Pretty solid.

It's an amazing guitar for beginners, and I love it's feel and construction, my problems with it are more so my own fault at picking this guitar in the first place, since I would later understand how much I dislike single coils. If you like a funky bright guitar, it's pretty good! If not, it's not for you. Not a big fan of the neck wood but, still pretty ok. Overall: It's a stratocaster, what else could you ask for?

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Amazing Guitar

I've had this guitar for 5 years and its better than a lot of Fenders that I've played. It sounds wonderful running through pro amps.

It's great for the price.

Been playing this thing for a while now. Love almost everything about this guitar. Unfortunately, the nut is a very cheap plastic nut, which means it will go out of tune QUICKLY However, you can simply take it out and glue in a TUSQ nut for 20$

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Surprisingly good for the money

Bought this with a view to putting better electronics in it and doing some work on the frets/fretboard etc. One of the cheap pots didn't work. Fender would have been happy to fix it but was going to replace with better ones anyway so told them not to bother. A little rubbing down of the fret edges and crowns was enough to fix the "scraping" when string bending - which would have gone away over time anyway. Set up out of the box was pretty good. Everyone seems to complain about the tuners but for the money it's a detail. And frankly, after tweaking the trem and changing the strings the standard tuners on mine stay in tune pretty well. Potential buyers should be aware (if planning to mod the guitar) that there can be compatibility issues like thinner body (requiring non-standard trem block) and the pickups not having the same pole spacing as Fenders. Neither is the tremelo cover bolt pattern the staggered Fender standard - so you can't just buy one of the Fender sets if you want to change the pickup covers, knobs and trem cover. Wiring is very basic. Selector switch is awful. Pickups sounded a lot better than I was expecting TBH and I got some good tones out of it out of the box - but of course the ones I put in afterwards (Lace Gold) were a lot better - but also cost more new than I paid for the actual guitar. Much nicer with the completely smooth neck than the stickier gloss neck on the Classic Vibes.

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Great value, solid stratocaster

Many years ago I purchased a dark/pine green "affinity" strat by squire. I picked it up in a hurry and without much thought at all before hand, as i needed an instrument quickly for a performance and didn't want or have much of a budget to use at the time. I can honestly say the subtle but tasteful green it was painted was surely the biggest factor i considered, as i remember thinking it would look awesome if i swapped a black pickgaurd onto it. (I never did) So with that said, my expectations having been beyond low in the first place were blown completely outta the atmosphere by this little rock machine! It played at, above, and way beyond its price range for me. It was easy to play, set up very well, (far better than any other budget guitar i can ever remember) and sounded really great. I played it absolutely cranked, with less experience tweaking out a good sound, and in less than optimal sound control circumstances. [Specifically: i blasted it in a medium/large auditorium, as my amp and monitor, in a rock trio, through a yamaha solid state 210 jazz amp.] And i could not have asked for more! It did an amazing job! So if you are in need of a good sounding, easy playing, nice looking strat on like zero budget, i cant recommend a better axe than that!

Great and comfortable!

I wanted a new Stratocaster to replace the crap Starcaster by Fender one I had growing up. My GF bought me this one for Christmas and it's amazing. The body and neck is quite thin in comparison to a regular Strat but I think that helps make it easier to just pick up and play whenever! Definitely a great pick for someone who doesn't want a guitar that's very heavy. I don't even have problems with the tuning machines. The only thing I could say negatively about this is that the pickups aren't the greatest. THEY'RE NOT THE WORST BY ANY MEANS, but a lot of people would like that strong "Fender Player" level of sound which would be attainable by swapping in Fender Tex Mex's or similar for about $100 more.

On the subject of modding this guitar, I opened up the pickup cavity to see what I could do, and as far as how my Strat body was made, I had 2 large cavities under the pickguard. This will allow you to install any pickup arrangement you want! The neck will take a humbucker, and the even larger cavity in the back will let you install a humbucker at the bridge or even allow you to do an HSH config!

Great guitar overall. Very big bang for your buck at $249 (the price that I purchased the guitar). Excellent mod platform to throw in new pickups!

Probably the most accessible "real thing" you can get

You've probably seen that video where a Fender CS master builder tries out Squiers and is thoroughly pleased by the quality they produce at every level. It's an excellent place to start and with a little work done, it will have you set for years as a professional. Feels even better than some American Fenders I've tried, although that might only be down to neck shape preference. I own an Indonesian-made model from '04, which came with the exact same design pickups as the Standard MIM.

It's slimmer than most Strats (to further cut costs on this model I think), which only manifests as an added comfort bonus. However its stock bridge won't be the smoothest surface, and the stock tuners don't hold the tuning that well. Its pickups are big and bright-sounding ceramics that would cut through the mix like butter, and replacing them would be a bit more optional than the tuners/bridge saddles.

To recap: Its sound and feel gives you a solid platform to make great music, and you'll have yourself a trusty roadworthy weapon with as little as a tuner upgrade.

Introduction to repairs/modding - Pretty much indestructible

This guitar was given to me when I started learning to play, at that point it was 20 years old and still in great shape. I only had it for a year before upgrading and never really valued it as I do now but due to this I can safely say that it is pretty much indestructible with any type of damage you could imagine being done to it.

obviously with the damage it suffered due to my neglect, it opened up the opportunity for me to learn how to repair guitar parts including a bridge replacement I did which included learning how to adjust action ECT. I believe this is a benefit of owning one of these or another inexpensive guitar. I hope to use it for modding later on and intend to use it as a gateway to changing electronics such as pickups

in terms of musicality, I felt the pickups were a bit too bright, especially the bridge pickup

We all know it!

Boring part out of the way first: The Fender Stratocaster, blah blah blah, three single coils, blah blah, snappy, blah, alder, blah blah, we all know what the instrument is and what it's history is, right?

The Affinity Strat is the guitar most of us cut our teeth on. It's like you're born into the RPG called "guitar" and you're asked to choose your class from Strat, Tele, or Les Paul, and you decided to choose Strat. The SSS Affinity's single coils are nice, bright and snappy, the neck is thin and nicely smooth. It's an excellent guitar at a very reasonable price, even more so if you got your Affinity Strat used. If there's a down side, it's that the trem is intensely terrible; because the block is made of relatively thin pot metal, it doesn't hold tune very well.

Don't be guided by forums.

Surely, those who have had the opportunity to make comparisons with high-end ranges will have another perspective, but in my experience, coming from a laminated Korean Hyundai from the '90s, to switch to this guitar, I can say that I have achieved a qualitative leap in terms of sound and sustain. A change for alnico microphones and a bone nut and, for my style and abilities, I don't need anything else.