https://youtu.be/0_ImIqMGgrA

Thoughts?

synchro wrote:

I say this much, Fender’s quality seems to be slipping, of late.

Indeed.

I saw several videos about their gold foil guitars and just the awful QC work done on them…. Crooked necks , malfunctioning electronics, etc..

The sad part is Fender doesn’t worry about blow back because there will always be people lining up to have a guitar with the damn Fender logo on the headstock lol

synchro wrote:

I say this much, Fender’s quality seems to be slipping, of late.

And Squier has really brought their game up in the past 15 years or so. I have no problems playing a Squier at the gig and leave vintage fenders at home

I've never owned or played a Squier guitar. I've been playing acoustic guitar for the past 40 years. I still consider myself a new and naive around here and read this forum daily. I've learned a lot from the discussions and posts from experienced members.

Two years ago I ventured (pun intended) into the realm of surf, electric guitar and this forum. To celebrate, I bought a new Fender American Professional II Stratocaster with V-Mod II pickups and a maple neck. I can't say enough good things about that line of guitars. It is a joy to play. I've never had an issue with any part of it or felt I needed to make modifications. After two years of daily playing and rehearsals with my bandmates, we had our first gig on Saturday night. The '65 Deluxe Reverb RI that goes with it isn't too shabby either.

Perhaps I got lucky and got a good one. But then, at the Am Pro II price point, I would expect to receive a quality guitar.

-John

"...enjoy every sandwich." -Warren Zevon

Fender Stratocaster American Pro II
Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue

jtrollmann wrote:

I've never owned or played a Squier guitar. I've been playing acoustic guitar for the past 40 years. I still consider myself a new and naive around here and read this forum daily. I've learned a lot from the discussions and posts from experienced members.

Two years ago I ventured (pun intended) into the realm of surf, electric guitar and this forum. To celebrate, I bought a new Fender American Professional II Stratocaster with V-Mod II pickups and a maple neck. I can't say enough good things about that line of guitars. It is a joy to play. I've never had an issue with any part of it or felt I needed to make modifications. After two years of daily playing and rehearsals with my bandmates, we had our first gig on Saturday night. The '65 Deluxe Reverb RI that goes with it isn't too shabby either.

Perhaps I got lucky and got a good one. But then, at the Am Pro II price point, I would expect to receive a quality guitar.

I have also chosen Am Pro II among about a dozen of strats in shop: Vintera, Ultra, American Original and some others. I think it’s a good choice for surf in terms of pickups and controls (love this neck-bridge combination), has improved tremolo and they are really well made.

Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine

https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki

Lost Diver

https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin

Redfeather wrote:

It's in these conversations that it's always worth mentioning G&L guitars, which are really more Fender than Fender and give a hell of a bang for the buck, especially the Tribute line that's built overseas but uses the same American made pickups as the regular line.

Absolutely! My main guitar is a G&L Comanche Tribute… it sounds more Stratocaster than a real Strat if that makes any sense lol !

Samurai wrote:

I had a lot of American, Mexican and Japanese Fenders during the last 20 years, about 30 of them. I have played some Squires that my friends had and was never really impressed with them, except for some 80s Japanese Squire that was really good. I guess some Classic Vibes were ok, but don’t really remember.
I still have some American Fenders but also use Squire Jaguar. Virtually this is my main guitar during the last 4 months. Concerning the overall quality - yes, it’s good. It’s not as good as my AVRI Jazzmaster or Am pro Strat, but surely not 5 times worse if you look at the price tag. If AVRI is 10 points, I would say my Squire is about 7 points and mostly because of hardware.
But what is more important, the Squires I tested before were just a pale copies of Fender. Modern Squires (I am mostly talking about CV range now) have their own vibe and character, not always trad classic Fender one, but surely nice, bright and usable.
So I don’t really think Squire is generally outdoing Fender, and don’t believe that’s the target (it would be really stupid for the same corp brands to eat each other). It surely has its established place on the market and sometimes may be a rival to Fender even when you have money for Fender, especially when you know exactly what you need from this very guitar and rely upon your hands and ears more than on Brand marketing.
Will I exchange my Squire Jaguar for AVRI Fender Jaguar now? Honesty am not sure. I love it and it suits my needs and I was always struggling with my AVRI Fender Jaguars to get “this my sound”. Now I don’t.

That’s a great post, Vitaly. I’ve felt similar about Squiers. I bought a CV ‘70s Thinline a couple of years ago, and was very impressed. All I was looking for was an inexpensive guitar that I could bend strings on without worrying about the price of refretting a Gretsch. What surprised me was that it sounded great, played well, and the fit & finish are excellent.

In between, I bought. MIM Tele, which had significant electrical issues. Overall, the guitar was well made, but the wiring looked like it was done five minutes before quitting time on the Friday before a 3 day weekend.

Then, I saw the President’s Day Sale advertised for Guitar Center, and thought I’d have a look at a a MIM Player Strat and a CV Squier Jaguar. The Strat test lasted somewhere around two minutes, as I and the friend accompanying me to the store both thought it was the dullest sounding guitar we had ever heard.

Then I picked up the CV Jaguar, and was astounded by how good it sounded. The tremolo was a bit of a problem, but other than that, this was a very good guitar. They got the pickups very right, in my humble opinion. The bridge is bright, without being shrill (a great Country sound), the neck is warm, but not too dark (somewhat like a Strat), and combined they deliver a very usable sound, good for a sort of middle-of-the-road sound. Then you kick in the strangle switch and both pickups together deliver a classic surf sound that helps to create a nice drip. The bridge pickup with the strangle switch covers the brightest of Surf guitar sounds.

