Guitar Center CEO Starting A Brand To Rival Gibson And Fender

the Know Your Gear podcast. Hey everyone, welcome to the Know Your Gear podcast for March 3rd of 2026. We made another week. We're ready to talk guitars and fun guitar stuff. Maybe. Hope so. We got a lot to talk about. I got some stuff to share at the end of the show that I think will be fun. Some people sent some stuff. I thought I'd share that with you guys. We have some reactions. I guess I'm going to do a reaction today. That's kind of strange. This one says, hey Phil, I have an Ibanez hard case with a bad smell. Any suggestions? Thanks a lot and love the show. So interesting enough, I think any case this would work for, but I actually had the same problem you had. And my case is very important. Not that your case isn't very important, but let me show you what happened. I bought a guitar a few years back, a very rare guitar, very hard to get guitar. My wife bought it for me for my anniversary. So it was our big one, right? It was 25 years. So what happened was the case was part of the cool thing about the guitar except that the case was very smelly. So let me tell you what I ended up doing. So let me just show you. I'll show you the case. Let me show you the case. So I, it's an Ibanez case as well too. It's an old 80s, 90s. This one's from, this is signed by Steve I, Ibanez case. You guys will recognize it's got the pink inside. It's a pink case. I'm going to try and open it this way so I don't damage the guitar. It has an Ibanez universe in it, swirl. And the case, when you open it up, look, musty, moldy, sure, of course, but not the problem. It's got like cigarette smoke, definitely dirt, grime, grease. I don't know what it was. It had every smell, every horrible smell. And my concern, my concern was if I put chemicals in it, not only could I ruin the material in it, but what would happen if I trapped the guitar back in the case and, you know, and then those chemicals reacted badly to that guitar. I didn't know what to do. And so I had, came up with an idea and I tried it and it worked for me, so I'm going to give you the idea. So I have a, in my garage, it's in sections, right? I don't know how to explain that. I mean, I do have an explaining. It's in sections. I have two sections of the garage, right? It's a three car garage, the one car garage is separate than the two car garage. So I guess it's not that as hard. I thought it was. And oh yeah, see, somebody said ozone machine. I used an ozonator on it as well. But what I did was I opened the case. I left it in the garage. It actually stunk up the one car garage a little bit, which was not great. But what I learned is it took about two months, maybe a month, but definitely two months. I would go out every couple of days when I was going out to, you know, get in my truck. I'd walk into the one car garage, smell the case. You know, it was open. I would just keep it open. And I put a fan on it, not all the time, but I have a fan for, you know, a big, what do you call it, commercial fan. It's like a, I'd say it's like a 15 inch fan, but it's made for like, it's huge. It's powerful. And so I would run a fan on it and actually gassed it all out. Off gassed it out, I should say. In other words, all the smell eventually just left. So I used some ozone, some of that stuff that you guys just, somebody mentioned, like an Ozone, it's like an Ozoneater kind of stuff. I guess I'm not saying it right, but it doesn't matter. Spray it a little bit on there. And somebody mentioned somebody vodka, somebody missing vodka. I didn't try vodka. Somebody mentioned vinegar. I think somebody mentioned vinegar. And that is something I tried to, I, what I did is I missed it on a cloth and I cleaned things with some, some white vinegar and water mix. And it was easy cause Shauna keeps that pretty much standard around all the time. And it just, so basically what I want to say is I tried a bunch of stuff, but the thing that worked the most was just air, just letting it air out. Air out was a huge thing. Just getting some air across it and it worked great. And I didn't know if it was ever going to work. I was very prepared that if it didn't, I would have to basically sell off the case because there's no way I was going to keep that case in the house. It was just too stinky. And, and nope, it has no smell now. So I was going to tell you, so you could try some, you know, those ideas. Some people use, say, saying some stuff. I was going to use some, what do you call it? Oh, what's that stuff that everybody uses? The spray. I don't know what it's called. But anyways, yeah, but anyways, I found that just airing it out worked the best. So air it out. I would actually try that first. And then if that doesn't work, then maybe go to chemicals. So a reason why I say that is I don't know. I didn't notice that the chemical, the ozone stuff or even the vinegar and water did the trick. It was definitely, yes, Robo, robot, slow mo said air and sunshine. That's exactly it. So, so, you know, I would open when I was ever in the garage, I would keep, I would take it outside again. And I just funny enough. And I would have never done it, except for, you know, what happened was I had bought some, I think we bought mats, you know, like floor mats. I bought these four mats and they stunk so bad. It was like a chemical and the rubber. It was just intense. In fact, it almost made you nauseous. And we were a little nervous about it. We're like, oh no, what do we do? And so, Shauna looked online and everybody said, oh, it just needs a gas off. The smell needs a gas off. And this leave him outside and let him air out. And I'm like, and then I just had this moment in my head, like, that's what my mom used to do. That's what we were doing when we were kids. We would just hang clothes, we'd hang smelly things outside. You just like, like on, like on clothes pins, hanging them over the clothes lines, because we used to have clothes lines growing up. And I was like, oh yeah, I forgot. We used to, you forget, you forget the miracle of nature. Just a little air and sunlight did the trick in some time. And I highly recommend it. Obviously I feel confident enough that I can tell you two things. That case did smell really bad. The case is quite valuable. I would imagine the case is worth, you know, about 300, 400 bucks. I don't know, probably 250, you know, on the low side and 300, 400. But again, it came with a guitar. So it's actually more important than it's with a guitar. And but yeah, so that's, so I would just say that I've, and I've been using that ever since. Air, sunlight, you know, oxygen, time. And yeah, works great. So that's what I would do. Okay. This one was a, actually something I saw a week ago. I was going to do it last week. Didn't have time last week to talk about it. And then you guys hit me with it. And I needed time to think about this. So we're going to talk about this thing that came up. So some of you have probably seen it. Some of you guys probably have no idea what this is. Either way, you'll probably get cut in. So you guys know that Gabe is the, is the CEO of Guitar Center. You probably know that if you watched my interview with him from a year ago, I interviewed Gabe, the CEO of Guitar Center. And then I interviewed my Clem, the CEO of Sweetwater. And you get to see their two different styles. What I did ask Guitar Center to do is, is can I meet him, Gabe, one year later? It was about a year ago today. I don't know what I'm saying today, but a year ago, a year ago. And I said, can we meet back up for a year later to see how his ideas worked and all that worked? So I'll be doing that. That will be at the end of this month. I'll be going to meet with him. And something came up and I want to share it with you. He posted something on his Instagram and I have to say, I have a lot of feelings about it and I want to talk about those feelings and, and share them with you. Okay. So let's, let's get you up to speed. Let's, let's check it out. Hey, everybody, Gabe Del Porto, CEO of Guitar Center here. We are about to do something insane. We are going to build a revolutionary guitar and guitar brand from the ground up. Guitars haven't changed that much in the last 50 years and we're about to change that. And we have something that nobody else has, a relationship with you. Our customers are incredible musicians and we're going to work with you in public, out loud and share our designs, take your feedback, iterate and make the best guitar that has ever been made. So make sure to check below. There's links below to Reddit and to Instagram where you can leave your feedback and your comments and we'll be posting here on a regular basis. Stay tuned. Okay. So a couple of things to point out. I saw the throwback guys on the throwback podcast. They had actually talked about this. I was listening in the background while I was working and they brought up some of the interesting legal legalese that is in that Reddit community post where basically I'm going to highlight that. Just that's not my main subject here. Just that they, not only do you got to submit this idea for this great, great guitar idea that they don't have that they want you to have. You have to give, you have to basically state that you have every legal right to that idea and that you're going to give all those legal rights to you. And this is what's funny, Susan. Susan puts April Fools. It's not an April Fools joke. I swear. First of all, it happened in March and it's not an April Fools joke. This is so silly. So let's talk about this for a second. First of all, the reason why I want to talk about it is not for any reason to specifically talk about him and this, but it'll help me when I meet with him in a month, if that happens now. Of course, I'd like to point out I'm more than willing to still go meet with him. I'm absolutely looking forward to it. Whether they want me to or not. I got to tell you, in the last 12 months, I've spent more guitar center than I have in the last 12 years. After meeting with him last year, it's not so much that he like blew me away or that I was like, oh, I really like, you know, guitar center. My point a year ago, or actually two years ago, which is what started the whole meeting him a year ago, was that reverb is becoming more problematic for me. Craigslist is problematic. And what I mean by this, I just recently bought a pedal on Craigslist. It was fine. It was a friend of the channel, you know, someone who knew the channel, a great experience, of course, but more times than not, not great experiences. Facebook is offer up is crazy sometimes. But again, sometimes it works. But but you know, it's getting more, it's getting more difficult. OK, to find use gear. I still use my local mom pops and I still use reverb on the regular. But I had, you know, after thinking about it, going, you know, one thing that's great about guitar center is a 45 day return policy. In fact, so, you know, I just recently bought a what's considered a vintage product, actually two vintage products. And even though Guitar Center only gives you the three days, which is bullshit, because they really should give you more than that. Because first of all, if you get a guitar that's a that's a vintage, even if it's an inexpensive vintage, which still means expensive, just doesn't mean crazy. You get it and you probably want to sit on it for 24 hours before you want to open it. That's usually the concern. But, you know, let's say you don't do that. You really got to kind of move, you know. So I think to me, it should be three business days or five days as a minimum. But that's OK. And the particular case that I bought recently, do I have it? No, I do. I have a pedal that I bought that Guitar Center considered vintage. So because it was considered considered vintage, it fell in that three day policy. It was a pedal and it was 200 to $250 less than anywhere online used. So every person individual person trying to sell this pedal, I'll show you the pedal was trying to get way too much for it. It's this I've been as Tube Screamer classic. This is the one that if you guys know famously like John Mayer used. And of course, because John Mayer said it's good, then all of a sudden it's worth a fortune, you know, and this one was about two two hundred and fifty dollars less than anywhere you can find it right now if you're looking. So pretty, pretty reasonable. And and it was described as pretty cute up, which it is. It's got some scuffs. Look at that. Look at those scuffs. But I wasn't concerned about the scuffs or anything because I had at least three days. Like you get this, you know, I know sometimes when you buy used online, you still get returns, but it's a lot easier if I get this and go, OK, this is not what I thought it was or what they said. Or, hey, it's just crap, you know, I mean, just John Mayer hyped it for no reason. And I can work to walk it back in the store. So this is some great some great policies that I really like. That's where I think Guitar Center wins, where I'm really sad to see this post of from Gabe is this is exactly what Guitar Center doesn't need is to try to get into new businesses. It's like he didn't listen or learn from Gibson and other companies when Gibson's like, hey, let's get into the home stereo audio business. Guitar Center does not need to get into the building guitar business. And it almost sounds crazy and stupid to say, hey, we have a great idea for a guitar company. Why don't you guys think one up and tell us what it is? By the way, just to point out, I had to, of course, if you guys you know, you have to, I had to ask AI. I go, AI. Guitar Center wants a new brand of guitars, revolutionary, different, something new. What could it be? Let's do it. And I figured, well, I'll get AI to tell me the answer, because that's what I was doing now, because they're lazy. And I'll submit that idea to Guitar Center AI. So here's what AI said. AI said, you should make the Bodie McBoat Face guitar. That's exactly what you need. This is a joke, by the way, if you guys don't know the joke about Bodie McBoat Face. Essentially what this was was, I think it was England. Was it England or was it Switzerland? Somebody was basically, the government was making, I'm going to give you the probably pretty semi-accurate version of the story. Government decided to make a research vessel and decided to ask the community at large, hey, what should we name this thing? And a DJ said, hey, let's call it Bodie McBoat Face. And then everyone voted that it should be