Guitar Tabloid — The week in guitar YouTube

Guitar Tabloid: 24 Oct to 30 Oct 2026

Guitar Tabloid, Week ending Friday 30 October 2026: Even the livestream was a recording, says Danny Sapko; Fender gives formal notice of Christmas; Gibson's new Les Paul comes with a glossary

Headlines

From Davie504’s video “The Danny Sapko Situation Is Really Sad.”
Picture: Davie504

AS SEEN ON 4 CHANNELS

Even the livestream was a recording, says Danny Sapko

Danny Sapko says bassist Marcelo Perez Schneider mimes to pre-recorded tracks in viral videos and paid clinics, and that a friend and former student of Schneider's had the video removed with a copyright strike over a 7-second clip.1

From John Nathan Cordy’s video “FALSE ALARM - Fender Say There's NO LAYOFFS - Business As Usual”
Picture: John Nathan Cordy

AS SEEN ON 2 CHANNELS

Fender gives formal notice of Christmas

Fender says it shuts its Corona factory every Christmas, but this year it filed a WARN notice, the legal warning of mass layoffs, for 533 employees there from 14 to 31 December, then said nobody is being laid off.2

Megadeth live beim Wacken Open Air 2023
Picture: Frank Schwichtenberg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Megadeth will say goodbye until it hurts

Dave Mustaine named Anthrax and Kerry King for the next run, with Black Label Society and Testament in Europe, and said the farewell tour will go on until the shows start suffering, with no final date.5

The Big Story

Live, from last year

From Danny Sapko’s video “The most insane FAKE musician I've ever seen.”
Picture: Danny Sapko

A YouTuber says a viral bassist mimes his solos, and he lost a video for saying so. The bassist's promised live proof, he says, was recorded last year.6

On 24 October Danny Sapko, a bass player whose channel catches musicians faking it, posted "The most insane FAKE musician I've ever seen". It was about Marcelo Perez Schneider, an Argentine bassist in his 60s whose solo clips had gone viral and been reposted by Nuno Bettencourt. Danny says Marcelo mimes to a pre-recorded track, on stage and at clinics people pay to watch, and steps on a Boss line selector pedal to switch to real audio for the first and last few notes. "He not only mimes with his hands, but with his feet too."7

Danny's evidence was the footage itself. Solos filmed years apart line up exactly, and speed up and slow down together. In one clip Marcelo forgets to mime an open string. "He even looks shocked himself." The video passed a million views in under two days, and Danny says Marcelo then turned off comments on his Instagram.8

A friend and former student of Marcelo's then had the whole video removed over a seven-second phone clip, and YouTube put a strike on Danny's channel. In a follow-up on 27 October, Danny said one more strike would leave him a step from losing the channel, "and it's back to Manningham Lane Job Centre for me."9

The comments moved on to the Falklands. Danny says more than a hundred Argentines called him jealous, and a woman who works for Marcelo's booking agent wrote that he only made the video because Marcelo had given a clinic in front of a Falklands flag. Danny: "I'm barely even English, man. I don't even know where the Falklands is." He is "only interested in catching out musical bastardry."10

Other channels came in on Danny's side. Ola Englund told viewers to "go fucking buy some merch". Davie504 asked viewers to imagine paying for a bass lesson "only to discover that the most important member of the lesson was potentially his laptop," and messaged Danny with advice on fighting the strike. Danny says the two have never fully seen eye to eye ("Maybe it's the height difference"), and that Davie504 is now his mate.11

Marcelo had promised, in a comment that ended "The Falklands are Argentinian", to go live and prove his playing is real. On 29 October Danny reported that the stream had appeared. He says Marcelo spent 30 minutes talking about his bass and his new strings, never played, and that the video had been recorded last year. "Even his bloody livestream is playback." Danny had been "half expecting him to hit his line selector pedal at the end and cut to the real livestream."12

Danny has appealed the strike, which meant giving his full legal name, address and phone number to the people he is accusing. The original video now lives on his Patreon, free to watch and "safe there from any bloody takedowns". He says the 29 October video is his last on Marcelo unless something dramatic happens. Marcelo has not answered the claims beyond that comment and a stream with no playing in it, and the former student who filed the takedown has not spoken publicly.13

Who's Beefin'

