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.
2,978 listings · 186 dealer codes · 88 species · 21 families, live today
The Wood Key
Olneya tesota, confined to the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, southeastern California and northwestern Mexico; heartwood orangish yellow through dark red and brown with violet to black streaking — some pieces nearly all black — set against a narrow yellow sapwood, fine and even in texture, and the grain is often wild or gnarled because the tree is small.
Where it sits
fingerboards and backs and sides
1 on the soundbox · 1 builder
How dealers write it
Desert Ironwood
How it files
Who’s building with it
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 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.
