the know your gear podcast hey everyone welcome to the know your gear podcast episode 359 not quite 360 but close right 360 all right anyways so hope everybody had a fantastic week uh and um got a lot of stuff to talk about and a lot of questions a lot of subjects a lot of cool things uh so let's go into the first into uh what I put on my agenda for announcements there's only one announcement it's pretty cool um we have new mugs yeah now what's new is okay so normally saying a new mug is like hey look there's a new new cool design it's like goes from green to uh oh back to green so it goes green orange pink green little cool little vibe there um there's of course more of a traditional like know your gear logoed mug look at that that's more like a three-dimensional but there's a new one that's clear that's what I'm using today so it's cool it's like clear like that um and I thought I had it do I have it can I show you guys yeah I can look W look at that and uh so there new merch new exciting stuff uh so I just thought I'd share with you so of course uh we wanted to give you something a little different and a little the same so you can get the same style logo gear that you normally get um oh look there's oh I can add it to card check it out that's the one I told you it's the like the uh three Di dimensional kind of neon sign so there you go just letting you know about that stuff pretty painless pretty fast there you go that's my Shameless merch promotion um it's not exclusive uh it's not short it's not on discount it's not any of that stuff don't worry if you think you could use some want to do it do it if not just go ahead and you know check it out next week okay uh what else yeah the frost Chris says the frosted I thought so too I just thought it was cool cuz it's a little different um especially for me I use these coffee mugs at home normally that are clear and so I kind of like like this it's kind of close to them it's less of the you know normally the only reason I'm using the the more traditional mugs on the channel is because I don't want you to see the actual drink you know I don't want you to you have to watch me drink the liquid so but I like this one because it gives me like the Frosted look like I said and I know your gear mug makes the water taste better so so uh uh let's yeah it's like put it in the freezer and put some beer I don't know if you can freeze this I don't know I didn't I didn't try Okay so there's my big announcement let's go back to uh let's talk about guitar stuff that's probably the more important thing as always I just want to point out the moderators are in blue with a blue uh wrench and they're here to help us and uh if you see a green name that means they're supporting the channel because the channel members on YouTube support this podcast and of course Patron supports this podcast and I appreciate them and you guys for hanging out and every way you support give it a thumbs up share with somebody make a comment I don't know what buy a mug whatever works okay let's let's get into uh subjects and questions uh the first one I wanted to talk about was a a Super Chat that I missed last week it was the last Super Chat from floodland who says Phil will a Gibson tribute hold their value will Gibson tributes hold their value uh I believe they will go up in value this is like stock Channel now is that what we're going to talk about all the time you know I'm going to go on a tangent on this floodland I want to talk about the subject show you my uh my experience with that particular guitar and then also talk about funny thing I've been doing the Pod Clips if you guys don't know I have a second Channel where I dump all kinds of interesting shorter versions of things I do on this channel longer versions whether it's podcast or videos or extra Bon bonus podcast but creating them and putting them on there there's I get to watch like the podcast throughout the years recently and man do we talk about like literally what's going on in that minute minute it's like when Co was happening was like every show was like can you believe the price of guitars I can't find the guitar I want it's so expensive and I can't even find it even if I could you know afford it and now it's like every fifth question is I need to sell all the stuff I bought during Co how do I sell stuff how do I get rid of stuff how do I what is the value of the stuff I want to get rid of uh it's just uh what I basically what I'm trying to say is I know a lot of you that watch it are new and you come here and you're maybe hanging out cuz you know it's a good it's a gear channel it's it's geeky gear talk but man if you're in the market for guitars this is the time to buy everybody's trying to get rid of some guitars whether they're a a store a manufacturer or a person but let's get back to his particular question which was will a Gibson tribute hold value you know it's funny this question is uh a little traumatic to me because I did a video I dare say viral video like a million more view you know million or more views video on this channel many years ago I think it was 2017 I went into a Sam Ash and I I said hey you guys you know everybody the big thing at that time was anderton's and they were like Ali anderton and Rob Chapman were doing this what guitar would we buy if we had a budget was like a big thing and they were doing that video all the time they were great I watched them I was awesome and so they would go into the andron store and pick out the gear they would buy and uh at the time 2017 I I still had the store and uh and so I'd get a lot of viewers going Phil what guitar would you buy if you had $500 and I just thought well if I go in my store and go well I picked that one right there I'd be like well you know I don't know that's I mean that's like so copying the the anderon guys that I kind of felt like you know that's I and then somebody's like well I just want to see what you would do in this situation I'm like yeah but it was really their idea so I was like what can I do to make that idea more my own and even though I had a store at the time I called uh guitar Center and said can I come to your store and buy a guitar $500 and the Guitar Center's like we don't allow filming in the store I'm like literally there's like a thousand videos on YouTube of people filming your stores but okay and so I reached out to Sam Ash and uh I said hey uh can I film in your store they were like sure and uh Samy Ash called me back and said yeah we'll let you film in the store I had never been to their store I feel so bad i' never been to the Glendale store on the other side of town for me and he's like yeah you can come in we'll we'll close we we'll close the store for an extra hour or you can come in an hour before the store opens and I go oh I don't I don't need to do all that just me and my buddy Ralph and Joe uh we have cell phones and we'll just film it he's like okay and I go so we went in and we filmed it and in there at the time was a Gibson tribute and gold top with P90s and at the time they were going for $5 to $600 used six was probably closer to to Norm but $500 you could find for maybe 550 and knew they were like $7.99 so it was $800 guitar knew so I saw that if you guys saw that video I saw that guitar and I was like that's a good deal and I'm like hey you know and I always preach it on this channel I'm like hey if you're G to buy anything used buy a Gibson it's gonna right especially a video like that I'm like I don't know if I even want a guitar I didn't need a guitar I just wanted to make a video like what would I buy and um here's what's funny about stories and reflecting back and maybe it's interesting I am a huge huge fanatical ianz fan and in that show in that video the show I did the video I did if you see there is like two or three in perfect condition Dirt Cheap Ian his seven string guitars there was like a 721 uh rg721 and I I I was like I wanted it so bad maybe was a 7421 if I anyways um and I wanted them so bad I was going to pick them and I was like the whole time going but the question is like what would I buy I was like well I think I'd buy that seven string but I would kept going back going I'd be dumb not to buy this Gibson they had it marked for I think $3.99 it was 400 bucks and um it was sitting there so I I bought the guitar and uh why the story is funny I may have brought it up a couple times the years is that people have a trouble uh dating YouTube you know dating the times you know YouTube I think I feel purposely sometimes hides the dates from us on videos because they want them to be kind of Timeless because videos sometimes like in that context you have no reference of when I made it it's like not like my hair was much different back then so um so anyways um the thing that about that video drives me nuts is every year after that video the comments about how fake that video got got more and more as the price of that guitar got up so when people knew when I first did it not no one B deny every was like oh good deal 400 bucks they're only like 550 you know that's a good deal he did good a year or two later they were going used for 650 700 people like wow that's a really good deal I can't believe you got it then they were going used for like a th000 people were like this is fake there's no way he bought it for 400 bucks it was staged the entire time and then I think they even went used now like 1,200 bucks and then people were like this is ridiculous like people put comments that video to day ridiculous this is unbelievable they didn't even triy to to lie to us and cheat US there's no way he bought a a $1,200 guitar for 400 bucks so I guess the story is that video is living proof of watching a guitar go up in value each year but then having no context now I've put comments on it since I think I pinned a comment saying hey this video was done a long time ago please pay attention that or something like that and now every once in a while I see I see the opposite comments now instead of saying oh it's fake I just see people going man sure is sad to look at what guitars went for just only five six years ago and I'm like yeah it's tough right um so so yeah to answer your question uh tributes will go up uh Gibson has done one thing and one thing well which is they have uh not only created a demand for the guitars they continue to create a demand for the guitars um you know I hear all the time they're like oh when the the Boomers all die no one will buy them well the Gen xers are buying them so I guess we got to say when the Gen xers all die they'll buy them but right now right now if you look Gibson's having no problem selling Gibson to Millennials as well um the only time I hear the argument of why people don't want Gibsons is when they're playing guitars that if you were Boomers wouldn't play if they were playing a different gen of Music if you're playing you know eight string gent yeah you're not buying less Paul it's so it's it's not so much about Gibson at that point is it's just not the right tool for your job you're not going to play that kind of guitar if you're into headless guitars you might be into Gibson I couldn't wait for the I couldn't couldn't p p not put the joke I'm sorry um but you get the idea it's like it's it's um you know it's not your Forte it's not your guitar so yeah Gibsons um you know I hate to say it they're they're they're good bets and I when I say hate to say it I only say I hate to say it because I don't like looking at guitars as Investments um which ties into a great question I got this week that actually can bounce off that which I I loved it was an interesting question I never got it before and I liked it and it was and I did I put it in the right order probably not but I will find it here it is what is it it is I feel so bad if I lose it because I know the question but I just don't remember the person asking its name and I want to say it um okay I know I copy pasted it and I lost it so let I just to keep things flowing I'm going to go without it so the question was somebody asked me uh if I keep the the the actual boxes to the guitars you know and uh I I I I never heard that before I I never had anybody asked that but I never even thought about it like uh it never occurred to me that you would want to keep the boxes um so I I was like I I understand for pedals I think that's a collectibility thing I you know obviously it's like he's got the box that's a you know by the way I'd like to point out you know that was you guys were putting that stuff on my videos for a while and I was not getting it and then I finally caught up on Josh Scott videos and I was like oh it came from him he's got the box so anyways oh I'm sorry it was just some guy and he put no Hector Cruz I'm sorry Hector Cruz put do you save your branded shipping boxes thank you Hector I wanted to get your name so uh anyways uh I don't save the boxes I don't even save the cases to my guitars um I'm I I have a system that I have followed for many many years when it comes to guitars and um it's very obvious to see on the wall what I'm doing with a guitar uh if you guys don't know there is a process to my guitars and whether or not I'm keeping them and when I say keeping them I mean I think I'm keeping them okay so um so uh if if you see me add for those listening I'm grabbing a guitar If you see me add a Demario clip lock strap to a guitar that means I have decided to keep it then then the next question would be if I have the case I this did I picked up a gnl uh guitar it's an ASAT um HH with it has a Demario clip block strap on it and I don't have the case for that guitar anymore so with cases I'll sell them off for 50 bucks or whatever I can get for them uh depending on how uni unique the case is or what it is and um sometimes I give them away you know if I just maybe I know somebody in the right time the right thing um so I don't have to ship it you know obviously it's worth the effort and um yeah I just ditch the cases I I don't want the cases um my guitar sit in racks in my closet my closet uh the closet I have locks and so they're in racks and I seal the door the door seals and I lock it if I have to it's like locking all my guitars in one giant case and um I keep a bunch of gig bags in case I got to take guitar somewhere but I I don't even have a quarter of the gig bags for my guitars so I mean somebody goes what if you move I'm like well hopefully I won't move I guess I'll be buying some some packing materi in boxes yeah I just don't want the cases I I don't transport them in cases and I don't do it so and I just make that decision when I know I'm keeping the guitar and then so you know sometimes they don't keep the guitar and you know it's it's it's you know we all make the same mistake it's like I fell out of love with it and now I don't have a case for it and uh so I take the hit on that sometimes it's not the smartest thing but you you know I I just do it now the only exceptions to that is there's a few cases I do have about five or six cases maybe seven if I'm just rounding up that are so unique that I know you know these guitars just may be valuable one day with them uh to some extent but um you know not really anything else other than that somebody put a comment I should have just grabbed it because it tied on somebody said something about my Stevi jym guitars investment my oh Fred Fast Freddy 333 says Phil don't you keep your Steve V guitar as an investment no I don't keep it as an investment um I keep it because I absolutely love it and I I wanted a gem you know my my literally my whole guitar life I mean from the moment I started playing guitar you know I wanted a gem or a universe and so when I finally got one it has now you know escalated in price compared to what I paid for it but that's not why I keep it it's it's if anything if anything I would cash out it right now if um if there was a guitar that I wanted more than that guitar I would absolutely sell it and buy the guitar I want uh that would be not not even a question but um like I said I think I mentioned on a show once that my kids can sell it when I die or whatever I just I you know they'll get money for it or whatever it'll just keep going up but the main reason I keep it is because I I want to play it and I um I love it that's why I keep it so I have no guitars that are essentially like this was for investment purposes like I bought it um and I don't even know you know I made a comment that that's