arsene - 2-1-2009 at 10:02 AM
So I just got back from Istanbul where I was hanging around all the music shops looking at and playing ouds... and I stumbled upon a mystery.
Several sellers tried to convince me their ouds were the only ones around with solid tops, while others said a solid top on Turkish ouds is physically
impossible beacuse of the string pressure etc.
I realised I never thought about that, because the only oud I own is a Syrian made Munir Bashir - style oud with the mandolin type bridge set-up, and
a solid soundboard.
So what's the deal? Obviously the sellers who claimed that a solid top on traditional ouds is impossible were wrong, right?
Tom Moran - 2-1-2009 at 10:12 AM
Sounds fishy...solid as opposed to laminated?
arsene - 2-1-2009 at 11:19 AM
as opposed to two pieces, sorry forgot to mention that.
Ararat66 - 2-1-2009 at 01:21 PM
Hi Arsene
Solid top usually means that the Oud's top, like a solid top guitar is usually made from two 'bookmatched' pieces of spruce or cedar (there are others
but these are the main ones). 'Bookmatched' is when two thin pieces of solid timber are cut from a thicker solid piece then opened out like a book
and glued together along that book's spine so to speak. It's hard or even impossible to see the join. Some oud tops are made of of several strips of
wood - but they are still described as 'solid'. Lamination is totally different structurally and sonically, as it gains its strength from glueing
thin sheets of wood together, with each layer's grain at 90 degrees to the last. This drastically reduces it's ability to resonate so the sound is
usually very different (although I do have an old Yamaha acoustic laminate topped guitar that sounds much better than a lot of solid tops I try in
shops!!).
I think they must have though you used the word 'solid' to describe a single, wide sheet of unbookmatched timber.
Leon
arsene - 2-2-2009 at 07:14 AM
Hey Leon,
That could well be the whole misunderstanding! That would explain why some agreed and some didn't... Thanks for shedding some light on this 