The Atlas

The Wood Key

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

Cherry

Prunus spp. · hardwood · in the Other Hardwood family

Cherry in instrument work is normally Prunus serotina, black cherry, from eastern North America, with European shops instead using Prunus avium, wild cherry; light pinkish brown when freshly cut and darkening to a medium reddish brown on exposure to light, straight-grained and fine-textured, with a narrow band of pale yellowish sapwood standing well clear of the heartwood.

Where it sits

backs and sides

1 on the soundbox · 1 builder

How dealers write it

Cherry

How it files

35 codes31 species1 family

Who’s building with it

Lowden Guitars

Not CITES-listedchecked, not merely absent · as of 2026-08-09

Read from Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/1383, cross-checked against the USDA APHIS CITES Timber Species Manualthe 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.

What CITES is, and the two regimes it gets confused with