Re: It is not about features, it is about quality.
I got a squire bullet that's put together well and sounds like a strat.
Do I miss my old am std strat, with boutique pickups and staggered tuners and a high mass block, a 2 piece ash body and all that crap? Ehh... it sure was pretty and it played easier but all the same notes can come out of the bullet and my non-guitar friends can't tell the difference!
I guess my preference is a balance of features and quality but sometimes features don't add up to a $1100 price difference for me right now, ymmv. You normally wouldn't associate a bullet with quality but if you play a few you may find some of them sound how you like and that's my indicator of "quality".
Maybe they don't sound all too different (and in my experience, a lot of Squiers seem to use 'better wood' and are acoustically louder than a great many cheaper guitars) but you said it yourself about the feel of a Bullet, which for me just wouldn't cut it. There's a HUGE gulf between those two guitars. I've been thinking about picking up a Strat. I've had/have a bunch of very good Squier guitars, but have now decided that if/when a good American Standard or similar pops up, I'll be making the purchase vs. my original idea of picking up a dirt cheap Squier, even though I know and agree that it could sound 'good enough.'
The particular, immutable aspects about a Bullet/Squier that are difficult or costly to mod away: blocky neck joint/heel (even on nicer models,) neck finish that is either rough/papery or hard/plasticky but feels awful on the hand in either case, neck that is overall shaped with less care and has more hard edges and inconsistent spots/fretwork issues, 'wrong' thickness body that keeps you from being able to use nicer blocks and throw the weight off, poorer contours...
That said, I agree that you can (mostly) replace the pickups and electronics (maybe some hardware, unless you really want the tone of wavy chromed zinc) and get 90% to the sound of a US guitar, but to me it would always feel cheaper, nastier, and harder to play. Never mind that by swapping pickups and electronics, doing any re-fin work etc. you're investing more money and probably lessening (or not improving) resale.
An American Standard can be found pretty easily in the $500 range, give or take, used. At $1100 new cost, no, it makes less sense, but you could easily sink the cost of a used US guitar into a Squier with a pickup/hardware change alone, hell, that's the price of some Squiers new. If we're arguing Squier vs. MIM, I'll say Squier all the way but... As the owner of MIM, MIJ, MII, MIC, MI eBay parts and MI Fullerton Fenders and Squiers... In just about each case yes, I've eventually wound up with a great guitar. Also in each case I now sort of wish I'd saved a few extra hundred bucks and gotten a US model to begin with vs. the sometime headache of trying to make those guitars work for me (well, with the obvious exception of the Fullerton one.) If I wasn't a masochists who enjoyed that on some level I'd be angry, but now that I can afford to be lazy about such things, I'd rather just pay a couple hundred extra for a US Fender vs. a modded Squier (with some aspects that can never be modded to my satisfaction,) and know I'm pretty much going to be happy with the American.
