Quote Originally Posted by Brian Krashpad View Post
I never got a Squier 51. Went and tried all the ones at the local large mom'n'pop, Lipham's (where Tom Petty used to work back in the day), and every last one of them had fret ends that'd slice a finger off. Easy fix, I know, but that poisoned the well for me.
Unfortunately, that plagues just about every Fender of every price range that finds its way to Wisconsin. It's a nuisance to find that on a $100 guitar. It is ridiculous to find it on one that costs over a grand.

The first batch of 51s were supposed to be bad that way. Mine had been actually overzealously filed at the factory in one place on the neck and they actually took off a bit of fret wood. This winter I took it in to a luthier to get it filed. There wasn't much sprout, just some mildly rough edges. It was just enough to be annoying. It wasn't that expensive to get fixed.

Neither my Jackson nor my LTD bass suffer from that. The Jackson has a bound fretboard which helps in that regard.