Problem with sound

I am in Afghan right now and bought a fender starcaster. Some of the notes would not sound on the guitar. I changed the strings and put on Ernie ball slinky strings. I now have trouble with bending. I am a new player, however when I bend a string the sound goes away, and in order to get it to sound through the bend I have to press on the strings so hard that my finger turns purple. I dont think it should be that hard. So is it really that hard, or is there a problem with my strings, or just because i have a "STARcaster" and need a better guitar?

Sounds like a neck problem..
You did not mention how it sounded before you changed the strings.
You might try to find an experienced guitarist over there in Afghanistan.. or a luthier..
Take a look thru this link, it may help you to figure the problem..

http://www.squierguitars.com/pdf/manuals/StarcasterPack.pdf

Good luck

before i changed the strings, i would play a note on the 7th fret, and hammer on the 8th fret but both notes would sound the same. There was no change in notes at all. thats why i decided to change the strings.

thank you for replying, i will try the site and try to adjust the neck.

Yeah definitely sounds like a neck problem. I had the problem same with my acoustic a while ago when the neck also went crooked a bit.

With a guitar it is most important that you keep it at normal temperatures, when you expose your guitar to really high temperatures the wood might start doing weird things. Luckily it can be fixed most of the time but it's really better for the durability to keep it in a normal temperature environment. That would be 'normal room temperature' so 15 to 25 degress would be ideal.

Read this article if you want to know a bit more. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guitar/Guitar_Maintenance_and_Storage

I wouldn't call Afghanistan ideal with temperatures above 40/50 degrees. Keep that in mind.

JJ