Squier Surpassing Fender Guitars In Quality?

in today's episode we're gonna be checking out the 40th anniversary Squire Stratocaster so what I did so you guys know where this guitar came from was I reached out to the patrons and I said is anyone interested in buying this guitar and having a ship to the channel so we can check it out in this video so let's talk about what it is first of all it's a Stratocaster that has a couple upgrades and the upgrades are of course it has a binding on the neck so we'll go from the headstock down has close on style gold tuning keys with a gold string tree has the 70s style headstock so it's a little larger platform this is all gloss polyurethane or urethane neck so it's very shiny and feels very nice if you like a gloss neck now like I said if you if you don't I'm so I can understand why you're not going to like this it has binding around the entire neck to give it a beautiful look it has an actual bone nut and it has block mother of pearl inlays with an Indian Laurel fretboard I was hoping for this model maybe it'd be Rosewood and again keep in mind it's not because I have a particular interest in any type of wood it's just obviously certain Woods have different expenses and when you see a squire guitar Strat in the 500 dollar range you're hoping it's going to have some more premium features it has narrow tall Frets so uh they're going to be the width of like a vintage fret but they're going to be much taller so to me they feel like medium fret so if you're fused of medium style Frets these will feel pretty reminiscent you have gold Hardware so you have a gold Bridge you have an aluminum pick guard or scratch guard if you want to call it that and what's interesting is it's not gold it's kind of like a coppery bronze it looks pretty good but the screws look a little off you have three alnico Fender design pickups uh interesting it doesn't say what El ninco it is if it's two if it's four if it's five it's eight uh it just says it'll give you that Fender sound I I just thought it was very interesting that they were using such generic terms to explain such a something they should be super proud of right it's the 40th anniversary guitar but we'll get into that you have a five-way switch with three knobs you have volume tone tone we have two strap buttons something to note I don't know if it was done on purpose or it was done on accident this strap button is not in the center of this horn it's pushed back a little bit and I'm not sure why it was done that way like I said it could be done like that on purpose if you have this guitar and you could let us know in the comments if yours is like this if it's just like how they did this model maybe there's a purpose maybe they figured out that's where strap sits better or maybe somebody just wasn't centered up when they were drilling the hole as features go that's pretty much it it doesn't come with any gig bag or case it does come with an allen wrench of course the tremolo arm and some paperwork uh and that's it it has nine to 42 gauge strings so with those specifications let's get into the geeky stuff so now that we're all tuned up let's go ahead and see the neck relief and you can see here really good nice and straight so let's take a look at the action and looking at the action we are sitting in at two millimeters or 0.07 quick the guitar is sitting in at 25 and a half inches and we're going to check the intonation and see how that is and if you want to see how I set the intonation and how you can too very quickly and easily click the link down below to the video on how to intonate your guitar in three easy steps so let's go ahead and check these nut slots what we're going to do is depress the third fret and see how much space between the first fret and the string you see almost none man that's really good it's really good only thing is they really really cut this slots really deep it's not my preferred way of doing this but even though these kind of look a little deep they are working fine something interesting to note I couldn't find it in the literature I was looking at but I have confirmed that this is a dual action truss rod which means you can make this neck pretty much do whatever you want and that's very good at a guitar at this price point we're definitely seeing these Deluxe truss rods in a lot of affordable guitars now and let me tell you these guitars probably needed more than any other guitars it really pretty much doesn't guarantee that this guitar can be set up anywhere but I'm just going to let you know it's a lot easier to correct issues that might be happening because of environment so let's check these Frets and see how well they leveled them as I always point out in all these deep Dives you can use a fret rocker to check for high Frets but you can always just play each individual note and if you notice a problem confirm it with a fret rocker or credit card and these Frets look great all right let's see how polished these Frets are and they're not that bad now this is a good time to point out that they are obviously leveling these Frets crowning them and then sanding them so they're smooth they're not doing a high detail polish so my final thoughts will have some discussion about that it's time for the sock test let's see how well they did the front ends and they're snagging you can see there a lot of snags really the Frets felt fine but the ends are not very trimmed up you can see right there let's do the base side so let's do the base side and same thing you can see so definitely a two and a half a three maybe out of five really sad because you can definitely see where a lot of companies and no name companies just selling guitars on Amazon are selling much much better workmanship than this at a lower price now what's important to mention about these Frets is that even though they didn't pass a test this neck did not shrink that is not the problem the problem is right here that the the ends oops that the ends right here are just a little Sharp we're going to take a fret-in dress file which is rounded okay we're not even going to tape it off and all we're going to do is just come here at an angle just like this see here come down against this see how it slides nicely without that's it super light do all okay and I like to go out and