealer up for them on your website and if anyone just casually ordered a product they would just sell you a product. That was that was so terrifying as a dealer because at first you're like that's cool but then you go what I mean wait is what does that mean because that really tells you how bad the market was. I told you guys maybe I never told you this but I'll tell you this now during the recession we sold so many PRS guitars because PRS was repossessing the rep the reps plural but our rep was repossessing more PRS guitars from dealers than anything else that's what was his main job he was actually not even selling guitars anymore he was just going from store to store trying to get the guitars back the dealers hadn't paid for because their accounts were past you. And then because we were a cash dealer he would just bring the guitars to us so it was crazy time so so basically what I'm trying to say buddy is I think last year felt a little desperate especially towards the end and yeah I can see a lot of companies doing something. We'll see if it's a permanent thing it might be but I don't know. Bob says hey Phil what's your thoughts on the opinion what's your thought what's your opinion okay what's my opinion on a Gibson custom pro Les Paul that was a guitar center exclusive I think they were released in 2014 thanks. I like anything that's exclusive guitar center musicians friends sweet waters you know Wildwood I don't care what it is I don't care what the excuse is. A limited edition what I what I've learned in almost every case a limited edition a small run a whatever it is essentially is custom shop and that's what it will be perceived as later will someone care that you have a limited edition anything will someone care that you had an exclusive guitar center guitar. No but you will have something unique and different and unique and different is sometimes cool so in grand scheme of things you have to understand if you're looking for fast and easy sale. Okay so in other words if you're buying a guitar and your brain says for some reason I want to buy this guitar but I want to be able to get rid of it fast. Then you need to stick to basics by a offenders and Gibson's in the basic boring you know sunburst black white colors don't get too too crazy maybe cherry burst for Les Paul's you know just keep it basic and there's always a customer there's always somebody looking for that guitar. You'll be able to unload your stuff however however if you want to if you want to have something unique but not pay the crazy money that people have to pay to get a custom shop instrument made you know it's funny is I have a theory I have a theory. Okay I want to hear my theory I'm gonna give this this is a neon yellow guitar you know I think it exists because I think I have no reason I have no proof I have lots of reasons to believe this no proof. Let me go here. Okay I'm gonna find it there it is okay so I don't think it's a coincidence okay that nags. What year is this. Oh look at that I mean how okay so coincidence maybe right tell me so nags in two thousand twenty four you know the time when my guitar is made they did a very limited time. Okay so I'm gonna run of the Steve Stevens guitars in this fluorescent yellow pink and orange okay and I know this is weird it's a weird guitar okay. Look at that we for those of you all need that look at that it's got the little phaser pistol that he uses so why I'm showing you this is I don't think it's a coincidence that they did that and then they had a couple yellows I didn't see the origins but maybe there's a little bit of a difference. And a couple pink ones because what happens is they probably did that limited run and then they probably had the paint so they probably shot a couple extra guitars with the paint because the paint neon paints not cheap so and you know manufacturing is all about getting your cost down so they basically probably shot a bunch of guitars in those colors and then let them go you know sold them right and to same thing told the dealer like hey this is a very unique guitar the problem is is that it's so unique only one dude on the internet wanted one and he wasn't gonna pay for it. So anyways my point is to your to to Bob is it's a cool guitar it's unique and it's a way to get think about this. This is why I told you the moral the story of the guitar the week was patience right you know me you know it sold I didn't pay the full price I didn't want that bad now do I like it absolutely not because it's cheap because it's at a price point now that I feel like it's in my comfort zone you know I can play this guitar. I can play it I can love it it can get dinged you know I don't want to get dinged but it can okay and you know I have a couple guitars and I've you know I told you guys comfort zones I have a couple guitars that I just pay too much for and they're just staying in their cases right now and they're rich they're gonna go away because again I just can't pull them out and love them because I'm too nervous and for those of you gonna have opinions about that when when you when you have a family. And you think wow if I nick this guitar it's worth $2000 less I think wow or I could not nick it and give my daughter $2000 and change her