Fender Squier Stratocaster

Well, I got this strat as a gift from my grandfather, he played it probably 5 years ago maybe. The year is unknown, probably 1998 as a guess. It was made in Korea, and included: Fender case, two budget cables (which aren't very good), a Fender strap, and a set of extra strings. The equipment is great for starting. The tuners were cheap chrome finish, I assume that they are Fender. The bridge and tremelo are basic Fender, passive electronic 3 single coil budget pickups. There's a 5 way selector which kind of buzzes when you switch. I did like the sunburst finish. I don't know what the body wood is, I think it is Alder. The neck is also Alder, with a mahogany 22-fret fretboard. Over all, it has great beginners' features, but that's almost it.

This guitar can play good country and classic rock, but almost nothing else. It probably can have a different style, but the thing is you have to change the cheap strings to better strings. The ones that you get from the box affect the tone badly, I changed them and they sounded a lot better. Also, the amp I got was HORRIBLE. The tiny Squier amp has very low function. You can only adjust treble, bass, and volume, the most basic parts. Get a new amp if you are going to buy the stratpack. Replacing the pickups with Lace sensor or Seymour Duncan would make this guitar sound a whole lot better! If you don't change the pickups, you get fuzzy chords, and on the bridge pickup, you will get very very high annoying treble sound. Altogether, don't expect good music out of the box.

The nut is very bad, I replaced mine with graphite sounds a whole lot better. The pickups were also very bad, replace those too. The guitar I got was very tough, I give credit to the factory for that, and the wood is good for a cheap guitar. The only problems I had was the tremelo bar making the guitar out of tune quickly, and bending too. The tuning pegs are ok, I thought they were ok, so I didn't mess with those. Also, the tone knobs didn't really change anything, I think they broke when they were made in the factory. Change the nut, and most of the hardware when you buy this guitar.

Great durability! This guitar would probably last a lifetime and a half! I wouldn't need a backup for this IF I brang this to a gig. (I wouldn't bring it to a gig personally, I'd be embarrased.) But if so, no backup required! The strap buttons are almost perfect, they can get loose after a while but just screw it back and you're good. The only bad thing is the nut, which falls out easily. I would've rated this 10, but the nut is not very reliable.

Didn't need any.

This was my first guitar, and so far it has done well. If only the sound and hardware quality was a lot better, this would be one of my favorite guitars! BUT I hope I don't get this same guitar again. Great finish, durability, get this guitar for a good beginners/practice guitar.

Made in indo.2008. Candy apple red. Sweet maple neck. Nice finish . Solid squier tuners . Fretwork is good no sharp edges. The body is solid agthis and its a full size stratcaster like the made in mexico standard strats. The 3 single coil Pick ups are stong and sound great but they have a bit of a hum like most single coil guitars that i have owned. The neck is 22 fret. Nice Bridge with a trem but i blocked the trem i dont use a whammy bar.

Well strats can cover it all kinds of music ,pickup changes can help if you want to play metal with this guitar
Just throw some dimarzios into it and let it rip!! You cant go wrong with a strat good to have at least one in your army of guitars! I use all kinds of solid state amps and tube amps with this strat it sounds really good .Full sounding stock pickups.

This Strat was beautiful right out of the box. Bit of buzzing do to the frets not being level
easy to fix with a fret level. now plays clean, no buzz.

This is a solid stratocaster dont spend you money on a made in mexi when you can have a great strat for less than half the price with your extra cash you can mod if you want to.

I love Squier, I own there teles and strats and 2 squier basses Never had to deal with them.

Ive Been playing way to long to remember. I own alot of guitars. The fender squier line to me
has always been a favorite of mine. You just cant go wrong with the standard series stratocasters and Vintage modified series of telecasters and Basses.

well, it was made in the early 90 - 95s*, Its a Japanese Squier Stratocaster California Series, which i LOVE, yes it is a Squier, but remember that nowadays Squiers are built scarily accurate and better than 10 years ago,21 Jumbo Frets with pearloid inlays, 1 Volume 2 Tone Controls, normal Strat set up, 5 way-selector, S S S pickup configuration, the body is from alder, and it has a rosewood neck, it also has a skunk stripe in the back of the neck, and a BIG C shape headstock, the finish is NICE but this guitar is very VERY RARE! it is in a DARK GREEN with flakes or something color, RARE COLOR, ive never saw a green strat before, atleast not this green!, the tuners are good ! it goes out of tune sometimes when you play like a week without tuning it, and it have the squier logo on the back of each tuner.

