Two years of export documentation reshaped fingerboard choices across the industry — and some of those changes stuck.
The Listing, the Exemption, and What Changed Between Them
In 2017, all Dalbergia species — the genus that includes Indian rosewood — were moved to CITES Appendix II, meaning any instrument crossing an international border carrying a rosewood fingerboard required export documentation. The rule applied to finished instruments, not just raw timber. A touring musician with a vintage Precision could theoretically need paperwork. A container of new instruments leaving Nagano or Ensenada needed it certainly.
The shop wall used to set the price. Most of that work has moved to second-hand listings and their completed-sale data.
Photo: Stephen Niemeier / Pexels
Fender, Yamaha, Ibanez and virtually every manufacturer selling into the US or European markets responded the same way: substitute the wood before the logistical burden ate the margin. Fender's most visible move was pau ferro — a dense Bolivian hardwood with comparable feel and a slightly lighter colour — which appeared on the Player Series Stratocasters and basses from 2018. Roasted maple, already gaining ground for its stability, expanded further. Ebony, already used on premium instruments, became a more common mid-range option as manufacturers adjusted their specifications.
In 2019, CITES amended the listing to exempt finished musical instruments, removing the documentation burden for most retail and touring applications. The emergency substitutions were no longer strictly necessary.
Some reversed. Some did not. Fender retained pau ferro on several Player Series fingerboards through subsequent model years, partly because the supply chain was already in place and partly because players had accepted it without complaint. Roasted maple stayed on instruments where it had been introduced, valued for its own properties rather than as a stopgap. Ebony held its expanded position at mid-price points. The two-year scramble had, in effect, stress-tested alternatives that the industry might otherwise have taken a decade to adopt.
The episode demonstrated how a single regulatory decision upstream — applied to a species that luthiers had been using for most of a century — can redirect material choices across thousands of SKUs almost overnight.