Rosewood vs. Indian Rosewood

[Travis_Warner]

Okay, this is a question that I have been wanting to ask for awhile. I know that Indian Rosewood is more diserable, and plays better (I know, because I have played an Indian Rosewood guitar, and it sounds better than my Corodoba 40R)

But, where does the plain rosewood come from?

[Armando]

Hello Travis_Warner

The term rosewood actually doesn't say a lot. It does not define the botanical species. It's a collective term used in anglo-american countries to name a couple of heavy woodspecies of tropical origin with similar visual appearance.
There are many different kind of rosewoods, same as there are many different typs of mahoganies even when some of them have botanically nothing to do with rosewood or mahoganiy at all.

From the botanical point of wiew it would be accurate to consider only woodspecies out of the dalbergia family as true rosewoods.

The most common rosewoods from the dalbergia familiy used for guitarmaking are:

brazilian rosewood: dalbergia nigra
indian rosewood: dalbergia latifolia
madagascar rosewood: dalbergia madagascariensis
african blackwood: dalbergia melanoxylon
amazon rosewood: dalbergia spruceana
Cocobolo: dalbergia retusa
Palo Escrito: dalbergia palo escrito
honduran rosewood: dalbergia stevensonii

Each one of this rosewoods has it's own distinct visual appearance, a different density and different tonal properties even if some of them come close to each another.
Most of them come from different countries or even different continents.

So fisrt we need to know what woodspecies we are talking about before anybody can tell you where it might come from.


Armando

[Travis_Warner]

That's some great information. As for what mine is, i don't know. All I know is it says for my Cordoba 40R, it just says rosewood back and sides

[Armando]

I have checked on the Cordoba website.

Back and Sides of the model 40R are declared to be made of indian rosewood.

Indian rosewood comes not only out of India. It comes also from countries like Thailand and Indonesia.

regards

Armando

[Travis_Warner]

Ah, thank you very much for the information!