In my opinion I have never been satisfied with any stain on walnut ( other than alkanet ) with one exception.
Tried all sorts of commercial stains but I find on plain wood it just gives the appearance of being a bit "flat".
Very blonde wood benefits usually from alkanet oil pre treatment, and most woods generally benefit from alkanet, some woods like that crotch piece pictured could be obscured by an alkanet pre treatment and you lose some definition in the figure.
The only "stain" other than the afore mentioned alkanet root oil, I have used is basically a strong warm coffee mixture applied several times to the stock allowed to dry and rubbed back with fine paper. I used this technique on a Winchester 101 which had a flame of heart wood running through it with the rest being white wood with a clear definition between the two areas, it just darkened up the light wood a touch and helped bring out the fine ripples which were previously invisible, it was never going to be an amazing bit of wood but it bought out the best of what was there.
