Wood whisperers and fingerpaintners - unite to fix purpleheart! mebbe...?

[stubhead]

Honestly, purpleheart looks weird and even... ugly ( ) by itself to me - it's got a neat-o... hue, I think it's called - but it doesn't look DEEP. It does look much better as an element of the "hippie sandwich" kind of efforts - but I swear they darken it up some. I mean, even normal old walnut or rosewood have a little shuck 'n' jive to them raw, and tiger maple, cocobolo, Katy bar the door and hide the wimmen the woodie's back in town! And the purpleheart looks almost... pastel, or even like chalky, you know vat izt meanzt?

So, now -  It looks to ME like if you rubbed some red in there, just a mild solution that would turned maple pink-like :toothy11: - and just keep putting on coats of it till the purpleheart GROWS a PAIR you know? Or maybe blue (?), or black-sand-it-back 'r something... I don't think it'd take too much to nudge it off it's blahiness. :icon_scratch: And I know I'm not crazy here, because none of you EVER buy any purpleheart ANYTHING neither. Woodie-wise, it's supposed to be all densely kickass like pau ferro, padouk, satine... has anyone ever willfully nudged it off into unnatural acts? I'm serious, I "NEED" a zippy new fingerboard like I need a hole in my head here again really soon. Hep! Hep!

(wo - is that a new hole in my head? ow - just my ear agin I guess gowd gowd, these earboogers taste terrible!) ???

 

[Cagey]

I suspect if you tried to color Purpleheart at all that you'd be sorry over time, even if at first you were happy. The wood changes color based on its exposure to UV radiation, so if the color mix was right at first, it wouldn't be right later. Not necessarily bad, but certainly different. So, if you were trying to match it up to something else, it would need to be something that would never clash, like black or white, or more Purpleheart stained/finished the same way.

 

[stubhead]

Maybe I just like old purpleheart after it's pooched out.  :toothy12: Right now, Warmoth has brown-colored purpleheart necks, red-colored padouk ones and zilch for bloodwood. This last bloodwood neck I got was browner than my virginal padouk bass, but of course the padouk changed up a lot. If I hadn't sold my soul to boats, fatsos & the 7/8 devil-cult Warmoth coulda GOT me with that $215 douki lefty...

 

[Cagey]

I wonder if you called them and asked for a fresh picture of something you're interested in, if they'd crank one out for you? I know I was looking at some "Unique Choice" Ipe fretboards because of Ipe's inherent qualities and that they had an olive greenish tint to them, but as it turns out Ipe doesn't come that way. Which is by way of saying the colors as their camera sees them and/or my monitor displays them are not always as accurate as you might expect for a company that does 98% of their sales online.

Of course, the purpleheart is still going to change color on you, so even if the parts they have aren't as brown as they currently appear, they're still going to go there.

 

[stubhead]

I want a reddish fretboard for a turquoise/bluey guitar, and there's not too much to trust about any pictures of woods or finished guitars. Like, "kingwood" might be brown, or red, for sure ziricote looks wild but I think it may run gray too? If I was trying to sell oogy gray wood I'd goose up the pix on the monitor a bit meself and if I was making a guitar that was coming out gray and I wasn't worshipping Satan that week I'd probably hit the bugger with a bit of dye too. Things were so much easier back in the good old days.

 

[AutoBat]

My bloodwood fretboard is still quite burgundy.  I haven't noticed any colour change.

 

[alterbridgefan]

I want a reddish fretboard for a turquoise/bluey guitar, and there's not too much to trust about any pictures of woods or finished guitars. Like, "kingwood" might be brown, or red, for sure ziricote looks wild but I think it may run gray too? If I was trying to sell oogy gray wood I'd goose up the pix on the monitor a bit meself and if I was making a guitar that was coming out gray and I wasn't worshipping Satan that week I'd probably hit the bugger with a bit of dye too. Things were so much easier back in the good old days.

You could try staining Padauk, that might help preserve the sexy red it comes with...