I have a couple of pretty expensive guitars and I play my Squier Strat just as much as the others, if not more. It’s a Bullet body with a Classic Vibe neck and it feels so nice and comfortable to play.
I’d definitely suggest trying out a few higher end guitars to get a better feel for what you like and what areas your current guitar might be lacking.
But a well set up Squier can definitely be a great player!
P.S. Do some research into rolling your fretboard edges, it can really transform the feel of a cheap neck 
Let’s be honest, the price difference between cheap and expensive guitars is:
- The time put into the setup and a little polish
- The willingness of the customer to pay for a big name
Theres almost no bad guitars anymore, since everything mass produced is CNC-milled anyway.
@1: As you @Yaakov said you can do setups yourself, I would not feel bad about using cheap guitars. I own a 130€ Harley Benton Strat that more or less became my most played guitar, after a little fret polishing (levelling in one spot), shielding the electronics, swapping the string trees and adjusting the nut (which I will replace, but I couldn’t find the time).
@2: I played Squiers that were really great guitars. Still I think if I were willing to pay that “much”, I’d probably save some money or wait for a good opportunity to get a good deal on a used Fender just for the logo on the headstock 
Irrational but well…
So for me it’s either really cheap and put in some work or the real deal
Tom
So good, this is what I wanted - people who can speak to Squier vs. More-Expensive-Guitar…!
If you put aside fretwork and other aspects of the build that affect comfort/feel, and zero in on intonation… are you still willing to say you like the Squier/Harley Benton/etc.?
I can get a Squier intonated the day I finish a set-up. The question is when the humidity changes, temperature changes, the guitar gets played a lot, etc., etc., does the neck start to compromise and there goes intonation. (I sort of feel the answer’s yes, though I don’t have enough experience to say so with confidence.)
(I’m kind of ignoring issues that pertain more to the tuning machines, like the guitar holding to tune, since that’s gonna’ vary a lot - some cheap tuners are good, others not - and it’s a good, affordable mod to do anyway.)
Any guitar is going to need a slight adjustment every now and then, I haven’t noticed any unusual movement in my cheaper ones. Even your cheapest Squire has a functional truss rod.
These days there’s all kinds of extra reinforcement methods available once you get into more midrange intruments. Roasted maple, carbon fibe rods, multi-laminate construction etc.
I have a Strat with a Warmoth roasted maple neck and stainless steel frets and I don’t think I’ve had to do any kind of maintainance with it at all. But I still check whether I need to tweak the relief everytime I change strings, so it doesn’t make much difference to me.
By the way, if you’re having problems with intonation on your Squier it’s probably more likely to be an issue with your bridge saddles. The bent steel saddles tend to move a bit, especially the cheapo ones.
You can get a set of modern style replacements for pretty cheap and in my opinion they’re more stable and feel way nicer when palm muting.
So, intonation has nothing to do with neck stability, and is just a matter of accurate fret positioning and nothing egregiously wrong with the fretwork (EDIT - and, rereading this, those are two things I’d take for granted on any production guitar made in the last 20 years, that the frets are in the right spot and good enough not to impact intonation), and then adjusting saddle position. If a guitar is intonated right, and you don’t change string gauges, it would take a LOT of neck warp or movement to make intonation become audible off.
As far as how neck stability impacts setup… I mean, neck quality is less of an issue than finish, I think. An unfinished or minimally finished neck will be a lot more susceptable to climate shifts than a more heavily finished one. Thickness is an issue here - I’ve come full circle a bit these days but there was a time when I mostly played Ibanez guitars with their thin “Wizard” profile that I’d steel wool the finish off the backs and then lightly tung oil. Very well made necks… but I could feel the change of seasons in the way the action would change over time, while my thicker, finished Strat neck never budged.
I don’t think price is strongly correlated with neck stability, though, at least in modern guitars, from reputable companies (Squier is one).
My honest advice here… start saving, but absolutely DON’T spend $1000-1500 on a guitar for a few years until you really know what you like in a guitar, and spend the next few years playing as many different types of guitars as you can. It’s not that more expensive guitars can’t be nicer than cheaper ones (I’d say on average they are, but there’s a LOT of variability there), but I think two other reasons - one, if you haven’t had much experience with nicer guitars than what you’re playing now, you’re probably not going to really notice/mind thew differences, and you should really have enough experience so that you WILL notice and appreciate the differences when you’re spending that kind of money… and two, because it would really suck if you went out and spent $1500 on a Fender Professional, loved it… and two years down the road realized that what you really wanted was some sort of super-strat with humbuckers, deeper cutaways, and a fully floating bridge.
Also, fret height is a matter of preference (I like jumbo frets, feel weird playing guitars wiith anything less than medium-jumbo, etc), but fretwork itself is very important for intonation and buzz-free action. This can definitely be a differentiator.
I really like the amount of italics and all caps Drew uses to hammer home points
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Thanks man. I tend to write a lot, so the occasional emphasized bit probably helps.
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For sure. I’m trying to get in the habit of checking relief at least seasonally. That’s also a good point about the saddles - very good place to spend a little money if intonation is so much on my mind.
Not so sure about that, Drew - if the neck twists even a touch, you’re going to have intonation problems. Though I’m speculating here, I’d assume that one of the specs for a good neck blank on pricier guitars is consistency of grain, mass, etc. A cheap neck, if it’s got that kind of inconsistency to it, is not going to remain straight and stable when stressed by humidity or other factors.
There you’ve got me. I don’t have enough experience to contradict this; you may be right. I just know that the tiniest things affect intonation.
Do you feel like maple necks are more stable than rosewood for this reason? (I prefer rosewood just because practically, I don’t want to need to refinish a mape or worry about the effects on it from redressing frets or light sanding, which is good when cleaning. But willing to rethink this.)
