Squier Paran. Super-Sonic SHP

Very good guitar, becomes great with a few upgrades

This is a very good guitar that can become a great one with a few upgrades. It looks fantastic and the shape is very comfortable. I have the shell pink one. The finish is excellent, the neck is one of the very best feeling ones I’ve played regardless of the price. It is glossy at the back unfortunately but it is not a thick layer and it becomes much better with time or a bit of 000 steel wool.

The Indian laurel fretboard was a bit brittle but with some lemon oil and wax it came back to life. It’s a C shaped neck with a radius that feels flatter than the stated 9.5”, so it can be adjusted to a fairly low action, and very low after some fret work.

The pickups are surprisingly good, particularly after adjusting the height. They are pretty high output and for heavy music they will work great. They sound really good with distortion. If you want more detailed and articulate cleans you might want to consider something different but changing pickups is by no means necessary on this inexpensive guitar.

The bridge does its job ok, but in the long term a more substantial one will improve sustain and be more reliable. Same with the tuners - they work but a set of vintage style Gotohs will hold tuning better.

Out of the box it doesn’t stay in tune too well if you use the vibrato, slightly enlarging the nut slots (it’s a bone nut, which is very good at this price) and applying some lubricant or graphite really helps. Not passing the strings through the string trees also helps a lot because they make the angle too steep.

It comes with 09 strings which are way too skinny for a short scale guitar with vibrato, 10s or thicker will be much more stable and not feel like rubber bands.

If the whammy bar feels too hard to you like it did to me, just remove the central spring at the back. It feels perfect now.

Of course a nitro finish and a satin neck would be better but you can’t expect such things at a price like this. I bought it as a cheap guitar to travel with and I am now considering getting a second one to keep in the studio because I just like it so much.

I think that it is probably the best Squier - highly recommended.

Fun guitar

Great fun, lightweight, noisy guitar. Tuning stability is odd, as stock, but just unhook the strings from the string trees behind the nut, and it vastly improves. The break angle behind the nut is just not needed, and the strings seem to bind against the trees or similar, and not come back to pitch. Strings stay on the nut without the trees no problem, so no issue doing this. Makes the guitar go from frustrating to fun in one easy change