This $350 Fender guitar might just be the best value in the entire music market

According to Fender, this Strat has three alnico pickups, along with "a slim, comfortable 'C'-shaped neck profile with an easy-playing 9.5"-radius fingerboard and narrow-tall frets, as well as a vintage-style tremolo system for expressive string bending effects."

The vintage-style finish on the neck is perhaps my favorite aspect — I don't like it when guitars look too new.

The components on my test guitar were of high quality generally, although they lacked the heft and finish of what you'd find on higher-end Fender axes. Of course, for less that $400, one can't expect the best of the best. With CV Squiers, Fender offers a beautiful compromise. I personally think that these guitars look and play like instruments that cost twice as much.

Two aspects worth calling out are the real bone nut — typically found only on much nicer guitars — and the poplar-wood body, which is just about perfect for weight and sustain, not too heavy, but not insubstantial.

The idea here is to give Strat players options normally reserved for their Gibson Les Paul-playing brethren. Strats are famous for their neck pickups, but a lot of folks think the single-coil bridge pickup is useless. Dropping a humbucker (so called because unlike a single-coil unit, it doesn't buzz when selected) in there means you can use your Strat to play heavier music, punk and metal, but still have the tasty neck single-coil when it's Hendrix time.

I find that HSS Strats can go from, say, a Dead Boys cover with the bridge engaged to sliding through a funk number with the neck selected and some of the tone rolled off.

It's worth noting that you can always use the CV Squier as a platform for customization, swapping out the pickups for different models.

For much of my guitar-playing life, I've favored Fender Telecasters, but after I got into a group, I found that Strats are both easier for me to play and offer more versatility. So I bought an old Squier and I haven't looked back. My axe is also an HSS setup, with a pretty beefy bridge humbucker and milder single coils in the middle at the neck.

It was a cheap acquisition, and even after I had some work done on it, it came in below what a new Squier Classic Vibe '70s HSS would have run me. But I had to dig around to find it, and then I had to figure out how to get it up to snuff. Meanwhile, for $350, I could have had a gig-worthy Strat that would perform at the same level. No overthinking involved.

Classic Vibe Squiers are, as far as I'm concerned, the most stupid-good values in all of guitaring. I've sampled the best, US-made instruments Fender has to offer, and yes, they're worth every penny. But for grab-and-go playing, CV Squiers are amazing. And if you don't like something about them, you can always upgrade components and even swap out the necks.

I also own a cheaper Squier Strat — a roughly $200 instrument — and the move up in quality from it to the CV is astounding. That starter guitar is a fine thing, but the CV is worth the extra $150 for the neck alone.

My view is that Classic Vibe is the best starting point for most beginner guitarists. Even if you bail out after a year, you should be able to easily sell a CV. But if you stick with it, you can take a Classic Vibe all the way to the stage with no problem.