I can't tell if you guys are being sarcastic or not, but I have to weigh on the side of finish having an audible effect with electric basses, though nowhere near as profound as some believe. They're still stringed instruments and the properties of the body are going to affect the way the strings vibrate, changing the sound. Body resonance also goes a long way into changing the way an instrument feels and responds, which changes the way a player plays on it. I love the beauty and durability of polyester finishes, but I love the sound and feel of laquer more. Still, most of my instruments have polyester finish.
..although every time something of this nature comes up, I'm reminded of an old exchange on TB where an "expert" kept insisting that it was impossible for a set or bolt-neck instrument to output a pure fundamental tone and only neck-through designs could do so. When I pointed out that the pickups measure the movement of the strings regardless of what they span across and it was their tuning, not physical vibrational coupling of the body to a magnetic pickup mounted in a wooden body, he got really huffy.
