NEW Squier Offsets 2017

[HNB]

Black gold looks great also.....

Blue/blue with white covers as said above could be cool also.

[Pat V]

Black gold looks great also.....

Blue/blue with white covers as said above could be cool also.

I thought about this too but all of my slide switches are black.

[HNB]

But they make white ones....

[HNB]

Smurfy

[CROSS_guitars]

I love the blue on blue

[travisbrowning]

Could you put a mustang trem on these?

[CROSS_guitars]

Could you put a mustang trem on these?

Yes, I think you can. The body is 36mm thick. The tremolo depth only needs to be just over 30mm.

[travisbrowning]

So I think I've decided what I want to do with mine. Get a black mustang pick guard with 2 angled single coils (warmoth sells these for like 25 bucks), put some GFS gold foils in it, paint the headstock black to match the guard, and then throw on a bridge similar to a tornonado or older duo sonic. I just don't know if a.) a mustang guard would fit these, and b.) where to get a bridge that would fit the mustang guard and be a top loader. I know I would have to drill some holes to accommodate the new bridge but that doesn't bother me.

[Mad-Mike]

Dang you guys - now I want to buy an Imperial blue one and make it a backup to my Jag-Stang (shakes fists).....I'd better keep purging gear.

[honeyiscool]

I had all these lofty mod ideas when I pulled the trigger and bought Bullet Mustang in both colors. Having received them earlier this week...

I don't know. I feel like they're really nice guitars that don't need a lot of work done to them. They even have Alpha branded pots and I think the overall quality of wiring is superior to lower end Fenders. The 250k pots do a good job of working with the slightly hotter than vintage ceramic humbuckers to get a good clarity. When I saw the bridge in pictures, I thought, that's no good, I'd definitely want to do something with that, but in practice, the saddles are shaped in such a way that they pretty much do work. It might not be the best designed bridge I've ever seen, but it works. The tuners are pretty good, too. Really, other than the slightly raw feeling neck and frets (which quickly get better with play) and hard edges of the fretboard, it's not even clear that it necessarily feels like a cheap guitar. And if you think about companies like EBMM that go out of their way to give you the rawest maple necks possible, maybe that's a feature, not a bug.

I'll tell you this, this is the single best value in guitars in existence right now, or perhaps in history. They're fun to mod, but they have a lot of value as stock guitars, too. If you've ever wanted a backup or know someone who wants to start guitar or something like that, I just can't think of any other guitar in modern history that would be more perfect for that kind of price. It's got a light and comfortable body with contours, brilliant short scale neck for all kinds of players (slightly flatter than vintage), hardtail bridge that is a little hard to string up at first but gets the job done, nut that might benefit from a little softening but otherwise is cut correctly, pots that should last decades, and tuners that work. The only bits that truly need work are probably changing the jack to a Switchcraft which you can do without removing the pickguard (because cheap jacks will always fail) and maybe the switch, though the switch should hold up for a while.

So who knows, I won't really know what these guitars are capable of until I gig with them, and it might be a while until I do, maybe later this month. And when I do, I'm planning on using stock pickups.

[travisbrowning]

I have to say I love the raw feeling neck, its my favorite type of 'neck feel' or 'neck finish' whatever you want to call it.

[honeyiscool]

I have to say I love the raw feeling neck, its my favorite type of 'neck feel' or 'neck finish' whatever you want to call it.

Right? I mean, nobody says you have to like raw feeling neck, but it's certainly a flavor of neck feel, and it's a feature, not a bug.

I think it's funny that you go on forums for EBMM and they're like, "I hate that Sterling Ray34 trash with its glossy neck, it feels like I'm playing plastic. I prefer my USA Stingray with maple necks, barely any finish," and then you go on Fender forums and it's like, "I hate that Squier with its satin finish. It doesn't even feel finished. I prefer my AVRI Fender with gloss!" Whether you're talking about raw, wax, oil, satin, or gloss, they're all just types of finish, it's not like one's strictly indicative of quality. My friend just bought an EBMM Annie Clark signature. Unfinished neck, a bit of oil/wax on it. Tell her that guitar feels cheap because of that.

[Pat V]

I had all these lofty mod ideas when I pulled the trigger and bought Bullet Mustang in both colors. Having received them earlier this week...

I don't know. I feel like they're really nice guitars that don't need a lot of work done to them. They even have Alpha branded pots and I think the overall quality of wiring is superior to lower end Fenders. The 250k pots do a good job of working with the slightly hotter than vintage ceramic humbuckers to get a good clarity. When I saw the bridge in pictures, I thought, that's no good, I'd definitely want to do something with that, but in practice, the saddles are shaped in such a way that they pretty much do work. It might not be the best designed bridge I've ever seen, but it works. The tuners are pretty good, too. Really, other than the slightly raw feeling neck and frets (which quickly get better with play) and hard edges of the fretboard, it's not even clear that it necessarily feels like a cheap guitar. And if you think about companies like EBMM that go out of their way to give you the rawest maple necks possible, maybe that's a feature, not a bug.

