I was planning to commission a forever guitar with a custom builder but the truth is I only trust myself when it comes to custom builds, so I decided to get a Glarry guitar: the cheapest kit I could find to practice finish, build and setup on it before I commit to a more serious build with unnecessarily expensive parts.
Stay tuned!
What’s a Glrry? The kit maker? That neck pocket looks ROUGH but otherwise everything looks alright…?
I did a Warmoth partscaster ages ago, though I had them finish it for me. Lately I’ve been getting the bug to build another, and after seeing Angel Vivaldi’s gorgeous heavily relic’d Charvel on his tour with Morse, doing a matte teal blue metal flake nitro and expecting it to wear heavily over time is kinda speaking to me. 
Oh I plan to go with Warmoth for my next build but I’ll only have them cut and route the wood (except the neck which comes almost 100% done). I want to take care of the finish and everything else.
About Glarry, I didn’t even know I was getting one of their guitars as I simply looked for the cheapest kit I could possibly find on Temu. I knew about them as they have a reputation as the lowest quality brand LOL. Funnily enough, they got Trogly’s guitar show to stop his reviews of vintage Les Pauls to check some of their models. I find all about that brand absolutely hillarious!
Also, the quality of the kit is surprisingly good for ~$70 USD. Sure, there are some imperfections and it’s literally rough around the edges but nothing about it seems unserviceable imho.
Color me surprised when I found out this neck comes with “rounded” edges! I mean, they simply gave the router/CNC a pass on the edges to alleviate the ~90-degree angle that caused me an injury with a Mexican Fender some years ago 
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I’ve just refined the truss rod access hole, started working on a bone nut and leveled the frets which weren’t that bad, tbf. I’ve seen worse on guitars 15 times the price of this one.
I always looked at it like this:
Then one can attend to things like colors/finish. One thing to possibly add is a hex pickup for some of the BOSS processors, e.g., BOSS - GM-800 | Guitar Synthesizer
Definitely keep this thread updated as you work through your guitar. I have many Warmoth guitars and I think that they’re actually better than, say, my expensive Ibanez RG.
Both literally and figuratively
I’m certainly biased but I’m proud of my setup skills and support the idea that attention to detail beats “brand” in many cases when it comes to a guitar’s comfort and performance.
This is the last one that I assembled, with a fully scalloped neck. Unlike you, I can’t paint, so I let them do that.
Oh I can’t paint either but gotta start somewhere if I wanna learn. 
That is a beautiful piece btw. Their finish work is second to none based on the instruments I’ve seen in person.
Locking TOM on that? I have a PRS Singlecut with a stop tail that I want to replace at some point, partly because it falls off whenever I remove the strings which annoying, and partly because it replaced a PRS Singlecut SE where I DID replace the bridge with something that locked and it did seem to improve tone, sustain, and overall feel of the guitar. I just don’t remember what it was, nor what else is on the market.
We’ve been making progress!
I’ve experimented with multiple materials for the finish, such as tru oil and water-based stains, and learned that the instructions to deal with poly do not apply to these thinner finishes as the wood has to be way smoother but I got lazy with the sanding. In contrast, the rough texture would’ve been perfect for a poly finish. In the end and after all the different tests, I ended up going for this distressed black-blue randomburst. I guess this kit’s worth $2000 more now that it looks like a train ran over it.
Also, I love that this cheap kit comes with a solderless wiring harness! Gotta test if it even works but I am happy with how the project’s going so far…and of course, I had to stamp a dad joke on the headstock . That decal served as a good practice of how waterslides work but I’d rather opt for a transparent one on a more serious project, although it’s cool that I could just print it on my old Canon inkjet.
The guitar’s finished!
I crafted a bone nut by hand (spacing between the E and B strings resulted a little odd but nothing tragic) and tuning feels so stable that I can even wiggle the vibrato bar just fine. Also, the intonation is spot on and the action just as I like it for a 14" radius (1.5 high E to 1.7 low E). I appreciate that I didn’t really have to do a lot of “fix” work besides the neck pocket that arrived as a total disaster but I managed to level and shape appropriately with a little epoxy, which I used to seal a slight crack in the back of the body.
Also, I shielded all electronic cavities with copper tape and connected the whole thing to ground with little screws and a few wires. This guitar is gloriously noiseless imho. Quite frankly, I was expecting a lot of scratchy randomness so I am pleasantly surprised.
In the end, I am really happy with how this project turned out as I gained a lot of insight into guitar design, assembly, finish, electronics and my personal taste.
I really like the sound of this guitar, although it is making me despise my more expensive ones a little because I feel like I just saw the Wizard of Oz behind the courtain . It seems like most of the guitar stories I’ve heard my entire life are little more than fairy dust.
Fun fact: Technically, ~10-20% of this guitar’s cost represents the strings.
Finally, I had to take the guitar for a test drive with a few lines I’ve been working on lately. I really enjoy how economy-way economy simplifies the incorporation of arpeggios in the middle of scalar phrases. I think they add a lot of flavor.
That sounds great! And as a Suhr owner I both love and hate the “I’m not Suhr” sticker on the headstock.
Thank you!
I would love to blind test this kit against a few Suhrs and see what happens.
I only have one that it would be a true “blind” test against, as you’d probably notice the seven string on the other even through a blindfold. But the other is close enough that as long as we could keep your hands away from the output jack and maybe we covered up the bridge saddles (those look like bent steel?) we might be able to pull it off - the open grained body miht be a problem against the gloss finish on my Modern 6, though.
I also… well, that Modern 6 is one of the very best guitars I’ve ever played, unusually good even for Suhr (and the worst Suhr I’ve ever played was still a "hey, this thing’s pretty good!). So it would be a high bar to hit.
Oh yeah, It’d be hard to equal the touch and finish of a Suhr. The artistic aspect of it and attention to detail are top stuff. That said, an audio blindfold test would be equally fun! One plays the guitars while the other listens and tries to spot the $3950 difference in sound.
AI, I assume, what with the five strings?
I didn’t specify it in the prompt bit I am building a bass haha.
I guess technology is that advanced now!
Believe it or not, the primary colors are bullshit Schecter used to make these.
Oh shit, guitars that force you to play where the money is!
I kinda like the pedagogical idea of “earning” the access to a 6-string.
Similarly, Jacob Collier’s signature acoustic is a 5-string tuned in a peculiar way.