called Bodie McBoat Face. So of course, that made me laugh. So of course, according to the Internet, Guitar Center should make Bodie McBoat Face guitars, which I think is totally great. So gay, by the way, that's free. Totally all, you know, can have that all you want. The Bodie McBoat Face guitars. But my point to this is, as I purchased heavily from Guitar Center over the last 12 months, I do have some thoughts. And this is the things I do want to kind of point out. You know, he said in the interview with me that he wants Guitar Center to be like Disneyland. And I've been thinking about that. And one thing I can tell him after visiting so many stores and buying so many things and having some good experiences and not so good experiences. There's one thing that Guitar Center has in common with Disneyland, which is both their lines really suck. It takes as about as much time to buy a pack of strings at Guitar Center as it does to get on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So you've succeeded in the whole making it like Disneyland. There's no churros, which sucks, because I really think that would really improve the Guitar Center experience if I could at least get a churro while I'm waiting for a half hour to buy some strings. By the way, I'm insulting no Guitar Center employees. Every Guitar Center employee told me they're embarrassed by the checkout times. No exceptions. They all said it over and over again. Our system is antiquated. It's slow. It's stupid. We don't know why we have to get all this information and go through such a long process just to make a quick, easy purchase. There's in Guitar Centers as recent in the last couple of months, I've seen customers walk out just because they couldn't get rung up in time. Because once anything happens, the process is just destroyed. What I mean by that is if you're in the Guitar Center, it's not it doesn't even have to be that busy. All it takes is one person trading in gear, which logs down their computer system. And then there were one terminal down and all it takes is one customer needs something to check something out. It doesn't seem to take a lot. What's interesting about this is this is this is where I'm telling you, instead of in creating, this is my feedback. Instead of creating a new guitar brand, which by the way, is kind of insulting to all the brands that are in your stores. Because, you know, if you want a new, exciting brand of guitars that no one's seen in your stores, why don't you just carry something besides Fender and Gibson? I mean, there is Aristides. There is Ormsby. There is a lot of brands out there that are making things. In fact, when I was on the Reddit post, which I'll go to now, some people were submitted some ideas and one person submitted an idea here. In fact, there's three people that I came across that submitted ideas. All three of those ideas are great. You know how I know? Because those guitars actually exist. Somebody said, hey, you should make a guitar with a pickup swap out. That exists. Somebody's like, hey, you should make a guitar. You're like, what, you know, that every, every, every suggestion was a guitar that already existed. Could you imagine if Guitar Center just carried more of those nice guitars? I mean, instead of saying things like, you know, hey, the guitars have pretty much sucked for the last 50 years. We know because they're in our stores and they're not selling. I'm adding that part. I mean, I better not get in trouble. He didn't say that. But I heard that. I will tell you this and a side note. If Gabe, if the CEO of Guitar Center or Sweetwater, which Sweetwater would never do it, came out and said, hey, are you sick of crappy YouTube review videos? We're going to totally make them great now. I'd be like, screw you. I work really hard to make great videos. I'm pretty sure luckily for, I think Guitar Center, uh, Paul Redsmith doesn't care about the internet. He doesn't watch it. I'm pretty sure Paul Redsmith would hear him and go, what an idiot. This makes no sense. In fact, like you guys said, I thought it was a joke and I was trying to, to, so, you know, a reason why we didn't talk about last week, my wife asked me to calm down. She's like, why don't you wait a week and process? Because as soon as I saw this, I go, is this a joke? Is he joking that they want to start a guitar brand instead of, I don't know. Aren't they supposed to be fixing their stores? Now granted, I think Guitar Center is doing pretty well right now. Um, and that's probably because they got more inventory and some of his ideas have worked. First of all, making the experience more pleasurable. I've seen some Guitar Center is pretty much reverse everything he asked them to do. I can tell you for a fact that when he said unlock all the guitars, all of them did. Most of them went locked them back up. However, there are some stores that don't lock them up. The Tempe store in Tempe, Arizona, the guitars are not locked up. In fact, the locks are actually physically removed so they can't even relock them up. But it's crazy to me that I think as a, as a company where I think they're really trying to gain ground and maybe try to stop what is essentially the apocalypse to them, which is the sweetwater Amazon powerhouse that's coming to them online and crushing them online. You think, cause he said he wanted to focus on the stores and keep the stores. Um, you think that's where they would focus. In fact, I've seen the stores not improve at all in the last year. Um, yeah, he made some pedal stations. Okay. Um, for the record, for the record, he did say he cleaned the bathroom and he taught them all how to clean the bathrooms and keep the bathroom clean. Um, I don't know. I didn't use their bathrooms. So I don't know that to be true or care to be honest with you. But what's funny about this is I just thought this is less, it's a publicity stunt. Somebody even, a lot of you guys are mentioning Mitchell. Somebody mentioned to me that like, you think it's just, they're going to put some slaps and new colors on Mitchell's and it's just a hype machine for this. And I go, I'd actually have more respect for him if, and guitar center, if it was just a hype that they're like, Hey, Mitchell now comes in purple. Right. You, you said purple school. So we did purple, but it seems such a weirdly. Odd move for them. And, uh, and especially since, like I said, a year later after talking with him, I mentioned that his systems are antiquated. They're still antiquated. They're still bad. He, uh, we, I mentioned to him that his, uh, pictures online are horrible. So, you know, I have, uh, I have things to show him. Not only had, did he get the app, which is good. He improved the pictures. However, improved is not better. I have, I have purchased guitars that came to the house and they had damage. And the reason I didn't see the damage in the photo was that the, the whiteout thing that they use, the app, why did out? Cause it catches reflections and stuff. It whited out the part that would show that the guitar was damaged, which is important granted to guitar center's credit. I walked it back in the store. I showed him the damage. They looked at the original pictures, the damage. And they said, yeah, you're right. And they, they gave me a full refund and no hassle. And that's what's great about guitar center that way, but they still need to improve that system. Um, they still need to improve a lot of things that, cause they are a retail business, make the retail experience amazing. You don't need to start a brand of guitars. Maybe just go out there and pull more brands in or maybe go to the brands that you really like and say, Hey, in fact, let me ask you guys this question. If they went to a brand, even a big brand like Fender or PRS or Gibson, but let's not even talk about them. Let's throw in some mid tier brands. Let's say they went to Schechter or somebody and said, Hey, we have a great idea. We think guitars have been pretty stagnant for the last 50 years. We want to see something different. Why don't you show us some ideas? And if we like them, we'll put in some big, big orders for them. That seems like really great idea versus what we know this idea is, which is, Hey, great. Um, we're going to have the customers, which by the way, isn't the customers. Let's, let's explain something to, to maybe Gabe doesn't understand. Gabe, best advice I ever got on YouTube. I'm going to give you right now. If you watch this, uh, my friend who was a DJ, okay, a big time, national DJ told me there's a store. He said, this is the best advice he gave me for YouTube. He said in the DJ world, there's something called van people. And he goes in van people are when they go, Hey, come down to the, you know, Dobson and Elliot on Friday at three o'clock. The van's going to be there with Stink and Steve. And they said, and they would give out free t-shirts and crap. And the people would go to the van. And what happened was the CEOs, the executives of the radio stations would sometimes go to the vans to see, and they would talk to the people. I'm going to talk to the people. And the people said, what do you, what do you want? You want more music? Do you want more, you know, more conversations? What do you want on this radio station? They said, we want more giveaways. And so all of a sudden, all the DJs were like, Hey, no more talking about the music. Just we're going to be giving away stuff. And ratings fell like crazy. And the CEOs were like, I don't know what's going on. And the DJ said, well, that's because you went and talked to people who just want free crap. They're not actually the listeners. See, the listeners don't go get free crap because they're stuck in traffic. Listen to us go into their job. That's your audience. We're talking to the audience. You're talking to people who are van people who want free crap. I thought that was a great advice. What I learned from that was kind of like YouTube. I talked to my audience because this is my audience. By the way, Gabe, your audience really isn't online. It's not on your Instagram channel. It's in your stores. You should go talk to people in your stores. The your Instagram audience is going to go, sure, you should start a guitar brand. I think that's ingenious. You should take your money and throw it at that. What do I care? I'm not going to your store anyways. My point again is there seems to be a better way than just asking the public what they want is a product and then going to a third world country and then doing what everybody else does, which is we know they're going to go to China or Indonesia and just make a product line and slap a brand on it. That has a community driven. Somebody mentioned the Chapman guitars. That's how Chapman guitars started, right? You pick the colors, you pick the shapes, we'll start making it. That was a great idea for a YouTube channel 10 years ago. It's a bad idea for a billion dollar guitar store now. So that's my thoughts. Let's see what you guys think. Put in the comments, put question marks first so I know that you're talking to me. In insula, the problem says, hey, are GC a big franchise? They are the largest franchise of stores in the US. They're the largest retailer in the US. So there are 300 stores and they are larger than sweet water. You just don't see it that way anymore because if you're online, like a lot of us, you see sweet water everywhere and sweet water is really kind of built itself up. And sweet water is gained so much ground in half a decade. That's pretty crazy to see the growth that they are that they're at. But even with this growth growth arc, I would say sweet water. I would not say sweet water is half the size of Guitar Center, but to say that it's 60, 70 percent of the size was probably pretty accurate. There's there's neither company or public. So therefore a lot of the information is not readily available. But I've been to both corporate headquarters. I've been to the stores. I can just tell you like Guitar Center has about 3,000 employees, I'm guessing. But I think I'm pretty in the ballpark where sweet water is more like a thousand employees. And it might even be further off than that. Then what I mean by this, Guitar Center has way more employees than that. They have a lot of employees. And so it's a big franchise for sure. I mean, I have no doubt that they have the money and the power to start a brand of guitars. I just like everything. I think it's just a bad move. Why? Not because I'm on YouTube and I have a channel. And on Fridays, I get to just sit there and say whatever comes out of my ass. It's because I'm a customer of Guitar Center. So I'm telling you what I want is a customer. I want guitars not to be damaged. Like you guys saw, I bought a damaged guitar from Guitar Center. I would like the prices to be fair, reasonable or even if could be possible. Good. Right. Like fair, you know, right? I would like a selection of product when I go in the store. So I feel like, Hey, I had an experience that I wanted instead of like, this is what's left and I wish I would have thought planned better before I came to the store. I would like the experience of shopping at Guitar Center to be better. I bought a pedal from Guitar Center this week. I bought three Guitar Center pedals new from Guitar Center this week. And all three, like I said before, when I told them a year ago, they take a week to get here. And and again, I could get them faster if I went from Sweetwater. But I chose Guitar Center because I like I told you guys, I think Guitar Center is pretty reasonable sometimes on trades, if you know how to deal with them. And I have a I had a good amount of gift cards because I traded for gift card stuff. So I was using my gift cards. So the penalty to me was I had to wait longer again in a modern world where anyone else could have gotten me the product faster. Guitar Center was taking longer. Not my guess is because instead of working on that, improving that, um, the I was talking to somebody at Guitar Center the other day, and they were telling me a story about how a brand new Gibson are. I don't want to say the exact one. Let's just say a custom shop because I don't want to give away who it is, what store was they got a Gibson and it had a broken headstock. The problem is, is that Gibson, when they contact Gibson said, we've had it for three months, you've had it for three months. So and they're like, but we just opened the box now. And they're like, yeah. And they go, yeah, but you've had it for three months. You've had it for three