life you know I mean. So I'm not gonna do that you see I'm saying so that's it's it's it's it's that's just how it goes I don't know how it goes. Just practical I'm being practical is what I'm trying to say practicality so guitar for me is a romance but then my upbringing makes me practical so practicality is part of my thing too. Oh yeah Zarlie says 6-7 says hey Phil my middle pickup on my deluxe strat doesn't work in the middle position but it does work in the in between positions is it likely switch it's it's definitely the switch. My guess is maybe a cold solder joint broke fenders and kind of known for those on those switches because you know those what happens what happens sometimes is they run the wire through they solder it and then when they are putting it all together those tabs I guess is what you call them the tangs what do you want to call they get bent and. Okay looks like I got a rep bruise right there just from pushing down so hard on my desk anyways so. So basically that's what I'm trying to say is yeah it's possible I would not replace the switch here's what I would do is I would. De-solder it re-solder it make sure it looks clean look for anything that's you know just touching this not supposed to touch this you know kind of just you don't even have to know what you're looking for just if it looks wrong it's probably wrong and then I would do that first. And then I and then replace the switch and so you know somebody's probably gonna say hey you could somebody says wiggle switches you can do that too sure you can see if that helps it if it's bent. Me personally I if it's not noticeable damage always replace the switch because even if you fix it it just means it's gonna go out when you don't want to. Right intermittent is I think the worst. At least when something's broken like if I know the middle pickup doesn't work and I just don't use it on stage the worst is you flip on I think it's a I think a lot of you don't play out and so maybe this doesn't matter to you when I'm talking like this. But people who play out know exactly what I'm talking about you know people think like when you're playing and you switch to a pickup and it goes out you think like oh no you're stressed out. No sometimes you just don't know you don't have sound because it's loud things are happening sometimes you're just like oh and then you're like am I not hearing me in the monitor and now your paranoia kicks in at least mine does. Is it the monitor that's out is it me that's not making sound is it my pedal I kicked right what happened and so yeah you don't want. To anything that I think is going to be a possible issue just replace it and fix it and move on especially when it's a twenty five dollar switch and thirty minutes of your time and an hour if you're a novice at it so just do it for thirty bucks in an hour it's worth it to be to always be able to rely on it. Okay. No Matt says hey Phil what do you think has the bigger impact on the guitar industry in the last past ten years the helix of the Katana the Katana. I think the Katana. I think the Katana is a bigger thing than we all probably started with and here's here's why. I think it's it's a good sounding amp it's trusted by I mean Dave Freeman's got a Katana like he was talking about this once he's like yeah have a Katana that he uses to test stuff or whatever and I'm like they were using the test pedals and I have a Katana and I know I have a Katana you know to do on the video. So I have something that relates to people when they want to amp that's in the two three hundred range but I have a Katana because again it's just a tried and true amp it's not a it's a Toyota Camry it's not amazing you just know it's going to start you know it's going to run for a long time because it's boss and you just trust boss and it's relatively inexpensive and look there's been a lot of great practice amps and the Katana in fact in fact my best advice to somebody is to not even use the amp. I don't even get ninety nine dollar amps anymore just go right to Katana you know and just because I get used to Katana just a Katana is an amp. I mean you know it's funny they keep coming out new Katana is like a care less I just you know to me I'm just using it for basic sounds. I think the Katana was a bigger impact the Helix I think of the Helix because I use the Helix you know HX Stomp and I had a Helix before and I think line six makes great stuff as I've said this before I like to store. The line six distortions I prefer them to my ear prefers them to the boss distortions overall but preference is not like I don't like boss and I like line six is just if you A B them I'm generally picking the line six because there's something about it just sounds more more mid-range more natural I don't know what it is but something about it. But also the Katana is now the industry standard for this better be better than this and what I mean by that is every YouTuber I know that does quality demo work will tell you they're like the amount of comments every video like if I did a video of this magnetone right now. Okay this beautiful amp this thing is amazing right this is a this is the panoramic stereo and I plugged it now great it's it's you know whatever plugged into it