Definitely true. Totally subjective.
(And I knew you were joking--I really wasn't offended. You'd have to work a LOT harder than that to offend me!)
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Is Squire a bad thing ?
- Thread starter Maszkman
- Start date
Definitely true. Totally subjective.
(And I knew you were joking--I really wasn't offended. You'd have to work a LOT harder than that to offend me!)
My experience has been that my MIM fender p is a great bass, a really bad dead spot takes a bit out of it but that's all. I played a squire mustang that was a Piece of garbage. Then again, it was on the wall of guitar center for years, and mine has been properly set up.
I've posted this opinion here before, but here we go again.
I recieved a Squier Affinity Jazz 5 string as a gift from my SO last October, but didn't have anything to plug it into to actually hear it through an amp or sound system (too broke to afford an amp) until 2 months ago when my bandmates came up from Toronto lay down some bass tracks.
It sounds incredible considering all the electronics are stock, and the bass was complimented a lot more than I was expecting. The b-string clarity and sustain on the bass were, in our guitar players words, "better than any Fender Jazz I've ever played, ever." These were big compliments considering this guy has owned over 5 Fender Jazz's and is a self-confessed Fender Snob who won't even think about playing anything else.
I'm not sure If I just lucked out on QC or if an extra effort is finally being put into them nowadays, but whatever the case may be, I think Squiers don't deserve a lot of the hate the tend to recieve.
I recieved a Squier Affinity Jazz 5 string as a gift from my SO last October, but didn't have anything to plug it into to actually hear it through an amp or sound system (too broke to afford an amp) until 2 months ago when my bandmates came up from Toronto lay down some bass tracks.
It sounds incredible considering all the electronics are stock, and the bass was complimented a lot more than I was expecting. The b-string clarity and sustain on the bass were, in our guitar players words, "better than any Fender Jazz I've ever played, ever." These were big compliments considering this guy has owned over 5 Fender Jazz's and is a self-confessed Fender Snob who won't even think about playing anything else.
I'm not sure If I just lucked out on QC or if an extra effort is finally being put into them nowadays, but whatever the case may be, I think Squiers don't deserve a lot of the hate the tend to recieve.
Quality and selection of woods, hardware, electronics, and fretwork are some of the biggest differences. To most people, a $50 cubic zirconia looks just like a $5K diamond, but there's still a big difference, whether the average joe can see it or not. I think what we "see" on Talkbass is a relatively small cross section of bass players who may have gotten better than average Squiers, and another cross section of people who could have gotten less than average American Fenders.. and add to that, most people's opinions on any given bass could be seriously distorted due to something as simple as a bad set up, or the brand/age of the strings. Then add in the fact that people on the internet love to repeat whatever they read (about any subject), often with an insufficient amount of actual personal experience. Lastly (and this is the cold hard truth) the vast majority of people on this site are not professional musicians, so who knows if the posts you're reading came from someone who would actually be able to tell the differences in the first place (not that some aren't still valid opinions). But that is exactly why I think the whole "Squier is on par with USA Fender" is probably the silliest of all the perpetuated myths on this site. There's a difference. It's real. Kudos to the folks that have a Squier that "holds up to basses that are 5-10xs more expensive", but it's far from the norm. And the harware and materials will always be an area of no comparison IMO.
I'm not a Gibson guy, so I don't know, but I've certainly wondered if Epiphone has the same stigma as Squier. It seems like I see a lot more people playing Epiphones than I do playing Squiers.
Except, perhaps, for the myths that imply a more expensive bass equates to a better bass, or that it takes a professional musician to tell the difference between a Squier and an MIA Fender.
Sure. There are differences between any two instruments, even if they rolled out of the same factory with sequential serial numbers.
Whether any such difference makes one "better" than the other is completely subjective and will vary from player to player.
Neither opinion is wrong. People hear and like and expect different things from an instrument.
Yup! Squire is indeed evil! Why? 'cause my classic vibe tele sounds better than my two american standards. Not good ..i'm still trying to wrestle with pick up choices etc.
Getting more for your money is not a myth. Getting an equal or even better product for way less money, from the same company that makes both the expensive and the cheap products is not the norm. FMIC would not maintain profitability if they ran their business that way.. nor would they keep selling way more Fenders than Squiers year after year, for a lot more money. Consistency is not equal on all price levels. The hardware, woods, fretwork, electronics, fit and finish are consistently higher quality on the more expensive instruments that FMIC makes. People can be wrong and they often are. Not all basses are equal just because some bass owners think theirs are. It may be subjective when it comes to one guy/gal and the bass they bought and love, but it's not subjective overall, it's business. There are steps in quality and production that coincide with the price points. The only good Squier is a dead Squier. Ok that last one was a joke.
I totally agree. in 2013 I bought a CV Stratocaster 60's. I play guitar too, since 2001, and I was looking for the "perfect Strat" for my tastes; in almost ten years of concrete search, I tried almost everything, from vintage 70's to modern Highway, from American Vintage to Mexicans, but I never found The One.
two years ago I found an used CV, just 250 euro, two piece alder body with a perfect "joint" that makes the body look like a one piece, perfect neck, perfect fretboard and fully funcional vibrato bridge and tuners.
