2021 Year In Review.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] welcome to the 2021 year end review and uh i do this every year this one is going to be different in how i film it i want to just be more relaxed and sit here and have my screen in front of me i've done them in the past where i've used my phone and i've even done some where i wrote all of them down in the back of my cable bill just so i can keep track of it but now i have a spreadsheet in front of me so we can actually get involved into the videos also i'd like to point out that this year we did about 160 170 videos for the year and 51 of them were reviews so as always the majority of the videos on the channel are not reviews so thank you so much to the patrons and everyone else who supports the channel so when we don't have kind of like product sponsors or something like that to make content i can still make all the content that uh that i think you guys like and uh so you know it's called the 2021 year in review but it starts from when we did the last year year in review so there was one video last year that did not get captured in last year's year in review so it'll be in this year and it's the colossus guitar i said the guitar had a lot of issues and there's a couple things to talk about with that important part is this the owner of colosskatars reached out to me and he listened to a lot of things i said and i worked with him for months back and forth on improving the guitar i learned that the neck is not carbon fiber it's a like a 3d printed kind of plastic impregnated with carbon fiber he was able to add two carbon fiber rods to the neck and that he was able to make it strong he was eventually able to send me one of the prototype guitars which i'm showing you right now and the neck is far better than it was before he also improved the bridge now i recommended that he do a string through the back uh bridge because of all the issues he was able to do a bridge that i think is improved but not a hundred percent better a lot of improvements still can be done but the bridge is improved and unfortunately he was not able to move or adjust the output jack and where it's positioned in the back but the important part is we were able to improve that instrument and so the newer ones are better than the ones before so i don't know if i could still recommend that guitar but i could recommend the new version over the old versions at least by saying they're better the next guitar i reviewed ironically was an aluminum neck guitar from illuminati and i put that on a fender body and i still have that neck and guitar i love it in fact um the only thing is when i did that they sent that neck out and i put it on a strap body and that was because i thought well maybe that would make a good video you know putting that neck on the body doing that since then i've kind of regretted i should have put on a tele body and that neck will eventually go on a tele body and i'm going to keep that i love that neck uh it feels great it's stable uh it it just man the notes pop out it's just something different and everyone smile when i want to play something like that it's just kind of nice the next video i did was the black star id core v3 it was affordable it sounds good and i really think it could have been improved by a more up-to-date uh usb plug port but again not the end of the world just that was my suggestion other than that it was very good amp and for a fraction of the price or half the price i should say of a spark i would say that you could get that and get in that spark range um i have a spark and i'd say the sparks a little better but it's it's pretty close for like i said for for a hundred hundred fifty dollars versus the two two fifty for the spark then i did the paul reed smith essie arize verdi i also right after that did the zack myers psse and uh i loved both those guitars in fact i ended up getting something that i thought worked perfect and uh i don't know how uh it all came together but it came together i was able to get a paul reed smith custom 22 semi-hollow and with some of the features i loved about the zach myers which is the matching uh headstock is flame to the body and uh this has got the neck that's not as chunky as the zack meyers but not as thin as the uh the custom 24 sc neck everything about this guitar i love except for i'm not a huge fan of the pickups i mean they're good they're not great i'm going to upgrade these pickups and uh this guitar you've seen in a bunch of videos so that's kind of happened that's kind of what happened with those guitars next video i did was the exonic which is a pedal that you can use to control amplifiers you can use it to start and stop videos on youtube you can use it to control and uh features on your spark it's midi controllable it's bluetooth controllable and i have to say i still use that pedal i still have one i like it very much like i said the added benefit now that it can control your spark next video was the court g 300 guitar that was sent out by court that was a loner so of course i don't have it because as soon as it got here had to go back uh you're going to notice something on the channel i think i did three-quart guitars in a period of 12 months you guys whenever i do a video of a guitar man they sell a lot of guitars and that has nothing to do with me it has to do with you and when they sell a lot of guitars you can see they they really come back to and they say hey can we do more of these videos uh the last one did good let's do another one let's do another one and so that's why i try not to get caught in that doing the same brands over and over again but it's really tough because um when they're sending you know brand sends a product out it really helps the momentum of doing the videos financially and that leads me into where we go next which is the next guitar i did was the ltd eclipse that was a video like the ones i'm gonna