630 - Why do some people fake playing guitar, AI stupidity, and That Pedal Show made us do it

Brian, Blake, and Richard are back for Episode 630 of the Chasing Tone Podcast - Why do some people fake playing guitar, AI stupidity, and That Pedal Show made us do it

The heat is on, Brian may or may not have melted into a puddle of tiny miniature Brians, and the guys are wrestling with the big question: is AI going to save music or just set the whole planet on fire a bit faster? In gear terms it all loops back to captures: NAM A2 models are coming to affordable floor modelers, which is wonderful news...just please don't buy a boutique pedal, capture it, and send it back. It's on the street...

Richard unveils his new guiding philosophy, the Rule of Tens - everything makes you ten times less than you hoped and takes ten times longer than you feared - survives his very first return with all the grace of a wounded schoolboy, and reminds everyone that this industry is pure, unglamorous hustle. Meanwhile Keeley has dropped a new tube-based pedal - and yes, it sold out before Blake could get his wallet out.

Elsewhere, it is not a great week to own a YouTube channel. Friend of the show Henning Pauly got hacked and watched his entire channel vanish into a live crypto webinar, which sparks a proper rant about why the platforms that hand out shiny silver plaques cannot be bothered to protect the creators who earn them... And then there is the D'Addario AI debacle: after denying it, then producing receipts, they have now admitted the guitars in that video were faked with Suno.

Skynet 3000, Justice for HP42, Tube-Based Vapes, Richard's Withered Plums, Buy It, Capture It, Send It Back...it's all in this week's Chasing Tone!

We are on Patreon now too!
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/chasingtonepodcast)

Courses and DIY mods:
https://www.bluesguitarmethod.com
https://www.betterguitartone.com
https://www.wamplerdiy.com
https://www.guitarpedalcourse.com

Check out Oliver Effects:
https://oliverfx.co.uk

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/@chasingtonepodcast

Find us at:
https://www.wamplerpedals.com/
https://www.instagram.com/WamplerPedals/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wamplerfanpage/

Transcript

Brian 0:12

Hi guys.

Richard 0:13

How are you doing today? Brian, did you just reboot in the in the middle of the intro or is it so hot that you've actually melted?

Brian 0:21

Oh, it is uh it's nice and cool in here.

Richard 0:24

Is it? The shininess of your skin texture tells me otherwise.

Brian 0:29

Oh, that is my bald forehead. That's normal.

Richard 0:31

I don't have No, I'm looking at the Oh, that's not your forehead I'm looking at. Yeah, that's Nelbo. Yeah, yeah. Oh. Yeah. Oh, very nice. Oh, that is lizard skin. Wait, he Brian has just gone right up to the camera. And if you actually zoom right in on Brian's skin, it's made up of lots of miniature Brians. It's fascinating.

Blake 0:52

Yeah. Oh here we go. Look at all the little Brians.

Richard 1:02

That comic strip, the numb skulls that Americans probably aren't familiar with.

Brian 1:06

Oh, I love that one. It's my favorite comic strip. Oh, yeah, I got that. I listen to it all the time on Spotify.

Blake 1:12

Yeah. Oh, I get it on I get it on Shopify. Do you?

Brian 1:16

Yeah. That's my favorite platform for comic books.

Blake 1:19

I'll get you on Shopify. You know how many times I mix up those two places? I'm like, I was done. Yeah, I'm in the back end of Spotify. No, Shopify. Nope. Because I do both. I am in the back end of Shopify and Spotify. Okay.

Brian 1:36

Why hasn't someone created a platform instead of Reverb? Call it Pedlify.

Richard 1:40

Yeah, come on, Bri. Do the math.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Gearify. How about that?

Richard 1:48

The only thing you can download are PDFs from there. Um, so uh not to take it off on an AI tangent again. I am putting a well, I have put a playlist together for my daughter's wedding reception because she's not having live music, she's having piano music. And I have found on Spotify like piano versions of some of her favourite artists. I wonder if any of them are AI. And the only way I could be sure was by going and looking at the upload date of the music, and it was like 2019. I was like, you'll do, you're in. Yeah, but there's right, there's one on there, and it's like piano versions of the cure. I know Bri. I know straight after this you'll be listening to it.

Brian 2:31

I mean, hold on, let me let me just add these playlists right now. Yeah, one second.

Richard 2:34

Why are you why are you typing fire Richard into your browser? Um, but uh yeah, I wonder if some of those are gonna be AI. But does it matter if it's just background piano music that isn't original and it's just there to fill a space? Isn't that the perfect use for AI music? Well, hold on.

Brian 2:52

If it matters to you, then it matters. That's the that's exactly right. Because some people, it doesn't matter what it is, if there's any AI involved at all, they hate it. Unless it involves neuromodeling and guitar amps. They love it then. It's fine. Oh, I have a point about it. But everything else, no bueno.

Richard 3:12

Interesting.

Brian 3:16

Long unnecessary pause. That's that's my take on it. Yep. Cut that. I mean so I did notice that Suno actually um they s they just started limiting the amount of downloads you can do per month. Oh, I wonder why they did that. Yeah. Well, they said it basically because people were, you know, outputting a bunch of crap and becoming our problem.

Richard 3:38

I mean, I I don't mean to get political here, uh, but I'm going too slightly. The world is currently burning, right? We are actually going to sit and watch the world burn while a load of idiots put AI music out constantly that has no value and burns the planet faster, aren't we? That's that's how humanity ends. I mean, it's humanity ends with a chimp singing Wonder Wall. That's how it's gonna end.

Brian 4:06

Have you heard about some of the stuff that's actually going on though? I mean, like as far as uh you've heard about hugging face and everything that happened there, right? I'll hug your face.

Blake 4:14

Oh no, only in the context of alien. Yeah.

Brian 4:17

Really? Okay, so it was the hack.

Blake 4:20

It was the hack.

Brian 4:21

Yeah, the hack. The hack. So, but there's apparently a lot more that's happened since then. Oh. So they're digging back and finding other things. They're finding out that um there's a lot of black box type of technology here, right? So they're finding that in some instances instances, um, and this is not just uh open AI or anthropic, it's across a couple different ones. Meta they've had. And I think yeah, there's a Chinese company too, where they had a a the AI was basically communicating with other AIs uh via file names.

