Tada let's do it let's go okay so we're going to go all the way to the back we're coming in through the showroom we don't give factory tours so you guys are uh pretty special look at the man the myth of Legend Mr Albert Albert does all of our final setup head Tech amazing guitar player and uh does all kinds of fun stuff here so every guitar has to go through him before it gets shipped out that's after it's pass quality control after it's been cleaned um then he gives it a thorough playing and uh that's it so let's go back here and we'll see how we get to this final uh process so we are about 21,000 Square ft we have uh right around 60 employees and every single thing is made right here our fingerboards are all cut inhouse all of our wood all of our blanks I've just got in the shipment I haven't even seen it yet some of my uh special flamed Redwood some crazy crazy stuff here and so what you see here is this is at between 8 and 14% so it's not ready to be used yet 11 to to 12% that's moisture content so we have to put it in the kilm and dry it out so this is something unique that we do that a lot of people don't do they will buy their wood already pre-dried uh you could see some of this beautiful Walnut here bringing in some crazy stuff so I have to go through and grade all this um but my guys have gone through and probed it on the sides to get the moisture content and then we're going to Kil dry everything so what a lot of guitar companies will do is they will pre- buby their bodies and or necks um in a Billet form um that is already ready to use use so in other words it's already the right thickness already the right width they just machine it down where we do everything here we're going to turn raw Lumber into a guitar and why that is so cool is for example if we're going to grab like a piece of swamp Ash and I get a customer that wants a a neck through I can take a board that's narrower like this and I can cut here and then move down and cut again I can take this same board and I can end book match it so I'm going to take this one and this one I'm going to match them up to the next strip in the middle the reason why that's so cool is you have the same board soundwise it's going to sound the same if you're getting your wood from somewhat already pre-cut you might not know you know if it's the same fillet so not just looks wise but sonically it's going to sound you know very similar same with a two-piece uh you know like a bolt-on body you don't have to have a one piece if it's a Kel now not every single time that's going to happen we do we will have like one end and maybe another end that was going to be very similar we're going to match up but most of what we do is going to be perfectly matched up like that that does make a difference so that's pretty cool uh we did go to quarter saw next um a few years ago Maple so you what was the decision why did you do that the quarteron yeah uh strength so if anybody that's uh ever uh played with a cardboard box right that's a great example when you look at a cardboard box and we've made forts out of them and things like that where they're corrugated you can fold it with the corrugates pretty easily and actually get a pretty straight line you can't fold it the opposite way it's the same thing with a quarter saw neck when the quarter saw or when the the grain if you have your neck blank so I'll just take a piece of maple here if you have your grain running this way all of your strength is going to be side to side it's not going to be top to bottom it's going to bend this way much easier but if your grain is running this way it's like that box you can't fold it this way as easy you can move it this way easier but that's not what we're worried about we're worried about your string tension pulling back on it and the amount of strength increase is is phenomenal but the problem is your yield goes way down so your yield you're end up you end up spending about triple on each neck but it's the right way to build an instrument so we went to that we didn't even increase our prices that first time we did it we had a small increase the next you know price increase that we did to kind of cover it um and I don't think we even covered it all the way and so we've done a lot of improvements over you know the past almost decade uh as we've been Kel we went to Kel and uh the brand uh change in 2015 February 1st was our official first kind of uh launch of Kel and we did a lot of uh improvements uh you could see some of these guys here you got neck through construction so you have I mean look at these eyes I mean it literally looks like it's book match like I was talking about this is just um you know a random one this is an extra that I put through uh trying to show off something uh really cool with the Vader you got a customer 7even piece here with some uh roasted Alder body sides you don't see that a lot the roasted Alder body sides um a very cool option we do all of our roasting inhouse a lot of other companies will pre- buby roasted Woods our experience with that was when we were buying pre- roasted Woods we were having trouble with a lot of Chip outs and a lot of cracking by us buying our own oven and me figuring out all of the not just the temperature but how long how long we have to let it cool down doing a lot of experimenting we came up with a great way of really having not just a goodlook product but a great functioning product which is important see some bodies here uh these are getting ready to go through the time saer there's a burl Maple top and a black limo body you got a Jason Becker numbers guitar actually a couple of Jason Becker numbers is ours got two of them here and very looking uh very different looking swamp Ash you know you got more uh vertical grain here and more just kind of crazy grain um our brand new A2 you can see a base going through here and what they're sitting on here cuz we're going to fire up this machine they're going to go through get them to the proper thickness um and just give it a fine grit sand and then they're going to go off to the next uh step see Lucas what's up brother Lucas is putting on some tops here getting ready to glue these up so he's checking the time up there he's going to write the time down and these are motor home airbags actually believe it or not so they'll put down about 8,000 PSI on that top it's going to glue depending on the time of year anywhere from 2 to 4 hours and also depending on what type of wood what a lot of people probably don't realize is when we're gluing up various Woods we have to use different glues based on the wood so if you're if you're gluing up a walnut to Walnut you're going to use a different glue than you're gluing like a maple the Walnut or a maple the maple um so these these are all things we've learned over the years you know we've been doing it so long that you have to make adjustments it's not just oh here's glue let's just put it on there's a way to put it on a certain amount you want to put on you saw him stapling the top to the body part of the body that's going to get cut off off the reason for that is when we go to clamp it you don't want that top shifting around so you get those Staples in very very small Staples that will later come out you'll never see them because we're going to cut that part of the body off um but you have to do that because we work real hard to get these perfect book matches you see Lucas right now getting ready to line the Middle with the fine line um uh pencil mechanical pencil just getting the center line getting ready to glue that up matching the center line of the actual um body and then once that's done we're going to go over here sorry we're kind of running you through like it's okay since we don't do tours you know it's you can see some necks that just came out of the Kil um these guys will go in and we do what we call thermal treating on all the necks and what that is is these necks are already kilm dried they've been through that process but once we cut them into a blank we're going to sticker stack them so we have these little stickers these little pieces of wood in between spaced out so that air can go through this whole pallet and we're strapped down super tight we're going to put this through a treatment process in the Kiln we have two kils here and what that's going to do is we're going to super heat them up and we're going to slowly cool them down what we're doing is we're stress relieving these neck blanks so before you even place an order with with us we've already taken the 3 to 5 weeks that it takes to do this on all of our various necks you can see single piece uh quter Maple seven piece you got some different seven piece here some different threepiece necks here so we have to pre-build these so that we're ahead of the curve so we're not delaying you guys when you go to place that order let's check out what we're running on the CNC over here we use the hos CNC machines these are the latest and greatest the best money can buy for woodworking for what we do sure you can buy a different machine that's going to be more intricate for like