The Atlas
Tonewood Atlas is a live index of what the boutique acoustic world has on its shelves right now, gathered from independent dealers and normalised into one vocabulary. This page is the key to how we read wood — every classification choice, shown.
3,046 listings · 196 dealer codes · 93 species · 22 families, live today
The Wood Key
Dalbergia melanoxylon, from the dry savannas across sub-Saharan Africa — Senegal and Mali east to Eritrea and Ethiopia, south through Tanzania to Angola, Mozambique and northern South Africa; heartwood usually black or near-black with little discernible grain, occasionally showing a dark brown or purplish cast, against a very thin, sharply demarcated pale yellow sapwood.
Where it sits
backs and sides, occasionally fingerboards
39 on the soundbox · 20 builders
How dealers write it
African Blackwood
How it files
Who’s building with it
Baranik GuitarsBrondel GuitarsCasimi GuitarsCaton GuitarsCollings GuitarsHozen GuitarsHuss & DaltonJulien Sublet GuitarsKlein & Kauffman GuitarsLeGeyt InstrumentsLowden GuitarsMartin GuitarsMcIlroy GuitarsNorthworthy GuitarsRasmussen GuitarsRyan GuitarsSanta Cruz Guitar CompanyTaran GuitarsTaylor GuitarsTippin Guitars
CITES Appendix IItrade controlled · as of 2026-08-09
Read from Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/1383, cross-checked against the USDA APHIS CITES Timber Species Manual — the document. We do not give legal advice and have not checked any individual instrument’s paperwork: this species carries this status on this date. Ask the dealer about documentation.
