Look into cort. I would highly recommend something from the G or M series on this one.

If you're going to be doing more rock/metal than jazz, you might look into the x series or their newer models zenox or katana (that one might be over your $$).

Cort makes some incredible products. You can get pretty much a decent professional quality instrument from them for not too far off your budget, unless you're like me and have to have everything perfect (I'm thinking of putting prs pickups in my CL-1000).

Btw, cort also makes guitars for fender(squire), epiphone, bc rich, ibanez, schecter, conklin, and a few others, so if you've been looking at those companies you might as well cut out the middle man.

Fender is a traditional multi-role company, a tele or strat might be good. Ed Roman was selling some American fenders for really cheap, if I remember right. Not as good for the money, but there's nothing wrong with them.

Or maybe look at schecter. They may be made by cort, but ther are some differences between the companies that might fit your tastes more, maybe something like a tempest.