Martin Buchholz writes:
 
 GB> 2. i can set the tabs bg color with editres, but when emacs gains the
 GB>    focus the tabs are redrawn with mycolor4 (i.e., generic bg color)
 
 That's probably as designed.  Specifiers control the display of faces.
  
   i started playing with X resources as i have
          (custom-set-variables
               ...
               '(buffers-tab-face (quote holiday-face))
               ...)
    in my .emacs, but buffers-tab happily diregards my customization