For someone who is already extremely good, they can deliver a killer performance even on a half-broken instrument. But for someone who is in the earlier stages of learning, this often just hinders them. Especially since a lot of habits learned early on are very difficult to correct later on, when it comes to music instruments. And having a terrible instrument can easily help with forming poor habits.
However, there is definitely a significant category of people who are more about upgrading and/or collecting gear rather than focusing on improving the actual skill. In that scenario, “this better instrument surely will be the reason for my skill getting improved” is used as a pretty common excuse. I would know, because i definitely fell for it before in certain aspects.
Note: not trying to take a dig at Squire, afaik their current offerings are all pretty decent entry level instruments. Was just addressing the overall larger point.
I learned to play guitar on a very crappy guitar. It was from a brand known for being cheap and poor quality, and I've bought it second hand. Still, I learned to play on it. Chords. Scales, arpeggios; you name it. Execution was really bad though, because the instrument was the limiting factor. So, I agree that, in some ways, the instrument was a limiting factor.
One day I got to play on a very good guitar. All the stuff I struggled to play on the cheap guitar came out almost flawless. It felt like before I was racing F1 with a scooter, and then I've finally gotten a proper F1 car.
So, all this is to say that yes, maybe if I had started with a good guitar I wouldn't have struggled as much but, I think the fact I had to put in twice the effort to learn the same things on the crap guitar actually helped me improve (faster? better?). Of course, at one point I had to upgrade the guitar because there were things I couldn't do and it was holding me back but, I think starting with the bad guitar was a good thing (for me personally).
For someone who is already extremely good, they can deliver a killer performance even on a half-broken instrument. But for someone who is in the earlier stages of learning, this often just hinders them. Especially since a lot of habits learned early on are very difficult to correct later on, when it comes to music instruments. And having a terrible instrument can easily help with forming poor habits.
However, there is definitely a significant category of people who are more about upgrading and/or collecting gear rather than focusing on improving the actual skill. In that scenario, “this better instrument surely will be the reason for my skill getting improved” is used as a pretty common excuse. I would know, because i definitely fell for it before in certain aspects.
Note: not trying to take a dig at Squire, afaik their current offerings are all pretty decent entry level instruments. Was just addressing the overall larger point.