If the neck twists, you’re going to have problems for sure - notes choking out and irregular action being far and away the biggest. Intonation, though, how “in tune” fretted notes will be over the length of the neck, isn’t going to be one of them, unless the bridge saddles are all out of whack, or the frets are physically in the wrtong places. Where I would expect an unstable neck to start to impact intonation would be if the action rose to the degree that fretting a note was pulling it sharp from the distance you had to displace it to reach the fretboard. That would be awfully high action, and playablity would be first and foremost where you’d be suffering here.
Maple or rosewood fretboards? The fretboard is, bigger picture, a pretty small part of the neck. I wouldn’t exoect this to be a factor. If you’re talking about an entire neck made out of rosewood, though, I’ve only seen one or two all-rosewood necks, so I can’t really say.
It’s not common on Fenders, outside f the custom shop, but roasted maple does tend to be more stable than reglar, simply because it’s entirely devoid of moisture.
That said, for a conventional maple neck… neck blanks that are so bad they actually warp are exceedingly rare. Even a Squier, as an affordable guitar, is not likely to have a neck actually warp on you.
Not trying to be argumentative here, just getting educated… Warpage, or twist, will mean that you’ve changed the distance between the saddles and nut - and not uniformly. That should affect intonation, it would seem. Is there something I’m not factoring in?
(Re: my question about maple vs. rosewood… Since maple fingerboards are varnished, as you pointed out, they are less susceptible to moisture - so perhaps cheaper ones twist less than cheap rosewood. But I know now that you’re not of the mind that cheaper necks warp more, so…)
I didn’t really read through all the posts but I do have a bit of advice. I’ve rebuilt a few guitars. From stripping the paint/repainting to electronics.
This involves buying a older guitar though. Look for a 90s Peavey Predator. Basically a strat copy. They’re pretty good guitars on their own but the necks a renowned for being super comfy. Probably could get one for $150-$175. Ripe for upgrades.
I bought one just to frankenstrat it. As well as upgrading one I had for 20 years. The first attempt on the one I had for 20 years ended in failure due to inexperience, but the second one is a monster.
I put in locking tuners, Wilkinson bridge, fat 59’s, upgraded the pots and did EJ wiring. Maybe $500 total.
The video is me demoing the MXR ethereal reverb sound but the guitar sounds great if you ignore the digital distortion.
Aside from the fact that I own a Gibson SG Standard and Hagstrom Ultra Max, I modded mine, put in locking Fender tuning machines, Wilkinson PUPs, Graphtech nut, saddles, shielded all cavities, added a treble bleed circuit, replaced the budget 5 position switch and rewired the tone circuit so is first neck only and second middle + bridge. Overall a big improvement from the stock Squire making it quite more fun to play. Later on, and for less than the cost of the mods, I decided to get an Ibanez RG450MB and it has become my main go to guitar. However, if I had to choose to do it all over again I wud still mod the Squire as I feel there is a sense of pride in what you own and play.
Not trying to be argumentative here, just getting educated… Warpage, or twist, will mean that you’ve changed the distance between the saddles and nut - and not uniformly. That should affect intonation, it would seem. Is there something I’m not factoring in?
Not necessarily is my experience for the neck to have a subtle or slight twist to it as is the case with many budget Squires. Mine suffers from the same thing as what the OP has described but overall a non issue when it comes to intonation, staying in tune or playability.
Didn’t quite get you here - so you’re saying that you have in fact found that Squiers often have at least a bit of twist?
This may be a bit of a pickle but all I am saying is that I too have come to notice that my Squire has a slight or apparent neck twist. We have yet to talk about Stratitis which was pretty obvious with mine and spent many hours filing down the fret ends. Perhaps temparature and or humidity from the manufacture to then sitting in storage for long periods of time is plausible for this. Just know that I am not looking to bash on the product but after all it is a low budget guitar and for the money is a great instrument to get started on. With that said my main focus here was to relay that there is only so much you can do with upgragdes before the product is no longer an original which at that point one might be better off looking at something else unless of course this is what you are lookin to do - create your own Frankenstrat.
In my list of things to NOT replace on a Squier, there are two things: body and neck. Anything else - sure, why not? Tuning machines, if they bother you. Electronics (pots, switches, cables, condensers) for sure - if it’s going to be your main guitar, or if you use the volume/tone a lot. Bridge and saddles, almost definitely. Pickups: maybe. Cheap pickups can sound surprisingly good.
If the neck is bad, return it. But there’s absolutely no reason for it to be bad. If you need to file a few fret ends, so be it.
I hear the respect for Squier’s product coming through.
Ok, gonna’ try to learn more about the way the wood is sawn, and maybe then I’ll have a better question or two regarding… I myself may have lost sight of the OP!.. whether or not souping-up a Squier gives you a solid instrument (especially regarding the neck vis a vis intonation).
In theory, yes, it. could impact intonation… but, for it to make a detectible impact in how “in tune” the neck was across the fretboard, it would have to be warped or twisted to the point of unplayability. It’s essentially a moot point, because you’d have far bigger problems before it got even close to bad enough to impact intonation.
Maple necks are finished because unfinished maple is more susceptible to moisture. A rosewood fretboard isn’t finished, because it’s a much denser, more oily wood that really isn’t all that permeable and susceptable to shifting with moisture. I suppose it’s possible one is potentially more prone than the other, but I would expect the differences to be small enough to be irrelevant, in practice. Personally, I play mostly guitars with maple fretboards, simply because I like maple. Neck stability hasn’t been an issue though for my maple fretboard OR rosewood fretboard necks (or the guitar or two with an ebony board I owned at one point or another, for that matter).