The Squier Paranormal Series RANKED by Someone Who’s Played Them All

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The Squier Paranormal Series RANKED by Someone Who’s Played Them All

Hey, welcome to get offset. My name is Emily and I’m here today with a big hat and some bigger opinions today. I am going to talk about all of the guitars from the Squier paranormal series. I’ve had the pleasure of playing and demoing every standard six string. I’m pretty sure. I think the only two I haven’t played are the bass.

[00:00:27] Uh, and the baritone, I haven’t played the baritone is because it’s out of stock and I’ve heard great things about it. And I’m almost glad because I do have another baritone guitar and I’m worried I would like the Squier baritone more. And, uh, yeah, there’s just one less thing I need in my life to be honest.

[00:00:48] But yeah. So I want to talk about each of these guitars. And I want to rank them from the ones that inspired me, the least to the ones that inspired me the most. And I’m just going to say off the bat, this one was a very hard list to compile. I am myself shocked. But by the results. Uh, cause a lot of the things that I thought I was not going to love have ended up being my favorites, my absolute favorites from the series.

[00:01:22] So let’s, let’s start talking, let’s start with the one that, um, I’m going to surprise people with, uh, by saying this was my least favorite. Not because, and for the record, none of these are my least favorite because of quality of construction, the physical attributes of all of these guitars minus and tuning stability issues that can be ironed out.

[00:01:46] Were phenomenal. They are truly great guitars like that feeling in your hands. Uh, some of them are just especially, yeah. Buttery and fun to play and just feel good. Um, for me, the biggest, this thing is, does this guitar inspire me when I pick it up? Does it, does it light my fire? Did I bond with it? And some of these guitars I bonded with immediately and some took a little time and some, I just never really.

[00:02:14] Oh, I just think it’s never really connected with me on that spiritual level. So let’s start with, uh, the one that inspired me, the least.

[00:02:28] I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, tornado. I found you to be the least inspiring, even though you were perhaps the most well-built, uh, I think this had. The second best neck on any of these guitars. To me, I think it has just like the most beautiful of the grain patterns. And then I think the color is really, really nice.

[00:02:51] I’d like that subtle sparkle, but not so about this. I don’t know. Maybe it was scale length. Maybe I didn’t have that emotional investment. I think a lot of people have with this model because this wasn’t something that like I grew up watching people play. I’m in my favorite bands. So like, I think the pickups probably sounded pretty good, um, for, you know, what they are.

[00:03:15] And if I really, really wanted to, um, if other everything else had inspired me by this guitar, rather than the electronics, I just swapped out the pickups, um, done some weird wiring stuff at the very least added coil splitting or something like that. But I just don’t think that anything is really going to get me there.

[00:03:36] With this guitar. And again, this is a great guitar. It’s just, um, sometimes you can’t put your finger on why something inspires you or not. I mean, it’s got this really comfortable belly cut. It really is a very comfortable guitar to play sitting down.

[00:03:58] It stayed in tune better than almost any of the others. Um, but yeah, I’m sorry to say. This was my least favorite of the sixth strings. Alright. My second least favorite. Okay. So after the tornado, I’m going to say they’re just really, it’s just really hard. It’s just really hard to pick. Um, and I really am going to have to go based on how I felt about the instrument out of the box.

[00:04:27] Um, and kind of first impressions because after this, like I think I’ve modded. I think I’ve monitored, um, or have plans to mind almost all of them. Um, so yeah, I just got to this, this one was an absolute toss up. Um, Oh, let me lean over and grab it.

[00:04:50] The cyclone, um, is beautiful. It’s comfortable. It’s really cool. Something just, I don’t know. Um, I don’t want to say I don’t like it cause I really, really like it. So it’s really hard. And I know that this was my video and it was my decision to rate these. And I don’t want to rate this because I have, like, I think the most exciting mods that I’m going to do on these guitars is going to be on this one.

[00:05:20] So I think it’s a great, great little garage rock guitar before any modifications, just period. And I think that it had good tuning, like relatively good tuning stability. I did this did like just basically come out of the box and I unbox it and I tuned it. I listened listening back to my demo of it. I don’t think there’s a phase issue with the switches.

[00:05:49] Um, there was something happening in my ears, which was weird. Uh, so the switching is cool. I think the pickups are fine out of the box. Um, the neck, I would give a B something it’s just, it’s just a little bit less buttery than some of the other ones. Um, but I think it’s a lovely, it’s a lot. It is a lovely guitar.

