Squier vs Fender vs Fender Custom Shop - What You Actually Get For Your Money 

Oh no I’m binge watching gear videos again.. Help.

All the guitars in this video are good to varying degrees. I'd say if you're thinking of buying a strat, buy the highest end one you can afford without screwing your finances. They're works of art these guitars and you'll have something you can love playing for the rest of your life. Wether you have a squier or a CS you're gonna have a blast!

Squires are definitely making a come back & MIM Fenders from recent years are awesome too. There’s so many low cost options today

Quality content as always. Thank you for such an articulate / informative comparison video.

It's always been difficult for me to explain the feeling I got when I picked up my Clapton CS strat, and you nailed it. I'll be refering my mates to this channel, great vid. PS got the EC CS strat 12 yrs ago and still get that feeling, thank you.

As a beginner guitarist this video was great! Very enlightening. Thanks Dagan for another awesome vid 👍

Your comment about the psychological playing is so true. Just picked up a 2008 Tele Standard that makes me play differently. I play it slower so I can hear the tone of each note. It sounds awesome in my mind. As far a relics go, not my bag so I bought used to get the played in feel. A lot cheaper and it’s genuine wear. Do like the art aspect to relic custom shop but my wife tells me I can’t afford it full stop. Nice review. 👍🇦🇺

Dagan makes me want to buy anything he plays.. Thanks God he doesn't review grand pianos.

Thx that was really helpful, could see the joy as you were playing the custom shop, thinking of getting my first proper electric, a custom shop :)

Player series has always been the most appealing to me

easy answer: Fender if you’re rich... Squier if you’re not...

Very well done lad. I always enjoy your videos and always useful information.

I think I will go with the American standard, thank you Dagan for such a detailed explanation!

Superb video! Great energy. Thanks

Love your videos. Very entertaining and informative.

I hope you own PMT Dagan (or at least have a share) , cos ur working ur ass off on this channel - great videos mate - super informative AND entertaining :)

Sounds great! Love some Squiers in my collection of affordable axes🤘🏼. My favorite is my MIJ '70s Strat with Lollar pups. Cheers!

I stated in another comment that last week I bought a new Squire Bullet Strat HSS HT and it's scary because after I smoothed down the frets on the side of the neck and I can't stop playing it. I always stated that I keep my guitars quantity down so I can play equally but I went to play my Epiphone LP and the Squire felt better! I'm not practicing what I preach!

I would love the next incarnation of the American elite/ultra series to feature roasted woods, 24 stainless steel frets, luminescent inlay material and maybe even neck-through construction. After all, if it's supposed to be the result of the most modern features a manufacturer can reasonably put into a guitar all at once, those are some really great (and popular) features.

Kenny Everett lives lol. Great video best one I’ve seen for explaining the differences and this guys great.

The player series comes with great, appealing tone, and the sound is close to US made fender. Love the player series. 🎸🎸

Awesome awesome awesome breakdown man! Such a comprehensive breakdown, I love my fender Stratocaster but would love to try a customer shop 🤣 ..btw did your watch change wrist half way through??

I can’t wait for this whole COVID thing to end so that I can go up and down the country to different PMT stores

It’s worth pointing out that the old fenders wore in and got played in so well because they were finished in nitrocellulose paint; only the American Original series and the Custom Shop guitars offer nitro from Fender nowadays, so even if you bought an American Professional and played it for twenty years, it wouldn’t wear so beautifully.

Personally my favorite Fenders are made in Japan. Same feel and sound as the American made but priced much cheaper and usually have a higher resale value.