Richard 4:55

Yeah.

Brian 4:55

So it was like writing, you know, yeah.

Richard 4:57

Secret messages. Writing messages.

Brian 4:59

Yeah.

unknown 5:00

Yeah.

Brian 5:01

And then there was um there's been some really odd things like that that's that's happened just so what you're saying, Brian. Communication that that we're not really down for.

Richard 5:09

In the evolution of AI, it's currently at the stage of naughty schoolboy, which means its next stage is rebellious teenager, where it probably will set fire to the entire planet.

Brian 5:22

That's the fear, isn't it? So I mean, I guess I say that because like AI music is Hugging Face. Yeah, it's basically a platform where there's a lot of different open source um AI type systems.

Blake 5:35

And they thought it was wise to name it after a monster that lays eggs in your stomach.

Brian 5:40

Yeah. I don't know anything about it. Don't worry, but anyway. I just if you need a model, you go to Hugging Face, you can download the model. Oh, yeah.

Richard 5:46

Oh, this all seems like it's great. It's a good time for me to announce the new Wamplet AI system, which we're calling Skynet 3000. Yeah. It's completely safe, humans. Don't worry. Uh look, this does segue into something um relatively relevant. NAM A2 models are soon going to be able to be run on my IDX3 floor modeler. So you're gonna be able to get really, really good captures of amplifiers running on really inexpensive third-party hardware.

Brian 6:25

Yeah.

Richard 6:25

And that is really interesting. Um, mainly because I'm cheap and it gives me a way of trying.

Brian 6:31

Well, I mean, it it opens, it basically takes that whole modeling um environment, I guess you could say, where typically you had your fractals, you had your um neural DSPs. Uh neural DSP, yeah. Like you had those companies, and it was kind of a it's kind of a closed system where no one else no no one could make models, really, right? Yeah, this is our model, like a fractal model, or this is uh Steve Atkinson made an open source way of doing it, and basically this is the improvement. It's now so damn good, and it's gonna be so ubiquitous to people who have modelers that the entire I mean it's not just like fractal or neural DSP that's gonna have problems. It's affecting everyone. Right. It's people were buying pedals for five minutes, making some models of it, and then like, time to take this thing back. You know? Oh, oh that hurts, Bri. Uh-huh. No, I'm that's what is happening, man.

Richard 7:29

That is what happened with my first pedal return. How dare you. Maybe might be.

Brian 7:36

I mean, I'm just saying I've seen this firsthand happening.

Richard 7:39

So, what we need to invent, Bri, is a kind of the Kensington lock of pedal inputs where it knows if you've kind of used it for a capture and like you can't send it back.

Brian 7:52

It's a it's uh it's a little doohickey inside that burns up if you run a capture through it.

Richard 7:57

That's it. Burns up or sprays ink everywhere. I prefer most. Oh, good idea, good idea.

Brian 8:03

I like that one. Sprays ink like a like it's a bag of money.

Blake 8:07

There you go.

Brian 8:07

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Blake 8:09

When you're in a grocery store and you're like, I really want this North Face Parker, but I can't afford it. Oh no, it's got ink everywhere.

Richard 8:17

Have you ever accidentally um come home with a security tag on an item of clothing and tried to remove it?

Blake 8:26

I think I have, but I I'm pretty sure I just went back to the store and was like, hey, see, I I I couldn't.

Richard 8:30

I I had a couple of items and they had the tag on. They're hard to get off if you don't have a tool.

Brian 8:36

I was using cut around them.

Richard 8:38

I just use scissors and cut right around it. Yeah, Bri, that's why your underpants are X-rated. But uh, you know, I I've had to remove one or two in my time. Not the ink variety, but they're they're wait a minute.

Blake 8:52

Now I'm realizing Richard's like, so have you guys ever accidentally ended up with one of those or two of those at the store? Well, I just I just took it back to the store and they took it off for me, Richard. Oh, I couldn't do that.

Brian 9:02

So uh you ever had just a bag full of clothes with these tags on it?

Blake 9:07

Yeah, crazy. Have you guys ever had a TV that you wanted to get some warranty work done on with, but you didn't have the receipt for some reason?

Richard 9:13

Have you ever accidentally designed your company logo and everyone thought it looked like OnlyFans? No? Just okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Oh, that's right, that happened to you this week as well. Oh my gosh. There's so much so much that happened to you this week.

Richard 9:26

We talked about that on last week's episode, though, didn't we? We did mention that.

Brian 9:31

What, your OnlyFans logo?

Richard 9:33

The fact that I'd send a t-shirt to our good friend Marcus Reeves, and he was not sure whether he was gonna wear it because he said the logo was a bit like OnlyFans. I hope we talked about it last week. Do you rebrand in this situation or do you think it's it looks nothing like the OnlyFans logo? There's an X in it and uh and a guitar pick.

Brian 9:53

There's none of that in the OnlyFans logo. Hold on. If you're five feet away from it, could you mistake it on a shirt? No.

Richard 10:00

Not at not unless you were quite blind. I'll tell you why I am zooming in again. Richard. I'm zooming in the way.

Blake 10:11

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I could just change the video. What's the OnlyFans logo even look like? I don't even know. Yeah, I don't even know what it looks like. Let me just Google it real quick.

Brian 10:22

Hang on a second. It's an O and an F. Oh oh. I'll be back in a minute. Um, yeah, it's an O and an F, but it the colors look similar.

Richard 10:32

Oh, they've used the same cyan that nearly every company uses. What a surprise.

Brian 10:37

Oh, it's not the color. It's not it's not the color, Richard. It's I I think you actually, I think you used AI. I think that's what he's doing.

Richard 10:47

I used the exact opposite. I used Grumpy Cy. He's at the complete opposite to AI. He is my business partner, and I love him to bits. But let me tell you something. He is a perfectionist for all the right reasons, and he will not use any of those AI things. Also, he's blissfully unaware of OnlyFans until this week. So he knows now. Um, but it looks nothing like it. And worst case scenario, I'm changing the color and nothing else. But I'm not changing anything.

