Acquired by Fender in 1965 - the brand used to be an official supplier of strings for Fender’s unusual new electric guitars - Squier used to be one of the most successful copy-maker of Fender’s biggest guitars. Considering nice quality and smart cost the insruments produced by Squier brand experienced high demand.
Jerome Bonaparte "J.B." Squier was an English immigrant in USA. When he came in Michigan in 19th century he had already mastered the fine art of violin making. Together with his son they were producing violins with an exceptional varnish and in 1890 Victor Squier opened his own shop bringing the traditionally European craftsmanship to USA. His violin, banjo and guitar strings became well known nationwide and were especially popular among students because of their reasonable price. Squier started to manufacture strings for electric instruments in 1930s.
Since 1950s the story of Squier has been tightly connected with Fender ups and downs. After 1970s when Fender was bought by CBS there was disgracefully numerous launch of Fender copies made by Japanese manufacturers the insruments of which seemed more of a mockery. That’s why in 1982 Fender established its own facilities in Japan putting in some justice and honor. The funny part – some facilities took into business a few Japanese used-to-be “Fender-pretenders”. To relieve Europe of early Fender copies “made in Asia” the brand decided to find a cost-conscious partner which would export the newly produced models. Squier got finally revived and Fender Japan vintage models got introduced. The market witnessed the coming of Squier JV ("Japanese Vintage") instruments. The quality was still amazing and there were only minor changes brought, like a zinc tremolo block instead of a steel one, for example.
In late 1983, as it had in Europe and Japan, Fender decided to import Squier instruments into the United States in order to compete with the many copies flooding the domestic market. To make them stand out without actually shouting out about the competition Fender came to a solution: the Squier models got '70s features and were claimed to be the first instruments ever "officially authorized" to borrow from Fender's classic designs.
The original vintage models became the basics of the Squier Standard Series introduced in the mid-1980s, featuring some optimization difference and a modern design catch up. The Standard Series itself continued throughout the early 1990s and evolved into a new generation of Squier models.
Affinity and Pro Tone/Vista series guitars and basses appeared in 1996. Such fine touches as transparent finishes on ash bodies and gold hardware turned Squier into something bigger than a quality low-cost Fender business “insider”. The new era began for Squier.
Vista models, such as the Super-Sonic, Venus and Venus XII, were groundbreaking designs with no clear Fender predecessors; others combined Fender features from different models into modified beasts such as the Jagmaster, which is still a massively respected Squier performer today.
The Affinity Series was responsible for the great sells – the beginners preffered to purchase Squier because the brand cared about stacking their instruments up with everything they need to enter the world of amplified music.
In the early 2000s Squier released a short-lived Showmaster Series and went on with producing their commercially reliable Affinity and Standard series introducing some changes.
A bit later there were Series 24 instruments, comprising various style options, offered by Squier and it happened to be a market flop. Following this flop Squier produced Tom DeLonge Stratocaster model which was a best-seller – the model takes after '70s style Stratocaster design featuring true Fender approach.
During the mid-2000s Squier launched some special designs and limited editions and in 2005 the brand introduced Master Series. Fender Custom Shop master builders designed two Master Series models, the M-80 and the Esprit.
In 2007, Squier introduced its Vintage Modified series; vintage-styled Stratocaster and Telecaster models.
Squier is Fender. That’s what they say about themselves. We say Squier is a noble page of Fender’s history. A magic wand which saved Fender’s reputation so many times.