This is not true. If you buy a budget guitar, from any manufacturer, the quality will vary a lot. You might find a guitar that plays like something much more expensive or you could get a real lemon. Most of the additional cost when going from a cheap to expensive guitar is the QA (quality assurance) that’s done by a person. Not only does it cost a lot to have a human go over everything, but when they do find something the cost of fixing it (or scrapping the entire half finished guitar) quickly adds up.
Many people seem to think that guitar makers like Suhr are selling what are essentially $500 guitars for $3k and are swimming in money, but that definitely isn’t the case. Even at that price point the competition between builders is fierce (on both quality and price) and so you get what you pay for.
The price of the kit you linked is too good to be true. Either the parts themselves are of abysmal quality and will fall apart in your hands in the first year, or there’s been literally zero QA on them and you’ll be lucky if all the screw holes are there and in the right place.
It’s hard to find a good super strat for ~$250 even in the used market. If I were looking I would see if I could find an Ibanez RG from the 80s or 90s (Ibanez golden era). The RG 550 will be very close to a JEM. You can browse around that site and find other similar models with essentially the same spec but with/without pickguard and different pickup combinations.
I’ve bought a lot of used guitars over the years just because I’ve been curious what the fuzz was about. Typically I just resell them again shortly after for the same or slightly higher price. If you’re price aware and buy something that’s already depreciated to a stable price you can essentially try the guitar out for the cost of a trip to and from the post office.