there's gonna be four comments going that's great but my Katana could do that and they're not wrong because like when they say their Katana could do that here's how I perceive that I perceive that is like if I got you know and I'm not a car guy so just give me give me some like let's say I got a beautiful whatever exotic car and I go look at this car look how nice it is. I drive look at the leather and so my camera can get me to work to be like yeah it's true like so many goes yeah I can I can get with a Katana like you can get with a Katana it's pretty so I think Katana but it's just yeah I said but I like both products but Katana. Um. Uh Eric says Eric the bull. That's nice. Who's name. I like it. I like I like also. Um. I like how you picked your capital letters. And then. And then the lower case letters. I don't know why. I find there's an artistic quality to that. He's Eric. Big. E. R. Small. I. Big. C. Small. D. H. I like it, because it's just in my name too. Anyways, he says, Phil, from when you owned your private stock was, in your opinion, how do they compare to the core line? You know, what ruined it for me with the private stock was when my friend said, it's just furniture at this point. It's just fancy furniture. He's like, it looks like, he goes, it plays your core, but it's just fancy. And I'm like, yeah, that ruined it for me. So not digging on private stocks, okay, by the way. If you got the money for them and you love them, the other problem for me is, as you know, I'm not overly into wood. I mean, look at the guitars behind me, what I choose and pick. I mean, I have a plain mahogany mirror. That top was picked for me by a heritage. So no really fancieness in the woods or inlays. So a lot of private stock goes over my head in the idea of what I'm buying. I'm buying something that's, you know, it's exotic and beautiful, but not necessarily, you know, it doesn't fit the thing I need, which is stays in tune perfectly, intonates well, sounds good. To me, the core does that. So I don't really need a private stock, but that's all. And that's basically what I'm trying to say about Custom Jobs. I'm not trying to say that they're no good, they're overpriced, I'm just saying for me, and I've said this before, as you go up the rungs of prices of gear with amps or guitars, what I can tell you is, is I've said this, I say this a lot, you know, it's hard to go backwards, you know, if you go up, it's hard to go back. It's to me, it's easier on guitars than it is amps. Once you get a couple of nice amps, it's hard to go down to a lower quality amp or a lower whatever and go, oh yeah, this is a good sounding amp. You go, I kind of miss how that amp sounded. Guitars, you know, as long as they play great and they sound fine, they're functional. And that way I don't really, really need them to be fancy. So, let's see. Tony says, hey, any favorites in the blues driver world was looking at the Waza and the analog man mods, but curious if you have any personal picks. I played both, I liked both. I'd pick whatever's cheaper because I didn't pick a better one. I will tell you though, I think for a pedal that I'm absolutely in love with, for that tone, it's not, it doesn't have as much distortion as the blues driver, but absolutely, it's 230 bucks. Oh, well you can find them for 174. Here's one for 99 bucks, use the Guitar Center. This pedal right here, the J-Rocket Audio blue note. This pedal, there's a ton of versions, okay? I have one right here. This is the one I actually have. I paid, oh yeah, I paid $109, I thought for mine, 99 bucks. I absolutely love this. So, you know, comparing it the other day with a friend to a King of Tone pedal, which is like a Holy Gro pedal, we both like this better, which we're saying a lot because the King of Tones are pretty pricey. I mean, you could buy seven of these, at least six, for the price of a King of Tone pedal, a real one. So, unless you're on the waiting list, then you could buy three of these. So, that's one I would highly recommend. You guys let me know if you're interested. I told you guys I'm back into pedals again, and I've talked about this again. I've been, I think, you know, I was into pedals, and then I got out of pedals, and then I was into pedals a little bit, and then I've never really ended them into them. Now, this is probably the most I've ever been into them, and the collection has gotten pretty crazy. And so, if you guys think that would be an interesting video to do, I would do it and put it on the second channel, on the Know Your Gear channel, for sure, because I don't have to edit it. Like I said, I can just film it, and then have it edited and put on there. If you guys would be interested in that, let me know in the comments if you think it's interesting, and just go through them, and why own certain ones, because every pedal I have has a purpose, or at least from my thought process, of why this pedal needs to exist, and how I use it. Okay, so this is Mr. Austin Music, says, I buy guitars, get sent some from people and companies. I often do a video or two on the instrument, but then they take up space. I try to gift them to students, but I don't have a lot local. What do you do? So inexpensive guitars, like student, anything