be talking about in a row right here and you guys kept saying hey why so many of the same guitars so i bought an ltd that guitar was fantastic and of course i don't have it because i sold it immediately anytime i'm buying a guitar just to show you guys or do the video i buy the guitar and then immediately flip it most of the time it's some kind of loss just to get it on the channel and mostly to break up the monotony of otherwise like i said this would just feel like infomercials for the same brands over and over again whenever i can spread out the brands and be you know i like to keep it fresh and plus it's good for me keeps things fun for me that guitar was fantastic um but like i said i had to go for for the next video which the next video was the ibanez rg565 in japan which i thought was a beautiful guitar came in the orange if you guys remember the video the frets had a few issues they were sticking out so i corrected that beautiful guitar i love it thousand dollars made in japan quality instrument i didn't keep it because of course like i said i had to sell it to churn into the next video and the next video was the g l asat classic main usa another fantastic guitar like i said i bought that guitar at uh i think that was uh music store live i bought that from i guess if you guys continue to ask if i want g and you know to put gmail's back on the channel i will do them um i reached out to gnl and see if they were interested in sending any of the tributes more affordable ones and uh they were not so unfortunately um you know to get g l on the channel i got to keep buying them so it's uh it's up to you guys i really need to hear your guys kind of roaring comments uh of what brands you want to see on the channel for me to spend the money to buy those guitars to get them on the channel the next one was the thorn buckers again i bought the set of thorn buckers fantastic pickups i still love them absolutely um they're not in any specific guitar right now i put them in a strat checked them out in that i liked them put them in a les paul checked around that right now they're just in my cartridges for my interchangeable guitar and so that way i can play them whenever i want and i still like them a lot and i think one day they'll probably find themselves permanently in one of the guitars somewhere i just don't know where yet the next uh video i did was the sustainiac pickup again another request by you guys hey could you get a sustainiac on the channel i reached out to americanmusicsupply and they were kind enough to send it out so we could check that out very cool system very impressed it led me to buying a sinister gate uh uh schecter that i have currently now with the sustaniak uh because i'm a huge sinister gates fan uh and a huge uh vincent full fan and of course now i have a sustaining economic guitar so that gets obviously made an impression on me that video in that pickup because now i have one in another guitar then we did the uh sterling axis and that guitar was fantastic they sent that out i have to say that was one of those like i blew me away uh with the quality and the playability and the feel of the guitar it was fantastic what's nice about that guitar is they left that guitar and one of my patrons alan's music uh asked if he could buy it he bought the guitar and he did a video so i'll put a link to his video review of it because he actually reviewed it and that tells you something um because he actually physically bought it so it'll let you know how much of what i said was accurate or how much of it he probably didn't agree with and and what have you but at least it gives you a kind of range of the guitar the next video was again you guys requested over and over again the fender tone master series of amps i was like okay what can we do here and so i went and i bought a fender deluxe tone master and i did the video and i did the video 10 things that i think that will make you not want to buy it in 10 reasons i think you would want to buy it because i have to say like i said in that video i hold up to it it was a very good amplifier it sounded really cool it's got a lot of things going for it the only thing i really dinged it for for the most for me is the expense i mentioned other things i think other players might have issue with me personally the only issue for me was the expense it was pretty expensive amplifier which is why i don't have it to this day is i bought it and then of course i you know it's a lot of money to put out for something that i didn't intend to to buy for myself it wasn't something that was on a wish list of mine personally for a while a long time so i uh i sold it and flipped it so we can put into the next product which happened to be the sire l7 you can see how this works i buy the product they do the video i sell the product off take that money and we buy another product i did a video because you requested it i bought the product i did the video and then they reached out afterwards and said man you make great videos can we get some more products on the on the channel and they sent out some more sires so we'll be doing some videos on those uh coming soon and that was great you know like i said it's you guys that do that it's your support it's either the the the effort you put into putting the views and putting the thumbs ups and putting the comments so that the algorithms can take the video and grow it a little bit or a lot of you just flat out reach out to the company saying hey i enjoyed this video and you should have more of this stuff on these channels um so that you know so that uh so that you can enjoy more i sold the sire l7 i rarely really have to say out of all the guitars that i had to sell that one was really bugging me i almost didn't do it and then i i did it and uh what i do i took that money and i bought the next video that you're going to see which is the reverend usa now there's a there was an issue with