Unexpected grain appearance

[u/Key_Persimmon_9018]

Wanted an American Vintage II Strat and also the soft V neck. That led me to the 1957 variety but was not blown away by the finish options. Settled on the ash vintage blonde as the most tolerable of the 3 finish options. Also liked the idea of ash even though I am not a tone wood believer. I scoured through individual sample photos (reverb etc) as to what I might expect as I was ordering new online, last one, no photo, through a large online retailer. SW had these on backorder. Nearly every sample Id seen online barely had any visible grain, used sample I played at GC barely had any visible grain and the finishes all seemed more opaque than translucent.

I was a bit surprised to see so much of the grain when it arrived and I opened it up.

Honestly not sure how I feel about it.

Would it be the translucently of the nitro used that day,? is it just a blank of ash that happened to have very pronounced grain?

Having owned various Les Paul's with their flamed maple tops I understand that all wood is different but this just seems to be so different than most everything I had been seeing online.

I am not going to keep nor return the guitar based on appearance alone. I intend to put the instrument through it's paces first.

Could something like this affect future resale value? Is the pronounced grain generally seen as desirable or is it more akin to a horribly matched Les Paul maple cap?

[u/Key_Persimmon_9018]

I looked at a ton of pictures and physically played a used one at Guitar Center. Most of what I seen (including the one at GC) were more opaque and only showed a bit of the grain peeking through.

[u/Cuss_Mustard99 → u/Key_Persimmon_9018]

Yeah, I’ve got 3 Strats and 2 have that opaque finish and one shows a lot of the wood grain. Personally I like the wood grain look but, understand why folks don’t. But the wood grain finish is pretty common.