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In acoustic guitar circles, Brazilian rosewood reigns as the world champion of prized tonewoods. If you’ve played a guitar made with Brazilian rosewood, you know. The highly resonant tones, the chime-like ring that seems to sustain itself indefinitely, the rich colors and intricate swirls. When cut, Brazilian rosewood actually produces a delicious floral scent, similar to roses; hence the name. The only problem? The wood itself is now nearly impossible to find.
Brazilian rosewood’s appeal in art and industry created a huge demand leading to mass over-harvest. In 1992, the trees were declared endangered by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). Since then, both the wood and its end products have been banned from international trade—kind of a huge bummer for guitar aficionados.
Luckily for all of you, Breedlove holds the world’s largest collection of legal, documented Brazilian Rosewood. Not only can we ethically build instruments from that mana of acoustic sound, we are allowed to ship those guitars anywhere in the world, something most other guitar companies cannot do. How Breedlove acquired this incredible cache of raw materials is an interesting tale that dates back half a century.
In the 1960s, a church ornament company on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain imported a shipment of rosewood logs from Brazil to make elaborate adornments for the continent’s copious cathedrals. The ornament company went out of business soon thereafter, and the logs were sold to a tonewood supplier for high-quality stringed instruments named Madinter. After the 1992 ban on rosewood trade, the wood became very difficult to sell internationally, so Madinter shelved it and kind of forgot about it. For another two decades this trove sat and waited.
In 2013, Breedlove approached Madinter and offered to acquire all of the remaining Brazilian rosewood. Because the wood was purchased and imported well before the 1992 prohibition, and because Madinter possessed all of the documentation confirming its mid-20th-century arrival in Spain, it could be legally exported to the United States with full CITES compliance.
With this large, exclusive treasure of Brazilian tonewood sets, Breedlove crafts fully legal, completely ethical rosewood guitars at half the cost other companies are charging. Those instruments can travel throughout the world with a guitar passport issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
At Breedlove, we talk a lot about our two primary focuses: building exceptional guitars, and valuing natural ecosystems by being very thoughtful about our wood harvest and sourcing. Because we hold the world’s largest stash of Brazilian rosewood from trees that were harvested before the species became endangered, we can build you guitars from this exquisite tonewood without any guilt, shame, or hypocrisy.
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