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I purchased this guitar at Guitar Center, Eugene, OR for just under $200 (like a penny under but still under :P ) Right after signing up for a group instruction class at the local Community College, the pickups on my fake Telecaster went out on me. Since it was a fake, I was not able to find compatible pickups ANYwhere on short notice so I opted for a new axe (never a bad idea, right?) This was the perfect excuse to get a Strat, which I've always wanted, but I was on a limited budget so I opted for the Squier Indonesian model instead of a Mexican Fender. The salesman (his name is Rusty) was very helpful, and both my father and I spoke with him quite a bit over the phone for a couple of days before we went in to make the purchase. We told him what we were looking for and what we could afford, and he agreed that the Squier Strat would be just what I was looking for. He spent a while playing with all the ones they had at the store and finally picked out a nice metallic purple one with a rosewood fretboard that he thought felt the nicest to play, and set it aside. I came in the next day, and after looking at all the rest decided that I liked his choice the best, as well. We bought it that day and I've loved it ever since.

Great value. Spent a hundred dollars less than the "real" Fender, and that hundred dollars would have paid for "about an hour's worth of work on the fretboard" according to Rusty. Hey, for a hundred bucks, *I* can spend an hour filing frets, right?

After I got it, and had been playing for a couple of days, I noticed that once in a while the sound would cut out and be replaced by a loud buzzing/humming sound, no matter what the volume was set at on the guitar, and also one of the tone controls seemed to have an effect only intermittently. This turned out to be from poor soldering of the connections inside the unit, but luckily my father the electrician was able to fix that and touch up a couple of other suspicious connections, so now it works fine.

The wiring inside the guitar was horrible. Almost all of the connections had not nearly enough solder on them, and some of them were even completely disconnected (that's why the tone and volume controls were acting up, they weren't connected and only worked when the wires happened to be touching the posts.) When I opened it up, the cavities inside were quite a mess, with uneven paint all over and what looked like sawdust under the paint, but aside from the wiring there was nothing that would affect its performance. The neck is straight and the strings keep their tune from one day to the next.

A very good deal for the money. Small problems at most, that can be fixed with a couple of hours time put into it in your garage. I would recommend it to anyone wanting a Strat but doesn't want to shell out for an American Standard Double Deluxe Super-Duper Eddie Bauer Edition with double-pearl inlay and...you get the point. Good basic starter strat.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com