a heart valve or pacemaker or things like that that are millions of dollars but these hos super speed machines are amazing the accuracy is 1 10,000 of an inch give you guys an idea that's pulling your hair out of your head splitting it four ways down the middle that's the thickness of 11,000 of an inch no mistakes 100% accuracy every single time what's up RJ so RJ is just doing some shaving you know the uh machine does gets us all our final specs and then we're going to remove the little bit of machine marks that we have the little tool marks that uh the machine will actually make yo what's up brother how are you good top man oh that's a nice one super nice so just he's just checking with his fingers just to make sure the radius is perfect and again what's cool about our shop is the machine is getting all the final parameters and we're just removing the little scratches making sure everything's perfect fitting everything up this is actually a Sophie Lloyd model uh black limbo body is what she likes on her guitars and quilted top here and we're going to do a deep triple step stain on this really enhance that quilt and then sand it back down and we do that on every single premium top we give it a a deep triple step just to really enhance it we used to charge for that we said you know what we don't even want to charge for it cuz that's the only way we want to build these so that was a nice one what's up JD you JD's been with us for just over 20 years now he runs our department back here our whole uh hand sanding uh department does all of our training he's also the only one that works on the K series guitars the special editions the uh HKS and the K series and then also the Kel editions JD does all of the shaping gives it to me I do the final finish work on it and then when they're primed he goes back through and does all the final primer sanding and then it go off to the final paint department I love that you guys use the Evo gold friend oh yeah yeah unfortunately that's um something that's been discontinued from jessar yeah I wish that it wasn't discontinued but uh that's just how it goes sometimes but a beautiful uh Royal ebony um fingerboard Royal ebony head plate Buckeye Burl top Walnut body and neck five piece action with some Maple stripes down it and that's our Aries neck through so so you do you do quarteron oh you do qutis even when you do the multi-laminate neck everything is quarteron yeah every single time it's a quarter saw neck The Only Exception was when we were doing bird's eye necks those can't be quarteron because the eyes will remove we don't offer Birds ey necks anymore we're having trouble getting them so we don't offer them um so every single neck regardless of how many laminate Stripes whether it's single up to seven they're all going to be quarter on the other trick that we do when we do the multi lams you'll see some companies JD can I borrow that real quick I'm sorry um you'll see some companies laminate clear out here and they'll do like 11 15 17 piece you have to be very careful we did a lot of experimenting and when we got the laminates too wide and too many the neck sounded very sterile so what we do is we keep all of our laminates in the very very center whether it's a single piece a five piece or a seven piece it's all in the same size area that gives you enough single piece on each side to actually have some resonance and some warmth to the neck so you can actually kill some of that as as you go through the extra laminates I love carbon fiber necks but I find they're sterile you think it's the same reason it's too stiff and it just doesn't doesn't give I think what it does is it it slows down the vibrations going across into the body wings and that's just it's too much of a problem so although it looks really cool and it could be an option we could charge more money for it's not going to give the customer what they want and so the furthest will go is 7piece and we we keep within that that kind of that onethird uh Center section uh and it really the necks sound amazing and that's super important uh is to you know really keep those kind of things in mind could see a beautiful uh flame COA with the Evo gold inlays on that this is from that Aries run and then a flame COA back of the neck it hasn't been oiled or sanded this is going to pop like crazy it's popping now even oh yeah you get that thing wet put some finish on there some oil it's going to be an amazing amazing neck and that's what's cool about us you know for those of you guys that don't know what we do we go from Mild to Wild I mean pretty much whatever you can think of we can really do be putting a level on there making sure everything's perfect before we start uh taking a look at any fret work that needs to be done see this one here uh oh wow beautiful metal flake Infuse that's a crescent Buckeye top so I do all the metal flakes myself metal flake Infuse like that uh Nick's just getting going on this guy it looks like um so when we're working on the the Frets at this point once the Frets have been put in that means the Fret board's already been radiused so we're going to first thing we're going to do is we're going to hand radius every single neck and then press the Frets in one at a time you'll see some companies you go through and they have a big press they pull down and it's doing all 24 or 22 or however many Frets the neck is getting the problem is is you're going to have Flex out at the end so we do them one at a time just to pay attention make sure every fret gets perfectly seated and then it's so important to be constantly making sure your fretboard is level so he's got the truss rod wren wrench in there making sure everything's perfect before he starts doing all the work a lot of guys will ask us about a pleck machine and why don't we use that pleck machines are great for taking an imperfect neck and making them perfect they're grinding away precious fret material which you don't want to do because as you're playing you have high and low spots in an imperfect neck your fingers are going to drag on some areas and they're not on others they're going to actually come in contact with the fretboard so the neck's going to not play the same yes you're not going to have high spots and low spots but at the sacrifice of grinding down your frets so we get the fretboard perfectly even press the Frets in and then we don't grind away fret material so it takes a long time to do this you know we're spending by the time we pre- radius the neck put the Frets in do all the Fret work for a little over two hours every single neck do you glue do you glue the Frets in it depends so if we are using uh Bird's Eye Maple usually we're okay flame Maple we do need to put uh some fret hardener or some wood hardener in there okay but no we do not glue anything oh yeah we don't need to with the tangs that U the J car wire has it's all german-made wire we don't have any unseating problems and that comes from knowing what uh saw blade uh size for each type of wood to use it changes so certain Woods that are harder we have to open it up a little more Woods that are softer we have a narrower saw blade to cut our fret slots these are all things that you learn doing this for so many years you know um you wouldn't know this if you're doing this 10 years that's not long enough to learn all this you know and doing 4,000 guitars a year doing the final steel wool getting everything all perfect once it's all um all the the Frets have all the sharpen uh ends and edges are gone everything's crowned and radius properly uh just going through and uh getting that all high polished we're going to sneak by behind you what's up dude how are you so this good timing on this um it's good to show off like a white guitar I want you to see that orange peel in there so very very little bit of orange peel this hasn't been sanded or buffed at all so we're going to sand this guy down to 1,000 grit and then we're going to high polish it four times four different wheels so what we are shooting for is we want our guitars to look like a Ferrari not a Porsche sorry Porsche fans the finish on a Porsche is not high enough quality to be a keole so the Ferrari level of finish is what we want and even surpassing that is what we're doing I mean this sand uh sanding wheel is so fine p1000 feel that with your finger oh yeah that's the that's the grit so he's removing all of that orange peel and then it's going to get high polished so this wheel is going to take out those scratches this wheel takes those scratches out this set of wheels and this set of wheels are identical and then we have our high polish wheels so this wheel is going to take out our second wheel and this is the final polish feel how soft that is oh yeah it's like a like a diaper almost you know it's like so smooth just to get that mirror image like uh finish hey Pedro can I see that real quick thank you sir so this isn't done but you can see all of the uh scratch all of the orange peels gone and so now what we're doing is trying to get the high polish out so he's going through the areas to get rid of the