Why Are Squier Guitars Hated? 

Hi, sorry for the shitty audio. I haven't done anything differently in this video and the one before, but something is off. I can't hear any distortion in my editing software or my iPad gallery, only once it's uploaded to RU-vid. Will be fixed in the next video and sorry for putting your ears through that! 👁️👄👁️

The research and production value in these videos is astounding for a channel with only 3.5k subs. You address the camera like you’ve been making vids for years let alone only 7 months. found this channel through KDH (the Yngvie malmsteen fiasco) and binged all your vids. Can’t wait for this channel to blow up 👍

I like the point about Squier being their platform for testing new ideas. You're 100% right on that.

Low end guitars stopped sucking around the turn of the century and for the last 20 years the value-for-dollar ratio has continued to increase. It is simply amazing what 2 or $300 can get you now compared to back in the eighties when I was a teenager. It's actually astounding.

Of all the "guitar guy" channels, you're jamming and noodling always feels more sincere and realistic than others who demo gear. You jam out the way I think I do, and thus I think a lot of guys and gals do. Very relaxed, not pretentious. Just a guy whose pretty fuckin badass on guitar, talking shit and jamming, and I appreciate it!!

Fender but squier is leading the way for young new generation guitarists who want their own sound their own guitar, fender and squier offers that. Unique parallel and paranormal, vintage to contemporary. Can’t go wrong.

The reality is that low end guitars today are better than they have EVER been thanks to advancements in mass production techniques. Hell, last year my former roommate bought a US$200 GIO Ibanez that had ZERO business being as good as it was. He put a Duncan Invader in it, god damn that thing sounded WAY better than it had any right to hahaha.

Fender has a great line up. Products at virtually every price point.

Who hates Squier??

Love your videos! Jazzmasters don’t have p90 pickups though, the j mascis signature squier did but all classic vibes have jazzmaster pickups. There flatter and wider than a p90 with some somewhat similar characteristics!

I’m 75 and i just bought my first Squire, a Classic Vibe Starcaster. It’s a great guitar punching way above it’s price.

The Squier's available today are excellent. Especially the Classic Vibe series. There are always going to be brand snobs. I'm in my mid 50's and love Squiers.

Jeff Healey, RIP, blind, on his lap, rocked his Squires like nobody's business. But you omitted one awesome guy, Jack Pearson. He playes Squier Stratocaster Affinity (!) all stock with stock ceramic pickups and he sounds magnificent. Like a Custom Shop Strat. He ownes multiple of them and knows how to recognize one that will sound healthy. Great guy, check him out, few videos preferably if you want to spare time. It's not your usual Yngwie shred, it's blues but maybe you'll appreciate it.

I was gifted an E series 87 MIK squier with no chips scratches or any type of damage from my grandfather. It has an alder body, rosewood fretboard, gotoh tuners and fender hardware, I recently took it in and was offered some good coin for it due to the sound and feel! I had no idea it was a gem until recently.

I earn a living as a guitarist and I have no problem taking a Squier or a Harley Benton to work. I ve had a lot more expensive guitars having similar issues sometimes. Thank you for not being a headstock snob. Keep up the good work and greetings from Greece

My first guitar was an '84 Japanese Squier Bullet, made in the Fujigen factory, it had a tele neck and a smaller strat-like body. Very solid axe for how cheap it was.

That Squier Jazzmaster 😱 what a beauty!

I personally love Squire guitars lately. They’ve really stepped up their game the past few years. I have several Squires from the classic vibe series and they absolutely rival any of their fender counterparts! Especially the 70s Jaguar. Seriously a great guitar for the price, would 💯 recommend to anyone the Squire CV series. They may need some more set up and tweaking out of the box but it’s absolutely worth it! Great video, thank you!

8:59 Love that you're playing Speed Metal Symphony along with other riffs and licks you don't really hear anyone else play! Love the video's dude, I've been following you since I saw you on KDH and I'm absolutely hooked! Keep it up! ^_^

A few years ago I bought the bullet mustang and was so impressed by the squier quality that I’ve bought 2 more since, a cv jag and a paranormal off-set tele. I play them more than my other guitars. Beginners have excellent choice these days for affordable, quality guitars.

Who says they're hated? I reject that premise.

I found a Squier Contemporary Strat Special Hardtail in the Sunset Metallic finish on Reverb for $230 USD! For that price how could I say no? It kicks ass. Great factory action, great fretwork, a nice chunky neck, and it's 2lb lighter than my alder-bodied Strats! I expected FAR less than I got for the money. I planned to upgrade the pickups but these pickups sound great! Thanks for the positive review.

