Unboxing a $75 GLARRY "Strat" - Let's Find Out If It's Any Good!

welcome back to the channel you guys i hope you're having an excellent day today in this video we are expanding upon our affordable guitar series i've got a whole playlist i will link to it above so if you're looking for a specific guitar style or amp style hopefully it'll be there i go through the good the bad the things that need improvement on all of these affordable guitars and today we've got a strat style guitar this is from glary now in the past i've looked at their solid body telecaster style and their thin line telecaster this one is the cheapest yet 75 strat style guitar i have not opened this let's unbox it together there we go let's take the top off here oh and here it is okay so we've got our gig bag inside here we've got trim bar we've got cable and adjustment tools and here is the guitar even got a strap on here oh here's the first look sunburst strat here we go let's take a closer look all right you guys so let's start by hitting up some of the main specs of this guitar then we'll do some tones i want to do a mini tear down where i take the pick guard off check out what kind of pickups are in here uh the switches and the wiring and all that kind of stuff maybe even look in the back cavity so we'll do all those things but let's start with the basic specs so what we have here is a maple neck with a maple fingerboard which means we don't have the skunk stripe on the back and i've got to say the neck profile super nice it's a satin neck love that so you don't have any of the high gloss you know kind of gloopiness and overall yeah just a nice profile nice satin finish so neck looks great here is the clary headstock on the headstock we've got six unbranded kind of non-descript tuning machines two string trees and that's the shape of the headstock now as for the body it's made of basswood and it is insanely light that's one thing i noted about the other glares i reviewed the first thing you note when you pick it up is you're like that is so light and it has to do with that basswood so basswood and maple and i gotta say the finish on this is really nice like the burst from the black and how it transitions you know into the other colors it's really attractive i mean this is a very very affordable guitar but this thing looks good and if you see bubbles in here it's because i haven't removed the plastic on the pickguard but yeah that's you know what the guitar looks like really nice and just traditional strat right three single coils five-way switch volume and tones we'll get into that in a second but that's kind of like a quick look at the body now as for some of the other finer details let's start by looking at the nut now i've got to say this is a 75 guitar and the nuts actually cut pretty good it matches up nicely on the shoulders so it doesn't stick on the sixth string or the first string side so that's nice and the way the nut slots are cut pretty decent now of course this is not a boutique guitar you know you're not going to have some master luthier you know making sure everything is just perfect it's a 75 guitar and i have to keep reminding myself that so that being said uh it's cut pretty nice now of course it is just cheap plastic you're not going to end up with some sort of high end nut but that being said i've got to say it's pretty good now as for the frets and the fret ends i'm happy to say there's no sharp frets and there's no frets kind of sticking out higher on the sixth string or the first string anything that you would notice so that's nice and i've got to say as i mentioned that satin neck is really beautiful i love that um so yes the fret ends of course are you know there's filing and tooling marks so somebody quickly just kind of even them all off uh again when you're talking about a guitar like this uh you know the margins for profit on a 75 guitar have to be razor thin so you know thankfully there's nothing amiss with the frets um but you're not going to end up with like of course high end like rounded off frets and that kind of stuff that being said the front face of the frets is actually pretty good i'll take a shot for you guys that's nicely buffed up and shined up now there's some slight grittiness not as bad as i've felt on some other models so happy to say you know that'll just play out or you can buff them out i've showed you guys how to do that on on various other videos um but yeah there's some slight grittiness but overall not too bad so there you go that's the fretwork and the nut and the smaller details let's get in to some tones so i've gone ahead and stretched out the strings on the glare but nothing else so this is how the guitar plays straight out of the box now i know sometimes people complain they're like daryl you take an affordable guitar and put it through these really expensive amps that's not fair well that's how you get great tone spend your money on a great amp and you know even affordable guitars will sound fantastic that being said i'm going to plug into my stage right head today a very affordable head with an affordable guitar let's see what that combination sounds like here are the first tones on the glare this is the neck pickup let's try this thing out [Music] so well first impressions uh from string to string it is very very balanced [Music] sounds really good let's try position four that's always you know kind of a sticking point for strats [Music] it's got a little bit of quack i wouldn't say it's like you know intense but [Music] not bad let's try position three here [Music] really bright let's compare that to the neck pickup [Music] you know pretty warm and then back to that position three there really nice position two another quacky one i always play uh [Music] i think i like that position two more than position four let's try that again yeah back to position two yeah i think this one has you know more of that classic strat sound on position two than position four um position four just seems slightly maybe too warm um you know for that classic tone but so far you know all the tones sound great let's try that bridge i decided to use the bar because i was already out of tune but i'll tune it up with a snark here and then let's try some overdrive tones but you know first impressions really nice like it sounds great i'm not through a super expensive amp and so far you know it sounds like a strat and yeah so far very impressed [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so that's a great strat neck pickup tone really really nice when you dig in or use your fingers you know it sounds nice and you know really nice and snappy and then if you just kind of like lay back a little bit [Laughter] you know nice and smooth and throaty so you know pretty impressed that's the neck pickup let's try the bridge so let's flip over [Music] there i shouldn't have used the bar at the end of the other clip i'm way out of tune but you guys can