New Guitars Now Cost Less Than Used Guitars. The Prices Have flipped. Here's Why

foreign how fast wheat water can ship the know your gear podcast hey everyone how's it going I hope you guys had a fantastic week Welcome to the New Year gear podcast episode 300 and something we stopped Counting so we I hope you guys had a fantastic week and we have a lot of questions to talk about a lot of subjects to talk about uh as you guys know you can send questions or subjects too uh knowyourgearpodcast.com and what's nice is though is uh Mrs know your gear or Mrs McKnight she basically filters those for me she checks them out and picks ones for me or at least she's right now which is really kind of nice because it's not something I would normally grab you know something when she sent me wasn't ones I'd go yeah yeah that's great so what's what's cool is maybe we'll get some new perspective on questions obviously you can ask a question here please put a question mark first or you can super chat if you want to try to make sure it happens especially on the later half because I always try to go into Extra Innings with the super chats and um and as always we have stuff to talk about I should point out uh that I want to thank everyone who bought one of the uh I got drunk and fast and found out how fast Sweet Water could ship shirts and now that I'm thinking about it I didn't put a link for them I think today's the last day if you're interested it's on last week's broadcast I'll try and post it onto this show if you're interested in getting one uh the uh half the proceeds of that shirt is going to go to Ralph to make his next mistake so and I'll let you guys know what that might be or what mine might be all right we have so many things to talk about uh let's what should we do jump into the main subject jump into some early questions Let's uh let's do a little both let's jump around a little bit let's have some fun uh the first question I grabbed for the uh the early risers was from Bud who says Phil what would be your current recommendation as a parent that is buying a guitar an amp for a teen uh what would you pick to keep them playing and able to build off in the future I would say first don't worry about gear the the guitars the amps uh you know not not even especially the amp not not relevant um you know just a decent quality guitar don't worry about worrying about your expense it's not important in other words like I'm not going to tell you like buy at least a three or five hundred dollar guitar that's not true just buy a good quality guitar if you are watching the show you're probably a guitar player you probably know how to Source One if not maybe go to a crack edible mom and pop store that you can trust or get recommendations from Friends of trust and get a affordable instrument and that's just your affordable means your budget whatever you're comfortable with your budget the next thing you want to do is get them into lessons the reason is is this there's a lot of competition to not play guitar anymore I said last week that I got into guitar because I was bored I was sick of watching Gilligan's uh Gilligan's Island reruns I started playing guitar I I might have had it think about how beautiful that is I mean literally I learned guitar because not because I had this beautiful desire to want to learn guitar I loved music but it was because like literally it was better than doing nothing that is the last problem a teenager has today is there's so many distractions so and if you can't afford lessons I understand that get them a lesson program right um you know like I said but have some kind of infrastructure behind them because that is more important how good the guitar sounds is not relevant everything that they gonna play is going to sound like crap for a little while anyways and of course every success they have whether it's it's uh just minor of playing a song you know that just sounds okay they're gonna think it sounds good because again you're kind of critiquing yourself and you're feeling like you're growing and advancing because they are so just get them infrastructure get them support and that is more important than anything else uh because um because that's where that's the problem they will never give up because they're like man if only my parents got me good tone I would have kept with it I've never heard that right um in fact everybody who's ever came and said hey I'm getting back into guitar I started it as a teenager which is a very common thing or I wish I started as a teenager another common thing usually the reasons are other things not you know oh my guitar wasn't very good it is a it is the thing that they do say like my guitar wasn't very good and that kind of you know discouraged me but mostly it was I had other things going on or worse they had bad things going on you know whatever and um Brands like bad tone parents bad tone parents uh so like I said that's what I would do I would invest in that and and so you know I would highly uh tell you to take the money that you would have bought more like a better amp put that into some kind of lessons or infrastructure there like I said and stay with the guitar don't focus on the guitar in the beginning just get them a good quality guitar that they like um you know maybe set a budget for them and take them with you so they're invested in and they get to pick out the instrument and then get them into some kind of lessons lessons are for sure a great way to go and again if you don't have the ability for lessons whether it's just not around you or financial find some other lesson platform and get them involved in that get them get them get them going you know let's that's my that's my advice uh and uh Michael's question was upgraded my uh upgraded my Floyd Rose on his prsdw Dusty Warren Paul Reed Smith okay uh when I pulled the trim just pulling it back the block is hitting the inside of the bottom and bottoming out okay so it's it uh is there a Floyd sitting too high or low thoughts no it's probably because the new fluid has a bigger block and the block is either longer or thicker or both and those are uh affecting that to probably fix it and again I'm not looking at it I don't know for sure because I haven't worked on that particular model and had to deal with that particular problem but listening to your um I'm gonna treat this like if you came in the shop and you told me the problem what would I think is going it's going to cost or what you're going to need I would say without looking at it we're probably going to have to Route the hole in the back a little bit bigger to accommodate that block if that's something you're not willing to do with that guitar then I would suggest unfortunately changing out the block uh to a different size block and I know what you're thinking oh no you know low mass block all the tone will go away well believe it or not they make different shape blocks they make high mass blocks in different shapes thinner longer or fatter shorter I mean so there is a way to modify that bridge to accommodate that so it may not necessarily be a permanent modification of the guitar so much as a just a pain in the ass modification to the to the to the Floyd because the changing out the block isn't the easiest thing to do but it's not hard it's just time wise it's a pain yes time wise not call Wise so that would be my suggestion and again not looking at it just hearing what you have so um Derek wants to know he came early just to ask one question and he wants to know what was the first guitar I ever dreamed of owning the very first guitar I ever dreamed of owning is still a guitar I've never owned which was the Ibanez Universe in swirl um I do have an Ibanez rg7620 if you watched my seven things you don't know about the universe uh it explains why I have that one that is actually the basically the Stevi Universe original one the uh Stevi Universe was changed when they made the K7 guitars and all seven strings of course after that were changed so you have to have a an older seven six twenty or four twenty seven four twenty to have the appropriate neck if you care about that such thing um that was the guitar that I don't know why the passion Warfare cover just kind of spoke to me it was so crazy so many colors so much going on and uh as a young impressional guitar player um every guitar player that I thought was knew what they were talking about or was impressive or I you know kind of like that I personally knew they all just said like this is the greatest instrumental guitar album of all time so I got it and I was just like I didn't really know but I just heard like I obviously it was still stuff I couldn't play and so I got an Amber with that guitar and walked into guitars Etc music stores uh that's not there anymore down Tucson Arizona and they had one on the wall it was one thousand dollars it's literally a scene out of Wayne's World I walked in and it was one thousand dollars so you know one thousand dollars it was like watching one million dollars it was like it was one I mean I just one thousand dollars it was literally one million dollars to me at the time and uh I remember just like wanting that guitar and then funny enough about that uh guitar oh it's funny I have my swirl you know that's why I got the new I had to get it out of my system so right so I have the the seven string which is really what it's about if you want just the guitar and I wanted the swirl and I didn't own that one when I had this world and that one swirled and between this guitar and that guitar I've you know fed the fed the uh whatever the desire but uh so you know I have tried to buy a universe uh many times as World Universe over the years I even have a a story um when I finally started making money good money uh and doing well my wife uh took me to Vegas I think I talked about this I'm not a big Vegas guy but she it's the first time she took me to Vegas of course one of the things I pleaded for was when we were at Vegas could we go to at the time the largest guitar store in the world uh uh was uh Ed Romans and uh so we went there and we got there right at when they were closing and Ed Roman himself uh let us in so it was really strange if you've never been in that store it was a strange store it had a sign outside that said no children under 18. no talking and no cell phones that's what it said it said no talk no talking you weren't allowed to talk to you so we walked in the store as you would and uh there was a seven string it was the second time I ever saw one in my life in person it was on the wall brand new because they've been sitting there for years or at least it was used but he had it meant condition it was meant he wanted five thousand dollars at that time five thousand didn't feel like 1 million like it did when I first saw five thousand at time to give it perspective felt like 10 000 now right uh which is funny because with inflation I don't think that is correct it's probably but at the time 5000 just felt like like I said an insurmountable amount of money but this is my dream guitar so I looked at my wife and I said I have a credit card and she's she nodded like uh-huh okay she's like just play it first and make sure you love it and you know kind of like you could tell she was just like oh you know I don't you know I hope he doesn't do this right but she you know she understands she's known me since I was 13 years old so she knows this story so uh about why I wanted it and uh Ed Roman goes uh I said yeah I just want to try real quick and go Ed goes oh you can't try it the guy who buys this is going to want to make sure no one's ever tried it but you know or touched it so you can try it after you buy it and then my wife's like okay well we're leaving because she's like I'm not gonna let you spend that kind of money on a credit card uh and not let and not try it so why is that uh that happened and then it was a couple years after that now they've hit the crazy numbers now they're at 10 or 15 000. and here's the problem now and please don't send me suggestions I have friends that'll send me one's like here's one for sale and you know uh Austria and stuff they're always around the world somewhere the the thing about it now is that black guitar that I have that is almost specked identically like it made in Japan same neck right as far as I'm concerned close enough I paid 300 of that guitar maybe 350 either way 300 and there's no point that my brain can justify any amount of money now for the swirls just for the Finish because that's what would be different I'd have the inlays in the finish and uh you know and um I do have a gym I have a floral gym so to answer your question I guess uh I went too long on that story but the the answer your question is what guitar did I ever dream of owning uh was this I have in his universe and it's still a guitar I guess I dream about owning I just never never could uh pull that trigger so you know even when they did the reissues actually if you guys remember a few years ago they did three issues and I tried to get one I was actually an Ibanez dealer at the time I called um I've been just rep and I said I found out about the night before NAMM Show I said there's going to be a swirl one I want it uh I think that I think at that time it was gonna be five six thousand dollar Street and I forgot what dealer cost is but whatever it was I said I didn't care I just want one and uh as soon as I called him that night um it was like 10 30 at night Wednesday night before the nam I called him told him he goes yeah man he goes they were all sold out man already he goes we already kind of let all the bigger dealers buy them and they got them so that was it and of course those dealers flipped them for more money so there's your story there you go that's my I don't know if it's one I don't know if I have a story like it's got It's The One That Got Away and I still want it I mean trust me if the right circumstances came about like whether it was in a perfect addition or the right price or something came about I could see myself buying one but I just it would have to it would have to be the perfect situation because it's a lot of money for a guitar that I don't even know if I would play I just wanted you know more of a childhood dream kind of thing so there you go I wish I had a cooler story like a 57 Strat or something like that I find a lot of guitar players really like really that's the guitar like yeah it's just again it's just the way you know you chase things that you wanted when you're a kid or that you thought were cool um the uh the uh oh okay I'm jumping around because I want to grab onto uh this question came in through the uh know your gear uh podcast website and uh Mrs McKnight sent it to me and I thought it was cool because it's going to lead into something I want to talk about so we're going to start here and talk about this the first thing let me share with you if you if I can is uh I got a question hold on I need to read the question before I the question was hey Phil I hope you're well uh love the look of the new Badlands guitar