yes it suits my style of playing, i play psychedelic indie music, but mainly GRUNGE, well i have a crappy peavey amp, but im playin it on a fender princeton and it blows away! the bright sound is good, but it has a little hum, yes hum, but which single coil does not ?
i have a Boss Ds1 and a Boss superchorus ( yes grunge like effects )
it has a very sounds to go for, come on, it is a strat not a FENDER but is a strat and thats ok with me, i really like it, i will put some seymore duncans later but it is excelent better than a few mexi strats i found.

well this is the BEST PART with this guitar, i know that this is not a regular squier, so duuude this one is well made, the action is good and low, just like i like it!
it does not have any buzz, and the neck and body is REALLY nice to play with it, the pick ups are well made and they have this yellow like color
vintage thing which is cool!, i got this guitar used, but it is like brand new and it has almost 3 years! with the original owner, i would say that the only flaw is the selector swich i dunno, but i feel it weak, but thats an easy replacement.

yes it will stand, i would gig with it, i even done it already, and it has last for me, the straps are ok, and it is my main guitar.

none of them

ive been playing since 2000 and i have a fender mim too, and i prefer this squier, if it were stolen or lost, i would definitely buy another one, squiers are good!, i like very much the feel of the guitar, i hate the pickup selector but i will replace it, this one is like a high end mexi strat really it is, dont discount them, they are really good guitars :)

The Squier Stratocaster Standard black&chrome is a black-painted guitar with an also black painted (matching-) headstock, chrome hardware and pickguard, a 2-point free tremolo, SSS-pickup configuration, tele speed knobs which are very useful for violining and a modified tone circuit. The neck has 22 normal-sized frets and a plastic saddle. The tone circuit is modified to a les-paul-like power-wiring, i removed one tone poti because of the broken pickguard. Now I can produce some wah-like shrieking sounds I love very much because anybody has a strat like mine ^^.

Sounds great but that pickups produce sometimes a annoying humming sound because of the singelecoil construction and I miss the sound of position 1 and 5 in the reverse-positions 2 and 4. Position 3 I nearly never use.
Position 1 sounds a little bit flat I guess, but the fat-rich sound of position 5 is very amazing. If you play solos with heavy overdrive it bawls really cool, also the percussion with a powerful tube amp. NEVER USE IT WITH ANY KIND OF BOSS DISTORTION! It will tear your ears off! I'm using my Strat (black&chrome) with many amps (I've only a homebrew Tube-Amp with a VERY strange sound and a peavey Rage 15), a CRATE 120W, an Peavey classic 20 and, my favourite, a Fender ROC PRO 1000. The ROC PRO produce a very nice sound with it and also the flat, high sound of the first singlecoil became nice. This strat is nothing for a Hendrix sound and for some heavy things it's a bit too weak. But it's ideal for playing a solo which cut through the whole band sound. I think I'll replace the bridge pickup by a DiMarzio Blade or something like that.

A friend of mine bought a very great Squier Strat Deluxe so I choosed also a Squier strat, but compared to his, it's a lot of crap. I don't know why but his neck is more fat but very greater playable. I can't remember the factory settings because I modified nearly everything so there's nothing to say. The finish is suffering from plectrum scrapings, and there's a lack of paint because the guitar had fallen off a chair. The chrome pickguard looks very nice but mine loose a great part with the first tone poti mounted on because it crashed with the ground. So I've a big hole there but I'm too lazy to remove the whole pickguard. By the way, all pickguards of the black&chrome series are VERY sensible against mechanical stress.