months and the store was like, yeah, but it was in the Guitar Center warehouse and they shipped it to the store. And then we didn't need to run away. So we waited a month and we opened it. And I told that person at Guitar Center, I said, he says, does that sound crazy to you? And I said, it doesn't sound crazy when you think about the fact that now Gibson has sweet water as a customer and sweet water opens every single guitar as soon as they get it and goes through it. So yeah, they probably think it's weird now that are, that you're not opening the product and checking it. That's just the world we're in. It's, you know, I was a Gibson dealer and they did the same thing to me. I had to damage product with Gibson and they said, I sat on it too long before I told them my problem was an epiphone not a Gibson. And my issue was they kept sending me a back catalog of the same guitars. And so what happened was we did not pull fruit. In other words, you know, I did not know to do this in the Guitar World, but in the fruit world, fruit and vegetable world, apparently when you get no new produce, you pull the old produce forward, you put the new produce in the back. I have never worked in a grocery store, did not know this. So of course, when I was getting new stock up epiphone, I was not pulling the older stock of epiphone forward. I wasn't even thinking of it that way. And until Gibson taught me, yeah, they're like, you've sat on this for months and now you're telling us is defective. And I'm like, yeah, it's cause I sold too, but I didn't grab that one first. I didn't think to grab the old one. So again, these are the things that you have to learn in retail. Um, I'm sorry, somebody's saying sweetwater apparently has to open the guitar and check immediately. Yes. Yeah. Well, that's basically what Gibson's saying for sure. Um, but, um, okay, hold on. Always be rotating. Thank you, Scott. That's a good advice now. Like I said, first in, first in, first out, right? And that's the, that's the way. Well, trust me, we switched to that afterwards. I just really don't understand this idea. Maybe I will try and you guys, maybe what you think when I meet with him, maybe I'll, I'm going to ask him, Hey, could you explain this to me to maybe I'm too dumb to get it or I'm not seeing the vision here. I just think it's, it's a, I don't know. I just think it's a, it's a bad idea. It's a bad effort of energy when I have so many complaints as a customer of guitar center that I would rather you focus on that first. Um, hold on. Let's see. Somebody else said last thing I bought from guitar center was a power amp. They actually did have used and just didn't bother to tell me or ship anything of course took a week and, and to get the, any info. Oh, okay. Um, let's see. Um, oh, Vox guitarist rock says, Hey, my favorite music store is still up and running, but my second favorite is closing for good. I'm sorry to hear that. This is kind of why, like I said, I really believe, and it's just my philosophy, uh, that I believe that guitar center closing would be a huge coffin ill in the mom, pop music stores. I know everybody thinks the opposite. And sure, 20 years ago, kind of in the world where Walmart was the death of mom and pops, sure, you know, stopping the Walmart. Could that have helped the mom pops for sure, for sure. But now Walmart's not the problem. Amazon's a problem. In my opinion, guitar center is not the problem as much anymore to the mom pops. It's the online sales. It's the fender going direct. It's the sweet water. That's what's going to kill the mom pops. And the reason I explain that is, is because the one thing that they'll have, the internet has that mom pops can never, ever compete with. Look, you can outclass them. You can out knowledge them. You can even undercut them. Even if, you know, even though that sucks, it cuts in your profiling, but you can do that. But the one thing you can't do is out inventory. You can't out inventory the internet. And, you know, so when somebody walks in your store, it used to be just 20 years ago, somebody walking your store and going, looking for a strat. Okay, great. We got 10 of them. What will color you want? And they go white. And I go, I got every color, but white. And they're like, okay, why don't you try one? And, you know, you could, you could, they go, Hey, you know what? I was really looking for white, but I'm looking at this candy. Yeah. Or this candy cola and this candy cola looks good. I think I'm going to take candy cola or, Hey, if you give me 10% off, I'll take candy cola. There was an opportunity. Now people go, yeah, just get it online. They got the color I want online. I'll just go online. And so that's why I said, so guitar center, whether you realize it or not, it's like, it's like restaurants having a guitar center in your area where it used to hurt your mom pops. And the last time I went pop, still disagree with me on this. And they're partially right. I mean, there's no 100%. You know, this is all absolute, but I will argue that one thing that happens is when I go to a guitar center, I kind of then just go to another music store. I tend to hit multiple music stores in the same day. If I'm taking a Saturday, I'm going to his store. I will hit whoever's local next to me. If there's only one store and it's a 30 minute drive, I kind of go, well, I want to go, but not today. See what I'm saying? You want to kind of hit multiple things. It's why, it's why, and I'm not saying I know anything about this, but it's why I think car dealerships all kind of kind of congregate together. You have a lot of mecha centers where you go, okay, here's your Honda, your Toyota, your Nissan, you know, dealerships. So all, you know, they're all right there on the same street. So you can go and try all the different brands. You want to hit multiple stores. It's why they have malls. So you can hit multiple stores. So I feel like every time a store closes, a music store closes, it doesn't make it easier for the other new stores. I think it makes it harder. So, and I'm not necessarily saying guitar centers. Great. I'm just saying, I just think if guitar center was the closest chains, it would pretty be, it would be detrimental to the mom pops. It would not be a help. Not at this point. I think that would just again, um, it would just cement us all going online. Um, Oh, let's see. David says, Hey, the problem is, feels you bought all the guitars you like. No, you know, look, I still love checking out gear and doing stuff. And I'm, I'm obviously having the channel is different because I'm always buying stuff for the channel as well. But, uh, no, still being personally, I'm still out there looking at stuff. Like I said, I just bought some stuff. Um, so anyways, uh, let's see. All right. We need to, we need to go. Um, okay, hold on a second. This one's from Steve B. Real says, Hey, guitar center has no core competencies in guitar design. Well, remember, he they're asking you to do it. Steve, you got to do it. You figure out what the new inventive, innovative guitar line is. And less gave has brought in a team with this expertise. This idea will be colossal failure. I think, I think it, I told you I'm a pessimist first. So not only do I think it's going to be a colossal failure. I think the, not the guitar brand, that'll be a colossal failure. I just think the concept, this idea is a horrible idea. Um, and less, of course, it's just a fishing exhibition because they're going to do something with Mitchell or like, said he's just feeding the, Hey, what do you guys think of stuff? And then, you know, they just like, Hey, you guys said stuff and we listened. And now it's going to be something totally different. I don't know. I just think the whole idea seems really crazy, but really just unfocused from what I think they should really be focusing on. Um, so, uh, angry welder says, Hey, this idea is about patenting ideas, not about building guitars. It could be, it seems very nefarious. You know, uh, it actually, that's why I said, uh, Sean asked me to calm down for a week and not talk about it. Um, I, if you watch this throwback guys, they talk, like I said, more of the legal side of it, that part really seemed to irritate me, uh, emotionally. I try not to be that way. I try to, you know, be even killed and try to process everything and have a, you know, some kind of opinion that at least, you know, is insightful or helpful to either myself or somebody else. And my first experience, my first, um, not experienced, my, yeah, I guess my first experience of this was like, really people got to send your other ideas and you're kind of just implying you're going to then own their ideas. And there's not even really talking about compensation. And I'm like, this seems really just slimy and bad. I just didn't dig it. But maybe, um, when I talked to him, we'll have a better insight of it. Or maybe, you know, he'll explain somebody. Oh, see, look, the sarin says the shark guitars, exactly innovative, different. I mean, think about this. There's tons of brands. I would love to go into Guitar Center and see tons of new, exciting products on the walls. That would be fun. That's something I don't get to do. You guys don't get to do any. I get to see everything online and, uh, and, you know, I'd love to go into Guitar Center and check out something different. And I don't necessarily think you have to start a brand of guitars about that. So, um, but anyways, uh, and then Ramblin says, do you buy use gear? I mostly buy use gear. So, you know, just like anybody else. Um, that's usually what I will buy, uh, the, um, cause again, you know, you can save some money and you know, you're just trying to keep your budget. Um, looking on the wall, some guitars here are used and some guitars are new. So, um, interesting enough, the guitars I tend to love the most were mostly used because it, not because I got them for ideal, because, you know, you just kind of find them, you know, and you're like, Oh, this feels really cool. Um, and I like it. So yeah, a six string guitar, six stringster guy says buy and try. Yes. Buy to try instead of try and then buy. Okay. Um, the, yes. Okay. Let's go on to the next subject. Uh, uh, oh, hold on. Uh, six string, good six stringster guy says only problem with sweet water is you have to try and then have to pay shipping when you send it back. Oh, like we talked about that last week. So, you know, you don't always have to pay the shipping when they send it back. So sometimes you can talk them out of it, especially if you're going to buy something else. So I tend, and you don't have to usually spend the whole thing. So like, let me give you an example. Uh, let's say you buy a $1,000 guitar and you get it and you're like, I'm just not feeling that you're like, Oh no. Yeah, I can probably talk him into not charging me, you know, shipping back, but, uh, I have to buy another $1,000 guitar. I'll sometimes just go, Hey, what else do I need? And I go, well, I look around real quick and I go, actually I need, um, you know, like I was thinking about getting a temple audio pedal board or Hey, I'm thinking about getting a speaker. I needed this is selection speaker or maybe I just need something else or I'll just buy a pedal, you know, and go, Hey, I want to return this. That's nothing wrong with it, but Hey, I want to buy this other thing. And, um, is there any way, you know, you could, you take care of that for me? And, uh, the, what I will tell you is, and here's what I would, I would imagine, uh, the rep I have does it for me. He's always taking care of me. And, um, it's cause I don't ask much of them. So, you know, that's, I think that's why. So some people are going to go, well, it's cause you have a YouTube channel. Could be that too, but I don't know. You know, right? Uh, I mean, you know, it's, it's, so you know, the whole thing's awkward anyways, cause in most cases I'm most of the reps that I deal with when you guys like, I, they look at me going, why are you even talking to us? Why don't you just talk to my, you know, the boss and get it sent to you for like, you know, free or something. And I'm always like, well, I don't want every, I don't need everything to be my work transaction. I want some things to be my personal world. And it's just a lot easier for me to not think about half that. I gotta make a video for everything. So it's not, I don't want to trade everything I do for work. Cause then I'll be working all time. Um, uh, let's see. Um, yeah. And then last, we'll end on this one. Uh, Gray hair newbie says, going into direct competition with your bread and butter vendors seems insanely bad idea. I a hundred percent agree. I not only think it's insane to go in, in that direction. Look, Harley Benton knocking off all their competitors. Uh, the, uh, uh, what am I going to say? Knock it off a competitor is bad idea. Right. Um, you know, if you watched Mike Clem, the CEO of sweet water, what a different philosophy when he was like, we don't want to do anything that competes with our, our vendors, right? We don't want that. And, and, and to me, Harley Benton knocking off their competitor, are their vendors is kind of a weird thing. But then to go, like if I saw the CEO of, of tommy, if I saw Hans tommy come out and say, Hey, we know you guys think all the guitars suck. We agree for the last 50 years. We're going to make Harley Benton's amazing. And they're going to be the best brand of guitars you've ever seen because none of these brands could pull it off. I'd be like, wow. Actually, I'll tell you exactly what I think. I would think, wow, you buy a lot of crap from those vendors because they are taking it in the shorts from you. Right. That's pretty bold. That's like the boss walking up and telling you like, Hey, why don't you, uh, why don't you go make me coffee toots? Right. Like that's, that's a, that's an alpha move, right? To sit there and tell your, your, your, your vendors. Hey, you go, I'm going to do whatever I want. If you don't like it, suck it. Cause where are you going to sell your stuff to? It's just kind of weird. It's a weird thing. Um, uh, angry welder said, uh, GC used to sell their own brand of guitars called Laguna guitars. They still sell the Mitchell guitars and, uh, they still have like fire wire cables. And then what's the K, what's the guitar case company rode something, right? That's, um, uh, uh, and then, uh, Bunky, Bunky Muckett says, Phil, wasn't Michael Kelly a Sam Ash brand? It still is. So the way it works now is then there's a company in Mexico