How to tell between Brazilian and Indian Rosewood?

My 1973 F-50R was described as "I've been told it was Brazilian rosewood but I have no way to verify" when I bought it. To me that leans it in the Indian Rosewood camp, but how to tell visually?

From what I know 1969 was the cut off for using or importing rosewood. Not that guitar makers didn't have stores of it. But suddenly since it was a very limited commodity, There were only pieces used for certain parts. Rarely would a 1973 Guild be Brazillianrosewood. It might (in an off case) have rosewood sides, or bridge or fretboard but some guitars were mixed. But rarely by 1973. I'm gonna guess your guitar is all East Indian Rosewood! It's beautiful!! And folks will fuss and quibble about this but...... it's still a beautiful guitar and lovely rosewood. Unless you paid WAY TOO MUCH for it recently, I wouldn't worry and play the hell out of it. They're great guitars!! Play and enjoy!! :encouragement::encouragement:

Agree with Tom-beauitiful Rosewood and as far as sound goes my American ears love all kinds of tonewoods.

Another thought- -maybe someone who never lists his signature and has one of each would post a photo of them side by side and not tell the forum which is which. Members could, simply, respond, "left" or "right." After 50 or so responses the correct answer would be revealed. Betcha there would be more than a few incorrect answers.
That would open another thread by those who "guessed" incorrectly--arguments to prove they were correct in their original guess. Ha

This describes it well

https://www.classicalguitardelcamp.com/viewtopic.php?t=38697

Whatever it is, that's an awfully pretty guitar, GJ. Simply gorgeous straight-grain rosewood. I love how the darker heartwood is at the seam.

Visually, there is no way to be certain about Brazilian vs. Indian, GJ, especially from pictures. So, don't expect any actual answers from us. You can usually identify Brazilian from some green streaks in the wood, but I don't think you always have that. I think (not sure) that Indian doesn't have that characteristic. But, as far as grain and other normal cues are concerned, you just don't know. If you don't mind scraping, say, the inner wood on your guitar, you might uncover a bubble-gum-like smell which is associated with Brazilian. I think Indian is supposed to smell more bitter, but honestly I've never done that test, and it's hardly conclusive.

As far as Guild is concerned, the use of Brazilian for the backs is more and more unlikely as you get deeper into the 1970s. It's believed that some early '70/'71 Guilds have Brazilian sides with Indian backs. I think I owned an F-50 like that, but never actually confirmed that the sides were Brazilian. They certainly looked different from the back of the guitar, primarily from a grain pattern point of view. I believe Hans Moust mentioned that there might even be some exceptions to the "rule" and that there might have been some Brazilian backs. In your case, by 1973, it's pretty unlikely, though not impossible. Oh, and finally, to my knowledge, Brazilian was only intentionally/consciously used since then by Guild to build the anniversary model D-55 in Corona. There was a small stash of Brazilian in New Hartford, but I do not believe it was ever used to build any guitars.

Seems to me that a lot of EI rosewood in the early 70s was: remarkably light brown; and remarkably great sounding. Yours looks like that to me.

guitarjesus said:

but how to tell visually?

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Once your standards of being certain are high enough, you cannot make a correct determination solely by visual inspection. You need to take a sample and have it analyzed by a lab. Not many folks do that which is why there are claims like

"I've been told it was Brazilian rosewood but I have no way to verify"

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. That statement is meaningless although it can make a buyer feel better about what they are buying.

Excuse me. I think those kids are on my lawn again and I need to get them off of it!

Here are some ways to distinguish the two. Unfortunately the definitive test might involve the use of hand plane.

Very late Brazilian often has a wild grain pattern to it, given that all of the available straight-grained stuff had already been used up.

Check out photos on Reverb of late-60's Martin D-28's. Some pretty crazy stuff on the backs of most of them.

That grain is usually because the supply started drying up and I think they started using stump wood, Neal, where the grain is kind of all over the place.

davismanLV said:

From what I know 1969 was the cut off for using or importing rosewood.

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That was Martin's cut-off date.
Brazil just started getting very heavy-handed about letting it out of the country.
I've actually seen a 1967 date for that but surprisingly haven't been able to confirm it from a reputable source, but there weren't any import restrictions on it yet.
CITES was still out on the horizon.

davismanLV said:

Not that guitar makers didn't have stores of it. But suddenly since it was a very limited commodity, There were only pieces used for certain parts. Rarely would a 1973 Guild be Brazillianrosewood. It might (in an off case) have rosewood sides, or bridge or fretboard but some guitars were mixed. But rarely by 1973.