There's a 90s Pro Tone Strat in transparent blue coming my way, should be arriving soon next week, I'll be sure to post an update when I have it in my hands.

Probably not P90s? Just regular jazzmaster-style pickups.

Ive got two Squiers, the Toronado and the Offset Tele from the Paranormal line and i absolutely love them them both!

after kdh’s video about your yngwie malmsteen video you have quickly become one of my favorite guitar youtubers. keep up the great work man!!

I'd really love to see you make a video like this on Jackson guitars. Jackson is now the new target with many claims of bad QC at outrageous prices and paying only for a name. Would love to see you examine some of their Soloists (surprisingly enough the 600€ X series has less reports of bad QC than the 1000€ Pro Series lol)

I love my squier affinity Stratocaster, amazing quality and sounds great

Squier are great. Got two and I play both of them often. Probably more often than my more expensive guitar. Get one. Especially the classic vibe series and contemporary, but also the cheaper ones if you're on a budget. You will not regret it.

Very good, honest and informative! I've got expensive Fenders and I can honestly say that the top tier of the Squier brand is just as good. Even the pickups are great! All Fender designed and alnico magnets! What more do you want? People will say if I put a 500.00 set of Fralin pickups in it, then it'll sound great. When in reality, when you are playing with heavy gain, you aren't going to know the difference. Thanks again for a great, honest video on these Squiers.

Thanks for the vid, as I am a 100% newb just picking up guitar. I am not sure I will stick with it, so I wanted a new guitar but for little money. I found my way to a Bullet Tele for under $200 and I'm just going to go from there. To me it felt like a couldn't go wrong from what I have heard about Squire.......and I always loved the Tele body and looks. Aaaaaaaand subbed!

The Paranormal series looks awesome. I own a couple fender guitars. I paid well into the thousands for them plus upgrades and at the end of the day I still want more guitars lol so it makes sense to feed the buy & mod addiction with Squiers guitars. Great vid man thanks!

I have a squier strat and it’s my work horse. I put locking tuners on it and it never goes out of tune and came perfectly intonated. And I think my next guitar is going to be a classic vibe tele.

I lol at people who hate squiers. The thing I love personally about squiers is its a good workhorse/recording guitar that you can just abuse, for lack of a better term, and its more than possible to make a squier sound good if you have decent mixing/producing skills. Less expensive too, so you have so much less to worry about with respect to every scratch or natural wear and tear, compared to a more expensive variant in my experience. I have videos on my channel of me playing a squier and putting it thru good production treatment, and it sounds absolutely amazing with with the right balance of gain/reverb/delay. I can't in good faith say its better than the combined features of a real mim or mia strat, but its still really good, especially for the prices

The low low end range is meh but the 250-500$ range are usually pretty nice, I like how they bring some rarer things like the bass VI to the market.

If it wasn’t for ‘Squire’, I most likely wouldn’t have been able to afford to pick Bass playing back up after 25+ years. Maybe I got lucky, I don’t know, but I got a REALLY good Squire P-Bass out of it in ‘92, that played as well if not a little better to my ear anyway than the old Fender I had in my teens. Squire (and the other less expensive brand names) gets a LOT of young would-be players in the proverbial door… and that’s a GOOD thing. Sadly sometimes a person finds that they aren’t as interested in playing or as ‘naturally talented’ as they thought they’d be, and they shouldn’t have to shell out a grand or more to discover that. And if the idea of ‘building’ a guitar, especially if it’s your first go at it, is your goal - a Squire is a great way to start. I spent the lockdown experimenting with my first build attempt, and in the end I had made my dream Butterscotch Blonde ‘50s Tele, and a sort of Strat test bed as well. Plus a bit of skill in soldering, fret work, etc., that I didn’t have before. Most importantly, I had an absolute blast doing it. Understandably Squire isn’t everyone’s taste. But nothing really is if you think about it after all.

You skipped over the actual begining of Squier branded guitars- the JV Squiers made in Japan beginging in 1982.

I bought a Lake Placid Blue Squier Affinity Telecaster for my college dorm since I didn’t want to bring one of my expensive guitars, and it very quickly became one of my favorites.

I like that you mention how fender likes to experiment within the squire brand while leaving the fender name branding as boomer appeasers. They're doing the same with Charvel- all of the experimental layouts and modern features just without the fender branding so they're priced extremely fairly

Squier is fantastic. I got a Squier 70's Jazz bass (you know, the one with the natural finish with the black pickguard. Beautiful. Actually, I think I can see the same one in the thumbnail of one of your videos right now. XD) in like 2014 and it's great. I'm the kind of person to mod and upgrade my guitars, since I'm left handed and left handed players don't get anything cool. I haven't done anything to this bass, other than having a tech level and polish the frets and whatnot. It's that good.