that's good. So Mr. Austin Music, just again, you're asking me, so I gotta give it to you from my angle, okay? If the guitar is amazing, I gifted away. Like I gave a Bruno guitar to my father-in-law. I gave a couple of friends guitars that wanted to get a guitar. We gave guitars to students at schools. I'll try to give them to charities, but not like to raise money, because again, if you're looking at entry-level guitars, but only if they're really, really good. And the reason is, is because I don't want to give them a good deed to turn into a problem. Last thing I need is an email or a text, a month later, two months later going, hey, the guitar you gave us, we're having an issue with it, and I go, crap. So when I feel pretty good about it, we'll move them that way. Schools, it's where a lot of them have been going. We've been just giving them to schools, and that's what we do with the entry-level ones. And the logic behind that is, especially guitars, and so I have a sweet spot that I'm looking for, like guitars that are like, okay, this guitar sells for 500 new, and used, we'd be lucky to get two for it. So might as well gift it to somebody, because at that point, it's like, you're only gonna get 200 bucks, and that's not really gonna move the channel, our channel very much when it comes to. And then mid-price guitars, we tend to sell those all the time, because again, and an 8-operteers, definitely, very, very good, because again, that moves the needle the most, because like you're saying, I'm funding my goal, which I've been working to for years. There's no absolute goal to be no sponsors. I think about it, and then it just never seems to work out. I'd like to get to 25% sponsors. Right now, we're running about 50%. When I say sponsor, just keep in mind exactly what you said. Some companies are sending us a guitar, some companies are gifting us a guitar, some companies are paying us, some companies are just loaning us a guitar. Some people are loaning the guitars. But ultimately, I can hear, I just, this is a bad idea, what I'm saying anyways. I'm disgusted with myself doing 50%. I don't, I think it's horrible. So I think we should do a lot less. However, it's tough, and if you're doing it too, you know, everybody knows how tough this is, especially if you're trying to do something like, look, I knew that if I did a Novo, I'd get views. So you're like, okay, I know this is a video that people would be interested in. Why? Because it's a substantial size channel, and there's so many Novos that were sent to so many influencers that if you, you know, it would be, that video was like the quintessential, kind of to me, like my buddy said, influencers won't take a crap unless they get sponsored, right? And you're like, yeah, so it's nice. It's nice to see a video. I know, because I want to see it too. Like you guys, it's nice to see a video of a Novo where I bought it, and now here's the opinion, you know, it's not affected by Novo or somebody else, okay? But that's a hard video to make, as you guys know. It's a lot of money to do that. So, you know, it's, you take some sponsored videos and you try to move on that way. And so like I said, we try to keep the sponsorships limited. And ideally, we try to keep them, but you know, to the smallest number, but like I said, ultimately, I think it ends up to be about 50% is what I see. When I look at my own channel, looking at the stats. And part of that, so you know, and just because I got to give myself some credit, some of it is I can't control it because here's why. We consider anything sponsored if we follow, we follow the actual guidelines, which is if it was given to us, if it was gifted to us, it was loaned to us, if we got a discount on it, if we know somebody at the company, or if we're friends with anyone in the company, you know, same thing. So like, you know, at this point, I know so many people that I'm like, it's tough. But it's tough. So, and then Pick Me Chew, I think that Pick My Chew says, the pedal show is the one that remains unpaid. Well, they're doing pedals. So I appreciate that, because I know those guys and they're great guys. Yes, like my son said, if I was doing, he said it best, if you were doing like, he goes too bad, you're not doing like, blenders and appliances, you know, it's a little different when, you know, the average guitar is about a $700 to $800 investment. And it's tough that way. It's a tough thing to pay for. So plus they're selling product. And that's the other thing we talk about too, is if we sell product. That's the other thing too. It's like, it's like, like Rupi Otto doesn't do sponsors for the most part, but he's also selling his product. So that's his sponsors himself. And that's where it gets tricky. He's like, okay, do you guys want, and I'm just asking you, you guys can tell me, do you want me to get companies to send products sometimes? Or do you want me to constantly be telling you, you got to download my new thing or buy my thing or buy this thing or this video sponsored by this, which really means that every video's, and by the way, before you go down that road, I just want you to know that secretly, what's gonna happen is conversion happens at a much higher rate, a smaller amount of