The dreaded Fender

[Jonesy76]

Right first and foremost I am now pandering to the knowledge of you guys on here..........

Every Fender I have ever owned has been sold, and I've spent good money on some of them in the hope that I'll find something I can hold onto.  Unfortunately I've always had a GAS attack and the Fender has been the least loved of anything I have so immediately gets sold, and it doesn't matter if its a Tele or a Strat.

These days I've swapped over to buying lesser instruments that are still well made, and then gutting the hardware and electronics on them, but still everything I own is Gibson based (An SG, a 335, a flying V, and 4 Les Pauls).

However one of my mates has just brought a 'Hello Kitty' Squier Strat (he doesn't have any masculinity issues......he just wanted a Strat with 1 humbucker, and no tone just a volume control) and I have to admit to being impressed with the fit and finish of the guitar.  It got me thinking...........

I've been GASing for a Candy Apple Red Strat for a while, preferably with a maple fretboard and I noticed that Squier do one of their Affinity Strats with those specs.  Now the body according to their webpage is Alder which is proper Fender material, and I know that the Squier has the oversized headstock that I love from the 60's Strats, so...........

Would buying one be a totally dumb thing to do? :roll:


Now I'm not stupid, and I know that Squier employ squirrels to manufacture and install the electronics in their guitars, but surely £105 is silly money even if it is essentially just for a body and a neck in the right colour?  

I figure that buying cheap, and re-working the componentry and electronics will stop me selling the thing, and maybe allow me to finally give a Strat a chance.  

Any opinions out there?

[Elliot]

I have a feeling that the Affinity range is alder for the US market and Agathis for everyone else.  I could be wrong on that one, though.  Yamaha Pacificas are alder, but I don't know if they do it in CAR or a near colour.

[badgermark]

How about trying Fenders other than Strats and Teles? Jazzmasters, Mustangs, Jaguars, all good guitars with different sounds yet still feel Fender-y. Or something more modern like a Toranado an shtuff. Rock.

[38thBeatle]

Well I'd give it a go-for that money if the basic guitar is sound, you can then mod it after you have decided it is worth modding. It sounds like a good plan though rather than paying more for a guitar that will be stripped down to the basics.

[indysmith]

i reckon it sounds like a rubbish idea, lol. You'll get poor quality woods, shoddily put together. You'll be trying to polish a turd. If you really wanted a strat, and yu'd had nice ones that you'd spent money on before, but let them go then yu're clearly not a strat man. give up

[noodleplugerine]

Try the Swamp Ash strat - It's ace, and cheap.

I wouldn't want to pimp a squier - You can make it sound the bee's knees, but the playability will still be an issue imo.

[Philly Q]

£105 sounds crazily cheap, even for a Squier... are you sure about the alder body?

I just wonder if, having upgraded all the hardware and electronics, you'll end up with a pretty decent guitar where the body and neck themselves are the weak links?  You can only do so much with a sow's ear...

Then again, if you bought a more upmarket Fender would you still end up replacing most of the parts, or leave them as they are?

[Jonesy76]

I'm running with what GAK state on their website.......
http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/squier-affinity-stratocaster/1308

Now they can BS for all they're worth, but if that isn't Alder they're in deep sh!t with the powers that be as far as the trade descriptions act is concerned :roll:  

I know you can't polish a turd, but of the 3 Squiers I tried yesterday (I haven't played one for ages so it was purely for research) only 1 really needed some work - it had more relief in the neck than sense!  You could actually see the bow!  The other 2 - which incidentally were both in dedicated guitar shops - played damn well, certainly as well as the Aerodyne Strat next to them that I picked up to have a go on.  After lousy hardware and electrics I personally can't see how far wrong you can go with a seperate neck and body.  Anything can be playable with a good set-up surely????




And yes......perhaps I should give up on Strats and Teles, but I can't stand the look of Jaguars, and I quite fancy having something lighterweight knocking around the house that maybe the wife can have a go on.  The only real lightweight guitar I have is my Flying V, and you can't really sit down and learn on one of those! :P

[Philly Q]

I just looked on the Squier site and it definitely says alder for the big-headstock Affinity.  OK, it might be a 5-piece, but so were American Standards in the mid/late '90s.