then in out and then out then in and so on and now we're going to do the other sides same thing we're going to take the rounded side down so it doesn't hurt anything just run it here and like I said just kind of like a little tilted angle brush it up out then just like that okay so let's go ahead and check it now and a couple snags here and there you see little light ones but much better let's do it one more time and same thing couple little Marks here and there you can see where I think I missed one or two little spots but overall a much big Improvement just from removing the barbs looking at the neck a couple things we have a one piece Maple neck with gloss finish this guitar is made in Indonesia and it has close on style tuning keys I say style because they're not actually brand occlus ones you have of course The Binding on the sides and then with the Indian Laurel fretboard this is probably done for Aesthetics this looks like Walnut right here and so there's a walnut even though there's not a skunk straight in the back they did Walnut here my guess is just again for Aesthetics to make it look nice and it does now mentioned that these Frets were listed as narrow tall and I have confirmed that although they are narrow like a vintage fretware they are tall and they are like medium Frets so these are going to feel pretty much just like the traditional Fender made Mexico main USA fret wire that you're seeing now on current guitars something to show you on the back plate it is gold it says Squire 40th anniversary which is nice we do the a handshake we grab her here but obviously this is a fender and so uh of course it's not very good it pokes you right there this is um not the best handshake so you can see when you hold here it's kind of a little thick it's hard to put your fingers to the other side of the fretboard but you know come on we all love strats and it's inherent in that design and we're going to confirm right now that it is a nine and a half inch radius fretboard the fretboard is slightly rolled so it doesn't look like they intentionally rolled it over like they do uh when they're making the USA fenders and they kind of really want to feel broken in it just feels not sharp on the edge I mean it's more more than adequate and because it's a plastic binding it doesn't have a harsh corner so I'm going to say slightly rolled fretboard Edge all right so this guitar is sitting in with a c profile on the neck I don't know the 12th fret definitely the seat profile so this is definitely a c-shaped neck and it is 42 millimeters wide which is 1.653 so again definitely more narrow than a fender let's take the 12th fret and your 12th fret is going to be 2.024 or 51.41 millimeters so again a very small kind of more narrow neck than what you see traditionally on Fender at the first fret we are at 20.63 millimeters thick or 0.812 and at the 12th fret we are 0.907 or 23.04 millimeters thick let's check the pickups we're running a guitar cable into the output Jack we're using the two clamps we're pointing the ground to the shaft of the of the guitar cable and then of course hot to the tip and right now the bridge is showing at 6.45 and of course the middle pickup is at 6.08 K and the neck is at 5.75 K so definitely going for a vintage style pickup with the amount of wire they're putting on there that's only one part of the story let's look at the inductance we're looking at the bridge pickup at 2.49 Henry's the middle pickup at 2.25 henries and the neck pickup at 2.06 Henry's this is important because the lower that number the brighter the pickup is going to sound obviously that means these pickups are definitely going for the Vintage Strat bright tone I also wanted to get on my Tesla meter and see if I could figure out what these magnets are and based on what I'm seeing here I'm 90 sure these are alniko 5 magnets which are brighter than El ninco 2s So based on the resistance I was getting I'm going to say these pickups are about 8 000 turns a 42 gauge wire putting them in that 50s era vintage Strat tone especially with the inductance reading and now this uh so we're gonna probably hear some really cool vintage sounding strap pickups here let's take a look at the electronics first I just want to point out there's no shielding in this cavity that I can see sometimes they can Shield it and then paint over it that makes a little difficult but I I took and took a little file and marked right there I couldn't see anything underneath there there's nothing really for me to check with a multimeter so there's just no way to tell and then right here is the the bare wood so we can see that the wood is here now this is the metal plate that we were talking about what we have is a basic PCB board switch these are my least favorites and of course some small potentiometers these are 250ks with a 0.22 microfarad capacitor um these are alpha pots it looks like yep these are alpha pots now normally I don't have a problem like I said sometimes they point out the dime ones are bad and the bigger ones are good to me it's not a quality thing and how good they are it's how they feel these feel different than the bigger ones the big ones feel more substantial to me but quality wise because these could last just as long as any big ones don't let somebody tell you just because this is a small potentiometer that somehow it's bad Alpha makes the pots for three thousand dollar amps just as well these pickups you can see here we have plastic inject molded bobbins this is definitely reminiscent of what we used to see in the old USA standard stratocasters not the main Mexico's because those had a ceramic magnet on the back and these are actually El Nico slugs so these are magnets right here these are magnetized each slug there's not a bar here looking at the output Jack it's pretty good it's not a switchcraft part or anything but the quality is pretty good there's a little bit of solder work there I'm not impressed with but it's doing the the job but the quality of this if you look here at a standard switchcraft one isn't far off I'm not saying it's the exact same in quality let's do it this way what I am saying though is that it's pretty darn close looks pretty good so not bad at all so that's pretty good for reference this guitar is 7.73 pounds but I've seen them as