Why Most Guitar Salesmen Don’t Actually Help You

The Know Your Gear podcast. Hey everyone, welcome to the Know Your Gear podcast. This is March 20th, I gotta look at the clock, March 20th. Hope you guys had an exciting week, ready for some guitar stuff, maybe we have guitar stuff to talk about I'm sure. Let's get into some subjects and some topics. And I'm gonna start the first one. So I had an interesting thing happen, so my son was telling me, he's like, hey I saw a video about you, and I go, oh you saw a video about me. Good. So anyways, it wasn't like that. So what it was, was he had seen a YouTube channel, which I knew the channel, so when he said the channel, I'm like, oh I know that channel. So let me share it with you, and I thought this was an interesting topic to show. So let me just show you. So this is a channel called Jojo Fry Rocks. It's a great channel, if you don't know her channel, you need to check it out. I've watched videos of hers in the past. She kind of comes at it from the approach of someone who's on their guitar journey. No egos, which is always great, right? She's just kind of giving it to you how she feels, or how she sees things in the market or the industry. And she did essentially a reaction video to one of these podcasts, and there's a lot of this. We see a lot more of it, especially now that the second channel is doing great. We'll get into the second channel too, today's show. But why I'm bringing it up was I watched it, and I was like, I was a little perplexed, and so I want to talk about it. So let me give you the summation of what she was saying. So the clip she's talking about was the one where I talked about my buddy, one of my best friends, and how he went to a music store, and he was going to buy a Gibson Les Paul. Some of you guys remember the story, but I'll give you the recap. By the way, to help me, since there is a few hundred of you here live, and some of you are from Arizona and the Phoenix area, to show, I'm just curious. I'm going to tell the story, and then I would like anyone local to pay attention right now to what I'm about to say. So the story goes like this, like I said, I'll give you the reader's digest. He went to a store because he wanted to buy a Gibson Les Paul, a nice Les Paul. He happens to be a surgeon, and he went in there, and I told him that they have a don't touch policy. He went in, he didn't touch anything. He got a salesman to show him two Les Pauls that he was interested in, and when he was playing one Les Pauls, the salesman told him that got the guitar and said, no, you actually need an epiphone. And can anyone guess, just to show you, this is going to help, I think, Jojo Rocks, anyone guess what store that was in the Phoenix area? Let's see, because I got a feeling it's not going to be a hard store to guess, even though I think there's two, maybe three stores in Arizona that could easily have had this experience in. Anyone could have, but there's one store specifically, and not so much anymore. They're much better than they've ever been before, but by far, by leaps and bounds. But anyways, and if I see it in the comments, I'll tell you, I'm not telling you if you're right, but I just want to, I'll talk about it. Hey, look at that. The first person said, bizarre guitars. You're absolutely right. And so you know, bizarre guitars, who I was friends with the owner before he passed away. I have many unfortunate stories of bad experiences at Bizarre Guitar. He was kind of known for it, as we all know, even though we all miss him. But like I said, I think I said it in that video too. I said, I know why you're a jerk, because he was proud to be kind of like jerky, but why are the employees kind of jerky? By the way, I've since, I even bought a Gibson Les Paul from Bizarre Guitar in the last few years, and it was a great experience. So like I said, they're not the store that used to be by any means. Okay, they've really reformed. But back to JoJo, what she was talking about was she was trying to, or she was analyzing the story, and it was, she was in shock. And she came to this conclusion at first that not that the story is not real, although she had her doubts that she doesn't understand why a store would do that. And more importantly, she's good for her. She's never had that experience. So if you don't know, JoJo is, I believe in England, right? That's just my guess. I don't know if she's ever said it when I was watching videos, but obviously that's her accent seems English to me. So basically long story short, I'm trying to say, she's in England or in Europe, or somewhere like that, Ireland, Scotland. My point is, I really was like almost sad when she was talking about her experiences in stores. I'm like, wow, she was like, I've never experienced that. And what's funny to me, I don't think I know anyone. I can't think of a single person that I know that's a good friend that's into guitar like I am, male or female that doesn't have two, maybe three crazy and bad guitar store stories. It seems to be very common here. And that is why I want to talk about this, because, you know, I was recently talking about the story, and this is all going to tie in. You know, where I bought that Gibson SG guitar center, that was a so you guys know that video got clipped and that video went viral, 130, 150,000 views on that. And just to let you know, on a side note, before we go any further, guitar center, I got to give them props. You know, they reached out to me and asked me if I would do the Fender video. If you haven't watched the Fender telecast video that I'm pointing out right now, I did that video this week. There's no way I would have ever been included in any early launches of any Fender products or any known products. As you guys know, I do very few entry or, you know, launch products. So I do I very rarely get the product before it comes out or when it hits the market and definitely not when it's premium brands like Gibson and Fender. So that was guitar center. And to their credit, you know, they had just watched me pummel them publicly with their customer service. And more importantly, they've actually set up the appointments so that me and gave their CEO can sit down and talk. And they know I want to talk about some of those issues. So again, props to guitar center for for taking that and still working with the channel because as you guys know, it's really hard to to critique something and then expect to, you know, to expect, you know, them to keep working with you. It's it's really tough because it doesn't always happen that way. But why I'm talking about this is it's back to this the gentleman that sold me the SG guitar center. And I was talking about the fact that it was really difficult. You guys know that story too. And this all ties into what Jojo was saying. And the I think what Jojo maybe didn't get from the story, which by the way, her observations, by the way, your observations, if you see this, they were great. I enjoyed all of it. The and even you even started to touch on this. I was telling my wife, she's like, oh, she almost said it. She said it, I think for a second and then she didn't run that vein through. And that is even though he's a surgeon and he can definitely buy, collect Porsches. The the the whole story that I was telling that day on the podcast was about the you're not good enough to own that guitar thing has to do with if your skill isn't here, then your guitar that you buy can't be here. In other words, and that goes for and actually this is what's funny about that salesman. What I believe happened that day with him and that salesman. The salesman heard him play guitar and decided he didn't have the money to buy a Gibson. And I know what you're thinking. You're like, well, wait a minute, what does money have to do with, you know, what? How? Why does how good you play have to do with how much money you have? Well, because most musicians actually buy expensive guitars, don't have money. I hear this all the time musicians ago, you know, I don't have any money. Musicians don't have money. They don't buy expensive guitars. It's absolutely not true. Musicians buy expensive guitars when they have no money all the time. That's what trading is for. That's what layaways for. That's what loans are for. That's what payments are for. That's what credit cards are for. That's what girlfriends are for. That's what I mean. Come on. Who hasn't heard a girlfriend or wife guitar player joke, right? You know, you know, guitar players are like, I didn't get a job. I got a girlfriend. This is a very normal thing to see that guitar players who are really good, talented players, not making or having a lot of money have have nice guitars because they find a way. They find a way. You know, I mentioned once, maybe I didn't. Maybe I never mentioned this, but I'll just let you know. So you guys know, I've obviously been with my wife for a very, very long time. When I, when I, and my wife, when my wife and I moved into our first apartment, we used bass cabinets as in tables and a 810 cabinet as our coffee table. It's absolutely true. In fact, she once said a joke and I always, I always liked it. In fact, I'm having a moment because I haven't thought about it in probably forever. She said, yeah, whenever he had a gig, I had no furniture. So the thing with this, we didn't even have, in fact, so just to be clear, we didn't even have a bed. We had an inflatable mattress. So we had an inflatable mattress. We had a bass cabinets for in tables, a bass cabinet for a coffee table. And, you know, that's what we had. And I had a bass and I had, I had gear. We just didn't have anything else. And, you know, that's just a musician logic. Right. I don't need a coffee table. I got an 810 cabinet. Lay it flat. Just speakers down so we don't spill anything into the speakers. So, so my point is, I think that's what was interesting about that story was they heard he's playing, the person heard he's playing and decided that he wasn't either able to or gonna buy an expensive guitar. That's why he kicked him loose and didn't sell him the expensive guitar. That's what I believe. That's what my theory is. And this really comes down to something that's really interesting because of the fact that it's kind of ties into the guitar center story where, you know, my wife and as you know, and I talked about this after the podcast that day when we talked about guitar center and I talked about the fact that, you know, I went into guitar center. If you really analyze that story, I want you to think about the way you filter it through my eyes, if you could for a second, as someone who had to do retail for over a decade owning a store. How would it cut? What would I do? In fact, I asked my wife, what would she do? If she was that kid in the store and I walked up with the SG and I said, hey, I want to buy this $1,700 SG, but it's got some damage. And I said, but I want to buy it. And I said, what would she do? And she, of course, said verbatim this and it's the same thing I would do. So I'm just going to tell you from her point of view. She says, I will, she said, first I would offer tax out the door. I wouldn't even hesitate. I'm like, I can do that guitar for tax out the door. And Arizona would be an 8% discount to see if they would just take it. Why? And she goes, well, first of all, let's, I got to give her credit. First of all, she goes in our store, they never pick up guitar with damage like that. We would already have caught it. I said, yeah, but let's pretend we didn't catch it, right? So you guys know in our store, because we had lesson Academy, we would pay students or give students free lessons, but exchange lessons if they would tune guitars and clean guitars after or before their lessons. So a kid could come in and we had a cart and they would walk the store and they would take guitars down, tune them and, you know, still didn't mean the guitars are all going to be in tune. But, or wipe down, but at least we put right put a head on it. But anyways, my point is she said, if I didn't know, I would have said, hey, tax out the door. If they would have said yes, then that'd be the end of it. If they said no, she's like, I can do 10% with that work. And if they said no, she goes, okay, I can do 10% plus strings or some other accessories again, trying to smooth it down. And then eventually land on maybe 15% and then hope not to have to go to 20%. As you guys know, the dealer margin would be 30%. So we don't want to go super low if we don't have to, especially if the customer wants it. But the point is sales 101. I'm not really, we weren't really good salespeople in our stores. In that regard, we were just really informed as you can imagine, probably seeing the channel now. You can see what kind of experience you would have in the store if you asked me a question and pretty much have a good answer for you, which probably made the customer experience pretty decent that way. But, oh wait, I don't want to get sidetracked, but I got to. Offbeat, bass gear, what if the student tunes everything dropy? That actually happened. There was a kid that my wife hired, same thing. He had a single mother. By the way, he ended up joining the Marines. I always remember this because he was taller than me, around six foot, I'm six