that owns Sam Ash now. They own the brand Sam Ash. And so they own the website and they own all the brand Sam Ash owns. So they own Harky, Samson and Michael Kelly. So they own those brands. So that's how, yes. And so Michael Kelly was a Sam Ash brand and they bought that brand. And, uh, look how great that did for them. So, uh, I, I say that a road runner. Thank you guys. Everybody's a road runner. Yeah. Cases. By the way, I still think that's a smart move. Guitar center, Oding, run, wet road runner is the same reason. I think, uh, uh, sweet water now owning gators is a smart, smart move. It's like, yeah, you're in a business where you're going to sell a case with pretty much every guitar. I don't want to say pretty much. I mean, even it's 50%, let's say 50% of the guitars are going to sell a gig bag and a case. Why not own the company that makes that and your accessories. That makes sense. When you go into guitar, when you go to sweet, uh, so we water, when you go into Costco and you see the Kirkland brands, it seems to make sense a lot of times. Like these are things that we sell a lot of. So why shouldn't we have more steak in them for more profit? So that makes sense. All right. We're going to jump subjects now. Let's go to something else. We are going to go to, I know Amanda sent me stuff too. Um, no, this is interesting. This was from Edgar who says, uh, Edgar says, Hey Phil, thank you for everything you do in an alternate universe. Yes, I would have a mustache. That would be evil. Phil McKnight with a, you guys remember a night writer? Remember when every, every show would have the villain be just the same actor, but then they give him a goatee and a mustache. You must pay the rent. I can't pay the rent. You know, right? It was just, that's how I picture myself in an alternate universe. I'm, I got a mustache. No. Okay. This is where we're going to get back focused. Edgar says, Hey, in an alternate universe, if you had to kept the store and kept making the same videos, okay, like what I'm making now, uh, you guys here, do you think the store would had suffered or made a killing? Um, the last year of the store was our record year in sales. And the last year of the store, we were only open for half a year. And so the year before that was the second year. So in the 13 years, the store was open 13 and a half and the 13 years, we saw absolutely, it was, I mean, look, there's a reason why they all, every store has a YouTube channel now. It's why it's, it's why, you know, um, just having like my stuff in the background, you know, people still confuse. It happens all the time. I appreciate it. I understand it. People still confuse that they think I still have a store. So sometimes I get, we get emails pretty on the regular. Hey, Phil, I'd like to buy that. Dana Electro. Oh, you're right. What's the price? I'm like, that's my D Electro. It's not, it's not the store. This is, this is my bedroom. I just keep my bed. No, I'm just kidding. This is my office. So this is, this is the office. So, yeah, if we would have, I think I told you guys this, if we would have kept that line, I think a line of sight, we would have definitely been like an Anagrant's. Does anyone remember, I can't remember the name and I feel bad. There was a music store in the US and the guy was friends with Chapman and he used to put cookies in your guitars, right? They would put fresh baked cookies in those guitars. Everybody was trying to figure out back then, if you, I don't know if you guys know this and this is why I'm kind of privy to it. Everyone was waiting to see who was going to be the ander tins of, of the US, right? And, and, you know, who was that going to be? And so that actually scared, that actually scared me, that idea. So there was a little bit of fear with that when people would mention that to me all the time, like, oh man, you know, your store, it's going to be like a huge online thing. And I'll just, I'll just tell you, this is the, the conversation I had with Shauna. Shauna and I sat down one night and she said, I didn't get into this business because I want to ship stuff all day. I don't want to run, Rift City, thank you guys. It was Rift City. I don't want to ship stuff. That's not the business. You know, we opened a music store because we wanted to do what I'm doing now. Hang out and talk to musicians, be around people, musicians. I didn't want to be an online entity. I, you know, I don't, I don't know why that sounded, it seemed to me like sucking the life out of everything I would love. Um, and it was not, it was not interested in that at all. And, but we're not naive either. So we actually did have to sit and have an honest conversation about, well, do we take this D-Level, D-Level YouTube celebrity-ness that I got? Do I cash that in into sales and get everybody to buy all the, you know, hey, we carry a Chapman guitars too, you know, whatever it is. And, um, and it just didn't, it just didn't sit. It didn't work. And so, and I think, I think if you're a diehard viewer of this channel, you know one thing that's crazy, which is when I close the store, I had no idea I was going to be doing YouTube all this long. We had planned one year. That's it. I did a video. It's still up somewhere. It's like, Hey, I'm closing my store. I'm going to do YouTube now. And in the video I explained, I'm going to spend a year doing YouTube. And then I'm going to go on to something else. I figured everybody told me, everyone told me. Um, so, you know, just because I try to keep it, you know, some stuff close to, to the chest, it's not always a public has to be known this. I tried to give the store, not the store lesson academy to the teachers. We try to do that. Um, I understand their decision now. I didn't then I do now. I took my teachers. There was a lot of them. I took them, we went to wing night. We had wings and beer and I said, here's my idea. I'm going to close the store. We're going to move the lesson academy across the street. You're all going to be owners of it and I'm going to promote it through YouTube and that will, will keep this entity alive. And all of them basically said, but what are we going to do when you're 15 minutes of fame's up? Because that's all I got every day. It's so, you know, everybody told it to me. Everybody did. You have to comments then would say, Oh, you're 15. Enjoy your 15 minutes. Don't quit your day job. Do you know how many times I can't even tell you if I could, you know, when they say if I had a nickel for every time, I'd be a millionaire. I would be more than a millionaire if I had a nickel for every someone says, don't quit your day job, you know, doing YouTube. I was like, yeah, that makes total sense. Right. Who the hell thinks, who thinks YouTube is going to be around in a year? So when I close the store, my thought was I would do YouTube for a year to really just spend some time with my kids, relax in theory and, you know, start the process of what's next, which I had a what's next, I'll all figured out. So, and what next ended up happening was the channel exploded. That's actually when the volume went crazy. Up until then, what I thought, what I perceived as doing well, we really hit that, that, that year. And, um, and so, yeah, it was a, is not, this is not the, this was not the plan. At all. So, yeah, it's cool. It's a blessing and a curse. Um, so, uh, but yes, but that's the, the thing. So I already thought there would be a, um, you know, a new andritins for the USA and, and, uh, I don't know who that was, but now, um, I would say no one, I'd say no one filled that shoes. It's a little thing and I shouldn't say certain things cause, you know, uh, but I think I'm okay in this to say this. If anyone's watching this, anyone owns a music store and is trying to be the andritins thing. Um, my advice to you is understand that the magic of what andritins does is not just all the sticks and all the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, um, the bandanas, but whether you realize it or not, they are very expressive with their opinions. They are very, they have opinions and a lot of people think they don't, but they're reserved opinions. Sure. Everyone has a reserved opinions. I have reserved opinions not because I work with companies. No company means anything to me for when it comes to a living, but it means something when I have to, like here I am criticizing guitar center. Literally, I just did two sponsor guitar center videos and I'm supposed to go meet with the CEO. You understand how this is not probably the best idea. Okay. That I, but I, but I have a lot of bad ideas. So I just, just go with them. But my point is, is that, um, uh, one of the things that makes andritins, I think successful is that they give opinion, even if it is reserved opinion. And, uh, so many come stores don't do that. Um, so you guys know sweetwater doesn't compare products. That's a little, a little tidbit. If you don't know, if you haven't paid attention, I pay attention too much to stuff. If you watch all the guitar, our sweetwater videos, you'll notice sweetwater really never compares to products. They never pit two products together. And, and there's a reason why. That is, I've learned very upsetting to manufacturers. When I tell people I've upset a manufacturer, we go, what did you say? And I'm like, you don't understand what upsets a manufacturer. You know, if I was to mention, uh, you know, just a innocuous little comment I can make, like for instance, saying like the new Fender 75th anniversary telly is a really cool guitar. It's $3,000, but for $2,500, you could get all those features and more from Kiesel, you could go, Oh, well, he's friends with Kiesel. But the reality is, is this, that upsets the Fender guys, because I'm bringing up a competitor with a better product that's cheaper. That's what upsets manufacturers more than anything else. In my experience, quality comments, they can get around that, but suggesting that you go to somebody else, you know, you could see where that can upset some people. So you see why companies like sweetwater don't do that. You don't see sweetwater. They won't even compare like products. Um, uh, they won't even, I, if you watch their videos, they never do it. Notice they never go, Hey, today we're going to be checking out the Friedman against, uh, you know, a Saldano or a, you know, a squire versus a Fender. They don't even do that. Um, so it's because again, they are very conscious of the fact that that could upset their vendors. And why do that? You have a business relationship with them. So I think people don't realize it. And I believe just like this channel, I believe that the reason the andretons can get as far as they've gotten with it. And the reason I've gotten far as far as it's got with it is that it's certain size, even though you piss them off, the audience and insulate you a little bit, I'm slightly insulated. I'm just not very insulated. Trust me, I can be still pummeled to death, uh, you know, publicly, right? Um, but you understand, like, you know, when they hear me say something, sometimes what saves me is they, again, a reserved opinion, being a little crucial, but maybe being also kind helps, but also, Hey man, there's 1400 people watching them live. Maybe we shouldn't attack them publicly. And then we have an off camera discussion and sometimes that works out better. So I just, like I said, that's what I think. But anyways, that's my advice. Anyone who wants to do that, uh, make videos, but give honest opinions and just be prepared, you're going to get pummeled. You're going to get pummeled. Um, I get pummeled way less now than I did just two years ago, much less five, 10 years ago, but, um, I do the, for a while, I don't know why I actually said all the stuff I did because it was getting brutal. So, um, when I mean by brutal, I mean companies like, uh, legally attack, you know, gonna legally sue me. They're going to, you know, they publicly denounce you. I mean, you name it. It was horrible. Okay. Let's, uh, let's get to a brighter, happier subject. Um, let's, uh, and I got some questions from me and, uh, um, okay. Hold on. This isn't, uh, oh, this isn't, I'll just get out of the way. Uh, Greg wants to know, Hey, Phil, why is the premium patron membership sold out? Why wouldn't they be unlimited? Thanks. Okay. Uh, yes, I understand. Confusing. So if, if, oops, sorry about that. Uh, so if you go, if you want to become a patron, so you guys know two things. Last week I mentioned there's a half off sale on the $10, well, not the $10 here, but the, you know, it's $19 a month or if you pay for the year, it makes it like $10 a month. And I gave you a coupon code and it was very confusing for everybody and it was confusing for us and I apologize. So what we did is we just reduced the rate. So now if you want the mid tier, it's, it's, it's half of what it used to be. So if you go to the patron page and you want to see the live clinics and the lessons and stuff like that, it's just half of what it was. You want to just support the podcast. It's $5 a month and you get 10% off of you by the year. It's all automatic. You don't need codes and it's great. There's a higher tier. Okay. And here, and it's sold out. Here's why it's sold out. I kept tears constantly. I'll put a limit on how many I have in each tier. And the reason is, is because the sponsor of this podcast is the patrons. And that's great because I've told you guys for years that, hey, I don't have a company dictating to me anything and I don't have to read ad copy to you guys, but there is a slight drawback to it. Not everything is a perfect world, right? Here's the slight drawback. I do bonus podcasts for those, for those, for the, say thank you. I also do the live clinics and do lesson stuff to say thank you on repairs and stuff. And then I do a coffee hang and hang out with the, the top tier and to say thank you. And so here's the deal. That all takes time. Okay. And the reality is, is that even though I would love it, because more people is more money to get an infinity of money, the problem is, is that like anyone you have to assess and I assess all the time how we're doing. And when I start getting messages saying, Hey, you never responded to my email or, Hey, I had a question about this, but you didn't get to me. I'm like, yes, cause there's too many. And when there's too many, what I do is I can't kick people out of Patreon. That's not right. That's not fair. So what I do is I just cap it and I say, okay, I can't handle what I have now. I don't want to add