I had a fender squire in the early 2001 time frame. "Vas Kallas" of Hanzel und Gretyl auctioned away her old squire she used to record Ausgeflippt.

Have a Korean crafted 1996 Squier Stratocaster Pro Tone in Sapphire Blue with gold hardware that I purchased new. An absolute honey of a guitar that I wouldn’t think of trading. Cheers!

Personally, Squire is one of my fav guitar brands for how creative they can be with some of their guitars, and the quality they have in them for the price is truly insane, The sound demo was really good in the vid i always love watching the sound demos because of how cool they are, Great video!

I'm thinking of getting a classic vibe jazzmaster, it sounds so cool.

Yeah I’ve never really understood the Squier hate, I had a 2016 affinity that I modded into a super strat for a RU-vid video with high end parts that I find myself picking up more often than even my $2000 guitars

For me, they are hated because I don't want to have to mod the nut, re-solder the grounding wire, replace the broken pots that came with it as new. They can be amazing instruments, after YOU finish the QC, and be ready to replace parts.

Can 100% vouch for this. I picked up a 1995 Korean Squire for $100, easily gives 10-20x priced guitars some competition 😂

I’ve been looking at a contemporary telecaster, and I would be perfectly happy if Squire just become a massive experimental brand with new shapes, newer specs, different finishes and woods etc. just because it seems like a good idea, also a good way to create a newer more experimental way to get higher end versions in Fenders lineup as well if they are good

I've heard good things about Squier for years. I'm thinking of getting a 40th Anniversary Gold Edition Jazz Bass for my first bass. Bullet Strats are especially known for being good mod guitars.

Awesome video. The stuff Squier produce today is really high quality stuff. Just a few year back a roasted maple neck would be reserved for top ££££ guitars. One of my fav bands (The Cribs) bass player & guitar player both have Squier signatures and they are sick!

My first electric guitar was an Squier Obey edition strat. They came with Seymour Duncan pickups. Ive had it for 17 years and it is still in immaculate condition. The neck has never bowed and the electronics still shred

I love my 93 MIJ Blondy Squier. It's bloody awesome and only cost me $359 AUD in an eBay auction!

Absolutely love you way of looking at how Squier are like a modern version of Fender and you’re bang on. I’ve been curious about getting one as a mod platform. I watched this and now I want a contemporary Tele… I normally don’t even like Tele’s 😂

I had three Squiers I picked up cheap at garage sales; the years were unknown, but none were particularly new (early 2000s?). I went through them, doing little more than general cleaning, fret clean up, new nuts, and string height, and a set of bridge springs for one because they were missing. I was talking to a coworker who said, "Squires?! They suck balls." So I invited him over one day. I brought them out, he plugged them in, played a bit, then offered me $400 for all three. Sold.

The old squier series are great guitars as well. Squier Standard, Squier Vintage Modified and Squier Deluxe.

My Squire Contemp from 2015 is a damn good Jake E Lee Ozzy era copy with a damn good JB copy in the bridge and is one of the best guitars ive bought and it was $350.

I'm a bass player and I've got a Squier affinity PJ from 2020 and it's genuinely amazing. The affinities from the last 2 years have had a definite drop in quality in my opinion, but they're still great

Came back to this because I thought I remembered you reviewed the Squier contemporary series....just found a used Contemporary Strat HH w/active pickups in excellent condition for sale on Craigslist for $180. Going rate on reverb is $300-$350. Came back to this video to confirm I'm getting an absolute bargain that's actually worth it. Sometimes I get such absolute deals because parents buy their kids guitars and they give up within a year lol

Shout-out for that The Haunted riff thrown in there. Your playing is where I wish mine was even tho I'm pretty damn good sometimes.

I love my Squire.. I got second hand 1996 Squire Aff Strat and it's amazing! Just now realize that it is in fact Korean made.. It was 250e nearly mint condition, my main axe i love this little thing...

I'm not a strat guy but I'm really considering picking up the contemporary strat for something fun to play at home.

Sixstringtv gonna dominate the game soon. 🤘

I own Mexican and American Fenders. I also own an Indonesian 2014 Gold Label Squier Stratocaster with '70's headstock. It holds its own with both.

I tried a squire telecaster and I absolutely loved it. They’re so comfortable and affordable 😌

i just found out i have a Squier made in japan from 1984-1987. Damn..

....my best guitar is a 1996 Squier (YN****) Strat. I modified it , tru oiled the neck, installed clay dots. Gutted it and Fender-ised it put some VooDoo pups in. Locking tuners. Great guitar.

