I to have a squire strat, and I can get some great tones out of it. No offense to you taucer, but I think your problem is your amp. I used to play my squire through the shitty amp it came with(value pack) but then I switched to a Vox Valvetronix 30W. I can get some surprisly good tones with such a crappy guitar. I used to have the problem with the trem bar, until I losend up the screws on the bridge a bit. It still goes out of tune a bit, but its no where as bad as it used to be.