Well my first guitar I saved up for was a
Fender Stratocaster - just a standard one. It's been a very good guitar to me and sounds pretty damn awesome as well. Being a standard it didn't break the bank either, I've seen them for the equivilent of around $500... Or if you wanna take a step down from that you could alwasy look at the 'cheaper' makes. Take squire for example, squire are a cheaper variant of the fender guitars, but are owned by fender themselves. Like how dell is owned by the same company as alienware. There are these cheaper makes for loads of the larger companies, you might want to look into epiphone guitars as well (the 'cheaper' variant of the beautiful gibson guitars).
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