probably my most not expensive guitar but the best you know biggest investment guitar you know grown but I actually might have a another one that's worth more that I paid even less for than that and but I absolutely love that instrument as well so yeah it's just Investments as guitars um and and trust me I'm I'm very aware that investing in guitars can be a smart thing because I mean having the store you know you can't sell as many guitars as I sold a in a decade a longer than a decade and not seen the wow if I had that guitar seven years ago I mean there's a ton of guitars that I've went through my hands uh where you know I bought it for 800 bucks and now they're worth five grand bought it for five grand and now they're worth 20 grand I mean so I mean there is that but um I don't really get a whole lot of Joy from that um I get more joy out of guitars breaking even that is like that makes me so happy when I buy a guitar and then I decide I don't want it anymore and I sell it for what I paid it's almost like it's like a magic I can't imagine anything better than that it's nice to to cycle uh into you know and not and not feel like man if I didn't make that one wrong choice on this guitar I could buy this thing I really really like now so um so I don't know but yeah so uh but in investment guitars you know if you want to become an investor in guitars there's all kinds of people I suggest you watch um that do vintage guitars and all that stuff but uh if you want to be Layman at it like me uh you know Gibsons are smart choices when you're just buying a guitar for the idea that um uh you know just for whatever reason for interesting enough I got an email and the email the question was uh Phil you made a statement once on your podcast that uh if you lost money on a gibs and you didn't wait long enough and they said that's not true they've lost a couple you know money on Gibsons you mean if you bought it dirt cheap and now it's worth no it's just you you literally hold true with my saying uh what I said which is if you lost money on a Gibson you didn't wait long enough I I mean I I should have I should have been clear like I don't mean like another month or a year I mean yeah you might have to wait 10 20 years um and no you don't have to buy them special funny enough I I don't know what possess me to look at it this week but in 2020 uh my first coach covid purchase was a Gibson es335 which is easy to figure out you can go look on my uh Channel and see when I posted that video so and I hope I got the timeline right and I almost feel like I should look it up now I am I'm like well you know in a world where I can actually fact check myself might as well do it um hold on a second is it not taking me to okay there it is uh let me look this up and then I'll tell you why it's funny because I think I tell the story in the video okay so it says three years ago I love it it's not telling me the exact date if I open it maybe it'll tell me the exact date um I don't know why it's not giving me the date but it was three years ago so yeah it was about 20120 during Co I bought a Gibson eer 35 from bizar guitar and Reno and oh October 2020 so yeah so was right in the middle of like when we you know obviously in the middle of that you know so um why this is relevant is um you know the market it's funny uh and I didn't buy it in October cuz obviously the video came out October so who knows when I bought it I could have bought a few months before that um most likely probably bought it around my birthday which would be July so anyways why this important is um at the time they sold that guitar to me dirt cheap um Dirt Cheap meaning $500 off of street price so $24.99 is um what I paid for that guitar I think they woned three grand and I got it for 24 or maybe it was 25 then at the price so maybe that's what it was they sold it to me for their asking price whatever it was um it's worth that use now it's worth what I paid for it in a short period of time with the extremes of you know the guitar Market but even now in the softer Market it's worth what I paid for it um so it's an interesting thing it's like I said that I would not say is typical if you buy a new Gibson in 3 four years it's worth what you paid for it but it's very typical for 10 years and so to answer their question that they sent me in the email they go I don't understand why you're saying this uh or why you're you know you're always saying if you wait you know the the price you'll get your price for the Gibson it's really kind of Fender too but mostly Gibson it's because it's not because their guitars go up and value it's because they continually make the same guitar and they raise the pricing that's really what's affecting the market more than anything else when you're talking about that kind of stuff you're you buy a Gibson Les Paul St standard Les Paul in 1988 you got to understand 198 888 2024 they're still making the same damn guitar they're still making a Gibson standard I mean we could argue some spec changes some you know color changes a couple things here and there but it's essentially the same guitar and there's and obviously with inflation in the world and everything 1988 price to now so if you bought a 9 1988 we're not even talking about if it goes up in value which it does it's definitely worth you know uh used what a went for new because again they keep raising their new prices so it's kind of interesting and again I'm not back to not saying buy Gibsons as Investments I'm just explaining why I I like that and I and I think my first reason for that was I said it I'm pretty sure I said this in the e335 video um I don't think this you know sometimes stuff gets edited out and I don't remember what gets edited out but I'm pretty sure I talked about the fact that I really like the ePhone dot I really like that guitar but you know years of selling Gibsons T teaches me that if I buy an e335 Gibson and I play it for 10 or 15 years I will literally sell it for what I paid it's like I get to play it for free for a decade and a half or where the epone it doesn't it's not as easy to get all your money out of it not that it's a big difference but it's a little difference so again that's all the talk I want to talk about that because I feel like then this channel becomes more about investing in guitars and I just don't think that's you know as exciting as talking about the guitars themselves so let's um uh yeah rrdd says we can't touch a 335 for under $3,500 net great deal yeah so it's like you know and again I didn't buy it going haha I'm GNA be get an es335 and then in a couple years make a grand on it or whatever I just was like you know I just I had sold enough guitars I I tell you all the time I wish I was smarter than I was my stories mostly come from experiences in the store I have hundreds of examples of guitars that I sold that if I had any if I had the Savvy that I have now I probably would have put them in in the back this is why this is why when you see stores like uh norms and you see nice high-end stores like that why do you think they have back rooms they have them for special clientele for sure but they also have them because some of these guitars they just know sit on them longer longer so that's but that's their Market that's their world I'm not really into that I'm more into whatever is coming out next week um uh Damon says oh good question Damon says are you really getting your money back if if it's inflation well yeah that's how the inflation would work right so in other words if I had $2500 and I definitely don't want to talk about inflation but just in my we're talking about my es335 example yes in theory because I spent $2500 on that guitar in 2020 and if I sold it now I get 3500 which is yes that would mean that that actually works in my favor that that did um where the $2,500 sitting in cash on my desk from 2024 would now be worth less because I couldn't buy an es335 with it so just again let's not get into that stuff make makes you nuts okay um all right uh so many questions okay this was from Randall Vander Griff says so Walmart is selling a Ash body HSS guitar great deal uh under $400 people are making fun of the guitars because they're at s Walmart oh man now you're taking me back to when kids used to make fun of me for wearing Kmart clothes actually I you know what sad is that would make the kids almost sound they're they probably sound horrible they they weren't horrible I didn't get fun of make fun of because I had Kmart clothes I got made fun of because we bought from the Goodwill and so I got Kmart clothes that were like 10 years too late so like in 1986 I was wearing like 70s corduroy pants from Goodwill so oh yes oh yes the good old days of not wearing the right sneakers and clothes okay so um what what am I trying to say here I'm trying to say uh Walmart selling guitars uh and people making fun of it well first of all who cares who sells what um uh in the grand scheme of things it's not like uh you know it it it's not like would be different than Amazon in fact Let Me Explain why it's the same as Amazon uh Walmart is not selling guitars that's not what's happening um what is happening is and I can tell you this for a fact because I'm an affiliate for Walmart what yeah news flash in fact if you want in real time if you want I can load up the uh the channel right now I'm loaded up with guitar Gibson's at Guitar Center if you look at somewhere on this screen somewhere on this whether you're watch it on TV you can see that if you click any of these things that are products uh so you know these products that are listed they're just attached to me I pick them I usually pick guitar tools and um I pick Guitar Center today because I don't know it was just faster to do that when I set up the show and um but yeah one of the things I can pick is Walmart and there's guitars and tools from Walmart but um and I think I have Walmart Affiliates on here um so um what is going on well Walmart is essentially doing what Amazon is doing in this scenario sometimes you buy from Amazon and sometimes you're buying from an Amazon affiliate it means some somebody will ship it from their house or wherever they ship it from and fulfill it or you know from overseas they'll fulfill the purchase um so what's happening with Walmart same thing if you buy it online from Walmart especially on any of these links you keep seeing more so than their website but even their website um it's being fulfilled fulfilled by someone else a third party and then Walmart is getting a piece which is why Walmart is now giving affiliate dollars to people like me so basically if you click on a Walmart link that I have one of my videos um I get 1% I think I can get up to 3 and a half% but I get 1% on average and then Walmart's probably getting like 10% and then whoever's selling it has to you know pay out the 11% and ship it straight to you so that's all happening so that's why you're going to see it that you you can get guitars now from Target anyone who has Brand recognition or is set up with these affiliate type programs can do this uh so um my guess this that I know for a fact so everything I just told you is information you can take to the bank however my guess is that my guess is that when you got it you would get nothing from Walmart you wouldn't see any Walmart badging you wouldn't see any Walmart uh tape or receipt it wouldn't be like Sweet Water you know swe it wouldn't be Walmart tape or anything um because I don't think anybody from Walmart's actually seen the product or or handled the product uh so uh would it matter I don't know why it would matter if it's a good deal and it's a good product um I maybe the concern would be you know returns and stuff but here's where the Walmart branding why they're getting money for basically doing absolutely nothing is The Branding because you feel safe knowing you can return it what I don't know which would be a really really interesting question that makes me almost want to do it is if you bought something off one of those Walmart links could you take it back to Walmart could you buy a court guitar and then return it to the Walmart store would they take it or would they tell you it has to be like when you get it I'm I'm certain you would get some kind of invoicing and it might say something like returns have to be done online only so because like I said Walmart's not really in in in selling that to you like I said they're just the the link so um if you see a guitar and it's a good deal just means they're blowing them out uh one of the problems I've had putting Walmart links on the channel uh which is why i' and so so you know why I've used them now keep in mind I get 1% so it's not like I'm like whoa if you buy this $100 guitar I'm getting a buck uh they are doing stupid deals like I went to uh I went to um I did a video a pod clip and I remember last week and I was putting some links to some guitar tools you know everything from music Nomad to stac to uh you know didario and you know if I use uh Guitar Center you get 10% if I use uh another affiliate I was getting like 8% you know obviously Sweet Water uh I get 4% I think it's what 4% that's why I always tell you guys you know I mean I refer you guys to Sweet Water keep in mind Guitar Center plays two and a half times more money to me if you go to Guitar Center but I only use Guitar Center if that's the only option I have to to to put a link I prefer Sweet Water so I I share Sweet Water Lings with you guys but what's funny about this is I would go to look and the tool would be like $64.99 and I get 10% I was like oh okay you know six bucks that's pretty good and then Walmart would be like you get 1% I'm like well but it would be $23 on 50% blowout or whatever 60% blowout and I would do it I would pick it and it sell out like in a second so I was like and then I was doing the math one day going wow selling out Walmart's discount I made like half of what have made if you would have just bought a few from from one of the higher guys but the deal was great so I definitely see where they getting uh aggressive oh je Jeff B says yes you can return it to the Walmart store so that makes sense it's so that would be that would be again like Amazon where you can take your returns to Kohl's um you know especially if you have Kohl's cash I don't know what that means I just know that boy the ladies uh really get excited about Cole's cash I don't know maybe I shouldn't be that way maybe the guys get excited about Cole's cash uh as well but um and uh yeah you gotta have that Kohl's cash uh anyways um all I know is anytime we're driving somewhere and I have uh more than two females in the car whether it's my wife her mom any any other women my my wife knows um if we if we mention going to Kohl's there's all of a sudden a mad dashes in the purses for Kohl's cash so I know it's important cuz that's they all seem to like do you have Kohl's cash I have Kohl's cash uh I feel like every time I hear that I go sweet come on where's the Sweetwater cash let's let like all all of us can get excited about Sweetwater cash you be like I got to go to Sweetwater Sweetwater Cash guitar center Guitar Center cash I I feel like I've really lost the really lost track of what's going on here okay so um uh so anyways um but uh there's your answer there uh Vander uh Griff also says I touched it in the store so you can walk in and get it as well so there you go but but um yes there is um Harmony I'm trying to think all the brands that Walmart sells but mostly it's in that little aisle of brands of stuff but like I said if it's online you're just getting it from a third party Source hold on a second I'm just trying to keep track of all this stuff that you guys are saying um inan Nova guitar okay hold on a second so this one is from music maker hey Phil greetings from Argentina uh what do you think of the Ina Nova guitar I'm pretty sure that's the one we passed on let's double check that it is not the one we passed on okay so let me just show you and I'll keep things easy for you okay I did a video on this guitar this is the uh Nova go I absolutely love this guitar um I have it downstairs I absolutely love it I've told the story a couple times about this guitar about my video and um they made a new one with pickups and a speaker in it and um I I said no to the video um the uh reason is is I I just recently talked about this I don't it just doesn't float my boat it doesn't do anything for me