See this is where this all get's interesting - in regards to the body - I've scaped off most of the paint on one side of the Trem cavity and it is indeed a solid one piece body - a very light looking wood. no idea what it is. The machine heads have the the same shape as early Strats - Kluson? with rounded (fat) covers - I would think they are original as they are not particularily of high quality, just standard and there's no sign of work on screws etc. I've taken off the scratchplate and there's no shielding - once again there's no sign of ply through the thinner paint inside - I have a plywood Sguire Tele so I know what i'm looking for. The pickups are a bit odd - they have a hard plastic cover on the bottom rather like a bar magnet only bigger and fixed in the same way as the pickup cover. I imagine this is a bar magnet type single coil - not so good, but they sound as sweet as - my Burns Marquee has similar bars on the Rezomatik pickups and they will never be replaced. The quality of construction/finish again is top notch - and I have played Squires (Chinese,Singapore) and other guitars that aren't - perhaps some Squires coming into the UK are of higher quality - we always pay more and thus expect value for money. I've been buying and selling guitars for about 20 yrs - mainly Strat/Tele type and trust me this is as good as the current Mexican Strats as the seller described - in regards to basic construction, finish and sound it also looks the same - ie headstock/ body styling - I owned a Standard USA Strat for for about 5yrs and apart from the name I can barely find anything that sounds/feels different - neck is slightly slimmer that's all. This guitar is more responsive and acoustically a lot louder and resonant.

My overiding reason for banging on about this is that all guitars should be considered on their own merits - I took a risk with this one and it payed off - i had warned the seller that if it wasn't as good as he described it then it would be sent back - it was and I now have an extremely useful Squire that plays like a dream. Go figure.