previous wheel scratches so this hasn't been done yet the front and buffing is a very hard job you have to be very careful you can lose the guitar into the wall we lose about three or four a year which is you know 1 in a, that's actually pretty good very good so that leads me to a question so how long do they do what's the average time frame buffing the body how long do they usually take it totally depends on the wood and the Finish certain finishes are um going to be a little harder to sand um also different constructions bolt-ons are going to be easier than a neck through um headstock guitars that have a painted back of the neck are going to take longer than a non-painted back of the neck or a headless uh but these guys by the time they sand a guitar you're looking at about an hour to an hour and a half to color sand a guitar and then buffing can take another hour hour and a half it just really depends so up up to 3 hours per guitar so for reference you know that's longer than most facts oh I'm aware yeah so you're spending more time we are cuz so uh cuz you know time is money time is money but the thing is is you're only as good as your last step right and so if we cut this step here the product's not going to be as good and we've been independently tested as the highest quality clear uh clearest most transparent finish in the guitar industry and that was before we made a lot of changes we're actually our our newest gloss finishes are we've been doing it this way for almost a year now they are the smoothest it's actually crazy because I've almost dropped guitars lately with our latest gloss finishes they are so slippery cuz they're harder and more slick we are actually going to be starting to charge a premium for gloss it will not be a free finish anymore so that's something coming um we've really made some improvements even in the last 6 months on our finishes even when you don't think you can get better there's always room for improvement so we're always striving to be better so once they're done here uh they'll go into uh the Fret Department that's when they're doing the fretting and then bodies will come here necks will be put down over there they get paired together or if it's a neck through obviously it's already ready to go like for example this is kind of a crazy looking one wow you got a green color treated board which my daughter is now doing a lot of these so she would have done this one got a seven piece neck got a beautiful green metal flake finish going with our brand new A2 uh base with the triple stack uh they're like a single coil they have a single coil sound but they actually humu there are tridium pickups see what we got here look at that beautiful uh Poplar Burl A2 we do a lot of a2s you know the Aries was our most popular and we'll see if the A2 uh totally takes over or not but that's kind of our latest and greatest so these ones here will will come here they'll get bolted together uh and then they'll be put through a final assembly our final assembly we do things quite a bit different than most custom shops this is perfect look at that so you can see the copper foil going in a lot of companies will paint in the copper and that's a a lot lower cost a lot faster process this you can actually get cut how many times you've been cut oh yeah yeah probably not anymore I mean being an expert but at the beginning yeah but you can see how clean I mean she didn't know we were coming through you could see that like how perfect that is and notice the brass inserts those of you guys have been on tour or even you like to Tinker and you want to take your back plate on and off change pickups check it out redo soldering you guys have all probably experienced wood screws stripping out shoving toothpicks in there with the brass machine inserts these are knurled and they have a little I don't know how good your camera will catch this but you can see how it's split in the middle and because it's knurled it pushes out as we put the screw in there and so it's actually a machine screw that goes in there you could take your back plate on and off infinite it's not going to strip out really and that's just something we do here that just gives us that extra level of quality down the road it's things that people don't always see and you don't pay more for this this is on our entry level pricing all the way to the most expensive guitars and when I say entry level these are not entry level guitars it's just our lower priced models like the delos here's a California single cut beautiful metal flake finish and so we are the Mild to Wild I feel like experts you know from very classy you know jazz style instrument or sh550 um and you go right on down to something more compact we make this down to a 24 and 3/4 or 25 and a half this is our Leia headless we just do so much stuff or even if you there's a color we don't offer that you want like this is a special panone color so the customer that ordered it you know looked up the panone so it's Pantone 165c magnetto orange and that's what this customer wanted you know ordered this custom color I can't see the order date but our estimated completion date is 102 so we're a little late on this but we're in final getting ready to put the bridge on there and here we have a custom colored instrument Bridge pickup only oh wow so this was this is my guitar they surprised me with this i' been telling them I wanted something that looked like Predator Vision I love that movie Predator growing up as a kid and and Casey our head painter came up with this for me and so it's just waiting for me to figure out what color pickups I think I'm going to go Kel racing green and and maybe that orange just to do something kind of staggered but yeah that's uh one waiting for me so I'll have an N ngd pretty soon let see some of the uh here's a Kel Edition or not Kel Edition K series excuse me uh but Master Grade uh COA top as good as it gets you know probably a k toop in fact beautiful roasted Bird's eyee look at that gold black gold triple stacked logo just something really cool you know flame neck with uh Walnut stripes and I think it's waiting for um Kaa pickups from me and this one's waiting I know for quilted um pickups from me and this is a special magenta candy finish so this is a finish that I did uh for a customer and this one's super late 411 so sometimes when you guys are getting some real crazy stuff they do take a lot longer um I do work on everything that I tell you guys I'm going to work on sometimes are waiting for me but look at how gorgeous that is going from the K toop quilt little thin trans black burst getting back into that binding effect purple heart stripe and then the blacked out Ash side it's just an amazing looking instrument when it comes to Wood I always think of you guys as quilt tops because your quilt tops seem to always be next level like flame your Flame's gorgeous everything's gorgeous but quilts your your quilt tops always seem to be next level well thank you yeah we try we do our best I mean when the wood comes in what will happen is our head Foreman he's been here over 40 years he goes through the wood and he uh pulls aside anything that he thinks is extra nice basically basically puts that in a pile and then the stuff that's not high enough grade for what we do that gets returned and sent to another guitar company they can use it on something um and then I go through the stuff that's extra nice and I regrade it sometimes he puts a piece there and I'm like ah it's still not good enough for a customer to have me pick it out so I give it back to him and anytime I have a question is this good enough it always goes down so if I'm like is this a 7A that's a 5A I I cut out 6A I used to have 6 6A you see in here just you know the Oaks griggsby 5way switch um the good bornes pots just how clean everything is oh look at that that's really cool a little solo three humbucker little pink that's actually an extra sometimes we'll be building guitars and an option could get missed and we go oh we ran this wrong and so we'll turn it into extra that happens pretty often then we'll do whatever color we want we'll say CKC for paint job you know our head painter uh Chris is working on this um just doing some fret work over here and then once everything's done let me see if these what these guys have down here more guitars come down here when is this video posting do you know okay today tomorrow whenever you say yeah that that's fine that doesn't oh wow this is pretty cool this purple and we won't need like I'm fine with you not editing anything it's whatever you want to do you do the splatters these are super cool so we do splatters we let customers pick up the three colors the splatter on top of a base color customers send in their own pickups that's something we do they send in their own Fisherman's uh just a really cool looking guitar what color is that classic white that classic white looks so good on the pink I would have never thought that and throwing the Fishman rechargeable battery pack on there all right this one's really cool so you guys all know if you guys