One for the Squire Strat fraternity...which model is it?

jasperthecat

OK so on Saturday afternoon while looking for a guitar that I could leave up at my caravan between visits I spotted a Squier Strat for sale locally on Gumtree for the princely sum of £10.00.

Yep only £10.00 and what's more it looked remarkably tidy on the advert so as the advert had just been put up and the seller lived at the other side of town I quickly jumped in offered to drop around and buy it which I did.
  
At the time of reading the ad I'd noticed they also had a TKL jumbo acoustic case for sale...this is an excellent make of case and built like the proverbial and they offered to let me take it and either bring it back or take the money to them if I wanted it. It fits my Epiphone J200 perfectly like a glove so it was a no-brainer and I got that too for just £10.00.

Anyway the Squier is very tidy with very few dings and just needed a good set up. Apparently the owner couldn't get away with electric guitars and the guitar had been stored in the loft which explained the rusty stings but when I removed the strings that were left and checked the neck with my notched straight edge it was surprisingly pretty good and only needed a slight tweak of the truss rod so that was fine.
I then checked for any high individual frets and proceeded to dress only only those which required attention which really only meant two frets needing immediate attention and then gave the rest a quick polish as there was no fret wear to speak of and it was almost like new.

The fingerboard was dry and dirty so gave that a good clean and oil and then set about restringing it with a set of D'Addario 9-42s.
I hadn't actually heard the guitar plugged in so didn't bother to lift the pickguard to see what was underneath but I knew it wouldn't be much if it didn't work but it was fine.
Once I'd restrung it and set up the action height, I gave it a quick intonation adjust as you could tell from the bridge saddles that the intonation had never been adjusted it played very well.

Now the question is: There are no identifying markings on the headstock or anywhere else as far as I can see which would allude to the age or where it was made or even the individual model.
The pickguard has certainly aged as have the tone and volume control knobs so it doesn't seem to be a very late model but I'm a bit thrown by the very white pups?
From what I've been able to discover I am leaning toward it being a Squier Strat SE model. The neck is very slightly fatter than my Squier Telecaster Custom fitted with P-90s which of all my guitars which include Fender Telecaster and Gretsch 5120 is my goto guitar and it plays very much like the Strats i've played belonging to other people.

I spent an a good deal of time working on the Squier Custom's neck and the action is absolutely superb and I suspect I could do the same with this Squier. The guitar would make a ideal model to upgrade as it plays fine now and I suspect with a proper set of original pups etc it would make a great playing guitar and given that I paid virtually nothing for it, it's worth the investment, plus I enjoy restoring guitars so that is a bonus.

So any ideas of the model? Pics below.

 



The strap must be worth half of what I paid.

rossi

i think its an SE that came in a  start up kit with an amp etc .i have bought several and they are good guitars  with full size body and nut width .

jasperthecat

rossi said:

i think its an SE that came in a  start up kit with an amp etc .i have bought several and they are good guitars  with full size body and nut width .

Yes that sounds right. 
I read that the SE models had a slightly chunkier neck feel than regular Squier Strats but when I was holding the neck without strings I couldn't understand what they were on about but after fitting strings and playing it, they do have a slightly chunky feel but certainly not an unwelcome one and one I could soon get to grips with.

Among my 10 guitars I own I have a 'Westfield' copy of a Strat which I use just for recording in my home studio when I want that familiar 'quack' sound you only get with Strats.  Everything on it is original and it's a well made excellent sounding guitar which didn't take much effort to make into an excellent player once I'd given it a full set up.
A cousin of mine is a Strat fanatic owning several including some very expensive American special editions and he tried out the little Westfield and was more than impressed when he played it through my Yamaha THR10.

I've just compared them both and the Westfield wins out over the Squier on pups but I can soon rustle up some better pups cheap off eBay or the likes so the SE is a good platform guitar for modding.