The CV Squiers that have passed through my hands have had far better, and visibly different, tuners to the likes of cooking level Ibanez, HB, etc.
The statement about swampmash being lighter is so sweeping as to be quite untrue. There are literally dozens of varieties of ash, and ash of any type is itself one of the more variable woods in terms of density between individual trees.
Indeed, swamp ash itself is denser than black ash and pretty much on a par with the typical varieties of white ash used in luthiery. It's only the european types that tend to run significantly denser, and these aren't used in instruments of far eastern origin.