Face customization in (CVS) emacs

[R. Mattes]

Hello list,

while trying to tweak my emacs setup i encountered the following strange
behavior: when i customize my default font (using 'customize-group
basic-faces) i nned to explicitly set a background color or the these 
customizations won't be used (emacs picks the default courier font).

Here's a paste of my current custom-set-faces from my .emacs file:

(custom-set-faces
  ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
  ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
  ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(default ((t (:stipple nil 
                :foreground "black" 
                :background "white"  <----------- This _needs_ to be set!
                :inverse-video nil
                :box :nil
                :strike-through nil
                :overline nil
                :underline nil :slant
                :normal
                :weight :normal
                :height 164
                :width normal :family
                :"bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono"))))
 '(show-paren-match-face ((((class color)) (:background "light grey"))))
 '(sldb-condition-face ((t (:foreground "darkred" :weight bold))))
 '(sldb-detailed-frame-line-face ((t (:slant oblique))))
 '(sldb-frame-label-face ((t (:foreground "green4")))) '(sldb-section-face
 ((t (:background "navy" :foreground "white")))) '(sldb-topline-face ((t
 (:background "grey75" :weight bold)))) '(slime-highlight-face ((t
 (:background "lightblue" :underline nil)))) '(slime-inspector-type-face
 ((t (:foreground "green")))) '(slime-threesemi-header-face ((((class
 color) (background light)) (:background "#fff68f" :foreground "cyan4"
 :weight bold)))))

If i remove the marked property the default font family isn't used. 
I wouldn't mind setting the background but unfortunately once i do this
if i use "make-frame" the property "background-color" of the frame
property alist is ignored?

 Any ideas about how i can solve my problem?

 TIA Ralf Mattes