Thankfully, Some Guitar Problems Come With Their Own Solutions

One of the first things I did upon receiving my Glarry GTL Semi-Hollow Electric Guitar (not an affiliate link) was order new strings for it. The included strings weren't bad, mind you, but I like good strings. The classic Telecaster (this is a Tele clone) strings are Fender Super 250s, which were on sale at Amazon for $3.99 (not an affiliate link).

They arrived over the weekend, but I only got around to re-stringing the guitar yesterday, and ... well ... see if you can spot what's wrong with this picture:

See that little blue ring at the lower left? That's the end of the high E string. The other five strings come in through holes in the rear ... but that saddle was screwed on to the instrument slightly mis-aligned with the holes. I spent about 15 minutes trying to get the string in from the rear before I gave up.

Fortunately, the saddle is built so that you can string the guitar using the rear holes or holes at the back of the saddle. I'd generally do them all the same way, but the high E was the last string I got to and I didn't feel like removing and redoing all the others.

I didn't expect to get a guitar with that particular defect, but I knew it was possible, because I watched several video reviews of this particular instrument before ordering it, and one of the reviewers got a GTL with exactly the same problem. As it happened, that was the only thing that seemed to bother him about it.

For less than $100, I can't reasonably expect perfection from a guitar, and I'm still happy with this one. I'm just glad that there's a built-in way of getting around the problem without removing the saddle, realigning it, and maybe even having to drill a new hole in the body if it can't be aligned as is.