CITES and Rosewood Personal Guitarq

Rich Cohen

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I know Adorshki recommends care in this regard, but does any LTGer have experience carrying a guitar (in this case a Guild D-30) overseas with a rosewood bridge and/or fingerboard, and having a problem with the immigration folks? I'm travelling to India and coming back with it, most probably. Although, I could leave it there. I got there every year.
Thanks,
Rich
 

MLBob

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Rich,
When is your trip?
The reason I ask is that in the Fall 2019 issue of Taylor's "Wood and Steel" magazine, there is an article in the Taylor Notes
section talking about how Rosewood musical instruments ( other than Brazilian) will be exempted from requiring CITES permits. Here are the pertinent quotes:

" On August 28, 2019 the Convention (CITES) voted to exempt finished musical instruments, parts, and accessories made with rosewood from requiring CITES permits....... The new exemption will take effect November 26, 2019. The exemption does not pertain to Brazilian rosewood which was listed separately in 1992 on the much stricter CITES Appendix I. ...... Further, owners of instruments made with rosewood components will once again be able to ship an instrument internationally for service or to sell without needing a permit. And travelling internationally with an instrument made of rosewood will now be easier. "


 

adorshki

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Thanks Bob that's how I understood it as well, but while trying to put myself in Rich's shoes I realized he may be worried about overzealous customs agents who may want some kind of proof it's not Brazilian.
FWIW Rich and if it helps, I can't recall anybody ever mentioning being "hassled" while hand carrying a personal instrument.
(PM sent.)
It absolutely always was and will continue to be covered under the personal property exemption allowing 20lbs of various listed materials as I've explained before, but if I was worried about needing to vet the guitar I'd make a copy of the '01 price list, either from GAD's archive or the Westerlyguildguitars.com site
Both of those spec "rosewood" as opposed to "Brazilian Rosewood".
Hopefully that would suffice, it's actually one of the methods mentioned on the F&WS letter giving owners advice about the subject.
Ideally you could get a letter from Guild verifying it's EIR but Oxnard has already shown a sad lack of familiarity with legacy builds.
 
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