[jaegerpicker]

The components are the main upgrades, pickups are easy to change after the fact. Pickups, bridge, and tuners are the main things on electrics in my experience. PRS wrap around bridges or good quality floyd rose bridges for example. Locking tuners and a roller nut is another example. Depending on the sound you want active pickups or coil taps or stacked single coils.

Main three things I want to be better designed is better/easier tuning and tuning stability, quality and versatility of sound, and playability. Neck profile and construction is a another example. Set neck (Les Paul and PRS), bolt on (Tele and Strat), or Neck Through (Jackson, ibanez) all have different advantages.

To me the C/C++/Rust example fits pretty well, Leo's Broadcaster is completely different sounding and playing than a custom built strat or high end PRS. Humbucking pickups as just an example. The Broadcaster had terrible feedback issues at high volume for example and a modern guitar should never have that issue unless you intend for it to feedback. Broadcaster is rough design, few features, and easy to make mistakes on alot like C. Les Pauls and Strats add a ton of features from the Tele/Broadcaster and can be easier to play but can also are more complex in there setup/design like C++. Modern designs are even more complex (active eq/pickups, locking tuners and roller nuts, floyd rose bridges etc...) but just as powerful but setting them up is a steep learning curve at times just like Rust.