For pop rock, I would say a Fender Stratocaster is the ideal guitar, at least as far as off the shelf stock guitars are concerned. It simply is the most versatile as opposed to a Les Paul type. I sold my one and only Strat but found myself longing for it again. Noise or not it has some great tone. I ended up swapping out the pickups on this cheap Jay Turser which appears to be a one of a kind. I installed a coil tap and now I can have that single coil sound again as well as humbuckers for the heavier stuff.

This is true, the wood does matter on electric guitar, thats why there are the various tone-woods. I would put Strats and LPs at the extreme end of the sound character and those ibanez ones are versatile as it can reach somewhat near the both ends. Generally.

Higher range guitars will (should) have better pickups and are a better choice ofcourse for recording. However a cheap guitar with a good pickup will be much much much better with the same cheap guitar with stocks...

I used bcrich, and jackson wr so far, better guitar=better pickups,sound=better output.

There are so many guitars out there dude, the best bet if u need a studio guitar is a fender strat. Cause u can tweak the guitar so much when it recorded into programs like cubase+solar. Even though fender strat is good live as well. Studio les pauls are good but expensive.

I use ibanez s series!

Good luck!