views, which means I'm just giving you the insights, you guys know, because you guys deserve the truth. Which is, if you notice a lot of channels when they're making lots of views, and then they start selling a product, whether it's a downloadable product or a physical product, all of a sudden, they don't make these great videos anymore and they're getting a lot less views and you're like, oh, they're not doing this great. That's because you don't need that many views. I can make a company $100,000 off 5,000 views. Getting them half a million views doesn't help them, it helps me. They don't care, because once you break past the, you're the addictive quality guitar players who are just buying and consuming all the time, most of you guys aren't converting, you're not buying stuff. Most of you guys are watching stuff. Right now, there's 1,200 of you. 1,200 of you watching, I couldn't tell you the numbers, but I would've probably imagined that 100 of you are ready to buy anything right now, just because you're just looking for, you're like, your whole week is like, I'm gonna mow my lawn and buy whatever somebody tells me to do on the internet. That's 100 of you right now. So, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you're selling something for $100, that's 100 times 100, there you go. Right? So, that's the tough part, where do you balance that? So, it's tough. Yeah, I get it. But that's how we mix it up. Let's see, Quaker Town, Quaker Town Rick says, hey Phil, when you play a strat without a rear cavity cover, don't you worry about a grounding wire getting dislodged? No, my gut's not that big. It's a big one, don't get me wrong. I can get some of this tummy in that strat cavity, but not enough. No, I've never had an issue there. It's usually soldered on. Hell, I would say, I think, let me just give you the insight, Quaker Town Rick, have you ever desoldered that wire from the claw? It's not that easy. Usually it's a pretty big glob of solder and it's on there pretty hard. So, pulling it off is gonna be super, super hard. So, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Is it possible? Anything's possible. Have I ever seen it? Never seen it once, I've never seen anybody do it. Not even accidentally, but also, it's hard enough when you're trying to do it. Like I said, I don't want, I'm not gonna tell you to do this because it's bad, because I can tell you what's gonna happen. If you were to take that wire and pull on it as hard as you can, my guess is it's gonna break from the other side of the electronics before it pulls from that claw. Just because usually, the way it's soldered on there is the same way when you solder on the nickel cover on a humbucker, it's on there. I mean, you almost have to break it free or super heat your gun to your iron. So, you guys know, I get a little grief every once in a while on the internet when I say soldering gun instead of soldering iron. I apologize if I'm gonna say soldering gun. I'm pretty sure soldering gun came from, I think when I was in the Army. Somebody was caught, somebody when I was young called it a soldering gun and it stuck. But anyway, soldering iron. So, that's just my thoughts on that. Let's button this show up. This is also, by the way, all these have been from Amanda. So, thank you Amanda for grabbing these. Mort 2700 says, hey Phil, I have an RG with a backbode neck. Trust rod is only one way, oh, so no, dual action trust rod. Well, your backbode, that's good. So, we wanna straighten it. Oh no, we're backbode. Oh, yeah, so, and the neck's super thin. It's 19 millimeters. And it won't take a backbode out. Do I have to heat press the neck into shape or is there another trick? I would do a heat press on it or like I said, you could also, cause there's no finish on that neck. Whether you have the rosewood, the maple, most likely you have the maple. There's no finish on it. So, I would not only do that, but I would definitely increase the tension of the strings. I would block the trim. So, let me say what happened if you brought it to me, I would go, I'd block that trim, just to get out of the equation, and then I'd probably put in a set of 11s or 12s on it, probably 11s, tighten them up to pitch and get, you know, just enforce that neck straight. And then, we would probably do, we'd probably steam it. So, ever so lightly. So, that's, and heat and steam, same thing. Try to see if we can do that that way. It sucks because that's usually not a problem with those necks, it's really bad that it sucks that it happened, but it is fixable. But you need more tension and you need it to relax itself, straighten itself out. So, oh, somebody says, soldering guns dispense the solder. Is that true or are you just saying that? So, I don't know. Oh, Michael says, hey, so glad that you liked the heritage. I'm curious though, about the recent in-house pickups being used instead of Seymour Duncan 59s and Lawler dog ears, what do you think? The Lawler, I haven't heard, I haven't tried their dog ears versus Lawler's dog ears in their heritage guitars, but the heritage pickups versus the Seymour Duncan's, I absolutely love the heritage pickups. So, I have not ABed them in the same guitars to go, well, but here's the thing, I like that guitar