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
Swartzia cubensis, from southern and Gulf-coast Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and western Cuba; heartwood dark reddish brown to nearly black, sometimes with a strong purple cast and often curly or wavy, fine and even in texture and sharply demarcated from a pale yellowish-white sapwood — sold as “Mexican royal ebony” but not an ebony, which is to say not a Diospyros at all.
Where it sits
backs and sides
1 on the soundbox · 1 builder
How dealers write it
Katalox
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.
