Well, I hope we will stay with this until we get a solution. The paint is indeed Rusteoleum. And between fixing mistakes and struggling to get an even coat, I milked 'er pretty dry. But I think there are some smooth enough spots in the pickup routs to do some tests on. I'll try the wipe-on poly there.

Rabbit, I have been trying to find a water-bourne finish without much apparent luck. Createx products seem to be available here in the northern hemi, but both the Createx 5620 acrylic and Wicked Color acrylic are water based. Minwax also has a water-based wipe-on polyacrylic. StewMac offers a whiz-bang guitar clear coat, several cans are needed and I am not willing to drop $150 to finish this project. A little further guidance, please? Thanks again to both.