and the way it sounds, there was no instinct in me to change them out and I really like them. So, I guess sometimes that's probably a more accurate way of saying things is not that I like them better than the Seymour Duncan's, I just like them. So, I like them better than what came in all of my Gibson's. So, Blue Note guitar says, apparently drinks some water, says, hey Phil, I own a Boss Catana and I can't play loud neighbors, et cetera. Am I really missing out with a tube amp? Is it really worth spending a fortune on a tube amp and a attenuator? Is it worth it? It's a joy. If you get joy out of it, it's worth it. I don't want to sidestep this question. If you have the money to throw around and you don't care about that money, if you don't have another place for that money to go and you want to just enjoy your life and buy a tube amp and just, hey, suck it, I only live once, then yeah, you could do that. Are you missing out? No, I use a Boss Catana literally in my bedroom. That's what I was playing through last night. My wife came upstairs, I was playing. So, you know, I go upstairs sometimes ahead of my, of Shawna and I go in the bedroom and I kind of situate my side of the room, right? I don't know. And then I play a guitar. I have one guitar and then one amp in there and right now I have the Catana. And I had it in the whatever the lowest watt setting is before off, which is like a half watt. And I have a strat in there right now and I was just playing my strat through the Catana and loving it. You know, no, you're not missing out on anything. I don't really ever feel like I'm missing out when I'm playing guitar. I find every time I get to play guitar, that's not missing out. Owning nice stuff, that's a combination of two things. One, an addictive personality to this subject of music and guitar and just, I gotta try everything and I wanna see everything. And you know, it's been marketed to me since I was a young adult in guitar magazines and rock star videos and stuff like that. And then also just a point of, oh, I've gotten to a point of level where I can afford to buy nicer things. So I'm gonna do that. But no, no. You know, it's funny, I told Sean I might talk about this. I mean, let me talk about this and this may be help you give you some insight. A couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was last week, I don't know, it was a couple of episodes, but it stuck with me, it stuck in my head. Somebody asked me what's a good amp for a tube amp for under $1,500 that you like. And I said, if you go to the side camera, side camera, there, right there, is the 68 Princeton. Okay, now, I tend not to talk like this cause I think it's douchey. So the fact that I'm doing it, but I just don't have another way to illustrate this. I said that's the amp I would pick. The question was what amp would I buy for under $1,500 as a tube amp? Like, and I took the question as what would I buy and enjoy and want and be forever happy, right? And maybe I added all those things, but that's what I took the interpretation of that question was what would you buy? And that's what I would buy. And there was a comment, and I mean, no offense to the person in the comment, and somebody said, basically I was wrong, you should just buy a mono price. And I think sometimes in my attempt to not come across like an ass, I don't really hit the subject hard enough. And so maybe I don't know what the right answer is. By the way, Pete might you said DSL 40. I would say DSL 40 would be the runner up to me to the Princeton 68, for me personally, right? Like, here's where I would say the DSL 40, because I did a video on the DSL 40, and the DSL 40, if I didn't have any overdrive pedals, I would have to go to the DSL 40. But, and then after DSL 40, I would also say the Fender Supersonic. But the point of this story with the Princeton 68 is, in this collection of things that I have, in these amps I have, look here, that's a car, Mercury 8, that's one of the original ones. And then of course, there's the, the magnetone stereo, and then there's a Marshall 2061, and there's AmphiNation, and then there's a Two Rock, right? I guess what I was trying to say to that guy was, in a room full of really expensive amplifiers, that Princeton, to me, is everything I need, and I don't feel like any of these amps are much, I wanna say better, just any, they don't do anything for me that that amp can't do. And so that's what I was trying to say, is like, that's where I'm happiest with that amp. In fact, so you know, I have a Princeton 64, which is the hand-wired one, I still prefer the 68. So that's how much I like the 68. I have a video about the 68, it's called something like, why I've loved the 68 Reverb for 10 years. It's cause it compresses, it does low volume playing, I can get it loud enough that if I have to jam with someone I can make it happen. Hey, squeaky, sounds, my chair's being squeaky. And so my point is not to belittle the mono price or to say somebody who has a less expensive amp, they don't know what they're talking about. My point is, is that this amp punches way above its pay grade, so to speak. And so to answer your question, are you missing out? No, the Katana is also something that punches above its pay