Companies Show Who Really Makes Their Product

The Know Your Gear podcast. Music Hey everyone, welcome to the Know Your Gear podcast, episode 447. And I'd say welcome to 2026, but I think that was last week's, right? It feels like the whole thing was a holiday and then now we're back. I don't know, but apparently we're not. Alright, so I hope everybody had a fantastic week. We have a lot of stuff to cover. Okay, here was a question I got and we didn't do it last week. So this was a question from last week about predictions. And it wasn't new gear predictions because here's the problem. I've seen a couple of YouTube channels that I was watching this week and they were in the same boat as I would be if I started doing gear predictions. So the gear predictions, half the stuff I know about, half the stuff I don't know about. So when you ask me about something I know, I'm just going to sound like I'm really smart. Like I would definitely think this company's coming out with a product on Thursday next week at 3pm Pacific Standard Time. And it's going to be, so I mean predictions are no good. But here was a fun question I thought was great. It said, what are your predictions for the top three guitar bands, or brands, not bands, which is Gibson Fender and P.R.S.? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. So what's great is I don't know what they have. All three of those companies. I have no idea what they have coming out. So why I thought it was funny is I was actually making myself think about this really hard and I came up with some ideas. Okay, so for Gibson, what do I think Gibson is going to do in 2026? I wish I was kidding. I'm not kidding. I think they're going to come out with a Jack Black School of Rock SG. I saw an interview recently on Guitar World where Jack Black mentioned he still has the SG from that movie. And I thought, what a weird article for Guitar World to just plant right on nowhere. Right? I understand Jack Black's got the Anaconda movie, so maybe they were just trying to find something to interview him about. And of course, School Rock is, as I would say, if I was going to say it, top five movies, in my opinion, movies, not documentaries, top five movies that made people take up guitar. Oh, it's Crossroads. It's Back to the Future. It's School of Rock for sure. I don't know the other two. Can we think of the other two? Who do you think the other two is? Any suggestions? You guys throw one. Those three for sure, because I think Crossroads is for me. It's an age thing. So if you're my age, it's Crossroads. If you're younger, obviously, it's School of Rock. Back to the Future is about the same time thing. Back to the Future came out in what, in 85, I think? So I think Crossroads came out in 85, 86. Tenacious D. Sure, I could see Tenacious D as it definitely got people to take a guitar, because you can understand what those movies possess. They possess something that most things don't. Like a rock star, you go see a rock star. You're in for it for music. You're watching somebody, maybe they're not your idol yet, but you're watching somebody play music. So the idea that you would be inspired to play music isn't a far fetch. To me, it's like, I think of everything like the movie, I was talking to somebody this week about this, too. Like the movie Top Gun. Top Gun made it almost impossible for anyone to become a Naval Aviator or a pilot for a decade, because so many people want to be a pilot. So the wait lists were just impossible to get into, right? Like everybody wanted to be a pilot after Top Gun. And so I think of movies like that. What movies did somebody watch? Walking in the theater not knowing that when they walk out, you know, hey, I want to be a Jedi. Hey, I want to be a fighter pilot. Hey, I want to be a barbarian. Hey, I want to be a guitar player. A lot of saying is spinal tap. I'll give it to you. Somebody said La Bamba, but see, here's the problem with La Bamba. See, although not a documentary, it's based on a real person. So I don't want to say that. It has to be total fiction, because if you go into La Bamba, you totally understand that you're watching a movie about an artist, right? But I think of a movie like, like a made up movie, made up character, Jack Black's character is not real. Obviously, Steve Vai and Ralph Macchio's character is not real. And, you know, and so on like that. So somebody says spinal tap, I'll give you spinal tap. It tells you how funny it is that we can't, Bill and Ted, we were talking about Bill and Ted this week, Wayne's World for sure. These are movies that inspired people to play a guitar. And then you think of the iconic guitars and those like, you know, obviously like the Back to the Future Gibson. So I was thinking Gibson Wood is going to in 2026, just announced either, either it was already planned and that was a dropped article, just a dropped, kind of get us thinking, or they're going to get the idea from it like I did. And then I started laughing going, okay, here's what I think they're going to do. They're going to make 20, I don't know why 20, I'm just going to say 20, 20 Jack Black SG's that are like 10 grand each or 20 grand or 30 grand or 80 grand. It would be something crazy, right? Okay. And then they'll make 666 epiphones. I just know it. That's just how it's going to happen. That's just how, right? And that's, I think that's what they'll do. And then, so that's my prediction for Gibson. So what are they going to do in 2026 that my prediction for Fender, I think Fender is going to come out with an expanded line of Indonesian instruments. I think that they'll expand the standard series in some way, either by colors or by models, because again, it's a higher profit, high volume guitar and the market reacted to it. Positive. Look, the internet, we all complained. That's what we do on the internet. Everybody complains. No one wants to watch somebody just tell you everything's great. So, so you guys complain, I complain, we're all a bunch of Codgy old complainers, but reality is the guitar is sold well. So, so they sold well because they, they're good guitars. Look, I got a lot of negative things to say about Fender, but making a total of crap guitar is not something I would accuse Fender of. They have issues with some quality things here and there, but I could, I could pick on every brand that's behind me right now. Fender, of course, is the biggest. So therefore, they're one the easiest to poke at because they're the 10,000 pound gorilla. But also, they're going to have the most issues because they're making the most volume. But I think Fender, I think they'll expand the standard series. And definitely after that reading that email from them, I definitely think they're going to be expanding the non-tubamp market. My hat is loose today. Hold on a second. I got to dial this in. I'm sorry guys, but it was like wobbling. So anyways, and then what's my prediction for PRS? PRS is going to come out with a more SEs. I had no idea. I was trying to think PRS was the hard one. I was like, what were they going to come out with? I mean, they'll probably produce something at the NAMM show. Obviously, they did a lot of SE launches. I think PRS is going to launch a couple new PRSs at a really high price and then in November put everything on for 20% off. So I think PRS SE to me is the pinnacle of high quality, obtainable guitars. Notice they say affordable. It's pretty tough. But I think of right now in the market, when you think of like, when we think back at the day of the companies that were giving you a lot of value for the dollar, you know, like we think of Ibanez or we think of, you know, those old Hondo guitars and you know, the Greco's and all this stuff, just, you know, guitars that you could go in a music store and you could maybe get more for your money than, you know, the brand names like Aria Pro and stuff back in the day. Right. And especially the old main Japan stuff where you'd walk in and you go, wow, this is a pretty good guitar for the money. I think PRS SE right now has captured that. They're just giving you a lot of value for the price points. You know, like I have an interview. It's going on the Know Your Gear channel with Jack Higginbotham. And one of the things I talked about was the free gig bags or the included gig bags with SEs. And I was making a point that the $500 SE has a $100 gig bag and the $2,000 SE has a $100 gig bag. Every guitar has a $100 gig bag. And my point to him was I've been to the factory now. I've seen how you do it. I've seen all the other buildings. I've seen how everyone else does it. I see how everybody else prices. I've seen it all. I've seen all, I've been in the kitchen. I've seen how they cook everything and no one else is giving away gig bags with their guitars at $500 and stuff like that as a consistent line. And I asked them why they did it. And he said, well, it's just because every guitar should have a case and or at least a gig bag. And I don't know if you guys know, but PRS upgraded the gig bag for 2026. So not only are the only ones offering, they upgraded it. And before I get, you know, hammered by the viewers with the fanboy PRS, it's not that I'm fanboying PRS. It's that I want other companies to take notice. Hey, here's what your competition is doing. Take a note, man. This is a lot of value for the money. But that all being said, the prices are still going up. So I think the buy low sell high, you know, buy high low kind of thing is the only thing I don't like about the SES, which is, do I think SES will go discount in November? I want to say no, because I think they got it dialed in now. And I think the last two years were just adjusting to the markets that they didn't anticipate. But this could be a typical thing. So in other words, what I'm trying to say is maybe wait till November to buy an SE. I don't know. I wish I could tell you for sure. I wish I could get that out of them, but I don't think they know. So, you know, in fact, I'll tell you this and then we'll move on to the next topic. I really believe 100% that if I ask Jack, who's the guy's going to know, he's going to, if anyone's going to know PRS is what the prices of SES are going to be on if they're going to be on discount this year. I bet you honest to God, he doesn't know yet. Even if they were want not, he doesn't know because I don't think they're thinking like that. I think they're hoping not to think that'd be the plan not to. All right. So that's my predictions for the three brands. So. Oh, Luma says my only regret is that they don't know if PRS is going to release a hollow body and sunburst. There will not be a hollow body and sunburst that I know of. And the reason is, and I'll tell you why I know. First of all, I don't know. Okay. For 100%. Okay. So nothing's 100%. But I'm giving you a 75%. Like I feel like I'm, I'm guessing, but my guess has got to be 75%, which is a good shot, you know, enough to throw some dice on. Um, because the model just got revamped that I'm pointing out right now in the three colors and I know the difficulty they had to get it done and get it out in time. And I know that changes