Reviving a Bass

Looks like a good quality bass to start from. If you can solder and follow a circuit diagram, you should be able to handle the wiring, it's mostly not tough unless you want to get fancy with the switching or whatever.

 

That thick clear poly is going to be difficult to remove if you want to get down to bare wood.

 

Just get a heat gun and go slowly, not too bad. The bigger issue is that there is virtually no chance that the wood underneath that finish is going to look good enough for a transparent finish.

 

Yep, and there's the risk it won't look any good. It might be a number of offcuts used to make the body as it was going to be covered in paint and hidden.

Leave the finish alone, fix the electronics (not difficult), give it a set up and some new strings. Then just play it for the next couple of decades.

 

This was my first thought too, until I looked at the pics closer. The original finish is transparent black and the grain looks nice under there, a good candidate for a natural refin. The poly is a pain to take off. A heat gun helps but IME it still takes a lot of sanding and elbow grease. The up side to this is if there's dark finish stuck in the grain pores it will likely enhance the natural finish making the grain stand out.

As for electronics there are TONS of options, you should start by having some idea of what tone you're shooting for and design pickups and preamp (or no preamp) based on that.

These are usually really comfortable basses to play, seems like a worthy project to me