I've always wanted a baritone Telecaster. When I saw this Squier in sunburst and with P-90 style pickups I had to have it. I waited months for it to come back in stock and, despite the substantial 2022 price hike, I pulled the trigger. I see that the price has come back down a little now so I guess if I had waited a few months, I might have got a better deal on it but, seeing as a baritone Tele was one of my bucket list guitars, and this Squier ticked off all the boxes, I don't regret getting it when it became available. I've been picking on it a few months now and I think that I'm able to give an honest review of the guitar.The good: The guitar body and neck was well put together and seems durable enough. The neck is a nice and comfortable. It's not too thick but not super thin with a nice round carve to it. The laurel fretboard is not quite as dark and attractive as the rosewood on my 08 MIM strat but it looks better than some of the Pau Ferro fretboards I've seen on more expensive guitars. The guitar body showed some flame on the face of the guitar which was a nice surprise on a guitar at this price point and the sunburst paint job was well done and beautiful to my eyes. The strings were a heavier gauge than I prefer, tuned B to B but are probably better if you plan on tuning lower than B to B. The pickups are not bad at all, and I don't think that there would be much need to replace them unless you were after a very specific sound. I played some clean arpeggios and some tic… read more tac country licks through my Peavey Delta Blues with a bit of reverb, slap back delay and tremolo and it sounded great. Then I ran it through a green Russian reissue Big Muff pushed by a Proco Rat and got a massive Doom tone ran through a stereo bass amp/Delta Blues 115 rig. Running an Ibanez TS mini before the Big Muff tightened up the bass, pushed the mids and gave it more of a percussive "djenty" tone. I've found that the pickups can be a little brittle sounding when ran through my Marshall DSL that I have EQed to my Gibson Les Paul Special and Baja Tele but ran through dedicated baritone rig, EQed to the guitar, they sounded fine. The vol and tone pots worked and helped to tame some of the brightness of the bridge pickup. The middle (bridge and neck) position had that beautiful chirpy tele middle position tone, the neck on its own was nice and round sounding and the bridge had quite a bit of bite but not as much bark as the Gibby P-90's in my Special, which is okay for a baritone that needs a little extra treble to keep it from sounding muddy. First impressions were that I got a good sounding, pretty well-built guitar for a decent price.Now the bad: 1) The output jack is garbage and will need to be replaced. It barely holds my instrument cable in place, and I've accidentally unplugged the guitar a few times just by brushing it with my hand. 2) When I received the guitar the tone knob had come loose and was rolling around inside the box. I reinstalled it and tightened down the allen screw that holds the knob onto the pot shaft and that seemed to fix it but then, a few weeks later, the volume knob started coming off and I can't seem to get the Allen screw tight enough for it to stay on the guitar. 3) The three-way toggle has already failed rendering the guitar unplayable until I replace it. 4) The tuners are cheap and sticky (could also be the nut) and make it hard to accurately tune the guitar. 5) The guitar came set up with a very high action. The strings needed to be lowered quite a bit in order to make playing the guitar a pleasant experience.I've owned a couple of Squiers in the past (an early 90's MIM Strat and a VM P-Bass) and they were fine guitars that didn't need any mods. This guitar, however, is going to have to be completely gutted and rewired. I hadn't planned on replacing the pickups but since I'm going to have to rewire the whole guitar I might as well slap a nice set of Lollars in it to get the most out of it. If I wanted to make this into a dedicated Metal guitar, I would probably slap some P90 sized EMG's in it. The tuners will be replaced and I might even upgrade the bridge but it's working fine for now. The guitar is past its return window or I would have sent it back to Zzounds. I haven't tried contacting Fender for support since the bones of the guitar are solid and I feel as though I would be better off upgrading the guitar with quality components than having to go through the hassle of dealing with the manufacturer. With Fender raising the prices of their MIM guitars through the roof I have been looking more and more at Squier guitars as more "affordable" alternatives. I had planned on buying a bass VI next, but I think that I'm going to shop around for a used one rather than buying one brand new since I've had so many problems out of this guitar. Despite all the issues I enjoy playing this guitar a lot and it allows me to explore another creative dimension without having to modify my Fender and Gibson standard-scale guitars. I just wish that it had been built with higher quality electronic components.

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