That's always a risk you run with squier. It's all parts from fender that weren't up to stuff and got sent over to q
china, mexico, Korea, etc. You still run into some good ones though.
The early Squiers (JV-series and to a lesser degree the SQ-series) are different. These were the first japanese made Fender instruments. There was a time, when Japan was the only location, where Fender instruments were produced. The people, who bought Fender back from CBS, didn't have any factory to start with, they more or less just aquired the name and leftover materials.
When the new Fender owners saw the first japanese Squier Fender instruments, one of them nearly started to cry because he was so impressed by the quality. Prior they had sent some vintage early 60s models to them to copy these.
Later Squier became kind of the budget Fender line. There were even more budget Squier and a bit more expensive Fender labelled export instruments from Japan. But even the Fender labelled instruments didn't have the quality of the early Squier JV instruments. The workmanship and quality control was brilliant on all of them, but the pickups and electronics were rather cheap.
There were always exceptions, so a lot of Fender Japan instruments since the early 90s were of a higher quality, like the '51 Precision, the Bass VI and many others.
Since a decade or so, some Squier instrumens - like the CV series - offer an impressive quality again, esp. regarding the low prices.
