Squier Paranormal Stratocaster Deluxe Electric Guitar, Maple Fingerboard, Lake Placid Blue

The Paranormal series exists to build the guitars Fender never got around to making, and this one is a proper what-if: a Stratocaster wearing the pickguard, the pickup pair and the oversized headstock of a 1970s Deluxe. A chrome-covered single-coil sits up at the neck where a Telecaster keeps its warmest pickup, a full-size humbucker fills the bridge slot, and the whole thing is finished in Lake Placid Blue over a white pickguard. It looks like something that fell out of a parallel 1974 — and it plays like a modern Squier, which is the good half of the deal.

Two pickups doing two very different jobs

The neck position carries a Fender-Designed alnico single-coil in a chrome cover — the Telecaster-style unit, not a Strat one. It gives you that rounded, slightly compressed response with the top end tucked in behind it, the sound players chase for clean chord work and thumb-and-fingers playing. At the bridge there is a Fender-Designed alnico humbucker with real output behind it: it pushes an amp into breakup where a single-coil would still be polite, and it stays quiet under stage lighting and computer screens. Two pickups this far apart in character give you a genuinely wide range rather than three flavours of the same idea.

The push/pull that doubles the bridge

Pull up on the tone control and the bridge humbucker splits to a single coil. That is the setting that makes this guitar make sense as a one-guitar rig — the humbucker for the heavy end of the set, the split coil for the spanky, glassy bridge sound a Strat is supposed to have, and the neck single-coil for everything warm. No pedal, no amp channel, just the knob you already have your hand on.

Deluxe-era hardware and looks

The large headstock is the giveaway: natural maple, black Squier logo, exactly the oversized outline Fender used through the '70s, and it adds a little mass behind the nut that you feel in the sustain. The bridge is a six-saddle vintage-style synchronised tremolo with the arm threaded in, so you have individual intonation and length adjustment plus a gentle vibrato when you want it. Vintage-style tuners keep the look consistent, the skirted amp-style knobs are lifted straight from the Deluxe playbook, and the hardware is chrome throughout. The three-ply parchment pickguard covers the whole lower half of the body the way the original Deluxe guards did.

Built to be played, not admired

The body is nyatoh under gloss polyurethane, with the belly cut and forearm contour a Stratocaster has always had — the reason a Strat sits comfortably against you where a slab body does not. The bolt-on maple neck is a "C" profile, which is the shape most hands find neutral, topped with a maple fingerboard, black dot inlays and 22 narrow-tall frets over a 9.5" radius. That combination is deliberate: the flatter modern radius lets you bend without choking out, and narrow-tall wire gives you height to grab under your fingers without a wide crown pulling notes sharp. Micarta nut, 42 mm wide, 25.5" scale, .009–.042 nickel-plated steel strings from the factory.

Who it suits

Anyone who wants Strat comfort and Strat geometry but has never quite got on with three single-coils. Players covering a lot of ground in one set — cleans, crunch, a proper heavy bridge sound — get all three without a guitar change. And if you have wanted a '70s Deluxe for the look and never wanted to pay vintage money or deal with vintage weight, this is the shortcut.

Set up in-store by Guitar World Australia's techs before it ships to you, so it plays perfectly the moment it arrives.