That Strat... It's so perfect. Except... I want to reverse the angle of the pups and have a reverse headstock. A freeway switch mounted on the horn. A kill switch where the Vol is and master volume/tone. Squire probably will release it next year.

Who hates Squiers? I've never met anyone who hates Squiers unless you're a non-player who likes to buy guitars and just stare at them. I'm an actual player who loves his 60's CV Strat and lemme tell ya, I've had a LOT of Strats I've never connected with.

Did not know anyone hated squires. Omg the tone on that jazz master i love that so much!

I think classic vibes are some of the most well rounded guitars you can get, they're affordable play well sound well and look stunning

Nice video homie! One thing I'll never understand is how the squiers have amazing fret work like you showed but almost all the new MIM i see in store are cheese graters posing as guitars

I have owned a contemporary strat for 5 years now, hss model with black metallic paint and small headstock painted the same way. Paid 400 dollars canadian. A wonderfull piece of kit and play it regularly. Didnt need to dress frets, a little tweek on the trus rod and its been fabulous. Retired now but played full time in the 80's where we had to do our own shit on guitars.

I do see myself buying a really nice American made Les Paul or Strat in the future but I will forever love Squier for allowing people like me to start playing guitar at its entry kevel price point. Very underrated guitar for what it offers...

Bruv. I have a 1984 Made in Japan Stratocaster, and it's immaculate. I had Fender players in the late 80s chuckle at it, then they picked it up and were amazed.

Sick video dude, I've been defending squier as they were my first good guitar because it had everything I needed in a guitar. Would like to see a video on esp/ltd in the future

Recently I had a MIM Jag in a trade, after comparing it with the Squier Jag I have, I decided to keep the Squier, the finish and the sound was so much better than the MIM Fender.

My current love affair with my Squier Classic Vibe 60s P Bass is ongoing. It's such an enjoyable instrument to play. I have an American Professional Strat that was a grand more but it really isn't a grand for fun to play. Maybe the Strat takes itself too seriously? a Squier P Bass used to be the byword for horrible experience but not anymore. It's clearly come from the ability to CNC to such close tolerances that the finger board feels like it has rolled edges but it doesn't it just has a really small CNC cut that replicates it. I'd have more. I keep eyeing up the Mustang bass, and the 50s P bass, and the 50s tele...

You ever play a Yamaha Rev Star? I bought one 6 months ago, a Standard in black w/p90s and it’s the best guitar I’ve ever played…best neck, pick ups RULE, stainless steel immaculate fretwork, gorgeous aluminum tail piece….so fun to play too…play’s itself…for $800 it’s unbeatable…imo

Love my late 90s Korean made ESP Ltd Mv-100. Its the best cheap guitar I ever played in my three decades of playing.

I've been eyeing a classic vibe jazz master and/or jazz bass for a while. Glad to see they're decent instruments

I bought a lefty Squier Classic Vibe 70s Strat almost a year ago, and out of the box, it was close to being unplayable. The frets get increasingly rough (on both sides of the neck) starting at the 6th fret and the action on the high E-string was so low that it always buzzed out along with none of the saddles being intonated at all. Some less important things are: microphonic pickups, noisy electronics, righty knobs on lefty pots (the numbers are reversed so 10 is 0 and 0 is 10 etc.), wiggly whammy bar and an uneven level of gloss on the headstock. There are cheap and easy fixes to most of these problems. Intonation and action was fixed minutes after getting it home, frets will be fixed with a file and sandpaper this summer, the pickups and electronics are easy to swap and the uneven finish on the headstock is not a big deal for me. The reversed knobs are just annoying and it does not bother me that much either. I believe that the reason as to why it was so bad out of the box is that it is a lefty. In my experience left handed guitars usually have more problems from the factories regarding setup than righty models. I have had 2 Epiphone sgs (2016 & 2018) and a Harley Benton LP copy (2015) with bad intonation, action and lacking fretwork in the higher regions of the fretboard. My only guitar ever that was perfect out of the box is (ironically enough) my Gibson LP Studio (2017).

I have two M-80's. Beautifully crafted guitars that are a pleasure to play. Good video and subscribed. Best Regards and Best Wishes!

I would rather have a modern high end Squier than a MIM Fender strat. You convinced me.

