Mark Knopfler Guitar / My Knowledge of guitar

I was involved in a few discussions about the possibility of buying guitars with Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) from the US  – e.g. Fender Strats from the  early 60ies – on the Strat-Talk Forum. After talking with two officials from Germany’s authorities / customs I got some new information which I want to present with this blog post.

In Short – Brazilian Rosewood (Dalbergia Nigra)Brazilian rosewood is the wood of fingerboards on many vintage guitars like Fenders or Gibsons from the 50ies or 60ies. Due to its endangered status, it was CITES-listed on Nov. 6 1992 in Appendix I (the most protected, same status as ivory or some turtle shells), and illegal to trade. Guitar manufacturers replaced it with other sorts of rosewood, e.g. Indian or African rosewoods which are similar but not identical in look and sound.Although all these vintage guitars were built before the date Brazilian rosewood was protected, many restrictions apply to these as well, making it difficult (or even impossible) to sell or buy such guitars.

Still possible: importing a vintage guitar for private purpose

Selling guitars with parts of Brazilian rosewood  – both commercially and private – requires a special permission within the EU. Importing (or exporting) these into (or from) the EU commercially is in most cases not possible!

Brazilian rosewood on a ’62 Stratocaster

However, for private purpose it is still possible to get export and import permission for pre-convention instruments, in other words guitars built before 1992 .  Buying a Strat from someone in the US is not commercial automatically. If you don’t buy the guitar to resell it (or to make money from it in any other way, e.g. to sell photos of it), it is for private purpose.

It does not matter here if you buy the guitar from a shop or a private person.

****Now the bad thing: you can never ever sell the guitar again, not to anyone, no exception.****
[Regarding the five digits prices for e.g. vintage Strats from the early 60ies, buying such a guitar becomes econmically difficult: it is still true that it will keep its value, or the value will even increase further, but you are not allowed to sell it!!?? ]

You are allowed to perform with the guitar in public (seems ridiculous, but this was not sure some months ago) . This is because in such a situation you don’t primarily display your guitar commercially but your music. However, if you plan to display the guitar on e.g. a guitar show, or print pictures of it e.g. in a book you are going to sell, it is considered commercial.

Importing the guitar commercially – e.g. to resell it – is usually not possible. The only two exceptions are :
– the guitar was made before 1947 ,
– or if the guitar has once been imported into the EU before 1992, and you are going to re-import it.

How to do import a vintage guitar from the US into the EU

If you buy a Strat on e.g. ebay, the first thing that is required is an export permission from the US. To get this is the seller’s job!  The permission can be obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife website (application form here) , it costs USD 75, and processing time can be up to 60 days (or even longer) !!

The seller then needs to send a copy of the form (a scan via email will do, the original will travel with the guitar) to the buyer. With this export permission, the buyer can then get an import permission from his country’s authorities (in case of Germany, it is the Bundesamt fuer Naturschutz). The import permission will cost  20 Euros (price for  Germany).

Prices and authorities might vary from country to country, but the same should be true for any EU country as these laws are EU-wide laws.

One thing that is very important: On the export permission from the US, field #15 must be stamped by the export customs office. For this reason, the seller must take the instrument to one of the export customs offices in the US to get it stamped there!

If this is missing – which seems to be often the case when just leaving this job to the post service – the guitar cannot be imported into the EU, in other words will not pass the border to the EU. The missing stamp cannot be received afterwards.

The guitar will then be confiscated and will remain in the possession of the government forever (but can e.g. be given as a permanent loan to a public music school etc.). The buyer’s money is lost then, no compensation.

I wrote a few blog posts about selling vintage guitars within the EU before, see the list with links to related blog posts below (in very short: it is possible to sell a guitar with Brazilian rosewood within the EU with a special paper that is available if the guitar is proved to be built before 1992 and was imported into the EU before this date. If it was imported after, you cannot sell it!)

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I already reported in two previous blog posts (here and here) about the difficult situation we are facing when buying or selling guitars with parts of Brazilian rosewood (e.g. the fingerboard on vintage Fender or Gibson guitars).

Yesterday I was on Germany’s biggest vintage guitar show in Oldenburg. Last year the show was cancelled due to exactly this issue – the problems of displaying guitars with Brazilian rosewood in public. This year Brazilian rosewood played a role again: there was an info booth where you could compare samples of different rosewoods and a workshop on Endangered woods on musical instruments with PD Dr. Gerald Koch from Hamburg University.

Distinguishing Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) from similar rosewoods (e.g. Indian rosewood) is not easy (some info and pictures can be found here). The samples of  these two rosewoods at the info booth looked very similar, even the number of pores was similar on these. I also did the ‘smell test’: Brazilian rosewood is said to have a typical sweet odor, a bit like vanilla or roses. However, I have to admit that – after some sanding of the samples – both had some odor but I found the Braz rosewood neither stronger nor ‘typical’. And another rosewood – Cocobolo – smelled to me much more of vanilla than the Brazilian.

Here is an overview of some – partly new – aspects discussed in the workshop:

* The overlap between Brazilian and Indian rosewood on vintage Fender guitars is wider than previuosly believed. While almost all Fenders up to 1966 had Brazilian rosewood, it can be found in the late 60ies or even early 70ies as well.

* It is confirmed now that it is possible to gig with instruments with Brazilian rosewood! This was not clear as displaying instruments with this wood commercially is not allowed. To play an old Fender on a gig where you perform for money can be considered commercial, but it was stated that on a gig you mainly present your music and not your instrument. The same should apply for e.g. Youtube videos where you play such a guitar. However, if you want to sell it it is not allowed to present it on Youtube for this purpose without having the proper CITES papers.

* Trading these instruments beetwen the different economic areas (e.g. the US; the EU, Japan,..) is NOT possible, even with CITES certificate!!!
If someone offers e.g. a 1962 Strat on ebay and offers world wide shipping, this is illegal. The instrument can be confiscated when passing the borders!!

* If you want to sell such an instrument WITHIN your economic area, you need the CITES certificate.

* You can get the CITES paper when your guitar was made before 1992 (the year Brazilian rosewood was added to CITEX annex 1) AND you can prove that the guitar was imported to your econmic area before this date. If you e.g. bought the 1962 Strat on Ebay US in 1995 and let it ship to Europe, your guitar was imported illegally and you cannot obtain a CITES certificate for it !

* Hamburg University is a leading place for identifying endangered woods. They sent samples and information – including pictures of the endangered wood and the most similar legal ones it can be mixed up with – to many customs authorities all over the world. So hoping that the customs officers will not recognize endangered woods on a vintage guitar you are to buy is highly risky at least!! As customs are responsible for controlling trade with endangered species, they must be qualified and are thus trained for this.

* Instruments made before 1947 are free to trade in the EU.

* Everyone agreed that the CITES laws were intended to protect species, and not to criminalize guitar players who have owned their vintage guitar for maybe 30 years. But the idea is to control and reduce any demand for these species: if you cannot buy e.g. ivory legally, there is less demand for it and so less elephants are killed.

* CITES is a world-wide law which cannot be modified by local authorities. So if trading such an instrument is not allowed, authorities have to confiscate it and are not allowed to make exceptions.

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