Brazilian in Guilds ?

[roadbiker]

Man I want that smell in my guitar case. I have an old Martin that stunk so bad of cigarette smoke when I first got it I was afraid the smoke detector was gonna go off. I've tried everything I can think of to get rid of the smell but it just hangs on. I put rice in the guitar and shook it all around to get any dust or bug crud out. I put baking soda in to absorb the smell and let it sit for a week. Vaccuumed all that out and let it hang on the wall for 'bout a year while I was trying upholstry shampoo, baking soda, Febreeze and sitting open in the garage to get the stink out of the case. It's better but when you first open the case it still hits you with a wiff of Turkish latkia tobacco...strong stuff. Can't play anything but the blues on that guitar.

Maybe try putting cedar wood chips in it for a while?

 

[Elderguilder]

Here’s my 1970 which I’ve been told many times is Brazilian but as you say, there seems to be no definitive way to tell..mine smells sweet too

Here's my 1969 D-28. An email query to Martin w/ the s/n confirmed it is Brazillian RW.



Here is their reply

 

[banjomike]

It's true the smell is different. Brazilian Rosewood got its name from the way the wood smells when cut. East Indian smells like fresh horse manure when cut.
It can be next to impossible to visually tell the two woods apart. They can look much different or very much the same- it all depends on the tree. Both also have look-alikesthat grow in neighboring regions.

 

[chazmo]

Here's my 1969 D-28. An email query to Martin w/ the s/n confirmed it is Brazillian RW.



Here is their reply

Just beautiful, man!

 

[West R Lee]

So does anyone know exactly what happened with the use of BRW in 69-70? Had it becomes so scarce or expensive that builders stopped using it, or like CITES, was there law passed that prohibited the export or use of woods for guitars, furniture, etc way back then?

West

 

[banjomike]

So does anyone know exactly what happened with the use of BRW in 69-70? Had it becomes so scare or expensive that builders stopped using it, or like CITES, was there law passed that prohibited the export or use of woods for guitars, furniture, etc?

West

Yes. Scarcity was the reason.
The wood was first restricted by the Brazilian government, and later was prohibited to export. The trees had been over harvested for so long the species became threatened. Eventually, the CITES treaty stiffened the ban even farther by making it illegal to transport a finished product that contains any rosewood across an international border.
So it's is still legal to own an old guitar with Brazilian sides and back, but don't try to sell it to a Canadian and don't take it with you when you vacation in Mexico. Customs can seize the guitar and that's the end of it.

For a while, Customs was seizing guitars with Brazilian parts, but this has been challenged in the courts.

There were 2 reasons why it became scarce; it's a coastal wood, so it was easy to harvest at first, and the interior forests of the wood suffered massive cutting when the Amazon deforesting began. Most of the wood went into panelling. It still can be seen in corporate boardrooms all over the world.

It became pretty crazy for a while. While it was illegal to cut down living trees, a lot of tall stumps still existed, and they were still legal to cut. The stump wood was exceedingly oily, and some was very wormy, but the demand for the wood was so high that even when the wood was crappy, using it still commanded a premium.

Personally, I've never been able to hear any difference in the two woods, and the guitar industry used both long before Brazilian began growing scarce. They usually look different, but not always- sometimes they look very similar.

There are several other woods that could be substituted for them both; Cocobolo and Pau Ferro have both been alternatives for over 20 years, and there are rosewood varieties that grow in Venezuela, Middle America, and S. Mexico. Each has similar hardness and they all look different from each other.

 

[West R Lee]

So it was the Brazilian government who discontinued it's export in the beginning then. That answers my question. I was pretty familiar with the rest of the story.

And with the stump wood, well I've always assumed stump wood is the biggest reason we see most of the wild grained Brazilian that we see these day. Though it seems when we see older Martin guitars with straighter grain, I also assume most of that came from the trunks of the trees, from well before the scarcity.

West

 

[dreadnut]

What makes Brazilian superior to Indian rosewood?

 

[West R Lee]

What makes Brazilian superior to Indian rosewood?

I think many think resonance and depth Marc. Though I've played some pretty resonant and deep Indian.

West

 

[banjomike]

What makes Brazilian superior to Indian rosewood?

That's a good question!
Personally, I don't believe Braz is superior. In my experience, a superior guitar has a superior top, back & sides, and neck. Each can be a different wood, and they all have to work in unison to make the guitar superior to others like it.

The two weigh about the same, are similar in density and all the other standard measurements. But to me, when a flitch of either is struck, when it rings like a bell it's good wood. That's the truth with spruce, maple, mahogany, and all the others woods that are used too.
They're all capable of making lively guitars, but each type of wood does color the overall tone in it's own way.
...and the best wood cannot overcome the deficiencies of a badly designed guitar.
But when the design is very good, about any kind of wood can be used and the guitar will still sound good.