high as nine pounds and as light as seven pounds or on the high six pound range this body is made of naito which is like a mahogany type wood so it can be pretty heavy or pretty light depending on probably its moisture content or its density when it was cut to be prepared if you're looking at these guitars they can range from anywhere from Seven Pounds to nine pounds looking at pricing you can see these guitars come in at 499 dollars and come in a few different colors and versions comparatively speaking you can look at The Sire guitars that are also made in Indonesia for about 100 more with a roasted Maple neck you could look at made in Mexico Fender strats for about 350 dollars more or you can look at the e-art guitars that are almost half the price with stainless steel Frets or look at a square classic Vibe and save about 70 dollars and lose just a few of the detail features from this guitar alright let's do some sound samples first we'll be using the Paul Reed Smith senzera in the clean Channel with a little bit of Reverb and it's 20 watts through a stock 112 inch speaker mic'd up with an sm57 into a Neves 88m interface into my computer and of course I'm also running a room mic foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] yeah it sounds good I mean it sounds like a strat [Music] that's position four so that's gonna be your neck and middle [Music] it's got a very light sound to it back to that neck [Music] now in the neck and middle [Music] you know what it does it sounds does that quacky thing I like but it does sound a little thinner than I like [Music] middle position this is actually a position I use quite a lot [Music] yeah it's weird that the middle and the neck sound kind of thin I mean they sound good but that middle [Music] okay now we're going to have the middle in the bridge [Music] yeah it's a little bit of snap to it [Music] yeah it's cool let's go to the bridge that's good [Music] thank you okay all right so we have the tone control here is attached to the bridge pickup [Music] and the tone control in the middle is attached to the neck and middle so that's your wiring configuration [Music] thank you [Music] a little scratch [Music] okay well you got a scratchy pot [Music] yeah hold on [Music] graduate pot so let's fix it for that bad potentiometer that was crackling we're just going to use some deoxy you can use electronic contact cleaner I just like deox it because I like the controllable adjust spray I keep it on low you can see here right there right in that little line right there see that little section right there you're just going to put the straw right in there just go just let it go in there once you do that flip it over let it work in and you'll feel it like already I can tell just really nice and loose and you may want to do it again it won't hurt anything but it's uh it's fine and if you get deoxy on anything like here just wipe it all up with a dry cloth okay so let's go ahead and switch to some overdrive so I switched the sun zero over to the overdrive setting and I also have the bright switch on same sm57 same everything else and let's check out the guitar and see how it sounds with overdrive [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay this is the neck and middle [Music] wow okay in the middle [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] okay now we got the bridge in Middle [Music] okay and of course the bridge [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I mean that sounds great [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] yeah that's great so what are my final thoughts on this guitar well it's actually a really impressive guitar I was shocked I loved the way it looked I love the color I love the block inlays I love The Binding I was really impressed with the pickups they sounded really good for this price point there's not a whole lot of things to improve it would be nice if it had a five-way mechanical switch like a made Mexico or a main USA Strat but other than that it was fine it will do the job one thing I I want to do before I send it back is correct basically three things that I'd like to improve so first I'm going to go ahead and put in some conductive shielding paint in the cavity now you can use a tape but I like to use conductive shielding paint the other thing I want to do is Polish those Frets although they were fine once I took care of those barbs they played great I'm going to go ahead and just put a detailed polish on them I'm going to use my polishing wheel on my Dremel it works great the other thing you have to do when you do it is you want to use painters tape and tape off the entire fretboard however I have a metal guard and if you need one like this I believe music Nomad is making one that looks similar to the one I've been using for the last couple years so you might want to check that one out and if it helps every time I get a new polishing wheel the first thing I do is use my little screwdriver or something that's shaped like a fret to make a little Groove in the center of it so it rides across the Fret perfectly I just like having it the shape of a fret it works great that way the last thing I want to make sure I do is upgrade the tuning keys so I bought a set of close and style locking keys off Amazon for 40 bucks they're really good I checked them out I'm really impressed and I was able to put them on in five minutes basically all you want to do is make sure you match up whether or not you have a furl like a press in furl for the shaft of your tuning keys or if you have a nut this had the furrows so that's an easy thing to exchange out these are direct Replacements and like I said it's pretty easy so with locking keys some conducting shelding paint and polish the Frets up I think he's going to have a fantastic guitar and I'll put a new set of nine gauge strings on there as well I want to thank you guys for supporting the channel if you're not a subscriber please consider it it doesn't cost you anything but it does a huge dividend to the channel and as always I just want to thank you guys for your time to the next time know your gear all right [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 341,404

Keywords:

Id: 0_ImIqMGgrA

Length: 22min 38sec (1358 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023