Rosenut?

My stepmother owned a Brazilian rosewood Steinway grand...sort of a mind blowing waste but still...kind of like the rooms filled with solid Hawaiian koa wood furniture I'd seen in Hawaii. Note that Martin has been quietly buying those older Brazilian rosewood guitars like D28s, taking them apart and making fancier guitars out of them to sell for large bucks. I think a guitar can sound amazing regardless of the sides and back woods, and at a recent seminar with Santa Cruz's Richard Hoover (my cocobolo hide glue OM is a Santa Cruz) he said he prefers the sound of mahogany bodied guitars. Take that, big spenders!

That's where the name "rosewood" came from...what? You thought it was the thorns?

Guitar players "have a clue." I've owned a lot of solid rosewood (backs and sides) guitars, both Indian and the now protected Brazilian, and also have a newer guitar made of rosewood-ish looking (redder) cocobolo which is both fun to say and poisonous (look it up). I have an Indian rosewood Martin 000-28 that still smells like roses as it was unused and trapped in a case by the previous owner for 5 years before I bought it. That amazing smell is fading but I like it...it's good...I once picked up and examined a solid rosewood (body and neck) Fender Telecaster belonging to Delaney Bramlett when I was a stage hand for a Delaney and Bonnie show, finding out later that it was given to him by George Harrison who used it on "Let it Be"...Harrison's estate now owns it again. This concludes my rosewood trivia comments.