December 09, 2020
Five stars for satisfaction, meaning I am fully satisfied. It's not a five star guitar for $80 shipped! I love this guitar. It is so light it nearly floats. Being strat shaped it is very comfortable to hold standing or sitting. The thick neck is surprisingly comfortable, maybe because it is C shaped instead of D shaped. I had a guitar with a thick D shaped neck and it never felt good. The guitar has a few very minor cosmetic flaws. It actually looks great. The blue color looks better in person t ...
Five stars for satisfaction, meaning I am fully satisfied. It's not a five star guitar for $80 shipped! I love this guitar. It is so light it nearly floats. Being strat shaped it is very comfortable to hold standing or sitting. The thick neck is surprisingly comfortable, maybe because it is C shaped instead of D shaped. I had a guitar with a thick D shaped neck and it never felt good. The guitar has a few very minor cosmetic flaws. It actually looks great. The blue color looks better in person than online. It's a little deeper. The pickups have low output but that's fine since I have other guitars. I saw a review on youtube in which the person said that the sound isn't as bright as you would expect in positions 2 and 4. That's correct. I turn the treble up on my amp to compensate. One nice thing about the pickups is that the thin strings are almost as loud as the thicker ones and that's not true for the four other electrics I've owned. The vibrato arm is very loose but I've never had a strat type of guitar before so maybe it's normal. There's play in the arm which annoys me. I wrapped teflon tape around the threads and that fixed it, but when I swivel the arm I wear down the teflon tape. The guitar arrived in bad need of a setup and nut work. That's typical for any budget guitar and lots of non-budget guitar. But if you don't know how to set up a strat or work on a nut plan on paying an expert. My guy charges $40 for anything up to an hour, another $40 for anything up to two, and so on. I spent about a week setting mine up only because I was figuring out the vibrato system (some say tremolo) at the same time. I replaced the nut with a Tusq nut precut for a Stratocaster. I knew I would need to narrow it a bit with sandpaper. When I tapped out the Glarry's nut it came with some wood attached. I broke that off and glued it back on the guitar. I found out the hard way that the Glarry's neck is flatter than a strat's, 12" instead of 9.5". The Tusq nut is cut for 9.5". Remarkably, all the strings played in tune at the first fret but one string buzzed when played open. The slot was too deep because of the radius. I filled the slot with cyanoacrylate glue and baking soda, and recut the slot with sandpaper. It's the slot for the low E string so sandpaper didn't make the slot too wide. I thought I might have to shim the nut or sand down its base but I didn't. So, for $80, the price of the Tusq nut shipped, and a little time I have a comfortable, fun playing guitar. I love it. This would be the wrong guitar for a child. The neck is too thick and strat like length of the neck is too long. For an adult beginner or intermediate player my Glarry GST would be great. Update: four of my strings' ball ends were lodged in the vibrato unit. I was able to dislodge three of them by twisting the strings. For the fourth, I clipped the old string right were it emerged from the vibrato unit and ran the new string past the stuck ball end of the old one. That's the easiest solution, just leave a ball end stuck in the unit forever. No! I should have tapped them out from above! A small screwdriver, like the ones that make it hard to generate any torque, would work!