I have the "silverburst" model, offered several years ago and purchased thru MF's stupid deal. It's now repainted gun metal grey and looks and plays great. The pickups on mine were too bright and I mellowed them out with a .01ufd cap across the volume control. It effects all three pickups and you can judge the effect externally with clip leads on the output plug with the volume pot set at max. The tone controls on mine were scratchy and intermittant, and that was fixed with tuner cleaner and vigorous back-and-forth rotation. This strat plays easier than my 63 Fender and with the tone mods, sounds just as good.

I love this guitar. It plays and sounds awesome. The action is great. It stays in tune even if you jam the whammy hard.I replaced the three single coils with two humbuckers and this thing screams. It still has that strat tone but sounds really good distorted. I can play just about any style with this thing it sounds great.

I have gigged with this guitar and it looks and sounds great. It has a much better tone and finish than an MIM strat. The neck is fast and the pickups sound very good. The tuners are also high quality. The guitar stays in tune well. Definitely consider the Squier Strat Standard if you are looking for the classic strat sound at a lower price

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.