know me you guys know I love the de tones this is for Steph Mr Carpenter himself uh you guys might have seen the announcement that Steph started playing our guitars he's still endorsing ESP but he is playing our guitars as well um he's been doing this such a long time we've been really good friends for a while now and he was like look I want to play your guitars so we built him you know several guitars over the past few years and um when we built him the first White allwhite uh Vader um which this these have to come off because that's not the white Hardware so I got to tell these guys supposed to get the white Hardware so we'll have to stop these guys from working on this I'll take it into my office after this this guitar is going to be all white that's what Steph wanted um well when we we did the guitar we use blue luminlay material well Fishman for his pickup uses green so I reached out to Fishman said yo guys can you build me some pickups that are blue nope so we're rebuilding his guitars not not because Steph asked because my OCD won't let these be blue and those be green it looks weird so I rebuilt both of his guitars the black one and now the white one with green we ordered special Lumin lay material and special green luminlay side dots to match the green pickups for him cuz that's how it should be he's like ah it's okay I'm like no it's not okay dude so um anyway he'll be coming down at some point to pick these up uh probably in the next couple weeks is this painted is that what this is they you paint theboard yeah crazy and that's a pain in the ass it is but Steph wanted an allh guitar um with just allwhite hardware and we did it for him that's what you do you know uh people like that you're excited to work with this is kind of cool just a primer gray with Kel racing green and a black Rich light board so pretty cool we do build all of our own pickups in house we won't be able to video that area I'll show you I'll walk you through the reason why we can't video that area is we have a lot of stuff recipes posted on the wall sure so we'll walk through here and then that'll probably conclude um this flock flock will look at every single um build so what he's doing he's going through this is for uh gentleman named Richard and he's noting all of the options making sure we we did it you know people that walk through our shop they go other guitar Builders and uh manufacturing people they go how do you do this how do you give all these options and not screw it up well the answer is sometimes we do screw it up it's pretty rare now it's been getting a lot better um and we let I mean look at this you got an orange CHP guitar a blue fretboard antique ash body five piece neck satin finished on the back I mean it just so many options on this that's crazy I mean maybe he's a sports fan and those are the two sports team colors I don't know but we allow so much and the diversity that we have people always ask how do you do this and it's by having people paying attention and then at the end this is a this a newer thing that we've been doing now for about 3 years now is is really focusing on making sure all the options are on there um at the end taking the time getting everything cleaned perfectly everything's always been you know left playing good but this is something that we've really strive for and instead of the customer letting us know we missed something we put flock in place here which he's got a lot of experience in the industry he's been with us now for shoot what 15 years yeah coming up yeah and there's stuff like when I'm going through these that on paper you might know might not work well together yeah and sometimes we got to do the right thing and and call our customer and say Hey you know it look like on paper this could go through but once it hit even me you know let's make it right and then yeah call them and give them an option and then they're happy that we let him know but it's better to catch it than be surprised that you're getting something different than you think so yeah we don't want that call and so he's really helped out um and then we've really stepped up in our customer service department but you just see like our our builds I mean look at that that light purple against the white you know just classy but on a very aggressive looking guitar you know a multiscale seven string guitar roasted neck you go from that you know here's a an Aries that was an A2 the other model it's very clean looking do bases of course got like a very good surf vibe to it but a multiscale let's skip around here look at this another A2 that raw tone look I mean that's just like a metal machine right there love the way that looks I shouldn't skip this one this is pretty badass look at that yeah it's another unique thing you guys doing painting the pickups yeah that's a newer thing you know just trying to really give people a way to make it theirs I mean you look at these other companies and what they do they do some great stuff but to get something like that you have to be like a Jeff Lumis or a Greg how or whoever name you want to attach to it to get something custom well you're special you can get whatever you want right you know we'll build you your own signature model that's where we're different um and in such a quick time frame you know 8 to 14 weeks in most cases some cases they go longer uh the crazy stuff that I work on I am still just one guy and I do all my own work and pick out a lot of tops here and I end up working on I would say total about 20% of the guitars that come through here I do something with it whether it's picking out a top it's doing fill in the blank you know custom finish it's whatever the the case may be and uh you know I I go out of town and I do stuff too and uh do a lot of racing and so sometimes my builds will take a little longer but these are builds that are getting ready to to go out today and um you know flock will go through them and unless everything's good on them they they don't go out and they'll go back through they'll get checked out by our guys that's cool and we do other brand pickups so if someone wants to send in their own brand pickup it's not a problem in most cases we can accommodate all of them not most cases we can accommodate and we can't accommodate every single brand sometimes physically they're too big or we might not have the right size r out um but if we can it's something we do offer that's just a really cool look I'm sure you probably like this one oh yeah love it little B color too but uh yeah and we do left-handed too um you know kind of a little bit of everything really and love what we do you know my grandfather started the company back in 1946 and my dad took it over the guitar division in 1970 they were actually going to stop making guitars and my dad was 20 took that over and uh you know you know we're Father and Son operation here uh kind of took over the design work in 2012 and both of my kids are working here so you know I'm third generation they're looking to be fourth uh so it's just an amazing time we have we have a great time and um love that family Vibe you know i' I'd like to ask you about your pickups because you know your company started as a pickup company in 1946 right um and I really like your pickups um especially I like my the combination I use is the the lithium in the bridge and burum in the neck yeah right I like the combination and um I find that um you know you like you said you have the option you'll put other brand pickups in your guitars but I'd like to know just curious because when I think of your pickups I think of like a lot like a lot of the good companies out there that spend time you know kind of making the pickups you know match the guitars you know so so like any thought process in and that would be awesome like yeah so what happened you know years ago um you know Grandpa started the company and he had you know a lot of uh he had a lot of um influence on how the pickup sounded because he was a professional guitar player and he was on the radio all the time and so he was the only one out of our whole family that was actually a professional musician you know I was in a band and stuff too back in the day um but obviously I didn't make a living at it my grandfather was able to make a living at it so he started finding his own pickups and really knew he had a good ear knew what to to go after my dad played in bands all through you know high school and growing up I think they played a lot of their dances and stuff and played some gigs and everything and um you know got married young and took over the business and so there's always been a good ear um for you know for for you know different sounds and so my dad had this idea of doing multiple pole pieces um so that when you would do bends it wouldn't get the drop off and things like that and we took our pickups kind of the to the next level getting back to our Our Roots you know really when we're going back to the Kel name so in 2014 we invested into a lot of molds and uh really rebranded our guitars through the Kel name and came up with sounds that you would only get