that video and the issue was a lot of you were like well yeah but reverend doesn't make guitars in the usa why'd you buy the usa one i actually was not familiar with reverend so you know i've said that before i wasn't familiar with their brand and how it worked i knew just a little about them i went on reverb and looked at prices and what i saw was a really cool reverend with a case and it was a really impressive and it was a super good price so i bought it what i didn't know at the time was it was the usa model i wasn't paying attention to that i was really focused on just getting a reverend at a good price uh so i can get on the channel so when i sell it i don't take a beating and it was a really unique initial interesting guitar and i'll talk about later i'll talk about the later when i get to the next reverend but uh that was a really cool video and of course i sold that guitar and and turned it into another product so that we can do another video the next product i did was the revolta guitar it was a very cool guitar and i hopefully will see more of them on the channel i just don't know uh if we'll see any more they sent the one and it didn't get the most glaring you know glowing review it got a good review it's a very good guitar but we'll see hopefully you know they'll like to send some more to the channel um and like i said we'll see but other than that uh yeah nothing really big on that like i said just it did okay it was a good a good guitar the next video was the mark letieri prs guitar i thought it was okay so i i did the comparison it was fine obviously went back to prs and uh i didn't i didn't ask them for any kind of like pricing or anything on that because again i wasn't interested the next video i did was the uh paul reed smith r con amp that was a new one as you guys know is a huge archon fan i had the original the new one came i did the video if you guys remember that one had a blemish in it we talked about that uh and uh and uh that was the one you know minor issue with it but it had a minor issue um sound wise it sounded better than the original um now better is the wrong word to use different than the original right but one of the things it did is it kind of at lower volume sounded fuller and actually the gain when you backed it off it got crunchy instead of you know the archon's like high gain and then it goes kind of clean and the new archon can kind of go in the sweet spot what i will tell you is i like that archon so much i sold my old archon because i would rather have the new one that one had to go back to prs so it went back and i couldn't find another one since then and after about a couple months of just waiting and trying to figure it out i ended up getting a bogner and so now i have a bogner ecstasy and like i said before if it wasn't just the times that we're having now where it's just hard to find product and there's all kinds of supply chain supply chain issues i think i just would have got the new archon but i'm happy with the bogner i'm happy it worked out and uh and that's where i ended okay the next product i did was the epiphone muse now i bought that epiphone as well um that was again you guys mentioned epiphone and uh so i after you know so many times of hearing you guys like epiphone at the phone i bought an epiphone muse uh it was a very cool guitar i personally think the sire was a better instrument and um obviously i did buy both those guitars but i bought them for the channel if i was buying one for me personally uh i would buy the sire but i'm a big epiphone fan as i said before many times i'm a big epiphone fan and uh it was really cool and it was really cool to do the video i'm glad you guys enjoyed it it looked like it did really well um if you guys want to see more epiphones you let me know like i said i'll have to purchase them but i have no problem doing that to get some interesting content on the channel now the next one was for me and it's a single cut bevel kizel like i said about sire one thing i want to give the keys guys credit for is i bought a keyzone in 2019 because again you guys kept saying oh phil you're missing out the keys that's the way to go and so i bought a keisel vader i did the video that video did well the keys guys took notice and basically said hey man thanks to the video that's really cool that you bought a guitar just to show it on the channel and highlight our brand and uh we want to appreci you know we want to show our appreciation so they sent me a delos and uh i like that dello so much and my vader which by the way i still both have i have the one that i bought and the one they sent me and i like that so much i was like okay let's do something something exciting and so i did the single cut bevel and the purple crackle that is definitely my favorite guitar this year um because of course i spec it out exactly it was built exactly uh to my liking to my to my desire and it's a fantastic instrument the next video was the dod american medal that was my very first uh paddle so i bought another dod american american metal pedal and tried it i absolutely did not like it in the video i think i highlighted that it was like it was very obviously telling the video in the video that i was like oh this is okay it's okay it was an okay pedal um it's okay you know sometimes the saying is you can't go back right you can't go can't go home uh i i'm sure it's not a horrible pedal and i'm sure i'm probably exaggerating a little bit but i think it's because remember i have to react to not only the pedal but the memory of that pedal and the memory of the pedal was oh yeah and uh it was it was okay so i didn't keep it obviously it didn't do anything for me i knew i wouldn't use it so the next video i did was the court x 500 minutes and again this was court saying hey the last video did so great let's send another chord out and again it was a loner they send the guitar out and then of course as