oystereyes - 1-12-2024 at 03:48 AM
Hey all, I recently bought a new Oud here in Istanbul. I've been playing it for about 10 days and it still doesn't sound right. I messaged the seller
with a video and he said I need some new strings and that he will ship me them.
Ok, I got a new Oud with bad strings. Pretty strange. I'm still in Istanbul and figured, its ok, I'll come home to some new strings in the mail. The
seller gave me an additional pack anyways and I'll just put those on while I'm traveling. So I just pulled the additional set of strings out and they
are Kurschner C-109, which I see online is listed under Turkish. These are not C-Arab1 or C-Arab2, which is what I would have thought to use as I'm
using an Arabic tuning.
So my question: is this why my Oud sounds bad? When I purchased the Oud I was given a choice of tuning and I chose Arabic, but it's the same oud, so
I'm under the impression that this Oud, like many made in Turkey, are designed to have both Arabic and Turkish strings, so I'm not so worried about
the health due to string tension as I would be on my Syrian oud back home. Is it possible the seller put turkish strings on the Oud and when I tune to
the Arabic/Persian that's why it sounds atrocious?
Or is K C-109 fine and I just don't know anything about strings?
Brian Prunka - 1-12-2024 at 08:03 AM
Tuning a set of Turkish strings a step lower certainly isn't ideal and can result in a poor quality sound.
But "my oud sounds terrible" is a pretty vague statement and doesn't give us a lot of info.
Presumably you played the oud first, right? Sounds like you bought it in person. Why did you buy an oud that sounds terrible?
An "Arabic" oud will normally have a larger body size and different bracing than a "Turkish" oud, so if they are selling the same oud with different
strings and calling it "Arabic" or "Turkish" I'd be skeptical.
oystereyes - 1-12-2024 at 11:24 PM
Edit: I picked up some arabic strings, so I'll pop those on and see how it goes 