Squier Affinity Tele SH FMT MOC

This guitar is very finished and it's lovely to look at. It's pretty lightweight for a Tele (the body is thinner than normal) and the "belly carve" makes it comfortable against your body. The tone of both pickups combined is gorgeous but the humbucker on its own is muffled and muddy. The bridge pickup on its own is thin and not very pleasant. The guitar was reasonably well set up but the intonation was off and there was some annoying fret buzz. In the end I flipped it after a year because it was too inflexible. My biggest complaint would be the pointy corners of the bridge, the top most of which digs into the heel of your palm painfully at times. I looked at replacing the bridge and upgrading the pickups but the cost didn't seem worth it.

I bought a Mexican Fender Tele with same pickup configuration and surprisingly the Chinese Squier was better quality, the Mexican Fender was returned due to sharp frets and chewed up heads on the neck screws - surprising that Chinese made Squier which literally cost less than a quarter of the price had superior quality control. The Mexican Fender was very disappointing, though obviously it had much better pickups.