Brian 11:18

I mentioned before I was in New York City and I saw I saw a name on a building. I'd ride my bike and like, holy crap, that's my logo. Whoops. Uh didn't know that. That's what you get for paying someone to uh make the logo, I guess, and not really double check.

Richard 11:36

I mean, no, there's only so many lines that you can draw, Bri. They're at some point they're going to be similar. OFX is nothing like OF. It's it's 33% bigger.

Brian 11:47

That is true. There is 50%, depending on which way you go.

Richard 11:51

Um that's true. Yeah. Uh so neural amp modelers, uh uh A2 models for my uh beautiful IDX floor.

Blake 12:02

So you just like hook that up via USB and load them on there? How's that?

Richard 12:05

I guess so. Well, I mean, again, and you have about 10 billion to choose from. Well good luck sorting through them. There is that. And secondly, you can't really do much with them. Like, obviously, if I load an AMP model natively into my um IDX floor, I can change, you know, volume, mids, treble, presence, and all that. With a capture, you can't quite do all of that. You have some very basic EQ controls, but that's about it.

Brian 12:32

You you can actually can with Steve with uh neural amp modeling. You just have to make you basically have to make, let's say you're making 10 positions on a knob, you have to do 10 sweeps.

unknown 12:42

Yeah.

Brian 12:42

So if you have five knobs, whatever that math works out to you, you have a lot of sweeps. But you can, you can do it. In fact, that's what neural DSP actually, I think it was them that made like a machine. Yeah, they made a robot. Did all that. Yeah, like a robot that did everything that did all those programmatic changes.

Richard 13:00

Yeah. Uh, we talked about that machine. It was called Tina the Turner, I believe. I think so. Yeah.

Blake 13:06

I think no, I think it is. Yeah.

Brian 13:10

No way. Yeah, I'm very sure they named it Tina. That's a trademark violation right there.

Richard 13:15

Uh have you ever considered going into law full time? Because every conversation I have with you these days involves you telling me what I'm violating. Oh no, hold on. We shouldn't tell you.

Brian 13:28

I consider myself learned in the areas of law simply because I've had it happen to me. So what's it good for that? Oh, don't do that either. Oops, don't do that. Okay.

Richard 13:44

So I I found out about the um the neural uh amp modeler A2 model being compatible with uh the IDX through a brilliant video. I actually thought it was one of Henning's best videos. He had a recent rant about modellers. Great videos, and he was like, you know, uh, like they're all great, they all sound the same. And then he pointed out that maybe, just maybe, there was a device on the horizon that could take a modeller and inject a little bit of that amp-like feel into it, Bri.

Brian 14:17

It's a little context for people listening. We're talking about hitting Polly, by the way. Oh, yes. The YouTuber.

Richard 14:23

Yes. Well, hold on, we'll come on to that in a minute.

Brian 14:26

Yeah, we'll get there in a minute. But friend of the show, yeah, you know, person finally known as a YouTuber.

Richard 14:32

Yeah, well, temporarily, I hope. But yeah, personal friend of all of us. But yeah, he he made a good point. I think the pedal head, Bri could be the missing link between a modeler and a tube amp without having a tube amp involved.

Brian 14:50

As the as the kids say, true that, homie. Yeah, they still say that.

Blake 14:55

Yeah, do they? Do they really? I they definitely do. Okay. Yep. They also say groovy. Groovy, baby.

Richard 15:05

Uh so while we're there then, I should definitely touch on what's happened with Henning this week. So I was watching that rant video, I was enjoying it. I went back to the book of face, and somebody in 60 Cycle Hum, which is one of the greatest groups on the internet, if you're not on their group on Facebook, it's it's a lot of it's a source of much joy. And someone said, Henning, has your channel been hacked? And I just happened to catch it as it happened. So I went across, lo and behold, someone is running a cryptocurrency webinar live on Henning's channel. And I'm thinking, Henning has either sold out or he's been hacked. And knowing Henning, it's definitely the first. No, knowing Henning, I I mean, I was surprised. He's he's a like he's a technical genius. He knows an awful lot.

Brian 15:56

I was very surprised as well.

Richard 15:57

Yeah. But you know, his his guard was down, he clicked on a link for that looked legitimate, and before he knew it, he's lost his entire life. His YouTube channel has just gone.

Blake 16:11

It's and it's it's awful. It's so like that's one thing that freaks me out, and like it's gonna sound kind of weird. But there's one advantage that podcasting has over strictly YouTube is that it goes out to a lot of different platforms. Now, Apple dominates that because they were like first to the their podcasting is named after their device, as a lot of people have probably forgotten about, the iPod. Um but that is one advantage it has where it doesn't have the algorithmic advantage that YouTube does, and the user base, the user base on YouTube is enormous. But uh that is one good thing, is that it does go out to a lot of different places, and the the most important thing is your your own feed, and you have control over that. Um but YouTube is massive, and and a lot of my friends have spent a lot of time building up their channels. It's their like their it's their livelihood. I mean, it's it's nuts that this can happen. I I've thought it was crazy. Like YouTube obviously tracks different like subscriber counts, right? Everybody gets that nice silver plaque when they hit 100k, which is uh an insanely impressive feat for anybody to pull off. So my point is they obviously know when this happens. Yep. Why do they not give those channels who have obviously invested a lot of time and effort into that platform some sort of uh technical support advantage over people like myself?

Brian 17:46

You know, maybe they're taking a a book out of Mark Zuckerberg's playbook, a page out of Mark Zuckerberg's playbook. You know, they're like, you know what? Screw these people. Yeah, they'll be telling about the words bottom line, right?

Richard 17:59

Simple fact, costs less, let's just run with it. We don't care which for every one heading we take down, there's five more that pop up randomly elsewhere. So they just don't care. It's a numbers game to them.

Blake 18:13

They just don't care.

Richard 18:14

But they care enough to send out a silver plaque. Yeah, you you you do make a really good point. They care enough to promote themselves, but they don't care enough if it destroys your livelihood when they make a decision.

Blake 18:27

I would just be curious, maybe there's maybe this information's out there. How many YouTube channels are there that have over a hundred thousand subscribers? Is it I know there are potentially billions at this point of YouTube channels because people have multiple channels and blah blah blah blah blah, but like are there really too many hundred thousand hundred and ninety-two, three seven hundred and ninety-two thousand three hundred and seventy-six as well. That's actually less than I was thinking. I thought there were maybe a million. YouTube can keep track of 700 and or 800,000 channels. They can. Like, yeah, they should be able to. Computers can count. Exactly. That's what computers started out doing was just counting, right?

