Hmm, I found a (maybe) better way. I created a new material slot (copy from the Metal rough) with the the anisotropic option set to 1 like so:
And I assigned the desired to faces to it and it works like a charm. For some reason it works also for the selected knob, without using the tangend node. If I use the Y axis in the tangent node it will not work. I'm using Blender 5.1
Yeah as Martin says, there's always lots of way to achieve any goal. Teachers will use their way, you are totally free to explore and experiment with different approaches. Of course if you're following along with the video lessons, you have to be careful, it might get you into trouble further down the line.