happen as Jack goes back to the factory and Jack has not been back. Well, uh, because he's been doing something else. Like in other words, now his job is to do the marketing. So that's why he's been doing the clinics in Korea and India and stuff like that. I can't imagine, uh, considering he showed me and I'll just be honest with you guys, he did show me with a lot of trust, by the way, a lot of models that are coming out for the next year or two years. And it's, and I'm not going to say just because I didn't see it doesn't exist. They could be doing other things too, but I just can't see them. Uh, they're trying to just get these going right now, the new higher end, uh, hollow body too. So I'm going to tell you the three colors they have, which they do have one that's kind of sunburst, right? I mean, that, um, it's, it's a brown color, right? What's the, what's the brown one? That one's like a sunburst. Let's take a look at it. Um, here's hollow body too. It's, um, I went with this color, uh, and the video is coming soon. I went with this color only because in the factory, I, I did a lot of videos and content with one that was exactly like this. And I thought it was cool to have the one that, you know, I was showing at the factory. Um, so here is the, here's the three. So this one's, you know, the orange tiger is going to look a little sunburst. I understand it doesn't have the yellow in the center, but this is going to get you close. But these are the three colors. I can't imagine a new color unless of course they do a limited run for a deal or do something special that I don't know about. But I don't know. I just don't know, but my 75% guess, uh, in other words, if you made me bet a hundred bucks, I'm betting a hundred bucks that they're not more than I'm bought in a hundred bucks, you know, 25% chance that they, I would take the 75% bet. So, um, let's go into, uh, we got a question from, um, from Susan, Susan says, I've been as alpha guitars, seven, eight thoughts. Well, guess what that means. Nope. And now it's time for gear of the week gear of the week. Look at this. I only have six buttons. I can't, I just wanted to force it. I have eight buttons and I can't pick the right one. You know, it's funny. She'll show you guys a picture. The button I have to push is the only button that doesn't have a label. That's cause my wife's watching right now and I'm like, Hey, I don't have a label for that one button. Wouldn't that be cool if we had a label? Wouldn't that be cool if we had a label for that? Okay. So anyways, uh, so now it's gear of the week. Okay. So, um, actually I just messed up. Yeah, that's right. I'm right. Okay. Uh, so let's do gear of the week. Um, so a couple of things with gear of the week, a lot of new announcements. The first one was, did you see that it was like chase odd? Let's, let's look at the, the, the Dr. Z pedal. And this was interesting because let's see what's new. Okay. I want to go to sharing with you guys. Come on. I don't want to do the guitars. I want to do this pedal first. Here's this pedal. Okay. So let's talk about this first. So the first thing up is this earthquakeer devices, uh, Z Q D preamp pedal. This is a Dr. Z preamp pedal. Um, and I believe looking at it, does it show you? It's kind of weird. Yeah. There's a tube right there. It's got a little tube in there. And I think this is a definitely going to be a trend. I, uh, I would be, uh, I'd be okay to tell you this. I talked to two amp companies in the last 30 days and both had mentioned in passing, they got one of these pedals coming too. So this one's a little different because unlike what, uh, you know, obviously what, um, uh, a tone King did amps and they made a preamp pedal and Freeman where they're making their own pedals. This is where Dr. Z is like, Hey, and I wonder if this was inspired by the fact that Dr. Z is doing the synergy amps and maybe they saw success from that, like a licensing deal. Like, Hey, we help you design it. You make it. You ship it. You sell it. You deal with it. Right. You try to get some guy on the YouTube to talk about it on a Friday show. Right. By the way, they're not sponsoring this. I don't have sponsors. So anyways, but that's the point, right? Like they had to do the marketing. And so I think this is an interesting idea and I actually love this idea in concept. In other words, I've always loved it. Like to me, one of the coolest things boss did and then never did it again was the JHS, uh, you know, uh, angry Charlie, you know, blues, blues pedal combo. I thought that was cool. I thought, what a cool idea. I've always loved this idea. Um, I believe, and again, I'm just going off of a memory here. I thought I remember like Budweiser, one of the beer, big beer companies, you know, picking some small breweries and doing like limited runs with them. Like, Hey, you cook up the recipe and we'll mass produce it. Right. And I love that idea. And I love this idea. This idea is like, you know, this is when you're, you know, this is like Freddie versus Jason. This is when two things come together that you love, right? So you have a pedal company that's well respected. That makes good pedals, uh, like earthquake or devices. And then you have Dr. Z who makes great amps and, and now they're partnered up. And so you get a product and it works great for them because like I said, Dr. Z doesn't have to worry about this. They don't have to worry about it cutting in. I kind of wish Paul Reed Smith would have thought of this idea. I think that was a, you know, versus their idea, which is, so you understand what Paul Reed Smith did with the pedals was they just found a source. In other words, um, they found somebody to make them, ghost build them. And I think the ghost building thing's done. I'm sick of it. So I think ghost building, I think now when we think of, you know, like Cortech, cause now that I've kind of exposed the factory is how that works. I think a lot of people are like, okay, I know how ghost building works. And now I think I'm hoping from that video that like what P.R.S. did with putting Cortech makes these guitars, I think I've done with the whole, who makes this for real? Who makes this? You know, it's got a brand on it, but who, who, who freaking makes this? It's so much funner when it's like, okay, like this, there's no questions. Who designed it? Well, Dr. Z and earthquakeer, who built it? Earthquaker. Now imagine they could have made this pedal. Earthquaker, go to ghost, built it and then where it's built it for Dr. Z shipped it to Dr. Z. Dr. Z's got, you know, same accounts with sweetwater. He could sell it to his dealers and then we'd be like, oh, it's a Dr. Z pedal. But to me, I like the idea of knowing, no, they worked with somebody they trust. They work with somebody they believe in and we get a good product. And I think this is a win. And I haven't tried it yet. So I'm going to, I'm going to definitely try to get try one. I love my tone, King Imperial. And in that case, and in the idea of synergy and freedmen and synergy and tone King, the difference there is they do make pedals. So obviously, you know, like for instance, though, they have wampler. So even though it was a tone King product, it might have been cool if it was a tone King Imperial done by wampler. Like it makes it fun. I love this idea. I don't know what you guys think. Let me go back to the main screen and see if you guys are talking about that too. But I, you guys are making up funny names like earthquakeer. That's funny. But what do you guys think? Yes or no? Do you like the idea that instead of a company having another company build their product and not tell you who does it? Just partner for this. Hey, we came together. This is us together. This is what we, we, you know, we get. Somebody says $400 a lot of cash. Well, of course it's a lot of cash, but it's a tube preamp. There's a physical tube preamp pedal in there. And by the way, that's not me saying it's worth $400. I'm just saying if you're matting it out, you're going to go, okay, well, what is it? You know, what does the pedal go for $250, $300? Okay, well, soon as you put a tube in there, that's a hundred bucks, right? So what's the reasonable price on it? In fact, this is the game I started playing recently on reviews, which is when I say, oh, I think it's overpriced or it's priced high. What's the price too low? Right? Let's play the game. If $400 is too high, that's what I want you guys to do. Put in the comments. Well, I want to agree on this $400. I think $400 is high. So, you know, I think at 401, they lose customers dramatically. So obviously, four is the highest you can go. $350, I think, is where it should be. Reasonably speaking, $350. Now, again, I'm not telling them their business, so in case any of them watch this and go and fill, you have no idea what it costs to make this and how can you say it's $350. I'm not telling you what I think it's what you should build it for and sell it for. I'm telling you what it's worth to me. At $350, I'm more of an impulse buyer on it than $400. But the question is, what's so cheap that you're like, that's ridiculous? Sean saying $250, $250, somebody says $2 is too low. So yeah, $275, $299. So, okay, so see, I think that's always a realistic thing to kind of, I think, look at things like, okay, $400 is too high and $250 is too low, then what's the right price? And maybe it's $350, maybe it's $3, something like that. But anyways, like I said, I just like the idea that they're giving credit where credit's due instead of pretending that it's, you know, and speaking of which, let's go to the next category, okay? This one was what Susan actually wanted to talk about. So we probably should talk about that since that's the actual question and before gear of the week. Okay, so Ivan has released all their products. I love that Ivan has released all their stuff in January and lets us know before the NAMM show. I hate the whole waiting for the NAMM show. I'm not going to the NAMM show. You guys don't care about the NAMM show anymore. No one cares about the NAMM show and yes, they should still do a NAMM show and the NAMM show should do its thing. I'm appreciative that companies understand that. Just put it out now, okay? Call it a day. Okay, so what was released? Well, the biggest release was Ivan has released all their products, but of course the thing that's got everybody talking is this. And why is this the big talking? Well, because obviously it looks a lot like the toast and a bossy guitar. A lot of people are saying like the Kaizen, the one that I just did a video where I was talking about how I had defects and they fixed the defects. Based on some feedback that I may or may not have given to them and others. Well, so others too. They said others gave it to. So we'll see. You know, okay, so let me give you my harsh opinion first. My first reactive opinion and then I'm going to go into a little bit because remember I told you I'm kind of like negative at first. I think that's a normal default for humans. First thought is I don't want to do it. I don't want to go. I don't want to be there. And then when you get