foot. He was taller than us and he was kind of scrawny and, well, not scrawny, but I don't know, it's just scrawny. My wife would hire him to tune guitars and me and Ralph would bust his chops sometimes. And then when he graduated high school, he went and joined the Marines and he came back and then he was a really buff, like six, three dude. So me and Ralph were like, I hope he doesn't remember all the razzing we gave him. He didn't. He was a pretty good kid. But so you know, we couldn't figure it out. We didn't know what he was doing. He didn't. He tuned every guitar to drop D. Not to not to get us, not because me and Ralph were razzing him at times, just because I guess he plays in drop D. And so he would, that's what he would do. He would tune it up, drop D, play drop D. And so what happened was we didn't know and every customer would pick up the guitars and be like, this guitar is not in tune. And we would say, though all the guitars should be in tune. And then like, this guitar is not in tune. And then he's like, I remember customers like, he's on his third guitar. He's like, this guitar is not in tune. He's on none of your guitars are in tune. I'm like, we just had somebody tune him this morning. So yeah, somebody did that. But back to the, now I'm sidetracked. I'm sorry, but it just brought back another funny story. So back to sales 101. You know, you should have a process. That was my critique of Guitar Center. And actually that's my critique of the industry. And then I want to tag on to what JoJo was saying, which is that's really the problem that the industry as a whole are as mostly guitar players in guitar stores and not sales people. Not customer service people. They don't think that way. To me, it's as a customer again, basic sales 101, a customer says they want to buy something and they give you one objection, which is a very easy one, whatever it is. Hey, I want to buy it, but not today. I want to buy it tomorrow. You just have to find the objective and move on. If somebody came to me and said, hey, I want to buy this, but there's a dent in it. And I'd be like, okay, well, I can't remove the dent. So what can I do, you know, right? How do you, you know, is a discount going to work? Is a free restring going to work? What is going to work to make this process move forward and make the sale? My point with critiquing the kid at Guitar Center was his, his responses were these canned 1970s movie car salesman responses with, but that's a really good price. Oh, it's a really good deal. Like that's not, that's not going to fix it. That's not my objection. My objection was I wanted to, I wanted to some kind of adjustment. So, so I think this all ties in together is what I'm trying to say is that, that the story about my friend where they didn't sell him the less Paul and insulted him is the same story where I've had where I walked in stores and they couldn't help with an easy objection and move the sale forward and make the process easy. And just so you guys know, we had a bonus podcast this week and in the bonus podcast, we talked a little deeper about this because of what I'm going to talk about Guitar Center about. And one of the things I told them was absolutely, I've said this before, I wouldn't have bought the SG if I didn't have a gift card, but I really wouldn't have bought it. If it wasn't for the fact that I had the gift card, I liked it. And in that experience, I was like, you know, I want to see how this plays out. Like I said on the podcast, because I think this is going to be a good conversation to have a Guitar Center because I think this is a problem that retail has to deal with as a whole. Because of kind of what JoJo said, which is the internet is winning and these these brick and mortar stores, they're going to have to give something to us that the online can't. And I think that's a little service and maybe a little smile. Like, you know, you don't have to smile, but you know, it'd be nice if you weren't grumpy sometimes. So, but anyways, I thought I'd point it out. Not only I'll put a link when I timestamped this to her channel, you can check it out and even watch that video. Watch her observation. It's really interesting for me to watch people respond to the things I say in the podcast, especially the way she did it. She came out as a skeptic, which was great. And she wrestled with it. And I don't even know if she actually got to the end 100% agreed with me, which is not the importance of anything. It's just to have she just gave her viewpoint of that situation. And I will tell you this, JoJo rocks. If you watch this, somebody sends this to JoJo, I JoJo fry rocks. I'm sorry. I'm not saying the fry. Jo Jo Joe fry rocks. You will get a viral video if you come to the United States and film yourself in a music store. I would pick about six random music stores. Any six, I promise you any six in the U.S. In fact, probably two, but I just want to be safe. I want to win the bet. Pick any random six music stores, half a dozen, go in them and film them. I guarantee you're going to have one interestingly bad experience, whether it's because you're a woman or because you're whatever. It's going to, it's just a weird thing here. So the fact that you said that there's that you don't have those kind of experiences there in England is crazy to me because it ties in. We actually had a customer, a viewer send me this email last week as well. And it ties on to this. He was in a long and equate in Canada. And he's a, his story was that he has an electric guitar, Yamaha electric guitar, and I believe it amp fire and he wants to upgrade now. He wants his next level, his playing and get a high end acoustic. He was looking at a Martin D 28 or D 45. You guys know that's a very expensive instrument and it was on the top row and he had a little awkwardness asking for stuff off the top row. By the way, if you're watching this man, I have the same problem because he said what I always say, which is it's hard for me to ask someone to get something down like that. I'm not 100% committed to it yet. I'm entertaining the idea of buying it. Sure, am I a buyer? I'm possibly a buyer. I have the, you know, the cash. I have the want, but it's the stars have to align, you know, just because I have a couple bucks in my pocket and the guitar happens to be in the room doesn't mean it's going to be, you know, it's like a dating app for guitars, right? We got to do the first date. Got to see how that goes, right? So I got to do the first date with a guitar. So he was a little nervous about it. So what he did, which is in his email, he was explaining that he was sitting there and essentially looking like he was looking for the guitar or trying to get the guitar waiting for someone to come to him because, and so, you know, back to him again, if you're watching this, I 100% the same way. I feel that if they come to me and say, Hey, can I help you with anything? I go, actually, I'm curious about that guitar up there. Can I try it? And I feel like if they get it, then if I say, yeah, I'm not really feeling it, then I can move on to, you know, my way. However, if I have to flag down someone and say, Hey, can you get a minute? Can I get that guitar down? I feel more like, because I put them out, I guess, you know, is how I would feel that I feel more inclined to have to buy it. And I'll tell you this, what I do all the time, and I really don't like this part of my personality, but it happens a lot. If I didn't up not buying it out of guilt, I end up usually killing too much time in the store, trying to find anything to buy. So I didn't waste somebody's time. And that's fine. Sometimes it's just picks or strings, but sometimes I'm buying a pedal. In fact, I'll do it a lot. I buy a pedal and I'm like, I just feel like, Oh, I bought a pedal. That's something, right? I wasn't loitering in your store. And so basically, what I'm trying to say is not just an America thing, because when he was explained that store in Canada, my suggestion to you is buy it at Sweetwater.com. I am not sponsored by Sweetwater. This is sponsored by patrons and obviously Guitar Center works with me too. Notice I didn't say GuitarCenter.com. I know they probably don't ship to Canada, but I think there's a workaround. I saw Landon and thing. Landon, put a comment. Is there a workaround for that? Can you get stuff from Sweetwater into Canada? But Sweetwater, here's the deal. You can pick out the guitar exactly what you want on their photos and then have it delivered and there's a return policy. I didn't think about the fact you're in Canada. That's a little tricky. So hopefully some Canadian friends will put some comments on if there's a way to get that stuff done like that. But don't forget, you know, I know guitars like that's tough. First people are going to say, Hey, go see your mom pop stores. It's tough. A lot of mom pop stores are not carrying guitars like that. I mean, there is some, but not a lot. So, but yeah, it's interesting. I think this whole industry is interesting. And for, obviously for my own personal purposes, you know, I don't want to go into detail, but I noticed this massively differently as my daughter now is in management for a company. I can't keep it vague for obviously reasons. And the way that they train, they're outside this industry completely. And the way that they train and for sales and up sales and helping customers with, you know, all kinds of items and the way that they do things. My wife and I have had long conversations about how this industry is so far removed from that concept. So, in fact, one of the things that my daughter, because my daughter trains people, they focus on is getting a good review. Not like at work review, like please go and put a good Yelp or go to put good positive. I'm like, yeah, no, I thought about it. I'm like, I don't think I've ever been in a music store ever, including my own. Or somebody said, Hey, really like it. If you give me a good review, you know, if you enjoyed the service, I never thought about this. Like, yeah, this industry, but yet I have been to appliance stores. I've been to so many businesses where they're like, Hey, it'd be really nice if you gave us a good review, you know, just helps us get more customers. And and then you think about it going, Yeah, no one's going to give you crappy. Well, not no one. They're not going to give you crappy service than ask for a good review. So it's kind of funny. Usually my guitar buying experience is pretty, unless I know the people there, that's usually the only way it works. If I have a good experience at a store, it's usually because I know somebody there. We're already friends or we became friends. But most of the time stores are pretty, pretty bland, you know. Oh, so Anthony says, Hey, don't worry, Phil. They can be just as bad if not worse in the UK and Ireland in guitar shops. Well, that doesn't make me feel better. But I will tell you that I was going to ask Shauna to pop in and maybe say something on the show. But I already know the answer. So I'm just going to answer for her for her in her entire life. And she's her first experience in a music store was when she was, I want to say 16, maybe 15, but 16. Little fun fact, we knew each other as friends, but we didn't know each other, know each other. And we were going to lessons at the same music store. And so anyways, again, if you were to take, if you were to ask my wife out of all the music stores she's been to, she's been to a lot and all the stuff she's bought in the stores and she's bought quite a bit. As far as I remember, she's only mentioned to me one time that she's ever had a great experience and it was in the Sweetwater store, physically in that store, a young gentleman walked up to her and asked her if she needed any help. She, she walked up to me right afterwards. I didn't see the interaction, but she walked up and she goes, that's the first time anyone's ever walked up to me in a music store in my life and asked me if I needed any help. And I immediately, so you guys know, I immediately shot, looked to see if she had her lanyard or anything on and she did not. She was not wearing any garb because we were there, you know, and I was, I didn't, and I was not with her. So, you know, so there was no like, oh, she got the Phil McKnight treatment. Like, you know, because I was obviously there as a guest of Sweetwater, the, you know, the employee didn't know her. They just came up to her and asked her if she needed any help. And she was like, she was, she was blown away. Okay, I feel like I've put enough of that on the topic. Let's go to some other questions. Topics. Let's talk about good stuff. This came from Amanda. This is from Jeff. It says, hey Phil, I love your content. I recently acquired a 2014 Fender FSR Fender. So you guys know FSR stands for Fender Special Run. It means it's like a limited edition. They do a run and there's all kinds of reasons for that. Sometimes it's because they want to do something special. Sometimes because when they're slow months throughout the year, they actually do FSR to keep excitement up and sell guitars for the smart move. He says, okay, so you got an FSR Strat with a grease bucket tone pots. What are your thoughts on these and how do they really differ from treble bleed for tone? So