Why Can't We Get Some New Good Quality Brazilian Rosewood?

[loco gringo]

Originally Posted by jdrnd

The solution will be animal based wood. Sort of the opposite of the impossible burger. Brazilian Rosewood will be artificially made using animal meat. The product will sound better than Brazilian wood, but not look as nice.
Than the problem goes away. Guitarists will be craving instruments made from animal flesh. Chicken meat would be the best source for the wood. They are not endangered, there are none of the religious issues that one sees with cows and pigs, and there light and dark meat means that there would be a lot of unique products.
Of course I realize the that Vegan guitarists would be opposed to this idea. I can see vegans boycotting performers who use instruments made from animals. It is sure going to be interesting in the next 50 years as animal based guitars enter the market.

This is going to lead to tone protein sniffing. Or, maybe tasting? There are many breeds of chickens, some endangered. I can imagine a Crèvecoeur or La Fleche based guitar commanding a lot of money. Good old fashioned Dominickers and Rhode Island Reds could become the Sitka and Mahogany of chickens.

I can see Tyson getting in the game. Industrial raised super chickens would be used for laminated protein guitars. They could press chicken parts together for a kind of chicken nugget guitar.

[jdrnd]

Originally Posted by loco gringo

This is going to lead to tone protein sniffing. Or, maybe tasting? There are many breeds of chickens, some endangered. I can imagine a Crèvecoeur or La Fleche based guitar commanding a lot of money. Good old fashioned Dominickers and Rhode Island Reds could become the Sitka and Mahogany of chickens.

I can see Tyson getting in the game. Industrial raised super chickens would be used for laminated protein guitars. They could press chicken parts together for a kind of chicken nugget guitar.

This is of course all in the future. But I am sure that there will be many an acoustic guitar forum member who will protest the use of Sinker Rhode Island Reds as inhumane.

...Human nature suggests that there will be a whole slew of blackmarket guitars made with sinker Reds because of the superior tone quality.

[jdrnd]

Originally Posted by jpricewood

As a professor of ecology and conservation, it warms my heart to read all of the pro-environment comments on this thread.

If a Luthier grew his own Brazilian wood on his own land or in a green house, is it legal for him to use it?

[tadol]

So - there is no problem using Braz rw if you have it - the trouble is, real braz rw comes from Brazil, they’ve greatly restricted the cutting of those trees, and the international community has put severe restrictions on transporting it across international borders. That means that even if you have enough inventory to build 1,000 guitars, you won’t be able to replace it. And you can sell those guitars within the boundaries if whatever country you’re in, you just can’t sell them and ship them across borders. And braz rw was not made scarce because of the guitar industry - it was the wood of choice for a great many products. It was used as handles on Stanley hand-planes and squares for decades, it veneered grand pianos and jewelry boxes, and it was originally discovered and used for its smell - who knows how many 100s of tons were ground up for oil extraction -

Because it was being imported in great quantities as a “luxury” wood was most likely why it was originally used for high end instruments - actively imported and easily available, worked very well, why investigate other options? And now, we have a long history of the best instruments being made from braz rw, so many people expect that you have to use it in order to make a great instrument. But we have dozens of great luthiers who’ve proven that truly great guitars can be built with easily available and extremely sustainable materials - but the market doesn’t value them as it does the scarce, or rare, or unusual, or best - unobtainable materials. Too often we seek instruments based on the name of the builder and the material used for construction, and not on the actual tone and playability. I’m a victim as much as anyone - put a guitar made from “the Tree” or maybe highly flamed koa, or qs pernambuco, and I will imagine how great a guitar it probably is, without having ever heard it. And I have heard fantastic guitars made of walnut, oak, cherry, and even poplar, and I worry about whether they will hold their value in the decades ahead if others aren’t willing to evaluate them with eyes closed -

The other side of this is that there are projects underway to grow braz rw as a “crop” - but I don’t think that will supply viable supplies in our lifetimes - but maybe 50-80 years from now? Maybe, our great grand-kids will be able to order a new guitar with some of this newly grown material? Or maybe, they’ll find that other materials have become preferable, in their lifetimes. I’ll never know -

[Scotso]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

Steve DeRosa wrote

In general, if what I've read is true, reducing the area of an ecosystem by 90% cuts the number of species in half. More than half of whatever was there to begin with in the Brazilian .....

Alan, not to be a debbie downer.

It is tough to sell a guitar that is not traditional woods. I like Walnut. Great stuff and love the looks too. I have owned a couple. Tough as hell to sell. And you kinda take it up...well you know...on price. Great if you buy used but someone gotta plunk down $$$$ for the first purchase.. There is a custom Walnut martin for sale in used right now. Beautiful. The price and length of time in used for sale will be instructive

[6L6]

Happy to say that my favorite non-hog back and sides wood is EIR.