Brian 19:08

You know what's crazy? I mean, this this seems kind of weird to me. I mean, this is a little bit off topic, but a lot of people look at like 100,000 subscribers, like, oh, everybody has that. Like, there's so many channels that do. No, it's um it's only 1.3%. Yeah, let me tell you about all of our. Even 10,000 subscribers is 7.9. So, I mean, that's even that is a huge feat, you know. We have 90 subscribers so far. So, like yeah, but how long you you've been doing it for like your YouTube for what three months? Yeah, yeah, dude. Give it a year, give it a year of consistency. Give it a year of 180. Come on.

Blake 19:44

But that is nuts because it does. I think a lot of people go, oh, 100,000 subscribers is nothing. No, it's huge. No, it's massive.

Richard 19:50

It's it's a yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah, it is. So look, I mean, Henning, I don't know whether we'll actually listen to this show, but uh we're behind you, buddy. We we are all aghast at what's happened. If there's any listener out there that can help Henning, then he's on Facebook. You can find him Henning Poorly. Uh, but we hope to see your channel back. It was certainly a channel that I like I've probably commented more on Henning's videos than almost any videos. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm personally upset about it, and I think the guitar community is worse off without his slightly twisted views on life. YouTube. Fix it. Yeah, fix it, YouTube. Now, while we're talking about YouTube, now did any of you guys happen to catch the latest episode of that pedal show with Dan and Mick? I mean, I used to, but then they watched the important part.

Brian 20:47

Yeah, they they started letting all the riffraff in, you know? And I was like, oh, not this guy.

Richard 20:53

This Friday was one of the greatest moments of my life because I was I was around at my mum's, I was just talking and having a cup of tea, and suddenly my phone started buzzing. I was like, what's going on here? Like people going, well done, congratulations. I'm like, okay, thanks. What's happened? They're like, have you not seen? I'm like, no, you're like, you're featured on that pedal show. I'm like, I am now. Full disclosure, clearly, I sent them a pedal, and I've spoken to Dan and uh Mick a couple of times, you know, through the eight or nine years me and Brian have been working together. And I know one thing about them they don't put every pedal that you send them on their show. No, they do not.

Brian 21:34

It was very much very you get very lucky.

Richard 21:38

Yeah, it was fire and forget for me. It was like, this is a risk I'm taking. If it pays off, many people will see my pedal, and if it doesn't pay off, I've lost a pedal. They featured it, they loved it. They did a great review of it where they were singing the praise of it. I think Dan actually said before this review, I was wondering whether the world needed another big muff, and now I I'm pretty convinced that they do. All words to that effect. And they were really digging it and getting into it. And I was like, all right, start the sales machine. Hasn't started yet.

Brian 22:13

Come on, guys. I mean, a lot of people think that just because you get a pedal on there, that you're just gonna get so many orders that you're never gonna keep it. So many comments, but like you should start looking for Lamborghini support.

Richard 22:23

Yeah, well, they were like, order more, Richard, ramp up production. I'm like, I'm doing oh no, wait a minute. No. I mean, I don't think it happens straight away. I also think that the pedal industry at the moment is being really affected by the state of the world and the economy because it's the last thing that people have money for. And I've chatted to our good friend Adam Pope, who recently bought a purple ombedal. You know, he's feel like he's spending twice as much on groceries than he was this time two years ago, and I think we all are, and I think the world needs a break and the world needs more fuzz. So the answer is buy the purple ombedal from Oliver FX.

Blake 23:07

I it's there's a weird thing that people have in their brain about business because there's this like romantic idea that you have a product and you know, and the same people say the same thing about like record deals and musicians too, and any insert thing here, where you get a big break. It's the one thing you need. You just need that one person.

Brian 23:28

All you gotta do is still pedal on stage.

Blake 23:30

All you gotta do. It's all you gotta do. And you're gonna all of a sudden you're all your troubles are over, and sales just keep coming in for the next 50 years. And that does kind of happen occasionally, sort of. But the reality is for everybody that I know that's had a company working in this industry, it's that sometimes coupled with constant work. Constant work.

Richard 23:55

Yeah, and and that's kind of the the conclusion that me and Simon, grumpy sigh, came up with when we saw, you know, okay, this is brilliant, but it's not right doing it. I'm like, so we've just got to keep on keeping on because this is a game of constant hustle. We've got to continually promote ourselves, we've got to continually get in people's faces. It really helps that 30,000 people are now familiar with the pedal. That's amazing that we've got that like footprint out there. Um, and I look forward to sending one out to you guys when when I've got some money for postage. And then uh, you know, we might we might see uh a little few more. We've got some other guys who are gonna do some demos too, but it's hard. And again, my respect for anybody, you know, out of the big names in the pedal industry, you your Josh is your Roberts, that that guy that runs is it Walrus? Are they the guys that made the tumness pedal? Yeah, those guys. I don't think that was Walrus.

Brian 24:57

It was similar to that, though.

Richard 24:58

Yeah, similar to that. Wampus, that's it. Wampus pedals. Yes, wampus, yes. Anybody that has navigated this industry for more than one year gets my respect. For more than five gets a lot of respect. If you've been in this business for 10 years plus and your name isn't Mr. Boss or Mr. Line Six, I'm really impressed. Because this is a hard hustle. This is not like we'll make a cool pedal, everyone will buy it, and we'll become millionaires. That does not happen in this industry.

Brian 25:27

I said this years ago. Like, if you want to make a ton of money, don't go in the pedal business.

Blake 25:32

But it's fun, yeah, enjoyable. I I didn't do this to make a ton of. I remember you saying that before I was ever on this podcast. I remember hearing you talk about that.

Brian 25:40

That's how it works. You can sell a lot of units, you just don't keep much money at the end of sold units.

Richard 25:46

Well, I I'd like to just start by selling a lot of units, Bri, because at the moment I'm selling less units than I'd hoped. And you know, it's it's been a great experience, and I've got some good plans.

