Years ago I played in a band and had several really nice guitars (ah ~ those were the days!) Somewhere along the line I acquired a pre CBS Fender bass. Now we are talking the punk era here and this poor bass was painted in lime green and luminous yellow. I dont know what the base coat was but when the guy sold me the bass (for �35 - I was nearly running out the door with it, couldn't believe my luck) he gave me some various coloured paints and uttered the immortal lines - if you don't like the colour you can just spray it wiv this (it was car spray paint) and varnish it wiv yacht varnish when it's dry. The lime green and yellow was a complete b@stard to get off. I had to strip it right down, take the machine heads, bridge, pick ups ~ everything ~ off and eventually used paint stripper and then a very fine grit wet and dry to get it back to the original wood. However, before I got round to cleaning it up I lent it to our bassist. I remember watching him practice and thinking that the effect (from a spectators point of view) when the spotlights hit the colours was very striking, and seeing as how it was just your average common or garden spray paint, and there wasn't any cracking or flaking, it had proved to be a successful way of vamping up a plain wooden bodied guitar. The moral of this is, If you're going to paint it, naz my friend, ensure that you are completely happy with the colour first, because stripping it down again is one of the most tedious jobs known to man.
P.S. bought a wine red Strat in America in 2003, and was surprised at the tonal and neck difference between it and the one I'd got here in 1997 ~ turns out the American one is actually made in Mexico, but the one I got here was USA built.