Sanding down...

[f'nar f'nar]

Hey ladies and gents! Got a quick Q for y'all. I'm not the richest guy in the world and can only really afford at the moment to stick with my Warwick rock bass. No real problem there, its a great bass and has served me well for a long time. Im happy with performance and whatnot. However I'm getting bored of its colour, which is a dilly of a pickle because unlike most of you guys out there i cant just go and buy another one

So anyway, I was thinking, what would be your opinions on sanding the laquer and colour off the bass? Theres some small dings here n there and a bit of belt wear that makes the underlying wood clear, its a light coloured wood so I know roughly what it would look like. My plan was to sand it down to that wood and use some finish or laquer of my own (gonna go the expensive stuff, no expense spared haha) and just finish off the woodgrain colour. But also to protect it a little more.

So what are your opinions and how should I go about doing this if I decide to go through with it?

[62bass]

I've done it on a couple of Fenders and it's a lot of work. Most of those factory finishes can't be removed with ordinary paint strippers.

I found a heat gun and a clean paint scraper to be faster than sanding. You have to use a heat gun outside or with a good exhaust fan nearby or you'll set off every smoke alarm and fill the place with acrid smoke.

You'll still have to do a lot of hand sanding with various grits to get off the stuff the heat gun doesn't get, like in the crevices, etc. I spent the better part of 2 days on one Fender. That was worth it to me because it was a nice ash body under the factory solid colour.

Their are dozens of choices of finishes to use once you've got down to a clean, bare body. I used stain and varnish because I wasn't set up for spray painting.

You'll have to decide if you want to put in all that work.