My first acoustic bass, Glarry GMB102

It's my first acoustic bass.

Glarry emailed me and asked if I wanted to review one of their products. One of them was the GMB102 acoustic bass. Being I've never owned an acoustic bass before, I said yes.

I was sent this bass for free and do not have to return it, so you can consider this a sponsored review of sorts.

The video below goes into detail about what I received and you can hear how it sounds both acoustically and electrically, but here's the long and short of it:

The finish did have a few flaws, but they were minor and did not affect the playability of the instrument at all.

This is an easy player, although the roundwound strings it comes installed with don't do it any favors since you will hear a lot of finger moving noise while playing. I say this in the video but will say it here also: I strongly recommend switching over to D'Addario Half Rounds string set. I have used these before and they're great. It's the middle ground between flatwound and roundwound where you eliminate all of the finger noise while still getting that familiar roundwound feel. And they're not crazy-expensive either.

A feature that's usually only available on upper-end basses is both 1/4" input and XLR - but you get that on the Glarry GMB102. I've not looked around, but I think this is the absolute cheapest way to get a hi-z and lo-z electric bass. That XLR being there is a big deal. You can go direct-to-mixer with no problem at all and use the on-board EQ to shape the sound so it works with whatever setup you have.

Lastly, the piezo pickup. You have to understand that piezo has a specific sound to it, and it's nothing like what a pickup sounds in a regular solid-body bass. I'm not saying it's bad but rather different. You will have to spend some time shaping the sound to your liking.

Here's the best advice I can give concerning a piezo pickup: It will sound terrible through a guitar amplifier, but sound near-perfect through a PA speaker, especially if you connect using XLR. Output one of these the same as you would with a regular vocal microphone (like a Shure SM58), and the sound will be much more to your liking. Trust me on that one.

Full video review

I made sure to go through everything about this bass. What's in the box, how much it projects, how to get a battery in the battery box, and so on.

Published 2023 Dec 26