Squier Affinity Strat Laurel SG

I'm a big fan of Fender Stratocasters, but I couldn't afford to buy one, so I decided to get this Squire Affinity.
I will divide my impressions into points:
1. The appearance of the guitar, in fact the color is much softer and more pleasant in reality, I really liked it, also the lacquered head of the guitar with a vintage design and the laurel pickguard go together elegantly.
2. The quality of workmanship and assembly of the guitar, in this regard I was a little disappointed, there are several reasons, the fretboard was very dirty and dried out, the first thing I did was remove the strings (by the way, the stock ones are simply terrible) and cleaned the fretboard and then treated it with lemon oil. The tuners seem to be quite cheap, they work unevenly, some are smoother, others are stiff, tuning the guitar is problematic, I think it’s definitely worth replacing the tuners. The frets are unpolished and have some minor gaps. On the positive side, the painting is done with high quality, for this price there are excellent pickups, chrome fittings, the weight of the guitar is very pleasant.
3. Sound, I think that having spent this small price on a squire guitar, I got exactly what I needed, I think that the money was well spent.
If you love Fender, Stratocasters and want to enter the world of music, I am sure this guitar will be very useful for you, I recommend you buy it.

The guitar has a lovely finish that looks better in person than on the website and the tone is gorgeous. Great twangy sound in the fourth position. For its price it's incredible even with everything stock. My only complaints are that the low E sometimes rattles when played, meaning the string may be too deep in the nut (something easily fixable!), and that the tremolo bar sends the guitar completely out of tune with the slightest use. The latter may be due to the fact the guitar is still new though, and I will update it in accordance if this problem no longer persists.

Positives
Paint finish and hardware is fantastic. Can't find a blemish on it.
Electronics all work perfectly.
The minimal finish on the neck provides no resistance, for fast movement up and down the neck.
Held tuning ok, with stock machines heads / nut work.
Not too heavy, kind of a medium weight Strat at 7 lb 6.5 oz (3.3 kg)

Issues
Fretwork not great, it needed a fret dress to get a useable action for me (2 mm / 1.7mm)
After I tightened the whammy bar springs, the bridge studs started to lift. I decided to get my tech to fix this, instead of returning. They had to be plugged, re-drilled and fitted properly.

Hopefully the bridge issue is not consistent among all of these, but I've never had a problem with Thomann taking back defective products, if you decide to return it.

I ended up upgrading the guitar to a 1 humbucker Tom Delonge style strat. The scratchplate holes lined up really close to the Fender hole spacing, so ideal for modding.

Machine head holes are 10 mm, so will fit modern style machine heads (I upgraded them to locking, for each of use)

If it didn't have the issue with the bridge, I'd have given it 4 stars.

There is a lot to love about this guitar: 42mm nut, almost full-size body, smooth neck and that gorgeous surf green colour.

In terms of electronics, you'll get the usual 3 single coils, 5 way blade switch, 2 tone pots and a volume knob.
The single coils are not bad at all and if you play around with the pickup heights, you can get nice sounds. I think that intermediate players might find that the stock pickups hold them back but it's an easy thing to change.
The nice surprise is that the second tone pot came pre-wired to control the bridge tone - this is a great feature.

The bridge/tremelo is surprisingly good and the tuners/machine heads were particularly good. Definitely usable and despite looking a little cheap, work great.

For the modders: you'll be happy to know that the control cavity is deeply routed in the new Chinese Affinity model. I had no trouble installing 3 regular push-pull switches and a Schaller Megaswitch in this guitar.
The guitar came pre-routed for HSH configuration - but if you wanted to convert to HHH you could do so with very little material removal needed.

The build quality and quality control in places feels a lot like a cheap guitar. The fretboard felt quite rough and the frets were sharp. This is quite easily fixed at home with a fine sanding sponge and any decent guitar specialist/luthier could do this for you with no trouble. On the headstock, there are black flecks of paint/dirt/dust present, under the lacquer and to be honest, that bugs me. It should not have left the factory like that and there's not much that can be done about it. The paintwork on the visible parts of the body is great but if you remove the pickguard, there is a lot of poor quality painting and rough wood.

The guitar came pre-intonated, close enough that it is definitely playable. This was great to see. The truss rod needed adjusting though, as the strings were all buzzing on the frets and the guitar was unplayable as it was delivered. A few turns of the allen key provided with the guitar and this was fixed.

In terms of playability, the Squier Affinity is a nice sounding guitar and is a serious instrument. When you play a note, the whole guitar resonates strongly, as it would with an expensive guitar. The back of the neck is satin smooth and very nice to touch. The guitar holds tune well and the intonation is decent. It's a great instrument to learn on and for beginners and intermediate players.

There are some quality control concerns with the Affinity that I received and it's a bit of a shame because it's otherwise a very nice guitar.