There are 3 most common types of electric guitar that people begin to play on. The 'S' type, the 'T' type and the 'LP' type which you have.
S Type - Stratocaster The Fender Stratocaster was the first popular mass produced electric guitar with a vibrato system and 3 pickups. They will most likely look like this, however pickup configurations (3 Single coil pickups, 2 single coils with a humbucker in the bridge, two humbuckers, two humbuckers and a single coil in the middle position etc but I'll get onto this in depth later.) will vary.
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The copies made for beginner musicians will most likely have similar features visually, but the quality will suffer incredibly due to price. To get a good quality, 'S' type guitar that's relatively affordable in the music industry, I'd recommend a Squier Classic Vibe 60's Strat. It has very good and clear sounding pickups that are traditionally voiced to sound like the guitars of that era, and the build quality is superb, with no rough frets and a good quality vintage tremolo (vibrato, again I'll get into this later) system on it, provided you set it up correctly. This guitar can usually be bought for around £400.
Tonally speaking, these instruments are very bright and 'twangy' due to the single coils, lending itself well to both clean and driven playing. Chords ring out fully and with definition and single notes are very percussive and clear, with lots of attack. Genres could include Blues, Country, Punk and Rock, with a few 80's virtuoso's cranking them into high gain and ripping some Neo-Classical shreddery. Players traditionally associated with a Stratocaster include Eric Clapton, Yngwie Malmsteen (No, it's not a spelling error, that's his name), Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix and John Mayer.
Fretboard wood's vary between Maple and Rosewood but either are good, however as you start out, a nice and smooth fretboard is sought after, so I'd go for Rosewood. The necks on these guitars are traditionally quite large and , with a variety of Neck Carves, which I'll go into later. Wood-wise (wink wink 😉), these guitars normally have an Ash or Alder body with a Double Cut (one cut either side of the neck), a Maple neck and a Maple or Rosewood board with 21 or 22 frets and a 'Bolt-On' neck joint, which means the neck and body are two separate pieces of wood bolted together with 4 screws and either a backing plate or washers. The fretboard also traditionally has a 7.5 Inch Fretboard Radius, which is the curve of the fretboard. ------------------------------------------------------- T Type - Telecaster The Fender Telecaster was the guitar that made the solid-body electric guitar popular. It was first called the Broadcaster with one pickup, no truss rod and a multitude of other issues that were ironed out with the Telecaster. The Tele has two single coil pickups, one in the Neck/Fingerboard position and one in the Bridge position. It had a 'Hard-Tail' bridge and 21 Frets with a relatively thick neck too, and traditionally look like this:
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There are less cheap copies of these guitars but there are still things to be weary off, like Fret work, hardware and electronics quality, tuning stability etc. Again, to get a good quality and great value Tele, I'd recommend a Squier Classic Vibe 50's Tele, which like the Strat are around £400.
Tonally, these guitars are similar to the Strat, being very bright and twangy. They have less pickup combinations traditionally (3 instead of the Strat's 5) so they are not as multi-purpose as the Strat, often being used for Blues and Country. Players include Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Brian May (only on one song, he uses his Red Special exclusively now), George Harrison and John 5.
These guitars are often constructed out of Ash or Alder with a Single Cut (one cut next to the neck with the other left blank), a bolt-on Maple neck and a Maple or Rosewood Fretboard, either finished with a Nitro-Cellulose or Polyurethane Lacquer, which can feel sticky and restrictive. I'd go for Rosewood which is always Satin finish. ------------------------------------------------------- LP Type - Les Paul The Gibson Les Paul followed the Stratocaster and is pretty different from both the Fenders. It's a single-cut, Mahogany bodied instrument with a Mahogany neck and a Flamed Maple Cap, which is about 15mm thick and is essentially a plank of flamed wood that's 'Book Matched' (so the grain lines up and looks more appealing to the eye) and glued to the top of the body and carved to look appealing visually and physically.
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Unlike the Fender guitars, this guitar features dual Humbuckers, which lend to a fatter, fuller yet slightly duller, more rounded tone. These don't buzz like single coils (Bucking the hum... Humbucker? Yeah? Yeah.) Chords are slightly less defined but the pickups have more output so they're louder.
Also, the wiring on these guitars is different. Instead of having a master volume and master tone, you've got individual volume and tone controls for each pickup. This was used to go from a 'clean' sound to a 'dirty' sound back when footswitch-able amplifiers weren't a thing. To do this, roll off the neck pickup volume to about 4 and the tone down to 8 or 9 and dime the bridge controls. Then use the pickup selector to go between the pickups and this will effect the input of the amp, 'cleaning' up the sound.
They have very wide and fat necks, commonly a 'D' shape with a 12 Inch radius and a 'Bound' fretboard, which is where there is a channel routed up the edges of the neck and 'Binding' (plastic strips) is added. The headstock shape is different too, sporting a '3 a side' headstock rather than a '6 in line' headstock. The neck join is a 'Set Neck', a version of a bolt on neck but it's glued in at the joint, making repair difficult if something goes wrong.
In reference to tone, it's used in everything because of the very warm and whole sounding pickups. Guitar players like Slash, Eric Clapton and Randy Rhodes have been seen with these instruments. A great and affordable option that would be an upgrade from your current guitar in my opinion would be a Chapman ML-2 Modern Standard, because it builds a bridge between classic and modern single cut guitars.
