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ESP GL-56 George Lynch Relic GL-56 George Lynch Relic
GL-56 George Lynch Relic

‎02-24-2010 12:00 AM

Overall Rating: I've been playing 16 years and have owned a boatload of guitars throughout the years. I know a good guitar when I play/hear one. This guitar is a true gem. A very balanced, clear tone and resonates nicely. As mentioned, I wish it had ...
Overall Rating: I've been playing 16 years and have owned a boatload of guitars throughout the years. I know a good guitar when I play/hear one. This guitar is a true gem. A very balanced, clear tone and resonates nicely. As mentioned, I wish it had an f-spaced humbucker, a RWRP middle pickup, and different wiring on the 4th selection on the switch. I also wish the bar were compression fit and I wish they would have included some shorter saddle height adjustment screws with the guitar. Further, I wish the neck didn't have to be removed to adjust the truss rod, but that's normal for a lot of Strats. Overall, those are fairly minor things and if something were to happen with this guitar I would absolutely try to find another one just like it.
Features: 2008 model. Made in Japan. 22 XJ frets. Alder body which appears to be two piece. Heavily distressed finish sealed with a satin top coat (more on this later). Bolt-on neck is one piece maple with a skunk stripe on the back where they installed the truss rod. You have to remove the neck to adjust the truss rod. The neck is ESP's "Extra Thin U" profile. I wish it were a little thicker, but I get along with it fine. I LOVE the satin-finish and overall feel of the neck finish...very comfy to play on. I'm not sure what the neck radius is, but I don't have any problem bending notes up a full step or more on the high E string. 25.5" scale. 5-way selection switch (more on this later). Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Pearly Gates humbucker in the bridge position and ESP SS-120 single coils in the neck and middle positions. Gotoh Vintage Tremolo with screw-in arm. Sperzel staggered locking tuners. Mine weighs 7lb. 12oz. Not too heavy and not featherweight either. I'd probably prefer it to be a little lighter, but it doesn't bother me. Guitar came with one of the better, old style ESP cases with white piping on the outside (not one of the lesser quality LTD style cases like they sell now). Also, came with a nice Certificate of Authenticity, warranty/instruction/specs manual, some tools, stickers, and Schaller straplocks.

For what this guitar is, it gets a 10.
Sound Quality: Wow, I don't know if all GL-56s sound this good, but this thing ranks up there with some of the best Strats I've ever heard. TONS of mojo.

It has a 5-way switch, which has the following selections: 1) neck, 2) neck + middle, 3) middle, 4) middle + both coils of humbucker, & 5) humbucker. I wish position 4 used just one of the coils of the humbucker, so it would sound more like a traditional Strat setup. Next time I have the pickguard off, I'm gonna look and see if the Pearly Gates is 4 conductor and, if so, I might consider modifying the wiring to use only one coil in position 4. Controls are normal Strat configuration: one master volume, top tone control for neck pickup, bottom tone control for middle pickup, and bridge pickup is not connected to a tone control. I pulled the pickguard and all 3 pots are 250K CTS. As mentioned above, the Pearly Gates is a Custom Shop model. A couple folks on the ESP forum mentioned that it is slightly hotter than a regular Pearly Gates. Strangely, the Pearly Gates is not f-spaced and the strings don't line up very well, but so far this has only been a visual issue as I haven't noticed any string-to-string volume issues. The middle pickup is not RWRP, so there is hum on every pickup selection except for the humbucker by itself. I don't really care for those last two things but would guess they are that way at George's request.

Aside from the hum of the single coils (normal outside of the RWRP issue), this thing is awesome. Again, one of the best strat style guitars I've ever played/heard. The ESP single coils sound very nice. The Pearly Gates is great with clean and low to mid gain. It is a fairly versatile guitar, but for hard rock or metal a person might want to switch out the bridge humbucker for something else. I personally love it and will leave it alone. I am able to get great SRV sounds with this guitar along with many other sounds. HSS guitars are generally very versatile and this one is no exception.

Any qualms I have are subjective and this guitar was built to George's specs, so with that in mind I give the guitar a 10.
Reliability/Durability: This guitar is a solid, quality instrument that should last a long, long time. As mentioned, I'm not sure how the sealed distressed finish will look with actual dings and so forth. I like compression trem arms better than screw-in style, but with care, this trem should last a long time.
Customer Support: I've contacted ESP a few times throughout the years and have had mixed experiences. Back in college around 1995 they had a guy answering the phone who was very helpful. A few years back I had some questions on an older Custom Shop ESP guitar I had bought and they weren't able to get much info and didn't seem very interested in helping. To ESP fans, it is known that their record keeping was not good on the older guitars, so maybe they just didn't know what to say. I have emailed ESP USA a few times and got short, but helpful replies, but I tried recently and the email part of their website errors out and doesn't work?!. I have had good luck emailing ESP Japan.

One thing that is funny with ESP is that with all of their attention to detail on their guitars, they often blow it on the specs checkoff list in the warranty/instruction/spec manuals they send with the guitars. I have seen the specs listed totally wrong. For example, with this GL-56, they have Schaller tuners checked on the list when it actually has Sperzels.
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Date Registered ‎12-12-1998 12:00 AM
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