My background, once again…
I took Beginning Folk Guitar at a community college in the '80s. I bought my Takamine then, and amused myself strumming and singing songs in privacy. A friend needed money, so he sold me his American-made Fender Telecaster and a Hondo II Les Pau copy in the early-'90s. I played with those a bit, but I never progressed beyond chords. My friend wanted his Tele back years later, so I sold it to him. After several years I really began to miss it. A couple of years ago I bought a duplicate of it. Shortly thereafter, I found a Squier (note spelling) in the same colour. I switched out the maple neck for a rosewood one so that it would be a cheap-ass clone to my '93 Fender.
Now I had an extra, brand-new, neck. What to do with it? Build another guitar, of course! I sourced a bunch of parts from American-made 2008 Fenders, SCN pickups, and a console with upgraded pots and a four-way switch. My burgundy beauty turned out very nicely and plays well. But I got tired of the ‘joke’ of having a Squier neck on a guitar made of Fender parts; so I bought an unsued maple Tele neck. And then I just had to have another Les Paul. I bought an Epiphone one in cherry sunburst.
I took some instruction, but haven’t had the time to continue with it. But I do have some tablature, and have learned to find instruction on YouTube. I just need to find some time.
Anyway, I got to looking at that Squier. Wouldn’t it be fun to make it not such a POS? I had plenty of copper shielding tape left over from the Fender build, so I took the Squier apart and shielded the cavities. I found the same SCN pickups and upgraded console I used on the project Fender. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’, right? Can’t do all this work and still have the top-loading bridge! So I bought a new Fender string-through bridge. I drilled holes through the body for the strings, bought some ferrules, and put everything back together including replacing the Squier pick guard with a new tri-ply Fender one. I left the neck off because there was just one… more… thing… that needed to be done: I needed to countersink the holes on the back of the body for the ferrules. And that’s where I stalled. I didn’t have the proper drill bits, and by the time I got them the holidays were upon me. So the Squier sat. And sat. And sat. More than a year later I decided to finish it. I countersunk the holes and installed the ferrules. But by this time I’d lost interest in opening it up and figuring out where all of the wires went and soldering them together. Last week I took it to The Guitar Doctor. He did the soldering for me. He also ‘set up’ the guitar, including replacing three screws and springs on the bridge so that it would tune correctly. (The ones supplied were too short.)
At long last, my Squier is finished, and it sounds as good as a Fender. And well it should, since the only Squier parts on it are the body, the neck, and the knobs!
Of course now I have leftover, ‘brand-new’ parts: The Squier maple neck, original, Squier pickups and console, the top-loader bridge, and the pick guard. Say… All I need is a new body! 
(I think I’d better nip this in the bud, and just sell the parts on eBay. 
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