I'd put this guitar up against any Fender I've played including a friend's Custom Shop. I transferred the pickups and electronics to the Squier pickguard because it had that creamy yellow vintage look that can't be faked. I had a GFS pre-wired pickguard laying around.
SQUIER STRATOCASTER SERIAL NUMBERS SERIES
I have almost the exact same guitar but an A series from 1984. The switch and pots are middle of the road quality and due to age will probably give you problems if you start playing it a lot. They get a pretty good tone but the guitar will come alive with some better pickups. On that one if it's going to be a player I'd replace the pickups and electronics but keep the old parts in case you decide to sell it someday. They are incredible guitars if you can get them cheap enough. That one is based on a '62 but has many things that are not period correct. A lot of people call them reissues but really they are not. I sort of collect MIJ Squiers and Fenders. There is not a lot of difference structurally between the MIJ Fenders and Squiers. I've read it could be a standard, it could be a 62 reissue standard if you believe ST362V means strat 62 vintage, but who knows?
No markings on any hardware except that it has Gotoh tuners from factory, they've never been off and the maple has faded around them and the squier by fender logo. Pickup covers and knobs are nicely yellowed and the WBW PG is clean and tidy but not yellowed. Very little fret wear, but then I think I mentioned in my OP, that it was a wall ornament for several years and totally unplayed until the current owner swapped it for a cheap strat copy! Completely stock, never been opened up by the look of it! The 5 way selector is stamped YM-50, the wiring is all factory standard stuff but looks a decent standard and untouched. It has no other markings on the body, but the pots a M250kohmA also stamped 83 K. Its a squier ST362V strat according to the neck stamp. That’s what I love about it: you can never actually get to the bottom of it, you know? It just goes on and on the further you get down the rabbit hole.I now have this guitar at my house for a service and setup. “There’s so much out there that was made in very, very limited numbers, like special orders for Japanese guitar stores. “I think people make the mistake of downloading the Fender Japan catalogues and thinking that’s the be all and end all of Fender Japan – when actually it’s just the tip of the iceberg. People make the mistake of downloading the Fender Japan catalogues and thinking that’s the be all and end all – when actually it’s just the tip of the iceberg It’s effectively more obscure than the Fender Japan stuff I normally go for, you know, of which there’s absolutely thousands and thousands of models. So because I buy directly from Japan I don’t get a huge amount of the JV or the Squier stuff in. But I don’t get a huge amount of JV stuff in purely because, at the time, a lot of it was exported over here anyway. So all the way from ’92 to about the mid-90s. “The way I run my business, I’m lucky in that I get to select what I have – and I am a bit more skewed towards the FujiGen era. Fender Japan also made a thinline Jaguar, but the Mustang is much rarer” (Image credit: Future)ĭo you come across much interesting Squier and early Fender JV stuff? “Thinline Mustang from 2012: another real rarity. But nowadays if any boutique guitar company was to move production to Japan it wouldn’t be seen as a step down, just a step across. And so the original idea of a cost-cutting range of guitars is perhaps what’s persisted in people’s minds when they think of Japanese Fenders.
“I think Tokai almost got the original contract with them in 1980, but that fell through, so Fender went to FujiGen. People are starting to see Fender Japan as quite an exclusive brand in its own right. Fender had been in the doldrums in the 70s and I think they now realized that, actually, the guitars being built in FujiGen were fantastic. “FujiGen had started in 1960 and had made a kind of niche for themselves in copying other guitars like Gibsons and Fenders through brands like Greco. The factory Fender originally got to build their guitars was FujiGen. “I think it’s a perception that comes from when Fender originally moved over there in the early 80s and it was seen as a cost-cutting exercise. Does Fender Japan still suffer from being perceived as a rung down from USA-made equivalents? Japanese-built Gretsches and ESPs are seen as absolute top-quality marques. “A 2012 order-made Mustang with a factory Bigsby.
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