Squier Stop Dreaming Start Playing Affinity Strat HSS with Bullet 150 DSP Amp

July 26, 2007 by Jo Minor · Leave a Comment

Are you looking for a good deal on everything you will need to get started rocking with the electric guitar? Then you ought to check out the Squier Stop Dreaming, Start Playing Affinity Strat HSS with Bullet 150 DSP Amp Pack. For only $499.99 list price, you get the Squier “fat Strat” electric guitar, a 15 watt Fender amp with 15 digital effects, and all the other odds and ends you need.

The Stratocaster is about the most popular electric guitar style ever. One of the big beefs people have about it, though, is that it has single coil pickups. Single coil pickups tend to hum, for one thing, and they tend to have a twangy sound. As a result, most rock guitarists like the double-coil style of pickups which are commonly called humbuckers. These pickups remove the hum heard with single coil “pups,” as well as giving the guitar a “fatter” or “thicker” sound.

Enter the “fat Strat.” This Squier Affinity Strat HSS electric guitar offers the best of both worlds by giving you a humbucker at the bridge, and single coil pickups in the middle and neck positions. A five-way blade switch gives you choices about which pickups you wish to use. This gives you a wide variety in the types music you can make.

The icon known as the Stratocaster, or simply “Strat,” was first made by Fender in 1954. It featured a comfortably contoured ash or alder body, two deep cutaways for accessing the higher frets, and a uniquely designed “synchronized tremolo” arm and bridge device. The latter invention has become one of the most copied developments in the history of the electric guitar. In the years to come, however, Fender developed a floating tremolo bridge which they generally put on their guitars now.

Buddy Holly was one of the first rock-n-rollers to make the Strat famous. Other famous Strat players past and present include Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton. It has been popular with artists whose music is influenced by the blues, but has also been used in country and other styles of music.

Fender obtained the Squier guitar brand name for marketing a cheaper line of products. Squier guitars are well made, but are not made in America. Squier has recently produced a series of guitar and amp packs that include everything a beginner would need to start learning to play an electric guitar. Someone who plays acoustic guitar and would like to branch out to the electric, or even just someone on a budget, might also like to consider one of these packs.

The Squier Stop Dreaming, Start Playing Affinity Strat HSS with Bullet 150 DSP Amp is unique in that it includes the fat Strat instead of the basic style. The Bullet 150 DSP amp features 15 digitally mastered effects, in addition to an auxiliary input so that you can play along with a CD.

Advantages: Squier Affinity Strat HSS is a pretty good electric guitar to be so inexpensive. As one reviewer so ably put it, it “kicks some serious gluteus max.” It has a good fast neck and a nice finish. With the choices of humbucker or single coil pickups, you can play a wide range of music styles, form hard metal rock to quiet finger picking to twanging country.

The amp has 15 choices of effects as well as a jack for playing with headphones and one for playing along with a CD. The preset effects are decent sounding. The Squier Stop Dreaming, Start Playing Affinity Strat HSS with Bullet 150 DSP amp is certainly a suitable practice or beginner rig and is a good value for the price.

Disadvantages: The single coil pickups do hum, of course, but some have reported the humbucker making some extraneous noise as well. The Bullet Amp is reported to have a bad sounding distortion channel. The clean is good, though. It is basically a practice amp and does not have enough volume for average gigs.

Guitar Specs: