A great guitar for beginners! (Fender Squier Affinity Strat RW)

Member Name: Ggd07

Product:	Fender Squier Affinity Strat RW
Date:	25/10/09 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, reliable and attractive. Perfect for beginners!

Disadvantages: Sound quality is not the best for these class guitars and the tremolo can unstrung the guitar.

Features:
Squier Affinity Stratocasters body is made from alder. It has a maple neck, Rosewood fingerboard and twenty two frets. They are models with three single-coil Pickups, and models with two single-coil pickups and one humbucker.

The controls on the pickguard are Volume Control, Tone Control for the Neck pickup, and another Tone Control for the middle pickup. The pickup switch has five positions. The first position enables the bridge pickup, the second position enables the bridge and middle pickups, the third position enables the middle pickup, the forth position enables the middle and neck pickups and finally the fifth position enables the neck pickup.

The bridge features a synchronous tremolo, which I don't recommend touching it very often, because it will unstrung your guitar, and if you are beginner and don't have a digital guitar tuner, it will be difficult for you to tune it back.

The pickguard is white on models. My squier has its time and when I look at it, and look at a new one, my white pickguard has became darker.

Other Specifications:
Scale Length: (648 mm) 25.5
Width at Nut: (40.9 mm) 1.61
Strings: Fender Super 250L, (.009 to .042) Nickel Plated Steel, P/N 073-0250-003

The guitar was introduced in 2001, and is available in Black, Metallic Red and Metallic blue.

Sound and Action:
I bought this guitar two years ago and I still play on it. The fact that I am playing in a band, and am still with this guitar, makes me think I should go get a new one, and sell the squier, because I don't think it sounds that great, like some people say. When I started playing the guitar, it sounded great for me, but now as I advance in a more experienced level, I see that it doesn't. This guitar is more like a "beginner's guitar" but beginners should know they can invest in something better for some more cash. Although if you are low on budget, and want to start playing the guitar, this might be your best choice. The good thing about the guitar is that it is very easily customizable. You can buy better pickups and change them, you can customize your pickguard, make some artwork on it and with some little effort you can make it compete with higher class guitars.

Other than that, if you use this guitar with a processor and a nice amplifier, you might end up getting a pretty bright and clean sound. I play Rage Against the Machines, Tool and other bands, and was able to make the sound exactly as the original ones with my zoom guitar processor.

Reliability:
I dropped this guitar so many times, that I have lost count and it works fine for the last two years. I have to say that this could survive a bomb. Although it may get easily scratched, you can hide that by making some artwork of your own, and customizing the looks a bit.

Conclusion:
Well, do I recommend this product or not?
Yes I recommend it, especially for beginners, although the sound quality can be really dull, if you customize this guitar not only from the outside, but from the inside too, get a guitar processor and you can get some amazing sound quality that can compete with the big bands in the music industry.

Summary: A good affordable guitar for beginners.