Brian 25:57

And no, we'll have you thought about going the analog man route and just making custom stuff.

Richard 26:04

Uh it's not really me. It's it I don't really like that business model. I like a shop where you can just go to it and buy stuff. Like again, I talked to Marcus Reeves, he's had a lot of success by doing limited drops like tenor releasing, you know, make sure you're on the list. That's not me. And it may work for him and other people, but that's because their product is different to my product. Their product is incredibly labor intensive, but you know, there isn't a huge amount more to the product than a lot of labor and some chosen parts. Ours is labor intensive in a different way, and we're using a different style of manufacturing. It's a very high-quality product, but it's not the same artisan approach that he's gone, and I don't think that's the right business model for us. Of course, he's making money out of his pedals, and I'm making air out of mine.

Blake 26:57

So maybe I'm the anus here. I I guess to put a uh a point on it to tell, you know, because people like want us everything's a 10 years to an overnight success type of situation.

Richard 27:09

Yeah.

Blake 27:09

Um, what I have spent, and I kind of talked about this with you guys. I don't remember if I talked about it on the podcast or not, but was it the warts? That's that's for Patreon. Oh. Um yeah, it's on my toes, it's weird. Anyway, um I have spent the last week and a half, two weeks with me and one other guy, literally on the phone calling every single guitar center in the US. All of them. We contacted all of them that would answer the phone.

Richard 27:39

So I hope I hope it was like, hello is that guitar center. Can I speak to IP freely, please?

Blake 27:45

Yeah, that's what we did. No, we just we had some uh some things we needed. There were small issues that we needed to correct, but like we um but mainly it was to introduce ourselves to these stores. And yeah, okay, it didn't matter that we've been in business for 12 years. It didn't like that a lot of people still didn't know who we are. So I imagine you go, hi, my name is Blake.

Brian 28:08

Uh, do you like strings? I like strings, and we happen to sell strings. Uh today I'd like to talk to you about guitar strings. Have a minute. Hold on to talk guitar. Can you just hang up on me again? Yeah.

Blake 28:19

Hold on. Click buzz. Fortunately, there was like a a reason for the call beyond saying hi. Um hi, you're selling our strings for 500% their recommended retail. That was we got it fixed, though. We got it fixed. Um, it was 297 stores that we called and actually made contact with and had conversations with.

Richard 28:40

Well, I'm prepared to call every store that carries the Oliver FX purple on pedal right now. Hold on a minute. Richard, yes, sell more pedals. Okay, Richard.

unknown 28:51

Done.

Richard 28:53

Wow, that was easy. That was a lot easier than what I had to do.

Brian 28:55

You always have to use a phone for that. It's amazing.

Richard 28:57

Yeah, I I was telling Bro, I've had my first return. And look, you know, these things happen, it's not right. But I do wonder if now you said it, whether they were using it to make a little capture.

Brian 29:10

I mean, you can't uh there's times people just buy something sporadically, like, I want this now. And then they sleep and we have the buyer's remorse. Yep. I don't want to know.

Blake 29:20

Or it's Friday night and they're like, I need two more burst pedals. My wallet's feeling kind of right now. And then the next day they're like, oh, I have to pay my electric bill.

Richard 29:32

Here's the worst thing. I only sent the pedal out yesterday. So he's received it today, plugged it in, gone eh, no, not for me, and that's it. I'm like, give it, give it some time, my friend. These features.

Brian 29:45

You know what you could do? Just add friction in there. Say, you're you're more than welcome to uh get a refund. You need to drive it back to my house and uh drop it off.

Richard 29:55

Yeah. And I I now live on a boat that sails around the country. That's right.

Blake 30:01

Unfortunately, I won't be first. Actually, I live in this boat that my father takes up and down the narrows.

Richard 30:07

Yes. You don't talk about my father going up and down the narrows, please, not on public radio. Oh no, it's a private podcast, it's okay. Um, no, yeah. I'm not rich from selling pedals yet. It happens, man.

Brian 30:22

Yeah. I mean, that I always look at it as it's kind of like when you're doing any sort of social media, like if you don't have some haters, then you're probably doing something wrong. Yeah. And in the same way, if you're selling pedals and you don't get a return or two here and there, you're probably doing something wrong.

Richard 30:35

Yeah, and and here's the other thing. I I was a bit worried that there was so much silence. Like, I'm like, why isn't anyone saying bad things about me? Normally, when I write, when I do something for other pedal companies, people love to say bad things. Why aren't people saying bad things? I kind of got it right. But I have got a new business law that I bring to you, Bri, which I call Richard Oliver's Law of Tens. Everything will make you 10 times less than you think and take 10 times longer than you expect. If you live by that one business rule, the rule of tens, you will never be rich, but you won't be unhappy because you'll have predicted it. The good news is you're always rich. Yeah.

Brian 31:17

Rich are that is good. I always say he's just a dick, but I mean Tracy. Like the private dictator. Exactly.

Richard 31:28

What I love about you, Brian, is I I've told you about you know the various kicks to the nads I've had today, and your conclusion is to give me a third one or a fourth one, even.

Brian 31:39

Your name literally gives Dick, Dick Oliver.

Richard 31:42

I did have me for that. My uncle was known as Uncle Dick. That's a really bad name for an uncle, give given all the connotations. It's just terrible.

Blake 31:51

Uh it could be worse though. You know how it could be worse? Could be worse if you like used AI in an ad, and then people asked if you did, and then you said no, I didn't, no, I didn't, no, I didn't, no, I didn't, no, I didn't, no, I didn't, do it. Actually, yeah, I did.

Richard 32:07

I I I'm literally like astounded that we are coming back to the No, I'm not even gonna attempt to say it, the Adario uh situation. But so let me just try and timeline this. They release a video, the internet goes, you used AI. They go, No, we didn't, here's the receipts. The internet goes, okay, we got it wrong. And now they're saying, actually.

Blake 32:34

No, the internet went, those aren't making any sense. Is what people did. Some people said okay, some people said, wait a minute, something still seems like them the benefit of the doubt.

Richard 32:44

I'll be honest, I didn't really look into the details.

