Most of these reviews state that this gitar is a great value for the money, and that's true, but it implies that you only get what you paid for, I disagree, this guitar is a much greater guitar than that. I bought this as my first strat just to see if I liked the feel. I have since played the MIN and American Fenders and find IMO that the Squire Standard Strat has much better fit and finish than the MIM. The American pickups sound better and the rolled frets feel better but the Squire again holds it's own in fit, finish, sound and playability. I like the new type saddles and two point trem better than the pop-top saddles and six point trem on the MIM Fenders. Forget about the ventage hype, if Fender isn't making better sounding and playing guitars today than the did back in the sixties than shame on them. Ventage is just a bunch of BS to get big money for old stuff. Anyway, this is a great guitar, try it out.

I got this guitar for christmas as my second guitar. I had a yamaha acoustic so I was really excited. It was great. I put on some super slinkys and customized it with a floating bridge. This is an amazing guitar for beginners and for people who just want a guitar they can abuse but it plays fine the next day.

This is a great guitar for the money. the pickups can be bright or punchy depending upon your pickup selection, i have the 3 tone sunburst with maple neck. i prefer the neck & middle pickups together because of the punchy tone & also with the two together you eliminate the single coil hum. the tuners are nice (they are metal,) and the hardware is robust. ive had to tinker with the input jack but its a strat, a pretty common problem. i also found that a quick pull up on the bar will correct any out of tuneness after a drastic Hendrix style dive bomb. (mines set up to float) This may be common but ive heard my neck creak at the body joint during some mean string bends. maybe typical for a bolt on neck. dont turn your back on this Squier, you wont be dissappointed with this one.

I Looked Around For A Squier Stratocaster Electric Guitar For Months, And Then I Found This Squier Standard Strat And Fell In Love With It. I Got The Candy Apple Red With A Maple Fretboard. And It Plays And Sounds Great! Right Out Of The Box. Usually, I Have To Adjust The Saddles, But Not This Time. The Gold Colored Fret Markers Look Smooth And Feel Smooth Up And Down The Neck. I've Been Playing For 45 Years And I Have To Say, I Will Keep Playing This One Forever And It Will Be My Main Guitar.

I want to start off with these comments: This is my first guitar. I have had it 4 years. It is my only guitar. I RATED THIS GUITAR ON AN ALL INCLUSIVE SCALE - all guitars I've ever picked up (Fender American, PRS, Gibson, etc) are included in this comparison.

I bought this as a starter guitar, and it has served me very well, had a hiccup that was fixed, and continues to serve me well years later. It has made me really appreciate fender necks - they are fast (not that I shred or even want to shred) and comfortable. I hate fat necks; awful experiences.

I cannot give this axe a high quality rating for one main reason: the portion of the wood body that holds the pins which hold the bridge began to break when I put new strings on it (10s). I was ready to buy a new guitar after finding this, but I'm a tinkerer and I fixed it. (I MacGyvered this strat into a totally different guitar.) I cut a block of wood to fit perfectly into the bridge pickup cavity, and took out the bridge pickup. That fixed the problem with the bridge because that block holds the breaking wood, and hence the bridge, in place. Next, since I've got three pickups, one being opposite polarity and opposite wound than the other two, I naturally made a humbucker from two of them! I filed out the plastic pickguard to hold another pickup in the neck, and it just barely fits into the body's neck pickup cavity. I rewired the whole thing to a telecaster schematic with a humbucker in the neck and a single coil in the middle. It has one volume and one tone nob, with the extra switching allowing a bleed capacitor to be switched in or out for that snappy tele sound on the middle pickup. I also shielded the entire pickguard and electronics cavity and added a star ground to eliminate noise from the crappy wiring all fenders seem to have from the factory. The result is a rather odd, but really fun guitar. One of a kind, honestly. The humbucker isn't the worlds best since it's a little dark, but it definitely cancels hum and drives harder. All of the pickup configurations allowed by the switch are really different, unlike most guitars that only change tone slightly with different switch positions. It's great flexibility. You might be wondering why I'm going off on this tangent, but it brings me to this point: most guitars below $1000 aren't amazing from the factory, but if they're mechanically sound you can cheaply hot-rod the hell out of them and get something awesome! I've played some nice american strats, and they aren't that much fun. I'd much rather modify a squire or mexican than spend $1200 on an american fender!