Trust me don't do it. Save yourself time money and effort and buy another Japanese start in Natural.
Excellent advice. Listen to it.
If, however, you want to do just for the experience, well, striping the shit off of those things is a real pain in the ass. If you do it, use Citristrip, as it is much less caustic than most other strippers. I can't actually promise that it will do anything, as the finish on those things is pretty impervious to chemicals. But even once you DO get down to wood, even if the wood was once attractive, you aren't likely to want to finish it natural, because you will need to sand off all of the finish which is embedded in the pours of the wood, and by the time your done with that you will probably changed the guitars shape from sanding off so much wood.
As for the refinishing of the guitar, I'll tell you what I always tell everyone. Buy
Dan Erlewine's book, and do what he tells you to do. For finish material, do not try to use nitrocellulose lacquer. It is too dangerous to use if you don't have appropriate facilities. Use either
LMI's KTM-9 or
Stew-Mac's Waterborne Lacquer.
This is the same advice Muttley and I have given time and again on this board, which means you have two experienced guitar builders giving you the same advice; if you don't like your guitar the way it is, you are probably better off buying a new guitar than refinishing it. If your going to do it, do it safely, take the time to do it right, and most of all spend a little bit of money to buy a book which will tell you how to do it far better than anyone on the internet ever could.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