I would like to get your thoughts on the Martin starting and selling direct consumers okay so that's the question cheers uh this is from Aaron so uh Aaron sent this question in and interesting enough Aaron did a video about this let me share the video here's the video uh this is from Aaron short music as you know it's a very good Channel I've talked about his channel in the the past before right here and look I'm in the corner now it's just like something new I updated so um anyways uh so the the part of this scenario is Aaron short music brought up the fact that now Martin guitars is going direct much like Taylor Guitars Gibson guitars Fender guitars we've talked about this in the past where I said I talked to some of the people at Paul Reed Smith Guitars not Paul himself but others who said they would never go direct so many companies are going direct okay to Consumers and I've seen a lot of talk about this I've told you that even Fender has uh set up their themselves an affiliate program which is very important because that means it's more than just hey if they happen upon the website or they can't find it at stock at a dealer you know we'll sell it to them having affiliate program means you're actively uh you're asking people like me when I make comment uh con comment content to put links to your website so you're actively chasing customers and you're paying me to do so I mean that's what an affiliate link is it says hey look if you send this people this way we're going to give you some money right which is advertising so therefore Fender is putting their money into advertising selling direct consumers this is important because I've said this before is that there's more to selling direct than just hey they can sell direct and you can buy it at your mom pop them selling a direct is going to have a very powerful thing and because they have Google right so I've said this before let me give you a scenario let's say the same with Martin let's say you want a Martin D28 you've decided to pull the trigger and get the ultimate acoustic guitar you're going to go down to your local mom and pop store but maybe you bought that Martin Backpacker direct from Martin and let's say it's just innocuous let's just say that you looked online Sweetwater was out of stock you couldn't it was raining outside and you didn't want to buy acoustic in the rain whatever the scenario is you buy a Martin backpack or acoustic from Martin guitars direct or some kind of you know travel acoustic smaller acoustic and uh now it's four or five months later you've decided to pull the trigger on the big dog the D28 so now you wanna you wanna spend some real money now there's let's say there's one at your mom and pop store and here's the thing though if you do what a lot of people do before you go down to your mom pop store you'll pull up and do some online research you might get out the phone and start going you look at the specifications what kind of you know what do you need what are the pricing so you know you educate yourself right you go out there and you look what are they selling for now you understand that I'm not saying Martin's doing this what I'm saying they have the ability just like Fender just like Gibson they have the ability now to push you in other words push a notification to you through your social media so all of a sudden on your Instagram or an email direct to you because Google's basically knows you're searching for this guitar and they could set it up just like Sweetwater sets it up to where if you're searching Google or searching things they go hey we want you to push a notification that we have the guitar and what's to stop these companies from sending you a hey I I saw you were looking at a D28 and uh here's a 15 off coupon so now before you even gave your mom and pop a chance to go sell you that guitar you have the manufacturer direct selling you at a discount so and again I'm not saying they're doing that I'm saying that's the evolution because that's what happens as we all know so this is a really interesting thing because when this started I'm going to tell you the story it started all in in the big recession that happened back in 2008 this is where direct to Consumer Manufacturing in our industry really peaked it started popping up before then it was really not uh a thing okay and and the reason was we know why is because we were in a recession the Mom and Pops were not only not doing well the big chains weren't doing well um there was a lot of horrible things going on sales weren't happening and uh it we created a a storm in which a perfect opportunity to to sell direct Toca customers okay so then you saw offender and other companies start making the decision and sell direct I've said this before I'm not against selling direct I don't have a problem with it because ultimately I believe uh just like Blockbuster Video dies for Netflix I'm not ever going to tell you that that's a better scenario I'm going to say that usually the consumers vote and that's what the consumers voted for they just said hey I don't want to go Friday night and wait for a movie and go walk the aisles and see if it's in stock I just wanted to stream it direct to my house consumers are speaking and they are saying uh and when I say they are saying they're speaking with their pocketbooks buying online they're the online Market is growing and so uh you can imagine as the as the direct sorry the the brick and mortar uh situation is not growing it's not dying I'm not saying that it's just not growing you can understand where a lot of these companies are going to sell direct to gain some some market share because if they don't it's not about Martin wanting to sell your their customer guitar directly or customer it's about them not wanting them to buy a tailor directly or an orange wood you know look at Orangewood they are an entire company built around direct and consumer marketing to direct to Consumer right um and and there you go so that is that is the direct to Consumer business model but what I want to point out again and I know it's because a lot of music stores watch this and they look at it like they're going to be directly competing with those manufacturers you are you are directly now competing with your manufacturer the manufacturer will put a spin on it as they do they're going to say well this is in case you don't have in stock or don't worry just like Martin has done by the way Martin has set it up to where you can click to go find a local dealer and go to that local dealer as Aaron pointed out in his video you know they're they're they're not saying directly buy from us and don't buy from our dealers they're suggesting maybe buying from the dealers first however my question again just the question how much will that attitude change when 55 of sales are becoming direct right we see Brands like Kiesel have knocked out and knocked the direct Market approach out of the park they're killing with it right they're undercutting their competitors and pricing they're building Custom Shop guitars right to the consumer and saving them a lot of money and you know it's not hard to see the direct consumer model Works in a lot of ways and if you're a big enough company like Fender just like apple right you're the biggest one in your game you can get away with being direct to the consumer and being in the chains and being Mom and Pop I think that's uh easy but I think smaller companies I'm not saying uh Martin I'm just saying smaller companies it's going to be tough for them to do all of the things so they might end up just becoming direct consumer especially once they see um their profit margins grow and and I've heard and again I'm just going to discuss some of the things I've heard I've heard people say yes but the customer service aspect of dealing you know with dealers the returns and dealing with that stuff look Amazon figured it out they can figure out too I don't think any company is you know Amazon figured out just make it no hassle you know I mean they're it's not that hard okay consumers basically don't want hassle it's not hard to figure out good customer service you just don't give them hassle it's not it's not the hardest thing to figure out oh I'm sorry sir you got your Martin acoustic and it's the wrong one well the right one's on its way we're sorry like it can be done they don't it's not like they're like the manufacturers sitting there going in a meeting going but how do you handle a customer who's unhappy I mean they've they have customers already they're called dealers so they've been dealing with customers for years they're just different kinds of customers and uh I think this is going to be a trend that we see and especially right now and this segues into what I wanted to talk about today a couple weeks ago I said traumatic effect draws a pause for drink hold on a couple weeks ago I was talking about the market softening and the future of the market I wanna not only am I seeing that happen for sure I'm gonna talk about and show you uh what it is that you're probably seeing and why so as you guys know I had a store for almost 13 years uh part of the the story of that store that's important is that uh I went through a recession in that store so I was in a boom then a recession then post recession right um I closed I stopped working the store we closed the store in 2017 obviously the recession about 2007 and eight is when it was end part of nine it's really bad in that recession not only did the store have to deal with recession but during the recession uh the 22 000 cars a day that drove in the street in front of our store they ripped up the street the city did and worked on it for the entire year so we lost all that traffic and then the shopping center in that recession filed bankruptcy and closed it was taken over by the bank in which we lost two of the anchors that were bringing people into our shopping center so I want to tell you the reason I'm telling you this is going to explain why I think things are going to happen the way you you're seeing them right now which is you have we at one point you know when somebody comes in your store and says oh there's a recession you're like okay but yesterday's tickets were the same and this month we're doing fine the next month you're doing a little less and everybody's like oh it's the sky is falling but yet you're not doing that bad a little bit less you were I realized then what what you have to pay attention to and this is what I talked about last year with dealers but more importantly right now is at some point in a recession when it or when the market slows down which is really important we had a boom and now we're slowing down I still see tons and tons and I mean tons of guitar sales every day through the affiliate Links at even numbers that still Blow Away 2019 okay but it's not what it was during the the pandemic boom okay you're going to see some dealers a lot of dealers become what we the term is called inventory rich and cash poor it means that they're not doing bad they just have a lot of inventory because they were buying for a market that's not existing right now and I said that a couple weeks ago and I said one of the things you want to pay attention to is that the first thing the dealers are going to do is start listing product that is new as used so they can discount it to you so I want to share with you real quick let me share this with you uh and this is for no reason then I just came across this uh literally uh last night uh Hey welcome back Bill okay so here is uh a dealer and let's go into this is my recently viewed items let me go here and let's go to the store on this okay shop the sale so this door which is a great store I've actually bought from them I highly recommend them as a seller um this is oops sorry moving this right here okay this dealer is running at 15 at checkouts uh till the 7th and you can see here this is a massive inventory and I want you to see what I'm showing you see the mint used mint used mint these are great prices used mint used mint used mint right lots of used mint now here's what's interesting let me not move around so fast uh let's look at a guitar let me go ahead so let's hear the Charvel so I was looking at this one early so here's a Charvel this is a mint condition Charvel that was a thousand dollars you could have it for 15 off I've already explained and I'll come back again that most dealers are going to run a 30 margin some will get a 40 margin okay there's all kinds of scenarios and where that can change some of you guys I'll even know the bigger dealers can have a 50 margin but our industry industry likes the 30 range margin so that's a real safe margin especially since that's not even a real the real number because then they have to take expenses out of that so right here what we're what you're seeing is 15 off this guitar what I see is someone who did this for a long time is this is 50 off the Dealer's profit right the dealer uh is is was normally going to make uh 300 on this guitar and now they're gonna make 150 guitar because they're giving you 150 now I know it's mint it's not new but right here exactly what I said Charvel authorized dealer this item is brand new with full warranty all right Fuller's guitar inspect and sets up each guitar uh two Factory spec before shipping and this isn't to call them out there's tons of dealers and I hope I hope uh this works out great because again I want you to know that one of the things I can tell you is is this guitar Community if I can go back to the right screen over here it's one of the largest buying guitar communities probably on the internet I'm not making that up it's not a coincidence that this channel is some I'm I am one of the the largest affiliate links for a ton of companies because you guys just like to buy obviously I I like to buy stuff too and we're really into this we're passionate and we're buyers let's just be honest and so um what I'm showing you is is normally if you guys know I'm always like hey go to Sweetwater use the affiliate links go to this but right now this is a good time to be paying attention because you can do two things save yourself a ton of money or good amount of money and help the dealers that are a little inventory heavy because I will tell you when I was in this position I'm not saying they're in a bad way I wasn't in a bad way we were doing fine through the recession when I say fine we survived it fine but it wasn't wasn't fun at the time because the uncertainty scares you more than the reality of it you know right you learn later it wasn't as bad as you thought but it wasn't good great either um they just want to get rid of their inventory there's a lot of inventory sitting out there because they probably got a lot of stuff shipped and when you look online if you're looking I put the link down below I mean it's Gibson's it's fenders it's cramers it's uh you know there was uh drum sets I think in there right uh amplifiers obviously charvels tons of great gear and at a at a at a good price that you're going to get a full warranty almost every