not saying wood doesn't make any difference in tone..

btw, if you took a mahogany bodied epiphone, that had mahogany set neck with rosewood fretboard, and put in gibson pickups, it would sound pretty close to the same as a gibson.. not exaclty like it.. but it would be similar. why do guitars cost thousands of dollars, and some be really cheap? well, some use maple tops, that's a few extra bucks, expensive guitars usually use much more expensive paint jobs, alot of the time, they are partly handbuilt which costs alot more then having a machine do it all. and they spend some attention to detail, like fret filing for example.. this isn't that a cheap guitar is just as good as an expensive one, I'm not saying that, I'm syaing that if you took 2 identical guitars, say 2 fender standard strats, and played them side by side, their differences in tone would be minimal. and if you took a USA strat, and a standard strat, the difference in tone would be a bit bigger, but not much.. because, yes, the USA does use better quality wood, which I did say has an impact on tone. but overall, the USA would probably feel and look much nicer, but as far as sound, not be a whole lot better, it just goes through alot more expensive of a construction process.