Recording King ROS-697 Century Collection Brazilian Rosewood - CHN 2009

Recording King began life in the 1930s as Montgomery Ward's house brand, built during what's often called the golden age of American guitar craftsmanship, with designs closely following Gibson's own Advanced Jumbo. The name disappeared in 1939 and stayed dormant until The Music Link revived it in 2007, building genuinely high-spec instruments to vintage-correct pre-war designs. In July 2009 they launched the Century Studio Series Custom Shop line to mark the anniversary of the original brand, and the ROS-697 was one of its flagship pieces: a faithful recreation of a historic 1927 12-fret 000 parlor design, with only 10 examples ever made.

This is one of those 10, serial number 0904000004, built in 2009. It's about as far as Recording King's Custom Shop went in period-correct materials: a hand-selected AAA Sitka spruce top over solid Brazilian rosewood back and sides, a one-piece mahogany neck with a Brazilian rosewood peghead overlay, and an ebony fingerboard carrying Greg Rich's full-length Tree-of-Life mother-of-pearl inlay, one of the more elaborate inlay jobs Recording King has put its name to. The bridge is an ebony pyramid slot-through design over a maple bridge plate, strung through ivoroid pins with abalone dots, and the tuners are gold-plated Grovers. The top, back and sides carry abalone rope purfling and multi-ply binding throughout, with a matching herringbone-style centre back stripe.

Worth dwelling on the back and sides for a moment. Brazilian rosewood was placed on CITES Appendix I in 1992, effectively ending international commercial trade in the timber overnight, and any large, well-matched set like this one, big enough for a full back and sides with a bookmatched centre join and no filler pieces, has to predate that restriction or come from old, pre-ban stock. Guitar-grade sets of this size are genuinely scarce today, and most Brazilian rosewood seen on new instruments since the 90s is limited to small accent pieces, bridges or fingerboards rather than full back and side sets. Tonally, it's prized for a reason: denser and more resonant than the Indian rosewood that replaced it, it tends to produce a deeper, more complex low end, glassy, ringing overtones, and a clarity in the trebles that many players and luthiers still consider the benchmark for rosewood-bodied steel strings. On a small-bodied 12-fret 000 like this, built specifically to chase a vintage 1927 voice, that combination of scarce old-growth timber and a period-correct build is a large part of what makes the guitar significant, well beyond the rarity of the Custom Shop run itself.

There is some fine checking in the lacquer, mainly over the spruce top around the soundhole and bridge area rather than the rosewood back and sides. This is a common characteristic of nitrocellulose finishes over solid spruce as the top ages and moves with humidity and temperature, not a structural issue, and it's worth calling out plainly in the listing rather than letting a buyer discover it themselves. Worth a proper structural check before it goes up, but nothing here looks out of the ordinary for a guitar of this age.

Specifications:

Weight: 2.13kg / 4.70lb

Action at 1st Fret: 0.5mm

Action at 12th Fret: 2.25mm

Neck Depth at 1st Fret: 23.01mm

Nut Width: 47.88mm

Width at 12th Fret: 59.42mm

Model: Recording King ROS-697, Century Studio Series Custom Shop (1 of 10 made)

Origin: Designed USA, built China, 2009

Serial Number: 0904000004

Body Style: 12-fret 000 parlor, based on a 1927 design

Top: AAA Sitka spruce

Back & Sides: Solid Brazilian rosewood

Neck: One-piece mahogany, Brazilian rosewood peghead overlay

Fingerboard: Ebony, Greg Rich-designed Tree-of-Life mother-of-pearl inlay

Bridge: Ebony pyramid slot-through, maple bridge plate, ivoroid pins with abalone dots

Tuners: Gold-plated Grover

Scale Length: 25.4"

Case: Hardshell case supplied