single one of those posts had full warranty right their their authorized dealer just showing his mint now so you know some of you guys just so you know uh you know um uh Brian's saying hey they marked them meant to get around map this is true but so you know in their defense they could be telling the truth okay so it is oh it is okay if a dealer wants to say like for instance these guitars hang on the wall just like they would in a store if I was to say hey my inventory is hanging on my wall and I'm listing it on the internet and maybe I don't want to list it as new in box if it is on the wall and somebody has touched it so therefore it's like demoed so yeah mint can be a way to to explain demoed right they could be moving their inventory that way um this is up for them my reason I tell you that is because it's easy to say you know some of them will say new in box ready to go but but maybe some are you know hanging on the wall so you might want to ask questions and be clear but more importantly uh for the record and I've said this before I hate map I've always hated map I don't really understand it I've heard all the reasoning for it and I think everybody's argument has a valid point and it's almost convinced me to change my opinion a couple times the reason is is because of this situation right here these dealers are just trying to do I think the right thing they're trying to move their inventory so customers could have a deal they can free up some Capital right get this get this gear moving because they may be bought for a different Market this Market is not a bad Market but it's not the crazy you know everybody paying full price and putting on waiting lists like they were just a year ago so um this is again I really want to talk about this one because it's something we talked about cavalisco two because exactly this ties into Aaron music's uh video which is come I mean think about as the dealer you're a dealer you got a lot of inventory the Mark's not you know guitars aren't flying off the walls like they were a year ago and now the manufacturers one by one are announcing that they're going to be selling direct um I think this is a great time like I told you guys to support your mom pop shops to get out there find those deals you know right save yourself some money find something cool you know it's a win-win-win situation it's just my opinion uh and for whatever it's worth it's worth that and um and there you go but I'd like to hear your thoughts if anyone have any thoughts I'll read those thoughts well I while I drink water or vodka [Music] okay and no one's got any comments because right now you're all buying guitars I know it uh Joe says I think Sweetwater's recent demo cell is the same idea um it could possibly I think with Sweet Water just like musicians friend and Guitar Center they run they do exactly what I said they run a demo sale and it could be demos and it could be not demos because again they're trying to get under map or get away from map um a lot of companies would do that to me I think that's fine again you know right the whole point is you're not supposed to advertise the thing for a lower than what they say price but of course if you state that this is a demo product and of course the customers expectations is going to be great right if you're expecting a mint condition guitar and it shows up like it's never been touched I don't think you're gonna be upset and um and another dealer technically doesn't have to adhere to that because your argument could be hey this the other dealer's selling the guitar for 15 less and then go yeah but that's Mint Condition ours is brand new and they go well it's secretly it's new condition it's brand new that doesn't really have that doesn't really mean they have to hold to that they could and to be honest with you at that discount it's not enough to where I think again every dealer is going to have a different opinion but in my opinion it's not a great day to have to give away half your profits but I've said it before and I'll say it again it's not the worst thing to happen to a dealer um especially on a product that's easy to get and right now is readily available okay it's different if it's not available it's different if it's hard to come by it's different if you know again um but if it's like hey you're sitting on 10 of them too maybe it's maybe it's time to let them all go so they can find new homes um I I think at some point we saw at the peak of covid we saw used gear surpass new gear in pricing Used Guitars are cheap are more expensive than new guitars I think now we're going to see new guitars be cheaper than Used Guitars I'm not making this up I really 100 believe that not only believe it's going to happen I believe it's happening now I think it's going to be you're going to be looking on reverb for a used guitar and if you do a little poking around like I said you're going to find it new for the same price or less and uh so be be aware be out there educate yourself and figure out you know like I said uh ooh somebody said I'm drinking tequila oh God I don't know if I could drink tequila I I have a I cannot um I told you guys during covet right at the beginning Ralph and I discovered whiskey uh and bourbons and maybe messing with those and um I still cannot make I cannot do drink a whiskey or bourbon without doing the I do this I don't know how to explain it I shake like my face shakes like almost like you almost gave me a lemon or right I do that sour face um I cannot understand for the life of me in movies where the guys it's always some guy and he's got his bourbon or something in some fancy glass with one ice cube and a right and some business meeting he's like oh let me do it they always do this maybe they don't spill it on themselves sorry but they always like take a big Swig of whiskey or Bourbon and then they go no I'm not gonna whatever then they say they're lying and I'm always like there's no way I would be like it would be shaking making my pucker sour face so um and I don't do well with sugar uh liquor drinks so sweetening up the drink doesn't help me a whole lot that's why in old fashioned sometimes can work it's kind of a mix but it's uh yeah man this is smooth same thing that's yes I've gotten to the point now where I don't cough when I drink it so that's good so yeah so tequila um I'm sure I've had tequila but it it has been so long that I couldn't remember what the taste is just I could imagine it's not something I'd want um I feel like we got sidetracked again uh Louis says uh Sweetwater uh demos really do have nice stickers pointing out the floss yeah soda's music Ian's friend and Guitar Center by the way uh they do it online too but I mean ice Sweet Water of course is the king at you know letting you see everything um so uh um but yes I like how they actually do that and that's why I said that's why I was looking at this going interesting you know like I said I was like I was wondering like men condition they're not really showing you know the actual guitar they're showing final foot and then in every description if you saw what I said it was like new in box ready to go full warranty a lot of times it doesn't say new in box but it does say full warranty which is again a dealer is allowed to do that they're allowed to sell a good an instrument listed as mint as a as a as a authorized dealer and still give you the warranty um I've said this before this is a true story it happened so I mean I mean I have a ton of them but this is the one I like to use because it's a great reference um I personally damaged a guitar in my store once a Fender guitar um I tripped I hit it knocked the guitar Off the Wall um in fact I tripped on a I tripped on a cable I think right a cable wrapped around my leg I can't I can't remember I just remember I damaged the guitar and um you know obviously we were I was bummed we were all bummed and um what we ended up doing was I I worked on it it was fine it just had a chip in the headstock or chip damage somewhere and uh very minor but it had damage so I was like what would you do so I just listed as used right this is a about 2006 I want to say this happened so I listed the guitars used in the store I knocked the price down to about 10 below my cost because obviously even at cost that was too expensive for a used guitar at the time you could use guitars for about 40 50 off of new and so I had to put in about 40 50 off the new and um uh listed it and sold it a guy came and got it and then a couple weeks later could have been a couple months I don't remember uh Fender reached out and said hey we need uh the invoice for this guitar we have a warranty issue the guy's getting a new neck and so I get the information and I go oh no no this guitar this guitar was sold is used it's damaged I damaged it and then I sold it as used at a loss and he goes and the people the customer service is at Fender said yeah but you're an authorized dealer and that guitar was sold you new and so he's saying it's damaged and he wants the fixed and we're just going to replace the neck and I'm like but it wasn't I didn't sell it as new and they go it doesn't matter and then they just replace his neck which I'm happy they did it for him I wasn't upset um I I was just like oh you know um that tells you exactly what I'm saying is as accurate a lot of companies would do stuff like that although I've had a couple situations where some other companies didn't do that they did the opposite where they kind of screwed try to screw the customer um which is why I really like Fender back in the day for all the stuff they used to do I'm not saying they're not doing that anymore it's just they're not really the same company they were but still still pretty good um maybe it's time for the next subject you think maybe all right uh we have uh oh well this ties in uh this is from doodle dog g day I think it's good day good day good day Phil uh he says is your old store still a guitar store and if it is do you ever go there if not what is there now so my store is not there now uh where what is there now is a Ramen uh noodles place in fact the entire shopping center so as you guys know the story goes in 2017 I I went to The NAMM Show I was like okay I don't know if I'm gonna do my uh work at the store anymore I was gonna do repairs outside the store I was kind of done with being in the store or I was done doing YouTube I wasn't sure long story short obviously I decided to do YouTube and do repairs and not do the store when I decided not to go to the store anymore that happened immediately I never went back I basically told Ralph and my wife I'm never going back or I'm never doing YouTube again one of those things was gonna happen I ended up not going to the store what happened there was uh as I said this before uh my wife Ralph and my wife decided uh they didn't want to be there anymore either because obviously I'm not there and a lot of customers came in and just basically were just looking for me and they didn't want to talk to either one of them and then of course on top of that three of the anchor stores that are in the shopping center two just left and one was leaving they got an announcement of leaving the lease was coming up due on the store as I said the the the the shopping center had already filed bankruptcy the companies owned it was the bank so the bank would not negotiate with us they would not negotiate at least they told us that basically we have to wait till there's a new landlord a new owner and that was in transition and so basically uh my wife and Ralph decided that they were going to move to lesson Academy and maybe the store down the street and they talked to the teachers and we offered the teachers a huge deal like a huge deal they were I love them all dearly still friends with all of them and we got them all jobs somewhere else but it was a really good deal I don't know if they could understand it at the time how great the deal they were get they were given it would have probably changed all their lives but they didn't take it not a single one they only take one because at least somebody was on board I think I would have put some muscle behind it and and Ralph and Sean would've done it but they didn't do it so what happened was my uh wife and Ralph decided not to uh well they didn't have Elise to sign up with it was just they were going month a month at a time so they they closed the store um the we did have somebody who tried to buy the store however they um we told them they couldn't have the name they agreed and then they scare I don't know I've never told the story they scared me in a meeting with me they said uh yeah of course we you know we understand we can't have the name and they said but of course if anyone asked us if this was Phil's store you know we we won't tell them it's not we're just not gonna We're not gonna lie to them and I'm like that made me nervous because I was then I started picturing in my head like people coming and thinking coming to the new owners thinking that I'm somehow still involved with it so I said yeah let's not do that and uh now the takeaway is that entire shopping center was turned into uh like an Asian Marketplace so this there was a grocery store now as an Asian market the store room has a Ramen store and I think a conveyor belt Sushi and then there's like a bunch of uh uh Korean stores there and they just so they changed this to to change the entire shopping center uh and they gave it a theme and the theme is like I said it's like an Asian market it's really cool so they answer your second part do I ever go there we do because it's a really cool Asian market now so we can go there for that but that's what happened with that and uh there you go hope that helps so Haley says the first rule never changed the name when buying the business yes of course however um the part of the thing about our business was we had a built-in lesson model that was uh extremely profitable like you whatever we sold you the business for you would have made it back in the first year just off the lesson programs which were built in in other words it was recurring money and they were coming to the teacher it's not because of me so they it was a very nice business model so like I said when uh uh you know you get the idea so that's what we did and then so you know um the teachers all now work at a different store some of you guys actually here in the comments actually know those teachers and go to them to this day they're pretty much all working at the same place they were and uh my wife to her credit worked out an amazing deal she um she got the teachers all a job at another location she got that location because they got a giant influx of the students because there was a lot of students to give to another location she got them to agree to take a pay cut not the teachers the store take a discount on how much they take from the teachers she then negotiated a deal the teachers got more money and the students paid less I'm not making that up that's 100 true you can ask any of those teachers to this day it still works that