Squier Telecaster Custom

The Squier brand has had a negative stigma over the last few decades. Understandable, considering at the start of the production run under the Squier brand, the guitars were horrible, poor quality, and sounded better. Today, Squiers still haven't fully shaken off the negative connotations and they still live under the shadow of the Gibson budget brand, Epiphone. However, they are still excellent guitars. On the aesthetics side of things, it is rather an attractive guitar. A black pickguard with a design not found on any other guitars apart from the Fender Tele Custom '72, on a black body. It looks good. The neck is maple, and bolt-on, but gets rather difficult to play at times. Being maple, the neck is light coloured, and gets rather dirty easily. This can be a problem, and needs to be cleaned a lot. On the electronics side of things, the Telecaster Custom has 2 humbucker pickups. This is rather rare, especially in a Fender guitar. It makes the guitar sound better overall, in my opinion. It sounds excellent, especially played through a decent amp, and if you still dislike the sound, you can easily upgrade to some more humbucker pickups, for example EMGs or Seymour Duncans.

Overall, if you're looking for a cheap guitar and don't want to stretch to buying an Epiphone Les Paul, this is what you should be getting.