Happy Birthday mate. This is just my opinion obviously but spending that level of cash on a guitar I would always recommend trying the guitar in person if at all possible. For me the most important thing about a guitar is how it feels in your hands, the neck in particular and the overall weight of the instrument. Put a strap on it and play it standing up if possible too.
In general 2nd hand guitars represent better value for money but beware of guitars that claim to have been modded because who’s to say what’s been done and by whom.
I have a Mexican Tele that I bought new and the quality of the guitar is excellent. If it’s a Strat style guitar in particular you are after I’d recommend a G&L which are easily comparable to the Mexican standards, have better pickups and generally cost less. I have a G&L Fallout Tribute that I bought new for 425 Euros and it’s a belter, P90 in the neck and splitable Humbucker in the bridge. It has a fatter neck than the Tele but it plays like a dream.
I’m not really into Strats but if I was to buy one it would be a hardtail version with a Humbucker in the bridge.
Again just to say this is all my opinion and plenty won’t agree with me.
You kept that G&l quiet.
Agree on feel but I also think that there’s this right of passage for guitar player. And that is owning a Strat or a Tele.
On the G&L strats, there’s more than one type. There’s 2 basic models - the Tribute and the Fullerton. Not a huge difference between the two other than the Tribute Legacy being built in Indonesia, the other is manufactured in the US. The Legacy is cheaper. Both use the same pickups however.
Under that in the Strat models you have the Legacy which uses G&L’s Alnico V pickups. Very similar to a Fender. Then there’s the S-500 which uses Leo’s Magnetic Field Design pickups which have more output and a warmer tone.
Worth noting that all of them have a better trem system than that on a typical Fender Strat.
As a guitar on specs alone they are probably better pound for pound than a Fender but they don’t have the name. They do represent where Leo Fender would have taken the Strat had he not sold the company.
I totally get what you mean about trying before buying. Difficult in these times and when guitar is 2nd hand.
Fenders have slim neck widths so should be ok.
It’s a lot of money to lay out and it feels shit though.
Yep. I always felt I would prefer a slim neck but that’s not always the case now. The radius of the fret board is important too. My PRS has a wider, flatter neck…totally different to the Tele and yet still comfortable to play. Personally I prefer a Maple fretboard too.
The guy on facebook has knocked £50 off so its now £450 - Good price??
Im looking for a good metal/rock guitar ideally - any suggestions for around the £400-500 mark?
I do love the look of that fender though!
Shamelessly I’ve got an Ibanez SZ520 that’s ideal for that genre. Hard case and willing to post.
Gives me an excuse for a new guitar without having to intercept the postie and sneak it in through the back door. 
From my experience, you can find used Schecter guitars in that price range which are awesome bang for the buck. If you can find a used LTD, though, you’ll be in for a treat. I got the impression that prices of used instruments are generally lower in UK than in central Europe, so I’d search for guitars from both companies (various versions of LTD EC-1000 or Schecter Platinum series might interest you). As far as their endorsements and products go, both companies are oriented towards heavier music but I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to find a suitable guitar from their respective selections.
I got a ESP Ltd EC256 (Cost me £320) in matt Black - Love it but want a guitar with a different sound.
Seen a lot of love for the Ibanez RG450DX/
RG’s are terrible to keep in tune, absolute nightmare because of the locking Trem system; I had one and it had to go because of that.
You could do far worse than an Epiphone Les Paul; just make sure its pre-2005 made in either the Samek or Fine plants of South Korea.
@Walshy07 are you after a guitar with a hard tail or a trem system?
Im not bothered re Trem system. I cant solo yet anyways!
I prefer a wider fret board as I have sausage fingers!
Come to think of it my guitar tutor has one of these and I dont like the bolts at the top of the strings.
yeah, I can sympathise with that thinking. I’ve thought it would always be nice to have but my experience of a cheaper Floyd Rose was not great. Forever going out of tune and quite a pig to use to be honest. After that you’re pretty much limited to a simpler Fender type system which then means you’re leaning towards some gentle tremolo rather than the Hendrix and Van Halen style abuse.
So while I still think it would be nice sometimes and another avenue to explore with my playing I’m also not really bothered. I want the sound and playability more than anything.
BTW that Ibanez of mine is a hard tail. 
Not only that the Trem system is so tightly strung they take a week (for me) to change strings; as when you tune the bass up, the top E, the bottom E goes down, so you have to tune them from the middle strings outward, as in get the D and G strings in tune first; then as the strings stretch in those first few days it all falls out of tune, and you have to do it all again, about 5 or 6 times. All compounded by having to unlock those bolts at the top.
As @Noo_Noo says a hardtail Ibanez S is a much better choice if you really want an Ibanez. The pickups are high output too, probably up there with the highest output for any standard guitar. This is alright if you like a pumped middle, but if you want dynamics, they are really not made for that.
Also worth noting that is a particular criticism of strats, and certainly an issue with all floating trems is that if you play two notes together and bend one of them the unbent note will also go out of tune.
Love the sound of this guitar. Cant quite make it out - Sterling is it?
I guess Im still leaning towards the Fender. But I do like a wider fret board - are Fenders slim or normal size?
Slim and with a radius, so the fretboard is not entirely flat, contrast with Gibson, wider and flat. Gibsons are way easier to play, but more difficult to tame because of the PAF high output humbuckers. I think this is why by and large Fenders are the most popular guitar, they are much more forgiving.
I had never heard of a Sterling guitar until now! Sounds very much like what you want is a super strat?
This one looks nice.
Super strat? Don’t they all have those annoying bolts at the top of the strings? Sound cool though.
I think im gonna have to wait until shops are open to try a few but i have no patience to wait!
Sometimes they do, but a super strat means the same rough shape, usually rounded or squared off at the edges, and uprated electrics and parts etc.
It does look nice.
But when I was beginning, I really believed a different guitar would change things, and it does, just not as much as we would hope! I think its more about loving the instrument and wanting to try and own others, so to expand our repertoire, but a few have said this on here already - its far better to get a guitar that you can BOND with and feel an affinity for at your local shop.
Every guitar I bought of the internet, cold, is either now sold, or gathering dust. I play two guitars mostly. A Mex Strat I built from parts, a ‘partscaster’ with Custom Shop Pups, and a completely standard NOS (new old stock) Mex Telecaster.
Im on the look out for a Parker Midi Fly but I will have to ‘order’ that and wait and see if it gels with me; a pricey experiment at £2500.
But the point is, a guitar is such a personal thing, its almost stacked against an online order.
Cant argue with that hence my own procrastination at getting a new instrument. There’s so many lovely looking guitars out there but only a few that you can really connect with. It’s a bizarre feeling when you hold a guitar that just “fits”.
I’ve had it twice. Once with an Epi Les Paul which I still regret selling and an all too brief experience with a Telecaster of some description. I could not tell you anything more about it other than it was a Tele.
With regard to Fenders you’re buying the brand name but I also think that you’re buying flexibility. Strats and Tele’s are extremely flexible in the styles and genre’s of music that they have been able to cover. Tones as well. There’s so many tones that people have been able to eek out of them. As I said above they almost seem to be a right of passage for a guitar player. You might not like them but it’s a tick in the box and pretty much everyone needs to go through that door at some stage.