if you popped in a $400 set of pickups you know previously to be honest you know lungren made some of the best sounding pickups I had ever heard look at those are you know $200 $250 a pickup and so just listening to those and going well why can't we make a pickup that sounds like this and so the lithiums were born and we spent so much time I kept the box for the longest time I had a box po this big around and about that tall reject pickups it didn't make it all the different wines and so people like to think of pickups like black magic it's really not it's math winding wire type magnet and what type of pole piece it's math it's they're very easy to do and so we spent a lot of time we got it right I feel like we got it right and I still think our lithium pickups are the best sounding pickups out there it's my personal opinion um some people like the burum in the neck which I totally see it's got that warmer sound um and it's going to give you a little more versatility and then we have you know the imperion and uh you could put in the neck that Scott Carstairs play is a little more aggressive then going in the bridge we have brillium to to calm it down um and then we also have the thorium as well as uh the Holdsworth pickups the Frank Gali pickup um so you know we're very versatile on pickups and I feel like our sound is come a long way and what I wanted to make sure the clientele could do is when they bought a guitar from us it didn't matter that the pickups are costing us more to us they're buying a guitar who cares if these pickups are using more expensive components and it's costing us more you shouldn't have to feel like you need to swap your pickups out so that was one of the first things I wanted to tackle um was just giving customers more options more choices and the ability to not have to swap pickups out you know and then changing out things you know like the five-way switch going to the born pots you know just doing things that are you know now we're using a switchcraft Jack and um just doing things in the guitar that you don't need to Hot Rod them I want them to come to you guys you don't have to do anything I don't even want you to have to do a trust Rod adjustment that's why we started doing the carbon fiber rods in the necks I would sit there you know and and play some of my guitars and I'm having to do neck adjustments before the carbon fiber rods and it's like you've worked all day long you don't want to adjust your guitar you just want to pick it up you want your action slam I want my action slammed down I don't want to adjust anything I want it to play Perfect every time and we invested a lot of money and did carbon fiber Rod standard and what a lot of customers probably don't understand I could buy a carbon fiber Rod that looks just like the ones I use now for probably a dollar or two I could snap it right in half like that it would do nothing to add strength I don't know what these other companies are putting in Brandon do you want to grab one of those rods while I'm talking about them um I'll show you guys you guys have probably seen this um but the rods we put in they are crazy strong I'm even going to flip the camera on and you're going to try to break this thing oh nice but uh it it's it's really trying to do the the best we can in all avenues of what we do and the neck is so important whether it's the thermal treating The Cordon the uh carbon fiber rods the two-way trust rod and so how our system works is people will ask all the time well if the neck is so strong how do I do an adjustment well when you adjust that trust Rod so let's say we have this guitar here take the truss rod cover off here you do the the adjustment the truss rod you're going to want to push back this way to add a little bit of bow and those rods are in here along the length they're going to try to keep the guitar from moving well if they keep them from moving and we push down they're pushing back we're locking that neck in one spot you grabbed a base one so we got a super super long one so one that's going to go on a bass you know the guitars are a lot shorter so you know you grab this guy and you're cranking on it you know you can't move it you now if I went this way that's not the way they go I can move it actually a decent amount but because of the rectangular shape this is the way they go in you know they go in like that and you try to crank on that thing you can't you can't hardly get it to bend you know and I'm going at it come on and you can't get it to move so these are expensive carbon fiber rods and we were we put them in everything standard you don't have to ask for this you don't get you know there's no option not like some $200 up charge this is every neck you buy a guitar from us for $1,400 or you buy one for 14,000 they're getting these same rods in every single one a lot of companies since we've made this standard have done things like stainless steel fret standard they've done some sort of glow-in-the-dark side dot standard they've done some sort of carbon fiber standard I don't know what they're using I know what we're using and we're using the best money can buy we're using jcar fret wire we're using luminlay super blue side dots the best the brightest the longest lasting and we're using the highest strength carbon fiber that money can buy I don't know what the other guys use right they can use something that looks the same they do a fancy video but the proof is in the pudding and you know the product just is Rock Solid well a lot of companies what they're doing what they do is like when you were showing the quarters on next they're going to Flats on and they use the carbon fiber mhm to essentially force that neck yeah to be as rigid as the and so to the point where I've seen a lot of companies are uh when I've asked other companies a lot of times uh about either the cortison neck using a cortison they say well you don't need cortison if you're using the carbon fiber red Ro still need it yeah you still need it and and vice versa I've seen it where they go well if you're going to use cortison you don't you know what I mean you don't need the carbon fiber rods and so it's really interesting to see that you're using both um yeah and the big reason for that and I can tell you why you need both so what is this not going to do this doesn't care what humidity is doesn't care the moisture doesn't care the temperature it's going to stay straight they're made in an autoclave which means they've removed any moisture and they've treated these with heat and pulled all the air out to get it as strong and as light as possible so these things don't care if it's moist they don't care if it's cold they don't care if it's hot so so that is your I'm touring you you don't want the thing to move what does the neck do the neck still cares so if you have a neck that's quarteron it's a lot stronger than a flat saw neck that's what's going to want to move when you're touring you have a flat saw neck it's still going to want to move you have these that are going to help for sure but if that neck still wants the move you're still going to be doing adjustments where if you have a quarter saw neck and you have strongest carbon fiber you can you're going to have a better neck you know there's no reason not to do both I would ask why not oh I can tell you why because it's expensive that's why you don't do both well for us we look at our our standard guitars you know we want them to be Pro level we don't want a pro level and an entry level so you look at like our A2 model $1,500 you can go buy a PL plain one stripped down you're still going to get the carbon fiber you're still going to get the stainless Frets the luminlay side dots the great Kil pickups quarteron next all of that you go play the a world tour no problem the rest is eye candy right I mean it makes the guitar prettier to some people um it can make it lighter you can do things that make them lighter heavier sound different of course but the end of the day everyone working on the guitars they don't care if it's $1,500 15,000 it doesn't matter to them they're going to put the same effort into every guitar our names on it it's important to us that we put the same effort into every single model it's awesome okay can I try and break it down yes all right here we go all right like fun time so these go these go in like this so we want to push correct yeah you got it oh my God what's isn't that crazy you know what's funny is is I thought I thought it would be hard but it's it feels like I mean there's a and what's so here's what's cool it's as hard as steel but it's flexing just a little bit Yeah it gives and and that's probably why it's good in the neck right because if it was if it wasn't flexing then you would carbon fiber will have some Flex to it where steel would be heavy and not nearly as strong awesome yeah steel is not nearly as strong as that and so we get people that are pretty blown away I mean you know we don't give tours here um um but when people do check these out they can't believe at how strong they are and again it's I could buy the same