here, like why did I never not come? My first opinion, team who version of an a bossy guitar. I was just like looking at going. Yeah, I mean, almost reeks of like, here's how we're not getting sued making an a bossy guitar. They even have one has white pickups and here, click it. And I was like, well, maybe they're not white. Maybe they're silver. I thought they have one with a white pickups. Hold on. No, I guess they're all silver and maybe in the lighting it looked white. Um, but again, you know, had has the a bossy look to it $2,000. This is probably my guess is made in Indonesia in the Cortex factory. Let's take a look in Indonesia Cortex factory. I know now look at this. It didn't take long. Did it folks? You went from November going, how could how could Herman Lee's guitar in Indonesia be $2,000 to look at all the guitars that are made in Indonesia. The $2,000. It's almost like I was there last summer and saw it all coming. It's like yesterday. Anyways, yeah, I told you guys the amount of $2,000 guitars coming that are made in Indonesia and China are going to be a little shocking to most. Again, I'd like to point out, don't kill the master. I don't want to hear any crap. I didn't make these prices. I'm not involved with these companies. I'm just reporting the what I see. Do I think it's worth $2,000? I don't know. I don't. I don't want to give it away either. So I mean, I understand if you, I don't know, maybe you want this thing. It's different. It's interesting. I don't know. So funny, funny thing. My wife, I know right now my wife's chuckling. Here's why I'm going to luckily my in-laws don't watch this show. My in-laws like to say that's interesting when I'm pretty sure they hate something. So like if I, if, if, if my wife's like, hey, try this healthy dip. It's always something healthy. So I try this healthy dip and then they're like, oh, that's interesting. Or they'll watch, we'll watch a movie and I go, what'd you think of the movie? And they go, it was interesting. That's their nice way of saying that was shit. So anyway, so when I'm making myself laugh going, this is interesting. I'm not a huge fan of it, especially here's the deal. There's a couple of reasons. First, I'm a little bit of a Kiesel fanboy. So of course, when I see $2,000, I'm thinking I can get a Kiesel guitar. So to me getting a USA May guitar in a color that I absolutely want for around $2,000 really makes this a little bit of a harder choice, especially when it's a modern guitar. Look, there are a lot of guitars that I can argue that are way better. I'll say better than Kiesel, but mostly different, you know, vintage style guitars, right? Like this jazz master right here, this green one that I just did a video of. And this one is a vintage reissue. It's so different from anything Kiesel makes. But to me, the Ivaniz guitars, as the Indonesian Ivaniz guitars, get to Kiesel pricing. It's a little tough, especially being an American going like, ah, really? I mean, the whole point, I thought, you know, this is how they sold it to us, right? When I was like, hey, we're going to go overseas and we're going to save you some money. And you're like, okay, you know, I'm going to save some money. You know, there were some things you didn't like, like we're going to lose some jobs and we're, you know, they may not treat everybody the best, but we're going to save some money. And you're like, okay, well, you know, Walmart told me that's good to save some money. They said every penny I saved is the money in my pocket. So who can't can you not trust Walmart, right? By the way, I hope you guys understand a lot of sarcasm comes out. I find more and more my sarcasm. People are like, how could you say such thing? I'm like, I'm going for the joke. It's an entertaining show, I hope. Anyways, my point is when I see prices on things that I thought were used to be a more obtainable, affordable category, I go, well, you're pushing me right into the things I can just buy outright. So the Timo Abasi. Oh my goodness. That is funny. Timo, it's going to be stuck in my head now. Like the Ikea caster. It's the Timo Abasi. And so, you know, there's, this is the dumbest thing I can do. I hope you guys know I love you guys. And I say that because I've been talking to Ivan is about doing videos for them again. And this is pretty much sensing that I got to happen. They're probably going to watch this and go screw this guy. But seriously, Ivan is, I like that you're trying this, you know, one thing on a side note that made me sad was I once helped put together the Abasi booth. I was just volunteered. I was walking by and they were trying to build their booth and it was late into the day of the first day of the NAMM show. And I helped them build it. And the next day they introduced me to Tosen. They said, hey, by the way, Phil and his friend, which is Nathan, by the way, me and Nathan did it. And by the way, shout out to Nathan for doing that. Because when we were walking by, I go, hey, you want to help them build the booth? And he's like, I'd like to get dinner. And I'm like, and I forget that he's really thin and he's probably like exhausted because he doesn't have the calorie disposits that I have. So I was like, let's do it. But anyways, I did, I noticed that it was a bad idea to do with Nathan because we went to dinner afterwards. And I think Nathan ate his body weight and food. And I go, oh yeah. So you got to have those camel roller reserves like I got. But anyways, Tosen the next day, I asked him a question. I'll never forget this. It was 2019, I believe it could have been 2018, but I'm pretty sure it was January of 2019. I asked Tosen a boss. He said, hey, Tosen, you left Ibanez, you started your own company. What was that about? And he said that this was his dream guitar and he had, you know, obviously he designed it. He drew it and then Ibanez made him a prototype and he played it and he kept saying everybody wanted it and he wanted it. And he goes in two years went by and Ibanez was still dragging their feet. And so he's like, at some point I had to realize like, if I want this to get done, I got to do it myself. So that's the official story from Tosen that he told me. The important part of this is this pretty much proves what he was saying because it looks like it took Ibanez an additional five more years. So Tosen, if you're watching this, which I doubt you are, it took Ibanez seven years, not two to finally gives you something that you kind of wanted. But anyways, let's look at the rest of the Ibanez line. Let's go to the what's new. There was a couple other Ibanez's. So since we picked on a lot of the stuff, you know, just interesting. This one, this one was a strange one for me. I don't know what I think about this. You know, I was a Ibanez dealer and Ibanez acoustics were always so cool because they sold sold so easy visually. Sound wise, they were never the best. They would get lucky here and there. But usually all this like this maple laminate and heavy polyurethane all stuff, the acoustics were usually a little thinner, a little bit more like this. A lot of cool and interesting cuts that make the guitar look cool, but usually don't sound great. But what was great was for for first time customers, you would see an Ibanez and you would see this and go, wow, this looks so much more exciting than just the tan brown, boring acoustic. And I thought, OK, that's, you know, that's a good point. But so a lot of cool colors. This one, the blue, the purple, purple. We got blue. Oh, look, I can just hover over these. I can just change screens. Look at that. And I don't know. Is this kind of like a modern kind of vibe to it? I dig it. Three seventy nine can't beat that. This is interesting. This is a color I keep seeing put out there by a lot of brands. So we have an Iceman for nine ninety nine. You know, one of the things I like is look how they did the back and the seats like the cherry cherry stain on the mahogany and then the front. That's pretty cool for those that you like the Iceman. I thought that was a cool new piece of gear this week. A couple of other things they had some some I saw. Oh, they brought this back. This guitar was funny. This is a Zyphos for those that don't know how to Zyphos with the next. The Zyphos when they came in, this is a chameleon paint job. So it looks purple pink, but it also flips to this color. Right. It's a really crazy cool guitar in person. We couldn't give this guitar away when we had in our shop. We had a seven string version to and this and we just couldn't. I think we had a blow amount of burnout. And then what's interesting about that was I was just thinking about this the other day that they were going for a lot about eleven hundred bucks used. So people get about thousand bucks used. So I was like, oh, so they reissued it. This is also where's this made? This is made in Indonesia, right? Yep. Indonesia. So yeah, there's the eye right there. That's what the serial number means, by the way, when you see eyes, he's Indonesia. There's no C here. So that's interesting because sometimes C means Cortex. So this could be a non Cortex guitar. It's not likely, but it's possible that it's Indonesia and not Cortex. Okay. So the Xipho, some of you guys may hate that. There was somebody asked me about specifically about an Ivan is base that came out and this is it. The Ivan is custom shop vision space. And what I noticed right away was the different headstock shape. That was cool. This looks cool. Oh my goodness. Woo. Six thousand dollars. That's made in Japan, right? It's not going to let me see closer. Oh, there it is. I can't see, but I'm pretty sure crafted in Japan. Six, six thousand. That's big boy prices. $6,000. So interesting. I think it's an interesting move. A $6,000 base that you've never made before that looks like a lot of the other high-end bases. You know, I don't know. I'm not in love with it for sure, but I don't hate it. It's interesting. Okay. Next. The next thing I want to talk about new gear is they made a big article about Fender is now in the Fender audio business like Marshall. So let's give credit. So let's give it to Guitar World. Guitar World did an article. I read it and saw it. And so Fender is getting into the let's make Bluetooth speakers like Marshall. And obviously if you haven't seen Vox did it too. And this was an interesting thing. I got to give Marshall credit. Marshall knows how to make a Bluetooth speaker in the way it looks, which is it gives it the iconic Marshall look so that people who don't know guitar see that Marshall and go, oh yeah, that's a thing that's behind the thing on stage. Like even if you're like, I went and saw Mariah Carey and the guitar player had a Marshall like they can see it's iconic look. When I think of Fender, I think of them making a Bluetooth. All they had to do in my opinion was copy exactly what Marshall did, which is make their iconic thing. These two speakers, I thought this could say JBL right there as far as I'm concerned. I have no interest in this at all. The fact that it has a handle is kind of portable. The wood block on the top. And if you guys