Mike's Oud Forums

Double top ouds

rojaros - 1-24-2019 at 06:23 AM

I have no experience with double top ouds per sé, but from the classical guitar world I can say this: As much as a classical double top guitar is a classical guitar with a top, and how it sounds will depend more on the thousand other decision the luthier made, I'd guess the same is true for oud as well. It's sonic quality will depend much more on the luthiers' ability to work with a given top to produce a certain desired sonic result, than on the fact that the top of the oud is layered. Though I guess a well made double top oud could benefit from the better mass to stiffness ratio and thus be louder and have a slightly faster attack. But it also easily could become too sharp sounding.

As to durability: double tops of guitars are quite vulnerable, especially when made of cedar, because cedar is soft and if the double top stays within reasonable thickness, the wood layers become very thin and easily punctured under situations getting out of control (as happens especially under concert conditions). A hurt double top (especially when made of cedar) is virtually non-reparable (at least not without well visible cosmetic blemishes), so it entails a top replacement, which may be very costly and probably can only be done in a meaningful way only by the original maker.

Also delamination could become an issue, depending on the quality of the gluing the layers. I don't know if the benefits are outweighing the problems. In the age of excellent and cheap microphones and sound systems I don't see much point in trying to make louder.
Another issue is, if a luthier really wants to change how an oud sounds, like the transition from traditional oud with glued bridge to the floating bridge oud. Probably one could achieve significant differences by changing the top construction.

Baraka - 1-24-2019 at 05:55 PM

Thank you Rajaros,
I have been looking it up too. Hard to find much info in
the oud world so I read a lot from the classical guitar point of view like you mentioned.

It has been said that physical vulnerability is an issue really. I learned that one should exercise caution when moving it around trying to avoid possible impacts.

Sound wise although the double top guitars have a very good projection, immediacy, volume and sustain, it is said that they lack certain sweetness and traditional tone. I am told that they might fail to invoke an emotional response in the listeners somehow.

So classical guitar world largely agree that a doubletop guitar is a good choice for big halls and concert situations.

Again thank you for your great input. I'm still in search for my next oud. I have decided to go for a single top.

As for the sound board I'm thinking of Cacusian spruce. If any one has any information, I would appreciate.

And again thank you all for this great forum!

rojaros - 1-26-2019 at 12:28 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Baraka  
...

Again thank you for your great input. I'm still in search for my next oud. I have decided to go for a single top.

As for the sound board I'm thinking of Cacusian spruce. If any one has any information, I would appreciate.

And again thank you all for this great forum!


You are very welcome. Again, I think it will depend much more on the maker and the decisions he makes to compliment his top than on the top construction itself. But the only maker I have heard of making double top ouds is Turunz. And that would be not much to choose from. But that doesn't mean there aren't any other; I just don't know because I'm not looking for it. In an oud I'm looking for a very sweet, reach and intimate sound and not for great volume and projection. That's what microphones are for these days if one happens to play for a big audience in a big hall :)) :)) :))

And if you would be willing to spend that amount of money, I would seriously consider checking out Sebastian Stenzel. He now has two different models; one fully traditional form and one newly developed form that has a longer and flatter body still allowing for a very low body resonance to support the bass and narrower top having excellent trebles projection and radiance. The great advantage also is that it is so much more comfortable to play.
He has one of each models in his workshop ready to go.
http://www.stenzel-guitars.de/index_e.php?pageId=english/instrument...

If you want to stay within the Near East luthier world I would consider either Albert Mansour in Beirut or the maker whose ouds Negar Bouban plays. I played several Mansour ouds (Sebastian Stenzel owns one himself dedicated to him and also Mustafa Said plays Mansour ouds and I could try several of his ouds).

Unfortunately Albert Mansour apparently slowed down his production and his ouds will become more and more difficult to come by.

The good news here is that he shared a lot of his experience with Sebastian Stenzel when they built together an oud for Mustafa Said which was already used for a solo album (I'm not sure whether it has already appeared on the music market)

I also could try one of the ouds played by Negar Bouban from Iran, and that also was a marvelous instrument (this one with a cedar top, but he also makes spruce top ouds). I could make inquiries about the maker if you are interested.

aminateur - 1-26-2019 at 04:24 AM

Maybe some Double soundboard owners can chime in?

rojaros - 1-26-2019 at 08:51 AM

Just to be very clear: in guitar world there are at least three or four totally different, though related, methods that broadly taken revolve around the theme 'Double Top':

- sandwiching two layers of wood with one layer of Nomex (paper honeycomb structure) in between. This one requires to be the wood layers extremely thin otherwise the top becomes too thick and overly stiff. It's quite customary to use spruce outside and cedar inside, because otherwise the Nomex structure becomes quite visible.

- Sandwiching two layers of wood with stripes of Balsa wood (Sascha Nowak makes this, and of course some others, too). It has the big advantage that the outer wood layers are thinned only in stripes, which leaves a lot of more wood and doesn't necessitate to thin the outer layers too much. The results with classical guitars are very pleasing (very much so against the acoustical intuition one would have because of the high damping factor of Balsa wood) and closer to the traditional result than Nomex (though recently I played a fantastic Nomex double top made by Sascha Nowak).

- sandwiching two layers of wood with just hide glue in between. That would usually be called laminated wood, but contrary to the lamination process in the general usage laminated wood is made for here the wood is laminated as to tops of highest quality, but just half as thick as usual. The idea seems to be that you can thus obtain a thinner and thus lighter top with the same stiffness you would want to have in a traditional top. Robert Ruck is one of the famous luthiers who have deployed this method. Another advantage is that you can use a thin layer of cosmetically beautiful spruce outside and an inner layer of a better sounding wood that maybe doesn't look appealing enough for the high flung expectations of some customers.

- The 'Enhanced Wood' method that has been developed by the luthier and my friend Sebastian Stenzel, which he developed as his answer to the double top issue. While he keeps the principles of his method secret, it allows, as in best double top guitars, to bring out the best aspects of the traditional fan bracing even stronger. I own the very first guitar with this newly developed top (which was actually triggered through my nagging requests to develop something that would be a response to the double top hype). It's a great guitar, and Sebastian is quite confident that the technique would do at least as good for ouds as for guitars.

The problem is that the method is very work intensive and probably it will take some time until he will make up his mind to nevertheless provide one prototype without an actual order. With the quality of his ouds already belonging to the highest obtainable (it's not me saying that :) ) such an 'Enhanced Wood'-Top oud quite likely would be absolutely fantastic.

aminateur - 3-2-2019 at 12:50 PM

Can any double soundboard owner share their experience?