ok,
so i am new here...
so please tolerate my stupidity.

My Honer acoustic ... tunes and plays perfect;
my Alverez acoustic... tunes and plays perfect...i just bought a Squire Hss fat strat.
now it still has the strings that came with it on it....
but i have never seen a guitar do this; even with bad strings?

what it does is, i can tune each string (electronic tuner)
but it didn't sound right?
so i checked each string and all are on tune.

but for example IF i play the 5th fret of the low E on the electronic tuner it should read as an A.
on all the other guitars it does this. but on the new one... it reads as if its AT LEAST 20% higher out of tune?
so therefore when attempting to play it sounds wildly out of tune but each open string registers as normal?
there does not appear to be any issues with the neck; meaning it is not bowed or has any type of odd distance issues between the strings and the fretboard as you climb the neck. it actually has better "action" (string to fret distance / ease of play)than the other 2 guitars.
but for the life of me i can not figure out why this is acting this way.
so the questions remain.

does this sound just like a string issue?
meaning replace the string stupid!

or considering i have never owned a strat before and have no clue in reality, should i have this looked at/ set up by someone ( bring it back to sam ash?)

i actually have no clue... considering i have had a bunch of crap guitars in my life, some with bad strings and some not,
i have never seen a guitar "act" this way.


as always,
any help or advice is greatly appreciated,

Thanks,
Joe