I reported about the increasing problems concerning guitars with Brazilian rosewood (used e.g. for fingerboards on vintage Fender or Gibson guitars) last year (see here). As a consequence of this, Germany’s biggest vintage guitar  show last November was cancelled, as the CITES restriction does not allow to display a guitar with parts of Brazilian rosewood in public without a special licence.

With this short blog post I just want you to inform that in fact at this year’s Frankfurt Music Fair (the biggest trade fair for musical instruments worldwide) no vintage guitars were displayed at all for this reason. Last year there was a special display area with lots of vintage Fenders and Gibsons (see this blog post), like Strats from the 50ies and 60ies, even 50ies “bursts” (Les Pauls from 1958-1960) . The only exception was one booth by No. 1 Guitar Center from Hamburg, Germany, who had some old Fenders – but all with the required papers directly next to each guitar.

This shows that the  EU law is really repected meanwhile. It is almost impossible to sell or even display a vintage guitar with the protected Brazilian rosewood – unless you have the proper papers for it. And as this is an EU-wide law (to be correct, even a world-wide law), it will soon be similar in all other European countries soon (German authorities are often said to be more correct than others so no wonder they made the start).

I also phoned the authorities office for my town to inquire how to get such CITES papers. I will keep you updated after getting these, hopefully soon.