alt Hacker NewsMy first and last Fender guitar was a Squier when I was a kid and just starting to learn.
I’m sure the guitars are fine (the squier was for what it is), but I’ve always gotten the ick from their business practices.
These days there really isn’t anything special about their guitars there are a bajillion copycats that are almost as good, some that are better.
This kind of legal campaign just reeks of desperation from losing at competition. When you can’t win on merit and value, abuse the legal system. Gross. They’ve been on my shitlist for a long time and it looks like they’re staying there permanently. What a shame for such an influential cultural brand.
I am looking to get back into playing bass and have been completely out of the loop for about the last decade. When I started looking around to see what was available, it seems to me that guitar and bass prices are attached more to brand/model reputation than the actual objective and subjective quality of the instrument.
For example, the Squier and Fender basses with the same features are essentially identical. The Fender might have a higher quality finish and slightly better hardware (and is maybe made in a different country?) but I watched _many_ YouTube videos where professional bass players could not make one sound better than the other. Despite a 2x-3x price delta.
And most interestingly, Yamaha bass guitars are among the lowest cost for a brand-new bass, yet are also made surprisingly well and sound as good as some basses that cost an order of magnitude more.
This just further confirms my observation that in most any market, it always seems that the most popular brand is rarely the best overall value.