re: Cheap guitars (150 bucks or less) which ones are the best value?

Are you talking new or used?

$150 barely gets you into student to "serious" student instruments on the new retail floor. On the used guitar market that price window is such a skewed/gray area, you won't get answers that are solid or valid across the board, at least nothing on which to base a legit search or a be-on-the-lookout tip.

Case in point: You routinely see used Squiers, Epiphones, Yamahas and the like in pawn shops priced not much below what they go for new. In the meantime, I've bought two early 80s San Dimas-era Charvels (one a 100 percent original strathead) for around $200 each over the years because pawnbrokers didn't know how to distinguish the American made ones from the imports and because they were "pointy" era guitars when pointies weren't in vogue.