Official Luthiers Forum!

What is the difference between Jacaranda and East Indian Rosewood? Besides the obvious....a couple hundred bucks more, it's prettier and has much more figure than EIR. Is it any less stable, harder to bend, or tonally superior?

I have never heard of it until the other day. Immaculate looking stuff, just immaculately expensive as well. Anyone ever build with it?

It seems that people get this "jacaranda" mixed up with Rio Rosewood and/or EIR often. Here are some images.

I am assuming that is the wood being sold on ebay? I had a customer order a set that he wanted me to build with. The wood arrived very wet and already had little spider cracks blossoming in the curly areas. Tonally it seemed like Indian rosewood more than like the glassier rosewoods, certainly nothing like Brazilian in that one set, I did end up cutting it up and using some of the figured parts for rosettes and veneer overlays. There were some problems during the finishing process where even some of the rosewood sealers were having trouble curing on it.

The set I had looked very much like the 2 you showed above but I have seen others that look totally different. I can't speak to those, they may be fine. In my experience (of one set) though, I didn't find it to be worth what it is being sold for even though it is very pretty.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Yes, it is the same seller on Ebay and thanks for the heads up. I almost ordered a few sets. Although I had managed to talk the guy down considerably from his crazy prices (which I believe are based on his belief that the wood is very similar to Brazilian rosewood) in return for purchasing 5 sets (3 jacaranda and 2 mango). However the price was still far too high. I got similar feedback from another luthier that I inquired via email. I was planning on selling a few sets to recoup some of the money, but in the end I decided to buy a Koa billet for re-saw instead.

thanks again.

'Jacaranda' is a generic name, like 'palisander' or 'rosewood' (respectively portuguese, german/dutch and english), and has been used for braz rosewood before.