What astounds me is that this Squier addresses many of the complaints many people have regarding the Jaguar. The stock bridge works well, the pickups strike me as being excellent, Honestly, the only complaint I have would be the stock tremolo, but Mike Adams’ Puisheen channel on YouTube has a video detailing how to address these issues with a little bit of manual labor, applied to the fulcrum of the tailpiece.

So, much like yourself, this relatively inexpensive guitar has become my most played guitar. I have a nice collection of Gretsch guitar, which sound great, and do well at Surf, but there’s something about this Squier that just screams “play me”, and I do … often.

This is not the first time I have bought a less expensive model, by choice. In the ‘90s, I bought a Tex-Mex Strat, even though I could have bought an American made one. I actually preferred the feature set of the Tex-Mex and had no quibbles about its quality. The only mods were a pearl guard and some shielding, and the guitar is still in the family, owned by a nephew, and still quite playable. I sold it to him, only after buying an American Deluxe 50th Anniversary model.

As you say, they are not pursuing the same market shares. The Squier is meant for a broader market, and I think that they shoot for a wide appeal, and a selection of features that will result in a low return rate. It’s sort of the Toyota Camry of guitars.

Back in the era of mechanical watches, there was a company called Timex, and they revolutionized the watch business, by developing a way to mass produce precise watch movements, thereby lowering the cost. They put these movements in simple, but durable cases, and were able to sell a durable watch for a fraction of the cost of a more prestigious brand. A blue collar worker could easily afford one, and if it was damaged in the course of a day’s work, it could be replaced for about two hours’ wages. There were no bragging rights associated with a Timex, but a lot of people wore them. I think that Squier guitars are much the same, when it comes to target market.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Samurai wrote:

I also may say that cheap Gretsches are doing the same with Japanese models. I got two of them during the last year and sold my both Japanese ones, 6128 and 6119.

I’ll never sell my MIJ Gretsch guitars. Maybe it’s just Chet Atkins nostalgia, but I love ‘em.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Samurai wrote:

synchro wrote:

Samurai wrote:

I also may say that cheap Gretsches are doing the same with Japanese models. I got two of them during the last year and sold my both Japanese ones, 6128 and 6119.

I’ll never sell my MIJ Gretsch guitars. Maybe it’s just Chet Atkins nostalgia, but I love ‘em.

Yes, there were other reasons to sell them, but that’s another story. But these new Indonesian ones are so lovely and playable)

One thing is for certain, Gretsch guitars can make some great Surf sounds. I’m quite curious about the sound of the Rallye, with the new style HiLoTrons.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

I've had some Squiers since the 80s when they were made in Japan. I think they've had a checkered history over the years. The early MIJ Squiers were IMO, on the large, really excellent guitars. I think the MIJ Fenders and Squiers helped save Fender during the transition from the CBS to the Bill Schultz Corona era. However, as Vitaly notes, they needed to establish a stronger separation between the various US vs non-US lines and price points, and for some time, I believe they succeeded.

But beginning with the Classic Vibe line in around 2010 or thereabouts, they have made significant improvements. The early Chinese-made Classic Vibes were quite good, and gradually other more high-end Squiers followed suit. I still have a Fiesta Red 60s style CV P-Bass from that period that I think is competitive with the 80s MIJ Fenders and Squiers.

I think the newer Indonesian Classic Vibes have taken a slight hit over the originals. A big box store was blowing them out last year at ridiculous prices - I bought several, and I'm glad I did because some were very good, and others had issues. So I sorted through them, fixed the issues, and kept a few and jettisoned the others. They almost all had varying levels of sharp fret ends. The CV 70s Jag in surf green was pretty good, but the lead pickup was pretty microphonic. The sunburst Jazzmaster is really good and I kept it. The Tele Baritones were also very good, I kept one. I still need to deal with the sharp fret ends on the one I kept. The sharp fret end thing can be an issue on a lot of guitars, and IMO it is largely the result of using green (i.e., insufficiently seasoned) wood, and probably also the result of making guitars in a very humid climate and then shipping them to a drier climate.

The real surprise for me was the Chinese-made Paranormal series. I got a Paranormal Cyclone in white with red tortoise guard. Mustang body and volume/tone plate, Strat pickups and trem, Jaguar-like switching (just the single bank of slide switches, on/off for each pickup, no strangle switch, no rhythm circuit), and a 24.75" Gibson-style scale length, halfway in between the 24" of the Mustang/Jag and the 25.5" of a Strat or Jazzmaster. It blows away any Mustang I've ever played - I grew up with a '65 Mustang in white with red tortoise guard. I liked it so much I got another in Candy Apple Red for slide guitar. I imagine a lot of people don't know that Johnny Winter's first Columbia album prominently featured a '65 Mustang just like the one I grew up with.

Anyway - I don't think Fender is in any danger of being eclipsed by Squier. However, if one is careful, it is possible to get a real nice Squier for dirt cheap. I do think they generally require some fairly careful setup and sometimes fixing of issues. Younger guitar players without a ton of money never had it so good. I would have killed in 1967 to have a decent Strat/Tele/JM/Jag for around $35 in 1967 dollars - every one of these latest Squiers was less than $300 in 2022 dollars. What $30-40 in 1967 dollars bought in a new guitar was a low-end Teisco or Kawai MIJ guitar, and a $39 Kawai was my first electric guitar. The Mustang was a big upgrade.

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