remember, which funny about this is Fender had a Bluetooth amp that kind of looked like their amp, but it was kind of amp-esque. And then that went away and this is the new approach. So here's what I'm going to try to say. I'm not in love with this one, two guitar world. Really, you didn't even do any follow up like this is not really Fender's for into the Bluetooth. They've already been doing Bluetooth speakers. And after anything, they were more like the Marshall brand before. So it's a, yeah, Scott says it looks like a car battery. Yeah, yeah, it's got that lifeless, design-less, came with your Volkswagen car look to it. Like, I feel like, I don't know, I don't want to pick on brands, but I'm going to. So like, it looks like it comes with a Rivian. Like you push a button and it ejects out of the dash and this is your new speaker and then they start having to stick Fender on it. So, and I just love this funny and I hope it fails in hope that Fender learns to do something better. And all transparency, I own a Marshall Bluetooth speaker. It does sound pretty good and I did get it because it looks like a Marshall amp. I wanted something, it was in my birthday last year and I was trying to figure out something to get. And just so happened, I got a guitar, but it wasn't for my birthday. So I was like, well, I'm not buying a guitar for my birthday when I got one just recently. And I go, I want something and I decided to get a Marshall Bluetooth speaker and I actually like it. And I love the way it looks. It sits on, it sits in my front room and I think it looks cool. So for those that are going to say it's stupid, I agree with you. I was dumb enough to buy one, but I'm not dumb enough to buy the Fender one because it doesn't look like a cool Fender amp to me. This one, MandaGrab, says, hey, Philip, greetings from Chile. Since I have a very short question, I see you have an Ibanez JS. Would you trade a JS 1000 and an RG1570 prestige for a black Pia? Would I do it? No, but I don't have a, I don't have a gym. I like the Pia. I played, I played two. One was Steve Ice. They let me play a Pia. It's a great guitar. To me, it's aesthetically different, but physically reminded me of the gym. I don't remember playing it thinking anything was different. You know, I don't remember the neck carve being dramatically different than the gym. So everything was like the gym, just the aesthetic change. I have a gym. Would I trade my JS and an R and a prestige for the gym? Yeah, I would. I bought the JS. So you guys know I bought the JS to make a video. That's why I got it. So if you guys have seen a white JS here, it's like the Novo. It's here for a video. There's a bunch of guitars that are here for videos as we've been plotting out the, how we're going to come and 2026 2026 2026. Freudian slip of some sort. 2026 with a fresh approach on the deep dives, you know, something a little, a little new, not for you guys. So you guys, unfortunately, not like I'm trying to wow you guys and just trying to keep me fresh. You know, what happens when, you know, you make the same things. It's, you know, it's like being a tour guide. It's hard to do a tour guide of the same tour every day. And all of a sudden, you know, feel like you're, you know, it's, it's my first time in fresh there. So, um, but, um, anyways, uh, what am I trying to say? Uh, if you want to do that trade, I guess you could do that trade. Uh, financially, the P is go for good money. So I don't see anything wrong with your, your choices, but so, and I'm also a big fan of trading multiple guitars for one guitar. I always find that that's a good rule of trading, which is if you get less than you probably won. Now, keep in mind, there's exceptions at rule, but generally speaking, if you took three guitars and you get one, you're probably came out ahead. That's usually the way trading works. You're trying to upgrade. So you're upgrading everything I have here today in some form or fashion came from the fact that I had a lot of cheaper versions of it. And then that's how I did it. You know, I didn't just go write checks for all these guitars. One day I bought guitars I could afford and then over time I would trade them up and trade them up and trade them up. And then when I would accumulate a bigger collection, I would trade up and then, and everybody's going to have a different opinion about this. This is just mine. I've been, uh, been pretty consistent about this over the years. And at some point I traded up to a very high level and then that's where I realized that was the point of what do they call it? The, um, some not sunken fallow. No, it's the, um, what do you call it? Swear, uh, I don't know what I'm trying to say. Basically trying to say you stop getting stuff. What is this term for that? Law of diminishing returns. See, it took me a second. At some point I hit the law of diminishing returns. In other words, I bought guitars that are expensive and that are good or great, but not better than what I had. So, and I find that number has nothing to do with real reality. It has to do with you as a person. You know, what do you feel like is good and where do you, you know, and that's what happened with me. There was a point where I go, oh, this guitar is expensive and I like it. This guitar is expensive and it makes me nervous or I don't enjoy it. And there's a price point that if I buy a guitar, it will become a closet classic. It'll just rot in the closet because I won't damage it. I'll be too afraid to touch it myself and I'm, I'm too afraid to play a guitar. I shouldn't have it. Okay. And that's just my take on it. Everybody has to come up their own conclusions, but I, I will tell you. Uh, don't worry about missing out on guitars just because they're more expensive. Very rarely is it the case. I'll only worry when you don't like what you have. You physically and mentally just not enjoying it. If you're not enjoying it, then do something about that. But if you are enjoying it and you're like, I'm loving this, but maybe there's better. That's the mistake we all make. Okay. This is from Stofer 900. Can you run the tone King Imperial through a boss Katana preamp or a fax loop instead of buying an expensive Pia. Absolutely. Or if I far, if I far, absolutely, absolutely. Um, the tone King Imperial will give you this preamp pedal will have give you two options. You have two options. You can send it out to the, uh, the power amp in of the Katana use the power. The Katana is just slave power. So it's just the power amp and the speaker and all the tone is coming from this preamp. You can do that. You can run it like a pedal into the front of the Katana and then run the Katana as flat as you can. I don't recommend that, but you can do that. But also you can do as a four cable method, uh, with the Katana and essentially make the Katana like a third channel on this preamp and then use the reverb and some of the love for this pedal in the Katana and vice versa. Michael Nielsen has an amazing video on the four cable method. I'm, I'm a little concerned what I'm saying because I, I know you can do the four cable method. You know what? You're going to have to check me on the Katana because I kind of remember the Katana doesn't have an actual effects loop. You need an effects, an actual effects loop to do the four cable method on the Katana. I think well, at least the one I have the 50 watt, I think it's only a power amp in, right? It's not an actual effects loop, but I think the 100 has an effects loop. So if your Katana has an effects loop, I would do the four cable method like Michael Nielsen shows you in his video. You'll be the happiest and go that route. I also want to tell you, uh, that, uh, the NAMP show is only, uh, a few weeks away. And I can't tell you, because I can't predict the future that there's another preamp pedal and some other stuff coming that maybe something you'd want to consider. So I'm saying if you, you buy an Imperial, buy it from like Sweetwater Guitar Center where you have a, a, a guarantee 30 day return. So if something comes out better in two weeks, you can exchange it. I'm not saying I'm done. I'm just saying, just saying, I love the Imperial. And so you know, the only, on a side note, I have not physically tried any pedal, preamp pedal better than the, than the tone king Imperial. I have not, but I've, I've heard things coming that might be as good or better or different, differently better. So just keep that in mind. Cause so in case you get impulsed in buying this weekend, be prepared. All right. Um, uh, Jeff wants to know, he says, Hey, there's a lot of online hate regarding the 490R and the 498T pickups. I don't know if people just hate pickups. It says, Yet Studios and Custom Shop offerings seem to keep having them. Uh, yep. The Gibson tone is Gibson, Gibson tone deaf or is the internet hate just trolls? Look, people, guitar players, let me give you some insight as a guitar tech again. So let me switch hats or like so to speak, right? YouTuber hat. Look at my bald head. Anyways, YouTuber hat, guitar tech hat, whatever hat, you know, I got to put on that day. Right now it's a guitar tech hat as a guitar tech. A lot of guitar players throw a lot of hate at something they perceive to be the problem of something and, um, not a lot of factualness to it. And, and it's not always their fault. Let me give you an example. Um, you know, some guitar players will buy a used guitar, like a PRS. And then they'll say, Hey, this guitar PRS is don't stay in tune. And I've explained to you guys that PRS is whether you buy an SE or a core, they use a six screw system and each screw is sitting on a knife edge. The bridge is sitting on a knife edge of the screw like a two point trimmer, but there's six of them, a little bit more complicated. It looks vintage, but it's actually modern and complicated. If somebody adjusts a PRS trimmer, PRS trimmer, there's no what they're doing. They fucked it up. I don't have a beep, do I? I had a beep button. They beeped it up. So anyways, um, then you get it and you're like, this sucks. Why does everybody love this? I always remember that until you actually have like a guitar that you know has been set up correctly and you know that it's not tainted or problematic, which is why sometimes I have trouble. Grabbing used guitars or deep dives. Somebody's like, when I talk about buying a guitar and then having to flip it and you'll lose money doing the deep dives, sometimes somebody's like, well, despite use, I'm like, yeah, but if somebody mess something up, I'm going to be attributing that to the manufacturer. And that's not always fair. So I do do you. I do do. I do use use guitars sometimes, but I prefer not to to have more of a clean slate of what we're analyzing because in the deep dive, we're analyzing construction and theory of construction more so than the physical just how, you know, set up and stuff. But back to the pickups. Somebody might get a guitar and not like it. You know, let me give you an exact exact analogy. No, not an exact analogy. Let me give you an exact story of something that happened. Imagine you get a guitar and I don't know