Loving my Squier
If you want to learn the guitar, then you really don't want to spaff hundreds of quid against the wall, only to find out it's not for you. Entry level guitars are a great way to answer that question without putting too much skin in the game. And for me, that meant a Squier.
I actually had one years and years ago, but I didn't have the stamina to stick with the learning. So this time around, when my partner said she'd get me a guitar for Christmas, a Squier was the ideal choice.
I got my left handed Affinity Strat, and it felt great, played great, but I have to confess, I didn't actually know very much about pickups, and the clear chimey sounds from the strat didn't quite match my love of metal and rock. I needed humbuckers for the overdrive and distortion that fitted the songs I was slowly learning to play.
Now, I know that you can be a rock god with single coil pickups, but as my name isn't Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen or Jimi Hendrix, legend in my living room is about as good as I'll get. As much as I might dream, it's highly unlikely that I'll ever be asked to join Saxon as their third guitarist.
So that left me with two choices: modify my Squier or get another guitar. But if I'd got another guitar, that would have meant that my Squier was no good, and I'd already developed an emotional attachment for it as it was a gift from my partner.
Getting another guitar was out. So that meant new pickups. Regular sized humbuckers were also out. It's not that they wouldn't fit a southpaw model, but getting a humbucker-friendly left handed pickguard was always a problem, so I looked at single sized humbuckers, and after lots of browsing youtube shootouts, I settled on the Seymour Duncan Hot Rails Strat set.
The difference was amazing. With a Hot Rail in each position I've got a fabulous range of different sounds, and I don't even look at another guitar. I've finally got the Strat I always wanted, now all I need to do is learn to play it!
I also couldn't resist giving Cold Steel a pair of Squier guitars for their climactic concert in Cold Steel and the Underground Boneyard.
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