more. So yes, I could take infinity if I wasn't giving you my personal time or feedback or interacting with them. So that's why I have caps sometimes on patron. And then when things are less chaotic and I can open it up a little bit, I open up a little bit more, or sometimes we attrition some people out, some people attrition out. This is how it works, right? Patrons is an ever revolving door. Some people stay and some people don't. So that's why that's to explain that to you. So, you know, it's always trying to just, I'm just trying to do the best for myself and for you guys. I'm trying to find out where that medium is. Like how can I spend time with my family and make this great experience for you and make money, you know, right? Like anybody, you're just work life balancing everything. And, and this week was pretty horrible. Side note, because both my kids moved and at the same time, so we had to help them move during a heat wave and they all, they're all like, they all live in like 3000, 3000 foot apartments. I don't know how to explain this to you. I just never walked so many stairs in my life and it's a great workout. Let's just say that. Let's just say, Hey, I had a great workout. I carried so much stuff, so much stairs. It was a man. It's pretty, pretty horrible. Okay. This one is from Amanda says, our Eduardo wants to know, Hey, I'm moving from SoCal to Phoenix, Arizona, tips on guitar care for the dry Arizona weather. It's basically the same thing. You live in a desert too. So it's the same. It's just we're a hotter desert. I wouldn't say we're a drier desert. From SoCal, maybe a little drier, but it's mostly, it's the heat. What do you need to do? Nothing. Arizona is, like I said, terraformed. So it's going to feel like California for most of the year. It's going to look like California all year. It's just going to be really hot for about five months. So that's right. Notice I didn't say three. That's the big lie. Everybody goes three months of the year. It's like five to six months of the year is hot. It's three months. The year is psycho hot. So somebody wants to know if I've ever used the tank series pedals. You mean the Ivanist tank series pedals? I have not, although I am curious about them. I've been buying pedals again, collecting pedals in the last few months. And I've really gotten crazy with it more than I ever did before ever. This is the craziest pedal collection I've ever had. And I don't know what caused it, what started the process. It just all of a sudden I just like, oh, yeah, I think I want to get this pedal and this pedal and then, you know, I don't know. You know, I think and this might be a touchy subject. So please hear me out before you react. Okay. Because I have a feeling it's not just me. It's other people too. I think during the tariff talks, you know, when everybody, when the tariffs were a bigger deal and they were talking about them more now, you know, it's like everything in the world. It's the, we're on the next crisis, right? To talk about the tariff discussion. There was so many pedal makers and I don't want to indict all of the pedal makers. That doesn't seem very fair, but there was a bunch that were like, hey, man, there's tariffs and you're going to have to pay. And my issue with that wasn't about tariffs. So this, this is not, this is why I said, please give me a second, because it's not about tariffs. It has nothing to do with tariffs, the discussion, not pricing, not costs, none of that stuff. It has to do with the simple idea, you know, as you guys know, I've been going to the gym because I have a trainer now and it's, I've been doing that since August and of last year. It's pretty, pretty good. You know, it's an interesting thing. I've had to relearn everything about everything, how I eat, how I, how I do everything. And what I, what I kind of learned is if, if somebody sold me some, please hear me out. If somebody sold me some vegetables at the store and it said pre washed organic. Okay. Said organic vegetables, pre washed, right? Organic. And better yet, let's say a pre washed. Let's say it says, if I buy a vegetable, it says organic. And I go, okay, it's organic. It's, you know, this is a better choice for me. Less pesticides. Let's go with this route. I buy this and there was a notice on the bag that said, please rinse to get off the pesticides. I'd be like, wait a minute. I thought I paid for organic. I paid extra, right? Didn't I get organic? And if they were to say to me, well, yeah, it's organic, but we still got to spread, you know, you can't get a hundred percent organic. Cause that's just crazy. We've got to spray some pesticides on them. And I'd be like, yeah, but my problem is, is that I paid more for this feature and you didn't mention the other thing, right? You're just mentioning the organic. And I kind of felt that way about pedals. Look, we all know, especially as Americans, but everybody in the world's affected by this, we all know that when something says made in USA, it's not a hundred percent made in USA anymore. Um, that's, it's been, you know, it's been that way forever, right? My point is, is that, um, when somebody says this pedals made in USA, I never thought, and I don't think most of you thought, oh yeah, it means it's all made in here in the US. Sure. Maybe something came from outside the US. Maybe it came from, you know, uh, not only China, but maybe the paint, maybe the components we know it's like, Hey, look, there's no manufacturers making capacitors here. So maybe there's no capacitors in this thing, right? In theory, I'm just talking again. My point is, is that when the pedal company started saying, Hey man, we got to pass these tariffs on you because these, you know, this is all expensive stuff because it comes, you know, from other countries. And, and I was like a lot of you, I think going, yeah, but you said it was made in USA and they're like, well, it's not a hundred percent made in USA. I'm like, yeah, but see when it was, this is a $300 pedal. It was definitely cause it was made in USA, right? Cause I can buy a pedal, main China for 50 bucks. It was cause it was made in USA and I'm not accused in lying. I'm kind of accusing him like I'm talking about with the organic. They're like, well, it's mostly made in USA. I'm like, okay. I kind of feel like it took some of the romance out of what I liked about these expensive boutique pedals, you know, supporting a small builder that's giving me mostly made in USA parts and, and mostly made in the USA parts. And, and this is the funny part about this. I had an experience recently in the last six months where I had something done to the house and it was effective by a tariff and they said, Oh, it's going to be a small increase to the tariff. Now we're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars. They go, it's going to be like $30 more for the tariff. And I go, Oh, that's it. And they go, well, it's only like one thing we get from outside the US. The rest of us all made here in the US. And I go, Oh, that's great. I think when I would hear companies go out there and say, Oh, this is a pedal made in USA. We're going to have to double triple the prices now. And I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait. So is any of it coming from the US at all? And that's where I think I got a little just kind of emotionally hit me. I'm like, it, it's supposed to be made in USA. We all acknowledge as a social contract that it can't be done, right? You're sourcing as much as you can. And we all understand that as consumers and we all understand that as just people on the planet earth now in the global world we're in. But now it's kind of sounded like none of it came from the US. Like none of it came from the US and it's just being assembled here. And now because it's being assembled here, it's been all this. And so my point is that kind of put a taste in my mouth. And then what happened that's strange is I found myself and I obviously others too, because I see the market really humming right now, buying older pedals. And not because I believe they're made. Well, I told you, I showed you a pedal here. This was made in Japan. It's not made in USA. So it's not about USA. I don't want, don't you confuse this. I'm not buying pedals that are made in USA. What it is is all of a sudden I just found that I'm more interested in older pedals than newer pedals. And so I've been buying lots of pedals that are older again because of the fact that that kind of hit me weird as someone who was supporting. And I think it's because I just don't like the idea of being scolded by a business I'm supporting. And that's kind of how it felt to me sometimes. Like, you know, you better hurry up and buy before the real price increases come. And I'm like, look, I feel for your situation. And we're all trying to get through this world together. But like I said, I use the term social contract. But this social contract means we knew it wasn't all what you said, but I kind of implied it should be more than what you said. You know, I got this for you guys. I'm going to go on a segue here just to kind of share this with you. Somebody said, somebody said this message to email to me and they said, let me find it. Okay. So I can answer a question and it has nothing to do with pedals, but I'm just telling you my theory why I think, by the way, people are buying older pedals right now again. And that's what I'm saying. I'm buying a lot of older pedals. But let's go, let's segue a little bit because this ties into somebody sent me an email. I got an email and the question was they were, so this is what they said. Phil, I was watching another podcast this week and they were saying on the podcast that Fender can no longer say me and USA on their guitars because the guitars are mostly made in Korea. So interesting. I could not find the podcast. So, so you guys know when you guys source that to me, when you guys send me stuff, you know, could you, could you do that and just say, Hey, look, it was on this show. I'll watch it. You know, I, I, I tend to watch a lot of stuff, you know, when I'm working or if I'm right before I go to bed, especially if I think it's going to come up on Friday show, I like to be a little bit more informed. What I can help with is this. I did this research a year ago. This was a pretty extensive research that I did and I, uh, it was for a possible for a video, but I never made the video, but it might help in this question. And so I pulled it up. So that's what I'm looking at right now. Uh, I thought I would share this with you guys. So, um, this is a breakdown. What's nice about Fender, right? Like I said, when I, when I condemn Fender, when I condemn guitar center for, you know, understand, I love them too. And so there's good things to say. One good thing about Fender is every single as, because I told you, I was a Fender dealer for 11 of the 13 years I had a store as a Fender dealer and a Fender certified of repair tech. What I can tell you is every single component and part on a Fender product has a serial number that you can access and get to, and it tells you everything. So what's great about Fender, unlike some companies where they go, I don't know, when they shrug their shoulders, Fender will actually break anything down to you. So let me explain what is in an offender, American professional to Stratocaster or a Fender American Stratocaster or Tele today as a 2026. And it'll, you, you decide where it's made. Okay. Um, Fender guitars ready Fender, uh, Fender tuners are made in Taiwan. The nut is made in the USA. The maple neck is sourced from North America, which probably implies Northern US, United States, and then of course, mostly Canada. So mostly Canada, uh, Rosewood comes from India. The frets are made are from the USA. So in other words, they get the fret material from the USA, except for some Fender guitars, especially vintage fret wire. My guess is the vintage fret wire, but that's my guess is sourced from Japan. So fret wire comes from USA and Japan. Uh, the vintage bridges that you see on Fender guitars. So if it's a vintage real bridge, it's made in Taiwan bent saddles. In other words, the saddles you see on the American professional two series guitars that have the bent saddles, those are actually made in USA. They're actually made in the Fender factory. They're using the same machine that started it all then in those saddles. Bridge posts are also made in USA. The deluxe bridge is entirely made in USA. Volume pots are made in Taiwan, which it would also be there. Uh, the tone pots, like I told you guys last week, it's, it's both parts. Uh, the output jacks are made in USA. The output jack plate, like on a Telecaster is also stamped in main USA. Neck plate is made in the USA. Uh, the neck, the neck plate screws are made in Taiwan. This is all absolutely verified, by the way, I pulled this up by part number because it gives me all the part numbers, uh, because I still can access that stuff. Uh, pickguard screws are made in Taiwan. Alder body is from the USA. Ash bodies are also from the USA. They source those, that's where they get alder and ash from. Uh, pickups are assembled in the USA from US and import parts. That's the only thing I can find out that obviously would imply to me. And again, I'm just going to imply that my guess is they're getting the copper wire from China and, uh, probably source from copper mines out of Chile. That's probably where they is. And of course, the magnets are probably being sourced out of China. That's just my guess. Uh, it could be Korea because Korea is known for making a lot of pickup parts as well. Uh, the pick guards are made in the USA. Although they're made in the USA. We don't know where the material is actually manufactured. It could be material made in China. And then they actually cut them into pick guards. This is where it gets a little tricky because stuff is where it, what it is. When it becomes what it is. So in other words, like when it's a pick guard sheet, it could be a made in China. But then once they cut a pick guard out of it, they could say it's made in USA. But they're saying pick guard, the pick guards are made in the USA. Uh, and the case is from Vietnam, the current case that they're using as Vietnam. So that is the breakdown of a fender guitar. So is it made in USA? Well, first of all, let's talk about why it doesn't say made in USA. And it says made in car, uh, it says Corona, California, just like the, the new, um, the new Mexico made, uh, guitars don't say made in Mexico anymore. They