Hm, yeah, what to say? The body looks bad after a year, because of the broken paint and pickguard. The frets also loose material during the one year I have it now. I played the Strat only one time live and I was very amazed by the feedback sounds but I went one time too near to the amp and got a nasty microphonic sqweak out. The tremolo unit is a difficult thing because it's system anticipiates a easy tuning because if I tune a string, the tremolo also changes it's positon and the other strings are a little out of tune. This happens also if I'm bending the strings heavily, the saddle clamps the G and the B string, also annoying during tuning. The strap buttons are okay but the screw of the lower one is always unscrewing fastly. I fixed this with a match in the screwhole and two gaskets from beer bottles. But all in all, the guitar is a such solid construction that I don't need another guitar for backup. (exept I need an other sound ^^)

I haven't any contact with the customer store but I was in a music store in Rostock and asked for a new pickguard, for ???30 I can get one. Even the chrome one.

To put it in a nutshell, the Squier Stratocaster Standard Black&Chrome is a nice guitar to get on the Rock, exepting the tuning problem, the fragile pickguard and the crazy neck. I went to Music town in Neubrandenburg where I bought it and let them adjust the neck and the bridge saddle, but it doesn't help very much. I got told the neck is set in in the wrong angle. To fix it, the whole neck has to be removed and set in with a v-notch. An expensive game for an ???260 guitar... If I wasn't so owerwhelmed by the bidding of the store I maybe had coosen an other guitar. But the look said to me "I've to be yours". Most I like the tremolo unit because I don't need the lever, it's very nice for producing chorus like sounds. The tuners are fine, I replaced a part of the high-E -tuner because it broke by hitting the ground. Yes, I would buy another strat if mine is stolen (I won't hope!) but then I've to try it more in store before I'll buy it. If I wish, I'll replace the first pickup because of the too weak sound. At least, the volume poti is noisy because I hit it when using the tremolo lever.

I bought this in 2004, as part of a pack. The thing was simply labelled "Squier Strat", so i cannot work out if it is an affinity, standard or what, it seems to be a mixture of both. It's got a smaller headstock, which isn't on the affinity or the standard, the tuners aren't too bad, it has 22 frets, like the standard (affinity has 21). It innotates well enough though.

The features on it, unsurprisingly, are near identical to the real strats, but it is made with cheaper components and doesn't sound so nice.

First off, i had to ditch that crappy Squier SP-10 amp. it was just too crap to use, I use a Vox AD-30VT now, it works quite well. The bridge and neck pickups on their own are a bit noisy, its frustrating, but it's not intollerable. Positions 2-4 on the selector switch are not so noisy, but these 3 sound near identical (positions 1 and 5 obviously sound quite different). Now that the guitar has settled down, I'm starting to find hidden qualities in the guitar. It hasn't got a bad action, it looks good, and surprisingly it doesn't sound too bad (obviosuly it doesn't have the tone of a les paul) I can get some surprisingly good tones out of it and it has more sustain than i had expected.

For the first month or so, everything kept falling off. The socket fell into the body, and it works its way loose quite frequently, the tuners get loose, the whammy bar broke off in the bridge the first time i tried to use it, i had to get the end of it out with a drill, and it was very loose after that, but stayed in. The bridge is too close to the neck, so to innotate it i have to move some of the screws back as far as they go, i can innotate all but 2 strings perfectly, those simply don't go far enough back. The strap, lead, amp that came in the pack with it needed replacing, the book and CD were useless. It seems to have settled down now, it's playing nice (pun).

I have a theory that Squier guitars are simply fenders that fail quality control, and so have some fender components and are finished off with crap. It seems to be pot luck as to whether a specific guitar is close to a fender or just cheap crap.

I also own a really nice Vox AD-30VT amp and a Digitech GNX1 multieffects processor, as well as the usual bag of goodies (capo, tuner, etc.)
It if were stolen, I'd buy a better guitar, probably an Epi les paul [like everyone with an epi LP, i want a les paul, but im too cheap/poor to get one ;-) ] but so long as this guitar works, i'm not going to replace it, it does have good tone and is easy to play.

In the end, you're only going to buy this as a first guitar; you want something low-budget, but not cheap crap; easy to play; easy to maintain (change strings etc). The Squier strat delivers all of these.