I'll tell you this, this is the single best value in guitars in existence right now, or perhaps in history. They're fun to mod, but they have a lot of value as stock guitars, too. If you've ever wanted a backup or know someone who wants to start guitar or something like that, I just can't think of any other guitar in modern history that would be more perfect for that kind of price. It's got a light and comfortable body with contours, brilliant short scale neck for all kinds of players (slightly flatter than vintage), hardtail bridge that is a little hard to string up at first but gets the job done, nut that might benefit from a little softening but otherwise is cut correctly, pots that should last decades, and tuners that work. The only bits that truly need work are probably changing the jack to a Switchcraft which you can do without removing the pickguard (because cheap jacks will always fail) and maybe the switch, though the switch should hold up for a while.

So who knows, I won't really know what these guitars are capable of until I gig with them, and it might be a while until I do, maybe later this month. And when I do, I'm planning on using stock pickups.

I totally agree with all of this. For me, the only thing needed with these guitars to put them immediately into service as a gigable guitar is to take the factory strings off and spend fifteen minutes doing a quick polishing of the frets with a 8000 grit polishing cloth before putting a fresh set of quality strings on it and stretching the strings out well.

Straight out of the box, the electronics are fine, the fret ends are excellent, the pickups are totally usable and quite nice sounding once you figure them out. I really expected to have to change out a lot of things but as it turns out I didn’t have to. This guitar even comes set up exceptionally well and only a tiny turn of the truss rod was needed on one of mine.

I have changed out the string trees to Graph-Tech because I like them and the tuners to Kluson vintage machines for personal aesthetic reasons and I like changing pickguards because it individualizes the guitar but as I mentioned in my initial review over at Squier Talk, the stock trees and tuners are perfectly fine once you put a fresh set of strings on it.

My blue one is getting more of an overhaul because I had to do some routing to accommodate the Mustang slide switches but even that’s a minor job as far as modding goes.

Here’s a before and after of the rough fret surface (a real common feature of inexpensive guitars these days but at least they are getting the fret ends dressed nicely). My blue one was worse than my black one but as I said, a few minutes with a polishing cloth makes them smooth and shiny.

[honeyiscool]

I totally agree with all of this. For me, the only thing needed with these guitars to put them immediately into service as a gigable guitar is to take the factory strings off and spend fifteen minutes doing a quick polishing of the frets with a 8000 grit polishing cloth before putting a fresh set of quality strings on it and stretching the strings out well.

Straight out of the box, the electronics are fine, the fret ends are excellent, the pickups are totally usable and quite nice sounding once you figure them out. I really expected to have to change out a lot of things but as it turns out I didn’t have to. This guitar even comes set up exceptionally well and only a tiny turn of the truss rod was needed on one of mine.

I know it's quicker with polishing cloth, but I'm just noticing that spending a few hours playing with stock strings is already smoothing out the guitar for me. I have some bronze wool that I might lightly hit the frets with. Bronze wool is actually pretty useful for all kinds of things on a guitar because it's relatively soft so does a good job of removing gunk without removing material. I just want to put a little bit of wear on the guitar before its first string change. I'll likely use that time to remove the pickguard, remove all the spare bits of shrink wrap, and install a Switchcraft 3-way switch. I'll also switch out the wiring to my favored setup, but that's nothing to do with the quality of the existing wiring, I just happen to have specific preferences (250k low-friction linear volume pot, 500k low-friction audio tone pot, 0.22uF cap, Switchcraft jack, set screw knobs) for how I wire guitars. I've been playing the Bullet Mustang on my THR10 on the clean setting to just above breakup levels, which isn't the most revealing setting in the world, but it actually corresponds to how I play in real life, and sheesh, I can't imagine any of my bandmates complaining about the tone I'm getting from a Bullet Mustang, and this is on crappy stock strings. I might experiment with some nice steel saddles I have lying about, but I'm honestly not sure they'll improve much.

But yeah, what's possibly shocking is how well the thing was set up out of the box. The product box was stapled shut. Clearly, nobody had touched it since Squier boxed it up and placed it in the shipping container, probably weeks, if not months, ago. Yet the truss rod, string heights, honestly, it was pretty spot on. I could optimize it to my liking, but I don't think anybody would consider that a bad setup.

[Pat V]

But they make white ones....

This is true!