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Last winter I bought some LPB paint, and some clear nitro to refinish my niece's Mini Strat that I bought her. This year, I bought an LPB CIJ Jaguar without a matching headstock, but I bought it with the intention of having one our board members, joeybsyc, refinish it for me.

I compared the finish of the CIJ Jaguar to my niece's Strat, and the Strat has a much darker finish (which I actually prefer). At times my Jaguar can even have a turquoise tint to it (it's not a Ocean Turquoise Metallic finish). Is the Reranch paint the correct LPB, or did Fender Japan switch up their color code? Does Reranch use the exact DuPont color code Fender used (and does Fender still use that code)?

This was my first time finishing a guitar, could the number of coats of LPB/clear coat affect the outcome of the color? Thanks for any help.

It can be several factors you mentioned, or could simply be that the color itself has variations. I would say the Fender Japan color is probably less like the original 60's LPB, and the reranch is based closer on the original formulas, but again... There are many factors that can make the color appear different. The good news is that when doing a color matched headstock having an absolute match to the body isn't as big of an issue as it would be if you were doing a touch up on the body. That 20"+ distance between the body and headstock allows a slight color mismatch to be far less noticible and as long as it's close, it usually isn't a big deal. If you look at original 60's jags and JMs you'll often see a slight color variation between the headstock and body. It's not as uncommon as you might think.

CIJ LPB looks turquoise or at least the ones ive seen. I dont lke it at all.

LPB on CIJs came in two variants. One was called old lake placid blue and the other one was a more saturated version. I don't think the color on the CIJ are the same versions as on the US Fenders (I used to own both an OTM and a (old) LPB CIJ before I bought a AVRI thin skin LPB). Most of the CIJs I've seen came from Ishibashi with matching headstocks. If I recall correctly, musicians friend once had a special offer of cijs lpb that came without a matching headstock. Do you know if it's one of those?

Maybe you can get hold of a small paint stick and iterate with tinted versions of the reranch version to get close to your CIJ. It might have yellowed a bit too.

That Strat does not look like any LPB I've ever seen. If that's Reranch, I would say it's not particularly accurate. Fender Japan LPB has a reputation as not being all that accurate either, but I'd say the Jag is closer to real LPB than the Strat. LPB is a lighter color, not dark like that Strat.

Best thing to do is just a Google search for "Fender lake placid blue", then just kind of average what you see there, because there's going to be a lot of variation based on age, camera white balance, etc. But I think you'll see that the real thing is a lighter color than the Strat you have. It's probably even lighter than your CIJ Jag.