um this one this is the one this guitar um and of course you probably it they probably shipped a ton out uh to Channels cuz usually like I said if some company like that is talking to me they've already talked to 50 channels already I'm always on the bottom of everybody's list for that kind of stuff um and uh which is fine I'm just telling you that's how I know like I'm like okay uh I I wasn't interested in it uh kind of doesn't fit the same thing I liked about the other Nova so to answer your question what do I think about I love it I still have mine it's great it's fantastic um I use it on the regular um maybe not every day but couple times a week I pick it up and play it I've since gotten another cool guitar that I use a little bit more than that one now in the in the family room but the Ina uh Nova is still fantastic okay um guys yeah Chris says I think darl Bron did a I think everybody did because it comes in my feed I did obviously I look to see to learn about the guitar before saying no to them um you know I've said this before the um the guitars like that the companies like that uh it's really tough to say no because they pay so well I mean they pay a lot of money they have really deep pockets and they have a different philosophy than a lot of the other uh I don't want to say us Brands because it's not even a US brand thing but a lot of the traditional Brands a lot of traditional Brands so so you you know if you can if I can come up with a legitimate reason to say yes I want to say yes because you know it's it's it's they they sponsor the video and it works great but it's one of those things where it's like H you know it's really it's really not fun to sit in a video for six hours staring at a camera trying to think of five nice things to say that you can't you know it's not that I could I got negative things to say about it I got really no negative things to say I just don't have anything to say that I like it's not something I would uh do and to test its quality I would imagine the quality is the same as the Nova go it's made of the same materials so if you're thinking about getting one I don't I I don't have any concerns about quality I just don't have any like wow this is totally what I would be interested in so I don't want a guitar with a speaker in it um and they sent me another guitar uh Ina with a guitar with a speaker in it and I same thing just couldn't find any love for it I might eventually do a giveaway with that one it just sits in my my closet it right now until I figure out what to do with it okay we I'm going to go to the next subject okay next subject unless of course you guys have questions about that let me know uh let me hop around and see what uh is this all from today aand is just like on it she's sending me so many things okay Jeff hey Jeff it says I am not able to do a super chat thanks to my bank uh can you get this question to Phil will you do a review of the PRS SE ece2 4 that is going for 499 I said no to that guitar so you know um I Jeff if this helps you okay um there's a reason why I said no to that video um the reason I said no to that uh video from PRS when they requested it was I have a review of the new ce24 guitar and um talking to PS and having experience of all the PRS guitars I have experience of it is the same guitar that I review it just doesn't have a maple cap and it has a satin finish so if you watch my deep dive of the c24 video and you like what I had to say about the quality and the things I liked and the things I didn't like um just say no Maple top and no gloss finish and if that still makes it happy for you go for it but otherwise I would be making the exact same guitar video with a set and finish um somebody said blind test you Dr Frankenstein you literally would be the most boring video ever because there's there's not going to be any difference um I mean whatever difference I mean I maybe in the room I'd be like wow the one with clear finish sounds so much clearer and the other one sounds more satiny uh no I'm just kidding about that but I'm just saying maybe there's some subtle differences in the way that they sound maybe or something like that but it's it's again it would be things that you would have to AB them to know and then therefore it doesn't matter so unless of course the only question have is should you pay an extra money to get the finish my absolute advice would be if you want the way the the the other one looks then get that one if you don't care buy the one for $4.99 um you know that it's just again sometimes you know it's like I can't make a video every day I wish I could it just would it would burn me out it's not even it's not a workload thing everybody always talks about your workload it's not a workload thing it's just you it to to get efficiency going you have to formulize and once I formulize Iz content you're just sucking the joy out it for me and uh there's just not enough money in it to not enjoy it I got to I mean the joy thing cuz here's the thing I mean uh you know if you don't enjoy if I don't enjoy doing this I will burn out that's why you hear YouTubers all the time you never I've never done a video I'm thinking about giving in guys I'm thinking about quitting I'm not making fun of those guys so you know I totally watch those and it I totally get it because you burn out and you burn out because the same reason a lot of occupations burn out uh you know if you're doesn't matter but if you're in a commission sales which is essentially what YouTube forces you to be in that kind of Lifestyle um you live in an environment of this one paid out and that one didn't you know this customer just like if you're in sales this customer took three days of my time didn't buy Jack nothing total waste go to you know three days lost um there's a saying in sales you know what today you know if they didn't sell anything today they're like all I got today was a dirty shirt out of the deal uh I have videos you know uh my Sharp of my axe last week the bed like that sorry for the offensive terminology but I mean if I didn't love doing it I would never do another one again because of the debacle that I created with it I didn't get paid anything the video didn't do well and it didn't pay out anything so if the money becomes the only driver I'll quit so that's what I'm saying about the satin guitar I would love to give you that video but again I I was was super excited to do that one what I did agree to do is do some other PRS videos of some another new exciting gear that I haven't touched so again um just trying to keep things you know I'm just trying to keep it fun so I'm driven to do it um I'm just and I'm also just trying to give you Insight uh you know of why I choose what I do like I said I I would love to pick all of them for the money well my wife would like it if I would pick all the ones for the money situation uh I'm sure you know but she understands uh that it's not always about that and she backs me on that wab Beetle what's up he says uh Phillip uh life or death question oh jeez okay I can f the sarcasm before it starts should I buy a new case for my Hoffner for 60 bucks or Harley bitton p no wait Harley bitton 51p get both man they're they're not that much 60 bucks and then or get my washer and dryer fixed I mean do you need clean clothes I mean really uh so here's here's the thing wab Beetle uh I I I can give you some really sad honest advice this not only is it honest but it's sad when uh I always take care of the uh priorities in my life you know they're important you new tires oil changes uh fixing the the you know whatever the furnace fix in the uh refrigerator I do all the the adulting things always because I have enough resources financially to do both um when I didn't I only did the guitar stuff I would literally let the important things lapse when I was younger uh I say it's because I was younger and Dumber but it was just finances so it so uh what what you should do you should do the smart adulting thing but if you don't you would be no different than me in half the choices in my life I picked uh yeah I I literally can tell you this and uh this is uh sad at one point my wife and I which at the time wasn't my wife which makes you wonder why she's my wife uh I had the best base rig you could ever want like the dream base rig in my band we didn't have a bed we had an inflatable mattress in our apartment we um we uh I've told this I don't think I've ever told that part but I told this part before this is true my two base cabinets where my our our our coffee table and our in table and if I had a gig my wife had nowhere to put nor to put anything right there was no place to put a drink or anything cuz our furniture was my equipment uh and that was the priorities you know I mean that was just the reality of it uh priorities on the gear I had a I had a great base with a backup base and uh the windshield or not windshield the back window my truck broke and I just drove without a back window for ever with gear so uh I I think uh yeah so wab Beetle do the adulting thing but also if you don't yeah I get that it's probably not helpful in any way please judge me all you guys uh if you want just judge me away I don't care uh I literally I don't know if I regret any of those decisions uh as much as I probably should but I've just always you know I've always been into music uh and I have worse stories when it comes to CDs by buying CDs versus uh like I would put duct tape on my shoes and buy new CDs so anyways too many guitars uh no such thing says can you please explain if there is any difference between dimple back dimple back versus smoothback versus 450 series CT pots oh okay I see what you're talking about now and what value do you recommend for wide- range humbuckers you know I've probably only you only I don't think I've ever installed any wide range humbuckers and I probably only messed with a few sets in my life um so to answer that I wouldn't know what would be different than in them versus anything else it's uh you know though wide there's a reason why wide range humbuckers are so unique they're unique to almost like just one or two kinds of guitars predominantly and both those guitars are just something I don't have a ton of experience with so sadly enough you know I love to put my hands on everything I can and learn about everything I can these are just one of my blind spots I've seen Dylan talk tone talk tone talk about them and even made some a bunch and I think he made some cool ones uh for aftermarket for people with Squires and stuff so he would probably be the source for that I would really I I rather point you to a good source than give you my half-ass answer I don't don't have one so I I I wish I knew more it's one of those things um I'm sure to be honest with you if I ever get to meet Dylan personally if we ever hook up through events or something that's probably one of the subjects I'll probably pick his brain about the most because again it's just to me it's a blind spot of information I just don't know anything about because I've never had the experience of it so there you go uh okay let's go so many so many subjects of question you guys thank you it's like pouring in um oh this Ties on to something Gary think uh this is sorry gray Harris says uh good evening Phil or night in the UK I'm planning on fitting a JB he means the JB seamour Dunkin pickup HSS Strat I read that they work better with 250k pots is that true uh is there an audible difference cheers I'm a huge JB fan uh I own I would say uh in seamour Duncan land I have more JBS than my guitars than any other seamor Dunkin pickup so I really love them um I've never heard uh you know maybe in the online chat groups and stuff I never really read a lot of those uh not a lot of my friends talk about this I've never really heard that specifically 250k potentiometers are better for JBS um in my experience with this because you know this is one of those things where customers are just constantly asking you you know what should I put the one Meg a 500K uh 300K 250k what should you put in these guitars and um the rule I have found that works and it made the most guitar players happy so it's not even so much my personal uh for me what I like but it is actually what I like but I mean it it came about from just trying to make guitar players happy um the rule I follow is is that whatever the majority of the pickups are in the guitar follow that uh for potentiometers so humbucker s single single means there's three pickups and two of them are single coils so put the potentiometers that you would put for single coils in the guitar if it's you know uh so you understand what I'm saying so if it was hsh I would put five 00k potentiometers for the humbuckers I I found this works really well but what's great is you know for $5 to $10 for potentiometers you can swap them and see I mean you can put the 250 K in there and then swap the 500s but in my experience the 250k is what I would put in your guitar like if you brought your guitar to me and say I'm putting it in HSS with a JB I would put 250k but not because I think that that makes the JB sounds better I just think that I follow that rule it's a Stead rule that I I found has served me well which is the majority of the pickups are single coils so therefore we go 250k so at least I'm in line with what they're thinking I just wanted to tell you why it's different I'm coming to the same answer but differently I'm coming to it in a different way but it's the same answer um just some guy says Phil have you seen any ps's with Relic like wear since they started doing the Nitro over the last few years um no I haven't at all if anything I would say they are less relied now um you know PRS like every companies they've had issues PRS has had finish issues for many years we've talked about it a little bit with uh Nathan when he was on a podcast once um they're known for their hazing or the milkiness you get in finishes um the uh issue I've never had that happen to any of my personal pses but I've seen tons of pses it's usually some of the ones from the earlier 2000s and late '90s that I've seen the issue with um what I have experienced personally because it's so dry in Arizona you know your your fretboard shrinks and the Frets Sprout and they push the finish off I have a let me grab it uh my favorite S2 well I don't want to say my favorite now because I have another one but this S2 is the one I've been using forever um it's a what year is this oh 2016 uh S2 semi uh Hol semi uh semic cut semih Holo semih Hollow single cut uh it looks like it's black it's actually like you can see the wood grain uh Nathan when he saw it he goes man I can't believe we actually stain that normally that top is so dark and horrible he goes we would have just painted it but I don't mind to most people looks black um I beat it up I love it but it seriously let me switch to my guitar view hold on a second uh it's seriously like I'm having it a lot of it chipped out right here I don't know if that chipped out right there you can see where I it's all stained and broken and then right there right here you can see it right above my thumb it's hard to see see that is the Finish lifting off the fretboard um and it's done in a couple different places it's lifted off the fretboard uh So eventually what I will do is I will sand all of this finish and then blend it off the actual fretboard and let it blend out um so I mean they are they are they tend to do that it's not great um I guess I could be upset about it but like I said I love the guitar in fact uh for those di hard viewers uh you remember at some point I had two of these guitars a blue one that was gorgeous and this one it was and uh this one just played and sounded better so I ended up keeping this one get rid of the blue one but the blue one was fantastic um so Brian says strap button blowout yeah that one doesn't have strap buttons because I compensated the uh Mario clip blcks uh for another guitar cuz I want to put um I had tan ons on there it doesn't matter this is just boring anyways uh and one cool thing to uh being friends with Larry is he sends me randomly he'll send me new clip Lop stra clip lock straps and he sent me a cool one so I'm putting a cooler one on the took the boring one off but um uh but yeah so what am I getting at uh so with the new Nitro finishes I believe uh and I'm just saying this because again it's important to know it's not a factual based