I recently completed a guitar made out of Desert Ironwood (Olneya Tesota) back and sides. The quality of this set is astonishing considering how small the trees are and how hard it is to find guitar sized lumber without major flaws. In terms of rarity, it would be significantly easier to find a Snakewood back/side set than Desert Ironwood. I've been wanting to build with this set for about 10 years now. BTW, very interesting material ... I'm not sure if this applies to all desert hardwoods but this stuff structurally doesn't act like it has any grain and seems to me to be more of a homogenous composite type of material. Of course, my experience with it is just limited to the stuff I cut up myself and that is a small sample size. Tonally, it is very nice -- this particular guitar has a very beautiful high-end with great warmth and character but none of the metallic bite common to rosewoods. Visually, Desert Ironwood is quite special. The grain is especially detailed and when finished, it is really impressive up close. It's like comparing a blurry photo to a high-resolution photo. The only other wood that I've built with that had this kind of high-definition look was Brazilian Kingwood but the Ironwood is on another level.
