While I'm here - it seems a few of you guys are quite into the electric guitar side of things which I know little to nothing about. I don't know much about either the guitar or the amp side of things - in my naivety it seems like most of the sound comes from what you plug it into, so are you mainly looking for playability and feel from the guitar (besides the pickup arrangement) or is there more to it?

If i was looking to head in that direction and start fiddling around with some more verbatim covers of rock songs and learn some riffs etc, realistically what sort of stuff should I be looking to grab since a lot of subtleties will be lost on me?
I feel like having played mainly acoustic for so long, my musical brain is so much more attuned to the melodic side of things rather than tone and the particular "sound"