Roger Waters vs James Hetfield

Heat: 3/5

At a Metallica show at the Sphere on 10 October, James Hetfield said the band is "not here like some other entertainers to influence you with their BS". He didn't name anyone. Roger Waters answered anyway, on the Katie Halper show: "Hetfield has an IQ of about three and is a nobody," and "James Hetfield is no musician." Tone Nerds found that "appalling". One of them did concede a point: "Master of Puppets doesn't sound quite as good on the acoustic."14

The Tab says

This was the week guitar YouTube ran a liveness check. Danny Sapko says Marcelo Perez Schneider failed his: the livestream meant to prove he plays was recorded last year. Charles Berthoud posted a real live bass solo. Music is Win promised none of it was fake. Rick Beato's viewers offered Steel Beans' sweat as proof of life.

Meanwhile, the same scene cheerfully plugged into copies. Fractal, Headrush, Darkglass and Zoom now run NAM profiles, and Fender says it will. Joe Bonamassa went tubeless. Verellen will swap your power tubes for something viewers thought was a grenade. Glenn Fricker says a $20 plugin can't be told from vintage Lexicon hardware in a mix. A copy of an amp is fine. A copy of the player is the problem.

Bradley Hall fears Polyphia will put kids off picking up a guitar at all. If he's right, the next generation will mime it, and we'll need the Dannys and Jacobras more than ever.

Old Man Yells at Cloud

Rick Beato got the week off. His one upload was an interview with Jeremy DeBardi, who records as Steel Beans and has been opening for Tenacious D and Tool as a one-man band. The title asks "How The F*ck Does He Do This?" DeBardi explained his setup. A one-man band is the only arrangement in which the guitarist and the drummer agree on the tempo. Nobody yelled.15

Danny Sapko plans to fight his copyright strike under fair use, "but if you've ever watched Rick bloody Beato, you'll know that you need a team of lawyers to fight this shit." Rick was not in the video. He was cited as precedent.16

Glenn Fricker, in "The Vintage Gear Scam is OVER!", on the vintage market: "if you slap the word vintage on a piece of obsolete electronics, some gullible moron will convince himself it's the missing ingredient between his bedroom recordings and a platinum record." Eight minutes later he praised a sound that "harkens back to an earlier time when drums actually sounded like drums." He did not use the word vintage.17

The Toan Tribunal

Davie504

  • On 25 October Davie504 uploaded "This Video Will Get 10+ Copyright Claims. I Don't Care." Three days later came "The Danny Sapko Situation Is Really Sad."18

Bradley Hall

  • Bradley Hall reviewed Polyphia's new album under the title "The New POLYPHIA Album Is The FUTURE Of Guitar Music (And I F*cking Hate It)". The future, he says, will put kids off: they are "probably gonna be less inclined to wanna pick up a guitar and play after hearing it".19
  • Three days later he found something he hates even more: "I personally really, really hate people abusing the YouTube copyright system in order to silence others".20

Andertons Music Co

  • Lee Anderton says he and Pete asked "at least five different manufacturers" over five years for a looper like the new Polyend Loop, and none listened. Lee has co-owned a guitar company, so there was a sixth he could have asked.21
  • The Epiphone Prophecy review covered five models at £1,249 each, and a cheese knife. Nobody prophesied the cheese knife.22

Ola Englund

  • On PRS's new metal line, the Tekton: "That is not a good name." Four days later he unboxed a $9,000 Ibanez Visions IV2RG, "materializing the vision of Ibanez", and had no notes on its name.23
  • A viewer suggested metal shouldn't be played on a headless guitar. Ola: "Fuck off, I'm playing on this, ok?"24

SpectreSoundStudios

  • Glenn Fricker says Space Reactor, a $20 plugin that emulates vintage Lexicon reverbs, can't be told apart from the hardware in a mix, and it's on Tony Iommi's new record. Its maker on subscriptions: "You buy it, you own it, forever." The one vintage feature it didn't have to emulate.25

