Guitars with any kind of 'Rosewood' must be registered until the end of 2016

    Thank you for posting this. And I thought Indian Rosewood was cultivated since decades and well available without the exploitation of rain forests and other wild populations... I had guessed ebony would be more troublesome.


    Now if we all go and register our guitars with rosewood parts (before January 2nd 2017!), our administration folks will drown in paper... Are they serious? =O

    In the second, german link there's a strong recommendation for private owners to have any instrument with parts made of protected woods registered by sending a list of his stuff to the authorities. This is to avoid any trouble when selling an instrument, or when travelling overseas for gigging.

    1) This just puts pressure on individuals to not sell internationally.


    2) Regulations like these are actually designed to bypass actual poachers of illegal woods in favor of hassling legal owners. Unless you inspect luthier's wood logs, nothing else is effective, but instead oppressive.


    3) Rosewood now, what's next? Its a road few guitarists are willing to go down. If you hurt reselling, you hurt initial buying of any guitar by default.


    4) I've rarely seen used guitars on Reverb listed by Reverbs own proper definitions. "Mint" and "Excellent" guitars with buckle rash that are neither by definition. You think people are going to be honest about the woods, much less recognize the wood? I certainly don't know the differences between legal and illegal rosewoods.


    Bottom Line, I'm for intentional wood farming. But you need to address the bottle-necks of this situation. Inspect the manufacturers. The small guy here or there using illegal woods isn't the problem. Its the large scale manufacturers who are the problem. I liken the situation to taxation. You tax and inspect the 2 Million businesses in the USA and you can actually see who is cheating. You open up the IRS to 100 Million individual households and a lot of the dishonest cheats fall through your regulating fingers. Often that is why it is opened up to such a large scale. To allow slippage, because these laws are lobbied for BY the large businesses.


    Whom internationally is lobbying for this rule? Individuals? No.


    And that is what I suspect is happening here. IMO, putting the responsibility on the individuals who sell their personal guitars is intended to let dishonest manufacturers still buy illegal woods and sell them.


    But lets be real, no one is inspecting shipping docks that much. Most of the inspections are airports for terrorism and drugs. They certainly don't have dogs or inspectors who can tell Siamese Rosewood from Toasted Maple, so just who is going to prove you have the illegal woods?!?