I thought b.c. rich guitars had a weak clean sound, i was wrong. I get an asome clean sound from my b.c. rich and the mid level platinum or NJ you can find for less than 500 on some sales just look around. I give them 4 out of 5.
Epiphone are somehow good guitars too but the electric sound just needs a bit of working to get a nice metal tune going on, a lot of guitar players disagree but they usually forget the difference between a Les Paul wich has amazing electric sound but cost over 1000 bucks and a epiphone wich is weaker. Acoustic sound of the epiphones i tried were great, its an overall great guitar for its price range. i also give it 4 out of 5 but keep in mind this guitar is better if you use it more for acoustic sounds.
Jackson guitars. Amazing guitar a friend has, and i can be found for cheap ( around or less than 500 ) and both of their sounds are exelent for its price, the one and only problem is that their action was weird for my tastes, and it took me a bit of time to get used to it, is not the kind of action i would recomend to a beginner or someone who cannot tweak his guitar ( i mean you will eventually get used to the action or to modify it but it could become a little frustrating ) but they are amazing sounding guitars.
I give you my opinion on these options so you stay away from ibanez guitars. For the money you have you will regret it, i have nothing against japanese guitars im not the typical biased go for american made guitars kinda guy, but i own an cheap ibanez and i never had more problems in my life. Untolerable noise leves with the default humbuckers and single coils ( you sound like the kind of guy who cannot put down extra 200 bucks to replace them ), the arm bends horribly due to a cheap construction, the tremolo system will never stay in tune, you can virtually never do a full bending without getting out of tune, you can even do vibrato on a g string without getting out of tune and its easier to kill yourself than to fix the intonation, the electronics will be good for about a month before everything looses ground and starts making all short of false contacs, its just a damn pain in the ass. Is just not worth it and the sound it gets on optimal conditions is not even that good is seriously overrated...just walk away from ibanez guitars.
and once you do get an electric with a decent practice amp with good gain, you'll barely pick up your acoustic! 
