Yeah, I've been thinking about that. The guitar I've been using in concerts is a modified Mexican Strat where he's changed out the pickups and some other stuff. His advice has been to do something similar: buy the cheap strat and upgrade as I need. I just want to make sure that whatever I get is going to be good enough that it will work in live shows right away. Otherwise I'd just buy a squire or some other insanely cheap guitar until I had more experience.