Colouring/dying/whatever spruce...

The thing I'm working on at the moment will have a spruce top (and sapele ribs/back). I imagine I'll end up chickening out and leaving it natural, but as part of my normal process (overthink ten times, measure twice, cut once), I should consider colours... A deep red is my preference in guitars, but will spruce end up looking orange? What does coloured spruce look like? Sunburst?? Another negative consideration is that a bound edge is beyond my confidence/experience level, so there would be all the issues of either dye soaking into the end grain (if coloured after trimming to size) or undyed end grain (if coloured before trimming). A brown wood dye would perhaps be more conventional with spruce, especially for a super antique look but I don't reckon the antique look will suit this thing. Roughly telecaster shaped BTW FWIW.

Jim C

If you have access to a similar bit of scrap timber then doing a few sample test runs would provide you with your answers.

Fair comment, but I was hoping to learn from other folks experience. Maybe the apparent lack of such is indicative in itself!

A google session frequently comes up with the word "blotchy" so maybe it had better be natural.

Spruce is far more common on acoustic guitars, so a kit electric guitar forum is not the best place to ask. And on acoustic guitars, binding is really an inherent part of the construction. A good bit of spruce will rarely be dyed and I'd expect most coloured acoustics to be sprayed rather than stained. I couldn't really find much on YouTube either about staining a spruce top.

I'd expect it to take a stain pretty much like pine would. You're going to need different colours for the top and back if you want them to look the same. but a lot easier to have them contrasting.

Ok, thanks folks, I think the conclusion has to be that attempting to dye the spruce top is a bit too risky. There'll have been a lot of work to get the thing I'm attempting to the finishing stage, assuming it does actually get that far, so reckon I'll just go with natural. Its an excuse for another project...