Bolivian Rosewood? How Does It Compare?

[Stolysmaster]

Has anyone ever heard of Bolivian Rosewood? I am going to laminate the neck (five pieces) for my explorer using about 25% maple and 75% Rosewood, and I wanted to use East Indian Rosewood. But, I cannot find any locally. I have found some Bolivian Rosewood though.

I am wondering if Bolivian Rosewood sounds closer to East Indian, or is more dense and sounds similar to Brazilian Rosewood...which is brighter and tighter sounding. Any info?

[fryovanni]

Has anyone ever heard of Bolivian Rosewood? I am going to laminate the neck (five pieces) for my explorer using about 25% maple and 75% Rosewood, and I wanted to use East Indian Rosewood. But, I cannot find any locally. I have found some Bolivian Rosewood though.

I am wondering if Bolivian Rosewood sounds closer to East Indian, or is more dense and sounds similar to Brazilian Rosewood...which is brighter and tighter sounding. Any info?

Pau Ferro/ Bolivian Rosewood/ Morado(or whatever you wanna call it). Is not a true Rosewood(Dalbergia), EIR and BRW of course are. It is really one of my favorite woods to use. When bending it seems to be a little stiffer than EIR. I find it to be a bit denser than EIR(although close). It does not polish to as high a shine as EIR or BRW.

As far as the sound or tone. It sounds very much like a rosewood(I go no further into the tone descriptions than that). I will be dead honest when I say you could blind fold me and hand me three similar sized pieces of wood(BRW,EIR, and Pau Ferro) and I couldn't select which was which(accurately and consistantly). Mind you weight, texture and smell could give them away in a heart beat. I would go out on a limb and say there are VERY few people with enough familiarity to be able to acurately tell you which is which only by listening to the woods tone alone(you can probably get plenty of well read connoiseurs to tell you just what the differences are though). I wouldn't overthink it too much. They are all great and very similar resonant woods.

Peace,

Rich

[Setch]

Bolivian RW/Pau Ferro/Morado makes a great neck material, and looks pretty snappy with maple accents:

[westhemann]

pau ferro is really nice and smells like a candle when you sand it

[MzI]

I concur^^^^ I use it fairly often as it is readily available at my local supplier. I personally use it for fretboards and it sounds good to my ears, not quite as bright as ebony but thats obviously expected.

MzI

[Stolysmaster]

So...Bolivian Rosewood is the same as Pau Ferro. I did not know that. Thanks. The Warmoth site indicates that Pau Ferro is about as bright as hard maple! If that is close to being true, I'm not going to use it because I am going for something less bright than an all hard maple neck; understand that the fingerboard is already finished and it is Ebony! I keep thinking that an all maple neck with an ebony fingerboard might be too bright, even though the body is one piece of 27 year old mahogany.

So, I'll just have to keep looking around for some East Indian Rosewood. OR, maybe I'm making more of it than I should...just go with the all maple neck with ebony FB and be done with it! I already have the maple. I just need to cut it into three strips, turn them sideways, and glue 'em up; so it will be "quartersawn".