1. WOOD: make sure its not "amalgamated" wood, like wood with layers of wood and glue.
2. HEADSTOCK: use blinded tuners, so it doesnt detune easily
3. PICKUPS: if you play metal, it would be good to have 2 single coils for clean sound (near the neck and in the middle) and one humbucker on the bridge for use with heavy distortions
4. BRIDGE: please, dont buy a floyd rose... you have no idea how boring it is to recalibrate this crap every damn time you change strings...
thats basically it. with a near 1000 as budget, you could by one guitar that has a good wood but crappy pickups, so you could change pickups later. it gives you a customizable guitar with a lower price, usually....
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