Exactly!

Tom Morello used a $50 plywood guitar played through a 20 watt solid state practice amp on the track "Tire Me" and won a Grammy.

Well, the pickups and a few other things (like having volume controls), but yeah. That was a fun watch and confirmed much of what I had previously suspected.

But to be fair, overall quality involves more than just sound. The big one for me is, how long will it stay in tune? And in general, have good action, be solid and hold together over the years? Tuned strings create quite a lot of static force which becomes dynamic when you play it. Some uber-cheap bass guitars I played never had a hope. Wouldn't stay in tune and action was all wonky and couldn't be corrected for, even with kludges like shims in various places.

If you only care about the sound, according to a single youtuber.

Other things one might care about:

- Ergonomics: weight, balance, shape of the neck & body, finishes all affect the feel of playing the guitar

- Build quality: Reliability, stability of the wood, ease of setup

- Durability: Quality of finishes, quality of assembly

- Aesthetics

For those outside the guitar world, the above is one side of a debate that has raged for years and will never be resolved. Stating that POV as fact rather than opinion is disingenuous.

Hundreds of famous artists are deeply attached to the sonic attributes of their favorite guitars. Are they wrong?

Well, the pickups and the tensors for the strings