Product: Fender Squier ProTone Fat Strat
Price Paid: US $499$ new
Submitted
10/31/1999
at
10:50am
by
Anders Hagg
Email: bonjovi<at>swipnet dot se
Features
:
9
This is a korean made strat from 97.It has 22 frets and has a solid top. It has a H-S-S setup(Alnico pickups) and has a volume knob and a tone control. The guitar has the ordinary fender 5-way selector and passive electronics. The body is in hard ash and the thin neck and fretboard are maple. It also has a double locking Floyd Rose which is painted in gold. I got a gig bag,some tools and som picks with it. This guitar has a lot of features for such a cheap guitar
Sound
:
10
My music style ranges from eighties style heavy metal to styles like the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.This guitar rocks for this kind of stuff especially the heavy metal of the eighties. It is a little bit noisy on the Single coils but quiet when swithed to the humbucker. The humbucker has a rich full sound and the singles have a nice "Blues" feeling. This guitar has very good sound. The humbucker should have a little more sharpness though. But this is a guitar that has a good variety of sounds. I think you can play anything thrown at it. I have Hughes & Kettner editon blonde amp and a Korg AX-1G guitar effect.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
10
When i got the guitar it was in perfect shape because the store a bought it at adjusted it when i bought it. No apparent flaws.
Reliability/Durability
:
No Opinion
This guitar looks like it would hold and i would take it to a gig without a backup. I have not played with it on stage many times so i can't give it a rating
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
don't know
Overall Rating
:
10
I have played for 1 1/2 year. I had a Standard squier strat before but it was crap so i bougt this one. I would buy it again if it was stolen. My favourite about this guitar is the sound. Incredible for a chepa guitar like this one.There is nothing that I don't especially like. I have compared to some Ibanez guitars and i think this is better then they were. The only thing it lacks is coil tapping.
Product: Fender Squier ProTone Fat Strat
Price Paid: US $400
Submitted
01/19/1999
at
08:48am
by
GE Jones
Email: gedwardj at webmail<dot>bellsouth<dot>com
Features
:
8
Korean made, 22 fret maple neck/fingerboard. S/S/H pickups Floyd Rose w/locking nut. One volume, one tone gold hardware mock tortise shell pickguard. Pretty standart super strat stuff. It get's an 8 for lacking any coil tapping options for the bridge pickup
Sound
:
10
this guitar's saving grace is its sound which is great. You can get a great "Fender Quack" with the single coils and a nice heavy HB sound in the bridge. It's good at almost any style you can throw at it 'cept possibly Jazz and maybe country (remember that non-tappable humbucker?) for rock it, well, rocks
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
1
Why isn't there a "0" option? The guitar had high action, the intonation was off the frets were uneven and basically it was in a total state of disrepair from the factory. I got it home and soon realized it was beyond my meager abilities to fix. I took it back to the store I bought it from and they refused to do the service for free (note: the guitar was only a week old when I took it back) so I got stuck with the charge for a total setup and a fret level and a bunch of weird looks for using .10 -.52 guage strings...
Reliability/Durability
:
4
Well, about a month after buying it I went to take the trem arm out of the bridge and, low and behold, while the arm would rotate 360 degrees it would *NOT* unscrew from the bridge. Which doesn't bode well for reliability. I wouldn't use this guitar live without a backup, I'm not sure I'd use this guitar live at all. Despite having a Floyd the tuning stability is more than a little iffy and it's had problems since the day I bought it....this might need to be locked in a closet..
Customer Support
:
1
Does anyone even know how to contact Fender? They seem to be trying their best to insulate themselves from their customers. Lord knows I've tried and I've failed...
Overall Rating
:
4
This was the 5th guitar I ever bought and my second Squire (the other being a P-Bass). Both Squires have stupid little easily fixable problems that would be cheap for the factory to fix, but drive the owner insane. Considering that part of the reason I bought this guitar was for my ex-girlfriend I think it's safe to say I wouldn't buy this guitar again. In fact I doubt I'll ever buy another Fender product, period. I could use the money I used on this to buy a couple of good, used, early 90s Jacksons or Ibanezes which seem to hold up much better. It's frustrating that this is a fundamentally great guitar but it's execution was so bad that I wish I'd never bought it.
