Vietnamese Rosewood

[Etienne Rambert]

According to what I read HERE, Vietnamese Rosewood is rarer and more expensive than Indian Rosewood. Also, it is supposed to sound more like Brazilian & Honduran Rosewood, than Indian Rosewood.

 

In my experience, that is not true in Vietnam. It is substantially cheaper than Indian Rosewood. So buyers should keep that in mind if someone tries to tell them Southeast Asian or Vietnamese Rosewood is rarer and more expensive.

 

The guitar I bought for my son, is called the Muse. It is made from Vietnamese Rosewood back & sides.

 

My luthier charges less for this wood than he does for Indian Rosewood. In my opinion, it doesn't sound quite as good as his Indian Rosewood guitars.

 

But it does sound very, very sweet. I'd compare it very favorably to the Taylor 814ce I've recorded with several times.

 

But the Indian Rosewood models I've played here blow the 814ce away. Of course, they have deeper bodies.

[zen501]

Do you have humidity issues over there?

[Etienne Rambert]

Average annual humidity in Saigon is 80%.

Roughly the same as Houston or New Orleans.

 

But average annual does not tell the entire story because there is a long monsoon season here, where the humidity is 100% for long stretches of the day.

 

Everyplace has humidity issues. For the southern part of Vietnam (Saigon south through the Mekong Delta to the Gulf of Thailand), the issue is too much humidity. It's about like the Louisiana swamps, except the swamps here are tropical, not sub-tropical.