But... in my opinion a guitar should be versatile. Now, if I was rich and famous and coud afford a different guitar for every kind of "sound" i could want, that would be be a different story. Since neither I or probably you are rich, a versatile guitar is what you need.
I have found that Epiphone makes two beautiful sounding guitars, the LP custom and elite LP standard, the former being $600 and the latter $950. Both these guitars sound *exactly* like a gibson and will provide with any kinf od "sound" you want. After all, granting the usually fickle nature of most guitar players and the type of music they listen to (or stop or start listening to), you would want a guitar that could play metal, blues, country, rock, etc.- and this guitar can do that.
As for Fender, great guitars but too one-sided. You can usually only get blues and rock out of them, and no extremes. Anyway, hope that helped, and remember EPIPHONE IS THE SAME AS GIBSON.