thing it's a belief um Paul Smith Guitars Paul Smith said oh the new Nitro finishes are about tone uh he thinks they sound better it's probably true I don't know uh I don't hear any difference but what I can tell you is I I definitely think the finishes adhere to the wood better and they move a little better and they less likely have the problem I had with mine and because of the new s are Nitro um relicing wise I mean it depends Nitro is known for uh you know wearing a little easier and cracking and stuff but I haven't seen any and I'm not a finish guy like in other words I don't do finishes so um it's something it's like one of those questions I'm going to I'm going to keep this question and and defer it to some people I know that really know the real answer um uh cuz I can tell you that the Nitro finishes on the ps's don't feel the same as Gibson and Fender to me I have all three guitars you know Nitro Gibsons and Nitro fenders and ps's and the ps's still feel totally different it doesn't feel the same so there you go it's funny to me uh I always get this conversation I I don't have this whole like this guitar has an issue and I won't ever buy this guitar I hate this company uh I I find like I said if you fix things it's like a mechanic you know maybe you love Toyota perfectly but even then they make you know they do things you don't like that's how I feel about guitar companies there's some do it better than others and some do things that I don't agree with uh but ultimately no such thing as a perfect guitar and what I'm willing to tolerate so uh you know uh I don't like that PS has that issue but I don't like some of the issues with other companies just as well they're all the they're all bad they're worth complaining about I guess I'm really more nervous that my more expensive ps's don't do what that S2 does I wouldn't I wouldn't like to see that happen but it could I'll let you know if it does okay um let's uh uh WIS thank you Amanda for this one wind surf Maui says wi surf Maui says Phil so if you had $500 today would you buy a PRS C Bolton uh neck C Bolton SE so they want to know if I would buy the satin purce Bolton if I had $500 today uh so like in that video I don't think so um I think what that video what would I buy for $500 really does kind of you tap into where what I would do you know I'm assuming when you ask a question like that what guitar would I buy for $500 you're assuming I don't have a wall full of beautiful uh guitars that I'm super happy with that I would just gladly go if I could only have one guitar I just pick one of the ones I already have because it's a curated collection of you know guitars I love I would buy used and I would buy something I really really like my guess would be um you know I would if I only had $500 and you asked me to buy something and I it was it's my going to be my only guitar I don't have any guitars right now I would start going and looking hard for like goans uh main Mexico fenders maybe some psses um you know all used uh shors these are definitely guitars i' would be scanning for on reverb um definitely godan main Mexico Fender shors Paul Smith sees trying to think one more maybe Carvin but but those are so they've gotten so expensive um I mean you could still buy godan a perfectly made godan guitar used for under 500 bucks but a Carvin now days is pretty hard but I would be looking for some kind of really uh like a gem you know in the rough you know a guitar that's just fantastic plays great sounds great um the uh PRS C SE is a great guitar and so yes if you're asking me like new would I buy it new if yeah I don't know what I would pick over at New right now that would probably be the go-to um if I went with a name brand I mean to be honest with you I only had $500 and I had a buy new I'd probably start looking at the off Brands because sometimes you can get something really really good um you know for a lot less because you you do have to pay for brand uh but that's not disqualifying the fact that the PRS uh C SE whatever I feel like I'm saying it too many letters c SE SE c um is a I mean obviously it was strategically priced it was made to be a perfect price point for a really quality guitar got to give him credit for that okay um okay go keep going uh Courier Bell Eerie I don't think I'm saying that right hey Phil I've been a sub since the Hot Rod Deluxe days still taking submissions for sharpen my axe my first guitar got cracked after a bulldozer knocked it off I'm sorry I'm not laughing your crack guitar just like the bulldozer I'm like your guitar got hit by a bulldozer is a sounds like a story I'd want to hear one night that like please if you said hey did I tell you the story at the time my guitar got hit by a bulldozer I'd be like no please tell me I would probably stop whatever I'm doing to hear that story uh running into our house a week after it flooded yeah the story didn't get much better after I kept going did it just just like worse um you know I don't know if we're taking submissions for them uh you know it's kind of more of an opportunistic thing this is our problem in the past when we started doing it was like I mean we just get inundated with requests and it just gets overwhelming to see so I'm just kind of you know hoping things just appear things happen you know uh maybe we'll create a a formal way to submit a guitar uh people have been sending me emails since they see me pop up sharp Max again and um I've been looking but again it's more about you know everything I have to think everything not only how how the video will come out but Logistics costs all that stuff I'm working on it um but I you know you're in the you're on the list now I have this I I might want to do it just to tell your story that sounds crazy I hope you're okay everything's better now um okay let's see man you guys are really focused on this SC as says Phil would you buy the C SE or the silver sky SE if you can if you could find both for $500 I'd buy the silver sky for $500 that's a good that's a that's a great question uh I love the C SE um but I'd probably pick the silver sky that's just my thoughts maybe okay um uh okay Mark all right we're just playing this okay we'll do one more of these Mark says hey Phil great Channel thank you so much man uh would you rather have a $22,000 guitar or1 $200 guitars I mean with less expens less expensive guitars being so much better now nowadays um you know what's funny is is that my my first I want to say I'd take the $2,000 guitar I want to say that because I have a couple $2,000 guitars and I love them and I really think uh guitars you know typically once they get to about $1,000 man they start becoming a little bit of a next level up and then around $2,000 I don't think the next level up anymore I think you just get more of what you got for 1,000 bucks to $800 um that being said uh I have been playing long enough to know that no matter how much I love a guitar you know I just am not a one guitar person there's just something about it that eventually you know I mean I could I could do it absolutely but there's something nice about having a you know was it variety is the spice of life it's just nice to try different things um I mostly play what I like to play which means I when I play you know whatever it is like a rock blues kind of thing um or a fusy uh Funk kind of thing I'm going to be on something like my like my delos or something like a strat so I'm going to stick to that a lot of times when I'm playing but you know if I go see a band Live oh I'll just like if I go see I'm going to be playing corn stuff for a month if I go see panta if I go see country music whatever I go see it influences me for a while I get excited about that style of music and I got to start consuming it and learning it and playing it so it's kind of nice to have those guitars so I think I would pick the10 $200 guitars um it would be a lot easier if you said like you know 10 three or $400 guitars because I $200 guitars are good but you know once you get to three $400 guitars I don't think you're missing out anything like I own guitars currently that are three3 $400 that I think are just as good as anything else I own I don't know if I technically have anything $200 that Ina go is 200 bucks and it's fantastic it was 199 and there might be one or two others but the sad thing is is you know even when I used to refer to Dan electros U my Dan electros are in the $5 $600 range now if you want to buy one like those um okay should we do yeah it's a good time take a take a second let's do guitar of the week oh that's weird that's guitar of the week back to my there's my side guitar of the week you could tell it's just it's all professional around here okay I wanted to do a guitar of the week as you guys know uh somebody suggested I play more guitar on the podcast and I was like No And then I thought about it going well I timestamp everything so um if you uh you know we could highlight a guitar by the way if you're an audio version you don't even know this is happening so I think we put the first two guitar of the weeks on the audio version and we took them out so audio versions stay the same video versions have now added this feature so uh guitar of the week what am I going to pick I'm going to pick something I thought was cool because it came up last week uh when we were talking about oh do I knock things around we're talking about guitars and we were talking about seven strings and somebody sent me a funny email they said a lot of your guitars of the week it's like a PS hollow body a Fram is hollow body I'm like uhhuh and they go and then the Texas toast guitar I'm like uhhuh and then what was the other one there was another one and they're like you know you should do your more your your other style of guitars and I thought okay so guess what we're going to do we're going to do this strandberg look at this this is a seven string look at that top isn't that gorgeous so uh this is a strandberg uh Bowden 7 I think it's nx7 I believe and this is a a beautiful instrument and it's a little a little bit unique because we talked about the fact that now strandberg has some new more obtainable guitars that are about thousand bucks that have the endur neck but they don't have the fan fret system and I talked about my concerns with that I still have those concerns by the way um so I'm going to talk about this guitar show it to you and uh you know so let's get into it so this guitar if you're not uh familiar with it besides looking like a puzzle piece that you've been missing for the last three weeks to finish your puzzle which I love is extremely light this one is uh like 5 lbs flat okay so it's nothing these are semih Hollow they're chambered out and you have Fishman fluence pickups in there and then so what that happens is is you have the voicing control so on the volume if we pull up on it you get two different voices you get a modern humbucker and then a more of a classic humbucker so think like more of a modern JB super distortions think like that modern pickups you pull this you get more of a paf style pickup then on your tongue trol you pull up you get the coil split you get a three-way switch you get the trim system which I'm not a huge fan of but it stays in tune it's just not my my my favorite thing uh I didn't I didn't uh request this guitar to be sent out for its tremola system I wanted to try out the seven street it's got stainless steel Frets it's a uh this is a folic resin fretboard I believe uh so it's man-made material a bonial uh what do they call it they call it rich light so and I'm sure maybe Rich light's technology is a little bit different and it's maybe not a phenolic resin but either way it's a man-made material it looks like ebony but it's manmade why is that important uh with the stainless steel Frets with the nice polish ends you don't get a whole lot of fret shrinkage I've heard people tell me that they've gotten some of these um Rich light guitars and the Frets still poke out that is very strange to me because I don't know what would cause the rich light to shrink so I've never experienced it myself is what I'm trying to say I've never had a a guitar with a a rich light fretboard like this manmade material where it shrank but I definitely believe it has if you know except had more than one people tell me um Brooks says AB bonial yeah believe it or not Brooks throughout the uh iterations of this that there is a there uh cortech did it a lot of companies would call it abonal like exactly how you're spelling it it's a manmade ebony so obviously it was sometimes it was called folic fretboards there was all kinds of terms thrown to it uh Rich light um which I believe is a technically different material I'm not really sure I would love to learn more about rich light one day other than I have some guitars with Rich light my godan has Rich light fretboard um they really kind of you know uh you know changed it by calling it rich light and so that's why I'm explaining this this is an actual richl branded fretboard I believe but you can see some man-made materials and it would be more of a folic resin uh this is the Bolton series and you have a five piece neck with maple walnut maple walnut Maple and in between those two strips of maple or sorry Walnut has two very hard to seal little strips of what it looks like I'm pry sure it's probably carbon fiber uh some kind of carbon I don't think it's ebony I think they put carbon fiber strips in there is what I think they're doing to make it more stable and then this has the endure neck let's go to the guitar view cuz it's crazy if you haven't seen this the neck is not round it's Square so it's not it's almost like like a the most extreme V look at that vneck look at that see how it see how you can see the angle it goes up and flat then back the other side and the idea is that you you know you put your thumb here on the back and then as you go up it's going to put your thumb in the perfect position so you makes your hand play right now this is why I wanted to talk about this particular one um as you know I have one with it's behind me pointing it there you go I have one with the true temperament Frets and I've uh reviewed uh one where I had the six string one and it's fantastic but I believe this is if you're thinking about strandberg if this is something that you just got your curiosity going maybe you want you to put your hands on one or maybe you want to buy one you know like I said sometimes you got to buy it to try it but um I would think about seven string and even if you're not a seven string player sometimes I've always cautioned myself from recommending seven strings and non seven string players but this neck is almost like the perfect neck for a seven string and it will fill the less for in to you when you're playing it um in other words if you're the type of person who just wants another guitar for another experience a seven string version of this is nice if you ever been thinking about seven string because it does help you play the seven string it does pos position your hand I think in a in a much better playing position than a traditional seven okay so let's do some playing shall we okay I'm running through a Paul re Smith archon I'm going to kick on a little Reverb if you don't mind cuz a little dry sounding I'm going to go and move my chair here like so and let me let's just go over here to guitar view look at that there's my shirt I'm on the neck [Music] pickup and so uh rrd says uh how does the neck feel it feels fantastic um it's wide I mean it's I mean look at this thing looks like I'm landing f14s on this thing or 18s uh but it sounds fantastic and it plays nice but it feels great like I said the Endor neck helps me position my hand with these fan Frets and I just feel like pretty comfortable with it let me go ahead and spend some time on some sounds real quick uh so oh and J jhn says it is carbon fiber strips see that's pretty good pretty good that I got that all right so let's go to uh what I'm going to do is play the modern humbuckers I'll switch to the uh vintage to CH buckers okay we'll go ahead and coil split it here we go so very very clean sounding guitar and of course with the modern pickups you can hear it push in the amp a little bit right but if I go back to the more vintage tone [Music] humbuckers it's a little better right so little cool all right um silent guitar huh okay let's go ahead and switch to the overdrive channel