For my money/tastes, silver finishes - particularly polished chrome (eg Acutus) and brushed stainless steel (eg LP12 top plate) - are too prone to 'fingerprinting' and the like and always look as if the owner has never lifted a finger to keep them looking at their best. Finishes like these - anywhere on a deck - are a complete no-no.
Where the deck design is based on an unbroken plinth (i.e. box), then, for me, the plinth sides should be wood/veneered. For "open" decks (e.g. Gyrodec/TW Acustik) the open frame should be a matte black.
On plinthed suspended sub-chasis designs, the top panel and arm board actually look very good in that black carbon fibre textured finish (a la Funk LP12 mods). Otherwise a matte black inlay offsets the veneered plinth rather well. The only challenge with black is that any dust build-up is immediately apparent and any over-zealous spouse could just decide to take a duster to the top of a turntable and zap the stylus/cantilever in her zeal (leading to a steep rise in the divorce rate).
For the various 'gubbinses' that protrude (platter, arm and controls) from a background of matte black, there is a need for some contrasting colour/shade/tone so that us old farts suffering from failing eyesight are still able to distinguish these protrusions from the background. Brushed or sandblasted titanium is less prone to 'fingerprinting' than stainless steel (not to mention polished chrome).
The lack of use of titanium metal in tonearm manufacture surprises me - its strength to mass ratio is one of the highest yet few, if any, manufacturers make use of it (maybe because it's a real bitch to machine?). Also, titanium can be anodised to provide a range of colour shades (with some admittedly grotesque but with some nice subtle shades). Titanium can also be textured - via brushing or sand-blasting - to provide a variety of subtle and attractive finishes that avoid being mirrors for every oily fingerprint.
To get back to the question regarding "Red"... (in this case, Pink)
Some years back, after some dialogue with Chris Harban around sourcing Pink Ivory stock in which Chris offered to make me a Pink Ivory LP12 plinth if I could source enough of the wood for his immediate demands (which I couldn't) - I played around with some ideas for colour combinations and thought that a Pink Ivory plinth matched to a carbon fibre top plate & arm-board would make a very attractive combination. (One of the items in my custom knife collection has handle plates made from Pink Ivory with anodised titanium bolsters (at the blade hinge point) with a Damascus steel blade and this combination was what caught my eye and drove the purchase:
So, a subtle bit of "red" in the wood can be very attractive but a vivid scarlet enamel finish would -for me - be a bit on the garish side. Besides vivid red colours should really only be used on Italian sports cars...
