The 5 different series of Squier electric guitars

Bullet

I've owned several Squier Bullet guitars. These guitars are built cheap but sound great.

The weakest point of any Bullet guitar is undoubtedly the tuners. It's the thing on the guitar that says "CHEAP" more than anything else.

The second weakest point is that the pickups are typically noisy. Again, they sound great, but since the cheapest wire and only the bare minimum of shielding is used, noise gets through.

Where the pickups themselves are concerned, yes they are generic parts-bin ceramic magnet pickups. This isn't to say ceramic magnet pickups are bad because they're not. But the ones put in Bullet guitars were obviously slapped together very, very quickly. That's just the way it is - but it does give them a very specific Squier cheap-guitar tone character that actually sounds good.

Affinity

The first thing you notice about this series is that the tuners are far better compared to what's used on Bullet guitars. While the tuners do not have Grover or Gotoh level smoothness, most players including myself would be fine just using them as-is.

The second thing is something only noticed by those who have been playing guitar for some time. Nut width on the Affinity electrics is 1.60-inch/40.64mm. To the best of my knowledge, all the other series use a 1.65-inch/42mm but width. This does affect how the guitar plays because string spacing is different. You either really like this or really don't.

Overall build quality of the Affinity is better than Bullet. The guitar does feel more solidly built all around.

Contemporary

All of these are nonstandard builds. You can consider "contemporary" to be the same as "modernized".

Contemporary series concerning build quality is basically the same as Affinity, except you're getting more fancy pants features. For example, the Contemporary Active Stratocaster HH has a reverse headstock, matching headcap, Floyd-Rose R3 locking tremolo system and a pair of active humbucker pickups. The fretboard radius is also a flatter 12-inch.

Extra cash was spent to put the fancier stuff in these, hence the higher price tag.

Classic Vibe

We're now on the second generation of these guitars. They've been a big hit for Squier ever since they were introduced because they are honest-to-goodness decently built electrics.

Even though the Artist models have more fancy stuff in them, Classic Vibe is the top-of-the-line electric they offer that doesn't have some famous guitarist's signature on it. For some, that means the CV series is top-of-the-line Squier since they won't buy Artist models.

Published 2019 Dec 10