why guitar players think like this. They just can't help it. Where it happened to be. We have a lot of problems as guitar players. Like it's like music draws broken people. I'm broken. That's how I got drawn the music and broken people have broken thoughts. So one broken thought is I buy a guitar new and it has strings on it from five years ago because it's been sitting in a music store because heaven forbid, especially back then, music stores sat on guitars forever until somebody found it. Right. And they get this guitar and they go, this guitar is dull and lifeless. And they go in there and they hand me a guitar, especially another guitar tech. But even me. And they say, I want to put new pickups in it. And I'm like, okay, I want to pay my bills. So yes to your answer of yes, I will do work for you. And then I take their crappy strings on off and I clean their frets and their fretboard and I put in new pickups and I put on brand new strings and they go, man, these are way brighter than before. I love them. And I'm like, huh? Wonder how much of that was the strings. A lot of things happen when a guitar. So what am I trying to say? A lot of people like the hate those pickups. Well, one, the internet loves to regurgitate a thing it learned. I have a saying, I've been saying it forever just cause you know a thing doesn't mean you know everything. I say it all the time. My wife actually, it's one of the few sayings I say daily that Shauna doesn't hate me for saying cause she always laughs a little bit cause she knows what I mean by it. Somebody learns a thing and all of a sudden they're a genius. Somebody sees somebody like me or somebody else on YouTube. We say a thing and then they regurgitate that like they've lived it and it's not just a piece of information that was forwarded to them. And that's how you should really filter everything through a little bit of your own life. But my point is to you, Jeff, is that a lot of people are attributing a lot of things to those pickups that are not necessarily bad. Now, that all being said, is there things about those pickups that a lot of players don't like? Of course. See, because people generally sometimes don't like, like if you don't like pickups, if you have a fender, a fender Princeton like me, you don't want a high output pickup pushing that amp and just giving you a little crackle at the end. That crackle isn't pleasing. It's not a pleasing overdrive sound. It's just the amp being overdriven in a really bad way. The front end is being overloaded, which is why there's a second input on the Princeton and a lot of fender amps. You put your hot pickup into the second input. But then people go, I don't want that because it's not as bright. Well, it will be with the hotter output pickup. That's why they did that. They had the foresight to go, hey, you know, there's different kinds of pickups. And it's almost like fast lane, slow lane. It's like first input, single coil, second input, humbuckers. That's where it goes. Right? And so players get a little angry. Some opposite way. Some players are like, this pickup doesn't have enough output. And so they hate this kind of pickup. Generally speaking, in pickup land, what really happened was more so than everything, more than any factual base, somewhere, somehow there are certain products that just got Holy Grail status, like a Klon pedal and a Dumble and a PAF pickup. They're just Holy Grails and you cannot and everything that's not them, you're just an idiot for not liking the Holy Grail. There is no pickup better than a PAF. So all other pickups are crap. Gibson only made one good thing and that's the end of the story. And the reality is there's all kinds of people with 490s and 498s that don't even know it. Don't even know it. So, you know, that's why the hate. That's my and doing this for a decade basically on YouTube. What I can tell you is I already know when I'm making a video or the show, oh man, there's a hot button that's going to piss off 30 people and they're going to get upset because how, you know, because I'm not doing the tropes. I'm not saying the thing that everybody wants to hear, which is these are the agreed upon community loves. These things are all loved and these things are not. And no, so that's my answer. So if you like the 490 and are in the 49080, I hope you like them. I hope you enjoy them. I have some one of my get, I can tell you for a fact, here's what I can tell you. Somewhere here in this house is a Gibson with 490 and 498 and I have no problems with it. In fact, I couldn't even tell you which guitar is it and it might be one of my custom shops. Actually, it might be that one or it might be the other one. I don't know, but I don't really care. I really don't care how I look at it is I plug in a guitar and if it sounds good and I can get what I need out of it, then I'm done. It's when I'm feeling something's lacking. I want to start changing things. And I know I still to this day, I understand the desire and I have friends that just feel the need. They got to upgrade stuff, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. And I always tell everybody, please know your gear. The whole point of the slogan, know your gear came from the concept of spend time with stuff, which is why I spend time with product before I do the video. I really didn't enjoy unboxing videos. Like I said, I don't want to tour guide from someone who just, it's a George Carlin joke, right? How can a stewardess welcome me to a city she hasn't even got to yet? I don't want to watch a video of somebody unbox something and go, look, it's red. And I'm like, well, I can see it's red. That's the thing I can figure out on my own. I have eyes. What I don't have through the internet is hands. I can't touch it. Tell me what you're feeling. Tell me what it's doing. Show me the thing that you figured out that it does well or does badly over time. Where is it? It's a deficit. What do you like about it? Why do you use it? And that's why I am a, and if I seem opinion right now, it's because like everybody, I'm struggling to make great content for everybody, but also trying to adhere to this rule of everybody needs a video when everything comes out the same week and everybody needs stuff all the time. And I, what I enjoyed about YouTube when I started watching YouTube, which made me a best guess make YouTube was I love watching someone say, look, I've had this for five years and this is how I use it. And I'm like, wow, I never thought of using it that way or, oh, wow, I use it the same way. We can almost be friends and talk at a bar. And now everybody's doing a reaction to things. And I'm like, in fact, the reaction things are getting so bad. Now they don't even do reactions. I watched a dozen videos this week. People are just, they like, they're just like 30 second videos. They're like, Hey, I got this. Can you believe it? Wow. I just got it. And then that's the video. And I'm like, does people think that I actually want to see some asshole get a thing? I don't really care if they bought it or it was sent to my company. I don't want to see that. I want to see what people think and feel about something. All right, I'm done with my tirade. All right, that was good. By the way, so you know why Jeff, you know why people hate 490R and 490T's? Because apparently it draws a lot of emotions out of people and gets them upset. Got me fired up for something. Let's, let's keep on track. And I'll drink some water, calm down. Hopefully there's vodka in this. I didn't put the water in this. So there's, there's a small chance it could be vodka, but I doubt it. All right. Brian wants to know, hey, have you seen the PRS sprayers, sprayers choice guitars models that have been popping up? Is this just PRS way of unloading B stock or start of something new? I'm not very aware with the inner policies at the exact moment. I can tell you in the past, sprayer choices were in the past because they didn't have enough orders. So imagine how PRS and companies like them work in the past. So we're not talking about SES. That's why there's no such thing as a sprayer's choice SES. Okay. PRS SES, like a lot of import guitars are made with the concept of we're going to buy them, warehouse them, and then they're going to go somewhere when we get orders. Okay. Made in USA guitars are what they call just in time manufacturing, which is a fancy way of saying, we ain't building anything until you give us some freaking money. Right. That's a nice way of saying it. It's that's why, that's why, you know, it's like, it's like, it's like when you have some work done in your house, they're like, yeah, I need some money and you have a lot of money. They're like, yeah, I need some money and you have up. So, so what happens to a factory sometimes, especially in the US is they get, let's say get a thousand orders a month. Okay. Thousand orders a month from the dealers and they, they build, they order a thousand, you know, they, they can have the employees build a thousand guitars. And then when things slow down, all of a sudden they have employees twiddling thumbs and they let them go home a little early. Who wants to go early on a shift? A couple of people will, but as you know, everybody's been there. Sometimes you're in a position at life where like, what, leave early today. Hell yeah. I'm going to go do something fun or spend some time with my kids. Sometimes leave early today scares the hell out of you because you're like, I need to make rent and I cannot have a short check this week. So you need people working. So in the past PRS for a fact, I can tell you this for a fact, sprayer's choice was a way to keep workers working because they didn't have an order for the guitar. That's the problem. They can't build it if they don't have an order and they don't have any orders. So PRS would do this during the recession. They would let the employees just make up crap, I guess. And I'm sure it's the supervisors, but basically employees, right? They were like, just make the guitars and then that's the sales department's job to figure out where they're going to go. And then you can do some excitement. Like you can contact a dealer and say, Hey, we have a dozen sprayer's choice guitars here. They're a little different. They're a little exciting. Let's, you know, you want to buy them and then they can sell them even though they weren't ordered. So my guess is it is that, and the proof in what I'm saying is or the proof could be, notice there was none of that stuff during COVID, right? So cause there was probably no time to do that stuff. So my guess is sprayer's choice is they are just having the employees dream up some paint jobs or do some stuff and essentially have a little fun, but also keep them working. Because again, you don't want to do any more layoffs. They obviously did some layoffs last year that, you know, they, they were right size their crew, right? They don't want to keep laying off because here's the bigger problem. Not only is that horrible because people lose jobs and that's, that's a horrible, but from the business side of it, it's going to be very expensive to bring