oh okay so what we're going to do is we're going to start with the distorted tone and then we'll go to the clean tone okay so you guys will be able to hear it now so what I'm going to do first is start with the modern pickups this is going to be the modern pickups uh and then uh in the bridge position first through the Aron's game channnel so you'll be able to hear that okay here we go ready [Music] m [Music] [Music] okay so let's go to the neck pickup [Music] [Music] now what's cool is I'm going to go to the this is going to be more of the Vintage voice humbuckers so on the neck pick up [Music] [Music] yeah I I I kind of for this kind of style music I mean this is seven strings are just [Music] [Music] fantastic okay so now what I want to do is switch over to clean Channel since we messed that up the first time and like I said I'm going to run just a little bit of Reverb we'll start with the neck pickup and I'm going to start with the modern voice pickups and then you'll see me switch over to the more vintage voice pickups here we go [Music] [Music] okay let's go ahead and go to the coil split so if you pull up on this tone control now you're going to be coil split [Music] and you could kind of see um with the the Fishman fluence that's pretty much the kind of like they work a lot like emgs they're active so they're really going to be the dominant force of the tone of the guitar um so so basically uh for those that are looking for uh that that like the fisherman sound you're going to get that sound but you're just going to get all the features of the stranberg it's not necessarily a stranberg voice instrument which is interesting to me because I have the true temperament version of this guitar and it has uh some some strandberg pickups in it and to me it sounds like a totally different instrument more vintage classic and less of the modernized sound which is what the let me hit that which is what the the uh fisherman give you and but again the one thing about these guitars is how silly light they are I mean it's up there with the Parker flies as being super light and it really kind of feels good you see I mean you see how I'm holding this thing it's like balanced really really well uh when you have the strap on the guitar it feels fantastic but just in your lap the way that they do if you don't look at it I'm going to show you again from this view if you look the way that it sits it's just fantastic it just feels really good in a perfect position and it's also designed so you can sit on this leg or sit in this position and you can sit it almost like a classical player would in your left leg if you're right-handed so you get a lot of options when you play it so very cool and then um still has a standard trust Rod one thing a lot of people didn't like the last couple reviews they don't put any back plate on their trimal cavity and a lot of people said they should paint that black or make it look a little more more modern I don't disagree with that of course there's your compartment for your active battery which of course cuz they're active pickups there the Fishman stuff let me see if I can go down here where did I go where is it at um I thought I was going to see if anyone had any questions or comments about it anything that's what's great about doing it live it's more so much just to see if you guys have any any questions so I'm going to assume you don't let me go ahead and put it away what's nice is I can keep it right here right before I start the show is I've talked about this before I usually have the true temperament uh right here next to me I'll pick it up and play that warm up before I I do a video okay let's do this let me reset this for a second okay and for some reason I wasn't getting any feed now I'm being back okay where do you put Brian wants to know where you put your stash with no trimo cover I don't know man that's a good question yeah no trust Rod cover either uh okay uh yeah Eddie Jor says the endure neck is absolutely fantastic it's definitely a neck that if you love it you love it if you don't obviously it's going to be hard for you to adjust to it but what I will say is a lot of a lot more people than you would imagine a lot more players than you imagine really do like it and they adjust to it very quickly um Larry Mitchell says is that much lighter hey Larry what's up buddy he says is that much lighter than your Kel it is um so in the Kel lineup of of headless guitars I would say the only guitar besides luck luck of the draw right you can always get a guitar um uh one of the things Larry that they're doing on this guitar to get it so light is it's Ash so let me hit this real quick so if you go to guitar view you can see it's an ash body so if you go Keel and you go uh you pick an ash body uh which I believe you did on your Keel uh it will make it much lighter so it'll be like this um and even if they don't weight relieve it but like the Tim Miller I played a bunch of the Tim Miller uh semi Hollow uh headless guitars and they were all like this in the four and a half and 5 pound range so it's very light but yeah the strandbergs are some of the lightest headless guitars I've played um because of the usually using a lighter wood and then there's not a lot of body material and they're chambering them it's a lot so um but funny enough my personal my delos my headless delos it's like six lbs um six even and it comparatively feels kind of heavy but you don't notice if you don't pick up the stranberg cuz it's SK you don't feel the ultra light you know five pounder so HK wants to know are they a world away from the ianz headless guitars I have never played no that's not true I have picked up one or two of the ianz headless guitars in both uh I think the Frets were sprouting or something happened I don't know what it was maybe Out Of Tune it was at the N show just there wasn't anything for me to really demo it demo it check it out so I have no experience of those guitars the one thing about those and let me hit this let me go to Sweet Water because I want to look at the ious headless guitars because uh maybe I think yeah $1,200 I was looking at the price points so compared to a stranberg I mean now the stranberg has a ,000 guitar but they were, $1,200 I think the main thing I didn't really consider a lot of the uh ianz headl guitars when they first came out the first ones I saw there were some that were like this one $1,200 I didn't really see $1,000 one but now I see it but it just has three single coils let me share with this with you um these are mostly strandbergs but I'm looking at headless guitars at Sweet Water so you know what I'm up to and go back to the ianz that one was a th with three single coils right there but this is the one ianz right here $1,200 when I first look at these izes um the concern I had was was I could get a Kel for that price now what's funny is Kel prices have gone up and iess prices really haven't for for the most part for those guitars um but my first headless real nice headless guitar was a Kel Vader that I bought for $1,000 used and it was neck through so that's why I didn't consider the ibanes I was like well for a thousand bucks I'll just get a used Kel which is what I did and then like anybody when you buy a guitar and you bond with it then you just get more of those so that's why I started just going to the kysel guitars now I have a headless delos because I have a delos and I I my delos headless feels and plays the same to me so that's why I want it for uniformity um but I do have oh see I'm going to jinx it I'm going to mess it up if I say it out loud I do have something coming I can't tell you what it is but because I feel like if I tell you guys then it'll never happen it'll somehow it'll never get shipped or something happens um but uh but the strandbergs are their own little animal it's really you got to it's strandbergs are not about headless guitars they're about strandbergs you got to love that weird neck you got to like you know fan frat systems you got to like all of this um that you know that they're doing and and then you got to get past not everybody okay but me I had to you have to get past the mental for the same price as a usamade Kel you were buying an Indonesian guitar that's made in ctech now I love C cortech I'm friends with June the owner of cortech I love cortech built instruments I think like I like ianis or cortech instruments uh PRS G&L tributes um you know I I um I was even featured they took a clip of my podcast and featured on their 50th anniversary of saying something to that effect um and so obviously I have a lot of good things to say but that being said $2,500 and I can get a custom USA Me guitar for about the same price it was a really hard choice for me so I really needed stranberg to win me over and it did in my case the stranberg that won me over was the true temperament guitar so in fact uh uh I sometimes regret not getting the true temperament seven string and then I would have had the perfect true temperament and seven string guitar but I didn't go that route and it's just too expensive to try to figure it out now so okay but I'm really curious I'm curious about the ibanes but like I said it hasn't it hasn't uh prompted me to go out there actively looking for him okay anything else somebody was talking about the oh ken wants to know what's attuning on the S string guitar on this particular one which would be most common I just have a low B and um what I I will do often let me share this with you there's a reason why I I like seven strings besides the Chugga chuga low be string um I'm going to show you guys this real quick guitar view okay so uh here is your uh low B and then you have e a d g b e and what I like to do sometimes is just go ahead [Music] and take and [Music] tune the G I believe that's a F flat so I'm tuning it the same way I would tune a six string I'm ignoring this High okay so pay attention that's what I'm doing this High to me doesn't exist now I'm going to play it like a baritone [Music] and why I like that is sometimes when there's a song and it's in baritone um instead of I because I don't own a baritone I'll just retune the seven string real quick and play it and if I was if I had more songs if I did more with baritones I'd probably do more and I own a baritone but I really like just taking a seven Stringer quick doing the fast tune uh tuning adjustment and then play uh whatever I'm going to play real quick on a Barone whether I'm recording something or I'm just wanting to learn something okay any questions okay so on that note let's jump hold on you guys are talking about sh your guitars now um all right let me jump to the next subject it's always fun the uh guitar of the week idea is been something that I've been trying to push uh and flush out but you can see there's a lot of working projects got multiple camera angles multiple videos or multiple audio inputs and um so we'll keep we'll keep polishing and I think I I want to keep doing it uh I want to at least do it for like eight or 10 episodes and see if I really like doing it but what's nice is it's a nice way to talk about a different guitar um especially since a lot of you guys keep asking about guitars that I just normally wouldn't do a full video on and maybe do that but what I'm also thinking is is that the guitars of the week to do well that that means maybe that following week I need to do a deep dive on it okay so all right let's I have some more questions banked up and Amanda is sending me questions too let's do this one okay um this was a uh Believe it or was a super chat that apparently I missed a on March 29th so pandemic 7 come on pandemic 7 we don't we don't even want two much less 7 says is it safe to tune up a half step to F will it hurt the guitar If safe what gauge strings or or shoulder I just oh should I think it means or should I just use a capo um well you can always use the Capo um you should have no problem tuning a guitar up a half step worst case scenario my in my experience anything with a thicker nice Maple neck probably not going to make much difference and you won't have any issues some guitars um more so mahogany necks uh May um you know obviously your your neck's going to get a little bit of B bow and your action will come up you might have to tighten the trust Rod a quarter turn that is possible if you have a tremolo you will be pulling the tremolo up so keep in mind that so I would prefer that if you're going to do this do it on a hard tail it's going to be easier on a hard tail type Bridge guitar hard tail maybe not do anything but if you you know and play it great and if it's a little high action maybe straighten the neck a little bit by a quarter turn tighten it just a little bit um and that's all you really have to do gaug of strings I mean you know uh I would probably use nines and but I mean if you use tens I'd say you get away with that I would refrain from 11 gauge or higher on most guitars um You didn't say so you know and so I just want to be clear because sometimes that's the tough part about a short question that could be involved you didn't say acoustic or electric you just said guitar I'm assuming electric if you're talking acoustic the same things will apply except for I'm pretty sure on acoustic you're definitely going to have to tighten that trust Rod just a little bit andless you do lighten the gauge and then I would definitely go tens on the acoustic go tens um in fact I would you know if you have twelves you could probably get away with 11s as well but definitely not twelves or 13s definitely not 13s but twelves if you're going to uh if you're at twelves and you want to go up half step I would put 11s or 10 and then T tune it up and then need you know pay attention if you need to adjust your trust Rod uh just a little bit and that's it everything else will be fine now the next part of your question you didn't ask but it's important because some other people might have this question already that never thought about doing this is intonation issues uh whether on your acoustic or electric um it may cause some chords to have intonation issues um and unfortunately it's one of those things you got to do it and see it really depends obviously anytime you adjust your action you're messing with the intonation you know um my guess is I mean unless you're recording in the studio which in that case I would do a full setup anyways you'll be fine at home use and online on stage the intonation would be so subtle that most people wouldn't pick it up um arnna says when will we see a deep dive on the Heritage um I thought it's the 22nd I know I mentioned it earlier at another podcast it's coming up because it's scheduled I scheduled it out okay um hold on okay and then there was one other question that was interesting um from Lou who says so I officially need more space than I need money okay and I'm selling online and selling online has been super uh big frustration I drove 30 miles for someone not to show up yeah I I uh I did that once I went to a Guitar Center and sat there for an hour and the guy never showed up and the only thing I was mad about was I was like why didn't I go in the store and just go look around the whole time I just sat in my car I should have told him like you know I just felt weird about saying meet me inside the Guitar Center but I sat in this parking lot for an hour and the guy never showed up so that was the last time I ever tried to sell anything and meet someone cuz yeah cuz it was like oh I'm stood up on a purchase um but I understand uh anyways um he says how exactly how screwed would I be selling to Guitar Center um well screw is an interesting term uh in the idea of it's you know true and perception first of all you know value is not just in money like you said your value is in your space more than than your money I'm presented with that problem all the time and money is valuable it's just space to me is so much more limited sometimes I have to sell stuff you know sometimes I sell stuff just literally because you know I don't I'm I trip over it um I I've tripped on over stuff just because it's like everywhere and you know you you you know as a YouTube channel you you know run out of spaces where to shove this stuff um because some of it's here and it's waiting for a company to finally send an return authorization for it sometimes it's here because they left it you know you know many companies especially inexpensive gear you can