soon as i'm done uh and i'm pretty sure on that one if you guys are curious i'm pretty sure that guitar is at or went to glen fricker so i think he did a video because i think that's what they do with those guitars they just send them around to the channels or whatever you know maybe guitar magazines and so that's what happened great guitar uh everything i said in that video there were some couple issues but not very many and then a couple things i love about it nothing about that guitar sticks out they're the video that i have to correct or add to i just and why i don't have it is because it went back the next one i did was the firefly guitar video and of course that one went viral because you know inexpensive guitar videos tend to go huge sometimes and that was one but of course in that video i was really went through that guitar that was one of those guitars again so many of you just kept talking about i didn't have to buy that one they sent it out they reached out and said hey would you like to do a video and i'm like as soon as i saw the email the name firefly i was like oh i've heard that so many times on the podcast that's got to be a brand to talk to so i emailed back and i said yeah please send one out um i love that guitar for a lot of reasons one a lot of you guys always say like well if they send it out how do you know it's you know it's it's it's right that's definitely a guitar thing a guitar player think to me if a company sends out a guitar if they rig it so that they send me a perfect specimen i think that's worse for them than better for them i always tell you guys over and over again and i'll say this over and over and over again if you see me do a video and the guitar is perfect and i say man everything is flawless and this guitar is amazing and you get one it's not take my video link and send it when you complain obviously this is proof that they can make a guitar like that if i do a video on the guitar is not great then you know that that one specimen came and it's a probability that there you might get a bad specimen if i get a good specimen and it's great well then you know it's possible for them to do a good guitar but like i said before one video is not all guitars whether it's good or bad but more importantly like i said if you think they rigged it well if you get it and it's not like that well then complain tell them and and my video is now evidence that well if they say that's how they come then like why didn't this one get it if if they sent it to me um so you know the reason i tell you that is that's exactly what i tell the companies when i'm emailing them back and forth whatever you send me please send me what you send everyone because that is the benchmark you're setting out there for yourselves so that's just my opinion uh for whatever it is and in that particular video that was a kind of further proof of what i always say that they don't really even look or care you have to understand everybody thinks that there's this uh nefarious kind of like propaganda logic when it comes to these youtube channels you have to understand that most the time the person you're talking to doesn't even work for these companies they're just in marketing or sales and sometimes they do work for the company but they're really just overworked and trying to get boxes checked like i gotta get 20 of these guitars out to social media guitar magazines whatever and get the news out of the guitars and so that all happens and the other thing is no matter what you might think of my channel maybe you have an internal value maybe that watching me for a few years or watching the views maybe connects you to me personally but a lot of companies i'm just another youtuber that they see everywhere and they're where a dime a dozen and you know what i mean it means nothing they're not thinking like oh no what if this video gets viral or what if this person's has some kind of influence you know out there it's none of that stuff comes to mind in my experience with most the time and firefly proved that to me that guitar they sent it and uh and uh as you guys know i sanded the sides of the pickup ring or the pickup cavities and the truss rod to show that the woods weren't the woods they said there was a bunch of issues with that guitar we talked about and that in particular when there's so many issues like that with a guitar i always send a link to the company first to show them the video is coming out that way and ask them for some kind of response so i can edit in what they said for instance like with prs and the defective archon amp with the issue i sent that to them they responded in that video i said they said that they're sorry that it happened but they'll they'll take the time to look at all the other amps to make sure they don't have that for other customers so in firefly's case they didn't respond and didn't matter to them that it was like that it just what is what it is it was it's a 200 guitar and if you want to buy it you want to buy it and if you don't you don't the next video i did was the behringer pedals now again i bought the behringer pedals that was from sweetwater that was on a podcast you guys suggested we should get some or review some i bought uh six of them and reviewed them i really enjoyed those pedals like i said um i said everything everything in that video i still hold to which is they were good quality pedals and you know yeah i mean to be honest like i said i would use a few of them no problem and like i said i bought them because you guys requested them to do the video and so after i did the video i basically took the entire pedal board that i made for that video the pedal board all the cables the power supplies everything and i sold it as one package and the person who got it was super happy and they told me that it sounded fantastic and so it's at a great home now and i thought that'd be a little fun instead of just selling off the