I've owned numerous Braz Martins and they are all gone. My EIR ones remain.

[tommieboy]

Originally Posted by 6L6

Happy to say that my favorite non-hog back and sides wood is EIR.

I've owned numerous Braz Martins and they are all gone. My EIR ones remain.

Same here.

Tommy

[jdrnd]

Originally Posted by 6L6

Happy to say that my favorite non-hog back and sides wood is EIR.

I've owned numerous Braz Martins and they are all gone. My EIR ones remain.

So forgetting the status of owning a guitar built with Brazilian Rosewood, perhaps they don't sound that much better than EIR?
I have never played a guitar built with Brazilian wood, so I don't have a personal comparison.

[Tony Burns]

Very naive -
BR trees are being harvested daily illegally
and sold to China buyers.

[Br1ck]

Maybe the worst thought of the day. Let's go get a few turtles, and there are a few rhinos left.

[Alan Carruth]

tadol wrote:
"So - there is no problem using Braz rw if you have it -"

The Lacey Act, which is the US law that is used to enforce the CITES Treaty, seems to have required that any piece of wood be traceable through paperwork back to the stump. Since a lot of BRW as bought by luthiers decades ago, long before such paper work was required, it was hard to establish provenance. Luthiers are unusual in the wood working industry in stashing wood, sometimes for decades. After some folks from US Fish and Wildlife spoke at a luthier's convention and became aware of this peculiarity, they got together with some luthiers and worked out regulatory changes that would make it possible to establish the bona fides of old wood without the need for receipts back to The Beginning. It's still not a slam dunk, though: you have to go through the process.

This highlights our main problem; we don't exist. Guitar makers are not much more than a small rounding error in the American economy, so when it's time to write regs they don't pay any attention to us. Most of us don't have extensive legal staffing, and we tend not to sleep with the Congressional Record next to our beds for light night time reading. It's easy to spot the things we make at the border, though, and it's widely known that we use endangered species. so....

[mmasters]

Thanks for the insight guys. Sorry about being naïve on the subject but I have an incredible quarter-sawn BRW guitar and was thinking how it would be cool if there were more of this stuff to be shared. Since the price has gotten so high and there are possibly millions of trees left I figured some kind of eco-reasonable arrangement could be worked out (but then again I once traveled to Rio in Brazil and saw how incompetent things were down there that I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about the situation).

[jdrnd]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

tadol wrote:
"So - there is no problem using Braz rw if you have it -"

The Lacey Act, which is the US law that is used to enforce the CITES Treaty, seems to have required that any piece of wood be traceable through paperwork back to the stump. Since a lot of BRW as bought by luthiers decades ago, long before such paper work was required, it was hard to establish provenance. Luthiers are unusual in the wood working industry in stashing wood, sometimes for decades. After some folks from US Fish and Wildlife spoke at a luthier's convention and became aware of this peculiarity, they got together with some luthiers and worked out regulatory changes that would make it possible to establish the bona fides of old wood without the need for receipts back to The Beginning. It's still not a slam dunk, though: you have to go through the process.

This highlights our main problem; we don't exist. Guitar makers are not much more than a small rounding error in the American economy, so when it's time to write regs they don't pay any attention to us. Most of us don't have extensive legal staffing, and we tend not to sleep with the Congressional Record next to our beds for light night time reading. It's easy to spot the things we make at the border, though, and it's widely known that we use endangered species. so....

So If I plant a Brazilian rosewood tree (Dalbergia nigra) in my backyard or greenhouse, can my son legally use the wood from this tree to make guitars when the tree matures 20 years from now. How do I prove it was not imported from Brazil? Is the tree protected from being cut down even in my backyard in the USA?

[Frodolicious]

Originally Posted by jdrnd

So If I plant a Brazilian rosewood tree (Dalbergia nigra) in my backyard or greenhouse, can my son legally use the wood from this tree to make guitars when the tree matures 20 years from now. How do I prove it was not imported from Brazil? Is the tree protected from being cut down even in my backyard in the USA?

It would be more like 50-60 years i would reckon.

[hubcapsc]

Originally Posted by jdrnd

So If I plant a Brazilian rosewood tree (Dalbergia nigra) in my backyard or greenhouse, can my son legally use the wood from this tree to make guitars when the tree matures 20 years from now. How do I prove it was not imported from Brazil? Is the tree protected from being cut down even in my backyard in the USA?

while thinking about this thread I saw this:

https://www.fws.gov/fieldnotes/regmap.cfm?arskey=36795

-Mike