There is a lot to love about this guitar: 42mm nut, almost full-size body, smooth neck and that gorgeous surf green colour.
In terms of electronics, you'll get the usual 3 single coils, 5 way blade switch, 2 tone pots and a volume knob.
The single coils are not bad at all and if you play around with the pickup heights, you can get nice sounds. I think that intermediate players might find that the stock pickups hold them back but it's an easy thing to change.
The nice surprise is that the second tone pot came pre-wired to control the bridge tone - this is a great feature.
The bridge/tremelo is surprisingly good and the tuners/machine heads were particularly good. Definitely usable and despite looking a little cheap, work great.
For the modders: you'll be happy to know that the control cavity is deeply routed in the new Chinese Affinity model. I had no trouble installing 3 regular push-pull switches and a Schaller Megaswitch in this guitar.
The guitar came pre-routed for HSH configuration - but if you wanted to convert to HHH you could do so with very little material removal needed.
The build quality and quality control in places feels a lot like a cheap guitar. The fretboard felt quite rough and the frets were sharp. This is quite easily fixed at home with a fine sanding sponge and any decent guitar specialist/luthier could do this for you with no trouble. On the headstock, there are black flecks of paint/dirt/dust present, under the lacquer and to be honest, that bugs me. It should not have left the factory like that and there's not much that can be done about it. The paintwork on the visible parts of the body is great but if you remove the pickguard, there is a lot of poor quality painting and rough wood.
The guitar came pre-intonated, close enough that it is definitely playable. This was great to see. The truss rod needed adjusting though, as the strings were all buzzing on the frets and the guitar was unplayable as it was delivered. A few turns of the allen key provided with the guitar and this was fixed.
In terms of playability, the Squier Affinity is a nice sounding guitar and is a serious instrument. When you play a note, the whole guitar resonates strongly, as it would with an expensive guitar. The back of the neck is satin smooth and very nice to touch. The guitar holds tune well and the intonation is decent. It's a great instrument to learn on and for beginners and intermediate players.
There are some quality control concerns with the Affinity that I received and it's a bit of a shame because it's otherwise a very nice guitar.