John Nathan Cordy

  • 24 October: "The WORST POSSIBLE OUTCOME of the Fender Disaster - Nobody Wins". 27 October: "FALSE ALARM - Fender Say There's NO LAYOFFS - Business As Usual". The worst possible outcome drew 22,184 views. Business as usual drew 5,146.26
  • 24 October: "This is the ONLY PEDAL I Need", about the Line 6 HX Stomp. 26 October: "No OTHER Digital Modeler Can Do This", about the Darkglass Anagram, in a promoted video. 29 October: "I NEVER Planned to Buy a Fender John Mayer Strat" and "I NEVER Thought a Marshall JCM800 Would Work For Me". Both nevers were changes of mind too.27

The Trogly's Guitar Show

  • Trogly on the Brony Blast name: "I really don't even want to type this into my search bar." We recommend private browsing if you need to look that up.28

TheGuitarGeek

  • TheGuitarGeek's €68 Audota AME 100 runs NAM profiles and has an excellent looper, but its desktop software was flagged as malware, because "corners are cut". The singularity lowers the bar for everyone, including the people writing the software. Our editor writes software for a living, and can confirm.29

Riffs, Beards & Gear

  • Fluff thinks Zoom's NEURIG is "worth your [paid] attention."30
  • Verellen Devices' OCTAL replaces an amp's power tubes with a solid-state module, at $299 a pair. That is one cent less than a whole NEURIG. Viewers thought they looked like grenades.31

Rob Chapman

  • Rob Chapman reviewed a Guitar Center exclusive Les Paul, at Guitar Center, with Guitar Center affiliate links and what his description calls "sexy GC cables". On the finish: "It looks like it's a well-fed Labrador."32

Charles Berthoud

  • The week a bassist was accused of miming, Charles Berthoud uploaded "What A Real LIVE Bass Solo ACTUALLY Sounds Like", filmed in Shanghai.33

60 Cycle Hum

  • On 26 October 60 Cycle Hum asked "Which direction should you tune?", working from a Reddit user's data on tuning stability. The next day Ryan demoed a loaner Guild Starfire Deluxe whose G string kept drifting.34

Jacobra

  • Jacobra, who exposes musicians for miming, did not upload in the week everyone else did his job.

The Beef League

29 beefs in 7 weeks so far

Beef of the week

Roger Waters vs James Hetfield

Heat: 3/5

Top of the league: sixstringtv, heat 22 from 5 beefs.

League table
PosClubPHeatBestForm
1 sixstringtv 5 22 5 5 4 4 4 5
2 SpectreSoundStudios 5 15 3 3 3 3 3 3
3 Jacobra 2 8 4 4 4
4 Danny Sapko 🛡️ 4 7 3 1 1 3 2
5 KDH 🛡️ 2 6 5 5 1
6 Sonic Drive Studio 2 6 4 4 2
7 Fender Company 2 6 3 3 3
8 John Nathan Cordy 2 5 3 3 2
9 The Guitologist 1 5 5 5
10 60 Cycle Hum 1 4 4 4
11 Music is Win 1 3 3 3
12 Peavey Company 1 3 3 3
13 Tim Pierce Guitar 1 3 3 3
14 Bradley Hall 1 2 2 2
15 Rick Beato 1 2 2 2
16 The Editor 1 2 2 2
17 The Trogly's Guitar Show 1 2 2 2
18 Charles Berthoud 1 1 1 1
19 Rhett Shull 1 1 1 1
20 TheGuitarGeek 1 1 1 1

Heat is Who’s Beefin’s rating out of five, added up over the season. P is beefs played; form is the last five, newest last. 🛡️ is beef immunity, won in a special edition: a beef aimed at them still counts as played, for no heat.

Sources

  1. Danny Sapko, 8:32: "In a 30 minute video, he didn't play the bass once or explain anything. And then I looked, it was recorded last year. Even his bloody livestream is playback." · Danny Sapko, 2:12: "He's not playing fucking any of it!" · Danny Sapko, 7:57: "A friend and former student of Marcelo managed to get my whole 10-minute video taken down for a 7-second video of Marcelo playing filmed on a phone, and YouTube went with it, with immediate effect, and gave me a strike on my channel." · Davie504, 7:05: "Danny's video got taken down, and he received a copyright strike. His entire 12-minute investigation video got taken down for a 7-second clip included in the video." ↩︎