way the teachers made a little bit bump in pay the students paid a little bit less and the place that took them basically had to eat all that but they also started receiving thousands of dollars a month in Revenue immediately so it was a good deal she worked out a really impressive deal that took her a lot of time took her four locations to negotiate so that's where they're and they're all there now too uh they're all still there now too so a lot of you know them and take lessons so that was a so to her credit I did none of that in fact I was shocked that she did it and pulled it off so you know uh okay so um we gotta get to oh next thing uh this is from Blue MOX with a W MOX Blue Max says uh is this new member that's oh so you must be a new channel member thank you for being a channel member uh it says did my first fret this week refret uh on my hm uh Fender neck through oh nice okay uh did them in jumbo stainless they turned out great did not even need to level them that's awesome I I sometimes I get lucky when I'm doing a reef fret and you don't have to level them uh sometimes you don't have to level all of them just one or two as you guys know I only if I do refracts uh I will only do them in stainless steel um just because at this point it's just easier you know for me um it's not much harder to work with there's a lot of a lot of you know stainless Steels are difficult um I told you what I don't like about them sometimes I catch the ends of a Sharp stainless steel owner and it cut you know just takes some some flesh away from the skin not really a big fan of that happens but the it catches me uh but other than that uh everybody talks about tooling costs yeah on your files but a lot of time you're on sandpaper and you know sandpaper sandpaper if it's a little bit more at small levels I think the complaint about stainless steel Frets costing a lot is really more of a mass production Mass level kind of this concept in other words if you're doing thousands of guitars sure all that stuff adds up over time more man hours it's the more time on it it's a little bit more time on it it's a little bit more materials on it and a little bit more in your tooling and again that adds up but you know when you're you know doing you know five or ten or fifty a year it's not going to be a big deal um so that's really cool I'm glad it worked for you and thank you for sharing that with you because are sharing that with us because I love uh people hearing that because it's exactly that you guys you know uh I guess I'll say you can't do a fret level until you do that's essentially the best thing about anything when you do repairs or do anything in life you can't do it until you do it and then once you do it you can it sounds like I'm talking like a crazy person I swear to God I I hope that makes sense in your head but it's true so every time somebody says they can't do it I go well you can't do it until you do so do it so and then just understand you're going to be working at work the way so I want to just say uh blue blue mocks congratulations I'm happy you shared that with us that's awesome so Brian says sort of like installing a toilet I have installed a lot of toilets uh incorrectly and to my dismay it's one of those things I I told my wife once this is true true I said once I I uh she bought new toilets and I go I'll install them and I did and then she's like how'd it go and I go you know I said just because I'm smart doesn't mean I'm able I'm not something is wrong [Laughter] in trouble with one thing and it was just really difficult for me uh I don't know why um so what I figured out is this I can do uh Plumbing work I can do it good enough but I would still rather have somebody else do it so uh so I intend to do other stuff I'd rather like and do you know electrical stuff or anything else I I did I do she I'll do rather I'd rather do replace drywall which I've done many times and stuff I rather do all that stuff before uh uh Plumbing there's just something uh I have a maybe a paranoia thing where I'm just constantly like if you make me change the sink or a toilet I will go back for hours with like a paper towel in my hand and touch everywhere and then and then go I don't see it's not wet but I think it's damp I think it's damp like I have this in my head that I did something wrong and it might be leaking and over time it will right just a paranoia thing so uh yeah Brian says you haven't lived until you've scraped the old wax ring I find that gross isn't that funny like it's weird and you know what's funny about that I don't know why I find uh the wax ring on a toilet uh gross because I've worked with axle grease and you know on tanks and it's essentially it feels and looks the same I mean the axle reads A Lot softer and stickier but still I don't know why just somehow sticking that next to the toilet made it gross but obviously smacking Treads with a sledgehammer and taking the Tanker Bar and prying stuff off and using axle grease didn't bug me I don't know why that is but it is the way it is all right this this show has come off the rails we're not going to start a new Plumbing show that's for sure not with my expertise um as I cough and didn't use my mute button that I have now um this is a good time to mention thank you guys for the Mackie thanks to Mackie for the new Mackie mixer I want to thank them because obviously I'm still not smart enough to use it yet because I didn't hit the mute button in time for the cough I apologize although somebody told me last week when I used the mute button when I I gave a little cough they said it looked like I was choking to death and I should probably let you hear the cough so you know I'm not dying I don't know vim69 says last week you told us a story of Ralph learning how fast wheat water can ship have you ever bought gear while drinking and regretting it this is turning into a drinking show I don't want that to happen but I will share with you um there is not a drinking and buying gear problem per se it's a type of drink that I have to watch out for for right for Ralph yes it was some old fashions for me it's wine I don't know what it is about wine some of you guys that are connoisseurs of stuff will probably have tons of information in the in the comment sections some reason for some reason wine is a different thing for me so um have I ever uh drank and then bought gear and regretted it no uh not regretted it um I don't tend to get uh you know a little tipsy and then buy gear I I tend well I do but I mean not differently than any time I either buy it um what happens with it is um I guess I liken it too they say I didn't drink I didn't I didn't drink when I was younger so at all so um I liken it till they said it's like liquid courage right like you know if you you drink a little bit and then you go I'm gonna ask that girl out I never had that so now I've kind of learned that it's not that I have to worry about make uh buying something is a bad deal or something I regret it's that all of a sudden I have liquid courage sometimes especially with wine and uh I will be like I think I'm gonna buy that thing that I've been thinking about for weeks and I just can't you know I couldn't do it all of a sudden now I'm like yeah I deserve that let's do it and then I do it so um and uh it's not too often um but yeah it happens uh somebody says red or white depends on the time of year I don't uh I know I'm supposed to drink wine with types of food you know right like you match your wine to your food I am so so rednecky right I'm so low uh I do it if you're even at a restaurant if it's hot I drink white wine because it's cold if it's not hot outside I drink red wine I know it has nothing to do with the fact that the fact I'm in air conditioning building that's just the way I process things so um if it's warm outside it's white and if it's uh cold outside it's red that's um I do the same thing if I drink beer by the way I drink light beers uh in the summertime and dark beers in the winter time if if and when I partake so so yes I know see you guys are like red red wine with meat and fish is what yeah none of that stuff I went to a steakhouse a couple weeks ago and I got white wine um because it was 118 outside and that was it we came in I just felt warm when we came in and even though we were cooling down in the air conditioning in the restaurant I still did it um this is just an old guy he says a tech put too much relief on my Epiphone Les Paul okay too much relief okay so he's losing your truss rod gotcha and now your next got released so it's got okay so it's bowed okay uh he says I tried to loosen the truss rod you should be technically tightening it if there's too much relief okay so I didn't put too much pressure to the left right because you're loosening it I felt I felt oh felt felt the nut he means a nut on the truss rod is totally loose yet neck went straight not not does nothing is it now trash okay so my guess is and again you didn't say which model up phone but most the headphones I have messed with and most the guitars uh from from Gibson and phone uh our app phone it are dual action dress Rod so it's not about being loose that doesn't tell you anything because it's kind of it's not righty tighty lefty Loosey it's kind of like it's righty tighty thin Lucy then tidy again does it make sense and same thing going the other way too so in other words um it's it's totally possible they loosen your truss rod your neck straightened out okay so now it's straight and but now you hear it rattling and you're thinking oh no right but you can tighten it the other way until it's just just snug you're not trying to change you don't if the next straight I understand this is what I'm getting from your question your next straight now things are good but your nut is loose on your truss rod and maybe it's rattling or it's just loose and you're don't worry about that just turn it in either direction just just enough to where it's not loose again just so it has enough grip to stop and maybe not rattle it'll all be fine that's what I'm getting from that question I hope again there's with the information you gave me um nothing sounds wrong at that point other than uh you said that he gave it too much relief and uh you tried to loosen the truss rod you would technically if he gave it too much relief you would tighten the truss rod and to straighten it out and if you're concerned as you're tightening it and nothing's happening again like I said you got to try to go to Center on on a dual action trust rod always try to find the center part where it's loose then go another Direction then go another Direction you kind of get a feel for it don't don't don't worry about it too much it's not it's not super complicated it's just not what you're used to um uh Parker wants to know any updates on the Outsource note or outsourced Northern Lights no updates but are we still working on it we are still working on it Things Are obviously way behind schedule but that's because I spent time on other projects I had to put it on a back burner so I'd like to point out it's not that it's behind schedule because I'm having troubles with anything it's behind schedule because it literally for it like goes in Hiatus for weeks and sometimes months without working on the project and then coming back to it um I expect in August to be back full time on that project and buttoning up all that stuff since now it's a now I have the time to put towards it I don't have any more weird projects coming up um thank you Jay for a Super Chat Pocket Change nice sign on Pocket Change thanks for this huge Super Chat apparently you have a lot of Pocket Change Pocket Change says Hey building a Fender Jazz base on on Fender site okay uh stuck between the pure vintage 74 Jazz and the generation 4 noiseless jazz pickups what would be your choice and why Alder body mocha burst roasted Maple neck um I'm not a big fan I had the uh so I have a jazz Deluxe as my is is one of my main bases is the one I play when I say that I only own four bases I say only a Sephora there's a lot but I mean it's not like guitars I only own four and they are all very specific uh why have them my jazz Deluxe base did come with noiseless pickups I was not a huge fan I didn't hate them I'm just not a huge fan of them I swapped them out um I did go with a bartolini but it was more of a vintage voice bartolini pickup I would go with the Vintage 74 Jazz um but you asked why I just think they got it it's just like a lot of things Fender got it right in the beginning man the jazz pickups in the beginning were great you don't really need the noiseless it's up to you though you know I mean it's like again to me that's one of those things like you know if you got no hum coming through your base or you know things where you're playing a show I just turned the volume up so stuff like that I find I don't have a whole lot of problems with noise live um if the noise comes through I just volume off you know I mean I'm very fast in the volume off um I I did an interview with uh Phillips once and because he uses P90s in large stadiums and I said what do you what do you use you use a noise gate and he he did he's like no I just take the volume and off and I find I'm I'm Instinct that same way if I'm not playing the volume is immediately off and I sometimes will have a volume pedal or a kill switch uh button switch on the on the floor to turn off the signal too same thing I just go right to that so um all right I feel like this guy you guys are still talking about wine okay uh cyber says happy Friday uh learn I'm I'm I'm seeing a ton of dealers listing obviously new items is used we are hey we just talked about that at huge discounts like 20 30 off yep I see that too uh to just give it to get around map hey cyber uh I think I wish I wish I saw your question earlier I could have segued from that question right to what we were talking about yes absolutely uh I think this is going to be a trend until like I said until the inventory thins down and uh and it's just gonna be a it's going to be a little bit while right right there's a lot of inventory out there as we know so uh there you go uh Damon says thank you for the Strat buying advice last week I went out on Saturday and bought wait for it a Gibson gold top b90 list Paul go figure hey you know what that's exactly how that goes I find if I want to um if I want to uh guarantee I'm not gonna buy what I want go out specifically to buy what I want I feel the same way all I want is a Telecaster and I come home with a Rickenbacker that's how that will work okay we had a question coming from the uh podcast on the uh know your gearpodcast.com this is a great question and it was about the the fact that I was talking about that I have the new Mackie rig and it was a great question I didn't answer it I feel kind of bad I feel like I I should have thought about this um the question is basically uh it's longer usually when you guys send the questions on the on the uh on the website I have to paraphrase it the question was basically he really likes the the Mackie