I once played the Taylor Pallet guitar, a guitar that was made from a couple of shipping pallets that had been sitting in their junk pile for years. The guitar sounded bassy and lacked a good high end to my ear, but would have worked just fine for playing rhythm, and it did sound like a Taylor.
Building it was a stunt, but it sure did show how much a good design can trump the materials.

I think most of Brazilian's reputation for sonic superiority is nothing but voodoo. The wood can be very visually beautiful, no doubt, but looks don't always make for the best tone. And both looks and tone are so subjective as to defy serious discussion on either property.

I'm glad efforts are being made to save the trees though; I hope guitar makers in the future have the same wide variety of wood choices the makers of the past had.

 

[chazmo]

Great answers, guys.

I think the reason this question comes up a lot is that Brazilian is so expensive; i.e., questions about its perceived superiority as a tonewood are ultimately colored by its rarity / supply. You log any tree into endangered status, you'll see this happening.

If there's any real difference to be heard, tone-wise, one thing to consider is that since the late-60s anyone using Braz is using it for the pinnacle of their product line.

If you want to see another example of this market-force phenomenon -- for different reasons -- consider "The Tree." This was a mahogany tree that yielded a bunch of logs that had wonderful striped and quilt-figured grain. It was just one tree, though, so, well, you do the math.

Anyway, sadly, I think banjomike's last comment will not turn out to be the case. Will there ever be forests of old-growth Brazilian rosewood or ebony or mahogany even down the road? What about old-growth spruce for soundboards? Alaska's a big place, but at some point...

 

[wileypickett]

In terms of desirability, value is based on age, scarcity, appearance, that Brazilian was used mainly on top-of-the-line models, coupled with fact that vintage guitars tend to command the highest prices.

Most guitars made with Brazilian are likely to be at least half a century old and well broken-in, which very well may affect the sound.

Whether Brazilian sounds better in and of itself, I have no idea. But I’ve certainly played guitars made with it that sound fantastic.

 

[banjomike]

Great answers, guys.

I think the reason this question comes up a lot is that Brazilian is so expensive; i.e., questions about its perceived superiority as a tonewood are ultimately colored by its rarity / supply. You log any tree into endangered status, you'll see this happening.

If there's any real difference to be heard, tone-wise, one thing to consider is that since the late-60s anyone using Braz is using it for the pinnacle of their product line.

If you want to see another example of this market-force phenomenon -- for different reasons -- consider "The Tree." This was a mahogany tree that yielded a bunch of logs that had wonderful striped and quilt-figured grain. It was just one tree, though, so, well, you do the math.

Anyway, sadly, I think banjomike's last comment will not turn out to be the case. Will there ever be forests of old-growth Brazilian rosewood or ebony or mahogany even down the road? What about old-growth spruce for soundboards? Alaska's a big place, but at some point...

I completely agree, chasmo.
The rosewood is now like the tortoise flat picks I used to like so much. The flat picks that were genuine tortoise shell never lasted as long as a plastic pick, but they made my string attack sound more clear and precise while they were still useable. They wore out fairly quickly, as it didn't take long to fray the edges of the pick, and once frayed, the pick would crak and break on one of those frayed spots.

Those flat picks were always 2-3 times more expensive than the plastic picks too. But when Jim Dunlop introduced the Tortex flat pick, I found that while it didn't exactly reproduce the real thing, it was pretty close. And if I lost one, I didn't cry about it or fret about where I could find another one.

And since then, Dunlop and others have come out with many good alternative choices that all work very well for me.

That's the story of Brazilian to me.
I think we wanted it because it was used so much by our favorite guitar brands.
The reason why they used it was mostly due to price and availability. Martin guitar grew tired of paying the Brazilians the price of sawn lumber, so they bought a sawmill and began purchasing bought logs of rosewood at much lower cost, then sawing the logs into finish lumber here in the USA.
Where all the other guitar makers who didn't use so much rosewood bought the stuff from the Martin wood shop.

In Europe, where India is as close as S. America, the guitar companies there never had such loyalty to the wood. If a bunk of Palisander (the common name for E. Indian) was as good as Brazilian and cost less, it was purchased. And vice versa. There was more free market action in Europe than here.

Another big American difference is one (and more) of our major guitar companies never used much rosewood at all. Gibson always preferred maple to rosewood as a tone wood. So rosewood was used more for fingerboards than for backs and sides.

This left Martin room to use the wood and claim its superiority with no opposition until all the guitar makers began competing with each other much harder in the Great Depression years of the 1930s. Gibson might have bought their rosewood for Martin, but they called it Carpathian Walnut if they did.