  2. John Nathan Cordy, 4:07: "There are no layoffs associated with these quiet weeks, and employees will return in the new year." (John Nathan Cordy reading Fender representative) · John Nathan Cordy, 7:23: "Filed a WARN notice indicating a temporary layoff of 533 employees at its Cessna Circle facility in Corona, California, scheduled for December the 14th, 2026." · Tone Nerds, 28:11: "Fender's response was the notice relates to Fender's standard holiday inventory quiet weeks scheduled for December 14th through December 31st. There are no layoffs associated with these quiet weeks, and employees will return in the new year." · John Nathan Cordy, 4:41: "Our year-end shutdowns are part of our normal annual operations and are not a new practice." (John Nathan Cordy reading Fender) · John Nathan Cordy, 4:50: "we have taken an evolved and more proactive approach to formal notifications this year." (John Nathan Cordy reading Fender) ↩︎

  3. The Trogly's Guitar Show, 1:48: "Oh no. Did they really just call that Brony Blast? ... But that is a slang term for an adult fan of My Little Pony." · The Trogly's Guitar Show, 2:10: "a nice light blue, almost a bit of lavender" · The Trogly's Guitar Show, 2:20: "I would have just called it Cotton Candy Blast." ↩︎

  4. John Nathan Cordy, 6:48: "Fender, with the ToneMaster Pro, have just come out and said that they're going to be doing this NAM stuff" · John Nathan Cordy, 5:45: "Fractal, with the AxeFX 3, that can now run NAM, so two NAM blocks and eight channels" · John Nathan Cordy, 6:32: "they're now saying that you can run like four NAM profiles on one of their pieces of hardware" · Riffs, Beards & Gear, 0:14: "Zoom has packed some interesting technology into the brand new NuRig, and at $299 bucks retail, I think it's worth your attention." · John Nathan Cordy, 14:12: "I feel like we're definitely now in this kind of digital kind of singularity." ↩︎

  5. Ola Englund, 3:50: "Anthrax and Kerry King are going out with Megadeth on their next run." · Ola Englund, 4:24: "He basically says they're gonna keep going until the show starts suffering, whatever that means." ↩︎

  6. Danny Sapko, The most insane FAKE musician I've ever seen. (whole video) · Danny Sapko, 0:24: The most insane FAKE musician I've ever seen had my video taken down · Danny Sapko, 8:32: Midi Vanilli went LIVE to prove he's not a fraud ↩︎

  7. Danny Sapko, 0:47: "a man in his 60s with the most unbelievably skilful playing" · Danny Sapko, 1:25: "Virtuoso guitarist Nuno Betancourt reposted a clip of him" · Danny Sapko, 4:59: "he will start and end his solos with some real live audio, but steps on a boss line selector pedal, which switches back between live sound and the pre-recorded track." · Danny Sapko, 5:55: "And he even does it at his clinics where people pay to watch him play. Where he not only mimes with his hands, but with his feet too." ↩︎

  8. Danny Sapko, 3:49: "And just listen to how they both speed up perfectly at the same time." · Danny Sapko, 8:24: "And the most obvious of all, he completely forgets to mime this open string at the end of the section. He even looks shocked himself." · Danny Sapko, 0:17: "In less than two days it gathered over a million views" · Danny Sapko, 0:24: "He turned off all comments on his Instagram after the backlash." ↩︎

  9. Danny Sapko, 7:57: "A friend and former student of Marcelo managed to get my whole 10-minute video taken down for a 7-second video of Marcelo playing filmed on a phone, and YouTube went with it, with immediate effect, and gave me a strike on my channel." · Danny Sapko, 8:22: "if they manage to get this one taken down as well, I am one step away from whole entire channel deletion, and it's back to Manningham Lane Job Centre for me." ↩︎

  10. Danny Sapko, 6:00: "But I had over a hundred comments from angry Argentinians saying that I'm just jealous of his success and going on about the bloody Falklands." · Danny Sapko, 6:20: "I'm barely even English, man. I don't even know where the Falklands is." · Danny Sapko, 5:16: "The top comment coming from this woman, who said that I only made this expose because he recently did a clinic in front of a flag, stating that the Falklands are Argentinian" · Danny Sapko, 5:31: "She works for Marcello's booking agent." · Danny Sapko, 6:01: "I'm only interested in catching out musical bastardry." ↩︎