rig I have obviously he wants to get into podcasting and he feels like uh this is a little Overkill so um believe it or not you can get a smaller unit I queued this up for you this is the Mackie M Caster live portable live stream mixer I'd like to point out that there's a lot of portable uh units like this on the mark market and I'm only recommending this one because you asked me about the Mackie rig that I currently have which is the the dlz right there so of course I'm just saying hey look if you like what the Mackie stuff I have not tried the kimcaster live um I believe Landon Bailey told me he has one of these and I got the impression he liked it I don't remember him specifically saying he liked it um or disliked that I think he just said he has it and this is what he uses but this would get you everything that mine's doing for the most part um you know you wouldn't have cool like you know I got drunk once and found out how fast wheat water can ship are you really buying another guitar like you can't trigger buttons but you could do all the important stuff and maybe the buttons aren't that important so so there you go so that's I wanted to cue that up uh since that was a great question and of course you can use the the microphones that I'm using the Maggie mics and I love these uh robust stands that they have mostly I like these mics because they're really nice and they are a little bit more sensitive than my uh sure microphone was um and the sure microphone cost more than two of these mics almost what three of these mics cost so actually I think what three of these mics cost so very good quality for the pricing which is always nice too because I know it's really tough you guys that are trying to start a podcast I highly recommend if you think about starting up a podcast to start up a podcast I know everybody says the same thing everybody's got a podcast but there's a reason why everybody has a podcast because it believe it or not it's a growing platform and uh people who consume podcasts consume at a much bigger level than they do nine minute YouTube videos or five minute YouTube videos so even though your podcasts are an hour two hours long they can burn through them much faster in a week listening to on the way to work and at work with headphones in so David says Phil was just upselling by showing off the sample buttons I just like the buttons it kind of feels fun it's just nice it's not even that we can trigger the voices it's just that we have the the see Amanda coomb says she needs a podcast Amanda start a podcast so I I will I will suggest you that's exactly what you do hey Landon's here I'm going to make a podcast about making podcasts you yeah with with uh your Mackie product right okay let's go back to the next question because otherwise it's going to go off the rails again um we have Nick said happy belated birthday oh that's from last week thank you man Tech question got a B stock Jackson that has a three-piece Maple neck with a Wingate stripe the Wingate has a small crack in it should I glue it to prevent further damage absolutely you can use that with some tight Bond I don't know because you didn't say what the neck is finished or unfinished I'm assuming it's an unfinished neck definitely get some glue in there um the rule I kind of follow with cracks in guitars is uh their get worse right remember it's not just you have a crack on your guitar your guitar is vibrating right I mean those strings are moving it's vibrating the crack is going to get worse I mean just think about anything else like you know I like that so you definitely need to to fix it and sooner is always better than later so if you can get some glue in there do something like that um I don't think you have to use super glue I don't necessarily recommend it uh I I really like like I said just using some type on wood glue it does a really good job um sometimes the question is the problem is maybe the crack is really really thin and you cannot get the type on glue in there you can get a syringe from places like sumac and other online retailers that will help you get that glue into that crack if that's if that works if not you may need to turn to super glue and then if you if you turn into Super Glue you will have to use some kind of sandpaper and clean up your mess a little bit but I have found the wood glue is what I choose I will choose wood glue and until I can't does it make sense so that's the best advice use it first even if it doesn't work it doesn't hurt anything it wipes off with a damp cloth and it's really easy when I say damp cloth I mean really lightly damp just enough to get some grip on there because again it's water it's water soluble so to speak so okay uh I feel like sometimes you guys are crazy all right uh we have the next one is from grumpy my guitar who says I received my shirt this week oh okay cool great material that's super comfortable looks great gonna be wearing a lot thanks I didn't get my shirt yet isn't that funny I ordered one as well um we did a limited run of the subdued know your gear uh shirts I just saw the new landing page for the new know your gear merch that will be launching soon uh uh we're going through that today so I'm excited about that but in the meantime I wanted to have something out there so we did the subdued logo shirts and uh but I haven't got mine yet so maybe I get one soon I wonder if because you're on the East Coast I wonder if that's how it works so West Coast gets it after the East Coast gets it thank you uh grumpy Mike for forgetting the shirt uh Mike says new amp day PRS Hendrix 20 head already had the cabinet takes pedals really well yeah like I said I tried that amp at Sweet Water and it just couldn't find a spot you know I couldn't find that that spot to blend with it or bond with it but I was also like I said I was in the Sweet Water like I was just like a Guitar Center right I was just in the big room with amps trying stuff but then it intrigues me a lot they uh they were gonna send one Hemi demo but then they decided not to at the last minute which is fine and then uh I just wasn't able to get my hands on one but I was able I want to try one as a Sweet Water just didn't I didn't know I said I didn't find a spot for for it that when I say spot I mean I couldn't find a tone like everything was just not sounding right whatever I was doing and uh and to to be clear there's about five or six actually probably more than that amps that I had as my like a list I had a list on my phone of amps I wanted to try it Sweet Water since I don't have access to the stuff normally and uh after a few minutes I was like okay on to the next amp on the next amp that's when I try the Rev G20 the D20 I tried the new uh Mesa Boogie Mark 7. um I went through just a plethora of amps and dried them all to see which amps I like and um there you go uh Baked Alaska says my Gibson Les Paul Jr non-compensated Bridge won't intonate the G string very well about 15 cents sharp or so which is pretty bad uh should I not worry about it to replace the bridge um worry about it this tricky thing okay there's I wanna I wanna put a different hat on no seriously as a guitar tech if it's not intonating it's not acceptable because I can't give you something back that's not right okay so I would be stuck okay so if it's not intonating it's not right as a guitar player most guitars aren't intonated correctly and they were hit records with them okay so there's a difference between it won't intonate on the tuner and there's a difference between I'm ha it sounds horrible or it doesn't sound right when I'm playing it so that's really where I want you to to kind of focus on um I also in my experience it is possible especially with wrap around bridge that they put the bridge in the wrong spot it does happen um and so even those two adjustment screws you have two adjustment screws on each side of the bridge that you can push back the bridge or bring in a little closer and um I don't know if your email said was it flat or Sharp I'm gonna go back to that screen did you say uh oh sharp okay so it might did you try this is what I'm saying make sure you tried those screws that they're there and then also like I said you can also replace that bridge if that's a problem and you can put a different style bridge that will intonate better including uh adjustable ones so I would say that if the guitar sounds fine it's playing fine then the priority would be to eventually find a fix for it but don't obsess about it if you are hearing it it's out then it has to be addressed and my guess is either at this point you need to hit it again think about intonation being out and this is my my best advice always when an intonation is out in any guitar is when you decide at some point that it won't intonate you need to especially if you have other guitars put it away do something else play the guitars come back to in a day or two start from scratch again I said it on my intonation video and it's really served people really well a few people of course not so much but a lot of people very well um which is I tell people when when you're you're like I've done everything and it won't intonate I always have a start from the beginning again do the process over again it sometimes can happen so fast what what everybody's like yeah but I pushed it always far back as ago that's why I'm like bring It Forward start going back again I brought it all forward as far as I can go bring it back out Bring It Back in right the reason is is because believe it or not it's when it's out it's just so fast right um that sometimes you missed it you know you're paying attention to the tune or you're paying attention to something else and that's why I've caught it many times that way um the same thing I've learned just be patient patience is a virtue hit it a couple times come back to it um now that being said how many times uh you know three four times I would say honest attempts starting from scratch then at that point maybe look at modifying the instrument with a a different Bridge or taking it to another guitar tech sometimes the different Tech can see a problem it's not even about your skills versus their skills it can happen to anybody you can I've worked on guitars with years you know Decades of experience and still some guy who probably just started Facebook guitars 30 seconds ago saw something I didn't see it happens to everybody at some point so um the um the other thing too is I didn't see what tune are you were talking about what use you didn't say so that could also be two also B2 I don't even know if I'm talking English anymore um also your tuner is important to see what kind of tuner it is you could pretty much intonate a guitar with any tuner nowadays basically I don't want to say it's so broad stroked but a quality tuner will take you is much better and take you much further uh Dave the pious says remember when everyone wanted a matchless amp why don't I hear anything about them anymore well they still make mattress amps and then of course uh bad cat makes some version of a massive stamp to some degree um I don't know why it was I remember that matchless stamp was really like a Nashville thing and obviously I'm I'm from Arizona so we didn't have the Nashville thing here um so by the time I heard what A matchless amp was well let me put it this way I probably heard about matchless the magic of magic stamps years and years and years before I literally um you know got to actually play through one uh so I don't know why we don't hear him about him anymore but that's that's true all the time right that there's there's this products that are you know everybody wants they're still collectible so but I'm not really versed in them um I do have a bad cat I really really like it that helps but it's not really a matchless per se it's kind of matchless adjacent or esque uh HK says hey Phil which is the lightest for a light Strat build okay A Thin Line strap body or a full-bodied paluina wood nothing's probably going to be lighter than palawina so if you guys don't know what Halloween is it's a type of wood that's like Styrofoam I mean if you think Basswood is light this stuff is just literally like Styrofoam uh I've seen a couple companies I believe sir has done some bodies in palawina um uh gnl has done some bodies in palawina that I've seen and when I see the word palawina body it's usually accompanied by five pounds like the guitar is five pounds the guitar is six pounds um so uh I can't imagine it's I mean anything that's possible I mean obviously if you're semi you're making uh any wood uh like a you know an alder body or an ash body especially a light Ash body or a um uh Basswood body you know if you're making a semi-hollow chamber I mean it's gonna be pretty light but man pauloina um Susan says Balsa so think about this palawina I don't think is as light as also but I have no basis for that I just assuming it's not because it's a little bit denser A Little Bit Stronger then Balsa obviously because Balsa is a as as no structural integrity at all for a body but um uh but it's uh but it is super super light like I said so super super light um oh Chris says Sandberg makes spaces out of it five string bases under six pounds absolutely absolutely so um there's a friend of mine who builds guitars and he's done something really cool with it and I don't know if I'm allowed to share with it because I think he's trademarking it or patenting it and I don't know if that means I don't think I don't know I don't know um so I'm going to hold off but I've seen he's done the most interesting things with that wood uh that I've been impressed with so I'll just give him credit at least it's Steve from Maxim Guitar Works in Colorado amazing he always comes up with the craziest ideas and so he came up with an amazing idea to use uh the wood uh palawina palawina palawina whatever with um with other Woods in a really interesting new way that I've never seen before it was really really cool so but I can't imagine anything lighter than that every time I see that wood it's just super light I mess with it a little bit and it's literally super I mean it's like I said it feels like Styrofoam it's like almost feels like a joke uh ddob says hey Phil thanks for the show love the community you built uh thanks I don't want to take credit for building it uh though I think the community uh kind of finds itself right and and I actually if you're gonna think anybody I think YouTube for building it right they built the as much as sometimes we kind of talk about YouTube as being the pain in the ass of it because they are that too it's possible to be the villain and the hero in the story um and that would be YouTube they are both the evil ass and the beautiful thing that brought us together and so yeah I give you got to give them credit um uh present resident says how you fail question what do you think of 10 s guitars I don't know anything about them they reached out to me a couple times in the past about uh doing some videos um I didn't like the interaction with them per se um I know they did custom