African Blackwood

Family: Fabaceae - Order: Fabales - Class: Magnoliopsida
Scientific name: Dalbergia melanoxylon

Trade name: African Blackwood / Grenadille Afrique

Also known as African grenadillo (United Kingdom); Mpingo (Tanzania); Grenadilla (Mozambique); Pau-Preto (Mozambique); Ebene du Mozambique (France); Afrikanisches grenadille (Germany)

Origin: East and Central Africa, from Sudan to Mozambique, to Angola and Senegal.

Instrumental uses:
Guitar back and sides, fingerboards, bridges, head plates, bindings, peg heads, turnery, woodwind and stringed instrument parts.

Tonal properties:

African blackwood is the densest of rosewoods, the taptone is glassy and loud – Deep bass and well-defined trebles. Great volume and clarity of sound, with good note separation. So good and expensive as well as heavy. It has all the same great rosewood acoustic properties but with higher volume and amazing separation of voices. Tonally some luthiers refer that it is as good as a great Brazilian rosewood set when matched with the right top, it has that nice quick bottom and great harmonic blanket that Brazilian lends to the final complexity, a powerful and robust sound.
This is one the finest sets, almost black with very dark slight reddish purplish waves, it will produce master guitar. Contains some resins or extracts which could pose problems when machining or finishing.
It is a very dense, hard and stiff wood, actually the 3rd densest on the planet with an average dried weight of 79 lbs/ft3 - 1270 (kg/m3).

African Blackwood is a true rosewood. Dalbergia melanoxylon occurs on a wide variety of sites from sea level to 1,050 m of altitude. The tree is much branched, usually multi-stemmed and small, 5 to 8 m in height, sometimes as much as 16 m. The bole is short, cylindrical, often fluted and rarely over 30 cm in diameter.

The sapwood is yellowish white. The heartwood is dark purple-brown with black streaks, it is sharply demarcated.
CITES Status - Protected on the CITES Appendix II and on the IUCN Red List reported as near threatened.