This pickups will have to be replaced, there is no getting around it. While I did dial in sounds I was happy with I couldn’t help but feel something was just off while playing the GTL. It felt like a bit of a struggle to get it to do what I wanted. It’s a combination of all the cheap components. Because I don’t care about selling you anything and I don’t get paid for this.
No guitar is right for everybody and some really aren’t right for much of anybody. I think that a wide range of folks could be quite pleased with the upgraded Glarry GST Ⅱ. This is one department where this guitar shines, coming in at under $80 USD, it just can’t be beaten. With the guitar comes a very thin travel bag for it, the whammy bar, a cable, guitar picks, and a strap. All this for $60 is a bargain no matter how bad the guitar is.
They are famous for their GST S-Type guitar that often can be purchased and shipped to your door for a whopping $89.99 … and that is the full price. They sometimes run sales that bring that price down further! Do you want to practice upgrading the components on a guitar? The Glarry GTL is a good base to start from.
I thought they held together fairly well for single-coil pickups at low to moderate gain levels. The hum-canceling pickup selector positions 2 and 4 really do pretty much eliminate the constant static crackle in the background when the gain is turned up. If you occasionally want to run a little gain, then you can get some cool tones. If you want to make your guitar scream, then consider getting a guitar with humbuckers. They are feeling better the more I play them. However, I suspect they picked up a bit of surface corrosion while in transit from China to the US.
My experience with inexpensive, entry-level strats is that the pickups generally deliver rather thin and soulless sounding tones. These Wilkinson pickups have some depth and character to them. The guitars is one of the three major musical instruments in the world originated from Spain, which is divided into acoustic guitar and electric guitar which have obvious differences.
When I unpacked the guitar and started playing the strings felt a bit grabby and this continued for the first couple of hours of playing. I would normally replace the string right away, but wanted to play enough with the stock strings to be able to speak about them in this review since they are listed as one of the upgrades from the original GST guitar. Some folks probably aren’t going to like the thick and chunky profile of this Canadian Rock Maple neck… but I really like it. Most modern guitar necks feel too small for my man-sized mitts. I have other guitars with thinner necks that leave my hand in an awkward, unsupported position much of the time.
Just put it through an old tube combo amp, use a slide and be talented. As he explained to Guitar World back in 2016, when he went to record Ride the Lightning, he only had three guitars – a red Flying V with a white pickguard, a red Fernandes and Edna. Hard to imagine, but Metallica were still underground then, and equipped with EMG single coils and a double-locking vibrato, Hammett’s FST-135 represented excellent value for the jobbing hesher. The body is made of premium solid basswood to produce a warm and bright tone while keeping the overall weight low.” My contact at Glarry clarified… “Basswood： Higher wood density, brighter sound”.