Lots of reviews here seem to say it's crap becuse it's got single coils, it's crap because it's got curved frets, its crap because it doesn't have a floyd rose tremolo. Well to those people, i say this; "You're a bloody moron for buying the wrong sort of guitar, don't blame the guitar becuase it's not the one you like, blame your own unforgivable stupidity." (this also goes for all those folks who buy a marshall amp to play numetal, and then slag it off because it's not a mesa boogie dual recto)

1985 E-series Japan made(the best) strat. Black. 21 frets. Maple neck/fretboard. Basic "features". Small frets

This was my first electric. Bot in 1990. So glad I kept it, these things are worth $ now and with good reason, it's a good quality ax that has gotten better w/age. Neck has yellowed, so have the pickups. I retired it years ago when the frets were getting bad, flattened and dimpled. MY heavy handed fault! Although the frets are those thin ones that kinda suck for bending and chords. I recently bot a fret refinishing kit off ebay(Thomas, Highly recommended!) and brought it back to playable. This thing sounds amazing! Wide range of sounds. No need to change pickups. Sure the bridge pup is a little thin for clean but works great with dist. Cuts well. Neck pos. is FULL. Pos. 2&4 are funky cool. Mid is thick with a nice trebly top. This ax just got better without me knowing it. I will refret and it will become my #1 gtr. And I have some pretty nice axes, too. Pure vintage strat tone, Love it.

All good. Would prefer a unfinished neck like my Ibanez Roadstar but I guess that has it's drawbacks. Excellent workmanship. I am totally sold on the 80's japanese gts. They really made some great stuff. This guitar has NOTHING in common with newer Squier's.

Was my only gig ax for years. Everything is solid. Stays in tune. All stock.Only thing that didn't hold up was the frets. I will take a couple points off for those.

I own lots of guitars from Epiphone, Fernandes, Ibanez, Ovation, Fender and amazingly this Squier that I almost gave away years ago is one of my better axes. Find an old Japanese one like this. You can't get much better. Even if you spend stupid $.

This was my first guitar, a 1987 Japanese-made Strat with 19 frets (I think), 3 single coil, 5-way, black body with white pickguard, rosewood neck - at least, it looks like rosewood, it's probably just some sort of generic black wood - plastic nut, regular Strat-style wang bar, you know.

When I bought this I was a bass player and couldn't afford to buy a guitar amp, so for the first seven or so years I played it through my Vox Venue 30 bass amp. It sounded...I think "thin" and "dull" are the right terms, the "rosewood" fingerboard not helping. Then I got a Pignose, and it sounded scrappy and interesting, especially if you turned it up. Through a cheap Kustom 20W practice amp it acquired more character, and now through my Marshall 20W Valvestate it can sound positively gutbucket, if you put it through a compressor and crank up the volume. Over the past 19 years the pickups have lost a lot of whatever it was they never had much of in the first place, but in return they've acquired a generous amount of rust inside and out, so now switching from one pickup to another sounds like somebody sandpapering a record stylus. It was never very full, but it's now definitely tinny.

Have to say, this guitar was stunningly badly set up. Within hours of owning it I'd had to learn to re-set it up myself, and within a week I was a veteran of the Allen key. The action was way too low and the intonation was all over the place. The first time I changed the strings, the tremelo unit leaned out of its hole in the body as if it was craning to see what was going on; I had to go to the shop and blag extra springs out of them. One day, about three months after purchase, the whammy bar just snapped off in my hand. Getting the remaining nub out of it's hole was no fun. I bought a replacement and that snapped off too, so whenever I wanted to divebomb I took to sticking a screwdriver in the hole. That worked fine until I bent the screwdriver, and the threads in the hole are now too bashed about to fit another proper wang bar. The grooves in the nut were far too low and ever since I've bought it I've had to stick paper shims underneath the strings, being too lazy to get a new nut. The hardware, once immaculate, has rusted beyond recognition. The frets were bent and dented after only a year. The cover on the back of one of the machine heads just fell off, one day. This guitar was a dog from the word go.

If this guitar can take the amount of impatience, maltreatment and general physical violence I've subjected it to over the years and still make any kind of sound at all, it's a small miracle. I wouldn't ever use it in a gig without a backup; in fact, I wouldn't ever use it in a gig, unless I were planning to jam with Sonic Youth. One day I may take it to a shop and have it completely rewired and refitted, but I'll tell them not to fill in the gouges in the body, nor to clean off the bits of old duct tape and faded Black Flag stickers. They're part of its history. Once a piece of crap, always a piece of crap.

