The silly things people do... and buy...
Was watching youTube a few months back and came across a video by @Agufish where he hot rodded a guitar and turned what was effectively a junk guitar into a Metal monster, and the thought of getting one of these guitars was planted and took root with me scanning the various 2nd hand guitar markets for a suitable candidate...
Low and behold I found one up for auction. The seller was obviously not a guitarist or a guitar player of any sort but he seemed nice enough. I suppose you have to be if you are working with kids in a hospital. Details on the sellers page said that the guitar was bought to hang on the wall in the ward or in the nurses station, but was never hung up and has sat in its gig bag all this time. Serial number has it as an early version made in 2006, For the price it seemed a good buy so I placed a minimum bid and waited.
To my surprise and joy my minimum bid won.... and today almost two weeks later it has made the journey from Texas into my hands in Australia....
Hello Kitty...
Squire Affinity 2006 (by Fender) Crafted in Indonesia
Now most of you would figure for a guitar that was being sold to little girls way back in 2006 for the clearance price of under $100 that it would be a junk guitar, well I can affirm that you'd be completely wrong. The paint job is awesome, okay it has a cheap nut and tuners but on this one they are quite fine. I plugged kitty into my tuner and every string was at least 3 semi-tones down, yet all tuned up to pitch perfectly. Intonation on the low E was a little out which I put down to the 14yo strings that all still looked brand new. Kitty certainly has NEVER been played. Fired up the Blues Junior and was pleasantly confronted with quite bright bridge HB tones.
Yup, the neck is straight, nil strangled frets. The frets could do with a polish, but for 14y in a air conditioned closet in a hospital they are in very good condition. Fret sprout is almost non-existent.. A close look at the headstock shows it to be much more yellow than the Maple fretboard, and the entire neck is the same. The gloss that is on the fretboard has aged differently to the rest of the quite thick neck which I suspect was a Satin or Matt finish...
Now that I have it in my hands I have become a little unsure on how to proceed. @Agufish certainly got a sad example... Do I go for a bone nut and replace the very well cut existing one. Do I upgrade the quite serviceable tuners. Do I replace the very functional HB PU for something else... Or do I stay original and just polish the frets and call it done, as other originals I've seen are going for three times what I paid...
Oh, pix are family shots, the Fender/Squier's I have, and the other includes the Gibson and Epi cousins