grade. And the only thing I don't like about the solid-state amps is that they're not as compressed, like the tube amps. The clean channels just don't sound as silky smooth, and velvety, all these stupid terms, transparent overdrive, all the terms that we use. I just like said, I really like the 68, is what I'm trying to say. And I don't know if that's gonna help you with your question, but maybe it's in sight. I think that's what I'm trying to say in the evening. I can't answer this question, but I wanna read it because I know someone who probably can't answer it. Okay? It says, why do you think we do not see PRS Nitro Finish guitars that have age from heavy use? Is it that they use an extra durable nitro formula? So I have a friend who's a friend of mine who's been using this guitar for a long time, and I'm not sure if he's using it, but I think he's using it. So I have a friend who's a Finnish expert, and I'll ask him, because so you know, when I say I'll ask him, I wanna be very clear. He's already told me this answer, but I wasn't really paying attention. Like I didn't need that information in my head, so I didn't retain what he said, but he was talking, and I'm gonna be talking in a term, he was saying something about, they do it a little bit different, and they use an undercoat, something like, I don't know what, ceramic, something. I don't know what he was talking about. He's like, oh, and it's really, this is the undercoat. It's acrylic undercoat with the nitro over the top, and yada, yada, yada. And this is like said, somebody, an authority who actually knows about it. And I was like, oh, okay, and at the time I didn't really care, but now you're asking, I'm like, I could probably find out. But yes, this is what's, so you know, PRS went full nitro, I think in 2020 in June of 2020. So they did nitro before that, okay? Some guitars were nitro, but all PRS guitars, USA, S2 and Core, USA, June of, when they came back, it's, I believe it's when they came back from, you know, the two week, flat in the curve COVID thing, from then on it was all nitro all the time, all guitars. And so that's how long they've been making them and doing that, and he told me that then, you know, oh yeah, well they're doing it this way. And I'm like, oh, okay. And when I went to the factory, and it actually came up, cause it was a question, cause their dry time is significantly less than Gibson's for nitro, which I thought was really odd. And again, he explained it. So I will, this subject, I'll timestamp it as, I don't know the answer to your question, and then I'll send it to him and he'll tell me the answer, and then I can tell you his answer. Okay. Okay, are we done? I think we're done. Okay, Vim69, so we're gonna just button up a couple of last ones from, says, hey Phil, can you intonate a guitar with it lying on its back, or does it need to be in the playing position? This is a great question, okay. And the answer is yes, you can intonate it on the bench. You can do anything on the bench. However, the argument, the argument is the, without a perfect phrase for it, it's like a 1% argument. It's a, well technically, when you lift the guitar up, the weight of the guitar that was pushing on the neck, now the intonation can be slightly off, and it's not the same, just like we said the action. Everything from the bench is not gonna be the same as in the playing position. Sure, but no one that makes your guitars cares, because they're doing it that way. So you know, most setups, look, when the 55 point inspection guys at Sweetwater hold your guitar, they're holding it in the playing position, when PRS is setting up the guitars, when Kiesel's setting up guitars, they're holding it in playing positions. Generally speaking, everybody's gonna do most of their stuff in the playing position, okay? So that is correct, and I've said this in many videos, do it in the playing position. I'm illustrating always in a video, so if you notice a lot of times, I try to do this disclaimer of time, but I forget all the time too, which is, hey, do it in the playing position, but illustrated wise, it doesn't make sense, because unless I put a camera in front of my bench, it doesn't, there's no way to get the angle correctly, and it's not, again, I'm just at this point, I'm like kind of like thinking like a clinic I'm teaching, but that being said, no one would complain. I would argue for everyone who says, oh man, if you intonate your guitar while it's sitting on the bench, it's gonna be out, I'd be like, how much money you wanna throw down on that? You know, I was talking about how people are very brave on the internet, but then they're not so brave in person, I don't even care about bravery, I care about money, thousand bucks, right? You tell me, I'll make the video, we'll do it together. The guy who's opinions that strong who says, hey man, if you intonate your guitar on a bench, and you pick it up, it's gonna be out of intonation, cool. Well, then what I'll do is I'll intonate the guitar, either two exact guitars or something like that, right? I'll do one in playing position, do one in, you'll guess which one's right and which one's wrong, and you'll tell me, and if you lose, you gotta pay me a thousand bucks. And I