We are waiting for your videos then 
It’s been a LONG time since I’ve played a Peavey Studio series, and the one I’m thinking of here was probably a mid-90s, but I actually recall rather liking it at the time. Of course the amp I was playing back then wasn’t great either, but I remember Neil Zaza used to do clinics with one of those, and his tone was always great no matter what he plugged into.
I used to be subscribed for those free emails from Tom.
I did that sometime around my beginnings with the instrument, when I was an absolute noob and wanted to shred like mad.
Watched a few of vids from his events, but as time went on I begun to suspect something was off - he never showed his own playing, and his advice was generic at best.
I never learned anything useful from his videos or emails.
I don’t know who Levi is, but I’d like to watch the now deleted videos just for entertainment.
Also, it would be fun as hell if someone really good attended his event and stood up to him, resulting in video game-like standoff with a boss.
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You can be sure the herd would crucify that hero for that.
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Also not a fan and find these stories very disturbing.
But since it is difficult to be a 100% bad teacher 
here is one useful thing I learned from him (from a youtube video):
When trying to improvise a solo, don’t think about one phrase at a time, think about the phrase you are about to play, as well as the one you will play next.
EDIT: by the way, I can’t find those Levy Clay vids anymore. Have they been taken down for legal reasons?
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I think Levi took them down himself to stop the mud fight. Too bad I was late for the party and haven’t seen those.
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I mean, honestly, I’m no fan of Hess’s, but the adversarial nature of this thread title does make me a little uncomfortable. It’s not like we have to pick a favorite football team here or something. And, I guess, it’s also not like one guy being wrong means the other has to be right.
Good point! Changed the title. Now, unfortunately the videos have disappeared - so my title is misleading too. Whoever can think of a more fitting title wins… my gratitude
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I’d still love to see those videos some day 
I watched all that Hess/Clay stuff when it was happening and I was following fairly closely. I just wanted to chime in a couple of points related to a few recent comments in this thread:
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Yes, the Clay vids were taken down. I vaguely remember hearing because of threat of legal action. There were a few videos that went deep into Hess’s program for giving business advice to guitar teachers, as well as Hess’s general business practices. Some of the videos were pretty long and detailed. At the time, there was also a MONSTROUS facebook thread or two on Clay’s page, I mean, must have been thousands of comments, with (if I remember correctly) many people coming forward to talk about negative experiences they had with Hess’s programs. The thread was not 100% negative stuff about Hess, but my memory is the majority of it was negative.
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All that being said, I think it’s not quite accurate to talk about is adversarial or one teacher vs another teacher. It’s much, much more like a journalist doing a lengthy expose on an individual’s teaching and business practices. So yeah, Tommo’s thread re-title is apt. Clay is a pro transcriber, author, and youtube personality, but I’d argue is not a ‘competitor’ of Hess in that none of their professional offerings really overlap. Similarly, the discussions had basically nothing to do with quality of playing from either person.
I’ll add this, which I probably said in another thread, but:
- fortunately or unfortunately exposure for an online product has a pretty direct correlation to sales.
- The more website hits, google searches for someone (even if they are out of morbid curiosity or with intention to mock) the better their analytics are for things like SEO, youtube search algorithms, etc.
In a similar vein as ‘there’s no such thing as bad press’ I have a guess that some people…some…people…do utilize this as a bit of strategy. Be a little outrageous, get a lot of attention…and it’s not that many steps between attention and sales. JUST SAYIN.
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adding to previous: good example is, yep, the guy has a video lesson called “guitar sex masterclass.”
“Is that real??? What??? That’s ridiculous!”
Wonder how many times that’s been googled…
Yeah. It’s exactly this type of output that was actually good advice. There were other tips too that I sometimes refer back to. Like for example, seeing what emotion you’d attach to each degree of a scale in a soloing/melodic context. Like what it feels like to land a phrase on b3, or 5, or b2.
I guess what I’m saying is, I wish more teachers took this side of music seriously and thought and talked about it.
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Drew : 《 that some world class players simply don’t mute with their picking hand at all - it might give you a couple fresh ideas. 》
I wached the Troy video : No muting ? No problem !
(For the second time) at only 50% video speed, to be sure to miss nothing…
If i understand, almost every kind of picking techniques are good ! The muting secret : It’s the FRETS hand 90% of the time !?!