builds I was probably you know when when custom Builders kind of approached me about doing a video um you know I tend to and I'm done now doing that I tend to used to uh like hey let's build something that will highlight to the audience what you do and that will help me illustrate it in a video like I really so you know I look at almost all collaborative uh relationships with companies as a way to highlight what I do and what they do right like I'm not here to talk their excuse my language oh wait too late um I'm here to do what I'd like to do hopefully somebody else likes it too and then because they're working with me it makes my life easier because again you know you run out of money doing this game if you buying stuff left and right to constantly push this stuff so my point is a lot of companies what happened a lot of companies you guys are really funny okay a lot of companies when they reach out especially custom Builders I'm like let's do something interesting because that's a great video to make it makes it an interesting video and in that interesting video someone might get inspired to purchase their product which is their goal right their goal is to sell it to you I don't receive a benefit if they buy it I I receive a benefit if you watch the video I'm trying to get you to watch the video that's what I do I create content and and share with you guys so um with them it immediately turned into they wanted me to sell this guitar something that they had right this Relic guitar I remember like whatever and I think and again I'm doing off memory and so I want to just tell you memory uh because they they hit me in the worst way they came at me through uh Instagram they're I hate Instagram uh you know when people DM you and stuff or whatever that is I hate it because I always feel like I'm um look I'm looking actually for the message let's see if I have it um because I know you know it's a very different kind of communication I like more of an email I'm old I like emails that's how sad it is I'm old like emails not even letters I like emails but anyways um what happened was um the uh the they wanted me to talk about this one guitar they were had I didn't argue with that I just said okay let's do two one for a giveaway and I'll keep one and we'll figure out what it is now remember these are lower priced guitars they were trying to not push their more interesting guitars and they weren't interested in doing that either and uh so here's what happens I at some point what always happens with me these negotiations I realized like the videos sounding worse and worse like I'm not making a great video which is really my goal and there's no benefit at least if you guys get a free guitar out of the deal and there's a giveaway maybe that's interesting somebody can get it do a giveaway and I can do something to one of them and do a comparative like here's the one they sent me in here's the one you're gonna win you know I'm looking for that video right um and uh and then after that after I said no I think got so I think I lucked out then I got an onslaught of people reaching out to me saying that basically there was something going on with them some kind of turbulence or stuff so that's what I know about them uh nothing but I'm just so I'm explaining why I've never work um uh that's why I'm I'm I explain why I didn't work with them so just to let you know and that's actually why we don't I don't we don't actually work with a lot of uh small Builders anymore they're very few small Builders now there are a few that I I like there's one that's about to do I'm doing a video for right now I'm really excited about um and obviously like Beltone behind me this guy um Beltone guitars just certain builders that I think they get what I do they're not trying to hinder what I do they're like make whatever video you want Phil because they know that if you can get views in front of guitar players it's interesting content and you get the idea I don't want to go on a high I feel like I'm going on tangent um okay so there you go but uh present resident if you had a great experience with them please share that with me because that's that stuff is important when you guys have good or bad experiences with companies especially what I would call YouTube based companies 10s guitars there are a list of companies that we all know they're pretty much just on YouTube and so like you um I don't know how like sometimes when it's only on YouTube and I've never touched it I like you guys I'm like I'm just going off the word of all the people making content sometimes that's good sometimes it's bad but man it holds more weight sometimes when you guys either affirm the goods or the bads with me so if you I can tell you this if you send me a message ever about a company negative or positive I may not respond to it but I guarantee you I read it because that's the those are the con those are the emails I'm looking for as soon as somebody puts in the comment section or the header of the subject you know like I bought this and and good or bad I want to know especially especially if I work with them in the past but more so even if I haven't because again it lets me know when I'm talking to them uh which is a good time to mention this let me give you example I should give you an update a good segue into this a couple weeks ago I asked you guys for a favor you guys were amazing I want to talk about that Dean's Linsky guitars the brand Dean zelinski not Dean guitars but Dean's List guitars reach out to the channel obviously you guys wanted me to review a guitar of theirs do a deep dive I bought the guitar I did dive it did well a couple hundred thousand two hundred thousand views whatever right whatever really well you know if you're when you're lucky enough to get a video that hits like that um and uh they reached out and asked me to do content I asked you if you guys thought they'd be interesting and I said if you were interested in doing the video I would say yes and let them borrow let me borrow a guitar and do a video if you weren't as interested in it I would tell them they'd have to pay uh donation to charity um uh so you guys know Amanda thank you Amanda Coombs Amanda Coombs sent us the number she actually counted all she took the time out right to count every single one of your guys's votes gave me the information which was not I want to say overwhelming but it was definitely more so uh slanted towards you guys didn't want to me to do it for free you wanted me to ask him to put it to charity um I responded to them with an email I just want to let you guys know I asked them to donate two thousand dollars to one of the Charities that I I donate to every year or a charity if they have a charity they like I also I gave them an option to donate a thousand dollars a charity and let us keep the guitar as a giveaway to you guys so we give the guitar wait you guys have the video and still get a thousand dollars charity keep in mind though and this is important a lot of companies really don't like that they really want the YouTube channel to keep the guitar because it's behind the wall and you guys see it and you still you're like oh you still have the guitar so I let them know that if he wants to loan the guitar to the channel for whatever length of period I said I wouldn't sell it that basically at the end of it if I was sick of it we'd just send it back but I'd keep it for a time period and then maybe do like a 500 donation to charity and uh I haven't heard everything back so I'll I'll keep you guys updated but this is what I was talking about with certain companies you gotta understand like I don't know what else to do then I'm in I'm letting them basically donate some money charity and get their guitar in front of possibly a couple hundred thousand guitar players I mean it's possible and the video won't do great but even then a bad video for us on a deep dive is 50 60 000 views it's a lot of views for essentially just giving somebody charity so I'll keep you guys surprised with that because I said I would but I just want to let you know that it was your votes and that's I basically acted on what you guys said and uh there you go and let's get back to let's get back to your regularly featured program okay so the next one's from Travis who says hey Phil are these discounts real or a return to pre-covered prices um is it is this not inventory that was bought and paid during covet but has finally come in well that's my whole point yes so you answer your question is yes this is uh pre-covered right for a short time uh or maybe a long time I don't know for a time you're going to see deals on guitars especially new um more so new than used because people use telling you stuff might want to sit on it till they get their money out of it they may not depends on how desperate they are for money but the stores are definitely going to flip inventory because these are definitely orders in my opinion these are definitely orders they put in during covid that now they're receiving and going okay we do we don't have the numbers of customers we did when we were putting in these orders and it's very very important for me to tell you that um I because I do a lot of side work with companies including manufacturers you guys know I do all kinds of work with manufacturers and dealers and I can tell you that um I've had more than a dozen dealers during covid come to me and ask me for some information right I'd like to say advice but it really was more about information what they should do in scenarios you can understand a lot of these dealers were basically told by the manufacturers to they better take this inventory like the manufacturers were pretty hard on getting that inventory out there um you know not like other strong strong arming them so much as they what they were definitely saying oh if you you know fear-based right if you don't oh if you want any guitars you're you better order every guitar and so a lot of a lot of dealers did buy a lot of stuff and now they're sitting on too much inventory so I'm sorry I'm doing water see and I still don't use the mute button mackie's regretting this already [Laughter] all right um sorry you guys are just talking about numbers now uh tele driver says hey Phil do companies get a tax break if they donate to charity well they get a tax break if they pay me to do a video or if they give me the guitar um tax break meaning it's cost it comes off their you know if I mean obviously if they're a legitimate business they're um they're marking this his advertisement costs technically again I'm not an accountant um but the way I would understand it is whether they gave the money to charity or they gave it to me it would all be taken off the their profit line for the year and it would be you know tax deductible at that point it would be an expense right they would either be giving a charity I asked them to give a charity because again I I brought you guys in involved and I told you guys sometimes I ask companies to get the money charity sometimes I have the companies pay me there's a lot of reasons for that as I've said before it has to do with how much I want to do the video right if and and how much you want me to do the video or how well I think the video will do there's a lot of reasons you know to do this I'm I'm trying not to just make content for the sake of like hey a company gave me an offer let's make every video of the company say I think that burns it burns me the hell out I feel like it burns the viewers out but it really just burns me out before I can even get there just I mentally just all of a sudden I'm just tired of doing this um so to me I can't do every video that I think is exciting because what I find is exciting doesn't always correlate with you guys are finding exciting but in this case um the charity thing was um I I basically asked you guys if you really wanted the video you guys basically said no so instead of telling them no it's hey why don't you give money to charity and I make the content to me I'm looking for the win the win is if I'm doing the work which is two to three days worth of work right and you guys aren't super excited about the guitar I'm gonna be talking about at least if we're bringing making some money for charity or doing a giveaway and charity that brings excitement back into the video right because we're doing something and I think there's there's a I think there it's exciting to know like Hey we're giving money to guitars for vets or for children in the classroom or something like that and maybe doing a giveaway so like I said I was just looking for an opportunity to make an exciting video so there you go okay you guys are still all talking about this advertising budgets and again it doesn't make them a bad company or a bad person or whatever if they don't want to take the deal I'm just sharing with you because I'm pretty pretty upfront on the weekly show about whatever I'm doing that week or what I'm up to and why I'm doing it um and I'll like I said I'll give you an update I probably won't tell you if they ever say no I'll just assume it but I'll tell you if they ever say yes plus you'll see a video uh Curtis C says have you ever modified a tele with a conversion neck to change it from 24 or uh three quarter scale uh which neck did you use Warmoth and were you having the results I don't know if it was a Telly I feel like Telly wise I've done more conversions for baritones right uh using warmth baritonex um I I I always feel like I've done a lot of warm off conversions for customers but a lot can mean a dozen in a lifetime so one a year for 12 years right maybe sounds about right um in that I've probably done one or two 24 and three-quarter scale conversions from guitars uh and a job you know and so but here's what's funny I I know because I've no I remember doing it but I don't actually remember doing it if that makes any sense so I'm no use here it's been too long if I'd done it it's definitely 10 years ago minimum so um and the so they asked your question was was I happy with the results uh the customer was having the results I know that because they obviously they wouldn't have paid me so um so yeah I'm gonna say they were happy with the results I've never done it personally um I like 24 three quarter scale and I like 25 and a half inch scale and um I like it on different guitars for different reasons uh Telecaster I don't really I like having 25 and a half inch scale I like having a snap to the string on a Telecaster to me though I like 24 and three quarters on this on a strat or a super Strat style Body I think that's kind of fun and I I've played those before so but I'm gonna tell you I don't know if I necessarily care for it uh not in a negative way I just don't know what I would like love about it uh rummy rummy says Phil I scored a new Gibson Les Paul for 20 21 off oh that's a good question our thing to talk about too I paid cash to the store it weighs seven and a half pounds I was it was an asymmetrical neck thoughts uh every play ever play one so yes I have I've played the asymmetrical neck um