Personally, I love the Tacoma guitars as the best bang for the buck. Pity they stopped making them.

Best advice I can give you came from Frank Zappa:

"Guitar Player magazine, 1983: What do you look for in a guitar?

Frank Zappa: If you pick up a guitar and it says, "Take me, I'm yours," then that's the one for you. You don't go into a guitar store and say, "Hey, what a great paint job." You have to put it in your hand, because a real guitar that's going to be something you make music on — as opposed to a piece of machinery that makes you look good onstage — is going to have some relationship to your hand and body. It feels right when you pick it up. And that's the way I felt when I got the first SG that I had. It felt right in my hand, so I got it. Same thing with the Gibson Les Paul.

Guitar Player: Will you overlook such things as lousy pickups?

Zappa: Well, you can always change the pickups."