On this....an option is to take some black Transtint in water and spray numerous, very light coats onto the bare, sanded wood (320-400 grit). Not too much dye in the water...enough to make the water DARK gray. This will highly accentuate the figure. If you want you can then sand such that the light parts go back to the natural white and the dyed parts remain a mid-gray tone. But if you build it up very slowly with numerous coats you'll see that the figured areas suck up the dye and the non-figured areas don't change too much....offering up the possibility of that subsequent sanding is only necessary to knock down the grain raised from the water.
Then pore fill if necessary...and use the amber tint in the lacquer topcoats.
I wouldn't try to get my color by dying the wood....but if you do...make sure you use a light dye ratio and build your color up over MANY light passes. I consider one pass to be a pass in one direction (0-180) and then another, right away, in the other direction (90-270). Atomize it well and use a wide(ish) fan spray pattern..and then let it dry a little bit before you hit it again. It takes a while. If you have an impulsive nature...don't try this
The LAST thing you want is to hurry as you build up color. Remember....a run and you're done.But like I say...I'd do the amber in the topcoats. To me...it's way easier to build even color this way. Each color of the Transtints works a little differently so the process I use when using a new color is to spray test panels, increasing the tint ratio until I get the density of color I'm looking for in one pass. Then I do the math in order to arrive at a tint ratio that will allow that amount of color to go down in SIX passes. I use clear lacquer on the last two passes for a total of eight coats. If the color looks weak after six passes I have the latitude of coloring the last two passes. The two guitars pictured were done using that process....but NOT applying the black tint to the raw wood as described above.
