Okay - first off, your pearwood one is made of hardwood too: all wooden recorders are: softwoods are the coniferous ones, but fruitwoods, and those of deciduous trees, are hardwoods. You're right though that rosewood and box are harder than the pear: it's just a misconception that pear is soft
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It really is impossible to advise without knowing what you're envisaging using the instrument for, in the main, and as you've already indicated, you need somehow to find your way through to being able to blow down more than one potential candidate in the one session, so that you can compare. I have two pearwood instruments, a 415Hz treble, and a knick bass - the treble is a gentler sounding instrument than my others, and not as capable of such big volumes, but it is very flexible in sound because of its voicing - the windway is very narrow indeed, and also very curvy. The bass I bought in a lineup of similar, after blowing my way through three cherrywood and two pearwood ones - and though cherry has a reputation for being a little harder than pear, and therefore capable of a more brilliant sound, the most consistently assertive instrument in the lineup had been the pearwood one I purchased.
My 440Hz treble is of box, as are my descant and tenor - the descant is a Moeck Rottenburgh, the treble a Moeck Denner and the tenor a Mollenhauer Denner. Box does happen to be my favourite wood for recorders, and of those three I'm especially fond of the treble - it's a bit of a bully, demanding to be played quite hard to get it up to pitch and a good tone out of it, but it has a lot of brightness to its sound, and character: it's also capable of a fair amount of warmth in sound.
When buying my voice flute - a treble in D, its builder says, I tried out two instruments to help decide - one in cherry and one in rosewood. The rosewood one was the first in that wood on which I've ever been able to make a nice noise - it was utterly heavenly to play, but produced a very soloistic sound, clear, bright, and just a teensy bit impersonal somehow. I was very tempted to opt for rosewood, but then the maker explained that that particular instrument had disappointed her rather when she'd first produced it - it was by this time over a decade old and had been played in by a superb player, and its character had taken a long time to evolve to that level. My worry was that I'd not be good enough to manage the same with a new instrument: I also tried out a cherrywood one, which was not as cleanly bright but still has a wonderful flexibility of sound - and opted for cherry in that case: the maker built one for me, and I love it to bits
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So - EMS, or Mr Everingham at Saunders Recorders: either would probably let you try a couple or even three on approval, do play more than one, and decide based on what you want to sound like. Rosewood is more expensive than box, more assertive but has the downside that more people are allergic to it - so another good reason to do some testing out. Other woods very much worth looking at include olivewood - there are some gorgeous examples out there - plum, kingwood and ebony, but the two latter are very dense and surprisingly heavy to hold. Have fun, and good luck
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. The maker of my voice flute has just enquired after it, and reminded me that she services new instruments as part of supplying them - I've had it since last autumn. 