  11. Ola Englund, 2:39: "Even better, go fucking buy some merch." · Davie504, 0:10: "Imagine paying someone to teach your bass, only to discover that the most important member of the lesson was potentially his laptop." · Danny Sapko, 1:57: "he messaged me privately with some really helpful advice on fighting my copyright strike." · Danny Sapko, 2:35: "We've just never fully seen eye to eye. Maybe it's the height difference. But I can say that, officially, from this day forward, Davie504 is my mate." ↩︎

  12. Danny Sapko, 7:43: "Remember how he said he was going to go live and prove that all his playing is real, and that the Falklands are Argentinian?" · Danny Sapko, 12:00: "and then finished by saying, 'The Falklands are Argentinian.'" · Danny Sapko, 8:32: "In a 30 minute video, he didn't play the bass once or explain anything. And then I looked, it was recorded last year. Even his bloody livestream is playback." · Danny Sapko, 8:42: "I was half expecting him to hit his line selector pedal at the end and cut to the real livestream." ↩︎

  13. Danny Sapko, 7:10: "in order to submit a claim against the strike, I had to give my full legal name, address, and phone number to the people that I'm trying to expose." · Danny Sapko, 0:45: "It's on my Patreon, but it is completely free for you to watch. It's safe there from any bloody takedowns." · Danny Sapko, 0:07: "This will be my final video on Marcelo Perez Schneider, unless anything hugely dramatic happens here." ↩︎

  14. Tone Nerds, 37:15: "Metallica's not here like some other entertainers to influence you with their BS, okay?" (Tone Nerds reading James Hetfield) · Tone Nerds, 37:30: "he didn't name anyone." · Tone Nerds, 38:31: "Hetfield has an IQ of about three and is a nobody." (Tone Nerds reading Roger Waters) · Tone Nerds, 38:37: "James Hetfield is no musician." (Tone Nerds reading Roger Waters) · Tone Nerds, 39:04: "To come out and say James Hetfield is a terrible musician, that is appalling." · Tone Nerds, 43:09: "I will say Master of Puppets doesn't sound quite as good on the acoustic." ↩︎

  15. Rick Beato, Steel Beans: How The F*ck Does He Do This? (whole video) ↩︎

  16. Danny Sapko, 8:13: "I will try to fight it under fair use, but if you've ever watched Rick bloody Beato, you'll know that you need a team of lawyers to fight this shit." · Danny Sapko, The most insane FAKE musician I've ever seen had my video taken down (whole video) ↩︎

  17. SpectreSoundStudios, 1:26: "They figured out a long time ago that if you slap the word vintage on a piece of obsolete electronics, some gullible moron will convince himself it's the missing ingredient between his bedroom recordings and a platinum record." · SpectreSoundStudios, 9:42: "This sound harkens back to an earlier time when drums actually sounded like drums, when we didn't have to timeline every single fucking beat, replace every hit with the same fucking sample, and turn making music into a glorified game of connect the fucking dots." · SpectreSoundStudios, The Vintage Gear Scam is OVER! (whole video) ↩︎

  18. Davie504, This Video Will Get 10+ Copyright Claims. I Don't Care. (whole video) · Davie504, The Danny Sapko Situation Is Really Sad. (whole video) ↩︎

  19. Bradley Hall, The New POLYPHIA Album Is The FUTURE Of Guitar Music (And I F*cking Hate It) (whole video) · Bradley Hall, 9:19: "kids listening to this sort of stuff are probably gonna be less inclined to wanna pick up a guitar and play after hearing it" ↩︎

  20. Bradley Hall, 6:33: "I personally really, really hate people abusing the YouTube copyright system in order to silence others" ↩︎

  21. Andertons Music Co, 33:21: "Pete and I have asked at least five different manufacturers to try and make this over the last five years. And every single one kind of just basically doesn't, yeah, hasn't listened." · KDH, 0:36: "It used to be owned between Lee Anderton and Rob Chapman" (on Chapman Guitars) ↩︎

  22. Andertons Music Co, A Modern Metal Monster! Epiphone Prophecy Electric Guitars (whole video) · Andertons Music Co, 0:52: "this is the new Prophecy series for 2026" ↩︎

