He used to originally shape the necks on CNC machines which were used for gun stocks. This is NOT web folklore, he told me this in person.

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You dig?

I read it in guitarist magazine years ago. Corroborated by his daughter, who then owned the company, sometime around 98 i think.

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No no and no

+1 you stole my thoughts. GE Smith once said something exactly like that. Most of the very best music ever recorded were played on inexpensive instruments.
rock on dude!

I own a MIA Strat and MIA tele. I just got a Squier Jagmaster and I love it. I think it has great tone and it feels good to play. My strat still feels a little better but I think if it feels good to you, who cares what anyone else thinks!

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I owned a Squire HM III. I bought it back in the '80. It was a great guitar. Played nice, great sound, looked good. In fact a friend of mine offered to trade me his Krammer for it. I was hesitant so I didn't. I played that guitar for years. After many years and a couple mishaps I decided I wanted a different guitar and used it as a trade in. I no longer have it, but I wish I did. Long story short, Squires are great guitars and I would never bash someone for owning one.

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RK

2007 Fender Highway 1
2012 American Deluxe
2015 MIM Dave Murray HHH
2010 Fender Blacktop
1987 Fender Avalon Acoustic
2012 Marshall DSL 15 watt head

if you own a squier, please do not be ashamed of it. bear in mind that you've probably owned one of the best solid body guitar in the world. squiers are mostly made of alder wood, which is very nice in terms of resonance, sustain and tone. change the stock pickup if you are still not satisfied with them. well, don't most people do that with American Strats too?

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If I flip the switch, I go into Killzone mode, which means these two center coils become active, and whenever I shred, I kill people instantly.

This is 100% true. It's in the hands (skill, passion, attitude, style), etc. plus some guitars "have it" and some don't, no matter what the price is. I played a few guitars at a music store a couple weeks ago, and a Squire Strat blew away every other one hands down, even some that cost 10x as much. Just the luck of the draw. Play what you love and forget about cork-sniffing (though amps might be a different matter!).

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Addicted to chasing down tone info, and publishing all my findings at my blog: www.WoodyTone.com

Quality is more than just good tone. I started on Epiphone SGs and Mexican Stratocasters, and while I was able to get good sounds from each, they had issues with wearing. While my 95 MIM strat was a dope git from the go, the hardware (bridge saddles and frets) wore rather quickly. The pup switch wore out, and needed to replaced after only two years of rough play. My Epi's had wiring problems, and I was never able to get the action exacly the way I wanted it.
I recently upgraded to MIA strats and Gibson LPs. The biggest improvement is in use of better quality materials. The hardware is more durable, the pups are better quality, and the necks are better constructed and feel better. It may be hard to justify spending 100-200% or more for a slightly better sounding guitar, but in the long run, the more expensive Fender/ Gibson models tend to be built better, and will last longer.
I see what your talking about. In my early playing days, a fellow musician had a late 80s Squire strat that was hands down, a dope guitar. As much play time as we put into it, we more than got his money out of it. However after a decade of use, it is now almost unplayable and in need of bridge, pup, and neck replacements.
My first git was a Japanese SG copy that I bought used at a pawn shop for $150. I played it for 5 years non stop, but its trash now.

I played for just about 10 years before I bought my first name brand guitar a Fender tele. I was to worried about learning to play and being a player than how much my ax cost. Can a $5,000 guitar do anything for you if you suck no you just suck the same on a 5 grand guitar. Worry about being a good musician and having good chops and writing and sooner or later you can up grade to the ax you want. The only thing I can say outside of the cosmetic side is that a higher end guitar will be a more comfortable guitar to play which is important,but that aside you can get mostly any low end guitar and mod it with quality pickups and it will get the job done just fine. Guys on the forum like Martian and Nikininja have pro guitars but they like to take low end guitars and turn them into something special and if I had that talent so would I. If you are passing by someone and you both have your guitars and he has a PRS and he sees that you have a squire and if he does not ask you what music you play or about licks he is just a cork sniffing poser and not a true player. I have had times in my life where I stood outside a train station watching a guy play for an hour because he was good not because what he was playing.