say in Sonata, Mexico. I believe that is for uniformity. I'm sure I think it's because Fender made the decision. Hey, since we're putting Corona, California on the USA stuff, let's just put the city and, and, you know, and, uh, you know, in Sonata, Mexico, you know, in Sonata, Mexico on the, on the Mexican made guitars and stop putting made in Mexico. The made in part was a California passed a law that if it's not a hundred percent in Maine, USA, so this is easy to figure out, you can research this a little bit. So California passed a law. This is many years back that says if it products, not a hundred percent made in USA, they can't put made in USA. They have to put like a symbol in USA. Okay. Now that was, that came up because new balance shoes, apparently, allegedly was selling a premium made in USA, new balance. And then like a made in Vietnam or India, wherever they make them, I don't know, shoe. And then, uh, what was really happening was they were actually assembling most of the shoe outside the country. And then symbol, you know, final assembly was here in the U S and they were calling the new balance made in USA. That's what it says online. Uh, and that's what started somehow prompted California to start legislating that, Hey, if it has to, if it says made in USA, it has to be a hundred percent made in USA, but believe it or not, California, and you can read this online if you want, has backed off those laws a little bit. So Finder actually can, I think, start putting made in USA, I believe on guitars if they want, but I would imagine as a corporation, they made a decision to start labeling things Corona, California, and they're just going to leave it that way. So essentially, uh, cause they don't probably want to put assembled in USA. Cause I think putting Corona in California sounds better than a simple new USA, but to answer the question, cause it's mostly made in Korea. Actually, none of it is really made in Korea. The parts I could find, uh, you guys have the breakdown. If you guys want to put that in a system and break that down to percentages and see what percentage of that is actually USA product versus outside USA product, that's up to you guys. But, um, again, this is back to the social contract. I don't think I'm blowing the doors off anybody right now. Right. You're like, what? My USA made fender is not all USA made parts. Um, you know, there's all kinds of things that we know. You know, one thing that's, uh, interesting is when I was in, uh, Germany, uh, some of the Germany man German manufacturers were telling me that chromium is illegal in like the EU. Excuse me. I should have hit the mute button. I apologize. Um, so chromium is illegal. So they can't Chrome stuff there. And funny enough, I think they have kind of the same problem in California. I don't think they can Chrome parts there. I think they have to Chrome them in Mexico or the outside California. So, I mean, there's certain things like that are just going to happen. But, uh, I wanted to address that because it's all coming up the same with this whole discussion, you know, where stuff's made. We all know that it's all not made exactly where it is. But again, I think, um, I would like it if you guys remember when I, when I helped start the badlands company, um, one of the things I suggest them, and they actually did was, um, that they should put up, uh, not all tell you exactly like ingredients where all the parts came from and then give you a percentage of what's made in the USA. I took that idea from car manufacturers. You know, uh, my Honda has a USA made engine and a USA made transmission and a USA made, uh, frame. So, I mean, it doesn't mean it's all made in USA, but it breaks it down. It's kind of nice. You know, some, some, my, uh, older Honda, I think it was like a, a made in Canada frame and maybe made in Canada engine and then a Japanese transmission. So it's like, so it's kind of nice when you get to see when you buy a car and they show you where all the stuff is made. I think it's just again, as an informed consumer, you just want to be more informed where your money's going, what you're doing with it. And I don't really have a political opinion about it. I just like to be informed. I like to know what I'm doing with my money. I worked very hard for it. I like the people I'm giving it to, to treat it like it was important because it was important. It was important to me and it seems to be important to them because they want it. So, um, so that's the breakdown of the USS Stratton. That's why I think the used pedal market is actually secretly booming in the use section. Um, and the reason I say that is cause I, I feel like I've been doing this for a couple of months, buying pedals for, since about November, maybe just before that. And each month it seems like there's less and less available of these, uh, kind of magic older pedals, you know, I think people are just buying them up. Um, okay. Let's go to another thing that Amanda pulled. Okay. All right. Uh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Uh, so, okay. So this was from, uh, I think this is a real question. It says, Hey, what's the best way to sell a zoom R20? Okay. Let's look up what a zoom R20 is. A zoom R20 is. Oh, okay. So it's a multi-track recorder. Looks like it sells new for $500. Um, here we go. The zoom R20, R20 multi-track recorder right here. Uh, you know, look, the best way to sell it, if you can local, right? Cause you don't have to deal, you know, you don't have to deal with shipping it and you're dealing with stuff. Um, otherwise you have to go on reverb. Uh, so I mean reverb is their option, but, uh, this might do well local, but you got to put it out for a reasonable price. It's tough. Like I said, I told you it's getting tougher and tougher to sell this kind of stuff. Um, because of the fact that, well, what I've talked about, which is, you know, the, the, the, um, I, uh, I just had a guy, uh, I felt bad, uh, for him, uh, not necessarily like super bad for him, but I was interested. I saw a base. I was thinking about getting another base and, uh, I thought his price was a little high for what it was worth, but it was not super high. It wasn't being ridiculous. He was just, I thought he was on the top end of what it should be, you know, but it was a good price. He, he's not like he was being crazy. I threw him a 15% you know, Hey, I'd like 15% off. And when I did that, I was actually thinking like, if I got 10, I'd probably buy it and then he was actually really on it and sent me a response within 24 hours, probably by the next morning said, Hey, I'll do 10% off. And right there, I should have said, okay, yeah, great. But what happened was in this current market and climate and time, I was like, I don't, do I really need it? No, I got a lot of stuff. I'm good. And so I was like, nah, I'm not interested over 5%. I think it was like $40 difference in price. Maybe $30. So I mean, the sale was lost over $30. It's a tough market is what I'm trying to say because, uh, you know, he was even nice. He followed up with me and said, Hey, are you interested? And I'm like, you know what, believe it or not, I'm not. And it's funny. It's, and, uh, and I actually sat and thinking now, if he was to send me a message and going, Hey, I'll do it for the 15, I don't know if I'd actually say yes. It'd be 50, 50. It would be, I'd have to talk myself into it again. Because I was so easy to talk myself out of something I really didn't need. So, um, um, sorry, somebody cut me off guard with my car was made on earth with parts sourced from Mars. Yeah. Well, yeah, it sounds like a fancy car. Um, okay. Uh, uh, okay. Um, all right. Here's a question. Uh, this one, Amanda sent things says, Hey, Phil, I'm really interested in getting the DSM home home bolt. I'm the hope is I'm saying it right. Humboldt, Dumbled fire. Any opinions on it? This is the, this is a pedal, like a amp and a pedal kind of unit. Um, that's supposed to sound like a Dumbled. I'm also a bit confused about how these amps in a box pedals like the work. If you can explain that a bit more. I don't know that amp, uh, that product little by, I don't know that product. Let me, let me look because it has to, to me, it has to do one thing that's really important, Dumbled fire. And I did not look at it because I am satisfied with what I had. So, um, okay. So here's the product. Let's share it with you guys. This is it. This is the, uh, the Humboldt Dumbled fire pedal. And I just want to look at the back. Okay. Send return. What's on the side? Um, cab sims right there, but where's the, there are USB. Can I load my own cab sims? Um, I don't necessarily see where I can load my own cab sims. So that's a, that's a, you know, that's a downgrade for me. Um, so here's your question. And this is probably some of you guys's question right now with the, because I obviously was using one of those today. So I was using this, the Tateau King Royalist is what I was using today is what you guys heard. Um, I have to tell you as a, uh, as a hobbyist, I would probably find little to no use for these kind of products. Um, which is this product. This is what I was using today for those that are interested. Uh, this is essentially three marshals in one box. Um, but as a podcaster or as a, uh, content creator, this is an absolute amazing product for me, um, because I can run it straight to you guys and you guys hear it and I hear it through my monitors and you, I hear what you hear and you hear what I hear. And it just makes my life easy. And as someone who has to do mobile content sometimes and go somewhere and maybe demo a product on the fly, like if I'm demoing a guitar, to be able to plug into that and run a line of this out into a mixer that's going into my camera or into a mixer that's just recording it separate is nice for making content. It makes my life really easy. Essentially like the HX HX stomp and things like that. Um, and I'm sure if you're gigging and stuff, if you're doing some direct recording, um, to answer your question, that would probably be useful to you. But I mean, if you were buying this, just to stick a line into your amp and get a sound out of your amp, I mean, you could use it for that, but I don't know if necessarily you need to, um, do that. Um, Michael Nilsons here, and by the way, he's the expert of all this stuff. He says the Dumblifier can't load camp sims. It's an analog simulation. Okay. So like the bad cat analog simulation, it's a cool pedal, not exactly tube sounding, but pretty cool. Yeah. I, I, I have to tell you guys, I, um, I like, I told you guys this, I like the UA pedals. I like a lot of the stuff that's on the market. The tone king imperial, um, when I got that, I was just like, this is the most tube like feeling sounding thing I've ever heard in a box. And I was amazed. And I said it in my royal list video. If you want to watch that, it was a guitar center reached out and said, Hey, can we send you the royal list? And of course I was like, well, I'm super curious, send it out, right? Go ahead, send it. And they sent it. And, um, I, I, I got to tell you the royal list, the overdrives in the royal list, I think are better than the imperial and the clean on the royal list is usable where the clean on the imperial is amazing. Um, to me, it's, it's just form and function. It feels tube like, and it sounds good. And it does the job well. And, um, and, uh, so I prefer the royal list of the imperial. And then I'm still in, I'll give you guys final verdict of what it'll take time, probably a six months to a year before I, you know, kick the Kemper player free and just go all royal list. Yeah. As long as I can pull off everything I need. But, um, but my point is, is that, uh, these, these things are, you're just looking for something that you can, uh, can, can get your juices flowing, your artistic juices flowing, you play and can actually pull something out of. Um, and you get a direct sound. I think that's the point of it. If you're trying to do that stuff, uh, but I still stick with, if you're going to try and record and you like amps, just get yourself an ox or something like that and just plug your amp into that and into a computer. I still stand by that. I'm, I'm working on a video. I will, um, I will let you guys know whether it goes on the, the main, this channel, the, the film ignite channel or the know your gear channel. I haven't decided yet cause I haven't decided, you know, what kind of video it is in that style, but I've been working on this as a video that I've been wanting to make. It's 10 and again, I'm trying to get to 10. That's the problem. It might be five, but it's 10 products that I absolutely cannot live without. And I've had forever and, and then giving you some, some insight on why I love them. But I can tell you just to help you out. The ox is definitely one of them. The only thing that's going to ever make me get rid of the ox is if they make a different ox, it's better. Or if somebody makes something that I just like better than the ox, but as a, just getting stuff done, the ox is great. And, and so, and I feel that way about the Royalist. It's another piece of equipment where I just feel like I can get so much done. Um, so, um, and then this one came from a man who says, Hey, Phil, I just got the Freeman IRX and man is this thing noisy. Even with the integrated noise gate at 80%, I play high gain and I'm wondering what might help quiet this awesome pedal down. I know the guys at synergy said that with these Freeman IRX, you know, these pedals that sometimes you wanted to make sure you do the latest update. So make sure you've done that. I don't know if that's going to fix it. I have not played the RX. I did not like the Freeman pedal. So, you know, I, I just, I got one and I bought it from Guitar Center. So I had it for about two weeks. And then I was like, Nope, it's going to go. In fact, just for the record, um, I liked it so not much. I'm talking like that. I did like it so much that when the, the opportunity to try the, the tone king imperial came up, I was like, No, thank you. I'm just not digging this pedal. I thought it was a little bright, a little thin on the, on the Freeman and I just wasn't, and didn't, it just didn't do what I want. I had the Freeman that's supposed to be like the bee. I just wasn't loving it. And, um, and I was told by this energy guys, Hey, make sure you do the update. I did the update. And I was like, Okay. And it was fine. But when I plugged in the imperial, I was like, but so you know, I'm not saying the imperial is better. I'm just saying it from my needs. It just worked. All of a sudden I'm like, Oh, I have clean tone that I can actually use. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I don't know. Uh, somebody saying, uh, Blake saying I've never had issues, uh, with noise. So with my, my, our, our X, I did not have, um, the IRX I had was this one. Let's see. Are they all called our X? I know there's here, just here, IRX. Okay. So this is what I had. So it's what you have apparently. This is what I had. Um, and, uh, it, uh, it was okay. I liked it. I didn't have issues with noise. So that's really weird. Um, uh, you know what could be a problem? Uh, cause I do have a lot of freeman amps and freeman amps are kind of like Mesa boogies. They will get really noisy. They will get really noisy with certain pedals in front of them. Uh, boss pedals are by far the most problematic. First of all, unusable from most Mesa boogie experience in my experience with Mesa boogie and boss pedals, they're almost unusable together. And what I mean by that, I don't mean when they're on just them being in your signal, you that you need one of those, uh, things where you, it takes it out of the loop, you know, it makes a true bypass. Um, so one of the things I would ask you to do is try your freeman pedal with no other pedals in front of it. None. You got to go straight guitar into it and see if that kills the noise. And if that does, I would definitely start looking at each pedal and seeing which pedal, cause my guess is it could be a cumulative, a cumulative of the pedals. Um, but I bet you you got one culprit in there. And my experience, it's always the buffered, really buffered out, um, boss pedals, but anything like that. And, um, when I, when I switched to my, um, uh, my freeman amps, if I have my, uh, if I have a boss pedal on my board, it's just a little hissy. It's just that you're hearing that. This is really noisy. Um, and, um, yeah. So it's, uh, it's, it's why certain pedals like boss don't really work great in effects loop either. Right. It's why it's why it's what's, I think is what started the whole true bypass thing. Everybody's like, oh, you got to have true bypass cause all that noise gets introduced. And, uh, I, I've found that, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's like anything. You just find the right combination. It's why I have different pedals. Um, I have pedals like, uh, you know, whether it's a chorus pedal or a flange pedal or delay pedal, I have different pedals cause I found different pedals like different amps. And if you want to have multiple amps and multiple pedals, you know, you're, you're going to have to find what works together. So I would try that. That would be my, my first big suggestion. And then also I want to thank you because you made me think of something. Boy, I want to tell you guys, you want, we talk about the market being, uh, really bad. I'm about to show you guys something. If you're in the market for some amps, especially expensive ones, used or new, you need to go to guitar center. By the way, I don't have an affiliate link up at guitar center, but if you go to guitar center and you buy something online, use my affiliate link. Um, please. Cause it, guitar center pays me. I told you guys very few of you use guitar center affiliate links, which I understand, but they are very, um, uh, financially beneficial to our channel like mine. So if you can, I appreciate it using in my links. I will make sure I put when I timestamp it. Uh, but anyways, look at this. Woo. So anyone interested in a Freeman Plex, they are, uh, down from 28 to 2,000 and nine, that's less than used. Um, some of the stuff, look at this. If you ever look, think about getting the B 50 brown eye, uh, 37 down to 29. These are 20% off, right? Now is this the open box by, is that what they're showing you? Is that why it's that way? Hold on a second. Is that a trick? See, I maybe I'm falling for it. Are they showing us one price open box? Oh, they are. Oh, that's kind of messy. So see it's 25% off. If you want the open box, there you go. Factory sealed. So, but no, it's still 27, right? Oh, no, new is 27. So I guess the deal isn't as good as I was going to say, there's a couple of amps on here. I was like really impressed with the deals, but I guess not so much. Well, guess, so I guess you're going to have to get the, a pedal. Stick the pedals because the amps are getting crazy expensive. Hold on a second. I have lost the screen where you guys are at. Uh, $800 off. Uh, does Dave, Dave know about this? Well, he does now. Uh, the, uh, yeah. He, he, somebody says that's kind of misleading. Yeah, it's weird that it's like, oh, it tags the new item, but then it's like in small print, it's the open box. Yeah. What's funny is I saw it on my, on my phone right before the show and I thought, oh, that's not, but on my phone, I guess I can't detect that it's an open, that it's the small print. It was in pink though, but still, um, okay. Uh, okay. Hold on a second. Okay. Some of these questions, I don't understand. Okay. Okay. Let's, I'm going to try and, I'm going to try and talk about this one. Phil, would it be worth picking up and owning a second copy of a rare tube amp? If it's my favorite amp and I want it to be my forever amp and only one pops up maybe a year or a few years and I spend the money. Uh, I have no idea. Um, I mean, if you love the amp, buy it, I'm really not a huge, I mean, if you need to buy a backup for it, I guess that's what you're trying to say. You have an amp that you love and it's your forever amp and you just want to back up. I mean, it's not the worst thing you can spend your money on. If you know you'll love it. So maybe do that. But you know, I used to try to think like that, like, oh, I need a backup or a, you know, I have a, a pedal right now that I really love. And I thought, what if maybe I should get a second one. And you know, I've done that in the past and I find the second one just rots. I think the only legitimate reason for a backup is if you're touring or if you're somewhere where again, um, I'll give you, I'll give you this insight, maybe help you as, because what I do for a living, I have doubles of everything for YouTube. I have two, um, roadcaster mixers. I have, I have redundant cameras. I have cameras on top of cameras. I have, I have interfaces on top of interfaces. I have multiple solid state drives. I have doubles of everything minimum, double the lights, double the things. We even have, you know, multiple rooms for the same thing. I have everything is redundant. I have multiple computers. Everything is, as everything is redundant. So because as I was making content over the last few years, something would always go wrong. And then I was stuck and I'm like, oh, I can't upload or we lost this. And we even have redundant for internet. We have redundant internet. Um, so like a touring artist, I'm like, I have now a backups on top of backups for everything for my job, because being down, not being able to do something costs, you know, it could cost me, you know, my whole week of income. So I kind of look at that way. I think it's, uh, just having a guitar amp or a guitar that I loved having a backup. I mean, you could do it, but I, I don't find the urgency in it. Like I do. If you were actually going to make a living with it or tour with it because you're making a living with it. Um, Phil says, somebody says, uh, ones and zero says Phil has another fill in the next room. I do have two fills. Name room. Um, um, yeah. Uh, Stan wants to know some advice, some tips for a first time reverb seller. So if it's your first time selling on reverb, sell something very cheap. Um, you don't have feedback. I can tell you right now, as someone who buys on reverb on the regular, uh, I'm not going to buy from you. If you have no zero, if you have zero to no feedbacks and you're trying to sell anything that's worth anything, uh, stick to something very easy and you might even have to sacrifice the price a little bit to kind of entice that, that first time buyer from you. But I will tell you, if you don't want to discount something so you lose money, I understand that maybe stick with something very inexpensive, like a $99 pedal, something that, you know, I'm like, okay, I'll take a chance on that. Now keep in mind, you're protected for the most part as a buyer for, for, for re, from reverb, but even, you know, the headache of it and the scare of it, you know, do I want to see some $1,000 come out of my account and then worry about if reverb is going to take care of me, that's enough to freak me out. But you know, hey, a pedal that everybody else has got to ask in 109 for an hour and you're asking $99, will that, will that make me go a certain way? Sure. Especially like I said, when you're buying on reverb, there's more factors than just the price. Sometimes it's the best condition, sometimes the best pictures, sometimes the best description and, and sometimes it's where you're located. You know, I tend to buy from people who are within one to two states from me if I can, because things get here in a day or two versus a week. And it's not even that because I have to hurry up and I have to have my stuff. It's because the longer it's in shipping, the more damage it's going to get. It's just, you know, it's just, you're taking the higher risk of it being destroyed. So I would stick to your first time by selling. Um, uh, so, and then you said first time on reverb seller. Yeah. So seller, if you're a buyer your first time, I would have followed the same advice on reverb, buy something inexpensive for your first time, get an experience of that. Um, you know, and then, uh, it's, it's nice because I've, I've seen all the ways that go sideways on reverb and it's, it's nice to know that ahead of time, when it's not the most expensive purchase you've ever made. It's a freak shout. Um, uh, okay. Okay. Uh, blue note guitarist, has Philly ever tried to roll in blues cube? I absolutely love the roll in the blues cube. Uh, I was using one forever. I used to use cube rolling cube amps until the Katana came out. What killed it for me was, uh, one night we took the blues cube, which is a great amp. We took the, uh, the rolling cube 80, the rolling cube 60, uh, a boss Katana. I don't remember if it was a hundred water or 50 watt, but it was a first gen. This is when they first came out. And then another rolling amp that, oh, a jazz chorus, but not the 120. It was like the 60. And we put them all in a row and we would play all of them. And what we kind of figured out was, um, yeah, maybe the blues cube had more mids and it sounded more guitar amp-ish a little bit, but the Katana was the winner all the way across. I think everybody kind of agreed. So. So I love the blues cube. Um, and I would still highly recommend it, but I think, you know, it's a money thing, right? So for the money of the Katana, it's just hard to beat. It's hard to beat. Okay. Um, Sean says, Hey, I had the rolling cube 80 XL. It's just the Katana 1.0. Yeah. The thing about the Katana 80, sorry, the thing about the cube 80 that I loved XL was it had the looper. That was the feature I wish they would put in the Katana, especially the way they did it in that amp was fantastic. Cause you could hook up a foot switch, but it was at the time rolling was being jackasses, like they, they're better now. But back in the day, rolling would make, uh, you would have to buy the foot switches separate. You had to buy rolling foot switches and they had to take batteries. And it was like annoying as a dealer selling for them. It was annoying cause customers were like, can I use another switch? Like, nope, you got to use the rolling, you know, powered switch. But the thing about the cube 80 XL's looper that was great was it had that feature where you could hit record, you hit it and it would flash and it wouldn't start recording to start playing. So you'd start playing the riff, you know, and then you just hit the loop and it would loop and it was like, it was great having a little looper on a practice amp. I think that's the one thing that I wish, you know, every practice amp would come with was a looper. I've said this for a million times. I think if recording is paint a canvas looping is pencil to paper. So I know you people use a looping for performance, but keep in mind when they do that, I find most looping performance art. Not very good. I feel like sometimes like, I think once you've seen it once or twice, you're like, did the guy just write a whole song in front of me? That's pretty amazing. The second time you see it, you're like, is this guy taking six hours to get to a six minute song? Cause, you know, you're like, each loop takes, you know, just, it's like, all of a sudden the building and building, it just takes a lot of time. But to me, I love the concept of just working on ideas, especially for me where, you know, I'm trying to work out ideas and I'm just not, some musicians are so talented. They can sense, they just know, you know, oh yeah, I'm going to play this on top. Me, I got to fill everything out. I got to feel it out and see how it works. And it was just really nice to have a looper at all times, but, um, and especially in a little practice amp, because you want the looper to be essentially behind all your effects and distortion. So you can, you know, record that and take it out if you want. Um, but, um, okay. Um, let's button up the show. Um, guys, you're funny. Um, and again, if you're talking to me, put a question mark at the beginning. So I know it's to me. yeah. Uh, uh, Steve says, Hey, the key, the keyzel mark 66 looks much smaller than I thought it was definitely not a jazz mess. Resize. No, I'm doing a deep dive. So, you, so, you know, this guitar is not my guitar, this keyzel. Um, when I was at the keyzel event, I, uh, I got to play this one. This is the one they were letting people touch and see. And so I reached out to the keyzel guys and I said, Hey, could you send me one? Preferably something like this, something basic. I like to do a deep dive on it. And, uh, so we're, we're doing a deep dive. We have a deep dive scheduled to come out on it. And I just thought it'd be helpful, especially since, uh, it's going to contain a lot of information about neck sizing and kind of how to figure out which neck to go with with the keyzel, which is something everybody's been asking about. Cause I get it. It's a, it's a, you know, that's one of the downfalls is you're trying to, um, you're trying to, you