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I think the quality is still hit or miss. I have a Chinese Epiphone LP Standard from 2017 or so, and it is a fine guitar, but this is after leveling frets and replacing the nut, bridge and pickups. Before that it would not stay in tune, buzzed at several frets, sounded dull both acoustically and through pickups and especially the "hotch" bridge pickup was a wonderful combination of muddy and thin. If you are thinking "but that's how a Les Paul sounds", you have no idea how muddy and thin. To be honest, the "59" neck pickup wasn't bad, but Tonerider that replaced it is better.

Another guitar I use regularly is a Squier Bullet Strat. It sounds kind of like Strat and it doesn't buzz at frets because of super high action, but it won't stay in tune, the ends frets are sharp and so are saddle adjustment screws that are a couple of millimeters too long and the icing on the cake is that basically anything played on second string makes something under pickguard rattle unless you press it at a certain spot. If you have to ask, it's audible through pickups and kills sustain.

I think you can find equally bad USA-made instruments at several times of the price if you look hard enough, but I wouldn't call these good instruments.




A Squier Affinity Stratocaster was my first electric guitar. This was more than 20 years ago, so may be the quality has gone down recently, but there was really nothing wrong with it mechanically. The action was perfect (and fairly low), all the fret ends were well-dressed, the neck was perfect and it had great sustain. I didn't get any fret buzz even with Ernie Ball Super Slinkys. It stayed in tune once I learned how to wind new strings properly and stretch them out, etc. The pickups were shit, though.


Sounds like you have Japan-made Squier. I haven't seen one in person, but they do have a good reputation and probably cost now more than when they were new. The current cheapest Squiers are completely different guitars, and apparently even these have good and bad ones and I one of the worst. There are people who claim that you can get a good guitar if you buy a pile of Harley Bentons or Squiers, keep the best one and return the rest. My Epiphone was apparently a customer return.


Japanese Squiers are great. My uncle, who is a fantastic guitarist and has all kinds of amazing guitars, often still gigs on his late 80s Squier Strat.


No it was Indonesia-made. I guess I got lucky!




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