I got an oud off of Amazon.com made by Mid East Ouds. I got it in December and have a suspicion it is not a good oud. Primarily because it does not
stay in tune at all. I am wondering if it is just because of the cold weather or is it just a bad instrument.
Thanks!
BlueRidgeOudPlayerSazi - 2-4-2010 at 07:05 PM
There are many ouds there, which one did you buy?
Do a search here in the forum for Amazon and you will see a number of posts regarding the ouds for sale there.BlueRidgeOudPlayer - 2-4-2010 at 07:36 PM
Your suspicion is correct. That's the kind of oud everybody warns newcomers about ... usually a good instrument costs about 500-600$ or even more.
The problem of not staying in tune is very common with cheap ouds. You might solve the problem like most violin players do it too ... they combine dry
hard soap (without parfume) with chalk or buy special violin soap (which already includes chalk) in a music shop and put it on the tuning pegs, where
they contact the peg box.
If you use too much soap, the pegs get even more slippery, if you use too much chalk, the pegs get stuck.
Give it a try ... it might help. I hope the instrument isn't too bad.
PS: I hope you changed the strings ... these instruments usually ship with horrible strings.Sazi - 2-5-2010 at 12:21 AM
If you are lucky Chris' suggestions for the pegs may help, but sometimes it is just the cheaper woods of the instrument shrinking and expanding with
the weather... one of my old cheap ouds was like a barometer, I could tell if it was going to rain or get dryer just from how much it went out of
tune, and whether it went up or down!Aymara - 2-5-2010 at 12:36 AM
... one of my old cheap ouds was like a barometer, ...
Yes, a good oud is made of very old wood (several years).
But often it's also a matter of bad strings ... especially the nylons. On my new oud the new strings detuned that way, but settled after one week.
I would recommend taking care of the pegs and buying good strings like Pyramid, LaBella, etc..
If that doesn't help, it's one of these ouds, that's only usable as decoration on a wall. In this case it might be worth a thought to buy maybe a
Sukar oud online ... but maybe there are better options than buying online, if we know, where our friend lives.fernandraynaud - 2-11-2010 at 02:35 AM
Blue Ridge! You SUSPECT it's a bad oud just because it doesn't hold tuning? As the guys here point out, there are remedies. But how about the other
aspects of it? Do you LIKE it? You can make a big difference with how you approach it, what little fixes you do on it, etc. Don't just turn on it and
hate it!
