Squire affinity strat
I agree with Deeaa on this. As long as the neck isn't warped or otherwise unuseable, you can make this into a decent, if not excellent guitar.
Take your time. Personally I like the sandpaper idea better than the washer idea because you can easily make small incremental changes in your shim height using the paper, plus the paper will settle equally flat across the surface it sits upon. You don't want to twist the neck because a star washer digs in more on one side than on the other.
Someone offered to sell me a super cheap used affinity Squire strat that I wasn't even going to look at, but when he showed it to me and I saw the most flammed neck I've ever seen on it, it DEFINITELY got my attention. It is an "old" black affinity and nothing worked on it except the volume knob, the wiring inside it wasn't grounded anywhere - there were no grounds soldered to the top of any pots. The once white pickguard was all cracked up and pitifully yellowed. It had obviously been "fixed" by people that didn't have much of an idea of what they were doing, many times. The guitar had been all over the world with missionaries. Not only did it look super good "to me", but it had some mojo. I got that guitar for 20 dollars.
It has one of the nicest necks I have ever seen. I knew I had to have it and bought it immediately.
I put a black oyster pickguard on it and bought some pickups and had them installed by a tech, replacing the pots, switch, etc. The pickups I bought are Seymour Duncans - all black humbucking single coils sized: a hot rails in the neck, a little 59 in the middle, and a JB Junior in the bridge. I put on Fender Locking tuners.
This is one "awesome" guitar. I let the previous owner, an excellent player, play it after I built it up. He really liked it and wanted to know all about it, where I got it, etc. It blew his mind when my son told him it was his old guitar. He couldn't believe it.
You should hear or play this guitar. It is one nice item.
I put a lot of time and work into that guitar, but it had some basic things going for it from the beginning: the action was low and there was zero buzz, the neck was unbelievable - never seen a neck like that on a Squier, and I was highly confident that it would make a decent moding platform.
You don't have to spend anywhere near as much as I did, but if you can correct that neck problem and get that action lower you might have a decent guitar to mess around with.
Have you checked the neck to make sure it is straight?
Also, if you are not familiar with strats, the tremolo and bridge plate should be almost flat to the body, not sticking up in the back like a spoiler on a car. Some people like to have the bridge flat to the body in fact. Getting the bridge close to flat to the body or flat to the body can be difficult, especially expect this after you shim that neck and put on new strings and stretch them properly. That could take some time to get the bridge down good and low to the body after you shim the neck.
I'm probably going to buy an inexpensive used made in Mexico strat that has low action and no buzz and build that up next, just for the fun of it. And I'll also have another excellent guitar when I'm done.
Like Deeaa was saying, I think you can turn that affinity into a decent guitar if you want to put some work into it; that is if the neck is usable and can be adjusted properly.
Good luck with it. There is nothing like having a decent strat, but the way it is doesn't sound like any fun. Like DVM said, you don't have anything to lose by tearing into it and trying to shim the neck. It might take a couple tries to get it right. You might want to pick up a couple sets of strings. A lot of people use 9 thru 42 strings on strats.
I hope this input helps you figure out how to try and salvage that affinity.