I've never tried to have this repaired, being too ashamed to take it into a shop.

I'll never sell this or give it away; it was the guitar I learned to play on and for all its infuriating rubbishness, I love it. It sounds awful, plays horrible and looks like a piece of rubbish. But plugged into a Marshall with a Marshall ED-1 Compressor, a Cry Baby, a Boss Overdrive and the Gain turned up, it will do its best to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. Bless its little Japanese machine heads.

Oh but seriously, I wouldn't ever buy one.

I bought this American made Squier Stratocaster in 1990, and paid the equivalent to 450 Euros at the time. Just as a comparison, a JMP-1 from Marshall at the time cost 510 Euros.
It was not an expensive guitar, but, it wasn't also cheap, and I thought I was buying a quality product at the time, as it was an U.S. made instrument.
It's made of solid wood, unlike the Korean and Japanese made at the time. It has 21 frets on a maple fretboard, 3 Fender standard single coils, black painted body with white pickguard, classic tremolo, passive electronics, non-locking tuners and no extra accessories.

My first bad surprise came with my first chords on my JCM900 amp. I had played with it in the store, but, only mechanicly.
The sound came out too thin and almost no sustain, plenty of feedback, and surprisingly noisy when I was not playing. Not to mention the crackles and scratching produced by the controls. I had played many low quality cheap guitars until that day that sounded almost as bad.
Returning it to the shop was not an alternative for me at the time, so I spent quite a few weeks debugging and improving it after a few months.
I was looking for a Pink Floyd kind of sound at the time, and this was anything but it. I had a Digitech GX-7 processor at the time, which was used for mostly chorus and delays, and with the compressor and equalizer I managed to draw a few acceptable sounds out of position 3 and 4 (middle and middle-neck), but still very short of what I had managed with a strat like Ibanez I used for several months.
Excecive highs almost no mids or basses were the trademark of it.
After I rewired, I added a polarity reverser switch to allow me to have the neck and middle PUs in series, which I used with the bridge PU in parallel, which was the sound I used from there onwards, all the time. Still it was bad.

Mechanicly I have only good things to say about this guitar, with an excelent action, and ease of tune which the tremolo managed to keep despite all the use. But I think this was luck, because the rest doesn't match.
For starters, there was no shielding whatsoever on the pickguard or anywhere else for that matter. Every knob and switch use resulted in noise.
Pickups were not propperly tuned from factory, but, I didn't care about it as I know how to tune them myself, but still, that is not acceptable.
The wiring was not good at all. I found out that the groud wire was loose, and only worked because it got tangled in the tremolo springs, it was otherwise loose from the place it was suposed to be soldered in the spring holder in the back.
At least the neck was exelent.
Had I not known how to fix the electronics and it would have been almost impossible to play with it.
I had to shield the whole control/PU cavity and the pickguard, replace the jack plug and solder the ground wire to where it was suposed to, readjust the tremolo springs and buy new screws as the jack plate holes were too large for ones used in the factory and the jack plate got loosen just from unplugging the cord. A final detail, the upper middle screw hole in the pickguard. It stood right inside the PU cavity, so they glued a piece of wood inside the cavity for the screw to hold.

Despite all the problems I had with this guitar, I have to admit that it withstood quite a lot, without ever failling mechanicly. The action has always been exelent, the paint never cracked and the neck and body are still in great shape. I adjusted a Schaller straplock which never gave me any problems.
The tuners are still very precise after 15 years, but, the bridge rusted as did all the original screws after a few years. Just for reference. I left the guitar unnused for 5 years, between 1998 and 2003, and when I picked it up again, with the old strings still on, they were flawlessly tuned, and played for nearly 3 hours before I decided to change them without loosing tuned, despite the horrible sound :-)

I never dealt with the company, as I had no way to contact them at the time, but, the guys at the store were my victims. There were 2 of them that gave me all the help I needed to solve my problems. Unfortunately they left the store ages ago. And so did I...

