New Glarry GIB5 Dual-Hum and Dual-J, Update and Review
I bought both versions of the Glarry GIB5 bass from the (expired) sale I posted above.
The dual-humbucker GIB5 has a few upgrades over the dual-J GIB5. The bridge is cast, instead of the standard bent plate. It's not quite "high mass," but it's beefier, and has grooves for the outside saddles so they can't shift under hard playing. The fretboard of the dual-hum looks like Indian laurel: whatever it is, it's actual wood, instead of the composite on the dual J version. The pickups are humbucking, obviously, but they're only 2-wire so you can't wire them parallel or split the coils. To my surprise, instead of the standard cheap overmolded 1/4" cable, the dual-hum comes with a nice low-capacitance fabric-covered cable, with metal plugs and heatshrink strain relief. It's only 290pF, on the level of Mogami and other high-dollar cables!
Oddly, the dual-hum GIB5 has three (3) tone controls, which are redundant because they all do exactly the same thing. I'm not sure whether it was intended to be an active bass, or they just want to make it look like one. Unfortunately, the extra load on the pickups makes the tone a bit muddy. It's really easy to disconnect one of the tone controls by snipping the signal wire to it, which helps some, but the others will require soldering to bypass. Or you can do what was obviously intended and install a 3-band active preamp. If you don't, you'll probably have to boost the treble or cut some bass to get a good tone. The treble exists, it's just muted by the load of the extra pots.
The Shocking Part
Glarry quality control has improved dramatically since my first GIB5 dual-J from Covid times. That bass came with significant dents in the body and neck, no setup at all, and frets that weren't terrible but didn't allow low action. Today, however, their quality control is shockingly good.
The necks, in particular, are amazing. The edges are nicely rolled, and there are no sharp or protruding fret ends, which seem to be rolled along with them. I wouldn't call the frets polished, but they're smooth with no catches or visible irregularities, and strings bend across them just fine. The nuts are slightly higher than I like, but they're symmetrical in the neck and cut properly. The necks come absolutely flat as a ruler, with exactly 0.000" of relief. The dual-hum neck in particular has frets so even that I can get the action as low as any bass I've ever played under $1000. (Like with everything else, the dual-hum version appears to have slightly more time, care, and money put into it. It's on par with the active GIB6 I had.) The dual-J neck isn't quite as perfect, and I can't get the action quite as low, but it's close...worlds better than my first GIB5 from several years ago, and on par with any $400-500 Yamaha.
Honestly, I suspect Glarry has some sort of roboticized, automated fret finishing and fret leveling technology in their factory now, maybe even leveling the frets as they're added. That would explain the ruler-flat necks and the consistency of the fret finish, at a price that doesn't allow for any hand finish work, let alone to the standard I see.
The bodies look nicer, too. I can see a couple faint sanding marks on the wood under the poly on the "burlywood" dual-J, but the paint itself is excellent. Once again, the dual-hum is finished slightly better: I can find a couple tiny marks on the dual-J neck, while the dual-hum neck is apparently without flaw. And the setup, while not perfect, was far closer than before. String height was slightly low (fixed by adding a hair of relief to the neck) and intonation was not far off.
Even the strings don't feel like they're made of sandpaper anymore. They're not D'Addarios or GHS, but they sound fine and are far better than cheap Chinese strings used to be.
I have no idea if the other Glarry products are made to the same standard now. But if they are, Glarry is quietly revolutionizing the manufacture of fretted instruments. There is absolutely no way that an instrument selling for about $100 should have a neck and fretwork this good.
Which one should you buy? The dual-hum is finished a bit better, but doesn't sound as good without modification or meaningful EQ. The dual-J isn't finished quite as well, but it sounds great out of the box. Either one balances much better than the P or J copies, due to a slimmer neck and longer upper horn.
(For the 4-string players, there is a 4-string dual-hum GIB. The other 4-string GIB is a P/J instead of dual-J but keeps the body style. There is also a 4-string GIB that is a clone of the Ibanez Talman...why they didn't give it a different model name is a mystery.)