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Right, and I can only remember seeing confirmed by Hans "mixed B/S" on D50's although it would make sense they used Brazilian on D55's even into '73, if they had big enough slabs to make backs and sides.****
But those were still special order in '73 and I can't recall seeing one from say '70 to '73 that was confirmed Brazilian, but that's probably due more to poor memory and very few sightings here in the first place.
And can't recall the question ever coming up about F50's or a report of mixed B/S on those, let alone a confirmed one.
And I agree with Curlington that it looks like other known EIR examples from the era in grain and color.
It's probably in one of the links one of the other guys posted, but I always remembered a source that explained that EIR has a MUCH lower pore count than Braz, when looking at a piece end-on to the grain.
So if that's true DNA testing isn't necessary, but it might still be difficult to asses that on an already built instrument.
And I've heard the bubblegum smell ONLY occurs in Braz.
Interestingly Guild still had stocks sized suitably for fretboards and especially bridges well into the '80's so your fretboard and bridge have a very high likelihood of being Braz if they're not ebony.
And those might yield grain comparison clues.
:friendly_wink:
PS KUDOS for deciding to assume it's EIR until you can figure out how to tell for sure.

**** It just occurred to that maybe the reason they had leftover Braz to use to make mixed D50's was because they used up the last of the big enough slabs (that they were willing to use) to make all-Braz D55's?
Sheer conjecture.

Neal said:

Very late Brazilian often has a wild grain pattern to it, given that all of the available straight-grained stuff had already been used up.

Check out photos on Reverb of late-60's Martin D-28's. Some pretty crazy stuff on the backs of most of them.

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That’s because they were allowed to sale stump wood which has the really cool swirly grain

Rayk said:

That’s because they were allowed to sale stump wood which has the really cool swirly grain

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Yeah I like that stuff too, for a while I thought that was one of the definitive characteristics.
I do think Chaz was right about the green streaks though, I don't think any other true Dalbergia shows that, so it might be a good proof too when it does appear.

I bought a BRW guitar in the late 70s and I really liked its distinct and strong scent. I only really played it for a few years and it lives in a case overseas, and when I open it this smell still welcomes me.

davismanLV said:

From what I know 1969 was the cut off for using or importing rosewood. Not that guitar makers didn't have stores of it. But suddenly since it was a very limited commodity, There were only pieces used for certain parts. Rarely would a 1973 Guild be Brazillianrosewood. It might (in an off case) have rosewood sides, or bridge or fretboard but some guitars were mixed. But rarely by 1973. I'm gonna guess your guitar is all East Indian Rosewood! It's beautiful!! And folks will fuss and quibble about this but...... it's still a beautiful guitar and lovely rosewood. Unless you paid WAY TOO MUCH for it recently, I wouldn't worry and play the hell out of it. They're great guitars!! Play and enjoy!! :encouragement::encouragement:

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I only paid $800

guitarjesus said:

I only paid $800

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Dude..... you're GOLD then. That's cheap for ANY rosewood Guild in decent shape!! Congrats!!! :encouragement::encouragement:

davismanLV said:

Dude..... you're GOLD then. That's cheap for ANY rosewood Guild in decent shape!! Congrats!!! :encouragement::encouragement:

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It does need a few things...slight twist in the neck, that I can do myself. The truss rod is suspect, so the fingerboard might need to come out, that's not that bad a chore, it might be advantageous to straighten the neck with the board off. We'll see. I just got back my 74 F50 Blonde, so I've got something to play when the baby comes. If I need to absolutely send it for repair, I'll sell my Larriver D-03-12 to cover the costs. I don't play it, and I want an F512 anyways.

I believe this is Brazillian Rosewood based only on the visual evidence of this photo and nothing else:




does anyone agree or disagree?

You can try to differentiate between the grains, Look for different color Hues in the wood, and even go as far as Scientific Testing to try and determine the difference between East Indian RW and Brazilian RW. The truth is the only way to really tell if it is Brazilian is to see what the guitar looks like in a Bikini. I know it is a bit unorthodox but 50% of the time it works Every Time!

TX