"Mahogany sounds nice too, but I still like rosewood better. It seems to have a bit more clarity or "bite" or something like that. Mahogany sounds just a little too soft to me."

For many years, I didn't even know that my D-18 was made with a different tonewood than the more expensive Martin dreadnaughts. I thought the price differential was due to the absense of ornamental trim. I only began to learn about the mahogany-vs-reosewood issue from a long series of Mudcat threads.

The general consensus of opinions that I read seemed to point toward an idea that rosewood guitars emphasize the chordal sound of multiple strings played together, while mahogany highlights the separate notes of individual strings. I'm not sure if this is consistent with Little Hawks' characterization of rosewood "biting" clarity versus mahogany's "soft" quality, or if the two opinions are in direct opposition to each other ~ ???

Try as I might, I still haven't formed a sure opnion of my own on the subject. I do know know that I (as a fingerpicker) very much like the sound of my mahogany guitar, and am generally better able to get the sound I want out of my own D-18 than even the most elaborate and expensive borrowed -28 or -35. But that probably has as much to do with my familiarity with the quirks of my own instrument (versus my comparative cluelessness about how to play a strange guitar) than with the intrinsic qualities of the materials from which the instruments are constructed.