Dont jump right in, I think. Play more, as HTH says, get a feel for the variation in construction, woods and hardware.
If you can recognise a well made and acoustically well performing guitar easily (and by 'well' I mean 'sounds how you like it') then that can be upgraded and tailored to your tastes and experimented with till its nailed.
You can, as has been mentioned, find woods that perform very well acoustically in cheaper guitars. Its not even hard. You can also find poor woods and construction in expensive guitars, no matter what it says on the headstock. The variability is high at any price range (just a question of how high).
A lot of it is preconceptions and psychoacoustics. If you expect the 2000 quid custom guitar to be better it probably will be, subjectively. But could you tell the difference in a blind test?
For some perspective one of my main guitars is an Ibanez RG560 that someone changed the pickups in to I dont know what and dont care before I bought it. When I got that it went straight into the ranks of my top guitars, alongside three custom shops and one high end jackson. I then sold one of the custom shops, because it wasnt getting played since I got the ibanez. It cost me 100 quid. 10 times less than the RRP of the next cheapest guitar in my main gutiars (and 1/5th what I paid for it - 1/7th with the pickup change).
But I've also played RGs from the same era (late 80s - its an 89) that are unimpressive.
You can find some great guitars that dont cost the earth. You just have to look around and play as many as possible, and try to ignore what they're called, just listen pay attention to the sound and feel. If that leads you to multi thousand pound instruments, so be it, but it doesnt have to by any means.
Correction - two custom shops, one legra one dean. I got my second legra later, after I sold the dean.