See I did not think they used CNC machines for necks. I know that most have been using body routing CNC machines for a long time but not on necks becasue they are band sawed and then routed for the truss rod then shaped with a guide then finished. Thats what I thought. In one of my CNC news letters I read that just couple years ago Gibson Nashville started using the first triple axis CNC bandsaw for necks. Gibson help design it with Warsaw machines which make CNC furniture equipment because they could not get a CNC that could do a neck.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

You play that Squire long enough and that neck will feel just as good as any other well played neck... It's 99.5% in the hands and fingers and .5% in the instrument. Keep on keepin on.

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I'm not slow... and I'm not fast... just sort of halffast...

I might be one of them Snobs.....I have had a chance to buy and or play one (all because of price I walked away) I,m one to believe you get what you pay for.....But I do have a MIM strat and love it very much, it does play just as well as my Am. Std. and Am. Deluxe ...but as i said before im very much pro-amirecan (being born and raised in Michigan and most my family still there out of work....now me living in Oklahoma and being laid off work last May 15th) I want to buy only Amirecan.

But at the same time when I am asked about my Am. Strats....i always say yes i paid 3xs the price for it to say Made In USA.

But to tell someone that mines better then yours?....whos to say? you might play mine and think its high priced fire tinder.

Oh and just thought.....even AM. Strats that are one number apart can feel very different...so you can not say its better just because where it was made.

Gibson just started using CNC's for necks.a few years ago. Everyone has been using them for bodies for many many years but not necks. Here some info I have found on this topic. Matches what I have read.
Quote

CNC machines and guitar making go together as well as “Country and Western” or “Rock and Roll.” In fact, CNC does such a good job at improving the productivity and quality of repetitive wood routing tasks that all of the major guitar makers have adopted it over the past 20 years. Gibson, though, recently took CNC use a step further when it installed a new automatic bandsaw that helps keeps its Nashville factory humming along.

In the past, CNC machines were employed primarily for routing, according to Gene Nix, a Gibson wood products specialist who helped develop the new bandsaw. “We'd been using CNC routers since the late 80's,” he says. “But a CNC bandsaw is a first for the guitar business.”

Gibson installed the new saw, which was built by Warsaw Machinery, primarily for reasons of productivity. In the past, the company's electric guitar necks were manually run through the bandsaw prior to their final shaping. Nix says a good saw operator would get from 200 to 250 necks per day.

The three-axis bandsaw, which works on up to three necks at once, can do “several times that amount,” Nix says. The same logic applies to electric guitar bodies. The saw can handle a stack of three to five body blanks, depending on the guitar model.

As an added benefit, the new saw helped Gibson to adopt a new type of neck blank that is less prone to hidden defects than the lumber used in manual sawing operations.

Nix describes the incorporation of the new saw into Gibson's guitar building operation as seamless. “The biggest challenge was finding a saw that was the right size for guitar building. We looked high and low and there just weren't any,” he says.

So Gibson teamed up with Warsaw Machinery, which has made CNC bandsaws for the furniture industry for about 25 years. These big saws, which usually work on 4 x 8-ft panels with thicknesses up to 14 inches, do have something in common with Gibson's new saw. Both types have a servo-driven x-y table that passes the wood through the saw blade. The third axis is a servo-driven rotation of the blade, whose motion need to be carefully coordinated with movements of the x-y table to allow tighter curved cuts. “It's important to keep blade tangent to cutting path at all times so that there's no binding,” explains Kathy Wettschurack, Warsaw Machinery’s vice president and design engineer.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

The tone depends on your style not the brand, im getting a mexican strat but it sounds good in the shop? why should money count people think the rich win and the poor lose jeeez

i agree .....you get what you pay for....
i played alot of thoes made in china,korea,indonesia
and at the end of the day your better off getting something good becuase
when you buy say a squier u still need new pickups,screws & tunners and Jack go loose...i never have to do anything to my guitars its always ready2play

i got a line 6 variax acoustic 700 its made in korea and payed $1,300.... it does play & sounds very nice.. sometime's theres no choice where things are made.

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USA 1989 Clapton Signature Strat in 7up Green
USA Standard Telecaster all Blk w EMG 81/85
ESP Eclipse II w EMG 81/60
Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier & Road king 4x12