It's hard to believe one can get this much guitar for so little money. I play jazz with 12-52 flatwound strings and there was no way I could live with the stock skinny strings (09'ths) so I had to do a setup after a string change (truss rod adjustment, string action setting, intonation adjustment). My flatwound string set has a wound G string, so it will also be necessary to get a set of compensating bridge saddles to account for that. But other than that, it plays and sounds great out of the box. Being a Fender, it's design is modular, so it's also an obvious candidate for modding if one is so inclined. I may replace the neck pickup with a Biltoft Charlie Christian pickup, but that's just me. The stock pickups are very much OK. The tuning machines are not top of the line but they do their job. The frets are well dressed though not polished to a super shine - but you can't expect a lot of labor heavy work for that price. If you want high gloss frets, polish them yourself. Actually, I was prepared to get a Warmoth replacement neck for it, but as it turned out, the stock neck is so good that it's not needed.
I can without reservations recommend the Squier Classic Vibe - not only to beginners. Myself, I have been playing for more than 50 years and own a couple of quite expensive archtops. But to be brutally frank, the sheer utility value of this Squier CV is just as good.