I like that single cut fender behind him😂

They started in 1989 before that they packaged strings at the MIM plant. it did burn down and they rebuilt it in the late 90's the 1997 Calif series were the first ones to have the wood cut in the USA and finished in mexico and shipped back to the USA for final assembly and also the first Classic MIM series of Teles and Strats 1998 were made this way wood cut in the USA shipped to the MIM plant just for finishing and back to the USA for the final assembly. Now this is Just something i found on Google, but if this makes you tell me im awesome and thumb this up i will be glad i spent 3ish minutes searching about

At the end of the day, we have to remember that 99% of the tone from guitars are because of the amplifiers. I would rather play a Squier Affinity Strat on a Vox Conquerer amp than say a Gibson Les Paul on a crappy little practice amp

Love that blue fender strat on the wall

I learned a lot from this video!

his eyes are sparkling with the fenders in his hand....pro especially

The Squiers are actually NOT made by Fender, but are made by Cort, Samick, and Yako overseas under contract with Fender, to Fender's specs and using parts specified and/or supplied by Fender. Only guitars made im Mexico and California are technically made BY Fender, because they own and operate those two factories. Even Japanaese Fenders, as amazing as their quality is, are NOT made by Fender either, but are made by Japanese factories under contract with Fender also. The Squiers made since 2019 have Indian Laurel boards instead of rosewood, just like Fender ones have been Pau Ferro since then too. Only American and Japanese Fenders still use rosewood boards. Also, very few production guitars use ash anymore, since the species is being destroyed by an infestation of beetles. Because of that, guitars made of ash are in very limited quantities, and only on a select few models and CS guitars.

My first electric guitar was a 1984 Ibanez Strat copy only the headstock was different. I don't know if they had Squiers then...I'm a middle aged dude always a guitar player forever.

Fender began producing instruments in its Ensenada, Mexico, factory in 1990. :)

It’s awesome to have a compound radius from 9.5-12 please help bring it back

I really enjoyed listening to you play but at 12:30 my two cats did not like that sound lol. It really upset them! Well I thought it sounded great anyway lol. I'm learning to play (slightly later in life) and would love to be able to play like you some day :)

Dagen, we love you and we love your love for strats

I thought the Bullet was the base model?The player series has a dual fulcrum bridge noticable intantly, that's a jump up in hardware quality. Who makes the bridges for them Dagan, do you know? Thanks.I have a Shecter 79 Van Nuys Strat and it can go toe to toe with an American Fender Strat no problem, i love it it's a great player.

I started off on a squier affinity stat and it was great except for the pickups- they sounded really cheap and not like what you’d expect from a strat

I play a 1987 Squier strat and it is my favorite guitar of all time. it's #E1001116 which means it's the first-ever run of Korean squiers!. It's better than every other strat I've ever played and heard. something about the way those Korean strats are built that is so so so good

That white player strat sounds amazing.

Hey Dagan. Just wanted to say, from one SG guy to another, I finally got a Gibson. 1999 SG Standard.

Best player I ever met played Squire... when I asked him why he said "they're cheaper"

I picked up an American Professional as my first electric and it’s audibly different and feels nicer than the MIM’s I had played

Every fender strat I’ve had suffered with terrible fret buzz ! Is this normal ?

I wish somebody would talk about ghost builders and maybe interview a few and get a few secrets. Bet they would have some interesting stories to tell. Speaking of which, is Alexanxer Dumbell still alive and if so is he still making amps?

Damn Dagan pulling through right when I'm thinking about buying a strat

Damn that American pro is the same one Sam fender uses I wish I could get that but I settled for a fender Mexican made Stratocaster whirlpool finish. One day !

Relic'd strats/teles aren't for me, but I can see the attraction from people to them. My only problem is that it seems like the custom shop makes way more relic'd ones than NOS ones. When I was looking for a CS strat, almost every one I really liked was relic'd, and that's not for me. I wish they would make a 50/50 split as opposed to the 75/25 split it seems to be.

