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White Limba Dyed


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How does white limba take to dying? I've noticed there's a significant difference in price betweent he black and the white limba. So I was thinking, why not buy some white limba and apply some black, sand back, and then brown. Or something along those lines to darken it up (cause the guitar it's going on is gunna be a light spalted maple top, purpleheart laminate, with a limba back and I think the light spalt with the white limba would be too much light (it will also have a flamed maple neck and maple fingerboard.... so I wanna get SOME dark in there somewhere.)

Yeah, if anyone has links to dyed limba that'd be great, even if it's not a darkening dye, I'm talkin' ANY color.

Thanks,

Chris

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Yeah, I buy 90% of my wood from gilmer too. That's where I'm looking... but if the guitar's gunna sound the same with a $50 piece of white limba as it is with a $85 piece of black limba, and if I can dye the white to get it darker... why go the extra cash for the black? Especially since I'm low on cash due to the fact I'm buying up all the wood for two guitar's worth (I'm gunna build two side by side this time).

Chris

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Dunno, but I'd guess it takes stain just like Black limba (it's the same wood, just different parts of the tree, more or less); look at some of Myka's creations for that. Looks like it takes a stain just fine. White Limba's nice looking, but very different/less character than Black.

I've got a couple of boards (10' x 8" x 2" each) of white limba I selected at the local lumberyard that should yield a good 6 2-piece bodies. Price, including planing to thickness, about 120 bucks (including our lovely 19% tax). Consider that the only place in NL that seems to have black limba (and not very nice black limba at that) sells it for 120 bucks per body blank. 2-piece. So 20 bucks a pop seemed like a fair price to me :-)

If you want black, though, get black.

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but if the guitar's gunna sound the same with a $50 piece of white limba as it is with a $85 piece of black limba, and if I can dye the white to get it darker... why go the extra cash for the black

Well, the truth is, I really don't think you'll be able to get white limba to look like black limba. Maybe you'll get the general idea correct, but black limba tends to have a lot going on as far as color tones go. If you look at the back on my current build, you'll see what I mean. I guess I just have a hard time understanding the need to substitute for lesser materials. When I'm hard up for cash and itching to build, I just wait until I can afford what I want. Settling has never gone over well with me. Also, in my experience, black limba doesn't tend to be all that brown at all.

peace,

russ

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