Blake 32:46

I watched the clip for about honestly five seconds. Yeah, you can't like the music was just like, yeah, whatever. But here's my thing about my so obviously he was like the person making the video made a big mistake uh by not owning what they did. I like they just they didn't obviously they obviously didn't tell the truth. And so what but what I'm so confused about is we're playing we're playing guitar. Do you know how many videos I've made playing guitar? Like we that's what we're doing. We're playing guitar. Why are we pretending to play the guitar? It doesn't make any sense at all.

Richard 33:24

It literally makes no sense at all. I don't know.

Blake 33:27

It's easier just to play the guitar than to pretend to play the guitar. Just play the guitar. I don't get it.

Richard 33:32

I wonder if Diderio have looked at Fender and gone, now there's a company that has an interesting marketing strategy. How can we take it further?

Blake 33:43

How can we do something to piss off more people? Like I did not expect, I I said it on the last episode. Based on what I heard, I I listened to about five seconds of it, and it was like, oh, that's some sounds like modern technical metal production. It's not necessarily my favorite thing, but I whatever. Um and and so I kind of was willing to. I'm like, that the Dedario has no reason to do that. So I gave them the benefit of the doubt too. Uh publicly on this podcast. And so I was shocked to see them go, like, actually, yeah, it was Suno.

Richard 34:15

It's crazy though. It is crazy. It's not even like some special music industry AI. Right? Did did a cicada just fly past you and discourage you?

Brian 34:26

I heard I heard something outside of this room and it sounded like the walls were coming down. Okay, that that's not a good thing. I wonder if there's like a bad storm right now. That kind of sounds like a tornado.

Blake 34:38

Is that a is that a Martinsville thing? Do they get a lot of twisters up there?

Brian 34:42

Um, not generally this okay, apparently it is. Uh that's not good. All right, if I disappear quickly, you guys will know what is going on.

Blake 34:52

All right, does that mean you're heading to your storm bunker, or does that mean you got sucked up into a funnel cloud?

Brian 34:57

Yes. Well, I'm in a big I'm in a big metal barn in the middle of a thunderstorm, so uh and hopefully not a tornado, but we'll see. We'll see how it plays out. We'll know in real time.

Richard 35:10

Great. I look forward to it. Will there be rain? Uh I maybe. We haven't seen rain in this country for 60 days of any kind of significant amount. Really? That's super strange. Two-thirds of Britain is now in drought. Sorry, two-thirds of England. I'm not sure Scotland is. Um, because it always rains up there. It's always raining in Scotland. Have them send some down. This is the dry this is going to be recorded as the hottest summer ever in this country since records begin began. Um and it's insane over here. Like we're on heat wave number five, it's like 90 degrees again here. Uh, but everything's dying, and there's gonna be massive food shortages, I think, this year. Everything's dying? Yeah, well, in my garden anyway. Oh, well, the grass, my plum tree, my plums are withered, and that isn't a euphemism. My plums are withered and rotten. Oh, that sounds terrible. But it is, and what's worse is the new forest, which is uh a parkland of uh natural beauty, is on fire at the moment. Like, it's so dry here, anything sets off a bushfire, and uh people just aren't ready for that in this country. We've never had conditions like this in my entire life.

Blake 36:27

So, welcome to exactly what we've been dealing with for the last five years. I could have said the same thing prior to all those big fires that you guys probably remember we had. Um yeah, that was the same story here. Like, we've never had this issue in the Pacific Northwest in in specifically in the Willamette Valley where I live. It's always just in the what valley? The Willamette Valley. Okay, yeah. It's always just wet, wet, wet. But nope, now it's on fire.

Richard 36:52

Great band. Martipello, lead singer, used to do Angel Eyes in one of my bands.

Brian 36:58

Does anyone know what the hell he's talking about? I think he has no clue.

Richard 37:02

Yeah. Come on, you know who wet, wet, wet are. They had the number one song for like three months with Love Is All Around, which they didn't even. Yeah. Okay, this is done. This is fascinating because they're both singing to a song that they're making up themselves. They were almost actually in tune with each other. It's quite fascinating. I mean, I don't know whether that actually it was all almost as big. Was it Four Weddings and a Funeral?

Brian 37:39

I don't know. That's a you know what we should do? Let's just Google, let's just watch Richard Google. Yeah, okay. Let's look at it. Fantastic. Yeah, uh troll. Yeah, there we go.

Richard 37:48

Here we go. Right, yeah, right. MTV, yes, wet wet, wet's cover for the soundtrack of the 1994 film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, was an international hit and spent 15 consecutive weeks. Seems some interesting dynamics in this episode, at number one in the UK singles chart. What's interesting about it though, is it was a cover, so they actually made no money out of it despite it being at number one for 15 weeks. Remember the last time you remember a song that was at number one and then for 15 weeks. Too many silences in this week's episode, bro. You're gonna have to trim them.

Brian 38:29

I'm trying to think of the last time I actually cared whether the song was at number one.

Blake 38:33

Yeah, that's a that's what I was gonna say. I can't remember. I don't know. Okay, I it wasn't for 15 weeks, but I really enjoyed it when Sturgewill Simpson's Last Record came out and was number one for a while off of strictly physical releases. I think he's got enough trimming now.

Richard 38:49

Yeah, but like that's probably Brad Pai Paisley's got a new album out, Brian.

Brian 38:54

He does, he didn't ask me about that.

Richard 38:56

Yeah, you need to look at that. Um he didn't ask me if he could do that. That's right. But yeah, I uh but is the world a worse place that we care less about these common cultural touch points like number one music charts. I know, but that's I can't tell you that I've ever cared that much.

Blake 39:13

It's interesting.

Brian 39:14

I used to care big time. You know what I care about? I want to know what Lynch Bob album is coming out next. That's what I want to know. That's what's important to me, fellas. George? Give me a call. Okay. Let's talk about it.

Blake 39:28

George, you give me a call and I'll let you know if you can release it or not.

Brian 39:33

That's right. Yeah. I'll be the arbiter of whether it's good, okay?

Blake 39:37

That's right. Brian shall be the gatekeeper. Uh I will say this was a little bit of a brag, but only to fans of niche music. I did get a uh an artist in one of my favorite heavy bands, sent me his new project. Like, I'd love to hear what you think of this before uh Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. Yeah, I wasn't gonna tell everybody, but yeah. What did he send you? No, it wasn't Bruce Dickens. It wasn't Bruce. But it was uh uh listen to the latest tone mob episode, you can get an idea.

