Neck through bodies

[TQU]

Hello, I'm a quite new guitarist (about 2 very casual years). I've been lately looking at a cheap 7-string guitar with a Floyd rose. I already own a cheap but quite decent MICHAEL BATIO MAB7X 7 STRING - CBK guitar which I'm really happy with. I've been recently looking for a "new" guitar and I've found couple of guitars which cost almost nothing for what they seem to be worth. I'm fully aware these are counterfeited fake guitars made in china. I'm really interested in the neck through bodies that they come with tho. Is it worth buying for the bodies and bodies alone and installing new bridge and other components? Or are there somewhere the neck through bodies for 7 string Floyd rose bodies that I can buy? My budget is 500 pounds which is roughly 700 dollars. I know many will say to just buy a new original guitar but there really aren't any guitars providing neck through bodies with 7-string Floyd rose at this price range and due to already owning another 7-string guitar with Floyd rose bridge I only need the body to swap the components into.

[curtisa]

Agile guitars have the Interceptor Pro range - 7 string, Floyd Rose, neck-through - for less than $600US.

What about looking at the secondhand market for a Schecter C7 or ESP Horizon 7FR?

The risk with buying a cheap guitar and transplanting decent quality hardware across is that you chance either ending up with a guitar that still isn't a particularly good instrument despite having expensive hardware installed, or (more likely) a second guitar where the donor hardware isn't compatible. Not all Floyd Rose bridges are created equally, and there's no guarantee the double-locking bridge in the Dean will be a drop-in replacement for some no-name Chinese clone. The post spacing could be different, the routing in the body could have different dimensions etc. The use of the name 'Floyd Rose' doesn't automatically imply a standard component across different manufacturers.

[Bizman62]

Although there can be very good guitars among the Chinese ones, I wouldn't buy one without test playing it first. Then again, I wouldn't buy any guitar without testing, no matter how big a name the shop has and how pretty pictures are shown.

The Chinese top woods can be stunning and you can get a fully finished guitar for the price you'd have to pay for the top only. Also the craftmanship can be top notch, fully finished up to the fret ends for smooth playability. But there's always a risk of the opposite and sending a poor example back to China can cost as much as the instrument. Mailing costs from here to there are stellar!

A cheap guitar can be much better to play than an expensive one but only your hands can tell the difference. A friend, several decades of active playing, recently bought a €1500 silvery Gibson LP to fulfill a dream. Even to my limited understanding it was immediately clear that the fretboard had been too moist during the building process: Under the silver paint the fretboard was about 1/4 mm narrower than the neck on both sides and the fret ends stuck out by the same amount!

There's videos on YouTube where well known, largely followed and apparently also knowledgeable guitar tutors evaluate $100 guitars and find them great. My guess is that the sales departments of the Chinese manufacturers are up to the task and send them a hand picked triple checked example for marketing purposes. 

As @curtisa said, better quality parts don't necessarily fit. Much can be done by plugging existing holes etc. but an entire guitar could be built for the same effort. Also, should you by chance be happy with the original parts, their longevity often isn't at par with their original counterparts. The infamous Pot Metal is one thing (if you don't know, it's made out of junk cans shipped from the USA to China, molten and mixed with fresh metals to make it look and act somewhat like "copper", "iron", "brass" etc.), cheap quality electronics is another common nominator in the cheap Far East instruments.