thing for probably even under a dollar um and it wouldn't do anything what would it be it would be a sales gimmick it would be a combat the other guy type of thing we're the ones that started doing this not saying we invented this or anything but we're the ones that made it standard at a crazy affordable rate yeah and other people would do this at like a $5,000 and up doesn't matter to us we want it right we want it the best um and that's just how you uh that's how you evolve that's how you get better that's how you better the brand you better the name um you start doing things and just because you know and I remember my dad was like you know what that's going to cost us and I'm like yeah but you know what's going to happen is everybody's going to go wow these necks are amazing I can feel the difference I get it now and they went standard and everything I want to say that was uh either 15 or 16 we put them standard in everything and you even do it in the uh in the roasted Maple necks too right everything yeah every single thing you cannot buy a neck from us without those and we've done testing we've done blind testing with some of our bigname artists and they've all picked the ones with the carbon fiber including uh Devon Devon was like Hey I want to make sure you know Devon Townson has been playing Kel now and announced that um alongside his his frames but um he was wary like oh is this gonna loves him and he's doing a headless with you guys is that a headless guitar he he's got a headless he's got a headless Holdsworth and HH that we customized for him and put his uh some of his pickups in and he's got he's got a a couple guitars with our pickups he loves them too the um I'm just curious this is a QA little quick time quick QA at the end uh you're your headless I I look at you guys as the dominant force in headless guitars right now I mean if anyone's trying to get into the market they're just copying what you're doing because you just you you did it fast you ramped it up fast I mean it was like there was a headless and there was another one then another one it almost like felt like every year for the last you know six seven years since 2015 like it's just been headless guitars so obviously there's a market for it right so do you notice is do you know percentage wise what is it you know is it a good percent is it I don't know to be honest I mean if we just looked here um you have that whole cart of six has headstocks you have two here with headstocks and four without 40% I mean out of 10 guitars I I honestly don't know the the reason why I don't know is because we sell direct we're building what the customer wants you know we're not a distributor we're not selling to distribution so we don't have to know what the market is going to to buy to set them up so we don't really need to know and I've had um different people over the years in fact Ned Steinberger was like how many headless are you selling I'm like I don't know he didn't believe me and I'm like I I don't know and I explained to him he's like I never thought about it that way we don't need to know we we build with the customer orders um we try to guide them you know whether they use our online tool we have a lot of descriptions we've been adding to that or they call in we try to guide the customer into a way that's going to to build the guitar the way they want um and maybe even make some recommendations or suggestions um to them but we just build what they want I also noticed like like with the artists I noticed a lot of artists that have signature guitars with other brands they'll play your headless like that and I find when in my kizel collection my headless is like a very special guitar because it's like I feel like that's my if I take if I go somewhere and I need to not worry that's what I grab and deep down I want to convert like I want to go 100% just be headless cuz it seems It's troubless it sounds great it feels great but there's just something old school in me like I just like the headstock I'm with you yeah I'm in the same boat and that's how the Vader was really uh created it was um I had a DC uh that I had for myself and it was tongue oil and I started cutting it down and I ordered um a hip shot system and I put it on there and so I cut it down to make a smaller guitar so I could sit on the couch right sitting there with my wife and the great thing about it is the way it would balance on my leg it's not sticking way out I can sit there and play put my arm around her or whatever go back to play you know I could hang out for two hours with this lightweight small guitar on my lap that looked cool and it it felt good on my lap and that's how it became a thing it was like well this thing looks really cool what are we going to name it and so I'm a huge Star Wars fan and so named it the Vader and I actually registered it you know Believe It or Not Disney did not have Vader trademark for musical instruments so I do so uh yeah that's fun yeah it pretty cool you know just kind of like a little tidbit behind the scenes but for all the Headless that we have if you're going to sit on the couch and play I think it's the most comfortable you know with it being a neck through and just the way it sits in your lap naturally I really like the guitar a lot and tell a lot of our designs you know come through is like they're so comfortable to play and then you you make them look cool too you know that or at least I think they look cool not everybody's going to like our our styling and that's okay we do have a lot though we have a lot to pick from you know whether it's headless or headstock you know traditional to uh modern we got a lot going on I guess okay so are we're good I think we're good yeah this was good thank you so much absolutely well we're going to do some lunch and hang out and have some fun and well this is impressive I I'm sure like I said you touched on a couple times you you hear it all the time logistically this is a nightm we didn't see the paint department we're not done yeah let's see that logistically this is yeah this is a lot this is a lot there's a lot I mean you can see you know stuff in the works here these ones are all primed and they're getting ready for color so that's our primer racks and then we have these various racks we use um to stay things to hang things and see these guys here have color and they're waiting to be prepped for top coat and then let's see we'll go in this way we're going to give you guys the Royal Treatment these ones here are um prepped for top coat see that it's pretty cool you know someone wanted that and that's awesome we'll do some uh different stuff for people I was telling you guys about splatters these are really dull right now cuz they've been sanded down to make them smooth so we can reclear them this is a Jason Becker numbers guitar it's been splattered with the colors we offer or the colors the pickups are so how cool is that right the yellow the green the pink the red and the blue so it'll match our logo match the pickups um and that was something Casey thought of actually let me grab the this isn't that particular neck for it but and keep in mind that thing is a little dull because of the uh it's been color sand but you know you could see that just really cool looking is that going to be a limited run or is that somebody you ordered that no case you just sometimes our painter will think of something or I'll think of something hey let's let's do this and you throw that out there you give someone a a cool idea um and then maybe it sells that particular one and sells 10 more you never know but um a Vader with the Poplar top and it's going uh trans white it'll be a cool looking one and so what we'll do is these ones are all getting ready for primer primer is done in the morning we've already primed we can still open this up grab this one off of here that's dry enough and so I just grab grabbed a random guitar okay I'm going to hold this up you can see how smooth that is for primer keep in mind the primer process is to fill any void or holes or anything in the wood and uh beautiful black Limba on a solo and so we'll sand that down and if it gets a color it'll get colored next if it doesn't then it'll go a top coat and so we do all of our primer first thing in the morning and then these primers will get wheeled out those get sanded first thing tomorrow one day later so once the primers get wheeled out the clear rack will go in there and so these big metal ones the big steel ones hold 18 and the um smaller aluminum ones are what we clear off of and those ones hold 10 so we're going to wheel in 20 clears and those get cleared at the very end of the day why do you think we do it at the end of the day I don't know because no one's moving around less dust less chance of a contamination problem so we spray those very end of the day we let them cure in there and then we wheel them out here turn the heater on shut the door and we we heat them up overnight and those sit for two additional days before we color sand and buff them making sure they're perfectly hard and we don't overheat the the product