Squier by Fender strat review

This is how the combo looks like, but with a crappier amp and tuner...

 This is my fist review EVER, so take it into consideration. A have never written this publicly before, so don't get too critical on me. I must also say that english is NOT my first language. I am in the process of getting proficiency but I do not live or have not lived in an english talking country, so cut me some friggin' slack. So, as I said, I'll review my first guitar, which, as the title states, is a Squier by Fender Stratocaster. Now, there is a problem with what the box says on the outside, but I'll come back to that later; now let's talk about the specs. The guitar incorporates a body made of alder wood, and the neck of maple wood. It contains 21 frets in total, and the body includes three single-coil pickups. There are three controls on the body: one for volume and two for tone with a five-position pickup switching. The bridge is a synchronous tremolo and the machine heads are the standard Die-Cast Tuners. At the back you can see a chrome-built hardware with all the insides of the guitar and what not. Normally the pickguard is white, but mine has a red and black finish.

 Now you know how the guitar looks like, but here comes the serious business. As I said before, there is a problem with the box, and that's because it has quite a misleading slogan on it. It says: "Stop dreaming! Start playing!" Yeah, you get the point, the guitar's for starters. But that's not the problem. Once I unboxed the guitar, I frantically tried to play the intro of Nothing Else Matters, and the guitar sounded terribly untuned and shaky, which became a problem, since it was late at night and I wanted to play now. How are you going to start playing right away with an untuned guitar? It isn't major or horrible, it's just annoying at the beginning. Anyway, I tried to tune the guitar with the tuner that came with it, and after several futile attempts at doing so, I plugged the guitar to the Mac using Garageband and tuned it with the built-in tuner. I tried the song for a third time and it actually was in tune! The problem of the previous tuner was that it detected only the pitch of the string's vibrations, instead of using a built-in microphone to detect the pitch of the tone.


 Once tuned, I plugged it to my amplifier which came with my guitar as well; and the guitar sounded astonishingly well. I began trying all of the five switches and each one had its unique tone and vibration. I loved the high pitched vibration the strings transmitted, but I began to comprehend what this guitar was for, once I used Garageband to try and play it with heavy amounts of distortion. The guitar comes with three single-coil pickups, and that's because it is principally made for playing blues and country. I love country and blues, but when I used high levels of distortion the guitar sounded dirty and unfiltered. Once I began trying out and improvising blues and country songs, the guitar sounded beautiful and clean. However, when exposed to high drive levels, the guitar shows its rough and dervish side, as if showing who the boss is.


 So we talked about the tuning problem, how it looks, how it sounds... Now let's look at what it comes with. The combo is incredibly complete: it contained the guitar (obviously), three picks, a mono-aural cable, the SP-10 Squire amplifier, a whammy bar, a guitar case, a tuner (which is useless) and a strap. I read on some articles that the 80s squire strat, when whammed, gets untuned. Don't worry, this problem does no longer exist. The whammy bar works fine without untuning it the slightest. However, there is quite a problem with the bar. When I pull to trigger a whammy effect, it makes a really annoying squeaky sound, as if rusty valves opened and closed. Also, the bar unscrews constantly making it fall down.

The verdict: If you love the pure sound of an electric guitar, and want to start easy, it's a keeper. You should strongly consider getting this guitar if you're not going to play any modern music or going to use whammy. If you want to play metal, hard rock or something similar, you better get a guitar made for that genre only. If you are a country, blues and classic rock lover, you will feel ok with this guitar. If you aren't fan of either, try it, and decide whether to buy it or not, depending on your opinion.

2.5 out of 5 stars