know, trying to buy something online that you haven't touched. Um, okay. Let's see. And, um, let's check. Okay. Yeah. Sean says the first case, Kiesel I've ever been interested in, I think that's kind of, um, I think that's kind of the idea, you know, cause Mark made it, which is Jeff's dad. And, um, and, uh, I think it's, uh, it's what Kiesel need are really bad. I think one of the critiques that I get all the time from about Kiesel's is people are like, they're very modern, you know, very metal lamps and our metal guitars. And I'm like, I totally get it. Why do you think my main Kiesel is like a strat copy? You know, it's like, I'm, you know, it's, I, I mean, I get a metal guitar, like everybody else, I love them, but that's not what I play. So I totally get why it's, you know, it's not everybody's, uh, you know, thing. Um, but I do love the idea, and I've said this for many years, I love the idea that what Kiesel represents to me is still, it's a USA made product that is, that is almost fully custom or semi fully custom is more custom than actual custom shop Gibson and Fender and PRS and even sir, add a fraction of the price. And so, you know, I'm almost hesitant now to say that because when I started telling people about Kiesel, you know, uh, on the show and people were like, uh, you know, hey, give it a break. They were almost half the price they are now. So not quite, but about 35, 40% less. So it's, it's not even, it's still a good deal, but it used to be a crazy deal. It used to be almost, it didn't even make sense. There was a time and there's still kind of time, but so you guys know, if some of you guys who bought Kiesels and you had custom ones made back in the day, at least, you know, three, four years ago, know this, you could buy a custom Kiesel for less than you get an Indonesian made guitar, which was crazy. Um, so. So, so, and then, uh, JIT boy, JIT boy says, sir has poor resale value, 57% loss. Um, I find everything besides Gibson has a poor resale value. Uh, you know, it's the more expensive the guitar, it's going to take a hit because of the fact that you have a smaller market. You know, it's these, all these companies have, um, they make at the max they can for a market that is not big enough to sustain them. Um, there's just not that many people out there looking for high in guitars. You know, um, to me, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, if you guys want just, and we'll end the show with this, just something I do, not when I think about buying a guitar, cause I'm too stupid to actually think about anything rashly. It's like, I don't look at guitars as investments and I don't look at guitars as, um, you know, uh, you know, like, this is how I'm going to, you know, get my money back. I do what everybody does, which is I, if I'm experimenting and I, when I'm moving by that is like, I'm thinking about buying a guitar like this, you're aware of the fact that it might not stick and you might not love it. What will be the pain of that? And in other words, like, what will be the resale? And one of the things I, I find people do, and that's what's, I, I, I don't think they're paying attention. This is from 13 years of owning a retail store. Okay. So here's what 13 years of owning a retail store taught me that's slightly different than probably what some of you are looking at. When you go, um, to, uh, use reverb is a perfect example. Let's actually go to sir. Okay. So we type in sir and, um, share with you guys now. So here's sir guitars, new and used. I don't care. Okay. Uses a better deal than new for sure. Right. You'll save money when you get new. I want you to go to the filters. Go to the filters. Um, and I just want, uh, right now we'll just go solid body electric guitars. Okay. We don't care if it's new or used. Okay. And. And it's going to move stuff around. Okay. This is what I care about right here. 1118 results. Okay. So I want you to think of it from this way. And this is how I used to stock our store. Okay. And this is how I think it makes, makes sense. You think about it and go, let's say I have potentially in my zip code, I'm just using my stores as an example in my zip code. Let's say I potentially have a thousand customers, a thousand guitar buyers. Okay. I'm not talking about students. I'm not talking about people who could get into guitar and come into lessons off the street. We're talking about current guitar players in my zip code for my store. I'm just giving you a number. Let's say it's a thousand. Now I happened to my store happened to be by the Intel, uh, building and by microchip and a bunch of places where they have engineers that are making six figures. So an engineer's tend to be guitar players. I don't know if you guys know that. That's why I always love the doctor lawyer joke because more engineers are guitar players than doctors and lawyers for sure. Uh, and they make just as much money. You have sometimes more, but my point is, um, you have to then break down how many of customers in each bracket do you have? Okay. So out of the thousand customers, you're going to say, well, easy, you know, uh, because remember some of them overlap on each other. So you're like, okay, let's just say, and again, this isn't factual data. This is just conceptual. 500 of those thousand customers are going to buy guitars, $500 and below for sure. Okay. Cool. So the next 500 and we try to figure it out. And let's say I decide in my area that I only have 200 potential customers to buy guitars over $3,000. Okay. So you're like, okay, that's not, that's a good amount of customers, right? Um, but it's not a thousand. So in other words, you shouldn't stock as many serves as you stock squires. And obviously you all are like, of course, Phil, that's dumb. Everybody knows that. But that's my point when we're in reverse. When I go and look online and I go, okay, I'm thinking about buying a guitar. When I go to buy it, I'm not even looking at the price. What I look at is how many is for sale. A thousand, 1,000. So give you a, for instance, you don't know how many guitars sir makes, but you do happen because they don't tell you, but you do know how many guitars. Keyzl makes, Keyzl tells you they make 4,000 guitars a year, 4,000 a year, every year. Okay. So 4,000. Let's see how many Keyzl's are for sale used. And keep in mind, this is just reverb. So this isn't local markets. This isn't guitar center online. Right. Okay. So Keyzl currently has according to reverb, new and used 239 guitars. So there's less Keyzl's for sale. Now granted, sir makes more guitars than, um, Keyzl, but not double. That's a fact. They don't make 8,000. Well, I don't know. I don't think that's right. I see. I haven't seen anything from sir's data in a while. The last time I was able to know anything about sir, they were doing 15 million or 16 million a year as a company. And I think Keyzl's now doing 10 million a year as a company. So I don't know if, so here's the problem. The 10 million a year from Keyzl is kind of current information. I'd say that's probably accurate within the last year or so. And keys, my sir information is probably pre COVID or right before COVID. So it's a little dated. So let's say sir is now a $20 million company. I don't know if that's true. I'm just giving you some ideas. So I'm like, okay, let's say it's double. So it's double again. And they sell amps as well as besides guitars and pedals. My point is a thousand guitars seems like a lot of new and used guitars on the market. Now, one thing that throws this off is, um, all Keyzl's that we looked at were used because they sell direct customers where sir had new and use because they have dealers. My point is, is that when I'm looking at a guitar, especially guitar, like you guys are talking about high end guitar, I look at how many are for selling the market. Why? Just like when I'm doing anything else, like maybe buying a house, I look at that and I go, okay, then if there's a lot, then the prices are not being dictated to me. I'm dictating what I'm going to pay. That's how that's going to work. Right. I'm going to go and I'm just going to start looking for someone who really wants to let go of their stuff. That's what I'm looking for. Um, where basically if, uh, where a lot of you would just look at how much that they sell for new and how much they sell used and you're trying to figure that out, well, that doesn't really matter because again, what really matters is how many you can actually get. So, um, and right now, uh, there's a, that's a lot. That's the most used and new serves I've seen on reverb and forever. And I was looking at Tom Anderson too. Another number was crazy. I think they were like a thousand. Was that true? A thousand guitars. Watch this. I think I'm going to have some less, less minute fun. So looking at Tom Anderson guitars, new and used, we've got 598, but here's where it gets a little crazy. Let's do Gibson, which we know is the second biggest guitar company in the world, maybe even the first we're going to elect your guitars category, solid body. And again, we don't care about using new. Okay. Show. We have 12,700. So, and think about this. That's a billion dollar company, basically, almost, right? So it gives you an idea, um, of your market and what's out there. And there's a thing and think about how many people are actively looking for a Gibson every day versus how many people are looking for a sir. So that explains why your sirs take a hit. So yeah. And my experience, uh, expensive guitars do not usually hold value. They're pretty big. They take a very big hit. Plus it's a really on the top and it's a luxury item. And so a lot of the people who are buying them aren't like us. They're not, they don't need a deal to prompt experience. See, I'm not a luxury buyer of anything. In other words, if I buy something, I have to rationalize it. Um, if you're a, if you have the money, you know, you don't care. Luxury items or that exactly that. You're just like, I want it. I paid for it. I got it. That's about the end of it. Um, some of my friends are very unapologetic about their purchases. They're like, Oh, I bought a new car. What'd you buy? You know, I don't know. Some, I bought a Raptor. But I go, Oh, what's your another truck? I was wrong. You're their truck. Nothing. I just want the new color. Okay. Or me. It's like, I, all these processes have to take place for me to make the purchase. So, uh, but anyways, that's, uh, what I would just say on that note, I think we're going to cut it. Um, if you guys didn't see, I did a video on the second channel of the new batter monkey. I did a reaction video to it. So you want to check it out? It was not what I thought. So it was a little shocking, a little cool pedal. The digit tech guys sent it out, um, which is cool because the Cortech owns digit tech now. So that's the core guys they reached out and said, Hey, we want to check out the pedal. So you can check that out. I'll put a link to that video. Uh, if you haven't checked out the second channel, please check it out because it is killing it. And you guys are amazing. I want to say thank you for that. In fact, let's go ahead and share some stats. Well, in the show with some stats, I know I'm gone long, but we'll in the show with stats. Um, what are the crazy stats? The second channel had a record ever since it's been up and the record is the record is keep you guys in suspense. It hit 900,000 views, 905,000 views in the last 30 days, uh, which is almost a million views. That is pretty crazy to think that it does that. I want to thank all of you for that. In fact, it's now, like I said, it's actually leveled almost to the main channel, not in views, but in grading. That's the thing that we get graded on, um, which is good. That means the channel is killing and that's all you guys supporting this, the, the know your gear channel. So I want to say thank you for that. Uh, and, uh, we got also a cool piece of advice. We got a cool piece of information that I want to share with you guys that I thought was really cool. Then another thing about the channel, uh, this is for the audio podcast. So for you, those listening to the audio podcast, if you guys noticed, if you listen to the audio podcast, it's uploaded on time now. That's cause there's a person who's that's in their job is to upload it on time. They're no more waiting for me to finally get to it. Uh, so here is what happened. A company came to us and approached us. They, they handle podcasts. I like to point out two things. We're not going to be changing from the patron business model, but that was essentially what they wanted to do. We were offered, uh, money to basically, uh, sponsor the podcast and take us off of the patron system. We're not doing that, but it was interesting to hear their information. Here was the information that I was given by this company who, uh, manages essentially some really big name podcasts. So it was a really impressive thing to be rich. They said, just so you know, that the average, that the top 50% of podcasts, average 30 to 40 downloads every week, seven days a week, 20, the top 25% do 120 downloads, top 10% of all podcasts. This is all this is not even guitar podcast, top 10% of all podcasts on the planet earth do about 500 downloads a week. These are downloads. So if that sounds really low to you guys, it's because very few people actually download a podcast, usually stream it. Okay. So that's how it downloads. Uh, top 5% of podcasts ready top 5% download a thousand to 2000 downloads a week. Top 1%, which is considered elite, which is why we were approached by this profession, this company, this management company. Uh, top 1% of podcasts download 5,000 plus, uh, downloads a week. We are currently downloading 1000. No, sorry. 1000 16,500. See, I couldn't even say the number 16,506 downloads a week. Uh, but that is a little high for normal. Our normal rate would be closer to 12,000 downloads per week of the podcast. And according to this company, puts us in the top 1% of podcasts on the planet earth, whatever that means. It definitely means thank you guys to you. Uh, on a side note before anyone was too happy, uh, you get no money for downloading anything on the podcast, but it's cool. It's bragging rights and we got that. So I got that. All right. On that note, I'll let you guys go. I'll see you guys next Friday and, uh, watch any videos in between. And, uh, I want to thank you guys for supporting the channel and, uh, the podcast and, uh, have a great weekend and know your gear. The know your gear podcast.