pedals to actually take the entire thing i made in that video and let it go but then the next video i did was the dimarzio pick up for the fortitude i still love that pickup and i still have it in many of my guitars i have uh like i said i have six fortitude sets are three sets of six in different guitars love them fantastic pickups i'm still happy with them still love them the pedal pal 800 that was definitely my favorite pedal of the year it is the pedal that made me sell off my 800 jc 100 studio basically i was looking for that sound that marshall sound at a lower volume that pedal just does it for me you just plug in that pedal i can run into the effects of an amp in the front of a fender amp i can run into my recording interface and run some cabinet irs with it whatever i do it just sounds fantastic i love that pedal and i will say this over and over again if you don't like that pedal if you try and you don't like it you probably just don't like the marshall 800 sound so it's okay that's okay and i absolutely love it the next video i did was the bad cat cub 40 and let me tell you that amp changed my life very few things you can say that about you know very rare uh pieces of product that change your life that that amp changed my life and the main reason is is because it's so different than everything i've ever tried before it and since it and you know i knew about matchless and i knew about those kind of amps and i've played a few but i never really had the time to spend with them and i want to thank bad cat for sending that out and let me spend some time with that amp and to to kind of let you know i still have the amp i'm never going to get rid of that amp i absolutely love it um what i found for me personally is it's my go-to amp all the time i'm playing it all the time it's definitely the amp i'm using the most uh since i since i've got it since i just keep drawing to it for the channel i use it a lot but sometimes not all the time because again there's a sound to it that's very unique and cool and maybe for a review purpose it's not not what i need but i can tell you that i have been recording a lot in the last two years um recording a lot of music and more than i've ever done before and almost everything i'm recording i have the bad cat in that recording so that tells you a lot it's the go-to for the sound the next video i did was the bogner mini head that was probably the most expensive video i've ever done as i told you guys i did the archon and then i sold my old archon i was looking for the new archon and really that's the timeline that makes sense so you have me i sold my old archon there's supply chain issues there's no no new archon to get i'm waiting for the archon you know right i'm waiting to you know when's it going to come in and then i get the bagner mini sent to me and i play that and i just really dig it and uh and then it starts like getting me going like maybe i should look at bogner's so that bogner mini ecstasy kind of led me down to like okay instead of maybe getting the new archon i'll get the bogner ecstasy which is what i did and uh i absolutely love it um i didn't keep the bogger mini because uh after a while of comparing the two i'm like i got the i got the full size bogder um funny story though is that i was trying to show my buddy ralph that the bogger mini is good but not as good as the the real head and when i turned him on to show him that i didn't turn him up because i was trying not to be loud and they sounded almost identical he was looking at me like why did you just buy that expensive man for him and then of course you turn him up you're like oh see now the real bogner's the full-size boggers really kicking it but at lower volumes man i think you could really if you're practicing at night that bogner sounds like a bogner to me so really cool little amp the next amp i did was the ingle ironball se and i have to say that it was a very versatile amplifier it's very very good i still have the amp uh i like it more than my mark 5 mini in a lot of ways except for the clean channel and the mark 5 mini i think is just a little fuller sounding that was the only edge i give to the mark 5 mini the only reason i say this because i've had the mark 5 mini for about five years now um the ingle fireball uh our sorry engel iron ball sc i think is a fantastic amplifier i still like my fireball more a being back and forth but a lot of that has to do with there's just a little bit more punch in the fireball's distortion channel just a little bit and the clean channel is fuller that's it the feature set on the iron ball is is great everything about that amp is just it's a stellar amplifier it's really really nice um it's fantastic obviously like i said that's why i still have it the next one i did was the reverend charger humbucker guitar i did the reverend usa one we were talking about a podcast and and the people at sweetwater were watching the podcast listening to it and they heard the banter of you guys saying we should get a korean made a modern reverend in here they had just picked the line reverend so they sent one out now that one was a loner so i had to go right back so i don't have it and i was able to review that one and what i can tell you was obviously in that video it was flawless it was a great guitar i had a lot of great things to say about it looking back to the american one the american one i couldn't say it's better because again i try not to think that way but what i will tell you there is a uniqueness to the main usa ones a craziness and i know a lot of it is the the uh the like the materials they're using you know the phenolic kind of uh body uh that they're using that's chambered but all that stuff aside there's just something about the usa ones that just kind of like feels different like it doesn't feel like anything else and it's kind of unique and it's got its own thing going on but that being said i think