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My wife bought me some really nice shedua(ovangkol) for Christmas (what a gal!) from Don Williams. My problem is I have been out in the shop for three days trying to come up with a binding/purfling combination. The shedua,in my eyes, has a strong reddish tone. I tried the maple binding,but that kind of leaves me with a white/black/white for purfling and it doesn't seem to flow. I looked at a bloodred purfling,noooo. I'm leaning toward an ebony binding, then what purfling? I'm looking for some suggestions,I'm stumped. Clinton

a custom shedua purfling scheme might be fun... maple/shedua/maple
black/shedua/black

you get the idea

I think you can't go wrong with ebony. When in doubt, go with dark/black.

As for purflings... I always find that black and white goes with anything...   I think you'll be rather limited in that area. I have some koa/maple/koa purfs that I got from Shane at Highmountain. The look fantastic, but I don't think they'd work in your case.

Maybe no purflings at all?

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

Wow, I must have no taste, I couldn't come up with a thing. I like the "stealth" ideas with no or little purfling. I might order some rosewood & koa just to see and have on hand. I'm visioning a shedua binding with black lines.....side and top right? My mind is running now, I won't get sleep tonight. Thanks! Clinton

Hi Clinton,

If you really need to have purfling, rope purfling goes well with pretty much anything, check out Shane Neifer's website or Bob C's, they've got some pretty fancy purflings that'd go with shedua, i'm pretty sure, they would certainly look pretty once glued to ebony bindings.

Clinton, I like the idea of shane's koa/maple/koa purflings. The koa
would be a really warm highlight with the ovankol the way I'm picturing it
in the Taylor 14 series guitars I've seen over the years. With ivroid
bindings, it would be a Walker kind of look. With darker rosewood
bindings, it would remind me of the pics I've seen from John Mayes's new
models.

I love Alain's shape to death and really appreciate his eye. I differ from
his view this time and think ebony would be too stark unless it was more
like macassar.

want dark with some action .. ziricote, my fave these days if its not braz, then for purfs you could go with a combo using maple and one of red/orange/blk, or for a little more subtle change the maple out for anigre or cherry.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Shane-I'm going to check out those sites,I don't have any rope in my stash anyway and you have to have that in your arsenal>
James, I know what you mean about the ebony, I tried that and it was better than going with a light color,but something just wasn't right,at least to my eyes.
Tony-I don't know what ziricote looks like! I guess I better look into that one. I love BRW, I didn;t consider that one,although wouldn't that look good then with a BRW bridge. I know that's the choice of many builders. Now I have an excuse to go shopping! Clinton

Clinton, here is a quilted bubinga done with Ziricote bindings, purf is blk/orange/blk ... dark browns, with black lines, sometimes shows somewhat of a really deep olive colour in there too ... see the spiderweb graining on the tailwedge ... also when dead on quarter, has really nice fleck spots to it ..

TonyKarol39087.4137037037

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Hey Tony, the wood on that Git is all deformed!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Ebony with 3 .01 x 3 line purf-b/cur maple/b-for my 2 cents.

Yeah, that tree was on DRUGS man .... some whacked out natural herbs or somethin' ...

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"