the grease bucket thing is cool. I've had it on guitars, but it's nothing that I've actually actively searched for. Like a lot of players, I don't really use, well, it's different than, obviously like a treble bleed. That's a totally different thing. So how does it really differ from treble bleed? Well, because it's more in line, a grease bucket is more in line with a tone control. In other words, not exactly, but it's more in line with that than it is with a treble bleed. So what a treble bleed does is essentially it's you attach it to your volume control. And what it helps with is that when you roll the volume back off, when you roll the volume back off on your volume knob, not your tone control, your volume knob, what happens to a lot of players is you lose the high frequencies really fast, okay, faster than you lose the low frequencies. And so what happens is it works almost like a tone control in the idea when you roll back to clean up your amp, which is usually what some players are after, right? They want to just clean up the amp. There's a little distortion. They clean up the amp, but they get a little bit of this because they're losing their high frequencies. They're just kind of going in the mud. So by installing a treble bleed, which you can do very easily, and I recommend everyone try it. Some people hate it. Some people love it, but it's definitely worth trying, especially since you can buy them. We used to sell them. You can buy them with alligator clips or you can just add alligator clips to them. So you don't even have to solder them into your volume pot. So I'll put a link to a video. I think I have a video, but so does Stu Mac, and I think Stu Mac videos older and it's just to the point more. But anyways, if I, oh, I think I do. I think I have a complete video that's not that long. I'll put my link to my video. So anyways, by doing that, what it does is it lets you, when you roll off the volume, retain the high frequencies. In other words, you don't go right into the mud really quick. So that's really cool. The, in fact, let me pull that up real quick. Okay. And. Okay, so. I want to look at something because what I'm looking at, so you guys know is with the grease bucket turns tone circuit. What I want to see is how is it actually different because I've installed a couple. I've removed more than I've ever installed in funny enough. Okay. I'm looking at something real quick. So you guys know some modification. I get it rolls off the high frequencies. Grease bucket. Okay. It's claiming that it's the way it's different is that when you roll it back, it doesn't, you don't lose the high frequencies, but you don't also add bass. I don't believe a treble bleed adds bass when you roll it off. So I don't know why that would be specifically different. But, but the grease bucket, if I recall, it's connected to the tone control, right? Yeah. As you roll off the tone, it acts like a low pass filter cutting highs and high pass filter simultaneously reducing lows. Okay. So yes. And then I believe it goes the other way around, right? The grease bucket, if I'm remembering off at rolls off the highs, keeps the low and clean, producing a smoother, more mid focused and cleaner tone. So different because I don't think in my experience, and I'm getting out of memory because it's been a while since I maybe experiment and try one again. I don't believe it's rolling down volume. So that would be the main difference between the treble bleed is that you're actually reducing volume where I believe the grease bucket because it's connected to the tone control. It's it's doing a similar sound thing, but not adjusting the volume. So I think that's the main difference. That's the way I would see it. So, so it TV nine says, Hey, grease bucket when it's on 10, it's like having no tone control. Sure. Well, so is a so is a so you know, they have a lot of fender has the two tone controls that have the the disable, you know, where you go click forward. What do they call that? The no load no load. Tone control where it clicks and then it's out of the circuit as well. But this isn't something I overly worry about. I have played guitars over years that have no tone control guitars that have tone control. I find I rarely never use the tone control on a guitar, but I have decided for whatever reason that I like having it because it doesn't hurt to have it there. But I think that's the way I would see it. I don't have guitars that are that dark. So, yeah, no load tone control. I believe that's what it is. And as far as I know, the no load tone control is specifically for the guitar. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. So I think that's the way I would see it. I believe that's what it is. And as far as I know, the no load tone control is specific to Fender, right? It's a Fender only part because that's where I've sourced them always from. I'm gonna search that too. I have a lot of them in my guitars. I stopped putting them in my guitars because I fell in love with, I fell in love with when the original, the very first Wolfgang, USA Wolfgang EVH guitars came out, the USA ones. When we first received them, they had two low friction or zero friction potentiometers. So they were like fast, like the Inves. So if you guys don't know what that means, it just literally feels like the tone control and the volume control are broken. So you can just roll them back real fast. Have you ever seen anybody takes his finger as pinky and he rolls it really fast? Like that makes the violin sounds. And I thought that was cool for a second. And then I don't like them now because when you're playing, sometimes when you bump the guitar, they turn. The vibration makes them turn. Obviously, I think Eddie Van Halen did not like them either because after, I don't know how many batches, but it was not very long before all of a sudden all EVH Wolfgangs going forward, coming to the store, now had a very heavy tone control, not the volume. The volume stayed with a low friction. The tone control went to a high friction tone control where you could feel it turning. You're like, ah, you know, it's like, you know, you had to, you had to mean it to turn it. And ever since then, I like the high fraction, friction, high fraction, high friction knobs for tone control. So if I'm adding a tone control knob, potential number two guitar, I used to do the no load from Fender forever. But now I do the high friction and that way you don't have to worry about it, you know, turning if I don't want to. And I'm fine with it. I don't really need it out of the circuit. So it's not something I, first of all, it's one of those things I can't even hear anyways. It's just about paranoia for me. I've played a couple gigs and I've recorded a couple of times where all of a sudden I realized my tone control was cocked back just a little bit. And I was like, ah. And I actually had this bad experience once where I was playing a guitar and I could not get the note to squill. And I was like, what's going on? And I hit the note, hit the note and it's, you know, my normal rig. And I was like, I don't know what's going on. I can't do the thing that I want to do. And it was because the tone control had to get cocked back just a little bit. And it was just taking enough of the high frequency that I could not get the pinch to work. So I like the high friction potentiometers for, for, for what do you call it? For the tone control. Patrick says, hey, is that the 75th anniversary telecaster on the wall? It sure is. It's right there. Whoops. Right there. So if you guys didn't see it, I did a deep dive of that guitar. I just got to tell you how fun it was to finally be included. You know, I'm very rarely, I wish it never, but I'm very rarely included in these big marketing pushes. And sometimes I like that because you guys don't like the marketing pushes, but it sometimes sucks when it's like new guitars, because I'm like, oh, I'd like to see it. And guitars like this, they're limited runs. So by the time if I got one, you know, to check out and do a breakdown video for you guys, they wouldn't be any to set. There wouldn't be any for you to buy. So I don't know why the video would make any sense. But what I really enjoyed the most was I watched a lot of people's videos of that specific guitar, the Ultra 2. Telecaster. And then of course my breakdown video. And what's funny is how different, how different. And that's what I said back to I was saying earlier, I got to say, I got to thank the guitar center guys again. They're the ones who sent that fender did not send that out. Guitar center sent that out. And to the credit, you know, if you watch my video, I had some complaints about it. I found some things with it. We talked about that like we always do in the video to you guys. You're like, yeah, you probably didn't, you know, you, some of you saw it and probably didn't think I said anything that bad. But you got to understand like in my experience, that's why they don't usually want me. I wouldn't say allow. That's why usually some companies don't want me to be in the original marketing pushes because some of those negative things that got presented to you guys, which to me is just valuable information. If you're thinking about can get considering one. The somebody said, hold on. Yeah. Uh, Lou Matoro says, Hey, yeah, it's like a standardized test for guitar reviewers, our reviewers. Yeah. I, you know what? It's, um, I, uh, I agree. It's kind of funny, right? Um, when you, uh, yes, that's basically what I want to say. Yes. What I find is there was very few to know reviews on the guitar anyways. Most everybody was doing a reaction to how great it was to get one sent to them. And I don't mean that in like a negative way, but that's mostly what I saw was like, look, they sent me one. And then you're like, Oh, I'm like, okay, I don't know what I would do with that other than I'm happy for you. Um, let's see. Uh, Uh, and then also somebody says, I love the seventh anniversary. Oh, uh, a broadcaster one and seventh. So you guys know funny little tidbit on that guitar with guitar center. Um, so guitar center reached out and asked me if I would be interested in being in a, the, the telly, the, the fender launch. And so, you know, they said, we know you don't usually like to be in the market launch. So you could release it, you know, weeks later, whatever you want to do, do whatever you want. And I was like, no, no, I want to release it right when it comes out. Cause that's when people are going to probably be watching. And I go, but what's funny is, uh, I didn't get to choose the guitar. So, you know, um, kinda. So they didn't know which guitar they could get from me to do the video. So they specifically asked me like, give me the favorite guitar. Like I gave me the fate, my favorite three or the four that are coming out. I gave them my favorite three. This happened to be one of them and that's the one they sent. So that was really cool. So, uh, and, uh, I was really kind of like, um, I was either that one, the silver one, I was kind of hoping that would show up. So when that one showed up, I was like really, really cool cause it's interesting. I thought that that's an interesting telecaster to me. It's different. It's, uh, you know, a lot of people are like, Oh, it's the same old same old. Yeah. But all, all fender stuff, same old same old, all gifts and stuff, same old same old. You know, it's a, you know, it's why we get so excited about the silly little changes that are silly. Um, uh, let's see. Um, let's go to the next one. How are we doing? We're doing good. We're moving in quite long. Uh, Cesar says, Hey, Phil, love your content and been watching old podcast episodes. Where's cosmic hippo at? Oh, you know what? Where is cosmic hippo at? In, in the, Oh, right there. Here I go. Ta-da. Uh, so yeah, what he's talking about. So you guys know, if you don't know what this is, this is the hippo from Bella Fleck and the Flecktones flight of the cosmic hippo. Um, pretty much the instrumental bands. I'm not really into instrumental bands. I just, something to say, it's pretty horrible to say. I've seen Bella Fleck three, four, maybe five times in the Flecktones. Uh, I've seen Gary Hoey once, uh, and that's about the all the, uh, so I love Bella Fleck and the Flecktones. Uh, we used to go whenever they would come into town, we would go see them. And so I got a cosmic hippo. Look at that. And, uh, it's a stuffed animal. So if you guys don't know the song, Flight of the Cosmic Hippo by Bella Fleck. So he's referring to the fact that this used to be in the background. A lot of stuff is in the background because now you got to, the way we kind of see it now, or I see things now is this is like my office, but it's also a studio and then the repair shops, the studio. So everything's kind of set up studio wise. So yeah, a lot of the cool things, the Chatsky's and stuff I used to put in the backgrounds aren't there anymore. So, uh, but yeah, it was on my guitar racks. So I thought I'd grab it. It's cool that you mentioned that. Um, now I'm going to listen to Bella Fleck again this weekend. Oh, Limitoro says, Hey, my autistic self really appreciates the lack of words and instrumental bands. You know what it is for me? I love instrument music. So let's be clear. I listened to it in the, in the truck. I listened to it, you know, uh, when I'm, you know, in the house working or whatever I'm doing live. I don't, you think I would, you think, you know, by personality type, I would be cross-armored like the most of you, you know, and this is the way musicians watch music, right? Cross-armed and staring at what they did and what they can do and, you know, judging for appreciating or dissecting or giving analysis. Me, I'm more of a sing along kind of person. I go to a show to have a good time. So I want to go and I want to, I want to sing, you know, badly in a crowd with everybody else. I want to sing out, you know, and I want to have some fun. So that's what I like. Of course, I like bands that have great guitar players and great instrumental players because it's fun to watch on top of that. But the instrumental stuff, I really don't enjoy that much. Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, what's always interesting is every time I've seen them, they had a different guest artist. One time it was Stanley Jordan that came in and played. So I believe one time it was Jeff Coffin before he was actually in the band. So I always love that. I always love the fact that every time we saw them, somebody would just come up on stage and do stuff. And of course, just, you know, I always used to describe seeing Bella Fleck and the Flecktones like going to the circus. It's just crazy to watch and listen to and it was amazing. My only regrets is we used to go see Bella Fleck and Flecktones and people would bring like a, you know, especially the outdoor events. People would bring a blanket and have wine and I didn't drink wine. And now, you know, I'd probably get a, you know, a bottle of wine and sit with Sean and watch Bella Fleck and the Flecktones watching wine. So, but, yeah. Yeah, Satchel says, I haven't thought of Stanley Jordan years. My dad is really into his jazz stuff. Stanley Jordan was amazing. The only negative thing I could say, I don't want to be negative, but it's just a, it's kind of a compliment that unfortunately has a negative effect. It unfortunately has a negative connotation to it, which is the one thing that blew me away is that when Stanley Jordan came and played with Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, anyone who knows Stanley Jordan knows like masterful player, of course, on every level, but also masterful tamper, right? And he started tapping and Victor Wooten started tapping and I just, and Ralph was there that day with me. So Ralph was agreed with me that Victor was just a little bit more impressive overall as Victor sometimes is because he's really showmanship on top of technique. And I said, I remember saying to Ralph, wow, Stanley was amazing, but it was crazy to see Victor either at that level or higher when that's really kind of Stanley's forte, right? It's weird to see a musician who's got their thing down and then a musician who does a bunch of different things kind of at their same level kind of really shows you how crazy Victor is as a, as a monster player. You know, and, and I know that's, and this is a side thing just to say, and I know that's a thing that only people like, I'll may almost say us, but people like me think, you know, I know that I know now because I've actually not from just only interviewing guitar players or musicians, you know, bass players, but hanging out with them through these inner vents I've been met with them or just because I've learned to know them over the years. They're the ones not thinking like that. They're actually up there having just a great time. You know, I used to believe, and I think some of you guys believe this, and I don't believe this anymore, and that, you know, Stanley Jordan and Victor Wooden were like, like crossroads, Ralph Machio and Steve I used to believe every time two musicians got on a stage, it was to see who was better. It was a show, you know, like, oh, you play, then I play. And now I know on a deeper level, they don't think like that. Even if it presents like that, that's not what they're doing. They're just literally having a good time. So it's crazy. And I'm glad that I got to learn that in my life because I don't think I would have ever seen it from the audience view. I've always seen it as, oh, Steve I is playing against Ingve, let's see what happens. And now I know they're just having a blast. And we're the ones talking about who's trying to one up each other. Or who did. Yeah, Chamber says just jamming, exactly. It's funny. I think it's because I think that you somehow think, and maybe sports, I like that too, I'm not into sports, but maybe like when you see people at the Super Bowl playing, I'm sure they're stressed about winning the game because it's their job and their career and all that stuff, but deep down I wonder if they're just still 15 year old kids just having a blast on the field. And never occurred to me that a musician, a tenured musician who's accomplished so much is on stage still having fun like a 15 year old kid. I always thought, oh, they're performing because the word is performing. They're putting on performance. They're doing a job for you. And it never occurred to me. And so I got to meet some of them and hang behind the scenes of it and talk to them frankly and off the record so many times to know, no, they're just having a good time. They can't believe they get paid for it. So, so, all right. Oh, I don't know. I'm going to upset Sean Eric Brooks. He says, Phil, what do you think of the band Geese? I don't know the band Geese. I'm going to look them up today and put them in my, when I'm on the treadmill. I don't think I go to the treadmill the more I do today. So we'll see. But it's nice to have something new to listen to. So when I'm, that machine, that machine's just, it's not fun. So it's boring. So anything new is good. Okay, let's see. Let's go to the next one. Oh, sorry. This one. Did I? Oh, next one. Okay. I don't know. So the jam man says, Hey, Phil, you talked about your throwbacks in your Les Paul, but which models are they? SLEs? I don't remember. I should. There's a card that came with them. So I had a different experience, like I said with you guys, they sent those to me. So, because they did a podcast on the show and it was kind of like, Hey, we'd like to send you a set of pickups. And so what happened was he asked me, John at throwback asked me some questions on the phone and it was like, what kind of magnitude like what do you want? And I told him what I like. And then he sent me a set and I remember he said something there, this, this, this, but I'm going to put Al Niko fives in them. And then they came and then I saw the card. I, for some reason didn't commit what they are to memory and I put them in the guitar. But what I will do for you is I know where the, I can't get to it right now because in the shop, but I will get the card and then next week I will tell you what, what they are. And I will actually do guitar the week with that Les Paul and or add it to the guitar that we can and share with them what it is. Again, I apologize. And the good news is I told you I have a set that I bought that's in a guitar. That guitar has got a breakdown deep guy video and that video will be out pretty soon. I say before the month, but it's really soon. So the patrons know that they saw the video that you're going to see next yesterday. So it's not after that video is one after the next video that Lumatoro says, Hey, how do you best use a noise gate? Is it always in the beginning or is it at the end of the chain? I like to put in the effects loop of an amp, especially if I'm not using a pedal board. Usually if I'm using an effects loop, it's because of the amp. It's not because of the pedals. So my two reasons why I use an effects loop is either the amp is noisy when I'm running some higher amount of gain or some amps. They don't react well to a bunch of pedals in front of them. Even if the pedals are off because obviously it's like buffered and it's pushing whatever. Mesa bullies are really bad at that. But even my Freemans have acted up with certain pedals, right? And every once in a while, you know, I'm putting some different pedals and I kind of a montage of like expensive and cheap pedals on my boards at any given time. You know, I don't really have a, you know, I don't really have a, I don't know what you call it, like show off your pedals kind of thing. You know, like, oh, my pedals are the best. As you guys know, I like the Stryman. I like the Atlantic NUX more than all my Stryman delays. And that is your con. And I'm very aware, I've abeed them and I'm very aware that the Strymans are much quieter and there's just something, they're more articulate, but it's just like the flavor of the NUX. But that being said, sometimes you get some noise there. So I'll just put the effects loop or the noise gate in the effects loop. If I'm not putting the effects loop, I put it at the end of the chain. So that way it suppresses all the noise and hissing. I'm not really just trying to keep it from just to keeping the guitar noise down. So that's just where I put it. That helps. Somebody mentioned that Chuck Norris passed away. Yep. I just want to tell you guys that I don't know if you know this about Chuck Norris. He did not go to heaven. Heaven came to him. So I know, you know, it's funny. It's funny that Chuck Norris, you know, legacy is not only his amazing, you know, movies and all the accomplishments he has as an actor, obviously, as a martial arts artist. And trainer and teacher, you name it. But the memes of Chuck Norris are just the most amazing memes ever, right? The Chuck Norris, the jokes, I guess, what you call it, the memes. And to the point where they're not against him, they're with him. So the fact that even when he passes away, something so, so sad is that, that when you see the memes of his, you know, of this and you read them, they're not even like, oh, that's kind of mean, right? You're like, oh, that's awesome. Right? I saw that one today. That's how I found out. So you guys know that Chuck had passed away. I didn't see anything that said he passed away. I saw a guy just all of a sudden say Chuck didn't go to heaven. Heaven came to Chuck. Chuck Norris didn't go to heaven. Heaven came to Chuck Norris. And I thought that was a weird one because usually you're used to like, you know, Chuck Norris' daughter lost her virginity and he went and got it back. Like I'm used to all those. And then I was like, what a weird one to say. And then it was probably about an hour later when Sean was like, oh, did you hear the news about Chuck Norris? And as soon as she said that, I added it up and I go, oh, did he pass away? And she's like, yeah. So, yeah. Yep. Let's see. Yes. Jeremy says Chuck Norris knew the power of humor. He sure did. Sean says, is basswood for weight and for cost or for cost? Yes. So basswood, when they use basswood for bodies, they use it for two reasons. One, they can get lighter pieces. Okay. Mahogany is all over the place with weights, you know, especially all the variants of Mahogany like Siphalian stuff. Sometimes they're heavy. Sometimes they're light. Ash is the same thing. Ash can be extremely a different and variant of weight. It can be really heavy or it can be really light. Alder is very consistent. So you can generally get a lot of alder in the same weight. It's really cool. A lot of times Steve Isman noted to saying that when he had the, when he had the gems made in basswood, it was to save weight. Even though I believe at least the ones I play to his were alder. So I think all of Steve Isman's personal gems are actually alder, at least most of them. But basswood, so that's why they do it light. But the manufacturing part, they like it because it's soft. So it's easy on the tooling, the sandpaper, the machines. It's just a lot. It's just, it's really easy. Think of this. Basswood until, and, you know, they didn't really use any guitars until I believe the 80s. I mean, some people say it's a little earlier than that, but really it comes more mainstream in the 80s. Until then, the only thing that really when you do your research, the only thing they're really using basswood for is making a ducty coice. Because it floated and it was easy to carve on. So the, the one thing about basswood that that's tough is it's soft, so it dents really easy. That's why it's hard to find a lot of Ivan as guitars that don't have dents, especially the RGs that really dent it up. The somebody said Sophie Lloyd. Sophie Lloyd also has a sustainiac. I did an event with Sophie Lloyd in 2024 and she had her sustainiac and I got to see it and stuff. And, and same thing. I was like, oh, and it makes total sense now why she has it. Again, I was like, why does she have this? Why do they all have this? And I'm like, yeah. And it's funny, Sophie Lloyd, I've seen her twice on stage where, where I'm watching and she has the sustainiac and then she has an ear, an ear monitors and like she'll pull one out or she puts one in. And I'm like, right, right, because she's probably has very little to no stage volume. So now the sustainiac makes total sense why they're all switching to it. It's a cool tool, but you're like, why did they all switch to it? You