the average player i think would like the new reverends way better they seem more just dialed in there's you know there's just something about that um reverend uh like i said they had to have it back if they would have left it i would have kept it so for sure i wouldn't got rid of that guitar at all um if if i could have i probably would have picked one of one of the different versions than than the charger but something like it but just slightly different but that charger the way it sat that would be a different guitar i would put in rotation and play all the time i had no see no reason to get rid of it but like i said it was a loner it had to go then i did the diesel amp that was the mini amplifier that was a cool amplifier the diesel's got the you know the high gain 5150 sound a lot of people a lot of viewers have asked me which one did i like out of the three mini heads so far the the uh wagner the diesel or the freeman i like the friedman the most and i haven't reviewed the friedman i have it because there's another one coming and i'm supposed to end the channel and when that one comes i'd like to actually do a comparison of those two because now that i've played the bogner and the diesel and the friedman i like the freedom and most of the three and so i would like to now compare the friedman instead of doing it you know an individual video of the freeman because there's so many out there do a comparison video i did the prsmira essie and that was prs asked it there you know again they're like hey the videos have done great is there another video you'd like to do because again it gets people and i said yeah could we do a giveaway i figured since they keep coming back to the channel let's let's see if we can spread the the love and i said well my favorite one of my favorite ps is the mira can we do amira and they said yeah we can send an se so we sent an essay and i did a giveaway with it uh guitar was great i like it uh obviously my main one of my main guitars is a ps mirror i use it all the time it's a daily uh playing guitar for sure and um the se was not far from it it had a lot of the features that i liked the neck feels great everything plays sounds great feels great it's a great guitar inkshi telly this is the the t style ink she guitar there was a couple issues with guitar we talked about the issues the owner of inkshi mo had emailed me specifically and said thank you for pointing those things out what can we do to improve what can we do better and um so you know i gave him a suggestion he said they're they're doing that and he goes everything you said which is way more than they should ever have to do uh he said they've fixed um which again those are very minor issues it was just for the price of the guitar and it's a new brand it needs to be kind of perfect idea and other than that i still have the guitar and i still love it funny thing about that guitar is it's definitely a guitar that i just don't see myself getting rid of ever because it's just so nice the overall quality guitar is just fantastic then i did the d'angelico guitar which is another brand again you guys said hey we need to get that on the channel and uh believe it or not that was again that was sweet water listening to the podcast saying hey we have d'angelico can we send one out and i said yeah can we do a giveaway again trying to spread the love a little bit and so that guitar that was probably that was the first guitar i think i've ever opened out of a box and instantly regretted my idea of like let's do a giveaway it was a horrible idea i should have kept that guitar was so nice but uh it was just a guitar that i was like okay i have a guitar like that i have a hollow body just like this i have a guitar like this do i really need another one and so uh i'm just happy enough to get you know getting a product to to make content and so to send it out and i did the giveaway and it's in a nice home now and the person who has it i'm sure loves it then of course firefly came back and said man that last video did so good can we do another one they sent a semi hollow out that was the green es-335 style guitar that one was actually better than the first one they sent me so now if you want to say like maybe they upped the game uh you know for the review they might have done that i don't know but overall the guitar was very very good i still have the guitar then i did the vela uh the vella versus vela so semi hollow versus solid body as of now i still like both but i just can't justify having two velos and uh i flip-flop some days i think okay it is the hollow body and then i go no no it's the solid body and um i don't know so i think mostly what it is is in that video if you notice this is a perfect thing about youtube and this is why sometimes it's nice to do follow-up videos in the youtube video it's about the sound it sounds good i think the semi-hollow had a more punchy mid-range sound there's things i liked about it was fuller sounding i liked it i still feel that way but the not the different not the the guitars themselves it's just these individual guitars and these two individual guitars for some reason the neck on the solid one just feels perfect everything about the solid one feels great when i play it i just feel connected to it uh they're the same neck profile same guitars just you know how that goes just one guitar feels a little extra special and my in this case the solid one sounds feels a little extra special so i'm trying to decide what i care about more how it feels when i play them or how they sound and i'll tell you how it ends up but right now i'm leaning towards the feel but the sound is a big deal as well then we did the orange crush 120 and that was again you guys saying hey would you you know phil you never review orange so i reached out to american musical supply to see if they could send out a crush and they sent out the 120. so i i did it a lot of you guys