Squier Vintage Vibe '50s Telecaster

This a new Squier Vintage Vibe 50s Telecaster guitar. The body is pine with "blond" finish. (More like Olympic white.) The 21 fret neck is nicely-tinted maple with a nice, thick gloss finish. Three brass barrel bridge. Vintage -style tuners that really hold. Alnico 3 pickups.

This Squier has a nice, solid Tele tone due to the fine pine tonewood. The pickups have a good output & a somewhat raunchy tone. I'm a long-time Strat player who is trying to get into the Tele thing. I think Teles all sound basically the same. The big difference is in the quality of the guitar - cheap wood, shoddy parts & build quality result in a wimpy sounding Tele, and good tonewood, good bridge, tuners etc. make a solid-sounding guitar. This one is solid with very good tone. Pine is a great tonewood!

This Squier is so well-built and finished! The body is made from some beautiful pine with an impeccable see-through finish. When I removed the input jack to check the solder etc., I noticed that there is a 1/4" thick top piece glued onto a solid body. The body is very attractive, easily rivaling a $1000 + guitar. The bridge is very good quality, with nice brass 3 barrel setup. I could see the edge of the pickup routing near the edge of the bridge so I loosened the bridge mounting screws, adjusted it slightly by hand and the routing can't be seen now. I pulled the pickups out and examined them and they are quite good quality pups with a good, although not brilliant sound. Pickguard is nice and thick and flat. The neck is superbly shaped and finished and very smooth with no jagged fret edges. Medium jumbo frets. There is a very slight hump at about the 16th fret. The neck is made from very high quality maple as well. The vintage-style tuners are well-made and hold exceptionally well. All-in all, mine is pretty much a first-class guitar - better than MIM Standard Teles, as good or better than MIM Deluxe Teles with none of the revolting shoddiness I've seen in Squier guitars over the years. If this model had the Fender Logo on the headstock and sold for $629, players would be buying them up and bragging about what a good deal they got compared to a US-built model. At $350, how long can this deal last?

AS I described in the previous category, this Tele is solid and well-built with good quality electronics. So, I guess it'd hold up very well for years.

I have an extended warranty through Sweetwater. Anything goes wrong, I'll send it to them.

For $350, this axe is incredible!