April 06, 2020
I purchased a GTL transparent yellow Telecaster a few months ago. I've also bought 2 of their GST Stratocasters in the past. I consider myself an advanced beginner who's owned a few inexpensive electric guitars, but also owns a Gibson Les Paul. My comments below go into some detail on the issues I faced, modifications I made, and results obtained.
My GTL arrived in excellent physical condition with no dings or other defects regarding its appearance. As with all of the Glarry guitars I've purcha ...
I purchased a GTL transparent yellow Telecaster a few months ago. I've also bought 2 of their GST Stratocasters in the past. I consider myself an advanced beginner who's owned a few inexpensive electric guitars, but also owns a Gibson Les Paul. My comments below go into some detail on the issues I faced, modifications I made, and results obtained.
My GTL arrived in excellent physical condition with no dings or other defects regarding its appearance. As with all of the Glarry guitars I've purchased, the neck and fretwork were excellent with no buzzing. It's a thick neck, but seems to work for me. The nut was cut properly, unlike one of the GST Stratocasters I bought that was cut too high. The intonation was way off and needed adjustment. The saddle screws were too long but didn't affect playability.
More concerning was that the bridge was tilted to one side and that the bridge pickup emitted a loud hum. I was initially ready to return the guitar, but Glarry suggested realigning the bridge and offered a $12 refund on the original $89 price. I removed the bridge to also look at the pickup, and noticed that the ground wire had come loose from its soldered joint. I re-soldered the wire and was also able to align the bridge. The humming disappeared and the pickups overall seem quiet to my ears.
Although I'm not overly familiar with the Telecaster sound, I liked the bridge pickup and it's cutting presence. The neck pickup was a different story, however, as it produced a muffled, dead sound. I tried to adjust the pickup's height, but nothing helped. (I was hoping that it would sound somewhat like the GTS Stratocaster neck pickup.) I read that these pickups sometime benefited from taking the cover off, so I went in that direction. After removing the pick-guard and heating the cover with a hair dryer, I was able to easily pry the cover off. There were two large pieces of a wax-like substance that held the cover approximately 1/16" from the pickups poles. I kept the cover off and reattached the pick-guard. The result--an amazing improvement in the sound!! The pickup came alive and now worked nicely to complement the bridge pickup. I'm not sure if there was too much of the wax substance holding the cover away from the pickup, but anyone experiencing the same issue might want to try removing the cover.
With that success and my growing affection for this guitar, I decided to invest in a set of new Gotoh SG381 chrome inline machine heads (approx $36 online). These were a perfect fit for the existing tuners, requiring no modification of the headstock. They had less slack and appear to keep the guitar in tune much better. I'm very pleased with this change.
I also replaced the chrome saddles with Wilkinson brass ones (approx $17) in hopes that they might further improve the guitar's intonation. They helped a bit, but a couple of the strings are still not intonated perfectly. Not sure if this change was worth it, but the brass does look cool with the body's transparent yellow color!
Lastly, I installed a set of Ernie Ball Pure Nickel strings (9-42).
So with these relatively simple modifications and fixes I now have what I believe is a very good Telecaster clone that both plays well and sounds good.