know, why did they all adopt this? And they adopted it because again, what are you going to do without stage volume? I had read an article that said John Petrucci has a little one 12 inch speaker on the side of his pedal board that he can turn on and off. I believe that's what I read and, and he turns it on so he can put his guitar face in that. And that's where he's getting some feedback. But until then he said he didn't have any way to get feedback because there's, there's no enough sound on the stage. So, uh, yeah, Warlock says it chips the paint because it dents. That's right. Yeah. And obviously it flexes, it can dent and the paint can't flex. Let's see. Okay. Um, okay. So we'll move on. I was like looking to see if there's any more sustaining questions. Okay. Hmm. All right. Let's go back. Let's go back. Okay. Uh, this one came from Amanda. This is from Ellie, where Ellie worth who said, I have an HSS strat, but the middle pickup gets in the way of my picking. Should I get a very high output pickup, like a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails or a quarter pounder and just lower it way down? You sure could. Absolutely. That would help a lot to do to normalize that. I actually have, um, so you know, I have a, uh, my, uh, my stew hat base has a bunch of pickups. See all those pickups for those listening later. I'm pointing at a base with a lot of pickups and there's one in my way. And so I took out one of the P pickups and I put in a new one that's more powerful and I lowered it. So I have, so when you look at it, it looks weird because my P one P pickup is about a half inch higher. It's high. It's crazy. Right. Maybe it's quarter inch, quarter inch higher, quarter inch higher than the other one. And, uh, it's, that's how I did it and it worked out fine. You could absolutely do that. The Herman Lee guitar, that's how the Herman Lee Cleo works is that it has, or the Chloe, the Chloe, the Cleo, Herman Lee guitar. The Herman Lee guitar has, uh, the middle pickup is the fisherman, but it's, it's hotter so he can push it down. So you can absolutely do that. Uh, it's up to you what you want to do. Uh, for the middle position, I mean quarter pounder works. I like the quarter pounder, the Seymour Duncan Hot, uh, the rails, the rails that they make work. Absolutely perfect as well. Um, uh, yeah, David's got, uh, he's got the hell we all got. He says, Hey Phil, if you were putting a humbucker sized P 90 in a guitar, which ones would you use? I've researched lots of options and I can't decide. Uh, my favorite one is not a humbucker sized one. It's the T 90 by, um, by TV Jones and it's slightly smaller. It's about the size of a TV Jones pickup, but you can put it in your neck position if you're trying to do that. And it's going to have a big hole around the side. I don't know what it is about that one. That one's probably my favorite one. Um, and then I've tried a bunch, you know, Seymour Duncan's got one and everyone's got one to Marjah's got one. They're all fine, but none of them feel like P 90s. I have a video where I compare a P 90 size humbucker to the P 90s and you kind of hear it. There's just something magic in the P 90 shape, you know, the way the magnet is, the way the wire is, the way, you know, just the physical shape of it, you know, the, you know, how, how it's just, I don't know, there's something about the P 90. That's just a little bit more magical than just putting a, a overwhelmed single coil. To me, every P 90 shaped humbucker sounds more single coil to me than P 90. And P 90s to me, they sound like single coils that went to the gym. These single coils did not miss leg day. They're like, we're, we're there, right? So P 90s sound huge and to me, a good P 90 sounds better than a humbucker. That's how I know I got a good P 90. When I put a P 90 in, or if I have a guitar and I pick it up and it's P 90, and I, I immediately can do this. I plug into an amp, especially an amp that's light on the overdrive. So the more you hit the amp in the front end, the more your drive, you're going to get hit that P 90, hit it, hit the cord. You hear it, grab a guitar with humbuckers, plug it in, put it in there and then watch it go, oh, it's less. That's what you want. That's what I want. You want the P 90 just to feel, to me, it's more mid range, more throaty, it's bigger. To me, it's one of the biggest sounding pickups you can get. I mean, think about this. The original humbucker was just trying to be a P 90, but quiet. The, the, the original humbucker when it was designed by Seth Lover, he was just trying to make a P 90 that was quiet. That's essentially what he was doing. And, and in fact, if you think about it in a weird, funny way, that you could almost argue in a fun way, that a humbucker is the equivalent to when they make a mini humbucker for a single coil, right? You're, you're essentially making, so when you think of like the dual blade designed mini single coils, humbuckers, they're essentially shoving a humbucker into the size of a single coil. I think that's kind of what they did when they made the humbucker. They were just trying to make the P 90 into a noiseless. So it's just, it's a little wider and a little shorter because of physically that's just how they probably could make it work, but that's what they were after. And so I've heard it said once and I do agree that when a P AF is magical, it sounds a lot like a P 90. It's kind of funny, right? And that's my experience as well. P 90s are also very clear and articulate. I don't know why it happened to, to, I'm going to say my generation, if you're, if you're older than me, if you're the older generation to me, for some reason, P 90s were a thing for you that you understand. In other words, like some guitars had P 90s and some guitars have humbuckers. Me growing up P 90s were just not a thing. There was two kinds of pickups. You were either, there was a humbucker, that's what everybody was going after. You're trying to get rock or metal or whatever you're after. You're doing humbuckers. And then there was single coils. Now, whether that's a telly or a strat, but that's a single coil. You were going for blues or, you know, right? And then there was the anomalies, right? The anomalies would be like, Ingve Mounds-Teen, right? Or the guitar player for Iron Maiden or something like that. And you're like, they're playing in single coils and they're playing rock or metal. This is so strange. But to me, it's like, oh, Brian Adams played a strat, Huey Lewis played a strat, you know, and then, you know, Metallica played humbuckers. And it makes total sense because there's this obsession in the 80s with more. Everything's more, right? Gotta play faster. You gotta play, you know, right? You gotta have more distortion. And more importantly, your pickups has to have more. So it wasn't even like a humbucker was enough. Remember in the 80s, it was like, we need more. We need a super distortion. Now we need an X2N. Now we need an EMG. Now we need an EMG hotter. Now we need an EMG with an afterburner. That's a real thing. So more, more, more. So in the more, more, more world, the P90 was lost to me. It just wasn't a good pickup that I ever examined or thought about in my younger years as a musician. I didn't own a single P90 guitar. I didn't look at them. If I saw them, I would think, oh, I don't know why I thought this. But I would think like, oh, that's what a jazz player plays or something like that. And then I don't remember when it happened to me, but many, many, many years ago, I got a guitar. I didn't buy it, but I had a guitar of some house, borrowed it or had it and had P90s. And I remember plugging in to a Marshall, a JCM100 and hitting and playing and going, I don't know what's happening here, but this is just magic. And why did everybody keep this from me? Why are there being asses about this? This is something I would like to know about. And to me, this is like, this is not a strat through a Marshall, which is cool. This is something else. And so I think P90s are great. So I actually, everything I search for in my life now is P90. Either I want a P90 pickup or I'm searching for humbuckers that have the magic of the P90. So, so back to your problem. I, you know what, they're all going to be passable. But in my favorite P90 that will fit on a humbucker spot is the T90 by, and the reason I say this is because one of the things we did, or I did, as you guys know, I experiment with like the Delos going, Hey, do I want to, you know, change up the Delos since, you know, we have the Kiesel Delos, you know, do I want to make my Delos a little bit different? And I experimented with doing a 3P90 Delos. As you guys know, I played the Reverend 3P90 and I thought it was amazing. I love the whole concept of 3P90s. It's like, again, it's like a strat that went to the gym. It's like, this is great. And it's not like the noiseless pickups where I feel like I'm losing the high frequencies a little bit. I feel with the P90s, I'm getting all my high frequencies plus these mids that I want. And anyways, this, this, I bought tons of P90s from everybody and I was experimenting, experimenting and for some reason my favorite one and become the T90. And so I had, I had a Delos with the T90 in the neck and a T90 in the bridge and I was experimenting with that. And for right now it's on hold. So just, I got other things to deal with. So that's not something I'm pushing on right now, but I will highly recommend the T90. I will tell you though, it will fit in a humbucker ring, but it's going to have gaps on the top and the bottom. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, it bothers you. But I would highly recommend that pickup to try. Um, let's see. Um, Phil, I've got a rare, you got a rare. I've got a rare comma thought, thought. Oh, though not highly, I get it. I got a rare, but not highly sought after amp, 1970 ovation cat. Any advice on finding a market for it? I understand the Partridge family use them. He says, mildly emoji. I don't know, man. I said to me stuff like that, you either find stores that sell in that vein and they can help you or you go to folks, folks groups, you go to a group, you know, online groups that are collecting it or into amps, or you just put it on reverb. Because again, your reverb is going to be your biggest audience pool and you just put it out there and see who's interested in it. So my, my experience says somebody out there has been waiting for you to list it. So, and it's just about the price at this point. So, let's see. Dan 1455 says rude and belligerent customers. How does one deal with them when selling guitar products? You ever kick anyone out? I have never kicked a customer out of a store. Notice how I played on the words like a politician. It was, I was never physically there. I was adjacent. No, I've never physically kicked out a customer out of the store. I mean, you know, obviously we're not going to include criminal acts. Like when I have criminals, you know, people like robbing or stealing and stuff like that, then you have altercations, of course. But I've had belligerent custom belligerent people in the store, not a customer, not even like a, oh, you know, hey, I'm upset about this price or whatever. And now I'm belligerent. Like I've had belligerent people in the store. We had to have it removed. It wasn't very common, but it did happen. So, you know, actually, just, just because I'm, I'm, I'm friends with this person, I'm not going to say anything that's going to like help you decipher who they are. But I will tell you that yes, I had a belligerent sales rep in my store and, and I had to call the police. And I remember it was the, it was a really tough day because I just wanted him to leave. I'll tell you this. Hold on more. I wanted him to leave. He, and he wouldn't, and we were friends and we're still friends now. He was just a little intense. He was having an intense day. And so I kept asking me, okay, man, you should go. You got to go. And after he wouldn't, I, I eventually am like, okay, you got to, I called the police. So I called the police and the police showed up and then the police were like, they go out and they talked to him and they come in and they go, do you want us to take him to jail? And I go, oh, no, I just want to leave. And they go, we'll take him to jail. We just take him to jail. And I'm like, no, I just want him to go. And I go, you know, and, you know, and they go, why don't we just take him to jail? I never seen a cop ever in my life that wanted to take somebody to jail. Jail. I was thinking, I was like, this guy, like, what happens? Does he get a quota? What's going on? This guy, this officer really wanted to take him to jail. And, and I was like, no, so they finally he left. So what happened, so you know, what, and it raged him so much was you can imagine how this ended up being my life before. I was a YouTuber on YouTube doing what I'm doing now that is just I had made some videos on YouTube for our store. That's why I said never this channel has never been about my store when I had a store, but I did have a channel about my store. Does it make sense? Like, like everybody else, every store, like I made videos in my store. And so me and Ralph made a video one day. And what happened was it was about a product