Mexican made Fender
I have to agree with DreX about the MIM bridges. I have a 2011/12 example of the Classic Player 50s Stratocaster. The bridge is a hybrid of the vintage stamped steel design and two height adjustable pivot posts à la Am Std. I set mine down against the body. The guitar plays and sustains nicely.
The only items that I felt necessary to change were the electronics. I mated a set of Fender Fat Fifties single coils to my usual seven sounds control harness.
The guitar doesn't see much use because the neck seems too thin to me. My AVRI '62 Stratocaster with the Twangbanger and Surfers leaves the MIM for dead.
Your guitar model doesn't have the crappy hardware of which I speak. The Classic and Classic Player guitars are better quality guitars than the Standards of which I have been speaking...and the Classics are $200 to $300 more expensive because of it. I wouldn't change out Classic Series hardware either.
This isn't some need of mine to have a certain material (I never said anything about steel) for some supposed tonal reason, or some quest to avoid rust at all cost. I used the easiness with which the hardware rusts as just one indicator of its poor quality. If I'm trying to make a cheap guitar like a Mexican Standard be closer to the level of a nice mid-level U.S.A. guitar like an American Standard, then to me, the most important thing is to install well engineered and well built hardware, as the stock stuff is pretty lame. Good hardware (notice I'm not saying the greatest, most expensive hardware in the world) makes the whole guitar feel and look a whole lot nicer, not to mention that it is more durable and performs better. By good hardware, I simply mean something that was designed and built with at least some degree of care. For starters, something on which the action (movement of parts) is well engineered, the metal is smooth, the plating is durable, and the threads actually mesh tightly. None of these are features of MIM Standard hardware. It is not durable. It doesn't hold you adjustments tightly. It's movement is coarse and rough. You can see just by looking at it that the screws and springs are bargain barrel components, and the protective plating is cheap.
As for the tuner issue, I've said in this thread that they can perform fine if everything else is in order, and that they are the last priority in term of upgrades. But there's no denying that they are relatively cheaply made.
Anything on a MIM Standard will "work." I don't claim otherwise. They're fairly solid guitars for the money. I played a bone stock one for 7 or 8 years as one of my two main guitars before finally getting off my ass to give it the souping up it deserved. I have another that is two years old, and that still has all the stock hardware. This discussion isn't really about whether or not they will work as musical instruments, or what absolutely needs to be done to them so they will be playable. It's about whether it is worth it to rig one up so that it is approaching American Standard level. As I said in my initial post in the thread, I believe it's worth it if you get one on the used market, vs. a new American Standard...but probably not if you buy the MIM new. I also don't, and never, said that American Standards are high end guitars. But in this particular thread, they are what is setting the bar for a modded MIM to match.