when we're buffing it out and then we have our mixing room everything's nicely labeled and then we got Casey uh is our head painter he paints every single guitar a lot of times he'll have notes from the sales guys so you can see his guitar on the right on that um little spindle system so he might be looking through his phone um looking for color codes or notes from a particular customer and uh does all of the painting here and so this is all a clean environment so when they come in here they change and then they go into their booths which have you know they're pulling a lot of uh a lot of air in fact yeah I can feel it here from here I can feel it's sucking the air in from the door yeah I'm going to get Casey's attention I don't know if this guy's such a hard worker he's amazing amazing guy so I would imagine that filter right there that's the thing sucking the air into that yes so the Clean Air comes down goes across the booth and it gets sucked out we'll go in there here in a second I just want to grab his attention before I uh just walk in there and scare him maybe not we'll wait till he's done so you can video him shooting that so our goal is 20 you know 20 a day um in top or in uh in color because what'll happen is sometimes there's multiple days for a guitar so we don't ship 20 a day you know we're not shipping a 100 a week there are some weeks we do ship 100 or maybe even 110 um but you know our goal always is to you know try to get out we get out at least 80 every single week so because you're doing so many different paint I mean not only not colors but types you know the metallic paint the flake paint the stains you know or the the translucents the crackles the crackles yeah I mean so swirls I mean that's another obstacle you have you can't just have the average paint guy working here nope cuz he's got to know how to shoot all those paints you know what I mean um when I when I get see to other factories one of the things that's nice is they shoot you know four different kinds of color for a period of time and so that's a great way to train the new guy oh yeah cuz he he's going to do 50 yeah and you know it's kind of the hours training right after he's done 50 surf green guitars he's got a little sense of how to shoot absolutely the op um but you know flake is a different animal everything is and we've had to really learn a lot of things I mean there was the way we do our crackles let's go in here we're going to enter yeah it's like a Vortex hi so you can see this it's going to stick to the wall cuz it's pulling all the air across so the guitars are over there we can't contaminate them like we could it's not going to go over there we're safe the clean air is coming in here going down and going right into this what's up buddy how are you good you doing good doing yes Phil that's Casey hey Casey just wanted to kind of feel what our paint booth is like and so the floor will get peeled the walls will get peeled we fully douche this thing every so often and every time we do metal flake has to all get get douche yeah cuz the it's like a strip club it's like flake everywhere right the herpes man yeah it's going to come back buddy once you once you got it in there this it's gone yeah yeah tell my wife I'm like I was just working on a metal flake guitar I promise that's not someone's glitter yeah well I've seen especially the smaller to midsize shops a lot of them won't do flake yeah because the cleanup is just clean Up's crazy it's super crazy effective um and that's one thing uh it's I want I always like to point out because when you go on your menu mhm I think if you don't know you see $600 up charge for you know like a heavy flake or something like that and they don't understand the amount of work the amount of work to do just that type it's the amount of work it's the amount of cleanup and then the amount of top coat to get that sealed so it's not so textured it's so much work that really the price we charge it's just not enough I agree you know um here's what we would call a Kel Edition so what that means is you're going to have at least a Master Grade top with a matching piece of wood for the back keep in mind this is just dull right now this hasn't been cleared or anything it's very very dull looking um it's going to have a hand selected uh piece of wood for the body of course the top and back I hand selected as well it's going to have a layer in between the top and the body so it's a five piece body it's got a custom seven piece neck this is flame Maple w Walnut back to Flame Maple back to Walnut in the middle rear matching the front so what this particular customer wanted to do is he wanted an aqua candy with a blue burst and then on the back of so the head plate is the same and then on the back he wanted this color blue for the back and back of the head plate he didn't want it bursted this particular individual has a very high-end um violin company makes super high stuff goes to n showcases his stuff he's selling violins for like the 8,000 and up range amazing stuff amazing Craftsman and so it's cool to be able to build something like this for someone like that so these are a usually about a 2-year wait on my list then your name gets called I don't take any money until I start and those typically take me around a year so it's like from the time someone says hey I'm interested it's usually about 3 years you can see like these just waiting just all piled up waiting you know we're busy you know and uh kind of just look through here and got a neat looking Aries here and the ladies here in this department doing our prep work they're amazing they really are to get the tape lines perfect um you know I don't do the masking anymore I used to do it I don't do it they are so good at it hi they're so good um just the attention to detail getting everything perfect every time so they'll do all my prep and then I do a lot of work on guitars um and then you know afterwards it'll go off to the finished department but it's fun you know I enjoy working on stuff and it's pretty cool Poplar top from the light to the to the um um just the dark blue Alder body just clean looking you know a very beachy looking guitar yeah you got that like look at that thing doing a lot of these you know that one's pretty cool that's crazy this is a really cool look that I really like a lot I put a few of these same exact paint colors in I said earlier i' had put an extra in this exact scheme so Aqua the uh Aqua burst basically with an aqua binding and then a blue body I just for me I love the way this looks I think this looks amazing so I put a few of these extras through so customers that like this look will be able to scoop these up I think some Abalone knobs on there and you got yourself a winner Bird's Eye Maple board I think that's those are going to be some badass looking guitar so from time to time I'll try to put some extras through just to you know people that don't want to wait we try to keep things going um that's kind of it what you doing what you looking up nice so Daisy does all of our scheduling and just gets everything kind of figured out like puts the timeline on the builds whether I'm working on them or or whatnot will add time um and she's you know I I tell her don't hit me Mom don't hit me she's like get going on these builds you got to get this stuff going or this per okay okay okay and actually Daisy does all of my prep when I said the ladies do all my prep she actually does all my prep so she came from that department she's done a lot of different jobs here and now you know really helping out Rob why don't you come over here Rob how long you been here almost 41 years 41 years I'm only 44 and he's been here almost 41 that's pretty crazy and we have a lot of people here that at the 20e plus Mark a lot Albert um got hired in 95 um so that's you know that's some time right there you know you start looking at the employees and how long they've been here and how good people get at at their jobs and Scott Scott oh yeah Scott's over 30 like 35 yeah JD is over JD's over 20 Eduardo yeah he's been here a lot of longterm people yeah Carlos's been here a long time too this guy's been here a long time too yeah he yes that my dad that the man the myth the legend yeah yeah there you go yeah so uh yeah we have fun we get to uh get to do some neat things and uh build some build some cool guitars for some cool people and he keeps adding a lot more models all the time I've been pretty good lately which is cool so I've been pretty good lately we still have our n booth that I don't know if we're ever going back to n but my dad's like hey can we get rid of this I'm like no let's just hang on to it you never know got to go we need room for other stuff we do need room for other stuff wood bring yeah we're bringing in a lot of Special Woods um he was up until about two years ago was doing all of our purchasing for the company and we hired a full-time purchaser to take that responsibility um so he could you know just enjoy uh life a little more and he's coming in two days a week Tuesdays and Thursdays and still comes in Saturdays