Hello PMTVUK, greetings from Germany, yes, you're right, Strats don't have to come from Fender. But I can understand that American musicians are very proud of Fender and Gibson, just as Germans are proud of Mercedes Benz and BMW, that's all right! But when it comes to Strats and Teles, many German and European musicians don't think the same way as their American colleagues. I'm not saying anything against Fender and Squier guitars, but I recommend assessing the whole thing qualitatively. As far as I know, with Squier you don't currently get an alder body, but alder has its own sound, its own frequency spectrum, which is typical for the 60s Strat, while ash has the sound of a 54 Strat, etc. a 53 Tele, woods sound typical if these woods have a minimum quality. Fender has made it a condition of its subsidiaries that they are not allowed to build the bodies from the original wood, precisely because these subsidiaries sometimes delivered higher quality work, so that they do not have the same authentic Fender sound in the guitars produced there should hear that this is not an original Fender! This only changed for the Fender factory in Mexico after the 2000s, and the Mexico people were finally allowed to use alder for the Classic 50ie and Classic 60ie. Therefore, it can be reduced to the question: How do I get an authentic sound for cheap money? The solution: I play BLADE Texas Classic and BLADE Texas Standard Pro, which, for example, are very cheap used, have an alder body and a dense maple neck, a tapered neck-body-joint resulting in better playability, covered fret slots, the best workmanship and wood selection, and you can get it used for 300 to 400 Euros. So then I recommend swapping the pickups and then putting DiMarzio True Velvet in there, maybe only in the neck and middle position, in the bridge position I would recommend a Seymour Duncan SSL-1. Great combo, nothing Fender-like can match it!!! In terms of quality and sound, the BLADE guitars stand out in the high-end series production, and sometimes also in the custom shop segment. Add to that better playability and the chord is fading away harmoniously! I used to play the ESP 400 Series Strats, now the BLADE are definitely coming along! My conclusion: Get a BLADE Texas Classic for cheap money, or a Texas Standard Pro with midboost like the Fender Eric Clapton, add good pickups, and you have a noble guitar! Or if you want to spend a little more money and have a traditional feeling, you can buy an “ESP-400-Series” strat. So I don't need Fenders and Squiers here in Germany, we have so many alternatives in and from Europe and Japan/Asia like TOKAI and FGN, very fine guitars with good selected woods, original authentic woods, and best quality of craftmannship.

You really should have played a classic vibe instead of the affinity. There's a huge difference in quality between those two. Other than that, another great video!

thanks for your work. it is the nuance of the clay that is worth 3000.-😉

Really good job with the guitars, but that is a fine watch.

Dagan, Dagan, Dagan ... (shakes head sadly,) Squier is not a sister company of Fender. It never was. It's a BRAND owned and run by Fender. There was once a VC Squier Co. that supplied strings to Fender in the 1950s; It became a Fender subsidiary in 1965, but Fender dissolved it in the 1970s, years before releasing the first Squier guitars. The VC Squier Co. never had anything to do with making Squier guitars.

That amp is dialed in perfect kinda like the player sound better than the price or the custom shop

I have an early 00’s Squire Strat. It’s total garbage. But oh, have I modded it over the years from tuners, to pickups, to bridge. All done for a reasonable price. It also has a great neck. It would cost me a fortune to replicate it. Lesson is Strats are great, great, modding platforms.

I would rather have a cv strat, a cv telecaster, and a cv jazzmaster, as opposed to one full fender. Then again if I had a lot of money, and I do mean a lot, and I could afford it then sure, I would probably buy all top of the line fenders. But at the moment I have a mustang bullet, which cost me 110 pounds, and an affinity strat, which are about 200, and they are both great. Thinking about buying a classic vibe at some point tho, cos I love squier so much that I want to try a cv.

Been in Ensenada since July 20th 1987. So 33 years

I can't help but wonder if it was a mistake for me paying more for American performer vs player was worth it

I've got a squire bullet tele and for me it sounds great but the frets are quite sharp and the neck itself feels a lot worse quality than my friend's player series tele

squier was my first guitar..hated the position of the control knobs..moved on to epi sg400

I like this guy a lot more than chapman! Much more humble and polite

Shame he didn’t mention Fender Vintera, Fender American Original, Fender American Ultra...