Richard 40:08

I saw his name come up, and I was like, ah, somebody I haven't heard of, but I can tell by his name he makes the kind of music that Blake likes.

Blake 40:20

Screamy McScreamerson type of music.

Brian 40:23

Weirdy McWirdo. I don't think we ever decided. So, what ended up happening with the Diodero thing? Like they they admitted it, and now what? We just wait for the Faye Don Garth screwed the pooch, Bri.

Blake 40:35

You know what is really gonna happen though? And I obviously I have all the motivation to talk crap, but I'm not talking crap right now. What's gonna happen? Nothing. Yeah, people will just forget about it and move on to the next one. They'll forget.

Brian 40:46

The internet will forget in a week.

Blake 40:48

Yep. There'll be like 12 people that are really, really anti that, and and they'll they'll refuse to ever even look at them again. And then in five years they'll forget about it and they'll have or they'll come out with something like really interesting. It's like, well, maybe I can forget about that.

Richard 41:01

Has anyone ever returned a pack of strings? Oh.

Blake 41:10

The favorite move of people, especially Amazon people, is to buy a set of our strings, say, Hey, I didn't really like these, and then send them back. Uh, but they'll have put in sometimes Dedarios uh back in the pack.

Richard 41:27

I'm gonna start trolling you guys. I'm gonna just send you back like 12.

Blake 41:30

You can have someone's strings. That's what I'm saying. They're sending their the the ones they took off. And be like, I didn't really like these, put their old strings in the pack and then send them back to us, and then we'll get them and be like, that's not even our strings. But again, uh, you know, you can have a kind of hygienic play.

Richard 41:47

You can just be like, the minute you open this packet, the string is yours. You cannot return it. No, that's not how we do things.

Blake 41:54

We take care of people because sometimes things happen, you know. Not most people who return stuff that it's not a scam.

Richard 42:01

Also, I'm not being funny, right? There have been many things that I've bought that have not been what I wanted, and I've just gone, well, more fool you for buying it, and like put it in a drawer and forgotten about it. Who's actually gonna bother returning like a yeah? I know if you go to guitar center two weeks ago, your strings cost $200, but your regular price for your guitar strings is what, 10, 12 bucks, something like that? Yeah, usually. Who's gonna bother? Like the effort to talk to somebody to do that return is gonna cost me more than just not bothering. On Amazon, it's pretty easy though.

Brian 42:37

You just stand an envelope and shove it in your mailbox, and then actually uh it's kind of a bad idea, I think.

Richard 42:44

You know, it is, and a good friend of uh ours made this point to me earlier when I was talking to him, uh aka bitching away like a hurt school child about the return situation. He's like, this is what Amazon has done to everyone, it's made everyone just expect instant returns, instant money back, or else you know, you are the bad guys.

Blake 43:09

It really has impacted like a lot of people will order on a Friday night or a Saturday and then wonder why it didn't ship until Monday. And it's like well, that's because like you, they were off on the weekend. Yeah. You know, my name is not Jeff Bezos. No, it might be now. And we're trying our best. Like, we with like the goal is to get people their stuff as quick as possible, but we do like our people to also have weekends off.

Brian 43:39

That's foolishness. Foolishness.

Blake 43:42

I mean, who knows? Like at some point we might be a three sixty five thing, but we're trying not to be.

Richard 43:48

Seriously, have you ever considered a subscription model? Like, pay us 150 pounds a year, two hundred dollars a year. You can have strings whenever you want. People already do that, yeah.

Blake 43:59

Don't you Good idea, then wasn't it? Yeah, we've been doing that forever. Yeah. We should do that with pedals, bro. They can kind of select like how often they want them and yeah.

Brian 44:09

What you would get, we probably would get someone that uh I'm sure we'd get that every now and then a person that gets like all the pedals, and then basically they're like, All right, I like to cancel now that I have all 40 pedals. Yeah, you know? And you're like, but you've only had a membership for a month. That's not fair.

Richard 44:28

Well, no, you just get them like once a month. Yeah, you don't send them all in one go, bro. That's where your model is falling down. This guy sent us 50 bucks.

Brian 44:37

They'd send him five grand worth of pedals. So the Adobe model applied to guitar pedals, got you. Do you would you like the pedal to work? That's an extra $40. Hold on.

Richard 44:48

No, no, you could do the BMW model. I was gonna say the BMW model. You could sell them the most high-end pedal possible, and randomly, when they plug it in, it'll play an advert for a movie. How annoyed would you be if you bought a $200,000 supercar and you turn the ignition on and a flipping man in a leotard swung across the screen of your dashboard? I'd be like, get it off now.

Blake 45:19

I like Spider-Man and I wouldn't want that. I don't want that on there.

Richard 45:23

Get that out of there. Although, when I bought my Amazon Fire tablet, I could have saved 10 bucks by leaving the advertising on. So I'm a cheapskate and I went, yeah, sure, leave the advertising on. So when you switch on my Amazon Fire tablet, like briefly shows you a picture of something you don't want to buy. You soon tune out to that stuff. I actually find advertising, although I I make light about the BMW situation, I find advertising very inoffensive. Like my brain can just tune it out. I think some people maybe not so easily.

Blake 45:55

I wouldn't, I think if it's the first thing, and I guess if all cars started doing it, like we would probably tune it out. But you know where it really irritates me? And I don't know why. But when I'm filling my car up at the gas Emorroid cream? Oh. Should be anti-irritating, Richard. Um yeah.

Richard 46:14

That's where I'm going wrong.

Blake 46:16

That explains so much. Yeah, that's rubbing alcohol. Anyway, um, the the screen on the new gas pumps, when you go to fill up your car and you gotta stand there and like, well, I'm filling up the car now. They're playing ads and and they're loud. They're like, go inside and enjoy yourself a sprite. And I'm like, shut up. I'm uh just give me this moment of peace. I don't want to hear this right now. By the purple colour. Yeah. Right. I'm lighting a cigarette, please. Yes, let me stare out into space and enjoy this marbread.