I used this guitar for 8 years, and mechanicly it is an exelent instrument, but, electronicly one of the worst I ever came across.
I should have plug it into an amp before buying it :-) which was a huge mistake.
I wouldn't buy another Fender as long as I can remember this one, as I have played with cheaper and better overal instruments.
I bought an Epiphone Les Paul Custom in 2003, which is far better built than the Squire. And considering it cost 350 Euros in 1990, I should have bought it instead at the time.
I also own a Digitech GX-7 and a Boss GT-6, as well as a Marshall JCM900 head with a 2x12 Marshall cab.
The Squier is now being rebuilt by me, with new harware and electronics, because the neck and body are too good to waste. If this baby had lectronics to match the mechanics, and it would have been a 9, as it is, it's a 4.

Made in China. 21 frets, daphne blue, 3 single coils with staggerred magnets, comes with tremolo arm but tremolo is fixed, maple neck, body?? Chinese wood?, I would call thin frets, the edges of the frets are very sharp, not rounded, only allen ranches and tremolo is included

Sounds good as a beginners guitar..I bought it form my 9 y/o daughter..Other option was the small squier stat with short scale which could never be tuned in when I tried at the store..As compared to that one this is 200% better coming with the same price. Bought Marshall MG-10 seperately..Through this amp clean tones are surprisingly good, even you can get some Twang through tail-middle pick-up switching..Single pick-ups are noisy through distortion which is eliminated by switching to two-pickup configuration..Then I put it through my Boss and Zoom pedals and 20 w Peavey amp, well I could create the Pink Floyd Sound (The wall, Animals)..Surprisingly good..

Action was high when it came in. I have to paly with it.. With the treomolo fixed like hard-tail strat, stays in tune even with some abuse..Neck is not comfortable, fret work is cheap and it realy hurts your hand and fingers in the beginning if you are accostomed to American/Japanese Strat or Gibson Les Paul..No flaws in alignment though..Not sure about the wood on the body, neck should be a very cheap maple (almost white) with natural finish. Small cracks on the paint job just around the neck-body connection..

I do not think that this was mede for live playing.. It is a good practice guitar for a beginner to play at home or hanging out with friends.. You will not get mad if it is carcked or crashed or stolen..Definitely better than the small squire strat..I will not gig with it period..I will not depend on it as a back-up..But good for playing at home at low volumes through a small practice amp.. Good for anyone who wants to grow out of it with practice..Still much better than other beginner guitars in the market..

I do not know yet..If something happens, would I try it to be repaired? I am not sure..Well hopefully my daughter will grow out of it and I will get her a higher grade guitar..

I've been plaing for over 20 years..I went through many crap before I owned my Gibson Les Paul and Fender Deluxe Statocaster..This guitar is much better than my guitars I owned at my earlier days of playing..Very good beginners guitar for the money and it does not look like a toy..I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a first electric guitar for their sons/daughters..I think this is better than the guitars in the strat packs although they were also made in China..

White Squier stat bought new Sept 1987 for #240. Only left hander in the shop.
serial No. E6322229 If any one could let me know the country of manufacture and the wood it is made from, I would be grateful. Neck is maple with rosewood fingerboard with 21 frets. standard strat combination bridge/ vibrato block.
White 3 ply scratchplate. Schaller style tuners with Fender Japan
stamped on them. 3 single coil pickups and 5 way selector switch.
2 string trees.The decal on the headstock just reads Squier with the serial No. underneath.

Playing mostly fingerstyle I feel so comfortable with this guitar,
I also tend to grab 3 or 4 strings at one time and pull them up before letting them go, which compiments that bubbly strat sound. I play through a Fender HOT amp which sounds good but it sounds so much better through a larger cabinet. I love the sound of a strat, so most of the time I just use a hint of reverb and sometimes
distortion to blow out the cobwebs.

After 18 years of regular use the frets need attention, which is not bad The finish on the body and neck are still high gloss though the white has faded to cream. there are no signs of tarnish on any of the chrome parts but the guitar rarely goes out of the house and is cleaned every time a new set of strings is put on. The 5 way selector switch needed a squirt of cleaner but that's all.

Never used customer support

I started playing at the age of 10 so I have been playing for 42 years.
I tend to sit down and play so the thing I like about the shape is how it has been sculpured to fit the human body also it balances so nicely
on my lap. I don't get involved in which guitars are best, as every body has different needs to suit the style they play. This Squier suits me fine.