Didn't realise you'd actually played the guitars.  If you like the feel of the neck and they sound OK, go for it...

[Henk]

It sounds like your just as spoiled as i am  :lol:

Anyway, someone got me talking about that wrecked fernandes strat i once had, and i miss it.

Crashing some of that hendrix stuff into a strat is simply not the same on a Gibson, even to a point that it makes me worry about my precious gibbies. Its allmost an old versus young thing with LP versus strat.

I am happy with the S/H Tele with the uncovered vintage bridge single and the neck paf, but still its too perfect somehow.

Although in this respect the chinese strats are certainly not badly made, i think ill keep an eye out for a really nasty beat up Fernandes or something like that. They are a bit chunkier as far as i can remember and that improves playability form me. I also want a decent neck(maple/rosewood) and a heavy alder or swamp ash body. The rest ill probably alter myself anyway.

Ill be patient about this though because i want something old(80's like), allthough the chinese build squires are decent enough, im looking for something similar to what i had when i was young and sold back then because i simply had to.

EDIT: I forgot something about the chinese/korean squires, they use soft maple for the necks which is ABSOLUTELY horrible, you wont be able to use it after a year playing.......

[Will]

Jonesy, didn't you put a review on HC for your doubleneck? and you said that you had bought a riverside guitar doubleneck which you planned to alter.
I belieeve your words were something like 'These Koreans don't seem to know what a truss rod is'
So if you have had bad experience with dodgy necks on them before, then maybe it won't play so well after a good set up?

Am I thinking of the right thing?

Thought about a parts guitar? there are hardtail bodies on ebay for £60 from the US, your choice of woods, your choice of front or back routing, and you can always find a good neck around the internet I'm sure, give it a good fret dress and setup, and I would think that has a better chance of playing better maybe?

(I had previously looked into hardtail bodies, not a fan of trems that much)

In a Watford guitar shop, my girlfriend counted in excess of 5 different hello kitty guitars :!:  very weird, but kept her busy

[FernandoDuarte]

How about a guitar made by a luthier? I think you would get the best going this way

[Jonesy76]

Well remembered and well put Will :D  
I know I said that, and to be honest I still stick by that a lot (it was a Chinese made thing rather than Korean I later found out), but I have found that the Chinese and Indonesian stuff out there with respected names on the headstocks do seem to go through some form of Quality Control, these 'never-before-heard-of' guitars do tend to have no quality control......my friends sons Squier though is still going strong after 3 years of going to school in a gig bag every other day!

I'm looking at the possibility of going down the Partscaster line as you quite rightly state that I could get everything I want......been looking! :D


And I've had a luthier build something for me Fernando.......check my Avatar!! :D   The only thing is there is no way I would get a luthier to build something for me, with a hefty price tag on it, if I was only going to grow bored of it, even if it was built to my exact specifications.  
This idea is purely to either kill or cure me as far as Fenders are concerned.  If I don't get on with this next one than I'm not going to try again.......and before you lot say well there's no way I'd ever get on with a Squier, I've owned a Rory Gallagher strat after one of my friends had one!  They don't get much better, but I simply didn't play it and when the chance of a Gibson CS356 came along the Rory Gallagher was first out of the door!

[Philly Q]

I've owned a Rory Gallagher strat after one of my friends had one!  They don't get much better, but I simply didn't play it

What, the Custom Shop tribute model?  :o  That's the only Rory Strat I've heard of.  Serious money!

[FELINEGUITARS]

I have seen a lot of Affinity strats that were pretty good, and had customers who were keen to upgrade them.
One had a fret dress and put a set of BKP Apaches on
Yes - he spent more on the upgrades than they spent on the guitar but the end result was amazing

Sadly he was still feeling that he didn't have a proper "Fender" like he had always wanted and traded it in for a USA strat, which sadly wasn't as good.
That came as a bit of a shock to him!
We did end p working on the US strat and made it pretty nice but came to realise how good that Squier had been.