people back in. If all of a sudden you get orders again, so they kind of just kind of try to keep everything moving. And so that's a better way of doing things. So that's my guess of what a sprayer's choice is. That's my guess, what they're doing right now. I could probably reach out to them. They'd probably tell me if I asked, but I feel like even if I'm slightly wrong or wrong on that answer, it's definitely not a gimmick. It could be just, you know, trying to get excitement up for the models too. And they could have preplanned it as a sprayer choice. Like in other words, like let's get some excitement. But in my experience, it's very rare for a company to do anything like that if they don't, if they're backlog too hard, you know what I mean? And keep in mind, this all could be still backlog because they, they run a backlog no matter what, but there's a difference between an eight month, a one year, a two year and a six month backlog to them. If that makes any sense, because remember, not everything, it's not a, it's not an even machine, like areas, certain areas, you know, can be twiddling their thumbs while their areas are working. So that's my, that's my, my theory on that. I don't know how to say this name. Tonus? Tonus, I'm going to mess up your name, man. All right, I'm doing my best. It starts with a T. It's a lot, a lot of ins in there. It says, Hey, Phil, I broke the pole off the low pro edge tremolo on my IBANES. I am not able to unscrew it out and replace it because the whole head broke any recommendations. The pole of the low pro edge. So I'm, I'm, I'm from this description sounds to me like the, the, you're talking about the pole pieces for, you're saying pole, I'm thinking post. We're talking about the two tremolo posts. This is where it can get confusing because if we're talking about something else, you know, so it's tough about this particular thing. This is a good time to mention. I'm going to try to say your name again. Tonus, I'm sorry if I'm saying it wrong. We do have a live clinic every month on the Patreon. It's $10. You can pay for the year if you want. If since you've paid me $10 here, if you go to the patron and sign up for patron for next month for February, because the next one, the date on next month in February, I'll tell you when it is because we've scheduled them out now a month in advance. So you know exactly what day if you want to be there live, you don't have to be there live. And I know this is going to kind of, okay, hold on a second. The next one, the next event, let me go into the chats is so funny. I don't know why I'm having trouble. Okay, February, February 7th. So it's February 7th. It's $10. I'll tell you what I'll do. If you sign up for Patreon for February for $10, I want you to sign up and I will refund you your $10. So I'll transfer your $10. So you know, and just so no one else gets a crazy idea, I won't get 10. Remember, I'm not getting my, I only get half the $10 from YouTube, but I'll get more of it from patron. But this is a great question for the, this is what we do. It's like this. We do it on there, on the patron, the live QA for, it's a, it's called clinic. It's a clinic. It's $10 a month. It's just like this, except for I'm in the shop. I got nine cameras. I got all the things to recreate whatever the problem is and we can try to have at it. But anyways, back to your problem. I'm assuming also you can send me pictures ahead of time or during, and I can see the pictures and I can actually see what you're doing. So you just take a picture of your phone and send it to me and really there's real time or ahead of time you get to all see it. But back to the sounds like your post, I don't know what part of the post broke off. My, I have tools that will grab and, and I can get that post out of there, but without seeing it, it's really hard to see what exactly you're doing. And just, you know, that's the reason why we've disabled super chats, but super chats are not disabled today for some reason. I disable them and then I don't know how, I don't know why if I have to disable it every time we do a live show. That's why we started disabling super chats because a lot of super chats were questions like this and I'm like, there's just no physical way to do that detailed of a question. And then also I'm just doing a hypothetical. So I'm trying to keep to the questions that I can use my hand gestures and stuff. We talked about doing a clinic on the YouTube channel. The problem is there's 1353 of you. And so, you know, a clinic on average is 40 people. And even if it was 400 people, it's still be manageable. It's just no way to, there's no way to do it at this scale that I know of, but maybe we'll try. I don't know. Maybe we'll try one. Um, anyways, let's, uh, let's go to the next, next, I was going to say next question. Um, okay. No, this is a, okay. This is Amanda sent this. I'm trusting you Amanda. Uh, this person's name is vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. So they want you to vote. Okay. It says when you go from having gas, your acquisition says syndrome to having no gas. Okay. I'm sorry. I can't answer your question. I don't even know. I don't ever relate to that. I've had, I've probably the question I, I'll answer your question. Don't get me wrong, but I'm going to say how long have I gone without wanting anything gear wise days? I think it's weeks and months. It's days. Every time I'm like, I don't need anything. I don't, but then I'm like, hmm, I go down into the rabbit hole. Um, I did a rabbit hole this week. Uh, week ago I was buying all the tools or I'll say gimmicks now, things that I saw other YouTube channels going, here's a way to fix this, you know, using a cheap tool. And I thought, Oh, why don't I review this? I review this. Maybe I'll do it for you guys. I don't know. I know I'm going to get some pushback on this, but I'm, I'm a little concerned about it. Here's what I can tell you. So basically I watched a half a dozen YouTubers, if not more, show you a trick. Here's how you fix this with only some, you know, peanut butter and chili sandwiches. And I bought the thing that they claimed not one works, not one thing works. They're all full of crap. And all of their videos, by the way, every single one of them, that's why I don't want to talk about this. Cause I'm like, I'm just going to be setting fire and fighting the people on the internet, other channels. They don't actually really actually show you how they do it too. They just kind of suggest it to you and then they kind of mimic it. And then I'm like, right, but when you put it in practice, it doesn't work. So I was like, I was a little, so if I sound a little irritated for that, it's cause I was. There was one. I might show you guys this one. Cause I thought for sure this one was a, not even a YouTuber is a TikTok, TikTok Instagrammer. And I saw it and I go, in genius. Why didn't I think about this? And I bought this thing was like $54. And I did it and I go, this doesn't work. And then it doesn't even make sense that in fact, so you know, he's knowingly lying about it. How about that? So maybe I will show you cause it's kind of a fraud thing. Like obviously he edited and fixed the video for it to even make sense cause it doesn't even make sense. I'll, I'll, so I'll do that one, but we'll see about those. Anyways, back to no gas that I'm apparently not going to have. It says, what sparked you back into gas again? Everything. Another somebody's YouTube video, a guitar magazine, some artists, a new music song. I bought an album. I was listening to, you know, YouTube music. Cause I listened to YouTube music, which is like their version of Pandora. I'm listening to something in the, in the car. And I go, Oh, here's this song. And I go, I need that. It says, for me, it was a used guitar model I had once longed, a long four that has upgrades already done. Yeah. I, I've tried to use the logic, never go back. Every time I bought the thing that I thought I missed when I got rid of it, what I remembered is, you know, I did a video called gear I regret getting rid of. And then what was funny was I learned a lesson from that video. I didn't think about this when I made the video. I thought, Oh, that's an interesting video, right? We get rid of gear and then we miss it. And of course I bought some gear back. You know, I bought a thing that I, you've got rid of and I never seems to work out for the most part, but I thought, Oh, that'd be great video. I made the video. And then I didn't think about the fact that cause I have this YouTube presence, a lot of people, especially the people I sold those guitars to over the years, they all reach out to me, not all, but a lot of them. And they're like, Hey, Phil, man, I still got that thing. You want to buy it? And I was like, no, but I didn't, I didn't know. I didn't know I didn't want to buy it until they offered it to me. And I was like, and I keep mine, like buy it for what I sold to them for, like a buyback, you know, kind of thing. And I was like, no, I don't think I do. And then cause I, every time I seem to go back and try to buy something I missed, there's a reason why I was going in the first place. There is a couple of exceptions. And what I mean by that is this, there's a couple of things that I've bought back because at the time I didn't know how to properly use it. And then now I've kind of like, Oh, with my skill now or with my knowledge now, maybe it's got a shot. For the most part, I was telling people, don't go back. You can't go back is what I'm trying to say. But anyways, so back here you have gas, then you don't have gas. And for you, you got gas again, cause you wanted a guitar that you long for. I mean, it's true for me, you know, I go through sections of life, you know, where I'm things I'm focused on differently. Last year was a lot of hell because I was obviously fixing the studio. I spent a lot of time and money on cameras, cables and so on. Right. So, you know, I spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Eve day, New Year's Eve and New Year's day, I spent the entire those two days running cable in the studio and redoing the studio because we knew we're going to have more efficient, better content for 2026. And I can tell you, I spent a lot more time now with anything that makes my life easier when it comes to gear, music wise too. So anything that can make the guitar sound a little better or easier to record, easier to play, I'm focused on that because it just makes my life easier. And that's where all focuses sounds better, plays better. OK. I'm not old and finished. That spicy feel wants to tell me to sell my guitar. Yeah, I will, you know, like when somebody says, should I buy a guitar? The answer is always yes on this channel. Sometimes when you sell a guitar, sometimes the answer is always yes. I'm bad at that, though. So, you know, the I just offloaded an insane amount of guitars. So this is on the back half of the show. We'll talk about the back half. So I just took a bunch of gear to Zimz and to the Guitar Center in Phoenix. Now, this is not the Guitar Center in Avadale or the Guitar Center in