Indian rosewood is a great wood to make guitars with. So far it is not scarce or controlled and it contributes to making a great-sounding guitar.  It is also very stable, in part because you can usually find it cut on the quarter. The widespread preference for Brazillian rosewood is due to a few factors that can be a bit contradictory. Buyers love Brazillian because it is scarce and expensive and because it can be very beautiful. Makers love Brazillian because it is nice to work with. A plane and a scraper leave a lovely surface, the smell is heavenly and it has a nice sonorous ring to it when you tap it.  However, beautiful to a woodworker and beautiful to a buyer is not always the same thing. We love well-quartered wood no matter what the species. The shine of the medullar rays and the even grain is the perfection we look for. I have used great pieces of Brazillian like that and had clients say, “No, that’s Indian rosewood”. These are the clients that want crazy grain patterns, various colours in the same piece and spider webbing that to them are the indications that it really is Brazillian. Crazy grain makes for a greater likelihood of cracks, different colours often indicates a flat-sawn piece while scarcity means that it is expensive and its commerce severely restricted. So why use it? Especially if many of us have found that it really doesn’t make your guitar sound any better. Furthermore, why spend the extra money on it if the best pieces are going to be confused with Indian rosewood making it hard to pass on the extra cost to the client? Just to illustrate the confusion here are 4 guitars under construction: 2 of them are being made with a south american rosewood and the other 2 are being made with Indian rosewood. Can you tell which is which? Letter A, Letter B, Letter C, Letter D.

Letter C

Letter D

Letter B

Letter A