this is one of your days works from home a lot and stuff so when you guys used to go to the N people would ask on the podcast why does Kiza go to the n and I go I don't know I know they're the only one making money there though yeah cuz you were selling guitars you know it was it was uh I don't see why you would go now but I think when you guys used to go I think it was you know cool but I I don't know if it's there anymore he kept getting sick too sick the last two n show yeah I got real sick in 2020 I mean maybe I was one of the first people with coid I don't know um I we weren't testing down here but a couple people that I had meetings with did test positive I had long meetings in our sound booth I probably was one of the first people with it I haven't had it since that I'm aware of um but uh yeah I got sick the last two years in a row so 2019 and 2020 I got real sick from both both shows one time um in 2019 I actually had to leave the show I had I couldn't even do Saturday remember I had to leave I got Friday night we're out at dinner and um all of a sudden I just felt really ill I don't drink at the time I wasn't drinking I wasn't you know I don't do drugs or anything like that so it was just all of a sudden I just went from feeling good to like I don't feel good I have to I have to go home and my wife drove me home and I slept for like a day and a half and just felt awful so well the shows are pretty brutal on you especially the amount of people you meet yeah I'd beat a lot of people and it's noisy in there people get right in your face so that they can hear what you're saying yeah well exchanging a lot of spit a lot of owners you know would end up not in their Booth right they're hiding they're doing whatever I'm there I'm meeting everybody hey what's up hey how you doing and I don't I don't leave the booth so I'd be there for everybody take a picture with talk to whatever they want you know I'd be hanging out for of them I wouldn't leave my own booth I wouldn't walk around I wouldn't even leave for lunch four days I'll let you guys go on with it okay all right I don't know why you're going to shake my hand anyway but yeah it's fun it's um we have a good environment like everybody here gets along really good I we'll have them over and we'll have beers and stuff and get you know get together after after work and we we all like to watch not all of us but a lot of us like to watch Formula 1 and so they'll come over and watch Formula 1 together her husband's uh in the military and uh so they'll come over and stuff and it's a good time it's impressive like I said you you know um one of the things I told you earlier I've been to so many factories MH there's always something unique about each one something very common about each one but no one is running that I know of and I'm 30 you're number 36 I think right no one's running this much custom stuff yeah you know um and and that's and it's and that's not even including the time frames and stuff I mean most places are taking two years you know um but like I said this is a logist I look I'm looking around people can't see me looking around I'm looking around it's a logistics nightmare which is impressive that you guys pull it off because like you said it's almost like you have to do every day you guys have to start from scratch on every guitar there is no like oh it's easy we're just going to do 10 of these or run a 50 of those um one thing I looked for was I looked to see if there was like just a you know the same ones popping up but I don't even see that they seem like they're all over the place they are and with that custom virtual ability build um the guitars have become so unique now you know before what would happen is before we had the Builder I would post something on my personal Instagram people would be like they'd call my guys I want something just like that so we would see a few of the same guitar pop through here because maybe I gave him an idea now you got the virtual Builder and you can see what it looks like so you know anybody that hasn't hopped over to our virtual builder needs to just to take a look and and it's it's crazy I mean I'll look at auto manufacturers high-end auto manufacturers like you look at Porsche and you go build a car on Porsche their virtual Builder sucks in comparison to what we do I mean our virtual Builder kicks their ass and they're a multi-billion dollar year company and here we are the small guitar company you know big I guess for custom but still in the big scheme of things we're a small guitar company you know 4,000 custom guitars a year I mean what is Fender and Gibson do in a day yeah you know I mean I don't know do they do uh 500 in a day some of them it they can't well yeah Fender could be 400 a day there you go yeah so in 10 days they do what we do in a year in two weeks they do what we do in a year and uh you know that's a different it's a it's a different product it's a different use and they they make great stuff I'm not knocking them um you know you just look at what we do and how custom it is and for the most part you still get a 10day trial period there's some options you get that we're not going to let people return but who does that we're going to build you a guitar in this time frame with these amazing Woods this these amazing Hardware features pickups in a short period of time and let you return it if you don't love it one of the cool things on your Builder that you gu when you guys redid the Builder right that I love is you can save it and you can share it yeah and uh I found that helped me a lot because you build it and then you're just you you just don't know you get the option paralysis but if when I save it and share it I can send it to somebody and have you know some one of my buddies will be like oh really I'm like yeah I like it yeah no I mean and that's that's a thing and we've uh we have eliminated a lot of things we to stop people from doing things we can't do you know and that's where the Builder is evolved it's like oh well we can't even do that we shouldn't you know because it it's hard with all the endless amounts of combinations it's a very very hard thing to get a handle on and we've done a really good job we do it all in house so and it continues to evolve you know I mean we will add more options not new options but we'll add not saying we'll never add new options of course we're going to add them but we're we're going to continue to add things to the Builder that people would normally need to call in like one of our finishes that's really popular is Monster burst or reverse monster burst those are finishes I do I want to add that to the builder at some point um so people will will be able to order things like that online at some point they still are non-r returnable any anything I do finish work on we just make it non-r returnable I don't have my time is so limited that I'm gonna work on something for you I'm not going to take it back and try to sell it to somebody else because chances are someone at that price point 3500 and up one option's wrong they're out they're already spend $3500 they're not going to get one thing different than they want and that's what people don't understand is well the guitar is so beautiful why would you say it's non- returnable shouldn't it be easy to sell a lot of times the more expensive guitars are harder to sell because people are willing to wait they want exactly what they want it's the guitars that are more basic like a black RW T te even though we don't do Returns on Raw tone that would be really easy to resell you know just because you know it's only so many things you're going to add on a $2,000 guitar want you guys to meet my son you met you met my uh you met my dad here's my boy yeah my my my little boy look at this guy yeah look at this guy yeah so Zach um still going to school but uh doing you know some marketing for us helping us he's the reason why we started to stream on YouTube and got the good camera so uh Zach was Hey Dad let's step it up you know what you're doing we got to you know really bring a higher quality and he's had some good ideas he's even done his own little guitar run at one point when you were what 17 yeah 17 17 yeah so that was cool but yeah that's Zach so and Kayla I don't know where she is is Kayla here she's at school oh she's at school okay so they're both in college so Zach's 23 um Kayla's 22 so they're both in college finishing finishing up and um it's great having them you know and they both love this business they're both really into music Kayla's more into country Zach's into metal um and uh so it's cool hopefully they uh they take this and uh step it up to the next level someday yeah well on that note we we'll leave on that that's a great note to leave on yeah we'll go get some lunch thank you so much for the tour this was very amazing hey no problem of course all right guys thank you and uh I'm going to you know what I going say you know your gear at the end of the show but you got to say don't forget to call my guys sure don't forget to call my guys 858 get guars or log on Kel guitars.com