Scottsdale. The manager that stores name is Frank. He goes by Frank the tank. It's it's it's he doesn't actually he won't respond to you. If you don't call him Frank, the tank, if you call him Frank tank, he gets actually matter. You got to call him Frank the tank. And I'm just kidding. Frank is a very good friend. I told he he has a he has a master's in music education from Berkeley. And he ran our teacher's side of the lessons and did lessons for us for, I don't know, probably a decade. And now he's the manager at Guitar Center in Phoenix. So I went up there and I took him a ton of gear too as well. So I took some of the Zimz. I took it appropriately. So what means is all the more affordable type stuff went to Zimz, because that's what Zimz specializes in. If you know his store in Mesa, he specializes in more definitely more affordable product amps, guitars, pedals, and then of the Guitar Center can handle some of the heavy hitter stuff that was really expensive stuff. So I took him a ton of stuff. When I say a ton of stuff, I mean, it was a truckload. One of my friends goes a literal literal truckload. I go, yeah, it was a literal truckload. I loaded up the like packed up the truck and took it. Still have another truckload to go. So I took it there. So sometimes it's, you know, it's nice relief to get rid of the stuff. This is all stuff from the channel, you know, that you acquired over time. Sometimes companies want to leave stuff behind. It's like a payment. And so that's great, except for it's not really a payment until we convert it into cash and then really to be honest with you, a lot of it is just space. I don't have space for stuff. There's just no space. And Kevin says, not a dump truck, not a dump truck. So, so that would be crazy if it was a literal dump truck of stuff. But, but anyways, if you, if you go there, you'll see some really choice pieces. I took them really good stuff and he was very fair to me. And you don't have to ask for Frank, because he's the manager. He probably paying the ask. He's probably, he's not really like handling customer day to day stuff. But so if you're curious, you can go up there and check it out. I'm sure you'll figure out what's up there. So. Hero Glop says, Hey, Phil, what amp or other solution do you use to play practice or play or practice base at home for base, which I play quite a bit. I play here. I'm using, let me plug this so I can physically show you one of two things are usually being used. I'm using my Phil Jones amp that I'm holding upside down. This is a Phil Jones amp. If you guys don't know what this is, it's got two of the little five inch speaker, piranha speakers, all the controls there. It's actually relatively heavy for how small it is. I mean, it's not, you know, like heavy, heavy, obviously, but not super light. So I use this. This is my practice amp. So really nice practice amp. If I'm not using that, I'll use a pram pedal. And I actually have two of these. I just got another one. Just got. And so I have two of these Eden pram pedals. And then I'll run it out just like that. So here's what's funny. I can do both because I have a mixer, but I'll usually run either or. So if, um, so if I wanted to play bass, um, I'm debating if I should show. Anyways, I can unplug the X, the cable from the tone, King Imperial employee right into this and use the same channel to start playing bass. So that's how that's my practice solutions for base at home. I, I think if you're not a bass player, which is, uh, and you want a good base solution, uh, for a base amp, I think the rumble stuff by Fender, you know, the one 10 is probably good enough. One 12, you really want to make it a little loud in the house. The one 10 combo, one 12, relatively inexpensive. Sounds really good. Um, if you want something a little bit more refined, if you have nice speakers, like I have nice studio monitors, um, I'll run a preamp pedal because I can run everything right through the mix. And then it's instant recording for me. So yeah, Steven says Fender rumble 40 masterful. I absolutely agree. I think that their stuff is way, it's one of those things, like just because it's so inexpensive, you're just like, Oh, it must not be good. It must be beginner grade. It's, it's just really good. So, um, I will tell you, I think the Fender rumble 40 is as almost as good as good, almost as good as this. Phil Jones, the Phil Jones is probably 700 bucks new. And the rumbles, what probably get to what's a rumble 40 go for? Let's look. Rumble 40. I want to say 200 bucks. Look at that. 239. Look at the top controls. Um, I don't use overdrive. So the gain things, not, you know, the overdrive level is not a big deal, but the bright contour, you got the low mid, high mid treble master. I don't believe this has, oh yeah, has a line out. So you can run a line out. You got a foot switch. That's the turn off on and off the overdrive. Me personally, I wish they ditched the overdrive and put a compressor in it. That would be more useful for me. Um, I'm sure some of the rock guys are like, what are you talking about? I need that kind of ampeg, uh, SVT kind of overdrive. But to me, I'm like, I'd rather have compression because then I can slap based on it a little bit and do some stuff. Um, and then I, uh, you know, but it's auxiliary in eighth inch, I believe, an eighth inch for the headphone jack. Pretty straightforward. I mean, you're not going to, in my opinion, you're not going to buy anything better than this for $239, 240 bucks. It's his, and I've recommended many times. Nothing really changes for as a recommendation. I really, really like it. Okay. Let me refresh this. Okay. Uh, okay. So we have a hunter says, Hey, hello from Alaska. Hello Alaska. It's cold here too. Now it's 50 degrees and we're freezing. I have a heater on a space. I have the heater on before the show started. It's 50 degrees. So, okay. Uh, he goes, it gets dry inside. So I get fret sprout. Yes. Uh, extreme heat, extreme cold. Yeah. Dryness is a problem. Can't find your video on fixing, uh, not rounded ends. Also was wondering if you think once fixed, it is less likely to happen again. This is a great question that's come up recently, uh, when it comes to correcting fret sprout. And, um, I want to, uh, explain fret sprout to you in a way that I don't think a lot of people are explaining and obviously me too. So, uh, to your question, I have a fret sprout. You just want to type in Phil McKnight fret sprout as a video. Uh, so if we go to YouTube, they'll come up. Uh, that's how it finds it. I, I know because, um, I get to seek, you know, comments and stuff. And that video is a, uh, does well as a daily, uh, video. So there's always comments on it daily. Um, so I tell you, usually what you want to do is if you're trying to find a video, a specific video for me, the best way to do it is type in my name, full, full name, Phillip McKnight and type in what you want, like the product name or the video. Um, and, um, yeah. So this is how it comes up. So hold on. Here you go. And resting dirt face. Okay. Ready? Uh, no matter what I pick, man, it's just going to be always that stupid face. Uh, but yeah, how to fix a sharp front ends. That one will come up. If that's the one you've seen, I think there's another one, but you get it. Just kind of search through the, search through the things. Um, that being said, Fred Sprout, the question that you didn't ask, but you're implying and somebody's actually asked is, uh, should you not address Fred Sprout? So Fred Sprout's obviously when the neck shrinks a little bit and the, the ends of the Fred's poke out a little bit. And if they're not rounded perfectly, you can fill the barbs. This is a very important thing to, uh, to, to, uh, think about, uh, the way I explain it to the core tech guys when I was at the factory and we were talking about this because they were showing me how they made some tools to kind of pass the Fred and height fret sock test. Right. Um, that's not a joke. That's a serious, they were literally talking about how they want to pass, how they are trying to pass the sock test. Um, which I thought was great. That was funny, right? Um, uh, anyways, um, I made the analogy. I said, look, if I glued, if I took a hot glue and I glued marbles every one inch on a, on a broomstick and you ran a nylon sock over it, nothing. What happened? They're sticking out, but there's no barbs. The socks are detecting barbs. This was something that was a little confusing at the beginning of the Fred's brought test. People thought I was like, Oh, the next shrink, and therefore this is catching the sock and that's what we're detecting. No, what I'm using the sock for is to grade how well they polish the ends. I can show you, I can physically show you a fret that is sticking out dramatically more than another fret, but no, no fail, fail, failure on the sock test because there's no barb, the sock will not catch on something perfectly spherical and smooth. So when you do those semi, semi hemispherical Fred ends, the socks won't catch anything because there's just nothing for this. There's nothing to catch into that weave, which is why I picked nylon socks. I've seen a lot of dudes look, I get it. It's my shtick and some people will feel a weary about using it and stuff. And I see them. I've seen everything. I've seen it all. And I can tell you this funny thing. Everyone I've seen use something like it, like a balloon or tape or paper or tissue or cotton or what I used all that to first. Look, women's lingerie was not my first choice. I don't know what you guys think of me, but that was not the first thing I thought. Like I need to check Fred ends. I wonder if my wife's pantyhose work. That wasn't like a thought that entered my head. What entered, what happened was I had tried everything and everything showed something, but not exactly what I was trying to illustrate, which is not having a barb. And then what hit me was, oh, my wife, when we went to the shoe store a couple of years ago, I just remember this randomly, we went to buy shoes and she says, oh, I didn't wear socks today. And I thought, I'm as a man, I don't know what that means. I'll wear socks in my sandals because I'm classy like that. So anyways, my point is I was like, what do you mean you're not wearing socks? And then at the store, they were like, oh, we have footies. And I'm like, what's a footy? And then they hand my wife these nylon feet socks. And I was like, oh, I bet you I can buy that on Amazon. I bought a box from Amazon. That's how that transpired. And I go, let's give it a try. Now, so, you know, actually, that's not entirely true because I actually went to Target and actually had to buy some women's pantyhose because my wife wouldn't do it for me, which I don't know why, but I went and did it. So I had to buy women's pantyhose and I'm going to admit this to you right now. I also bought like a pack of gum and like four other things. Just because I was so embarrassed, right? Which is funny because I'm a husband and a father, so it's not in my, I know I have a daughter, so it's not like I haven't had buy, you know, the inappropriate things