bet you there's not a lot of takers, I wouldn't take that bet. It's a hard one. So Vems, it's better to do everything in the playing position, not only because of the weight, the weight, it's just because in the playing position is how you're gonna do things. One of the best piece of advice I ever got when it comes to repair and setup, came from Scott Grove on the Scott Grove channel, he always had his tidbits of wisdom, and one of them was, again, and this is where I try to take leads from things like him, because he didn't really care about people. He wasn't really worried about the trolls, so he just tended to say whatever he liked, which is nice, it's a nice thing to do, but what's great was he would say things even though he was anti the industry standard. And one of the things he said was, when he was tuning a guitar or intonating a guitar, he would pick, being he take the pick and hit the string as hard as he normally hits it, I got so curious about this, this statement that was, oh gosh, I don't know how many, 15 years ago, I mean it was a long time ago he made that video or wherever he said it in the video. I started not only doing that, but then analyzing people who I set up their guitars and saying, hey, how hard do you pick? And they would show me and I'd go, okay, I try to mimic it when I'm setting up their guitars. And what I can tell you was that one piece of advice instantly improved my customer satisfaction on setups. Because all of a sudden, I never thought about it. Yeah, I was always told you pick the string evenly, right? You got the tuner and you hit it and boom, normal amount, not too hard, not too light, you got to get it to intonate perfectly. And then he was like, no, hit it however you're gonna hit it. And I tried doing it that way and here's the deal. I don't argue if it's right, I don't argue it's wrong. What I can tell you is absolutely customer satisfaction skyrocketed, people liked my setups way more once I started doing stuff like that. So a lot of times when I implement things or say things in my videos, it's fine, people call me out and they'll go, hey, that's not right or that's not the way you're supposed to do it. And I never argue it is, I just go, that's the way I did it. And I got great customer satisfaction with it and people were happy with the service. And that doesn't prove anything, but it does say, it's just say something. So Vems, I would say do everything in the playing position but if you can't, then don't, you know what I mean? Just don't worry about it. So me personally, here's a wacky thing. I set up almost every customer's guitar or any guitar I'm doing for a video, I'll do most of the setup of not 99.99% setup in the playing position. My personal guitars, I don't care. Sometimes I'll just do the whole thing on the bench. Why? Cause it's lazy and I'm the player and again, customer satisfaction. I already know what I'm looking for and if it's slightly off, I'm not gonna care or notice you know, if it's slightly off. So, so. Uh. Bluesman970 says, do you tune at the attack or as it rings out? That's a good question. I can tell you a trick that I use a lot if you look at my bench, okay, in the videos. So, so the shop that I'm in is a studio shop. So it's a repair shop studio cause it's set up with all the cameras and stuff where if you look at the old videos, when I was in, you can always tell the background was brown, that's my old actual shop shop with cameras in it. When it's a gray background, it's the shop that's now set up like a studio. But either way, I had not only my Peterson strobe tuner and stuff, there's a rack mount tuner. You'll see it sometimes in the shot. You'll see it in the corner or of the bench. It's facing down. What I will do regardless, so when I plug into it, I plug into the tuner, I always take the tone control and I run that all the way back. So that's what I do. If I don't have the control, tone control all the way back, I hit the string and I watch the tuner wait until it rings out. That's how I do it. So, but if you run the tone control back, I don't think it matters. Just a little, just a tidbit there. Okay, I think we did it. We solved all the world's problems and with love and guitars. And that's all it really matters. I wanna thank everybody. If you guys are a patron, just remember that tomorrow is the clinic. It's tomorrow and it's on the patron page. If you're at the mid tier above and on Sunday, if you're on the top tier, we have the coffee hang where we discuss the secret society of secret guitar stuff. And so, and all, that's it. I was gonna say it, also that's it. And also check out on the other channel. I did a cool clip today about the new guitar center guitars and it was, I thought it was insightful, as you know. And what else? That's it. Also, thank you guys for supporting the second channel. It's about to hit 40,000 subs. So if you haven't subscribed to the second channel, that's where we put pedal videos, amp videos, the pod clips, but also bonus clips that are not always in the podcast, which is kinda cool. And so check that out as well. And what else? That's it. And on that note, thank you guys so much for your time and know your gear. Then know your gear podcast. ["Caribbean Euphoria"]