  23. Ola Englund, 6:16: "That is not a good name." · Ola Englund, 6:02: "PRS have launched a completely new family of guitars called Tekton." · Ola Englund, I GOT MY HANDS ON A $9,000 IBANEZ... (whole video) · Ola Englund, 3:47: Ibanez Visions IV2RG · Ola Englund, 1:44: "Ibanez Visions, materializing the vision of Ibanez" ↩︎

  24. Ola Englund, 2:18: "Fuck off, I'm playing on this, ok?" ↩︎

  25. SpectreSoundStudios, 19:10: "It's 20 bucks, it gets you the sound. This might be one of the best deals in audio since they started selling Reaper for only 60 bucks." · SpectreSoundStudios, 8:53: Space Reactor · SpectreSoundStudios, 10:20: "he even worked with Tony Iommi himself on his new record. And yes, Space Reactor has wound up on that too." · SpectreSoundStudios, 11:45: "I really want to keep things perpetual. You buy it, you own it, forever." ↩︎

  26. John Nathan Cordy, The WORST POSSIBLE OUTCOME of the Fender Disaster - Nobody Wins (whole video) · John Nathan Cordy, 7:23: "Filed a WARN notice indicating a temporary layoff of 533 employees at its Cessna Circle facility in Corona, California, scheduled for December the 14th, 2026." · John Nathan Cordy, FALSE ALARM - Fender Say There's NO LAYOFFS - Business As Usual (whole video) · John Nathan Cordy, 4:07: "There are no layoffs associated with these quiet weeks, and employees will return in the new year." (John Nathan Cordy reading Fender representative) ↩︎

  27. John Nathan Cordy, This is the ONLY PEDAL I Need (whole video) · John Nathan Cordy, No OTHER Digital Modeler Can Do This - SUPERPOWERFUL Darkglass Anagram NAM: YouTube labels this video “Includes paid promotion” · John Nathan Cordy, I NEVER Planned to Buy a Fender John Mayer Strat - Is It Any Good? (whole video) · John Nathan Cordy, I NEVER Thought a Marshall JCM800 Would Work For Me - This Synergy Module is IMPRESSIVE (whole video) ↩︎

  28. The Trogly's Guitar Show, 1:52: "I really don't even want to type this into my search bar." ↩︎

  29. TheGuitarGeek, Don't Buy a Premium Modeler Until You See This (It's €68) (whole video): Audota AME 100 · TheGuitarGeek, video description: "You definitely get exactly what you pay for." · TheGuitarGeek, 18:14: "This is my issue with with budget products is that corners are cut. And by cutting corners on the signature for the software, it means that sometimes you can't update it." ↩︎

  30. Riffs, Beards & Gear, 0:14: "Zoom has packed some interesting technology into the brand new NuRig, and at $299 bucks retail, I think it's worth your attention." · Riffs, Beards & Gear, I Tried Zoom's New NEURIG Modeler...: YouTube labels this video “Includes paid promotion” ↩︎

  31. Riffs, Beards & Gear, 0:18: "This is an 8-pin solid-state replacement for a whole bunch of guitar amp power tubes." · Riffs, Beards & Gear, Could This Be The Future of Tube Amps?: Commenters joked that the devices looked like modern grenades rather than electronic components. (a top comment, 24 likes) · Riffs, Beards & Gear, 0:14: "Zoom has packed some interesting technology into the brand new NuRig, and at $299 bucks retail, I think it's worth your attention." ↩︎

  32. Rob Chapman, 0:09: "Beautiful, glossy, shiny coat. It looks like it's a well-fed Labrador." · Rob Chapman, video description: "And here are the sexy GC cables I used" · Rob Chapman, Gibson Got This Les Paul Right!: YouTube labels this video “Includes paid promotion” ↩︎

  33. Charles Berthoud, What A Real LIVE Bass Solo ACTUALLY Sounds Like (whole video) · Danny Sapko, The most insane FAKE musician I've ever seen. (whole video) ↩︎

  34. 60 Cycle Hum, Which direction should you tune?: YouTube labels this video “Includes paid promotion” · 60 Cycle Hum, This Guild Starfire Deluxe is BLUETIFUL!: YouTube labels this video “Includes paid promotion” · 60 Cycle Hum, 20:24: "I did struggle with the G string coming in out of tune here and there" ↩︎