liked the video a couple you said hey why don't you do the new one uh it's cause that's what they sent out you know i said hey let's do that one they didn't have the new one in so i said let's send out something crushed i was really trying to get a combo like the crush 30. i thought that would be fantastic the original idea was to do a crush 30 versus the katana video i thought that would be a great video maybe help some people during christmas to kind of decide which practice i have to go with but uh ams didn't have the crush 30 so they're like how about the crush 120 fantastic uh so i did the video and it's really cool i did not end up keeping it because i don't really need 120 watt solid-state head wasn't something i i was actively looking for for me personally like i said i was just looking for content to talk about and maybe look at and i have to tell you uh it did what i'm sure a lot of you hoped it did it put orange in a new perspective to me i'm really now an orange fan and i will be buying an orange amp soon soon being in time but i don't know which one and i'll but soon you'll see one on the channel because i'll like i said i'll buy one for myself and i don't know if i'll do solid state or tube yet i haven't decided universal ox video i was super impressed like i said in that video there's a couple things that there's issues with it that i didn't like but a lot of things i love about it it opened up my ears and eyes to a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts and a lot of things and it's really cool the downside of course is the price point it's a very expensive product especially if it you know it's not only out of your budget but especially if it's something that you think you're not going to utilize a lot i think it's really best suited for some live applications but mostly recording applications the next product i did was the dummies which are those uh plugs what i left out was a lot of times when i'm plugging uh speakers uh cables into amps i tilt the whole half stack or amplifier towards me and i look over like this and then i kind of like you know look right and as you know the amps are dark in the back and you get your flashlight you're looking behind this because a lot of times you can't walk behind it so i tilt it and you know you're always like afraid the thing's gonna fall over and especially in my rig sometimes i have two or three heads and i'm tilting them forward and and uh now i don't have to do that because i can reach behind and i can just feel wherever there's not those plugs uh that's the way the the cable goes in i really should have mentioned what i just told you in the video so i am now then i did the vintage pedal of vnta g pedal which is a clone clone pedal fantastic company they build their own pedals they build their own casings they they do everything themselves which is really unique in this industry a lot of pedal companies don't do 100 of this stuff themselves or even half and they do so let me just say there's going to be more pedals on the channel from those guys i really liked it obviously i still have it and uh hopefully they'll we'll have other pedals from them coming soon i did the captur x so two notes uh sent out the captor x unit and i gotta say uh thank them for that because they sent it out because i said hey i have the aux i really like it i love my cabin by the way and i still love my cabin uh product from two notes it's uh it's everything i want more for a product but it doesn't have the attenuation and i said it would really be nice if i could actually compare the capture x to it comparing capture x to the to the uh uua aux i really have to say like i said in that video it's everything you need for a fraction of the price and it's actually better in a lot of categories and there's some some things where it has it's not as good as the ua stuff but just i gotta tell you unless you just fall in love with the aux there's no reason just not go the uh the captain away for that it's just a fantastic product like i like i said i did i think a fair assessment that but overall i think overall the captor wins and then last video i did was the seldano i did the slo30 i did a comparison video with that comparing it to the 5150 but mostly it was kind of to review the seldano that was a personal amp i bought i think that's just what i want to hit again is uh uh it records so well and and that's the thing about it in the room i prefer the 5150 i just think it feels good it sounds good um i like a little bit of the punches punchiness of the seldom but overall the seldom has a very very 80s 90s metal sound where the evh has got more of the modern sound so i think that's where you have to decide where your ear is on this if you want to go for the more the vintage kind of metal sound or the more modern metal sound if that's a way to kind of think of things and then price point of course helps but like i said of the two if i could only keep one i would keep the evh so there you go there's my 2021 year in review what i thought of the gear uh do i still like it do i still you know have it what happened is there anything i want to add to the story i hope you guys enjoyed this video as always i want to thank you so much for supporting the channel for the time you spend with me i know it's valuable there's nothing more valuable in your time and that's why i think it's great that you spend some with me and i appreciate that there's other gear nerds out there people who love guitars amps music talking about it listening to it and i appreciate you guys including me and part of your you know entire and your your time i guess that's what i want to say thank you so much for your time and know your gear [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 31,160

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Id: W-Y5POe44HU

Length: 36min 16sec (2176 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021