always Bank on it they send you the stuff and then you're supposed to send it back when you're done and they just never ask for it again and then but it's scary because some companies don't ask for it back but then two years later I'm not kidding they send you email going okay yeah we were just going through our books we need that pedal back and you're like okay uh so pedals aren't so bad but guitars get a little dicey and amps to sit on so here's the thing about Guitar Center and selling stuff to them and to music stores we've talked about this in many times and in the same way um you're going to have to if you're going to make that decision you already know what to expect you're going to get less for it than if you sold it on your own so if you're trying to if you're asking me is the convenience worth what you lose selling yourself um it it could be I mean you know getting rid of all your stuff the only problem that sucks now is in this market it's not the same Market it was which means if you take all your stuff down to Guitar Center or to your local Mom Pop which I actually recommend almost to do so more um you're looking at the fact that you could haul that St haul that stuff there and they were only going to take a small portion of it uh I mean that's the biggest thing about this you understand it's not as easy as I took all my guitars down the Guitar Center and they took them all and they didn't give me anything for them they're going to cherry-pick what they like give you very little for it and then send you home with all the stuff you you'll have less stuff than would you win there with but it won't they won't the odds of them buying it all it's going to be very little um a lot of people are putting comments in the questions they're going to say 50% of what it's worth um if you're not aware Guitar Center gives you a discount I think it's like 10% off if you if you buy stuff there plus depending on your state and city you may not have to pay sales tax on the stuff you um you buy uh this is one thing that I caution you again you have to learn you have to know your city state laws because it can be different for different cities and states throughout the country but in some cases um that's one of the the downfalls of getting a gift card so what I tell you is if you are thinking about trading in your stuff like selling your stuff and getting less you know to get let you know get rid of it and get something more expensive or less stuff like trade I would check the store first it's a habit I've been doing for many years I don't take my stuff into the store until I walk the store first and I if there's anything I can possibly go oh yeah I will totally take that then I go out and get the stuff bring it in and say what do you give me uh for purchase and trade now if they give it to you on trade what's great is is like I said guitar CER will give you a 10% discount on what you buy I think it's only new gear but I could be wrong again they have it on their website look it up but more importantly you won't pay sales tax now here's what's is important if you trade in $1,000 with stuff and you find a guitar on the wall for $1,000 you can straight trade for that you don't have to pay the sales tax the person who buys your used gear will pay the sales tax not in every city not in every state but most but if you go to a guitar and go okay I will just take a gift card like in so that's why I'm trying to caution you on that once you get the gift card you're paying sales tax regardless so if you take $1,000 worth of stuff to Guitar Center they give you a ,000 gift card you leave you come back to that store another store in a day or two and then buy something you will be paying the sales tax so that's what I'm saying the advantage could be could be to you to do the trade without doing a a a gift card or uh a sale outright sale you might save some money and that sometimes helps because like I've told about before is you're not you're not really looking for new gear but if your if like me if your problem is space more than money you sometimes can solve two problems at once and those problems can be uh you know you got 10 I'm just giving a scenario you got 10 Harley bons and they're just you don't know what to do with all these guitars you don't know why you bought them because hey we all do stuff um take them down to a store and trade them for one nice more expensive guitar that maybe has more cach a and value in the long term whether it's a fender or Gibson or a Paul re Smith or whatever it is maybe something you like maybe something you kind of like but more so like I said you're just trading out the value what's nice is is if you if you are able to get something that has value especially used it's most likely going to hold its value to some extent we're not even talking about going up and you making money we're talking about you know you get a ,000 guitar that's everybody seems you know you you know if you're like me I always took go I got five or six friends that would pay me $1,000 this are right now because you know you know who who's in the market for something excuse me and then what you do is you put that in your closet and sit on that for a while and uh and if it's not about money you don't have to worry about getting the money now you can wait to cash that out later um and I'm just that's just things I've done in the past that are really really nice um but the um that's that's what I would consider now I don't think there's any scenario in which you go to a store and you you you understand you're not going to get the same but like I said it's I don't really dissuade from that some people are going to say don't go to the music stores don't go to the um Guitar Centers I've made the comment about you know bringing sand to the beach before um but like I said you have to decide like in your case space is worth more than money then you know you're losing money if you're okay with that I don't I know why I'm sorry I'm coughing now um but what I will tell you that's important that has helped me really well is when you get those offers okay from Guitar Center and they're low or a mom pop like I said I'm going to keep saying you know because you can get a better deal sometimes from my mom pop but um I always have my friends ready to go on my uh you know I'm ready on my phone so as soon as they're like hey you know if I was hoping to get $700 or something they're like we'll give you five I'm like five I'll do it right then I'll I'll just blast out a text to all my friends and I'll be like 500 bucks right now is what Guitar Centers offer me anybody want it and most of the time they say no I wish man I wish it was in a better position or they'll say not right now or but every once while you get that guy going yes Phil yeah bring it over and I'm like yeah if I'm going to give it away give it to a friend right there you go so okay let's refresh this I knew I was going to do that it's like kicking me into a new screen okay um we have belt I think that's what it is Bel Jones 1 says I have a kisel with a finished neck and un an unfinished ebony fretboard there is a finish sprayed over the Fret ends oh okay okay so what he's explaining is the top of the fretboard is on not finished cuz they're not going to be finished but the the neck has got a finish on it and it goes all the way up to the edge of the fretboard including over the the blades of the the of the Fret so it's finished all the way up to the top of the fretboard okay um and it was sprayed by that way by the factory so stock um but it's bubbling up where the Frets are sprouting so yeah the Frets are pushing the finish off the neck how would you fix this well I wouldn't because I'm not a finish guy um and I'm not even going to suggest you how you can finish it what I'm going to uh instead explain is what you need to do to rectify it um I have no I don't know if uh Kel warranties that I just don't know and something I've never had to ask them um all the guitars I have from Kel except for one are unfinish necks uh my uh neck through uh single cup bevel is finished and funny enough that has never given me any hell but I had um oh my my swirl is my first one where the neck dis rank on me and now I have a a little bit of fret Sprout to deal with this my I think it's my first keys will happen to me but I've had it happen to a a few friends um it happens like I said that's why I have a channel when I'm constantly fixing it in videos um so in your case it's problematic there's a couple things you can do uh when I say you I mean somebody can do I don't recommend you take your new high-end Custom Shop instrument and start trying to fix it but let me tell you what most likely somebody's going to do to it um they may try to rehydrate the the guitar so in other words put it in a in a in a box or a case with humidification and hope to expand out the fretboard um if they can do that uh that's great right perfect and then sometimes they might use a syringe with basically super glue and inject it into where the Finish is lifted off and then press it back on uh Nathan's told me many stories working for Jackson and Pa Smith having to do basic finish work like that glue the you're gluing the basically the paint back onto the wood um so sometimes they'll have to do that um so uh Shane the something says just called Jeff he's great with customers you you would deal with I think I can't remember his name the new kid uh but anyways so the uh other thing that they could do is they could uh sand the Finish basically take that finish off the actual fretboard and blend it out I've had to do that personally um because I'm not a finish person so what I will do is I will literally sand from the top of the fretboard on the side down until I get past that fret basically essentially removing the clear coat off the fretboard you wouldn't be able to tell I did it the way I do it and then I will take care of the Fret Sprout and then if there's ever fret sprout in the future you won't have to deal with that problem um but I wouldn't recommend you doing it or trying to do it I just want you to know if you take it to somebody uh what they will do um first I would definitely let Kel no the reason I tell you guys this is with whenever I tell you guys with fender with Gibson with PA Smith with Kel with I you always tell the manufacture what's going on um never constru that is I'm telling you like oh and they'll take care of it I don't know what they all do they all like I said I I have stories both ways where companies have flat out sent you a brand new guitar and no problems and I've had companies basically tell you it's your your fault I've pointed out that the new CEO of Fender basically said that it's just how guitars are done and it's just how fret Sprout is just here to stay and it's just a thing um I think it's all sucks I would like them all to be responsible for it but again I don't I don't make all the policies for all the guitars uh companies what I can tell you though is is that it's very important that they know that they have an issue and here's why if you if you tell me like me me me me me if you tell me that this happened to your guitar um I'll be like yeah it happens if 50 of you told me your Kel next rank I'd be like oh sounds like they're having an issue right same with them the first reaction might be like I don't know what did you do to it right you leaving your garage which you did it I don't know maybe that's their attitude but when 50 people when 500 people tell them they have an issue they're aware of it whether they take care of it I hope they would but if they don't I bet you without a doubt uh they will correct the procedure one thing that's very interesting about Kel guitars and why I like them even though they have some controversy in the past because yeah he's he he got into it got into it with a customer publicly it wasn't pretty however um I don't really I really want you to pay attention to something that's really interesting I didn't say anything I was curious to see who caught it n of you none of you caught it when I did the the Kel factory tour where I walked through and it was unedited in any way and you did a tour if you were paying attention if you and this is I'm sorry it's an Easter egg for some of you I'm not going to blatantly do it you're going to have to do some work if you're got to you're going to have to do be super sloth out there if you don't know what I'm talking about some of you know what the issue was with Kel and the customer and where where his where that all went wrong what I will tell you is some people thought his apology was sincere some people thought it was insincere I really don't have a a feeling either way I don't know how to judge somebody like that what I can tell you is what I took notice which why I have more respect for him is in the in the tour of the factory he didn't say why but he was explaining the process with roasted necks and what and he said it had been changed I can tell you as someone who's been been in business for two decades that's what he did he solved the problem going forward he fixed it um I believe he fixed it I don't know I didn't ask him I had so many other things ask him that day I asked him those things I believe he fixed it because of that situation because he didn't want it to happen again um which is interesting see if I really thought he didn't care I think he wouldn't have addressed the issue and so um why I'm telling you that is same with the Fred sprout I don't know what kind of experience you're going to have if you call them just like I I don't wouldn't know if you called Gibson or Paul re Smith or our Fender um but I think you should tell them and then um I'm I'm telling you that if you're going to have to take it for service this is the kind of things that are going to be done to it to to fix it um like I said I'm dealing with the Fret Sprout on my swirl but it's unfinished next so it's just going to be the quick little fix that I've shown you guys many times the that quick fix I would recommend but finish on the ends like my PRS I just showed you earlier had that is having the same issue it's pushing the finish off it's it's a pro more problematic it's more of a pain in ass if in your case I would definitely have a professional do it in my case if I really cared about this S2 that I've been beating up because I've been beating it up since 2016 so I really don't care about it that way when the way it looks um but if I did I would have I would asked Nathan for a favor say hey Nathan can you fix this finish issues on the on the neck for me and address this cuz he would know how to do it I'm sure he would do it for me as a favor um but in your case I would definitely take it to professional I'm just giving you an idea what they're going to do uh oh dle dog said they did you you did notice it I I was waiting for comments in the video to see if anyone noticed that they changed he he says it quickly not like in a way like to to not to be comprehensive but he just if you're paying attention he's like yeah we we changed the way we roast the the wood now in the necks for more consistency and it was very clear to me that it was like oh uh yes in my opinion uh you know I love it when everybody tells me which company's bad uh to me they've all done something crazy that I don't understand and uh I hope for the best but like you guys I'm addicted to this stuff it's like I don't know what to tell you I don't know uh okay let's see um hold I'm just looking to see I'm just seeing if you guys had any more questions on that or anything like that if I covered it somebody says make a carbon fiber fretboard you can do that I mean obviously Parker did it it's a little bit better um me personally I would rather not have the Finish go over the fretboard so on painted neck guitars or on gloss necks I like the gloss to stop at the fretboard like they tape it off at the fretboard that's my preferred uh way of doing it uh for me personally but a lot of them don't do it that way for a ton of reasons I don't even think the new um Hollow flash Badlands I think it's painted all the way over to the fretboard uh because again I didn't have any say so on that but um but I prefer it to go to the fretboard and stop and um because of that reason because fret I live in Arizona fret Sprout is inevitable it's why I talk about it so much in my environment it's going to happen the problem is it used to be an