or weird women things as a man. But I was just a little weird out by buying just women's pantyhose, especially because I also need some rope and some chain. Anyways, my point is, is that I was like, I threw a bunch of other things on there. Like I need a Diet Coke, a pack of gum, one yogurt and these pantyhose. So anyways, and all the cash in your register and these huggies. So a little joke there. Anyways, so I tried it and what I figured out was it worked except for at, because at like 20 bucks, that wasn't going to work. And then when I went to footies. Okay. So all of that to explain Fred and dressing, which is important to understand. When you have a neck that shrinks, okay, it can expand out again. It can't, it's wood. It's a sponge. Wood is a sponge. Okay. It's a very dense, hard sponge. Okay. It is not likely that it's going to expand out again. It can. It's not likely. Wood is not only a sponge though, it is something that is dying. It, we killed it and now it's rotting. Okay. That's what it's doing essentially. How I want you to think of it. So it's more likely to keep shrinking than it is to ever expand. It's usually to expand it back out. You're going to use so much moisture by even like putting water on it. That that's not likely, but assuming you could it or not only you could or it will expand cause you went to like Argentina, right? Sure. To try, you went from Arizona to a tropical climate. It's possible. That's a lot of moisture, right? It can, and consistency of moisture. What I think people don't understand is that when you see the file that I use, like a Fred and dress file or some micro mesh, we're removing material at such a small level that it's almost immeasurable. Right? That's what I want you to understand. So when you see me run a pass, when you see a guitar tech and they're running passes on the fret ends and they're rounding them, remember, we're mostly rounding them more than we are trying to cut them back. Um, we kind of like hit them at an angle just to kind of keep the, you need the taper to come in correctly, the angle to come and then we're rounding a lot of rounding. That's why I like the Fred and dress file. Get the barbs off. The barbs are the bigger problem than the physical fret sticking out. Right? Um, you can kind of feel the fret sticking out, but if you watch your hand when you play guitar, I don't care what position you are. There's different positions. There's people who put their thumb, uh, exactly, uh, what do you call it? Perpendicular. Is that it? Correct? Is that a term? I don't know. Exactly with your thumb. That's technically correct. This is how you should have it, right? Something like that. Some put it in flat inside. Some put it up here. All these, all these positions, but no matter what, there's always a gap between, you can see here, there's a gap between your hand and the fret board. Your hand's not actually sliding up and down on this. So it's not going to fill the bumpy frats. It's not likely. You might catch a little bit of them, but really what you're catching is the barbs because they just happen to catch you just that right. Cause they just, it's a little teeny little, little barb, right? It's just like a rose bush. It's really, but it's super tiny. So we're really rounding off those barbs. And once you round off those barbs, if the neck expands out or shrinks, it shouldn't matter anymore. If you've done it right, but also keep in mind, if you did take some material off the end, if you're doing it the way I've shown you in videos, not only should it be not even measurable, I always tell people, like when you're filing a nut slot, okay? One little trick that we do, nut slots, when we're doing frat and materials, when we're sanding on necks, pay attention to how much dust you're creating. Obviously metal dust, a graphite dust or bone dust, because there should be almost none. We're taking some, everything is small, micro. Keep in mind the tools that a repair person, guitar, pair of a person uses are more in line with a jeweler's tools than they are with a carpenter's tools. That's why I cringe when I watch some YouTuber take some Home Depot thing and just start doing horrible Home Depot things to their guitar. And I'm like, that is not the tool to use. We, because it's, it's, it's your hand. I've said this before, and this is how we're going to show today. Your hand, your fingers, your tongue, your ears, your nose, they're sensitive. They're sensitive parts of body. They're there for a reason. That's why you detect all the silliness on your neck. You ever felt a small dent in your neck and think, oh my goodness, that's got to be what, two inches deep and you look and you can barely see it. You're squinting. You're like, I know it's there. I can feel this mark. That's because your hands are sensitive. So that's, so basically my answer to your question about fret and dress is if you do fret and dress the right way, you should never have a problem. I once watched a guy put a comment and video because he's a moron. He goes, well, when your fretboard springs out, the frets won't be on the end anymore. I'm like, what cartoon world do you think you live in? Right. If I had a hair to pluck out of my head, I'd be like, it's a hair's thickness as materials, what we're taking out. So I don't have a hair. So you have to pretend because I'm not pulling an eyebrow hair. That hurts. So my point is that's how much material would take off the fret ends. Remember, you're more about polishing than you are about removing the, the, the actual metal material. Okay. If fret sprout is sticking out that bad, it does. It's going to be a lot, but trust me, if it's thinking, if it's sticking out that far, that fretboard could never expand out that far. It's very, very unlikely. So that's the way I want you to think of it when you watch those videos and, and keep in mind, we're all learning together. I remember I had, I had to learn this stuff and then I had to learn to teach it to you. And then when I learned to teach it to you in videos from you guys, I learned how to refine what I'm teaching and then refine again. And not because some people got it and some people don't. It's also because sometimes I don't put a hundred percent of the instruction in the video, because I'm just not thinking that way. And then when questions come up like this, I go, you know, that's a great way. We can talk about this. And maybe that's what's cool about having a podcast is this is a discussion. Okay. We're going to finish the entire show on this one. It's called the real one. That's the name. They're not the fake one. They're the real one. Says no question. So it says, it's awesome. It says, uh, have quarter of a beer on me. Uh, Semper Fortis. Okay. I know. Okay. That's Latin and I'm dumb. So I, but luckily for me, Google will tell me what Semper Fortis means. Okay. I know what Semper Fi means. What Semper Fortis means. Latin for always courageous or always strong. Look at that. Oh, and it serves as the unofficial model of the United States Navy. Well, thank you for your service. My friends that all joined the Navy are always strange friends to me because I live in a desert. And it's weird for my friends that when I knew in high school, went into the Navy and now they've retired from the Navy because we're old enough and they've come back to the desert. And I'm like, and they tell me stories of Navy life. And I'm like, it just sounds like they went to Mars. Like I feel like every time, every story they could be like, and then we landed on Mars. And I'm like, oh, and then what happened? And then they tell me story. That's how all the Navy stories on they sound like they're just from another universe. But anyways, thank you for your service. I won't be having a beer. I'm not doing beer right now because I'm being good. It's not a New Year's resolution. I've been good for months. Uh, I will probably, I don't have a shot of bourbon. That's 200 calories. Have a bourbon. Um, I'll throw it in a, in a Coke. And then for those of you that hang out to the end, even though I said it was the end, I'm going to share something fun with you this week. I got this funny thing to happen. So I have this, uh, I have this, uh, tray, this wooden tray. It looks like a guitar, right? And you put your stuff in it right now. I have SD cards and things. And I put my picks in there. And, uh, so it's cool, right? It's kind of cool. And, uh, I don't know what possessed me, but, um, I found these. I actively went out looking for these. And I decided one night, uh, my wife thought I was crazy at first. She's, uh, she thinks everything I'm doing is crazy, which is, but she likes it. So, you know, I say that she says it's crazy. I don't want you to think she's like, this is crazy. Um, she says, she'll say like, of course, um, I found these vintage diner ashtrays. Right. These are, um, these are real. It's supposed to be, I paid for real ones. Uh, these are vintage, uh, to put my picks in and I got them to put on top of my amps and I put my picks now in vintage, uh, glass, uh, I'm pretty sure this is technically depression glass. I would imagine, I would imagine, you know, for those that remember depression glass. But I don't know. Maybe it's just the amber glass. And when I, I found these and I bought them, she goes, why did you buy those? And I go, because when I was a kid, all of us put our picks in our parents. This is what I use my mom's ashtray. And I go and my friend had an ashtray and I thought, I don't know. I just thought it'd be funny to put my picks in an ashtray. So I put my picks in an ashtray. And I go, here, why, here's what, hold on. Because, because I want to put my, the ashtray on top of my amp. I, I, so you guys, I don't smoke. I've never smoked, uh, you know, I know that those of you smoke, it's really tough, man, I get it. My wife quit smoking 30 years ago. Uh, so it was tough and she'll tell you it's 30 years later and she says it's still tough. So I feel for you. Um, but, uh, I was just like, I don't know why. I just want to put my picks in an ashtray. So that's my shenanigans this week. I thought I'd share that at the end of the show on that note. I'm going to let you guys go. I want to thank the moderators and I want to thank all the channel members and the patron members, uh, please, if you're interested, uh, check out the Tim Pierce lesson course, uh, like I said, at least do the 30 day trial thing. Um, like I said, as long as you, obviously if you forget, you get billed, but if you're as long as you remember to cancel, if you want to cancel, but also check it out, it's worth it. And, um, on that note, I'll let you go. Also check out Kiesel connect. If you want to come hang out with me and check out Kiesel's. And if you don't want to check out Kiesel's, you can hang out with me. If you don't want to hang out with me, you can check out Kiesel's. He's how this all works. And if not the worst case, you're in the, you're in, you're in amazing part of California where the weather is amazing. Okay. On that note, thank you guys for your time. Till the next time. Know your gear. Then know your gear podcast.