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Hi all,

Hope you don't mind my barrage of questions recently, I do read the Internet before asking specific things. I want to build a rosewood guitar. I have two sets of brw and a set of guatamalen but in Europe I'm unlikely to be able to buy another of either of these woods. I'm not really interested in an alternative Brazilian/SA rainforest timber as I'm more bothered about habitat destruction than individual tree species. I want something that is really being done right, is the answer just Indian rosewood?

Not sure if it’s available in your part of the world but.
I’ve often heard Osage Orange some folks call it Bois d’arc is a good substitute.

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Yeah, not available in Europe sadly

Hard to find guitar sets even in a city where it grows like a weed. The trees are usually small and gnarly.

Indian rosewood has been plantation grown for three hundred or more years. Ironically, it is native to the New World where it was originally called East Indian Rosewood...

There is also plantation grown Brazilian rosewood, but it's not anywhere close to mature enough for guitar sets.

There are quite a few woods that fall within the Rosewood spectrum. Padauk is one. Argentine osage orange is another.

One issue is the appearance. Most non-rosewoods don't have the rich brown/black appearance. Osage Orange starts chartreuse and ages to an orangey brown. Padauk is bright red and ages to a reddish brown. And so forth...

Ovangkol and Bubinga are very similar to Rosewoods and make great guitars. In a blind listening test, you couldn't tell tell which was which.

Are padouk and ovankol ethically harvested though? I understand there's currently plenty of it but I'm interested in how it actually gets from the soil to my work bench.

I applaud your sentiments. However, forest management practices in the tropics are absent in most cases and mediocre at best. Chain of custody is an attempt to keep illegally logged lumber out of the market but nearly impossible to monitor from harvesting to retail purchase. The Indian rosewood on the market today is plantation grown, which is fairly sustainable. A natural habitat was disrupted to support a plantation style of growing but so has modern agriculture.
If ethically sourced timber is a prime concern then temperate climate timbers are easier to trace and very few (if any) are endangered. Repurposing tropical woods from old furniture is very responsible although running across suitable wood is mostly a happy accident.
If it is any consolation the entire musical instrument industry from $49 ukes to $100,000 grand pianos uses a tiny percentage of annual wood harvest.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

The best "dead ringer..." for Brazilian Rosewood that I've heard AND built with personally has been Honduran Rosewood and I speak of tone wise here.

Don Williams as in the William behind the Williams binding jig and an early OLF member who pops up here still from time to time and I are both fans of Honduran Rosewood and we both believe it's a great substitute for the tone of BRW. It works much like it too and doesn't have any bad habits that I can think of.

The one thing that I was not thrilled about was a bit of a brick reddish color to it although this is not always the case. I built with some that was not reddish and I've seen it available but it's the exception. Nothing wrong with a very slight reddish tint anyway I'm just overly picky.

I applaud your sentiments too, good going for giving a da*n.

I'm not bothered about getting a real brw dead ringer, just a rosewood style sound. All my mahogany is currently reclaimed, Honduran and Cuban as well as other alternatives. Might try a set of Indian and FSC padouk?

On a side note, does anyone use low grade like single A Indian rosewood, if not then why buy the higher grade? It's suppse to be denser which I'm not fussed about really.

I'm currently finishing up a slope D for myself made from machiche. It taps nearly identical to BRW. My set is perfectly vertical grained, non-interlocked grain ( which I prefer), easy to work. The look is as plain as dirt, which I personally enjoy. Machiche places sound and stability first. Dramatic colorings and ink lines are not present. It's kind of subversive to ignore dramatic appearance for an instrument's primary functions: sound, playability, and longevity. Most machiche is milled for utilitarian purposes like flooring so making a guitar from it that will last generations is preferable, at least in my book.

_________________
Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

https://shop.espen.de/en/Tonewood-Acous ... FSC--.html

Like this? Very reasonably priced at least!

I'm not a fan of flatsawn wood if vertical grained wood is available. Check the site of Hibdon Hardwood. I believe they have more sets than are pictured. Some of the sets that are pictured have beautiful backs but just OK sides. If you ordered more than 1 set they'd be more inclined to match straighter grained sides.
Full disclosure: I worked there about 20 years ago.

_________________
Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

Morado / Pao Ferro makes a nice guitar. It's hard, and often denser than BRW, and I often think that matters more than low damping. Morado does have higher damping then most rosewoods, but then, so does the set of African Blackwood I tested, and some folks love it.

Black Locust is another North American rosewood substitute. Like Osage it's yellow: both darken down nicely when ammonia fumed. BL is in the density/hardness range of IRW, but has damping more like BRW and Osage. Also like Osage, the main use for BL these days is as fence posts. I made one BL guitar a few years back, and have seen others; all were nice instruments. The trees can get big, but usually don't since they're considered 'weeds'.

Mesquite tests out in the rosewood range, so long as it's straight grained. I picked up a burl back because it looks cool, but it tests out like Masonite: dense, with very high damping, and similar (low) stiffness along and across the grain. I may pair it with a Masonite guitar when I get around to it, just to compare. Masonite is 'micro-burl'...

I've used Machiche from Espen and it does have a nice glassy Rosewood type ping when tapped. I went for the AA as the extra money is worth the piece of mind over the flat sawn A grade.

Wenge is also a nice wood. I believe the maestro Himself Ervin Somoygi called it budget Braz. The sets I've used all sounded great.

I can't comment on how sustainable the woods are though.

The machiche from espen is fsc for what it's worth. I saw the aa sets look better and still affordable. How did the guitar turn out?

It turned out very nice. The Chap who bought it thought so too. Just remembered I ordered AA but they had ran out at the time so they sent A, this was in 2016. As You can see it's quartered in the middle but transits into flatsawn on the edge which worked out fine. This was a large body size 0000.

Around here we call wenge 'African crack wood'. The ring porous grain structure is weak at the transition from latewood to earlywood, and with the wide swings in humidity we see it tends to crack.

Really nice. It's that the natural colour?

Yeah and I've heard about the splinters too in wenge. Ireland always humid and then you get a real warm dry or real cold couple of weeks a year and can drop below 20 percent. It's more like 70 plus usually

Yes, au naturale. It is a really nice wood.