Arizona only problem and maybe Colorado parts of New Mexico and parts of California couple of the dry places maybe Australia was complaining about it now you know I mean you can be in the in the rainforest and have fret brout now it's getting weird uh because they don't you know because the wood is not dried like it was uh LD Fay thank you for the super sticker excuse me again I'm sorry for coughing at you guys uh Ray says I'm in the studio recording a strat with dead strings a half step down why does this sit so well in the mix um I don't know strats you know uh strats to me which is why I love them uh to me are always great in the mix I think that's what Tellies do great in the mix not so much of strats um as a bass player I like P bases in the mix more than jazz bass jazz bass is a little too uh like has too much of a you know it's too much of a Showboat instrument even though I have Jazz bases I prefer P Bas um I think the P Bas and the Fender Strat are perfect for being in a mix and I like my strings deadened a little bit for when I recording too for the same reason I'm not a virtuoso I'm not a solo player so I kind of always in the Rhythm and in the Rhythm I kind of want it to be you know I you know I like it that way so that I don't know if that's an answer to your question but that's my I like what you I agree with you I like it the way it works when way it works like with you uh Shane says hey Phil I took your advice and took and took eight unwanted pieces of gear in for trade and walked out with an awesome used R8 oh gibon R8 that's a nice guitar uh I really feel like I came out a winner thanks so much for advice and this this ties into um what was the sign on your advice or your question uh Lewis about how screwed you be going to Guitar Center look that trades sometimes are the best way to come out ahead on on a on a a guitar and I in my experience of trades with stores not with people those go well too but you got to be more strategic um because again you're talking to a person who has is just like you they're thinking like you they're you're both have the same agenda you want to come out ahead the store doesn't need to come out the head the same way you do okay sometimes the store is thinking wow I got this really expensive guitar it's really hard to sell be really it's a lot easier to sell a lot of less expensive stuff that's used I mean it's like every day um so here's what I mean by that um I like the strategy I go in the store I find the guitar that I want or the amp I want the highend thing I find what I want first I know the price and then I can reverse engineer it I can go home go on reverb in Guitar Center's case go on Guitar Center's website but also use Reverb and eBay go and look at what the stuff I want to trade is going for and then take the number which is going to be 50 to 60% of that okay if if you're lucky it's 60% of the the value so if it sells for a th000 you you you'll get six if you're not lucky you're going to get five there's no reason to take less than 50% of Something's value unless it's absolutely useless and you don't want it um so if you know you want a $2,000 guitar you know what you're trying to do you're trying to bring them $2,000 worth of stuff that they'll give you $2,000 for you walk out with that high-end guitar and that sometimes is a better win Justin says what if you don't have a lot of gear what are you watching here for then just kidding no man Justin I understand if you don't have a lot of gear um you're lucky I don't think a lot of players look most players that have a lot of gear don't want a lot of gear that's not what some do some just like to have a lot of stuff it's really like an accumulation I like the term curated this is a curated collection of guitars it's over the years it's guitars that I thought I wanted and then I don't so I'm stuck with them because I don't know what to do with them guitars that I absolutely love you I mean there's just going to be different guitars are in different stages of and so if you don't have guitar you want to get rid of gear you consider yourself lucky because that's where everybody's trying to get to just this their curated collection in other words whether you're collection three guitars or 30 guitars or 300 guitars it doesn't matter you're curating it you're trying to find the perfect collection for you and what that size is and in my experience most players whether they're professional players like Joe bamasa or their collectors or their whatevers or their doctors or lawyers or whatever term makes you guys feel better when you guys say crap on the internet um usually at any given time if you look at anyone player's collection of gear it's not perfectly curated in other words there's a couple things and they're like yeah I don't know if I still like this and yeah I haven't used that in years I mean it's just they're always trying to refine it to exactly what they use and need uh my buddy that's the name of the sign on says been watching some older podcasts recently thank you for your honesty in the episode 34 about the affiliate links here's a dollar back no no problem like I said anytime you guys ask me questions about the industry or YouTube and unfortunately got understand you know uh repairing guitars I have some experience I can help uh you know or talk about it I want to say talk about it owning a store I could talk about that being in the industry for other you know things marketing I can talk about that now being on YouTube for many years that's what I said sometimes I I wanted to be a guitar Channel but it's a guitar YouTube channel and anytime I can share stuff with you I'll I'll share it because uh I think I I look at it like this I look at the opposite way the companies get mad at me some companies get mad for the stuff I say and and not in the ways you think um they get mad because they think I believe they're wrong in thinking the way they do but they think that I'm somehow telling the world some business and what I've tell them over and over again is I'm telling a small group of interested people that want to be educated about it that's totally different so when I talk about affiliate programs or if I talk about because you got understand most of the stuff I talk about are the are the business relationships I currently have or I have so of course you can imagine some of the business like why are you talking about this and know and and if I'm allowed to I will talk about it if I'm not unfortun I can't but I talk about it because I'm like cuz the group that's watching this show which seems big to you is is not that big the guitar the guitar I mean big guitar channels get a million views they all you know they get half a million views the podcast video gets when I'm killing it it could get 50,000 views on average it can get down to 30 40,000 views which is a lot some channels would be like I'd kill for that but in the grand scheme of things you have to be interested in this subject to listen to me talk about it and so if you are which I think you guys are I talk about it and affiliate leaks are one of those things how do how do these YouTubers how do I make money how do the companies work with me and make money yeah I think it's important um because otherwise you listen to the comment sections which are mostly wrong and it's not because they're commenting it's just most people don't understand you know they go oh this guy was paid to say I just deal with it today somebody said I'm paid by PRS and therefore I say things bad about Gibson I've never received a single dime from PS ever and I bought almost well I bought all my no not even all I've actually gotten free Gibsons so not from Gibson though isn't that funny I got a free Gibson from uh AMS American music supply when I say free it means it was uh you know sent to me in exchange for Content um because I wanted it they asked me if I'd do a video and I'm like and my logic was yeah I want a Gibson I own more Gibsons than I own ps's and fenders Gibson is uh the most amount of guitars I own are Gibsons uh I like Gibsons I love to say I dis like or like Gibson the company but the reality is whatever we talk about has nothing to do with whether I like it or not it's just because it made the the subject that week and you guys wanted to talk about what they did uh look I like Keel Jeff stepped in it and you guys talk about the stuff he stepped in on Kel Paul he doesn't really step in a lot of problems he doesn't create a lot of problems so PS doesn't get discussed that way on the channel a lot we usually talk about the guitars that's what's great that's why sometimes I say maybe the ownership of these companies shouldn't be out there doing anything some owners shouldn't talk wouldn't it's not doing their company any favors we'll just talk about their guitars um but uh that's why we talk about it I think if that helps uh so I tell you guys when I have an a bias at least I tried to disclose the bias with PS and Gibson I don't necessarily have a I don't have a particular bias I like a couple of the employees in marketing at PS because they like my channel and they send me products so I don't have to buy them that's nice I mean I I like gibs and guitars I like Fender guitars but I would be dumb not to mention that I have almost 400,000 subscribers in a gear review Gear review channel that does really well and those are like the two of like if I Nam five companies that don't work my channel two of them are Gibson Fender I don't really know why that is I assume it's because of this discussion every week they don't like it but I don't know so you know I can't really say that's for sure but it is it would be dumb for me to not mention that the two biggest guitar companies don't work with the channel in any way shape or form Fender I used to work with but then they stopped I don't know could be because they just find my channel irrelevant maybe they don't like it they're allowed not to like it or maybe they I don't know who cares my point is uh there is as many Fender videos and Gibson videos as PS videos as ianz videos as any other videos I try to put all the stuff on there that I think is interesting so uh so that ties into his uh to my buddy uh the the saying uh thank you for the basically transparency we'll be as transparent as we want so that's that's great remember I still at the end of the day all my money from this platform comes from you guys it's 90 something percent I I'm saying 90 because I don't know it used to be 95 I think it's actually gone down I think it's closer to 92 90 I'm just making up numbers but it's 90% so nine of every $10 I make on this platform came from you guys watching it or patreons sponsoring it so of course that's the that's my allegiance cuz that's the money I got to stay I got to I got to make the people who are paying me happy it happens to be you guys I've worked really hard to keep it that way uh tsze says hey Phil thoughts on Vintage pickups I bought an 86 Kramer Focus 1,000 want to replace the pickups uh and oh replace the pickup and crr Kramer Enthusiast strongly recommend the jbj pickup $200 for vintage pickup $100 for new I have never found uh that any older pickup is more magical than newer pickups that are made to the same spec when it comes to getting you close enough to to matter okay so here's what I mean by that uh when I did the video recently on the P Smith S2s I mentioned that they're including a $500 set of of uh 581 15s and somebody said in the comments what the hell makes a pickup worth $500 nothing same thing it makes a good pickup worth a 100 bucks that makes it worth $1,000 uh nothing real you know nothing that you can qualify with a hard cost it's more of a you know they can get it so they ask for it um same thing with vintage stuff I find I'm not that's why I'm not a huge fan of that uh you know I I I um I bought some vintage uh uh Demario uh super Distortion pickups to compare I feel like a dumbass now I bought them I was like oh 1970 blah blah blah super distortions they're probably much better and of course the forums like they're much better they don't they don't the new ones don't sound the same I got them abat them I couldn't really hear a difference later in discussion with Larry I found out pretty much that I think they're using the same machines and the same people and the same this is the same I'm like he wasn't much he wasn't very shocked that I didn't find much difference in the sounds um so to me I mean if it matters to you to buy the Vintage correct thing or you know but to to hang this kind of magical esque thing to it I can't do that um and I'm not saying I don't have my own magic hoodoo that I believe in when it comes to gear you know it's just not vintage there's nothing that makes me believe in all my years that something that was made um basically in someone's basement 50 years ago can't be replicated to some degree to get it close enough uh to and I just can't argue the last 10% of anything when somebody so if somebody says like if somebody's arguing with me that Gibson made a replica of a 195 L PA 59 less Paul down to the T I would assume that if you played them if somebody said oh but the real one sounds better and feels better I'm not going to disagree with that but I am going to say that I'd be shocked if it wasn't 10% better it's not it's not a huge difference it's not night and day and I need night and day is sometimes a justifi price for for me so um so yeah I and then Average Joe is saying a jbj is a JB made by MJ uh from the custom shop and again you know I've talked about this before uh Fender uh when I was a dealer they gave me a set of ab Abigail Yara pickups as a gift I didn't even like them I was I I was I put them in I hyped it up my head that these were going to be the magical pickups I put them in and I thought they sounded fine in fact they probably sounded great I just was like so like wow I can't believe this uh so same thing um to me if you want a JB you get a JB um when somebody says older JB pickups especially JB pickups there's a big variance in JB pickups not over the years just even like you can pick you can get three JBS right now and there's a little bit of Varian in each one but all of them are pretty good so you know there's a uh you know you get the idea so uh it's up to you but I can't give you anything qualifying other than you would have vintage correct stuff in your guitar If That Matters um I I talk about this think about this I talk about it with my own set of pickups I I have a uh I like talk about the Northern Lights more so than the Copperheads but the Northern Lights is a pickup that's cloned off of a pickup that a friend made that I loved I literally have to make content I have other things to do and so when I sit in front of the winder now that I have my wife helping me in front of the wind you know on the winder packaging putting them together marketing them testing them um and I can make a little bit more of them that's why I brought the price down essentially I have told you guys this many times my price is dictated on how much time I have to give to making them and I can only make so many you know um and that's that's not that's my time but but that's not like I'm not trying to tell you like I'm using super magic magnets I'm using stuff that no one get I literally buy my stuff from the same place that almost every single person who does small run amounts of pickups like me gets their stuff from we're all buying from the same source so it's just my formula and my time and I put a premium on it because of of those two factors but I would never sit here and tell you that my pickups are uh in fact I think if you're a halfway decent pickup Winder you could take my pickups and clone him out pretty fast so just like how I cloned him out just like how everybody else can clone him out I like something I liked it and I went with it um and I appreciate everybody who buys pickups and supports the channel how about that thank you for doing that because I put that money back in the channel too okay uh grumpy my guitar says shout out to the lovely Mrs mcnight uh Shauna is the best I'll let her know she probably hears it right now if she's listening to show I'll let her know she's the best uh she's uh she's been working really hard lately on a lot of stuff for the uh the know oh the know your gear merch again she stays pretty focused on the merch we don't sell much merch anymore I think YouTubers in merch