The GTRS Guitar offers a lot to you, but can it deliver?
• Tone
This guitar can reproduce infinite styles of tone and basically if you know how to control it, you can achieve the tone you desire. It’s controlled exactly the same as normal pedals and amps which if you’re coming from analog effects really seem easy, It can save 10 banks (0-9) of 4 presets. With the app you can set the pickups to immitate other pickups like single coils on a strat or tele or humbuckers on a Les Paul. The humbuckers offer a wide tonal range, they are specced for all around tone which for me who plays all the styles of music was a great plus. If you want to play clean they can absolutely do it very nicely, and the output is generously high for genres like rock and metal. The only downside is I wish there was a bluetooth wah pedal to connect it. All around very very good in tone.
• App
The app experience was very smooth no bugs, but can be improved as it seemed a bit out of date. You can download a variety of real world amps and cabinet simulations to the guitar (10 amps, 10 cab slots), the simulations that I’ve tested are the soldano slo series, vox ac30, fender twin reverb, marshall jvm series are really on point to their real world counterparts. You can either download the amps as entire (amp and their cab) or just the preamp.
• The Ergonomics and Electronics
Comfort cuts and the contours were very nice and well rounded, and to me it didn’t seem that heavy at around 3.6Kg. Neck dive isn’t an issue, knobs are nice to turn, no scratching. Tuners aren’t one of those cheap ones but aren’t the best quality either, and the nut is cut very nicely. I can let the guitar sit for a month and a half and I still come back to it being in tune. The Strap buttons are large, no chance of the guitar falling with a strap attached.
• Build Quality
This is where the GTRS guitar falls apart. Everything is on the cheap side and they do their bare minimum, nothing will brake but they will just feel low quality. On mine the paint is a bit oversprayed and for example where the neck meets the guitar body the screws have a lot of overspray and in time will be a place for the paint to chip away from. The paint isn’t nitro so it won’t be easy to break it away, I assume that the paint will last you about 15 years in prestine condition. The screws strip very easily and you will probably need to change them soon. The Frets are terrible for the price you’re paying as it forces you to play very softly if you don’t want to bend the frets inwards, you probably will change them in 4 years time if this is your regular daily driver guitar.
• Pricing
For the price this guitar is very budget friendly and will do a lot for the price. I reccomend getting the footswitch as well if you’re planning to gig or busk with friends.
• Battery
The battery will last you around 8-10 hours or even longer if you use less effects and you can change the battery very easily in the future, as all batteries degrade this was a very nice touch from moore. The battery on my footswitch consistently lasts around 5-6 hours, I was there was a way to turn off the footswitch light which is always on. If you’re a bedroom guitarist the footswitch light will even disturb you in your bed while charging the footswitch, it flashes at a rate of around 60 bpm and the light is very bright and quite noticeable that it lights up a dark room.
• Pros
- Wide tonal variety
- Good enough hardware
- Good enough Quality Wood
- Nice switches and knobs
- Pickups are very nice and suits a wide range of music genres
- Paint job is mostly well done
• Cons
- Built in China definitely shows
- Footswitch is below average
- Some miscellaneous effects are missing (Example: Shimmer reverb)
- Locking tuners are at a below average quality
- Frets are very soft and will degrade over time
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