[00:06:11] Uh, but I was when I was filming, like editing my video of it, I think it was the, the weird kind of. I think the pickups I expected to like them more than I did because Ryan Burke from Supercycle hum really liked his pickups. Uh, I wasn’t, I wasn’t smiling as much as I was editing it. And that is why I have this as, um, second second from the bottom of my list.

[00:06:39] But cycling, I love you and I am going to make you into exactly the instrument. I want you to be. And we’re going to have a long and happy life together. I promise you that next is, this was the other one that toss up. And I think that, um, I’m very surprised to put this one in the middle because I’ve had so much fun with it.

[00:07:02] I’ve been playing in so many demos, but again, I’m going off of kind of what stock, uh, what came in at stock

[00:07:11] third from the bottom, right in the middle. The supersonic and this only edge out the psych load, because I actually did grow up or have been wanting this for a very long time. Um, it was another reason it was a toss up was because the tuning stability on this, wasn’t great out of the box and I am struggling a little bit to get used to that reverse headstock.

[00:07:33] I thought I’d like it a lot. And, um, yeah, it’s just fine. But once I. Uh, put the coil splits. If nothing else in this guitar, the coil splits have been such a tremendous improvement, uh, from, from just the stock hump, having just the humbucker option. I did upgrade the pickup SNS as well. Um, but I think that doing the single coil split.

[00:07:59] After listening to videos before and after I think the coil split had the biggest impact on why I love this guitar so much. I also love the especially skinny nut with, um, I think it’s, uh, the balance is not nearly as good as a cycle and, but it’s kind of smaller. And I just kinda like balancing it up like this on the sofa and, uh, playing my little, my little jazzy, whatever I’m doing.

[00:08:42] Yeah. So this is, this is something that I very much enjoy playing both in demos around the house. Uh, when my band had a live streaming gig, I had to choose between a couple of guitars and I almost, I almost picked this one. I do love. That kind of metallic finish. I think that would have been, um, fun to do, but I, uh, similarly ended up going with a different guitar for that, for that gig.

[00:09:07] Um, partially because I was just used to playing on a full scale, uh, guitar for, for the bands shows. And I kind of felt like moving to a short scale might throw me off. And since everything was about to be. Recorded and put into the world. I wanted to really play it safe with, with my, my comfort level of what I’m used to.

[00:09:25] So I just kinda went with a spool full-scale length guitar, but this is again lovely. Love it. Um, you’ve seen me play in a ton of demos is because I think it’s a great guitar. Uh, if you do nothing else with this guitar, when you get at do the coil splitting, you will thank me later. All right. The next pick.

[00:09:47] It almost seems unfair because I did just get this and, uh, and released a demo of it yesterday, but it’s already my second favorite of these guitars. It’s this Cabernet Nita tele with these P90X. And I’m shocked by this. I fought myself so hard on getting this guitar. Because it was it’s marketed as Jazzmaster pickup.

[00:10:14] So the thin line tele kind of look, and I ordered, uh, the, uh, the Jazzmaster body with the tele pickups. And I thought, how just dumb and gratuitous would it be for my Teles to meet jazz masters and my jazz masters to be tele? Like how hipster can you get? But I guess you’ve seen the hat. So you can guess this has the best neck on any of the guitars I’ve played.

[00:10:41] It’s just, my husband was playing it. He just calling it buttery and he was so ready. And I liked the pickups a lot more than I thought I would. I’m still gonna swap them around just for some extra context, the weight on this. I think it’s the lightest weight of any of these, um, the switching. I mean, yeah, it makes sense.

[00:11:00] It’s over there. I think knobs are fine. It’s hard hail. It is a string through, with easy access to the electronics. I haven’t dug around in this too much, but, um, it’s just a really, really nice. Really nice guitar that I think anybody would be, be happy with at any kind of, any level of your playing experience, uh, experience.

[00:11:22] Um, so yeah, this is my second favorite of these guitars and the winter is coming up in a second and I think I’m probably not really surprising to anyone, but me. My favorite guitar is the one I’ve ended up doing the most work on, but even out of the box, This was my favorite of these. I think that bridge pickup is just fantastic.