have kind of burned everybody out so much merch now always buy our merch uh and I think I've said this before I I do it because I she likes doing it I like I like that she does it I will wear my merch all the time just because uh I don't really care what I wear I figure if I'm going to wear something I'll wear something with my logo but I I just don't have any strong belief in anything that makes me want to wear someone else's logo for any other reason uh so that's why I do it but um uh the um the the merch is just a nice way to support the channel I appreciate that it's like I said I always tell everybody it's a donation vehicle it's like you give the money you give some money to the channel you get a shirt I appreciate that but uh I think yeah it's I get merch is a little tapped for the mo for the main Market okay uh thank you Mr s for the Super Chat the candle 34 says Shalom uh hope I said it right I think I did uh you know what sad is um the only way I I know how to say it was from a uh uh me first and the gim gimmies had a song and it started with the word Shalom and I was like oh Shalom uh so I hope I'm not butchering it uh with modeling amps in mind which ones in your opinion are still relevant and which ones have suffered the demise of being out of date uh I think with modeling amps uh you said amps not modeling processors processors I think is different because obviously technology is a big factor for recording how good they sound to me I could still play a spider 2 amplifier in a practice room and I'll get a tone out of it just work out a good sound and just play it so are they still relevant uh old ones I think if you're asking are they I mean do they suffer the demise of being outdate they do because obviously newer Tech makes them better they are Technology based so newer Tech makes them better but better is better uh that's it not crappy and great it's just they're okay and they're a little better now so yeah I would say a new one's better and I really I think a lot of companies uh whether it's and I'll just pick them on them all so I don't feel like I'm pointing everybody El fender py line six uh you know insert other company I'm trying to think crate doesn't even exist anymore but a lot of those modeling companies I think they're all kind of guilty of just repackaging an older unit with very very little updates all the time you know and so uh a lot of times when you're like oh the new one blows the other ones away you can be because sometimes it's like a car remodel sometimes they retool the whole thing and they start from scratch and sometimes it's just a you know hey they put a new grill on it uh so uh I like modeling amps for practice they're effective they're cheap they sound good I I can't I in total shock all the time with people's intense feelings for them either really positive or negative I don't understand it it's um it never makes sense when people are like these are horrible and they should be destroyed I'm like they're fine it's it's fine it's a product to make let you make music and it does fine I currently am using the Sparks cuz I bought all three Sparks I use the spark mini in my bedroom using the spark 40 in the shop I have my yamha th30 downstairs and I have a Sparco uh wherever I go so that's what I'm been using for practice and I have the Catalyst but I pretty much only use it for videos just because it's usually set up for videos yeah modeling you know Eddie oh sorry Average Joe says they are fun they are fun modeling amps are fun I you hear every once in a while there's like this rational person going I wish I had this 20 years ago or 30 years ago when I was play yes they're fine and you know what's great about old Tech modeling amps they are boat anchors when it comes to selling them so like it it it cracks me up not to say oh what great would be if when I started playing guitar instead of a CMC amp that only had literally tone I think it had tone volume and no it didn't have gain so it had base treble and volume that was my three knobs on my amp that's what I got on my first amp no gain control no mid-range mid-range is for rich people and it had an I think a 6inch speaker might have been 8 inch but um you know what I love to say what would I do if I had a line six or something like a a a Viper by py or something uh well one I would have I would have been blown away with how amazing it was but add this I've walked in music stores this recently in the last couple of months and seen modeling amps that are 10 years old yeah they're dated technology and they can't give them away they're like 30 bucks I've seen I've seen I've seen a 21250 watt modeling amp for $119 and it had a layer of dust from sitting in that store for a last two years and they're like yeah we can't get rid of it and I'm like 100 bucks that's crazy so yeah I I think they're great uh well see I'm now I'm doing it I think they're good they serve a purpose and I'm I'm glad the older ones are cheap new one sound a little better and uh that's my strong not so strong feelings on them false prophet says hey Phil have you played seen the new warma have you played have you played or seen the Warmoth Telly Strat hybrid body I am too a strat dude thinking about building one I have not um I need to re reach out to Warmoth you know when Co happened uh some of you guys might know uh I had worked out a deal with Warth to build uh two guitars so they were going to get me the parts I was going to put them together they're going to be twins I was going to build the same guitar twice and then what was going to happen is we were going to give away one to you guys in a giveaway and I was going to keep one and I thought oh this be cool because then you know somebody will win one and know that I have one too and it'd be kind of cool right maybe a bonding experience between me and a a viewer and um and then Co avenant didn't work out maybe it's worth doing and at this point maybe just build one and give it away way so maybe that's the body I'll pick uh I don't know like I said I haven't reached out to them since I I told you I don't make a habit to reach out to companies um usually they reach out to me and obviously when that fell through because of Co they said they'd reach out again and I think they forgot about it but maybe I should break my own policy and reach out to them and say hey let's get let's let's do this let's do a giveaway I'll I'll do a I'll build it and we'll give it away uh Ry says Phil anything to look out for when using Bass with guitar pedals uh do I need Bas FX pedals I like how it sounds with the tness and the mxr phaser um I personally use mostly guitar pedals for bass I don't really go specific the only times that I feel like I need a bass specific pedal besides Unique Sounds for bass maybe like an envelope filter sometimes her bass is a little a little better in my opinion for the bass than some of the guitar ones because of the the frequency range but sometimes the overdrive pedals for base are nice to have it has a they use have two lines where they have it they still signal they send the clean base signal through so because one of the things that sucks about bass plane is when you switch to overd drive if you don't have that same original signal coming through all of a sudden the lowend frequency in the band goes away and you're just you know you lose it uh so that's one nice feature but I generally don't use any base specific pedals for my base I stick with all guitar pedals for my Basse and I've always been that way and I don't use very many pedals but when I do it's usually guitar pedals uh Johnny thank you so much says K kyg support fund I appreciate that Johnny thank you so much Alex says just got a boss Katana uh got delivered yesterday best guitar product in a long time uh I predict you're going to sell huge num oh I predict they're going to sell huge numbers yeah they might that boss Katana thing might work no I'm just kidding that's great the katana is still great isn't that funny it's been out for a few years now still great um I slightly prefer the Catalyst to it and there's a couple reasons why but it's not like a I like the Catalyst and don't like the katana it's just I had one of each and I just preferred the Catalyst for a couple things but both were really great I think the katana is still a great quality product and I think it's just I don't know it's just nice to know that you know for a decent amount of money you can get something really good uh Tom says tone jar thanks for what you do wow thank you for the huge Super Chat man uh I appreciate that the um it's it's very nice to you guys thank you so much for all the support the Channel all the way uh em says no more Super chats please yeah I tried to turn them off a minute ago and it wasn't working so yeah don't do it I tried to turn them off at the end so we don't have any overflow one quick thing and I see that I have a left-hand Paw I'm going to do his super chat or their super chat but one thing about super chats and it just because it came up last week somebody Super Chat got me messed um something to you I I haven't said it in a while so I should tell you again super chats are cuz it's money cuz they because you guys are paying to the channel um it's accountability in other words you know YouTube gets 40% of that basically right 45 but it's definitely 40% so if you give me 10 bucks they get four and I get six um that's how super chats work because it works like that they archive them I have them in the order I've ever received all of them and it goes back two years I tell you that because I used to say this all the time and I maybe have been remiss about not saying it recently but when you Super Chat the channel if I miss it for any reason please feel free make a comment send an email use usually the moderators like Amanda and the guys they will catch it and tell me Amanda's usually on it dead soon as the the video ends she's like you missed two these are them I'm like okay um but like I said I have them in the system so if I ever miss one forever any reason please just let me know and I'll go grab it and do it like I did this week at the following the following week that's what's great about them that's why by the way I try to answer them at towards the end of the show uh this is how long the show's been going I haven't said it in years the show used to be an hour long and the the idea was always in the first hour I do pretty much none of the super chats I try to stick with who came early and who I can see at that time and then the second hour I consider it bonus hour in other words people who support the Channel with super chats get the second hour to get a keep going like I keep it going for that reason um and that's why so you know uh if for those of you who have been joined and joining new in the last couple years you when you go back you see a show and it's only an hour and a half versus two hours two and a half hours you see a show it's hour 30 minutes look I guarantee you do the math go look at the super chats there was not that many super chats the second hour is usually the bonus time and if I have a lot of super chats there seeming to be a lot volume wise today uh then we went extra long Extra Innings so so I'm just letting you know and I feel bad because I haven't mentioned that in a while but let's do sou uh left hand path uh real quick I don't know why I Southall on that says Alvarez posted a video last week comparing two of their parlors identical specs except one handbuilt one Factory they concluded that the handmade just 10% better than the factory two times the money thoughts I find that first of all some as as you know if I can impart some experience of reviewing gear more so than anything else uh I'm not talking about repairing it or building it or anything else reviewing it what have I concluded in you know in years and years of reviewing stuff that if I have to compare it to hear the difference the difference doesn't matter um me personally I think it's entertainment I think comparing a $10 Tube Screamer to a $100 one and doing a video and do I enjoy watching that absolutely do I hope you do too hearing the differences but to me if I can't if I put on if I get a somebody sends me a fake clone Tube Screamer for $10 and I plug it in and it sounds like a tube screamer it's a tube screamer to me to to say that it's not it's not as bright as the other one or the knobs I I watch people when they do reissues of stuff they literally go oh well on the reissue you got to put the knob a little bit different here and a little bit different there and then they sound alike they don't sound alike unless you put the knobs a little off from each other and I'm like it doesn't matter but it's fun to talk about and Sh share and same thing with guitars this is why I was talking about the PRS CSE earlier I would compare those two guitars and by the time it got to your ears from YouTube the differences would be so little you would really not be entertained by it and I could only tell you exactly what I told you without having to to compare them which is if you like gloss finish and a fancy top get the that one and if you like satin or you want to save a few hundred bucks get the satin finish one um so yes left hand uh path I find the same thing with the factory versus handmade guitar Acoustics you know I would expect think of this the results they have are exactly the results I expected to hear which is the handbuilt they're both handbuilt so you know this is important on acoustic guitars there's no such thing as a manufactured CN seed Out acoustic guitar they see see out the parts but somebody still has to hand assemble it uh $99 acoustic guitars it is the most hilarious thing and we'll end on this note it's the thing that makes me laugh to this day my favorite thing to read on acoustic guitars is handmade this is handmade now sometimes maybe it implies that it was entirely handmade but in my experience that is very rare unless you're buying from an actual luier who's building your guitar from scratch they are not handmade and even then you know still not a 100% handmade there'll be some some mechanical tools um electric power tools but usually when I see like when I see an acoustic guitar uh you know from a brand and it says handmade The $99 guitar at Costco acoustic guitar is handm made if you you can watch a thousand videos no exaggeration on YouTube of them building ausu guitars them being every manufacturer and they're all done by hand it's all basically uh cut wood wet it put it in jigs glue it together by hand hand finish it um so everything is handmade so the reason I make where I say it's funny is it's funny to me that they don't highlight that when the guitars are cheap even though they are true they could but they want to hold that terminology for right for uh the hiring guitars they're like oh this one was handmade well they were all handmade like but but but this one we need more things to justify the price so we're going to say that on there uh so uh that's that's the thing but yeah so I I think that's not really that um shocking but I I see your point and I feel the same way things are 10% better that's about right but the last part that's important is whether it's 2% better 10% better or 1% better if it matters to you it's it's like tunnel vision you can't get out of it you can't get away with it uh the difference in something can be as little as 1% different and if you can get Tunnel Vision on that and it can be the most important thing that matters to you and and the sad thing is because this is an emotional thing that we do play music uh and if you're not if you're not feeling it you're not loving it it's it's not going to happen so like I said I I I uh I wish that wasn't true I wish logic would Prevail but most of the time it doesn't for those of you it does prevail for congratulations I think you win all right on that note I'm GNA let you guys go because I got indexing now to do and I gotta Tim stamp the show and make some clips if I can and uh I always want to thank you guys for hanging out if you give it a like on the way out I'd appreciate that um you can give it a thumbs down too if you want that whatever makes you happy I guess is is probably good enough and on that note I'm going to say thank you for your time and know your gear the know your gear podcast before you spend your rent car payment or child's inheritance here pleas the affiliate links down below
