painting a bass

[ckulasekere]

HI,
I recently got inspired to alter one of my guitars. I have a fender fretless that was a purple color that the factory calls midnight wine. The body is purple, the pickguard is white, the knobbies are chrome, not to mention the headstock being a wood color. So having just recently gotten my Marcus Miller I got inspired to sand down the purple and refinish. I originally wanted to stain the wood and varnish and clear coat, but now I would like to paint it a blood red however I would also like to see some wood grain through the red. Anyone know anything about painting? I have appreciated all the help I have received from this forum in the past and would love to hear all your comments and also pictures if you have any. Thanks in advance.

[Marcus]

You do not want to use paint.

Really.

There are a number of places you can attain the appropriate finish materials and I'm relatively certain they can be found easily using the search function or even Google.

[tplyons]

Considering you want the grain to show through, and you say its a Mexican Jazz don't really go together. Fender uses the less than pretty woods for solid color finishes, and once you sand off that polyester finish to find something really UGLY underneath, it's going to cost a lot more than it's worth to make it pretty again.

Midnight wine is a very nice color IMO, much better looking with a black pickguard.