Nice! I picked up a discounted store damaged (small chip on bottom and busted strap pin) Affinity a couple months back and it played like butter but needed some hardware and electronics upgrades like they all do so I replaced the pickgaurd with an aluminium one, copper foiled the cavities, put in quality pots with Strat values (the ones in it were 500k) and wired it up for a Gilmour mod with a dual pot to keep the bridge tone control (had to drill the lower pot cavity down a bit to fit), new switch/plug, a FR Rail Tail, locking tuners and just for fun dropped a 0 fret in. Cost me a total of €680 when done including the replacement black knobs, pickup covers, plug plate and screws, files, small nut/fret vise and nipper. Really just stuff that I do to all my guitars except that one I got from James Tyler (soo soo perfect). Freakin awesome guitar for less than a really really cheap Fender of far lesser quality. Basically all that is left are the wood, frets and pickups (GREAT sounding pickups) which are the guitar really and they needed nothing, the setup was awesome, the fretwork was awesome except for a couple of snaggy ends which filed down in 2 or 3 strokes of the fret file I needed for the 0 fret, the action was unbeleivably good even for a high end guitar and best of all it's slim bodied with a narrow spacing. It is the Fender Strat that Fender should have made. Lovin Squire's build quality these days, gonna be my new gigging guitars.

Brilliant video. The only thing I would add is that the Contemporary Series should be higher, or at least at equal to Classic Vibe series in the Squier hierarchy, as almost all the Contemporary Squiers (especially the first generation) I have tried were better sounding, better playing instruments than the CV series regardless of their price tags. Keep up the good work!

The Squier Strats (and maybe others) are 40mm deep bodies, or at least they used to be. Fenders are 45mm deep, so that explains the neck dive.

Leather straps with rough backs help a lot with neck dive. And the vintage style tuners make string changes a joy, so I will always want them on my guitars. And those are not P90s, they're Jazzmaster pickups. :P

I worked in a small music store in the early to mid 2000’s and most of their guitars at the time weren’t any good however, we got in a “Telecaster” with coil tap, double humbuckers and an arched top. That guitar was fantastic. Fender has since released them as the FMT series.

Squier is bringing their A-Game right now, just bought a Squier contemporary telecaster with the hot rail pickup in the bridge and I must say, I still can't believe that they sell for under 400 Euros, it's nuts

I bought a squire bullet strat in 2009 new. I played every strat style guitar in the store, and the one I purchased had a completley different sound than all the others. When I started playing the guitar after I bought it, I realized the intonation was out significantly. I thought it would be an easy fix, but there was not enough room for adjustment on the saddle pieces. I believe the cheap bridge they put on was also placed incorrectly for the guitars scale length. I sold that guitar after only having it for a month because I didn't want to spend more money fixing the guitar than I originally paid for it. I'm not shure what a new bridge was going for in 2009, but the guitar was only $109 new. ( not including tax). I stick with Pro level gear now. It is worth saving for a nice guitar. Because of that incident I will probably never play a squire again (Unless I am working at a music store setting up the guitars).

I love squire man I want the 40th anniversary tele Hella bad. Looks so cool with the block inlays. It's nice to see another metalhead digging jazzmasters I got one a year ago and it's probably my favorite guitar now.

I have a mid 80's Squier Strat, made in Japan. The original 5 way switch wasn't very good so I replaced it and swapped the neck pickup for a Di|Marzio PAF. The guitar sounds great, plays well and hardly shows its age. Great value for a well made guitar.

I want the black version of the contemporary with aluminium pickguard.

I have the Squier showmaster electric guitar 🎸 the Black one with skull cross bones it says by Fender crafted in china I had it since 2005

I have 90s Korean Squire Strat and it truly is something special

If any of you have ever owned or played an 83 model made in Japan that is basically a 70s reissue, they are some of the best. I've bought up a lot of squires and built malmsteen models on them that people can't tell the difference.

I had a 76 fender strat hard tail that I sold many years ago 😳 and I still cry about it .

I own a “vintage modified” Jaguar bass with the active preamp 31inch scale. Seriously, one of the best instruments I have ever owned, I’v bought and sold many instruments over the past 30 years of playing live. I will die with this one… The fit and finish, playability to the sound is amazing. Bought for 80.00 US. New tuners new hipshot bridge, and it is rock solid!

Love the vid and agree that Squier guitars are a great option. I’ve owned a number of guitars and the one I’ve stuck with is an affinity Strat that I’ve modified. It’s always been the guitar I’ve felt the most comfortable with. For a relatively minimal amount of $ you can upgrade hardware & pickups to give it some more balls and stability. Great playing as well! Killer

I think Fender really went with the right approach lately; everything they sell is good. An entry-level Playermodel is a tad less comfortable than a Plus as the fret-ends are a little sharp, but it plays fine. Want the "Made in America" sticker? Fine, that costs more. Want the paint-job Hendrix used at Woodstock? Fine, that costs more. I'm totally OK with that if it means new players don't have to suffer trying to learn on terrible gear.