Ever Heard of Violet Wood, Chingchan or Indian Walnut?

Regarding the growing shortage of Indian Rosewood, we are currently experimenting with new body woods. At present we are building a series of four classical guitars, all of which are structurally the same and all have tops made of the same spruce, because our goal is to compare the different sound properties as accurately as possible.

Indian Rosewood Indian Walnut Burma Rosewood Violet Wood
From left to right: Indian Rosewood, Indian Walnut, Burma Rosewood, Violet Wood

For this purpose, we build the first model of the well-known Indian Rosewood, the other three are of Violet Wood ( Peltogyne spp.) , Burma Rosewood, also called Ching Chan ( Dalbergia oliveri ) and Indian Walnut ( Juglans nigra).

The guitars pictured are still in a raw state. We are very curious to see how they show up sonically. Visually we are enchanted by the Violet Wood. Interesting to see how the relatively dark wood first became bright after sanding  and now again darkens more and more during the construction.