Brazilian rosewood fretboards have become a fashionable ?must have? amongst Gibson Historic owners (ie instead of Indian Rosewood), that?s raised prices & led to many eBay sellers claiming ?Brazilian Rosewood? on almost anything. Obviously they?re in it for the money & nobody should take their descriptions seriously :roll: .
The early Tokai Catalogues are all written in Japanese, which makes it hard to be sure of the specs, but I can find nothing there to suggest Tokai used any Brazilian rosewood (plenty of references simply to ?rosewood? of course)... very strongly suspect that 1980 LS80 is "Indian" rosewood (though "Indian" could mean any of numerous rosewood species) :-? .
1999 catalogue specifies LS200 & LS220 with ebony fretboards and LS320 with Jacaranda, which is often described as ?Brazilian rosewood?, however, the name Jacaranda is loosely applied to numerous similar woods from South America & South Africa, & it appears to be a different Botanical Genus to true rosewood anyway.
Personally I doubt if it makes the slightest difference whether the rosewood is Indian or Brazilain or even Irish! Ebony feels slightly different to play. 2-cents :-? .
Ian.