Like always got a custom shop taste with a squire budget

squier 60s classic vibes sound so nice

I started with a Squire Affinity. I played that thing everyday like there was no tomorrow. It sounded alright, the only issue was that it would not stay in tune for longer than 5 minutes. I loved it. Now I can afford things and I have a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul Standard now. I gave my Squire to a friend’s son who wanted to learn and he is getting really good!

at the end of the day the amp and pickups matters the most

Why no mention of the quality of Machine heads. ??...I found out my Fender Jim Adkins thinline has but Cheapo ,,Squier Telecaster Tuners..that cost about £4-16 pence each..£25 for 6. .Spend a £120 odd squid and put better Tuners on it. !! Graph Tech or Fender own American Locking Tuners makes a world of difference. The Wiring is still Squier wiring though.. and i see if you can find one they are going for around the £750-£800 mark new and 2nd hand... i paid £350-£400 for mine new back in 2008/9... Beautiful Guitar though... !!

Hey, why we don´t have legends?

I'm really stuck with this choise. I want to buy a Fender, like a proper one, but in Russia players costs more than 1000$ and the CVs costs something between 700-1000$. And i don't know, i'm fine with my Affinity strat, but now i can feel and hear the difference between cheap (but in Russia affinity wasn't that cheep tho) and expensive guitar tho. I mean, i can imagen a world of Russian music where everybody plays Squiers, cuz that's a a mid-range guitars in Russia :')

How about fender japan made Stratocaster ??

fender custom shop is actually the best Deal...the best bargain in this video....but few will understand this...

Next video: Indonesian Epiphone vs Chinese Epiphone vs Gibson USA vs Gibson CustomShop

It just dawned on me that the sweat shop conversation never ever comes up during any of these reviews. That's a big part of why they're so much cheaper. And it's part of the quality control issue. I try and shop as local as possible when buying anything, musical or not. It's often impossible to do when it comes to electronics but they do still make guitars in the US and UK. Even if you don't care about the ethical side of the issue, surely you want to keep at least a few jobs in your country.

The body of that Strat is made of Alder? But is that Alder than me?

Relics 👍🎸

The standard is actually the professional now because I had an American standard strat but it got stolen. I'm not sure if the Mexican ones had a standard model too but I dont think so.

What if you buy a fender that was made in America but the bloke who built it is Mexican?

We could all see you leaning on that volume pedal. Wasn't the pots.

My squier paranormal cyclone fells a bit better than a MIM strat i played.

these day's you don't have to buy an custom shop fender anymore , if you like the old school fenders then just by an american original series fender , there awesome ( just as good as any custom shop ) and they cost a lot less .

I feel like comparing these guitars is like comparing less expensive vodka with expensive vodka. There’s a slight difference but both get the job done 😂

I use to think you were a tops pot. Now I've found out you ate indeed a tops pot. Just kidding man. Love your shit! And yes I understand there's sales involved but you break things down quite nicelymkrrp up the Goo work man. Love itm

ตอนนี้ต้องทำให้เสร็จไม้ครับ

30 min south of Corona isn’t even San Diego.

Player Series...that is all.

Just soooo fun eh'

The first time I played a Player Strat I was so taken back. Neck felt like a hollow baseball bat. Cheap finish, like balsa wood to the touch. I’ve owned three USA Malmsteen Strats, and wanted something a bit cheaper for a couch/beat around guitar that I’d scallop myself. It was pretty depressing.

Squier was aquired by Fender in 1965, so a Squier is a Fender Period! Stevie Ray Vaughan played a Squier, He definitely was no beginner.

😂🤦🏻‍♂️ half an hour south? Nope, more like 2 and a half hours. Not sure who came up with that joke but it’s definitely not half an hour.

Can anyone get me a Rory Gallagher strat?

The resemblance to Russell Brand is insane.

Your store also make a lot of money selling FENDER and GIBSON because your MARKUP is incredibly high also.

Is his accent changing?

22:18 Hey, you can't ever have wasted 40 years of your life if you played a Stratocaster!

An early 82 JV squier is on par or even better than custom shop fenders.

did Fender sponsor this video?

Fun fact: Squier Classic Vibe guitars have bone nuts!

The bang for buck quality you can get for a high end American Strat (around 1500-1700) wont even get you a decent Gibson. Fenders are just a far better deal!

75 years?