great seven and a half pounds a nice Les Paul because it's super light and I'm I'm glad that you get you gave them cash because that's nice too they don't have to pay processing fees on their credit cards and uh that's always nice because they give you a discount obviously 21 off is pretty good like I told you they're probably sitting on a 30 margin on that guitar so they were a male a little but a little bit more because they didn't have to eat you know one two three percent on a credit card process in charge so congratulations win-win for everybody um on that note I was talking about we were talking about selling direct did you guys see I don't know about you guys but Gibson's been hammering me on my Instagram to tell me that they're putting guitars on sale um they have a lot of Les Paul Studios and Classics I think Classics on sale like 20 off so getting what I was talking about here they are you know telling you you know here you are you went to you went to a store and you got a discount on a Les Paul from a store and here's Gibson soliciting me to buy direct from them at a discount you see where I'm saying this is going to be an interesting uh conundrum in the future right because maybe I wouldn't have searched for the deal you got from a store when it was so easily on my phone to get some deal direct from Gibson and that's that's where like I said I think this is going to get kind of interesting and I say interesting in the most not sarcastic way it's going to be crappy right it's going to be probably watch them fight it out um let's spend some time oh sorry um let's spend some time yep yep I love that name yep yep says go figure Gibson having a hard time uh uh unloading overpriced inventory well sure right I mean that's the whole point of this right the the inflation came because everyone was buying well we inflation came for a ton of reasons right some of them real and some of them not so real but either way years when the market slows down that inflation is hard to hold up especially on the new products I don't think they're going to permanently lower prices I just don't see that as a potential uh it could be you know could be possible but I think what we're going to see now is what we're seeing now which is like I told you you're gonna see people try to get rid as much inventory as possible so they can firm up pricing because once they're not so much you know like I said the saying inventory Rich cash poor once they're more cash rich and inventory uh aligned they're not going to have the desire to basically want to give us those deals so if you're looking for those deals they're out there now and they might get a little better but they're out there now no you guys are horrible um okay uh hero glob says do I own an arch Top guitar uh I own a Gretch and that's an arch Top guitar with a uh so yes I don't have any other art shelters I've owned many over the years and for some reason I just like the Gretch so it kind of fits the need even though it has the tremolo on it so because a lot of arch guitars Arch top guitars don't have trouble obviously so but I like having it um and we might be okay we have NYC says how do you how do I make my custom 22 Sound more like a Les Paul should I replace the Dragon 2 pickups yeah that would help I mean you know it you know me personally pickups can only take you so far some people think they can do everything I don't think so um I've never seen that like to me if I take a if I take the pickups out of my Gibson let's pull and shovel my Strat they don't sound the same they just don't um the guitar still sounds kind of like a strat so to some degree to me all Paul Reed Smiths sound more like fenders than they do Gibson's PRS guitars to me tend to sound like fenders with humbuckers in them um they don't sound heavy and full like a Gibson Les Paul they sound more mid-rangey like a really fat Strat so to speak not to Fender's gonna be like fat Strat trademark pending uh well they trademark trademark owned and not even pending um so yes changing out the pickups would be a big difference to do that um especially over the Dragon 2 pickups right but I would be misleading if I say oh yeah absolutely you know if you put different pickups it's going to sound like a Les Paul it'll just be more in that EQ range it'll give you more of a low in full uh full mid lower mid range that Gibson has and less of that upper high high frequency mid-range that PRS has grumpy my guitar wants to know if there's any new amps in my future um well I just because I I'm trying to think is there um I just got an amp that's going to be a video soon I have another Amplified Nation amp um Taylor at amplify Nation really liked my video my first one so as you know he sent me the snakeskin amp I did that video he really liked that video he's like let's do it again so they sent me another amp and um this amp I'm taking a little bit more time with because I like those two videos but I kind of feel like I you know I can't just keep making he makes so many great amps that I just I know every video starts feeling like this and here's another great amp and here's another great amp and of course at their price point why wouldn't they be great but I kind of want to help you guys understand what it is about this amp that's so you know unique and interesting um other than that do I have any other amps in my future no not really uh no so I know I feel like huh I'm trying to think like if there's any secret things I know and there's nothing right so the as I've told you guys I'm really not on the uh the email list for a lot of companies when they're going to release product to send them to me it's not usually how I get product I usually get product after they've sent out lists and sometimes I make the second round of stuff it's just not it's not very common for me to be on the you know the first round draft of YouTube channels so and I actually kind of like it that way so it's okay with me um okay hold on a second let's do um a couple more questions Alan says uh he says he loves the show have I ever reviewed a quilter avid oh Aviator right Cub is that what it is um I've only reviewed one quilter amp I bought it uh they actually gave me a deal on it um and uh uh the head amp I don't even remember what it was it was so long ago it was like six years ago I bought an AM same thing everybody said hey you gotta check out culture you gotta check out quilter excuse me move here uh and I so I reach out to quilter and said hey I have this YouTube channel is there any deals for YouTubers that they buy your gear to do a video and they said yeah they gave me a discount I don't remember what the discount was um and I bought the amp and in the video I loved it I my only critique was I go I wish I had Reverb and then they either had it in the works I don't think it was because my suggestion because it happened too fast then they came out that same amp with a Reverb and then I was like oh well that's what I didn't like about mine is in every so I sold it off pretty much what I paid for it and then I meant to buy the one Reverb and then you know what happens what always happens on YouTube channels like mine you go oh but there's something else I can get and do another video of you know because I couldn't do a video of that and now it was Reverb that wouldn't be a good video so um and then I've never really talked to them ever again they don't no one ever asked me until you about it Andre did yeah why'd you do a super trans Andre so hey Phil any advice for improving live stream quality I'm probably the last guy to ask but all right all right says I already paid for the most expensive internet possible but my screams are a bit uh anemic so I have the same problem Andre I watch guys do 4K streams I don't get it um so I have a different mentality for for streaming so what I do is first you hardwire so I'm hardwired into the internet right now I also pay for the absolute best internet that they provide and I even update um my router and all that stuff to the newest stuff we do it every two years um we get all new gear in the house um because there's so many internet crashes and so many things um I try to and I run I stream everything at 1080p sometimes if I'm nervous um let me look right now yeah right now I'm running 1080p but if I get nervous I will immediately switch the um the OBS software to stream at 780 um because hold on a second or 720 why did I say 1080 I'm sorry I'm thinking 1080 720 so I apologize um I do 1080 but if I get nervous I go to 720 it's because I realize I would rather have 720 and some people give me crap they're like oh man 720. I'm like yeah but I would rather have 720 and you hear and see the show correctly um then you know have a better quality I don't know how the guys that do 4K Do It um I've I've bought like the best you know the best computer the best camera the best everything and to me it's always the internet provider that's causing the problem for me everything works until the internet provider and part of my problem also is when I do Andre this will help you too it's when you do your stream I picked this time of day because uh some of the people that remember the beginning of this podcast no this was picked because it was to pick because I could do the show and then go pick up my daughter from school and then that's kind of it was just that's what it was had to do with picking up my daughter from school and so that's where this time frame came out what happened over the years it's made it horrible for me because this time frame is absolute horrid because the majority of people in my neighborhood especially post covered now work from home and the afternoon is where the internet is bogging down and the internet show the company show us like this is where it gets bogged down too much too many people on there so um obviously buying the most expensive internet you can is good but the only advice I can give you is just try to get to 1080p um I mean that's isn't that horrible that's my only good advice I don't know what else to tell you but definitely make sure your equipment's up to date and um and then I lean into as many resources I can of people who do this you know that know this stuff and help us set it up and that's it but I'm so not techy when it comes that stuff I'm like the worst one what drives me absolute Bonkers is most the time you can just use your phone and it will come out better than this but same thing I'm afraid of my phone just dropping so the the um I did a I did a live show from my phone once in Utah and um in my truck and I didn't want the AC going in the truck because you know it was too noisy and the phone was great and I was remember thinking like this is better quality in my normal home show but then my phone overheated and shut off and in the middle of the show so to answer your question I guess I would just make sure your route you're you're hardwired in you're using a good router um and also Andre the other thing oh see I can hear my wife in my ear right now and don't trust the uh internet company she makes them come out and test it at least once a year or more because they always tell us it's fine and then they always come out and then they always find a problem [Music] and so I find like even if you buy the best stuff from them they tend to downgrade you and also the other thing I've learned which is horrible this is this I feel like this is all horrible advice but it's at least I can experience um I also pay attention to when my internet provider has all of a sudden like I had a like their premium package and they're like they have a super duper package I learned whenever they add a new package get that package because your package isn't working like it was anymore Brian's like don't trust the Internet by the way Andre if you guys don't know Andre uh uh Dr Andre flood's Channel I've mentioned it many times he's doing right now an interesting experiment he's um checking out all the pelvis Smith SE guitars um I watched a little bit of your live show yesterday I stream it on my phone but I got to see the video you popped out today I got most of it and uh and uh so basically Andre uh understands the he understands the the the problem which is you know you can't financially pour out money constantly and making YouTube content but you also don't want to you know deal with the demon right so to speak so he worked out a really interesting deal I think with uh PRS to get some guitars out to his channel and get some content you know out there and again you know uh using the language that I like which is you know they know what to expect and one thing I will say about Paul Reed Smith Guitars is I've had good and bad moments with them over the years but ultimately like I said Gene has been always amazing to me uh she's never been in question once ever but uh so guys check out his that video because like I said it's just gonna be interesting to see what he does with these guitars especially the uh he's got five of the esses which that was really cool it's a lot of work so you guys know so you guys know just to give him an Accolade real quick the more guitars you see in a video like comparing the more they literally multiply the work the way you see it so if you see two guitars in a video it's twice as much work if you three guitars and videos three times work every guitar adds the same amount of work just multiply on that video so so so good for you better you than me that's a lot of work um so uh I'm gonna say space says thoughts on the Marshall Jason 2000 series uh why the hate um well I mean you know look it's a purist thing right I mean and again I'm just going off of like you know what I've seen people talk about because I I don't really think that jcm 2000 series gets hate it just doesn't receive the love that the Vintage Marshals do I mean all the guitar players I love use the jcm2000 I mean Paul Gilbert's used them uh Nuno Benton courts use them um Jeff Beck has used them uh Joe Bonamassa has used them those amps I've been on those stages used jcm 2000 is a well-known well very well known very well respected backline amp okay I always like I love this question because it kind of comes into this weird thing where we gotta watch the internet and sometimes the internet is his own little because here's why um I hear on the internet that the Hot Rod Deluxe is a crappy ant by Fender and the jcm2000 is horrible and everybody has opinions of stuff meanwhile that stuff is the back line of so many backline companies right it's used by somebody back on Clan Boys on so many stages by so many artists um so so literally um these artists trust it I even watched there's an interview I don't wish I could kind of like mentally resource where it was but it does exist on YouTube if somebody wants to find it it's Paul Gilbert not only talking about backlight amps but talking about his first second third fourth choice when he requests backline right so he like first if you have a Plexi I want that second if you don't have a Plexi I'll take a jcm2000. if you don't have a GCM 2000 I'll take it this right he was