I tried it on a all valve Vox AC30, and the sound was impossible to describe. however I thought that the amp made most of the magic until I've used it for some months...
the pickups are great, the volume knob allows me to organize my overdriven sound only using that pot (set at 2/3 I have the clean sound, at 10 the "lead solo" sound, and all the shades in between), and I stopped using overdrive pedals due to the perfect way the pot functions.
the fretwork is perfect, and if I mean "perfect", I mean perfect. I've used it even with 08-38 strings (the lighter possible on guitar) and I kept it with the lowest action ever.
my professionaly rectified Epiphone G400 can do the same, but before the luthier's work it couldn't.
at a certain point I strunged it with Elixir 09-42, and after almost two years (in October they'll be two) the neck didn't move of a micron, the setup is perfect every day and I use it for recordings and for live situations.
250 euro, plus ten years of research... pretty good.
talking about basses, I've had two Vintage Modified 70's Jazz, both natural (and with Duncan Designed pickups): one had three pieces body, the other a two pieces bookmatched:
Squier Jazz Bass Vintage Modified
one had just the 18th fret a bit higer on the G side, a thing I adjusted by myself, and the other had a perfect fretwork.
the three pieces one was used with flatwound 50-105 strings, and the neck had nothing against them.
then I had this beauty, Classic Vibe 60's Precision:
Squier Precision 60's Classic Vibe Fiesta Red
lightweight, not even a flaw in the finish, perfect functionally truss rod, but the 13the fret was slightly higher. same as above, I could make it by myself, but my lithier would have asked me almost anything (he asked me 70 euro for a complete fret leveling on the Epiphone).
last but not least, Classic Vibe 60's Jazz: Squier Jazz Bass Classic Vibe 60's
bought for less than 200 euros shipped, just because it was abused and had some scrathes. here I had a perfect fretwork and could use 30-90 Funkmaster strings with a low action and any fret issue. also, the neck/truss rod was perfect. I've gigged it for a while.
all the Squiers had a graphite paint shielded electronic cavity (you can see it in the Jazz VM pictures) from the fabric, and not even the smallest hum/noise.
the fun thing is that I've had an American Vintage 62 Pbass, and it had a three piece body (not perfectly matched) and the biggest dead spot ever heard on the G at the third fret...
sold it in a month, after trying different strings on it to be sure that the dead spots were not string's fault...
Fender Precision American Vintage 62
however, the real difference in all those instruments was in the hardware, or in particular in the tuners: the tuner's ratio is noticeably different when you go up with the price and quality.
smooth gear movement, small turn equals small string movement. with cheaper tuners the gear movement is imprecise, and often the gear "fails" the movement a bit.
this does not lead to the loss of the tuning, however. it's only a matter of quality.
I've had a Classic 50's Precision Bass (almost 1000 euros new, right now) that has the same issue with the tuners, compared to my 60 euros Schaller BMFL I have on my assembled Pbass, and never found perfect tuners under the American Standard Series price range. down from Highway/Special the tuners al amost the same in terms of quality.
considering that a Schaller set costs around 60/70 euros new, changeing them on a Squier/Mex is not a big issue, if one is not comfortable with stock tuners.
I've never had issues with the bridges, and the Classic Vibe, for example, have a hi mass bridge with big brass saddles firmly kept in the rails.
IMHO a VM or Classic Vibe is better than a Mexican Standard, and the difference starts being noticeable only compared with the Classic Mex serie (but Highway and Special are not even close to the quality of those Squiers... but I don't even consider them Fenders, actually...).
pickups and sound are both too "subjective" to be mentioned. I hate the SPB3 pickup, I think that it's the worst P bass pickup, but many people love it and use it. I like the EMGs pickups, and many hates them for how they sound.
I prefer the Fender Original over the Fender CS60/62 pickups, but many think the opposite.
how can we define a "better sound", if it's so subjective?
some use bright steel strings with scooped mids and say that it's the best sound ever, others choose flatwounds and middy tone with poor high content... where's the "best"?
In many cases, it's nothing but a myth, and this has increasingly the case for at least a half a century.
But the idea that a $2000 bottle of wine is superior to a $500 bottle of wine which is in turn superior to a $12 bottle of wine is still held to be a fact by many even though cork sniffing wine snobbery has repeatedly and for decades been proven to be nothing but complete farcical nonsense and BS.
But hey, entire industries are dependent upon most folks being duped by that sorta thing.
I've been taken in by it too, and there are cases, of course, where you can pretty definitively state brand X is better than brand Y.
A Yugo ain't gonna last as long or perform as well as a Mercedes, but a car is far more complex than an electric bass, which is essentially some hunks of wood, metal and wire.
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The longer the debate, the more I miss important stuff (like your post in this case) and repost them.
Here's my opinions.
Picked up a lot of cheap basses that were crap.
Picked up a lot of cheap basses that were fantastic.
Picked up a lot of expensive basses that were crap.
Picked up a lot of expensive basses that were fantastic.
Picked up a lot of cheap basses that were crap.
Picked up a lot of cheap basses that were fantastic.
Picked up a lot of expensive basses that were crap.
Picked up a lot of expensive basses that were fantastic.
Nope, I'm not! FWIW- Ken Lawrence, Lakland, Roscoe, Regenerate basses in addition to my Squier.
Dan
Basically the same thing (see my thread http://www.talkbass.com/threads/made-in-vs-crafted-in.1157841/).nice.... at least they're "Crafted" there and not made
