Your fingers and playing style have the most to do with your tone... You can own as much expensive gear as you want... but if you can't play the notes the way they should be played it won't matter... Practice, practice, practice...

I play with way too many guys that have a ton of expensive gear but htey can't play more than 15 seconds of any song... It's pretty ridiculous... Learn to play the instrument before moving onto any expensive gear...

A DigiTech RP-80 would be a good investment to start out with so you can mess around while you improve your skills...

Another thing that a lot of guitarists do when they're learning is hide behind distortion... Play everything as clean as you can an practice on accuracy... then add the distortion later once you've learned the notes...