hear you know how bright and present that is let's try an extended chord here [Music] you know so really nice and sizzly i'll tune up and play something else for you guys so that was the bridge pickup let's try position two immediately you can hear its hum cancelling so that's great i think position two might be my favorite uh you know kind of classic strat sound that in the neck pickup sound fantastic let's try position three here that's a great tone as well position four and position five we've heard already nice throaty kind of tone so that's kind of like the basic tones on the glare i think it sounds great all right you guys now that we've heard some tones let's take the glare throw it on the desk and do a little bit of a mini teardown we're going to take a look inside in areas that you can't see because you know from the exterior this thing's actually pretty beautiful but let's take a look at the components on the inside and the overall construction all right you guys i've gone ahead and removed the screws holding the pick guard on and slipped it out from underneath the strings let's start by looking at the cavity itself so the first thing i noted when i removed the pick guard here is it's cut out for humbucker which is nice so if you ever wanted to upgrade and put a humbucker in the neck you can totally do that the second thing i noticed was these cutouts are really nice i've seen kind of wiggles in the routing right along the edges here or here or you know right by the bridge and this is cut out really clean so that's awesome now the third thing i noted was there's no shielding in here so you know i i do find the pickups fairly noisy especially if you remove your hand off the guitar even at that low gain when i was using that stage right amp um you know there's a fair a bit and no fair bit of noise so i think these single coils are pretty noisy even for single coils so that's the first thing to note i think they sound really nice pretty you know good fullness and clarity so i think these pickups actually sound pretty good but i think they could sound better if a person maybe took some shielding paint painted in there or some foil or something so those are a few things i noted about the cavity really clean really nice but no shielding okay so let's look at the pickups themselves and the pickguard all right so we've seen these before on low end guitars these are ceramic magnets and usually when we have ceramic magnets on here the pickups are like exceedingly warm and i didn't find that on this glare so i don't know i'm assuming these are 500k pots i can't quite see i'll take a close-up shot maybe we can find something it looks like it maybe says 16k series not sure anyway most low end guitars like this are unbranded pots so these are some sort of brand but they are small dime sized pots and just basic wiring on the switch a little bit of shielding just where the you know the controls go in but uh that's about it so overall i mean everything it's zip tied and stuff about what you could expect again you know they got to be getting these these pots and switches and pickups for you know pennies a piece kind of thing if if they're gonna make money on a 75 guitar but overall you know nothing crazy about it looks really good so let's flip it over and take a look at the trim system so here's a look into the back cavity and i've got to say it's pretty nice it's painted in there we've got a claw with the ground wire from the front so that's great three springs and the block now when we take a closer look at the block i've got to say i've seen much much worse on lowing guitars this one is not really rough cast at all i've seen some where you know it practically looks like it's crumbling this one's smooth it's not the biggest thickest block in the world but it actually looks pretty nice alright you guys so here are my final thoughts on the glary well for 75 dollars this is a no-brainer let's just get that out of the way this is a great guitar for 75 dollars and there's nothing on it that would remotely you know turn me off getting this for 75 dollars let's just get that out of the way now of course there's some things on it uh that i would fix namely the action's too high the intonation wasn't set correctly you know but i wanted to kind of take you guys along with me as i had that first experience unboxing and playing it so i have a whole series i think it's called make your cheap guitar play like a million bucks if you want you know to take a guitar like this and actually get it playing and sounding you know much better than stock check out that series but anyway yeah i mean there's no obvious flaws on this guitar the finish looks fantastic i would say the pickups are a little noisy as i mentioned in the tear down section that's you know my main criticism i think compared to like something like a mexican fender or even a squire i think they're a little quieter these pickups i do think sound nice but they are noisy so that would be my main thing some work would need to be done on this trim to get it to you know be reliable so that you could use it again check out that series i go through all of that as well but yeah the neck super nice here's a shot of the back of the headstock there's nothing on there just very very clean but yeah overall you know this is a really good guitar and you also get a case well like a dust cover i call them because they're so thin but a gig bag uh you know a strap a cable some picks and stuff like that yeah i don't know how they can do it but anyway this is the glary hope you guys enjoyed it um you know i wish i could say some more bad things about it because you know you sort of figure i should say something worse about a 75 guitar but you guys saw you know there's no editing or whatever i just simply plugged it in and played it for you guys and it sounds good so anyway those are my final thoughts if you don't have a strat style guitar if you don't have a backup guitar if you don't have a first guitar something like this might fit the bill it's light it's ergonomic sounds great thanks so much for watching if you guys enjoy this affordable guitar series be sure to subscribe to the channel i'll link to the guitar in the video description below t-shirt store tab store all the gear i use is down there as well other than that have yourself a great day

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 199,755

Keywords: squier stratocaster, squier, squier telecaster, squier jazzmaster, squier classic vibe, squier vs fender, squier classic vibe vs fender, squier classic vibe telecaster, squier classic vibe stratocaster, stratocaster vs telecaster, electic guitar, glarry guitar, glarry, glarry stratocaster, glarry telecaster, glarry gtl, cheap guitar, budget guitar, Affordable guitar, glarry gst, glarry stratocaster guitar, glarry gst guitar, cheap electric guitar

Id: oIuya_nQScw

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020