Hello everybody,
As my baritone tele project is on the way and I am not able to use Dingotone I wanted to double check my plan on the finish. I've seen some post on this but there seem to be a lot of different ways and problems people had to manage so maybe you can help me avoid some.
I am going for a pretty dark red and want the grain of the flame maple veneer to stand out. It's the TL-12F body. Some examples:
This is a sketch created by using the halo guitars online configurator, thus pretty close to my actual setup. Except I'll use a FCH tele humbucker bridge and maybe hide another active pickup behind the pickguard (as its output is pretty high) to keep the esquire look.
My ideas is to use water based stain made by Clou. A layer of black, sand it back with 500grid or extra fine steelwool, another layer of thinner black to darken the following red and 2-3 layers of dark red. Only black stain on sides and back.
Fine sanding the raised grain and finish with tru-oil.
Is this a good way or should I go for dye or something?
It's a little hard to compare all the techniques and products because of all the translation and product comparing going on to find stuff here in Germany, so I appreciate your help. Maybe someone from europe can recommend good products available here.
Thanks