Ben - Troy and I had a long and very wonky discussions about the “mechanics” if you will of how compression works, in a thread about that video, which kind of changed my thinking in some interesting ways. Basically, the fretting hand is part of the equation, sure, and always worth thinking about, but also the amount of compression present in a typical high gain amp sound is such that if you’re picking one note, even with a not-especially-aggressive picking hand, it’s going to be overloading the front of the amp enough to “duck” any non-picked notes that may be ringing out, so as long as the picked (or legato, or whatever) notes are the loudest thing coming off your fretboard, a high gain tone can paradoxically help with muting everything but those notes, which sounds absolutely crazy but does, in fact, seem to work.
On a completely unrelated note, something I’ve noticed in my own playing recently is I tend to choke up on the pick a fair amount, and as a side effect of that I’ve noticed sometimes my thumb will be brushing against the strings while I pick. Since I don’t usually use tremendously high gain, this can sometimes become audible and sound kind of messy, so choking up a little less seems to help me get “cleaner” sounding lines. I guess I’m suggesting, try not worrying about muting and just play and see if gain alone is enough to suppress unwanted notes, but if not, maybe do some careful critical observation and see if you can determine WHERE the unwanted noises are coming from, and if there’s some way to address them.
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I’m not sure what happened but I used to work for one of his teachers as a door-to-door flyer person. I found it kind of creepy how they all decided to dress up in suits and ties and read the same books. Suddenly one day I noticed this guy isn’t friends with Tom anymore For our acquaintances threats Tom and my ex boyfriend who was tom’s assistant.and there’s no equal inkling hes a guitar teacher and he moved to another state. not sure it picks my curiosity. I’m starting to wonder if maybe my xbox one of these students or what if he wanted to call him when bankrupt from printing all those flyers. Those things are not cheap things are not cheap especially where I live. That’s. I was trying to figure out with how much it cost for flyers and advertising kiadvertising, paying employees, how oh is the lesson money covering this?
Hi there, I understand your story. I used to date one of his employees…he sometimes acted like he was “drinking the koolaid” It took me a while to figure out that it was cult like. This ex of mine kept suggesting books that Tom likes to read, and when I said thanks but no thanks because I am picky what’s the books I read, he would kind of manipulate me woth theme of myself thinking I didmtt want to broaden my horizons mentally. I Was hired to do door-to-door to door flyer work for one of his teachers. I liked the job but I had to quit because it turns out I have foot issues… I decided to quit and go back to an old job that catered more towards my health issues, because of this I was dumped, that shunned by 3 of our mutual friends they quit talking to me quit talking to me. Once I decided to quit I noticed things went downhill for my relationship and friendships of people that were friends with him.
After this, some people came out of the woodwork telling of the “elite circle jerk”.
It’s always wild seeing these threads pop up and how many layers this built into. What I fundamentally don’t get is even as a teenager when I ran across Tom’s stuff in the late 2000s he really didn’t seem to have any playing that stuck out as particularly impressive or even mildly inspiring.
Is he still around now? He ain’t wrong to be scared of competition, I can’t imagine him surviving in a world where you can hit up so many vastly more talented guitarists for virtual lessons who increasingly have a better understanding of their own mechanics.
Yeah he seems to be still around. I see ads pop up on Facebook every so often. Usually are links to short lessons on YouTube.
The funny thing is, I only follow on Facebook to read the amusing comment section under the videos 
I alluded to this somewhere in this thread, but last I heard he was pitching an “affiliate plan” as some sort of multi-level marketing campaign, wherein guitar forums would become “affiliates,” and get a share of any lesson revenue for members who signed up to take lessons. Heavy on marketing 101 stuff, “we’re doing this to help you, many of your members are already signing up for lessons, it literally takes no work except to tell us where to send the check,” etc.
I will say this (rant) and no more.
If he’s wrong 99 times out of 100, he shouldn’t be charging money for his advice. Weathermen are right more often than that.
Tom Hess is prays on players who don’t know better. Which unfortunately turned out to be me many years ago. He and his disciples should be avoided. Period.
He is a charlatan and the worst kind of online ‘teacher’. The problem with charlatans is that they deal in half-truths. They include just enough truth in what they say (delivered with absolute confidence) to seem credible.
Credibility for an instructor matters.That this guy openly admits Hess is a mentor, and thinks it is a positive, casts doubt all over his teaching.
There are too many other quality sources to learn from to waste time with this guy or his twit of a mentor.