FenderSquier Debut Series Stratocaster Electric Guitar, Beginner Guitar, with 2-Year Warranty, Includes Free Lessons, Dakota Red with Matte Finish

A legitimate Fender guitar for the price of a cheap clone, that is legitimately amazing! I own a couple cheap guitars that cost as much as this Fender Squire, but the difference in build quality is amazing. This thing feels and plays like butter, and aside from tuning the strings, the setup as near as I can measure it is spot on. The string height, neck adjustment, and intonation were perfect. The attention to detail is evident in everything from the way the strings are wound on the tuners, to the design and manufacture of something like the string tree, which all the cheap guitars get horribly wrong. Plays great, sounds great, looks great, and it's a real Fender for the price of a clone. What's not to love.

My particular guitar did not have any sharp fret ends and the fret tops looked to be polished, or at the very least did not feel rough at all. It was very playable right out of the box. Action was 1.5mm on low E at the 12th fret and even lower on the high E with no buzzing on any fret when played without a heavy hand. Intonation was spot on, on all but one string which wasn't off by much. The bridge was decked when I got it, floating it was the only change I needed to make. Truss rod did not need to be adjusted at all, there was a very slight bit of relief in the neck already. I didn't check the gap between string and first fret or closely examine the nut but there was no indication that the nut was causing any problems. The back of the neck, as YT reviewers have noted is pretty rough feeling. The satin finish looks and feels great and doesn't show finger grease like a glossy finish would. It weighed in at just under 7 pounds.Guitar seems to hold tune when lightly using the tremolo but the tuners are the real weak point of the guitar. They do work, and the guitar stays in tune, but the tuners are not very smooth feeling at all. Sometimes they'll feel very difficult to turn but then loosen up, sometimes it feels like the knob turns without doing much before having an effect. Sometime a slight twist of the knob makes too much of a change, so it is a bit difficult to make minor adjustments. They're not good but they are serviceable. They are the first thing I'd consider replacing. The tremolo block is also very thin so that's something else to consider swapping. I didn't play it a whole lot through an amp yet but initial impression is that it sounds decent. Bridge pickup seems a little shrill but dialing back the tone control makes it acceptable.For the beginner that this guitar is aimed at, I don't think you'd need to change anything right away. It is perfectly playable out of the box, all a new player needs to do is tune it up and start playing. That's the way it was with my guitar but of course this could vary. However, since some reviewers had the same experience it's clear Fender must be making some effort to setup the guitars before shipping them. The initial out of the box experience, in my opinion, is better than any Indio or Firefly I've had and better than or equal to most IYV or Harley Bentons that I got. Considering you get a very competitively priced guitar, from a major brand, that may not need any work at all (unlike most budget instruments) and the free 3 months of Fender Play I think this is a real winner for a beginning guitarist. I have no problem recommending it to any beginner or even experienced guitarist.

I cannot get over this guitar! It plays just as well as my MIM Fender strat which cost 4x more. The setup is nearly perfect right out of the box with nice action, I just tuned it up and started playing. The fretwork is solid, decently polished frets with reasonably clean ends, no buzzing frets and the neck feels great in the hand. The electronics are where you notice the low price, generic non-staggered ceramic pickups that sound OK but just are not as clean or balanced as properly staggered Strat pickups and don't have the same depth of tone as alnico magnets. Overall these are great guitars for beginners or experienced players that want something light and easy to play

I wanted to be 100% in love with this guitar and have it be playable right out of the box, and write a rave review. But unfortunately, that was not the case. This was not a guitar that had been returned to Amazon. You could tell it was brand new and never had been opened.When I first saw the color in person, I said WHOA. I love Squier Strats, especially red ones. I actually prefer them over the Fender Strats. I have way too many of them as it is, so when these first came out, I told myself I didn't need another one. But I kept seeing the reviews on YouTube. Not a single person did not rave about this guitar for the price. There may have been something here and there that was a little off, but they all couldn't believe the quality for the price point. I was also impressed by the matte finish. Alas, I am a sucker for a red Squier. I also figured maybe in time it would be one of those collector item guitars like some of the older Squiers are. So I said screw it, you only live once, Christmas present for myself, things are going to cost more from China very soon, and every other excuse I could think of, and ordered it. Going by the pictures, I wasn't impressed with that particular shade of red, but hey, it was red.I let it acclimate in the box indoors for 24 hours, like I usually do.When I finally pulled away the foam bag, I stood still and looked at it, and I really think my mouth was hanging open. I was blown away. None of the pictures do the color justice. It's a beautiful, deep matte burgundy red, like a wine red. It is gorgeous. They didn't cheap out on the pickguard like they did with the Sonic series, and just give it a plain white pickguard. This pickguard has the black stripe in it, which gives this guitar just such a beautiful accent. Some people here complained about the frets being sharp. I could see a couple here or there that I could pretty much even take down with a nail file if I wanted to. Nothing that would ever scratch me, or beginner, or a child with this guitar.Here's where things went south quickly. I tuned it up and plugged it in. Every string buzzed. It was not playable at all. Upon further inspection I saw that the truss rod had been left tightened all the way from the factory. A little loosening of the truss rod took care of most of the buzzing. I tuned it up again. The intonation was off on the low E and A and the low E still slightly buzzed. Some more tweaking and finally it was playing the way it was supposed to be.I can tell you that this guitar is light. It's thin. The pickups sound good. The fret ends are fine. The fretboard is really pretty and smooth. The tuners hold tune well. The knobs and switches work just fine.But if I was a beginner and this was my first guitar, and I didn't know anyone who knew anything about guitars, I would not have known what to do. I would have been even more disappointed than I was. Because of the rave reviews of this guitar, I am sure the one that I got was just a fluke. If anyone got it, I'm glad it was me because it was fixed in 5 minutes. But had I gotten this as a gift for a kid, I would have been really upset for the kid.Yes, I could have returned it, but I like working on guitars anyway. If you know your way around guitars and are getting this for a kid, grab one. It's a great guitar. I would definitely get it for someone, but also tell them if there's anything weird about it to let me know. Do I regret buying this? No way. I love the guitar. Just on the day that mine was made, someone in China was having a bad day.