Brazilian Rosewood: Dalbergia Nigra
Brazilian rosewood imparts a rich clear, warm, bright tone to the guitar. We here at Maple Leaf really can’t say enough good things about Brazilian. There is no other wood that sounds quite as wonderful and it is the gold standard. Currently under the auspices of the Cites Treaty (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), Brazilian is no longer legally exported from Brazil. For a while stump wood was, with the appropriate permits, shipped to builders, but recently even this is largely unattainable. The stump wood is highly figured; much of what we’ve seen has curly wild graining and color. Froggy Bottom, Bourgeois, Huss and Dalton, and Santa Cruz still have limited stocks of the wood; Collings stopped using it a couple of years ago. However, if it is even available from a luthier it has become fantastically expensive and getting more so every year. If you do dream of a Brazilian guitar, we strongly recommend that you buy one soon. We honestly foresee that in the very near future, Brazilian will no longer be available as a guitar wood.