Ok so who wants to do a refinish for me?

[woodchuck30]

Yeah it is, thats where I get my paint from. It's more reasonable than a lot of the guitar parts store's that sell the kits for refinishing guitars. If you go with a iredesent yellow, go with a metalic silver base coat before you do the yellow, you'll get more of a response from the color coat, it will kind of jump at you after the clear coat is applied, especially in the sun light.

[Scotstandard]

I say go to MJT tele
They did my 1960 Jazzmaster and did a spectacular job! Pretty fast turn and they can do just about anything you want. They can check it, and relic if you want but I just got the checking.
Here is the site.

http://www.mjtagedfinishes.com/

It ill be $300 for paint and $100 to strip it.

Its a father son outfit and they are super nice guys. they have done a bunch of work for my buddy.

Highly recommended. Here is my JM they did excatly what i wanted an OLY finish starting to yellow.

[eltuce]

It seems $400 is about the standard cost. There's a local place here that deals with the guy who does Campbell guitars in Rhode Island and that's what he charges. There's also a little group of guys here called Boston Homebrew Guitar Collective. I've had a couple of them offer to help walk me through it so we shall see. I might try that to save some dough. I was thinking of going with natural like my Rick but I'm wondering if I might have better luck with a color since I might not do the best job. I'm most likely going to put a Bigsby on it too so I'll have to fill in some holes which will definitely show if I go with natural.

[oipunkguy]

well you can always try it yourself, and if it turns out bad, just get it done by someone else. really when it comes to guitar work, almost nothing is impossible to fix. almost...