just going down the list okay and um literally like I said the jcm 2004 anybody can say anything bad or good about it it is literally used I said literally too many times it is used as a backline and so many artists um I watched Nuno bitten Court one uh time uh live when his Randalls came out and his his Randall blew up I'm not making this up so you know we saw Steve eye at that event he at the same venue and his aunt blew up too because they and uh because the electricity at the venue sucked and then they switched over to his other Randall and it blew up and then we saw like his two stacks we saw his like Roadie pushing the GCM thousand head up over the stack like we were hoping not you know it looked like he was going to top all the amps he put it up on top and they plugged it in they got it going and uh later we got to talk to Nuno uh King's X opened for them and we said man that was crazy and he goes yeah he goes I was getting nervous he goes dude if that jcm2000 blew up he goes they were actually unpacking uh King's X had already packed up their their trailer he goes they were unpacking all of King's X's gear to get Tai tabor's rig because so so extreme can finish the show extreme even did a acoustic little set while they were trying to figure out this stuff and uh to Jason 2000 blew his amp away it just sounded so much better which was why he'd probably still see him with that amp more so than anything else um so um I know it's hated but there's sometimes there's a thing about amps that are hated on the internet yet the professionals rely on them I mean I don't know where to take that I I what I like I like to use the word sexy I like that word for gear um it's it makes to me it paints a beautiful picture in your head some gear is just not sexy like I said a Toyota Camry not a sexy car right I mean it's Dependable it's great gas mileage it's comfortable it gets you to work it's going to last 200 000 miles right uh price wise you know for what you get I'm gonna say it's good value I'm not a car reviewer I'm gonna pretend I am for a second I'm gonna say I couldn't think anything about the Camry I couldn't like except for the fact that it you have a Camry that's not a sexy car it's not a you know exotic car it's not this trendy car same thing with amplifiers Sometimes some amplifiers aren't sexy a blues junior is not a sexy amp neither is a Hot Rod Deluxe neither is the jcm 2000 I'm sorry please don't get upset but they're good amps and they for some reason it's fine to say yeah there's something cool about a Friedman there's something cool about a jcm or not Jason even a Plexi you know it's a iconic amp but like I said so much focus it gets weirdly focused in the same ways and then uh and then that question is why I like those questions that you ask because to me Let me refresh this because you said the best way why is it hated I have no idea um now if we're talking about um like as a as an amp Tech why an amtec may not like it yeah it's a lot of PC boards and maybe it's not built the best way that this is something I try to um when I talk about guitars and I'm going through them I try to balance how I feel as someone who has to work on this stuff versus how I feel as as an as an Enthusiast of the gear and as an artist who plays gear or as a musician um yes there are things I don't like like I said I'm not a big proponent I'm not a big fan of when Gibson shows circuit boards or music women shove circuit boards into the guitars because it sucks for me to work on it but I try not to color that completely with just that statement I like to even it out with but it sounds good it looks cool it's a good guitar it's just yeah I don't like I don't enjoy working on that so much um and and on that note there are certain things about uh SGS and strats and stuff I don't like having to take apart everything to get to something either but I try not to like just focus on that um so amp text might have some problems with certain amps because again they're kind of built inexpensively and they probably have a lot of things they can complain about but if you give me if you give me a blues junior or Hot Rod Deluxe or jcm2000 or a um I don't know I'm trying to think of another another amp that's in that vein um uh the DSL series any of the DSL series all that stuff there's no I have nothing to complain about as long as it works right as long as it turns on which most of the time they do it's fine so and then that's a good example example Jim spy says is the DSL the same as the jcm2000 as I'm not an amtec so if you were to ask uh an amp Tech especially one of the amp channels if you're asking comparatively speaking they could probably take it apart just like I could take apart a guitar and compare and go no it's not the same they changed it my guess it's just a guess is the DSL series obviously the Jason the jcm 2000 originally was built in England and now of course the the DSL series is made in Vietnam or China or whatever it is right I'm not even sure where it's made I assumed it's Vietnam but I don't know um and so that's a that's a factor of that you know and why that is not just where it's built but of course you know when they tend to go to lower cost manufacturing places that have Lower Class Manufacturing they tend to also add lower cost components right um and so it could be cheaper components I don't know but they also don't cost the same they went down in price so grumpy Mike says amtecs hate anything with PCB uh yeah so do I there's a reason why I want to work on Old technology because right I know this and the same guy who doesn't want to use an app for a video you know in a video for a piece of tech it's like I don't want to do Tech I'm I live in a world with potentiometers and you know right just simple simple switches and stuff so I like it that way um but uh but in that question I don't know what's different and if you're asking me what sounds different there's nothing about I've never compared the two okay but that's not important some people think comparison is everything it is something but it's not everything sometimes it's your reaction to something you know as someone who's played a jcm two thousand a thousand times it feels like in their life and have a sense of what it sounds like I've never plugged into the DSL series and went what is this I plug it in and I go yeah that's the 2000. like that's what it sounds like to me it's yeah it's like a it's like a higher gain version of the jcm 900 kind of 2000 kind of vibe right like it's like I told you about tube screamers I use them as my Perfect Analogy um they make a thousand different tube screamers and we can a b them and I go oh this one's in brighter and this one's got a little more gain and this one's a little greener But ultimately all I really care about is if I'm looking for a tubescreen or something I know what it does how it sounds and how it reacts I plug into their Tube Screamer and I go yeah that sounds it that's that's good enough if that's all I care about right now right okay I have no idea what you guys are you talking about Sweetwater candy okay I think we're I think we're done is that the end of the show let me make sure I don't have any super chats or anything I missed and if I do miss them we'll always scoop them up next week and also I look at my moderator screen and oh Brian says Don't miss Mr G Super Chat okay let me find that so Mr G says I need to swap out the three-way on my hollow body 2 okay how hard is it uh I'm good with swapping the switch but I've never worked on my hollow body um it's not hard it's a pain in the ass I feel like this is the Kersey show um they uh um what I mean by that is uh it's it's it's just you're you know fitting everything through the F because everything feeds to the stupid f-hole it's just a pain in the butt um nothing is different um you might have here's where it's going to get problematic let me look at the guitar if we could hold on a second um that will help me and oh I'm assuming okay so you're gonna understand uh because then we're doing a live you know show um Mr G I'm assuming you said hollow body too I'm assuming it's the import okay I'm going to look right now the reason I say that is is because if it's the USA one it's going to be a lot easier because everything feeds through a big compartment on the bottom of the bout of the guitar in this case I'm assuming it's this SE and here's where it's a make or breaker man if there's enough wire for you you are gonna here's what you're gonna do you're going to undo this this this nut right here and you're going to pull this pull this this is how they put it in through that f-hole right there right you're gonna pull it out and if you're lucky they gave you enough wire or they have zip tied uh the wire together and you're going to have to go in there with some kind of something to cut it and cut that zip tie don't use a blade or anything it's only something that will snip it because you don't want to snip any wires if you have enough room I would also make sure um put painters tape all around here you can see my mouse right okay cool um uh for those who listen later painters tape all around the F whole even wrap it through the iPhone basically because you're going to be pulling stuff out you're going to be just like scratching things and doing stupid things this thing so protect all this area Okay feed this three-way switch through that little rat hole right there if you're lucky you have enough wire to do it then you'll desolder and put in the new Switch um my guess because of where it's made it's probably a box switch which is just a cheap switch it could be um there is an epidemic with guitars right now at all price points with switches um I don't know why this is happening it's been going on for years and getting worse and worse and worse and it's just getting to the point where I feel like I don't say half but 40 of the switches this is my impression no no factual data my impression is 40 percent of the switches are bad um and some of it's because there's fake switches out there that say that they're branded correctly but they're they're out there junk and maybe it's availability Parts I'm not sure what's going on but it seems like it's getting worse so um uh so basically like I said that's what I would do and just and then if you're going through that buy yourself a quality three-way switch um and do that somebody said use deoxid to kind of clean the switch absolutely you can try and clean and solve the problem for sure right um because again that it could be just some dust in there it could be a ton of things um so cleaning the switch is obviously a great idea thank you who did that suggestion Richard III Richard thank you that's a great suggestion because again uh simple right Occam's razor yes sometimes the simplest solution could be the easy or it could be the easiest one could be the best one if these and so cleaning it out could be a real big easy way but so you know um definitely do that but I'm skeptical too because I feel like a lot of guitars especially like that guitar so you know three way switches and prs's have been a problem for me so without a doubt there just seems to be something a run of switches and definitely prsse seemed to be the biggest culprits culprits when I think of bad three-way switches I think of probably Smith SES in my personal experience in the last few years dealing with them and sometimes deoxy works and some of those don't and so you can always do deoxic and then like I said if not feed it through and do that and like I said it's not difficult as long as you know how to solder you're good and if you don't know how to solder it's a good time to learn and then feed it through the worst case scenarios like I said is f everything let me go back to it if everything is on a short wire right then you have to pull up all three of these knobs off undo the nuts and then pull all the guts through that hole right there um through the middle of the f-hole pull the guts out and then beat it all back in and that's a pain and there's a couple things you can do to make things easier on that but what's nice is believe it or not this sounds horrible but in this kind of guitar it's actually right there it's all right there and it's not nearly as hard as a ton of the guitars it's a lot worse when the three-way switch is way up here and then you have knobs out in different spots and the F holes are up higher it could be a much much harder project um and uh don't think it was difficult just think it is time intensive it's gonna it's gonna be an afternoon of just you know because the more if you if you you want to just go slow because you know so you don't scratch or damage anything uh chess Roots love says have you mentioned that PRS I mentioned everything that I've ever seen to PRS uh so I I would say um I would say there's probably not a company that I've ever uh worked with in 10 degree degree that doesn't have more than what they would love to hear from me why a lot of companies don't want to work with me anymore uh it's not because like oh his video wasn't that great it was like or whatever he beat us up in a video it's usually sometimes I'm annoying them with stuff I'm complaining about um I can't help it it's not because I'm a complainer maybe it is maybe I'm a complainer um it's because like I said I kind of like I have a fear it's not a big fear but it's there I have a fear that I will I will do something in a video and then and then it will be the opposite and everyone will be like what what none of us had that experience and then I feel like huh so I kind of want to make sure that the company is aware of anything if it helps so yeah they know um and I think they've um we've had many back-to-backs about it [Laughter] feels difficult yes yeah well so you know and I don't think that's unique I think most of the YouTubers I know are kind of a pain in the ass so it's it's just because like I said it's it's tough because you're trying to you know you're critiquing stuff when you critique stuff it becomes habit forming and maybe it's not the best to have it to have all right on that note we're gonna call it we did two hours we had a lot of subjects we talked about a lot of things we learned we loved some of you probably bought a guitar during the show let's just face it that probably happened I I feel like I got everything on my list I hope so if I didn't miss something we'll hit it next week um as always I want to thank you guys for supporting what I do um and uh and being part of this community man that's always awesome uh so so I'm just reading some of your comments you guys can make me laugh it's great as I get to watch them after the show so I'll stay focused on that as always uh thank you guys so much for your time till next Friday I guess we say know your gear all right guys bye the know your gear podcast

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 63,134

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Id: i_-EwRiIsgM

Length: 119min 35sec (7175 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023