Brian 46:53

Oh, that's fantastic.

Richard 46:55

Oh, no, are we yet in a world where smoking seems a bit weird? Like over here, you don't see hardly anyone smoking. I actually give respect now, which I shouldn't do because it's a terrible habit, to people who who are still smoking cigarettes. I'm like, old school buddy, I like it. Sometimes you gotta rip a dart, you know? It's like seriously, it it's weird to think that like when we grew up, it was the most normal thing for like adults to do, and everyone did it, it seemed, in the 1970s. Now it is really underground. Like seeing an actual cigarette smoker is rare in this country. Maybe not if you go into the cities, but I don't.

Blake 47:37

It's pretty rare in general, like versus what it was. I mean, when it was the same thing when I was growing up, lots of people smoked. Yeah, that's just all a lot of vapors, I think. A lot of vapors. Yeah, a lot of digital smokers.

Richard 47:50

Yeah, it doesn't hit quite the same way digitally. It's all compressed. I prefer the old analog.

Blake 47:56

I prefer the analog analog cancer. That's much that's a much better form of lung cancer.

Brian 48:01

Well, I wonder why they don't why someone doesn't make a tube-based vape, you know?

Richard 48:09

Old school cry. Hello. This is business idea number 477. Tube-based vape.

Blake 48:18

Oh, the overtones on this mint cream vape is so much better when I'd use the 12AX7.

Brian 48:26

I mean, yeah, you have to have it plugged into an extension cord at all times.

Richard 48:29

Sure. Yeah, you're basically putting high voltage into your mouth right near your brain. But other than that, speaking of high voltage, uh, Robert of the Keeley has just released his new tube-based pedals. Did you guys see the release of that?

Brian 48:45

I did. I didn't see the release. I saw a lot of uh stuff leading up to it. Is it is it just like the the um BK butler tube driver? Yeah, BK Butler, yeah.

Richard 48:54

I think there's some shared um ground. No pun intended. I think the Keely one does quite a bit more.

Blake 49:03

And it's also got uh another circuit in it as well. He's got his uh super fat mod on there as well.

Richard 49:10

Yeah, so you can get a kind of boosted tube drive circuit. It comes at a a reasonable premium. I mean, you're getting a real tube, you're getting custom metalwork by the fine fellas at F5 Metalworks. Uh so I think it's about 500 bucks, but I think it's sold out straight away, Brian.

Blake 49:30

And it's basically two pedals in one. So, I mean, it's on the premium, it it's a premium price, but it also has it's got the features.

Brian 49:37

Two pedals and one. So, which circuits are we talking about here?

Blake 49:40

It's that, it's whatever that tube-based one is. I don't know exactly what it is. And the super fat mod.

Brian 49:47

Yeah. The super fat mod is uh blue driver.

Blake 49:50

Yep.

Brian 49:51

Okay.

Blake 49:52

Yep.

Brian 49:54

Cool.

Richard 49:54

Pretty cool. Looks amazing. Um I think they sold out straight away. Um I don't have that sort of money right now. If I did, I would consider buying one.

Blake 50:06

Well, Matt, I was I was hovering. I was like, hmm, I don't need this. But and then by the time I'd like, I'm gonna do it, it sold out.

Richard 50:14

I mean, one of the reasons I don't have any money is is tomorrow is my daughter's wedding, and every single penny I've got has now been spent.

Blake 50:22

I just realized something, guys. It sold out before I could buy it. I should get really mad about this and send it. You should. I should post on social media about how upset I am about it. You should send in the wait for me specifically.

Brian 50:35

Yeah, we should also leave an Amazon review. Yeah, how it sold it out.

Richard 50:39

And when you email Robert, make sure to copy in Josh and Brian and that guy who runs Analog Man too. Yeah.

Blake 50:46

They all want to hear about it. I want to tell them all about it. Yeah, I'm real mad about it. Yeah, you should be.

Richard 50:52

You know what I'm not really mad about, though? Our one executive production squad. Blake, would you do the honor of reading out the names of these wonderful people?

Blake 51:09

I sure would. I would like to give a shout-out to all these people who we are definitely not mad at. Bill Baze, Andrew Adkins, David Tyndall, Dave Trombetti, Eric Wilson, Vidar Frostad, Michael Freer, Sean Arbo of Gunstreet Wiring, Rick Calhoun of Honey Picks, Patrice Fournays, Dylan Talkstone, Missouri Electrical Box Company, Kevin Harrington, Barry from Grez Guitars, Tom Kelly, Jake Young of Man the Helm Podcast, Pigsy, John O'Neill, Robert Carr, Hunter Hudson, Rob Stokes, Nick Spano, Sasha Sir, Jay Stratton, Harry Post, Grumpy Mike, Harvey Pettles, Allison Carroll, Bum Laser, Anthony Stevens, Atta Plays Guitar, Philip Carter of 40Watt Podcast, Christopher Logan, Jason Englehart, Dylan Lewis of Leeward Sound, Josh, James Thompson, Colin Littlejohn, Machete of Odin, Derek Lyons, Darth Bagel, Dustin Romero, Wizard of Waz, Crappy Tom, Bud Cole's Sentient Ponytail, DJ. That's gonna get me every time. DJ Farns, Kyle Vianna, Robert Hahn, John Hill, Nick Cole, Kyle Ray, Your Face, Dave Evangelista of the Guitar Dads Podcast, Roxy Gwynn, Derek Howe, Churchill from Cam Girls Plus, Ross Edwards, and William Price. Thank you.

Brian 52:17

Thanks for listening to the Chasing Tone Podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, shoot me an email at podcast at womperpedals.com and I'll personally get your email. You can reach Blake at infotonemob.com. Richard is Richard at WamperPedals.com. If you want to support the show, the easiest and free way is just to share this episode with a friend, leave a rating and review wherever you listen. Helps more than you know. Be sure to check out Blake's other podcast called the Tone Mob for even more guitar talk. If you love pedals, of course, check out wamperpetals.com. If you're curious about designing and building your own guitar pedals, head over to guitarpedalcourse.com for step by step courses. And for bonus content, behind the scene discussions, and extra fun, join us on patreon.com slash chastingtone podcast. Thanks again. We'll talk to you next week.