It is shown in this letter that, in contrast to the accepted belief in the literature, it is possible to determine if a minority component is located on the dodecahedral, octahedral, or tetrahedral sites in a garnet single crystal. This prediction of ours is based on dynamical Bloch-wave calculations and proved experimentally with x-ray measurements in a transmission electron microscope. The previous literature seemed to agree on the assumption that the dodecahedral and tetrahedral sites are indistinguishable from each other. © 1999 American Institute of Physics.