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I'm starting guitar #3 (see the build blog). It will have yellow birch sides/back with absolutely spectacular grain, a walnut neck, and a blackwood fingerboard.

My initial thought was to use blackwood binding on the body.

But I also want to bind the fingerboard. The fingerboard binding ought to match the body binding, generally speaking. But blackwood binding on a blackwood fingerboard makes no sense. So that means I don't want blackwood binding on the body.

What binding would you choose that would go with those yellow birch sides, a blackwood fingerboard, and a walnut neck?

Another consideration: Because the sides/back are so spectacular, I want to keep the binding and purfling fairly plain so as not to compete with the sides'/back. The sides/back ought to be the focus.

On my Myrtle cutaway I did a maple purfling strip between the ebony fingerboard and the wenge binding.

It think the same binding looks good. The fret board will have the look of a bound fret board. Also as John suggested you could use a purfling line. The wood looks fantastic.

Hmmm...nice ideas. Anybody else?

How about doing blind fret slots so binding the fb wouldn't be necessary? And for the body perhaps madagascar rosewood binding or bloodwood binding or maybe cocobolo binding? If it were my set, I would do ebony or brw for contrast and set that off with fine herringbone or paua abalone.

I did ZipFlex abalone on my first guitar and liked the result. I was thinking of keeping this one less flashy, but I'll reconsider. My first one has ivoroid binding, and a dark binding with the ZipFlex would certainly give a different sort of feeling to the appearance.