Yeah, maybe I shouldn't knock new guitars that hard, I bought an ESP with a Les Paul shape (it was expensive too) a bunch of years ago. I took it to a Luthier to get it set-up properly, but it's pretty sweet. I have a Fender Strat (USA), ESP, Maton acoustic and a couple of other acoustics, the the latter of which I don't use really.
I actually haven't played my electric guitars for at-least a year. I play my Maton (1981, Australian made) pretty much exclusively of-late. I absolutely love it; rich tone, brilliant attack. I just like the immediacy of the acoustic I guess, pick it up and play, no fucking around.
I like Prog Metal and Classical (Art) music personally. I need to get into the ESP to record some prog stuff soonish. I'm more of the 'creative' music type and get the most satisfaction out of writing music, notating it (Finale) and using a DAW (Cubase) for recording, though I can't seem to really get the production side of things as polished as I would like (need to practice more really).
I have a music degree but doing the Teaching component now (Masters) and I actually get out and do some busking of late (need to set-up or get into some group soonish). Because I play a lot of solo guitar stuff, I practice finger-picking style and learn like popular songs where I combine the melody with the harmony and stuff like that. I really need to work on that way more to be able to play the Classical/Art music type stuff.
I do improvise a lot though, did a lot of Jazz at Uni - the teachers really knew their shit there. I'm not into Jazz enough (I still like it) to really dive head-on into it, but I still use a lot of the ideas. I'm pretty decent at the 'modal' side of things, but fast chord changes do my head in. What many don't realise, I think, is that improvising takes a lot of using your brain; hitting chord tones/extended harmony etc. to really be successful at it. I use the ideas of changing scales/modes like with the Blues and whatnot and my own tunes. That stuff is invaluable IMO. I had to change my Right-hand technique, so now I can play really fast.