and apparently I wasn't wired correctly then either because what happened was in this video, me and Ralph made some critiques about the guitar. They were very honest and fair critiques, although with some embellishment, funny things to say. We said some funny things. And, and I'm not sarcastic right now. Just we just said some stuff. We critiqued the guitar, just like you would watch the Anaghton's guys do, right? They were made a video. Except for we were just apparently critiquing it too hard. What ended up happening, which throttled him out, was another dealer in town who wanted the line of products who he was, was not allowed to sell the products to because that's how it works with stores. Some stores are territorial. In other words, I have the territory for this product line in my zip code or city. And this other store has been wanting it and wanting it, but they couldn't have it because and the dealer are and sometimes. So, you know, it's not that it's like a law that they can't do that. And it's not even like a policy. What's reason why the store couldn't have the brand is the rep. If the rep gives another store the brand, he's taking a chance that me, the current dealer, will either stop carrying the product line or decrease sales. And he was smart enough to know that we were moving enough product that the other store was not going to move a product like us. People really stores this day and there's that don't really understand how much product we were moving. We were very effective. We didn't know that we were too dumb to know for a while. But I mean, I've told you guys stories in the past about, you know, selling, you know, seven figures with something in a company like not acknowledging it. So we didn't think it was a big deal. And then we find out later like that's not even a thing. Like dealers don't move that much inventory in that period of time. So we were moving a lot of stuff. So what happened was I made the video. What happened was that the other dealer contacted him and the company. More importantly, here's what the dealer did. The dealer contacted the brand and said, this is video. This is who you're supporting. This guy has your brand and look at what all the crap he said about your brand. And this is a product. And what happened was, and just you guys know how it escalated was he came in the store. He didn't call ahead. So he just came in and he came in like a whirlwind. It's just the doors fly open and he's like, Phil, I can't believe you did this. And yeah, you said this and what's wrong with you. And I'm like, Hey, you need to calm down. And then what happened was he said, you need to take that video now. And you know, he was dictating all this stuff to me. And then I stopped and I said, I don't think you understand. I'm the customer. I buy this stuff from you. This is my stuff. I bought this stuff from you. Right. I'm just, we assessed it. It's, I don't understand the problem. Now now I'm more, I don't want to say intelligent, but I'm more intuitive. I'm more in tune with how this industry really works. It's very corrupt. It's a very corrupt industry. It's basically we're, we're a paola industry. You know, if you ever learned about paola, this industry is, is not only good at this. It's not really used to being critiqued for real. So a lot of fake, fake reviews, a lot of fake people saying fake things and the brands. So the brands don't read. So when you guys say, well, how could they get mad? All you said was it was heavy or it didn't stay in tune. They're not used to, a lot of these brands are not used to any kind of critiques. They're used to the world where they paid endorses or, or spawn, you know, they're, they're artists, they paid artists to play their stuff. And the artist said it was the greatest thing you ever heard, right? How many times have we ever heard from an artist? It's the greatest thing ever, right? And then you never see him with it ever again. I don't know why. I don't know if this is true or not, but I feel like sometimes these brands, some brands drink their own Kool-Aid. I've had brands tell me things that are kind of funny. I'll tell you, this ties into the story. I once had a YouTube channel. I reached out to them and I said, Hey, I saw your video of this and I'm looking at one. What do you think? And they go, Oh, I got rid of it. I didn't even like it. And, and then I'm not going to, two things I'm going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you who that, who that, our YouTuber is. I'm just going to tell you that I've never talked to him since because I actually was pissed off. So I, I, and I said, Hey, what did you think of this product? And then they proceeded to tell me that product sucks and they got rid of it, but their video was the exact opposite of that statement. And the reason I say that is then what happened to me, even though I never talked to that channel again, the company, the rep from the company reached out to me and they were talking to me. And then they mentioned that YouTuber by, and they're glowing review and how great it is as a product. And I'm like, Oh man, you drink your own Kool-Aid. You think, you think cause you paid them and they said nice things. You believe that you believe the nice things they said. I was like, this is crazy. So that's what happened to me in that in the store that day with the rep, the sales rep. But so, you know, like anything in life, I always try to make the effort to, to make amends. We made, we were friends. He's in a different industry now, a better one and he makes more money and he's happier. And, and, you know, I'm glad, you know, that it worked out. And I understand why he was upset. I just don't understand why he had to come in and start yelling at me, but he, I understand why he's upset because he just got lit up by his boss and they wanted to remove that. That was the thing they were telling him. They wanted to remove the line from me. And I don't think he was also reacting to the fact that I didn't care. So somebody says, was it marketing me see? No, I've never talked to market me see. So, so, you know, I've never met or talked to him ever. Let's see. Okay, let's see. Yeah, Brian says, how dare you buy stuff and then talk about it? Well, that's kind of how my brain worked at the time was like, hey, I bought this stuff and I'm just giving an opinion on it. By the way, and this is why I try not to, I tell these stories maybe for insight or funny and it's, you know, part of the podcast. I just, you guys are talking, but I want you to understand some of these stories. You really, if you, all you take away is that there was a guy in my store upset. You should really understand that that moment probably made this channel what it is today. It's definitely why I started a side channel. That's why there's a Phil McKnight channel. That's why it was not the store channel anymore. So I still made videos for the store with Ralph, but I started my own channel separate from the store. I didn't talk about the stuff in the store. I just wanted to be my own channel because what I learned that day was that the, and then, so, you know, it happened to me even on this channel as you guys know, I've told you guys stories about how certain brands were very upset about stuff. I said on this channel and I explained to them that it's my own independent channel and I'm not promoting the store or your brand. I'm just talking about the stuff I like to talk about, but this is, it ties back in. It's why I wanted to remove myself from that. So, and it's just how it is. I don't know how to explain it. Okay. Joe says, hey Phil, any thoughts on the early 90s Fender Strat Ultras with the lace pickups? I think they're amazing guitars. I think the next little thing for a strat, but it's not too thin. It's fantastic. I think they look cool as hell. A lot of them have cool paint jobs and those laces sensors are the best laces sensors they ever made. I think the new laces sensors are okay. You know, I have had my ins and outs with the new laces sensors pickups over the years, you know, because they've changed the kind of formula a little bit, but man, the those ones with the actual base plates on the bottom are fantastic. I think it's one of the best pickups. And so, you know, I really think, you know, Fender, in my opinion, what happened with that is if you notice what happens with Fender and Gibson and all these companies, there's this evolution of getting away from, you know, what really sells the guitar kind of concept. In other words, like, you know, you have Eric Clapton, he's playing lace sensors and you have Jeff Beck and he's playing lace sensors. And you have these ultra strats, these, you know, these Fender strats and they have lace sensors and people are loving lace sensors. And I used to believe because I didn't know the industry like I do now. I used to believe then like, oh, well, what happened was grunge came and the lace sensors were modern looking and then players didn't want the modern looking pickups. So Fender went to the Noiseless. And now I'm more understand that really what happened was Fender just didn't want to pay a lace sensor. They don't think lace sensors sold their guitars, just like they don't think Demars, you're a seamer, Duncan sells their guitars. And if you look now, you can see the evolution of this. You know, we're talking about things you're not supposed to say. In my video of the Ultra II 17th Anniversary, I made the comment that that pickup looks like a copy of a Joe Barton pickup. I just, my opinion for whatever it was. But I think it would be for $3,000 because I guess ours is very expensive. A set of Joe Barton's would have made that guitar, I think way more appealing to me. And but Fender doesn't make those decisions anymore. They don't put a lot of aftermarket pickups. In fact, I was saying this to a friend a couple weeks ago. I said, yeah, Fender and Gibson really, they never put, they really never put any other artists or any other brands pickups in their guitars. And then he cited like four Fenders right away. Oh no, they do this one, this one, this one. I go, yeah, those are artist guitars. Same with Music Man, unless it's an artist guitar. And they're always doing this because the artist wants it. So if an artist wants to Margio or Seymour, Duncan or Bear Knuckles, then it's in the guitar. But generally speaking, those companies do not want. And I know for a fact that sometimes Fender and Gibson obviously talk to those artists and see if there's any way that they can put non branded pickups, you know, in there and only use their brand. So, Mighty Guitar Mott says, it's Joe, he says Joe Barton, it's Joe Barton with a D, Joe Barton pickups. You can Google them. Okay. Oh. Somebody said throwback mentioned what pickup I have. Is throwback, was throwback in the chat? Brian, if you see the throwback thing, can you post it so I can see it? And then I'll, I'll tear everybody what it is. So I don't have to look. I don't do well with numbers. What I mean by that is like when people call like, you know, like the RG 550, like Ivan is, to me, it's like a fat strap pickup. Like a cool, right? Super distortion, the JB, you know, like all that stuff works. Names work for products for me. When people call products numbers, I just, I think it's just my attention span. Just like, I'm not going to remember that. Soon as somebody goes, it's a 48602. I'm like, I don't know what that is. I won't remember it. The, um, uh, uh, Okay, hold on. Uh, let's, while I'm doing that, I'm going to go to the next one. Uh, Uh, hold on. What was it? Oh, uh, it's a good question. So I'm going to read it out loud just so I know it to work on it. Uh, this one was from Derek who says, what is the actual pickup type when not using the sustainiac? Is it a single coil magnet type? I'm guessing I think it's a hum, a noiseless single coil, but I will verify that for the, uh, for the breakdown video so that, so that I have that information. So the, um, the way we, the way I make those videos, like the video they saw yesterday for this, for the patrons, uh, at first I temple it out the idea so that you see a first draft of the video. It's all the sections and all the things I want to talk about. And then sometimes the patrons will tell you like, they'll see it and they'll go, oh wait, that was a little fast or that was a little confusing. And sometimes that's a good information to have, but a lot of times not always, but I'd say 60% of the time. I already knew that going in. It's just I'm place holding there. In fact, it's a little tough because when I'm making videos for my, when I don't share with the patrons, I leave a little black little screens. So that means no, it lets me know like what goes there, um, because I'll kind of add more information, add more information. What I'm trying to do is I'm always trying to put as much information in a video as possible, but keep the video flowing. And so sometimes I'm like, there's too much information here and it's just, it's rattling too fast and then you're getting numb to it. And so, you know, I just try to temper the videos. Again, I'm trying to, I'm trying to teach you kids something. No, I'm just kidding. Like those teachers, right? I'm trying to gauge these kids so that they learn. I'm trying to make a video that you guys actually want to watch, but then maybe we'll, you know, have some information you want to learn instead of just, you know, giving you the verbal stuff. Um, uh, Quarter Town Rick says Corker Town Rick, Corker, Corker Town Rick. The specs on my Ivy JP Jr. says that it has a basswood neck. That'd be incorrect. Is that accurate? No. Uh, is it even possible? It is possible. Uh, cause I have, uh, I have a guitar with a basswood neck. So let me show it to you. Hold on a second. I should have had whole music today. Da da da da da da. I'll just hum. Evening for you guys. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. Little heap of Neema. Da da da da da. The girl from. Evening, but you can't get copyright strike, right? All right. You're about to see the only guitar in the world. This is the only guitar in the world that has a basswood neck. When I say only, I don't mean this exact one and no other one in the world. I mean this model, this guitar has a basswood neck. This is a Parker. That's my thing. So this is a Parker fly. You guys have seen this before. This isn't a popular body. This model, not all Parker flies are the same. Some are mahogany bodies with mahogany necks. There are different ones, but this particular one that I'm holding right now is one. Absolutely for a fact, a popular body with a basswood neck. So your question is two fold one. Is it true that the Ivy LP junior has a basswood neck? It is not true. Uh, is it so it's not. Is it possible? It is possible. Here's why it's possible. The reason why this Parker guitar has a basswood neck is that this entire back, this whole thing you see right here, this whole shape, including this neck all the way up to here is a piece of carbon fiber cloth that's been wrapped and then it hardens. And then the fretboard is also carbon fiber glass carbon fiber glass what they call it. So the, uh, the basswood neck is encapsulated like a skittle. Uh, it's a candy inside the basswoods inside. So they did, they use soft woods. They said for tone, just telling you what they said. Don't freak out. And then it's entirely, uh, surrounded in, and that's why they paint the backs always. In fact, in the right light, which I can't give you here, you can see the carbon fiber weave that you would see underneath. So, um, so that's how they did this. That's why they do that. That's why it's so thin right there. Um, and this guitar is like four pounds, three ounces or something like that. Super super super. So anyways, uh, so that's the only basswood neck I know of that does that was Parker. And of course they do it because again, it's reinforced with its carbon fiber. It's, I mean, it's 360 degrees totally surrounded with carbon fiber seemed up and glued up. So other than that, um, you cannot use a basswood neck. It's too soft. It wouldn't work. Uh, so my guess, here's my guess, uh, my experience with all the, uh, what do you call a Forda guitars, right? The Forda brands, uh, their spec sheets are a disaster. So, um, so, uh, uh, the, uh, yeah, so that's all it is. It's probably a basswood body with whatever neck and then they just put basswood neck. Um, for the basswood neck, uh, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, it's a basswood neck. Um, first of all, uh, a lot of these companies, uh, the afford a brands are, you know, they are, um, non English speaking people. And so they're using some kind of text to type, you know, software and it's always getting messed up, uh, or they just don't care. It's not something they're really, you know, they're, you know, so that's, that's my guess. But, uh, uh, there's, uh, no way that that's a basswood neck. Even if it was had two carbon fiber rods in it and a dual action trust rather, there's no way it's too soft. It wouldn't make, it would not work. So that's how I know. Uh, and the reason I should tell you when I went to the Parker factory and I saw them build these guitars, I had a very detailed conversation about this. Cause when they said we use basswood for the next and popular for the bodies, I went, what? Cause like anybody, I was like, I don't understand. How is that possible? And then they show me the process and I go, now it makes sense. Okay, gotcha. Um, so that's how I know it wouldn't be possible either way. Cause they're the only ones that had figured it out. Uh, okay. I already answered that one. We're almost done here. Uh, okay. Nope. Okay. Let me get out of this one. And let's see. Six is a 60% of the time works every time. So, um, let's see. Hold on. I'm just reading some stuff, seeing if I'm scanning. If you're talking to me, put a question mark at the beginning. So I know you're talking to me. I asked Brian and it posts something and then I never looked to see if you posted it. So now I gotta go back. Now I'm scrolling to see if Brian posted stuff. Um, cause you know, nothing like, hey, could you do this and then I'm not gonna pay attention to it. Okay. Um, and then what else do we want to button up on? I think, yeah, Nellis says, that's what for tone, then they encapsulated in carbon fiber glass, LOL. Yeah, you know, look. I, I, I've said this before when it comes to how things sound, you know, I've heard all the theories. I'm, I'm, the only thing I will say is this, there's a little part of me that's always going to end with, uh, it's not that I don't believe in Tonewood. It's not that I believe in Tonewood. It's just when everybody argues what it is that's important or not important. So one thing I know is that not all guitars are the same. And I, and you think about that and you say it out loud and you, and I've, and I tried, I thought about it thinking like that's kind of normal. And then you realize it's very not normal. Two vampires like that too. They're not all the same, even when they're the same amp, right? When you take a guitar, like any guitar, a strat, a fender strat, which is very, you know, pedestrianly, you know, everybody's played one. So everybody knows a mass produced instrument. And you think, wow, you can't even find, you know, multiple strats that are exactly the same. They don't feel sometimes the same. They don't sound the same. The variances are slight, but they're there. Yeah. Again, novices won't notice it. They'll be like, that sounds the same to me. It's, you know, you know how many times I've played and, you know, something to my kids and my wife and I go, what do you think of the difference? And they're like, I don't hear a difference. I go, how do you not hear that? What is wrong with you? Just kidding. And then I smack them around. No. Um, so anyways, uh, my point is I always, I always thought this, uh, and you really will learn it. I'm sure the builders learn it in the hell that they're doing a building, but repairing things and modding stuff, what you realize is that when customers just want a simple thing, you're like, this is, why can't I do this? Why can't they, we achieve this goal? Why can't we just do this just with some modifications? And because like I said, sometimes the guitar has his mind of its own and that's where I've learned like, okay, if it's not tone wood, fine. If it's not brass saddles versus, you know, uh, aluminum, if it's not these things, if it's not the pickup that matters, if it's not all these things that matter, then why can't we duplicate the process so much, you know, so easily? Because so many things like, you know, um, if I get a computer monitor and I buy 10 of them and I put them in a row, cause I've done this actually when we built our store, I bought like a TV, I put, we put TVs up on the walls and I bought like six of them, I think, or four of them. They all look the same. It wasn't, I mean, I know you can edit the colors and stuff and all that stuff, but I'm just saying they all look the same. It's not like I put them on and go, why does that TV look grainier and why does that TV look brighter and why does that, like they're the same. Like you can get, you know, if you have two light bulbs, I have two light bulbs right now and next, I bought two lights and I have next to me right now. They're the same. I look at them and I can see they're the same. It's so easy to get two of the same of a lot of things, but two of the same guitars are very hard thing to achieve. So I've always just, just decided that at some point I'm going to give into the idea that okay, whatever it is, if it's toned or whatever, I'm not going to buy it in 100% to any of you guys, you know, this ideology, but I am going to concede that yes, there is something that is creating a variance. So yeah, but back to the hostility of tone wood in the Parker. Yeah, I mean, you know, my guess and I believe this, it was just marketing. They needed to market it that way. So because think of this, even when I show most people a Parker fly to this day, they it's harder now because less people know what they are, but back in the day when they were more popular, everybody goes, oh, that's a guitar I made of carbon fiber. And I'm like, oh no, like an Aristides is made out of a, you know, carbon fiber or manmade materials, but a Parker is actually made of wood and manmade materials. It's a combination of both, but everybody looks at it and just thinks that it's not wood, but it is. So maybe that's what they were thinking. It was like, we need to, you know, my, my guess is they use basswood and poplar because it was light and cheap and then it kind of worked for all those carbs because that's a lot of carving on that body. So I would, you know, because they charged a lot more for the mahogany, my guess is because it was a lot harder on the tooling and work. Johnny 5494 says, Hey, Phil, I have a large Kiesel and Jim collection. How does the Parker fly compared to them? It's worse. The Parker is a, it's, it's that, you know, you know, you, you know, you have that friend and they have a dog and they love that dog. And you're like, how can anyone like that dog? Cause the dog is like kind of a jerk. That's probably how Ralph felt about my dog. Cause I, we had our, our dog before we lost him a couple of years ago. He always punched Ralph in the junk. Like I, to the point where I think Ralph secretly thought I trained the dog to do that cause Ralph would come over and the dog just went right nose in, bam. Right. You know, right. Just, and it punched the way like, it was a big dog. So it was not like, you know, I mean, not like a, you know, 80 pound dog, but it was 60 pound dog, 60 pound dog punches you in the junk. It's not a good feeling. And I'm sure Ralph every time went, why the hell's Phil like this dog? I don't know, secretly cause it punched him in the junk. I thought it was funny. But anyways, no, but my point is the Parkers are a thing you love or you don't love, but it's not something that you would pick up and go, I get this for the most people, most people are going to eat. They're going to not like it. Some people go, Oh, it stabs you in the chest. It absolutely stabs you in the chest. It's weird as hell. Why does it? It's so, you know, that arm comes up and it, have you played it for a while? You can feel a little bruise right about there. You'd be like, the hell? So, and yeah, it's a little, it's a little thinner. So I've heard people go, they sound exactly the same as anything else. Nope. I can A, B my guitars and it's a little thinner sounding than like a full full, you know, a PRS or a Gibson or something like that. It's, it's not, I'm not to even addressing looks. There are some things that are about a bit good about it. Obviously it has a lot of functionality because it has the, the transducer pickup and the magnetics and it's not going to go out of tune because again, it's carbon fiber and the components are built really well. But I have an affection for the guitars that like the majesty that I'm pointing out right now, the majesty, which is why I did the podcast with Petrucci, the emerald acoustic that's carbon fiber for, believe it or not, PRS guitars, that's the thing I like about them. What I'm about to say in a second. It's why I liked this ultra two 70th anniversary guitar with the crazy finish, this Parker guitar, this Joe Sartorini guitar. I'm sadly enough, I'm a traditionalist when it comes to what I like to play and what I have, uh, an SG, a strat, a less Paul. That's what I love. Very basic, very boring. It's like you take me 31 flavors and I'm going to either chocolate, vanilla, I'm not going to experiment. However, that's my, as a guitar player, as a guitar player, give me a strat plug into a Fender amp and I'm, I'm never going to be happier. Give me an SG plugged into a Marshall. I'm never going to be happier. However, I love the trying. I love the Parker, the Aristides, the Emerald, the majesty from music man. I love trying. I love the, somebody out there. I love the idea of somebody's like, I'm going to change the guitar world forever. And, um, and I've said this many times, so many of them don't do it. You know, it doesn't work. It like, like, um, Parker, it ends up failing. And that should make me sad, but it doesn't because I think there's winners. And I think that's how anything works. You have to, you know, um, and I, uh, I have a video. I'm very excited about, I'm going to tell you the title since the end of the show, uh, that I'm super excited, um, because, um, it's coming very soon. So, you know, the title is called, I don't know what's called. There it's called. It's called the guitar that changed the world and no one knows what it is. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's a video that I've been working on for quite a while. I love it. I hope you guys end up loving the video. Uh, there's this weird guitar. I'm just going to keep it simple just to give you the, the, the senses of what's going on. There's a guitar that was a colossal failure for this company. Okay. So this company made this guitar colossal, epic, like bad, like lost a ton of money. It didn't last very long. It just wasn't a good investment for the company. It wasn't a good guitar. It didn't do well. No one likes it. They're not even collectible nowadays. Nothing about this guitar was great, except for in the video, I'm going to show you how this guitar single-handedly created a ton of different guitars that we all love today because the company, even though the guitar failed, the technology and the, the, uh, style form that they had to develop to make this guitar, that is what succeeded. So that's my takeaway with this story. My takeaway with the story is, is that Parker might fail, but some of the things that are in a Parker exist in the guitars you love today. Right. That's the irony of this is sometimes the product doesn't do well, but the, but the design structure, the something from that gets translated into something else that makes it, uh, very successful. You know, it's an accidental, you know, success. And there's a lot of accidental successes in this industry when it comes to products that did badly, but like I said, or if it's not the technology or the design, it's the actual engineer. There's a lot of engineers I've met in this industry and talked to over the years. And the thing that they did that we all love, they were also responsible for 10 things that were just flops and we all like make fun of to this day. And they will tell you that literally without those, kind of like how I was making the comment with, without a company sending the rep in my store to scream at me, I would have never thought, okay, I need to get myself off my guitar store channel and onto my own private channel. And then here we are today, right? See how things you never know where it's going to go. All right, let's do one last question and then we're going to call it. Um, sorry, I just saw the joke, cola joke and maybe laugh. Um, uh, okay, let's see. Hold on, hold on. Um, okay, let me add to this one. All right, if you have anything last, okay. Um, so. Okay, hold on. I don't know, maybe this is it. Maybe we went in the show. I think we're all dipping out now. I think that was the end of it. I didn't see any, uh, if I missed the subject or question you guys had, again, I apologize. Uh, so. Um, okay, here I have with this, um, so this question is, can you do a video where you create the exact same guitar out of different woods and run signals through it in an oscilloscope and see what you can do? If the wood matters. Um, I wouldn't make that video. I'm sure it's been made by other people, but here's why I don't think that way. And, and it's a great idea for a video and somebody should make it, but I'm just, I'm going to tell you not why the video is not a good idea or not. Why that doesn't matter, but why I can't make that video. When I break down guitars and I show stuff to you and I share what I see with you guys, um, it's never about there's a magic formula that makes a great anything. It's always about who's there's, there's real value and then there's bullshit. Right. Sorry. Trickery, whatever you want to call it, snake oil, right? Uh, our industry is no different than any other industry. Okay. There's, um, water that comes from, you know, a spring and then there's city water filtered and then sold to you for the same price. Okay. It's not that the city water filtered is bad. It's that why would you pay the same for water to be pulled from a spring and then driven drove and then, you know, brought on a boat to your, you know, where you're at and then somebody just takes a garden hose down the road and then puts it through a filter. The point is you want to know what of it is real when you're paying for it. Because as many things are a quality in this, especially in our industry, you know, stick to this, there is many magical unicorn sales gimmicks, right? And the industry likes to just, they like to hang on to things that are not true because they know that we'll pay more for them, you know, and, uh, so they throw that on there. So my point with wood, when I talk about if a guitar is made of, uh, Mahogany or Sipali or older or basswood or poplar or whatever, it's always in context of the value proposition, what you paid. Okay. So in other words, um, every, and I'll use an example because I've, I've ordered a ton of Kiesels now over the last couple of years. Every Kiesel I've ordered, the wood had nothing to do with tone or sound. I always pick based on what I think I'm going to predict for the weight of the size. So like I, um, so I ordered a guitar that was smaller head, you know, a smaller headless guitar and I just said, okay, Alder's fine because it was like, I don't care because I know it's small and it's not going to be heavy, no matter what I do, but a guitar that was slightly larger. I was like, okay, I need it to be Mahogany or I need it to be light, you know, pick something that's going to be a lighter piece of wood. And so, um, so like I said, it's, it's always a source of function to me. We're only talking about left through guitars, acoustic guitars. I have a totally different argument. So electric guitars, uh, the SG over there in the corner that's a made of Mahogany, I could care less if it was made of Mahogany or Basswood or popular. I really don't care at all. It's, uh, it's to me. And here's why. Yes. And technically, if you were to take that guitar and make it out of popular and it doesn't sound as good, would I not like it? Yeah, I wouldn't like it because it doesn't sound as good. But as long as it sounds good and plays good. And, and, and here's why, um, none of these guitars that you're looking at, well, like this, I have guitar here that's made of carbon fiber. Um, the emerald, it's carbon fiber. I have a guitar that's made of Alder. I have a guitar that's made of Mahogany and Maple. That guitar is made of, uh, Alder. This guitar is made out of, uh, maple caps. It's hollow. It's all hollow. So what tone? What is that hollow? That's Mahogany. I don't even know what I do not know what that majesty is. I'm sure we look it up. I'm pretty sure it's a burl maple cap. And I think it's a veneer. I have no idea what that body is. You'd have to look it up to know the fender. Of course, I know it was Alder. Uh, the, uh, the, um, uh, heritage is Mahogany and Maple. So like I said, there was no thought process in when I bought these guitars, what they were made out of. It was more of a, okay, when I look at a guitar price, uh, and I'll, I'll pick on, um, the Paul Reed Smith right there. That's a good example. When I, when I buy that guitar, what I looked at was, okay, it's made in the USA. It's Mahogany body, one piece with a two piece, uh, half inch in the center, maple cap that goes to quarter inch. If you guys don't know how PRS does it, they take a, they take a half inch, uh, top maple cap and they cut it sideways and then they flip it out like this. Like, and so that it's thicker in the center and thinner on the side. So it's a half inch in the center and quarter inch on the sides. If you don't know, that's how they do the core PRS. Um, Mahogany neck with Rosewood fretboard, Avaloni, uh, birds and, and why I'm mentioning all that notice that I'm not giving you a list like a grocery list of things that make this guitar great. I'm giving you the list of why I believe when I paid what I paid, that makes sense. When I look at it's five X, no exaggerations, five times more to pay an employee in Maryland than it is in Indonesia is five times more. So, okay, the, the materials cost five times more than they cost in Indonesia. Better. No, Mahogany in the US. I could care less. Um, but at least when I look at the price tag, I could reverse engineer it and go, okay, that's what I'm paying for. If I want to pay for it, I pay for it. That doesn't make me go, Oh, this is the only thing that's good. And now I won't buy the Indonesian guitar. No, I buy the Indonesian guitar and I go, no, part of the value is it's actually better for dollar for dollar than this. And so that's my whole point with that. That's why the video doesn't work for me because I wouldn't care what the results are. If you told me that if you could prove to me a good example, if you prove to me right now that Mahogany always sounds better than Alder, I would never make a decision to only buy guitars made of Mahogany. It would just not appeal to me because most of the reason I buy guitars is, uh, two reasons, two reasons why buy guitars. The way they look like that majesty that looked crazy. And I thought that look cool. And then it played nice and sounded nice. That's like those things. And that's it. Uh, the, all the componentry is just to help me validate pricing. Okay. And sadly enough, most of, most of the things that validate pricing now is brand because that tells me why, because, because the brand tells me what the resale value is going to be. And that tells me what I'm, you know, what, what I will have, what if I get rid of it, what I'm going to lose. So I love videos like that, but, um, they're just not for me because it's not something I'm out to prove. Uh, like I said, I'm more of like a, okay, uh, perfect example. You'll see in the next video, I talk about scarf joints and I said it clearly then I don't care if a guitar has a scarf joint or not. I don't care if it's a solid piece of, you know, one piece neck. I don't care about any of that stuff. It's just if somebody tells me a guitar is $3,000, I'm like, oh, okay. Well, then it should have these things that make it expensive. Right. It's kind of like, um, it's kind of like, if I go to a nice restaurant, like a nice, let's just say a steakhouse and they go, okay, it's $70, $80 for the steak, whatever it is. And I go, okay. And then they go, they have this bourbon and it's like 12 year old, you know, bourbon and, uh, double, you know, whatever. And I go, okay. And they give me the price and I go, okay. And then if I went to the same restaurant and they said, okay, it's a hamburger and the hamburger is 60 bucks. Right. And the white claw and the white claw is $25. I'd be like, what's going on here? That's just weird. Right. It's not that I don't like a burger and a seltzer drink. It's that I just don't find the value that way. I hope that all makes sense. All right. On that note, I'll let you guys go just to remind you for anyone who's a patron, uh, in the, uh, the mid tier level that does the clinics, the clinic is tomorrow, so don't miss the clinic. You can see the rebroadcast, just like you see all the old clinics as well. Uh, if you haven't signed up to patron, you want to, you can sign up, uh, as a $5 minute member and support the channel. If you want to become the level that gets you the clinics as well, it's $19 for the month, but there's a coupon code when you go to patron. Don't forget that coupon code. It gives you half off for the year. So it makes it 10 less than $10, like $9 a month for the year. You just pay for the month, the year. And then there's a top tier if you're so interested in that. And I appreciate you guys considering that stuff. And again, I mostly just appreciate you guys hanging out to the end of this show and, uh, support in the channel. And then I got to give you the last cool news is all because it's the coolest news and I thought only the people hung out to anyone and I'll know this. The second channel is killing it. Killing it. In fact, it's killing us. Uh, the second channel is, uh, if it does not slow down, it's going to beat the main channel in views. It's already beating us, but subscribers is out subscribing us, uh, which is funny. And we're out subscribing ourselves, but more importantly, it's beating us in views and that's cause engagement is so high. You guys really seem to like it. The videos are really going. And, uh, so if you guys haven't checked out the second channel, you can see clips of this show, but more importantly, with a different angle, there's bonus material, including a new bonus podcast this week, uh, where we talk about some stuff with, uh, uh, LR bags and jacking them bottom. There's a pedal reviews. There's amp reviews. There's a lot of stuff if you're so interested to check that out, but also for all the youth supporting that channel, thank you guys. That's just crazy. Um, I'm almost like, please chill out, let this channel win a little bit, but I'm, I'm glad that the, that people are liking it because, um, it's, uh, it's, uh, took a lot of work and it takes a lot of work, uh, to do that channel. So, you know, and, uh, I appreciate it. And, uh, on that note, uh, look for the new videos this week coming out and then I'll see you guys next Friday. As always, thank you for your time and know your gear. Then know your gear podcast.