Importation of Brazilian Rosewood was banned in 1992 until CITES (some exceptions to be discussed). It was and is considered the king of tonewoods for acoustic guitars, both because of its tonal qualities and the wonderful chocolate brown color with great swirling grain. All of those $200,000 -$500,000+ pre-war Martin D-28s that are considered the Stradivarius of acoustic guitars are Brazilian Rosewood with Adirondack Spruce tops (with forward-shifted bracing).
Again, although Gibson used some Brazilian Rosewood, Gibson's always been more into maple and mahogany acoustic guitars.
It's still possible to get Brazilian (lower-quality Brazilian) at a high price, but the luthier has to have a lot of paperwork showing that the wood came from a tree cut down before 1992. That era of getting Brazilian from old stumps is an era that's pretty well passed, however.
Madagascar Rosewood was illegal to import (under Madagascar rules, I believe) for years, but a coup made it possible to get some into the country over the last decade or so. It's the closest thing, tonally and in looks, to Brazilian that we've seen.
East Indian is nice, but nothing like Madagascar or Brazilian Rosewood.
All of that is said with respect to using the wood as a tonewood, and not just as a fretboard or the veneer on a headstock.
And using Franklin Titebond instead of hide glue makes a difference, I believe. Think of pulling away old white glue. It still has a rubbery feel to it. Hide glue is brittle. When you want to transfer vibration from one wood component to another, rubbery white glue, no matter how well cured and now matter how thin the coat, dampens the vibration. That's what I hear from luthiers and based on guitars I have that are made with hide glue, I believe I can hear the difference.
That’s a good synopsis about the importation and use of Brazilian Rosewood. However, I’d bet a box of my favorite doughnuts that the rules used to ban the importation of Rosewood is political chicanery and eco-fascism in the extreme. I know a bit about these federal fascists and their illegal rule-making.
Back in 2003, the Congress and President Bush left every American a great gift called the Data Quality Act (DQA) Under DQA, every bureaucratic rule written by the nature bureaucracies must be based on verifiable science. If it’s not, it must be tossed out. And it gets better - every judge and administrative court that hears such a case must use DQA guidelines when deciding such matters.
Anyone - any American - may challenge any rule written by any federal bureaucracy if he feels the science behind the rule is flawed. Then the process of review begins, while the rule is set aside until the mattter is settled, either by the bureaucracy or by the courts.
George Bush and company left us the DQA as a tool to destroy the federal bureaucracies. The MSM has bashed the DQA and refused to tell readers of this tool.
Americans need to start using the tools we have to kill the leftists and restore our freedoms. DQA is one such legal remedy we can wield to stomp leftists’ nuts into the concrete.
Cheers.
Some players are real passionate about this. They'll spend $6k on a brand-new Custom Shop R9, send it off to a handful of luthiers who specialize in Historic restorations. These luthiers will strip these brand-new Les Pauls down to slabs of wood and then reassemble them using period correct hide glue and Brazilian fretboards. And they'll charge damn near the purchase price of the guitar to do this. And these luthiers have waiting lists for their work.
To each their own I guess. I like my R8 just the way Gibson built it. That and I'd need a serious salary adjustment before I could even consider such an upgrade.