Help A Newbie Refinish?

[Boston_rocker51]

I have a neck-thru tele style guitar (see avatar). It is mostly mahogany and the neck is mahogany and thin maple laminate. I don't like the way the maple stands out and want to stain it darker brown & clear coat the guitar.

It has some very thin kinda clearcoat on it originally, which I'm stipping away as I type. It felt "fast" when I ran my hand over it, very flat/satin, not glossy at all, like very smooth dry wood. The original clearcoat is probably some cheapo fast drying stuff, it turns white if sanded, it has not filled top grain of the wood at all. Any idea what that stuff is? I like the way it feels, and woul not mind having that kinda finish once it's darker brown. I'm a newbie, but I'd like it to look decent and not like a hack job...

Once I strip it, should I prep the maple to accept the new paint/stain better? Can you tell me what to use to prep the maple, or if I really need to do that at all?? For stripper I'm using Citristrip (orange) stripping gel. Nice smell, works ok and biodegradable.

I need help with... fast, fairly fool-proof ways to stain it & clear coat it... brush, airbrush, whatevah! for stain thinking darker brown & cover up the maple, get an even color - thinking of using Minwax red mahogany wood finish since I have some floating around. Tried it on the back & it looked pretty good, but I would like to have the grain show as much as possible - a dichotomy, since I want to cover the maple, but still have grain showing. I have more pics & will send if you can give me your addy - they are on my camera or hard drive, not posted on a URL friendly site. I have one:

http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/7238/img0185kl3.jpg

I am a total newbie around refinishing guitars, have read a lot on it lately and just want to get this done. Don't care how I do it, but doubt I have the patience for a time consuming/fragile finish like French Polish or nitro. Any suggestions, please? If it seems best, I was thinking of maybe using Stew-Mac stuff, blow it on w/ an airbrush kit from ebay (about $30 shipped).

I bought a can of minwax "Fast-Drying" Polyurethane (clear satin) and tested on the back of the guitar - it was ok but seemed to take about 24 hours before the finish felt smooth & fast at all and still was not as good as ther original finish.

I just stripped the face of the headstock, the finish there almost flaked when I wiped it off. Don't know if it's the stripper or finish or both causing that. Looks nice, tho.