Thinking about getting a new guitar

[JoergieN]

Back in the day I used to use big guitar rigs with a lot of amps and pedals. Nowadays I've sold all that, the only think I have left is a ltd ec400 with HZ pickups in it. I'm not really a big fan of EMG pickups anymore and I don't like how the cleans still sound distorted. However this was my first guitar I ever owned when I bought it 10 years ago and I don't ever plan on selling it. So I'm looking to just get a new guitar all together.

So here's the deal, as I've stated, I don't use amps anymore. I just plug my ltd straight into my interface. I would like for you to recommend me a good guitar for under $500 that can produce good DI's. It doesn't have to be anything cool. It just needs to make those DI's sound fresh as fuck. Thanks

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention. For the bridge pickup I just want something good for metal, but for the neck pickup I want it to have a nice hollow sound to it. I do use the neck pickup quite frequently for solos and stuff.

 

[Empathy]

Was going to very quickly recommend a PRS before I saw the sub-$500 price range. Go and try out an SE Custom 24 if you can, they're absolutely awesome guitars. Usually sit around $1000 new, seen some used ones go for ~$700. Seem to hold their value quite well, even in the SE range.

 

[JoergieN]

Thanks man. You know what, forget the price range I just listed. I'm willing to shell out more since it's for studio use

 

[Damage, Inc.]

Why don't you swap pickups in the LTD? The EMG-HZ pickups suck ass and you could get a much more useable tone if you put better ones in.

 

[JoergieN]

I know I thought about doing that for a while. It's just that it's my first guitar and the one that I learned on so I just want to keep it as a like a memoir. I don't know I'm weird like that