That's just part of the rosewood story. Really, most of that story is voodoo, mostly coming from how spectacular some Brazilian Rosewood looks. It's beautiful for sure, and it's beauty can't be found in our domestic trees. Plus, the wood has a centuries-old tradition as the best wood for making guitars.

But I don't think so much would have been made of it's scarcity if the acoustic guitar had not been so popular as it was in 1969. That popularity came at the apex of the folk boom, which had caught all the guitar companies off guard when it began a decade before. By 1969, Martin had built a new factory to meet the demand, and Gibson had moved to a new factory in Nashville. Guild moved to Westerly to a larger factory. Baldwin Piano Co. purchased Gretsch to get into the guitar business.

I don't think the superiority argument would still be going if the acoustic guitar and the folk boom had not been as large. Or if it had been a fad instead of a permanent market shift.

As always, I'll never criticize anyone for their personal choices. Looks are as important to me as playability and tone are in my guitar choices, but I'm just not very particular about how visually pretty the woods are in the guitars I buy. Some are very pretty, and some are quite plain.
I'm sure I bought the pretty ones in large part because they were good looking to me. The plain ones had to sound good. Now, both probably make less difference to me than when I first bought any of them.

I probably would pass up buying a new guitar made of Brazilian now; the guitar would be hella expensive, and the cost would made me think twice about taking it out to jams or to play in public, and I know I couldn't try to cross the border with it. A pain in the butt that I would rather avoid.
Unless the wood charmed my socks off, and then I wouldn't care about all that stuff. Or if I thumped the back of that rosewood guitar and it rang like a big temple bell in Nepal. Damn straight I would buy that guitar if I could!

 

[banjomike]

Great answers, guys.

I think the reason this question comes up a lot is that Brazilian is so expensive; i.e., questions about its perceived superiority as a tonewood are ultimately colored by its rarity / supply. You log any tree into endangered status, you'll see this happening.

If there's any real difference to be heard, tone-wise, one thing to consider is that since the late-60s anyone using Braz is using it for the pinnacle of their product line.

If you want to see another example of this market-force phenomenon -- for different reasons -- consider "The Tree." This was a mahogany tree that yielded a bunch of logs that had wonderful striped and quilt-figured grain. It was just one tree, though, so, well, you do the math.

Anyway, sadly, I think banjomike's last comment will not turn out to be the case. Will there ever be forests of old-growth Brazilian rosewood or ebony or mahogany even down the road? What about old-growth spruce for soundboards? Alaska's a big place, but at some point...

I actually think there will be a return of those woods.
The preference for Brazilian is mostly generational and pretty much a big deal for the Boomers. The later generations who followed don't have the same yen the Boomers have, even if they're aware of the wood. Many aren't, and don't know the difference.

The one thing that really gives me the most hope is the willingness of the Millenials to play guitars made of alternate woods. There are many fine tone woods that are not threatened, and some of the most plentiful are ours- maple and walnut both are fine tone woods. Maple comes in so many varieties that it can be almost as hard as rosewood on one end, and as soft as mahogany on the other. It's both plentiful and fast-growing.

Africa has bunches of under-used tone woods that are the sonic equals of rosewood. There are cousins to the wood all over Central America and the Amazon basin that would be fine for guitars.

One wood that none of us will see again when it's all used up is The Tree. It was ancient and a mutant, so different from Honduran mahogany as to be a totally different species, yet it was genetically identical.
I love the look and the tone of that wood. The story of how it was recovered is legendary.

 

[jeffcoop]

I've knowingly heard exactly one guitar with Brazilian rosewood back and sides: a 1964 D50 owned by one of the best players I've ever personally interacted with, a longtime professional musician who among other things has toured nationally with the modern incarnation of a 1960s folk group (one of those parodied in Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind"). His guitar, Gilda (or "Guilda," I'm not sure which), sounds amazing even in my inept hands--he let me play it a couple of times in the mid-2010s--and in his hands, when strummed, it simply sounds like an orchestra. That anyone can get such a sound out of a single guitar is just astonishing. (Edited to add: I've also heard him play my 1964//65 F20, and, again, he made it sound fantastic, but as you'd expect given the size difference it was nowhere near his D50).

Of course, some of what he gets out if the guitar is due to its age, and some of it is due to his own immense skill. But I tend to think that the fact that it's Brazilian plays a role. I've heard him play my Corona D50 and my New Hartford D50 Standard, as well as my mahogany Orpheum Slop Shoulder, and in his hands they sound vastly better than they do when I play them--but they still don't sound anything like Guilda.