For me it was a Lotus black fender strat copy the thing was incredible, i bought many "good" guitars over the course of the next few years , but that Lotus did everything .. all recording, all live stuff ...then in a temper tantrum of sorts i gave up playing guitar for years and let her slip away
My daughters bought me a Peavey Raptor Exp (to get me to play again)and it is a very playable piece the tone is pretty good , but could be improved.. but for the 150 bucks it is unreal how good the thing plays
Now i just bought an Epiphone Les Paul Standard but i dont know her well yet ... so ill get back to ya on that in time (the tone is ...hammer of the gods )