[00:11:49] I think it’s the best pickup in any of these guitars, just period. Um, I thought think the next field is a really, really great, um, it stayed in tune pretty well. It’s just a pleasure. I mean, I love jazz master shape, so it did not really surprise me that I would find the shape of this very comfortable. Uh, would this surprise me, was liking the electronics, uh, out of the box so much and not thinking that it was just kind of a dumb thing to do, put, uh, put Telecaster pickups in the jazz master.

[00:12:20] Um, and also I think it lends itself so well to MAs. And I feel like even if you’re just looking at these guitars out of the box, looking at what it’s made for how they expect people to have fun with it is really important. Um, this has a routing for a middle pickup. Um, and I think that you could do a humbucker in the neck.

[00:12:40] If I remember correctly, the bridge, you can’t fit a humbucker in there without more routing, but they did obviously know that people were going to mod this guitar and Teles in general. They’re great for MAs. I have a four way switch and this, and I use that a lot. Um, and then of course I put a big SPI on it, but you could have put a big spiel on honestly, a bunch of these.

[00:13:03] I could, I could do it with the, uh, Cabernet to tele. Um, and I could probably do it with a tornado if I really wanted to, but I mean, that’s just lends itself to it again, uh, mounting the strings to the back. I like that. I think that’s easy and just really a solid build, uh, construction. It is good on the heavy side, but I mean, that’s a jazz master body.

[00:13:27] I think the color he’s still one of the reasons I was so surprised I liked this is because I thought this was going to come out being like a light wood color. And a lot of the pictures, uh, just on the website made it look like it was going to be a lighter color. And instead I got this beautiful dark Walnut color.

[00:13:48] yeah, I love it. So I play this a lot of demos and I, uh, this is the one I ultimately played when my band had. Yeah. A live streaming show. Yes, I love it. Um, but really I think that all of the guitars are winners, uh, in the series. I, if we’re going to look back through like what I expected, if you had asked me what I thought.

[00:14:16] My ranking was going to be, I probably would have said just like looking at them what I was most excited about. Number one, I was mostly excited about the supersonic to cyclo in three sky, uh, for tornado. And then the five would have been the Cabernet data style tele. So that, that my favorites I could not have guessed would possibly be my favorites, uh, is really surprising.

[00:14:42] I think it says a lot too. And just the amount of work that fender and Squire put into making these guitars. So I don’t, I kind of want to say accessible to anybody, but I feel like there was just a lot of thought put into them. And I do think they’re all really solid, really solidly built guitars. I think if you care about pickup sounds, I think they all send a great with distortion.

[00:15:05] I think they sat on sounded varying levels of good with clean, um, I mean, I can’t imagine being supremely unhappy with these guitars. And ultimately I think a lot of the excitement you have surrounding any of them, especially ones like the tornado that I wasn’t particularly excited about. I think that does have to do with, did you grow up, did you grow up watching bands who played these kinds of looking instruments?

[00:15:30] And I think that if I had listened to a band where the guitars had played a tornadoes, I would have been really into it. I didn’t expect to like it. I played a fender tornado in a pawn shop a few years ago, and it was really good price and I walked away from it and I never regretted it for a moment. So I didn’t really expect to love that one.

[00:15:49] So that probably had a little bit of impact in, you know, what I expected. Meanwhile, all of these other styles of guitars, um, minus the, the tele and the jazz master, uh, tele. Uh, I may, I played those shapes before, so I’m used to them and they were immediately comfortable. So that probably did have more impact on my opinions, but like, I want to know what you think.

[00:16:11] Uh, I’m going to put links to all my demos in the video description. Some of these are shipping now. Some of them I think, are not quite on sale on the finger website. I think you can probably find ’em all of them on reverb.com. If you do want to buy any of them on reverb.com, please, please, please consider using the link in the video description.

[00:16:29] It costs you $0 and we get 1% back on everything you buy and that does help the channel. It helps, helps a lot. Um, what else? Yes, please. Like comment, subscribe below for more videos of me. Uh, yap and about guitar and playing the guitars. Um, and, uh, yeah, if you have made some cool music and you want to release it into the world, I recommend distro kid link in the video description to save 7% on your first year of district kid, and also helps the channel so many ways to help us out.

[00:17:04] Um, even if you don’t have any. Any dollar bills right now. So thank you for watching. Thanks for understanding until next time. My name is Emily goodbye.