I am a tinkerer, admittedly, most of my guns are very nice. But I still have a hatsan nova star simply due to the sheer amount of work and $ I've put into it. Refinished, remolded, stain matched walnut stock, hw100 barrel. A substantial amount of corrective work to the action, hammer, cocking lever. I like the valve design of these guns, but the hammer system in my opinion is awful, spongy plastic trigger housing
break is clean and crisp. But the gun just exudes cheapness and laziness.
I also have two snow peak guns that I like very much. Extremely accurate guns. Coming from someone that owns at least one sub 1/2 moa barrel, 2 fxs, an hw, multiple Lothar Walther barrels. Snow peak guns are very good for the $. Now, there is still a small chance you can get a bad barrel, and most of the holes on them are not deburred. Most all trigger assemblies are welded somewhat crooked. But triggers can still be made extremely nice. Barrels are mostly all extremely good. It's very hard to complain. I think I have $235 into my .25 pp800 with custom Cothran valve. And it will do 50fpe in 9" barrel and shoot a ragged hole at 30 yards.
I fully understand your sentiment, and would highly recommend anyone else save their $ if needed and invest it in a quality gun. Buy once cry once. Going the cheaper route, as is the case with my hatsan rifle can easily be far more expensive than just getting a nice gun. For all the time and $ into mine with custom barrels and what not I could have easily bought another fx crown and had a very good chunk of change left over.
Thing of it is, with most all of the cheaper guns, it doesn't matter how much $ or time or parts you sink into it. You are building on a cheap platform. It will have these Inherant flaws that cannot go away without almost the entire gun being redesigned from the ground up. Some of these things can be accounted for and compensated for. But will always be present in its character. A
proper high end gun will always be better no matter what. That is almost exclusively the case. In my experience, anyhow.