I think it’s more that to achieve the actual Coolangatta Gold colour, you need a fairly light coloured wood to apply it to. From the photo of the body, the overall effect will end up looking a lot darker and more of a light brown than a yellow/gold finish. But until you apply it, you’ll never know.

You’ve said it looks darker in the photo than in real life, so maybe you can either take a better photo or edit the contrast/brightness/colour balance of the original to get it looking closer to reality. This would make it easier to comment on the likely outcome of different colours on the body.

A flat-bodied guitar like a Tele is reasonably easy to sand the finish off using a random orbital sander. That can do most of the sides as well. If you have an oscillating spindle sander, then that will do the inside curves, otherwise that’s the most time-consuming part and will have to be hand sanded.