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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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After some debugging, fine tuning, and tweaking, I'm pleased to announce oudstings.com is officially open for business and ready to help you with
whatever you and your oud may need!
While I have been filling some orders under beta /soft launch for a while now, I feel the site is ready at this point to go fully public and out of
beta. But if you see anything amiss or have weird experiences with the site, let me know.
To celebrate and to thank all of you, I am offering two free rishas with every order, through the end of the year! Let me know in the notes at
check out if you want a medium (.71) or heavy (.96), or one of each.
One of the new products I'm excited to offer are a number of premade custom sets for Arabic tuning at the 58.5 scale length. There has been increasing
demand for these in the oud community, and I'm happy to provide them for you. Take a look at each one, as some of them are very specifically
calibrated to certain playing styles.
If you have a special request, feel free to reach out and I'm happy to put a set together for you.
Thanks again for your patience, and I look forward to getting to know all of you, and to helping you sound your best!
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Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1373
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
Member Is Offline
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I had a look at the website. No "weird experiences" but I do have a suggestion and a comment in relation to your latest post here.
1) At the bottom you have a good number of social media addresses but something is missing: the URL of the website itself. You will have potential
customers (I'm one of them...after after I've run through all the sets I bought from Brian last year) who do not use social media and will not try to
contact any business through facebook etc. It wasn't hard to figure out the URL of Oud Strings Dot Com, but may I suggest you be
absolutely explicit and tell people how to reach your site directly. If you are too modest to shout it from the rooftops, so to speak, please consider
at least including oudstrings.com below your signature. I think you will get more customers. It may look like the whole world uses social media but
the sizable minority that do not and will not are not readily visible and are entirely invisible in the social media world. But some of us play oud
and use strings to do so. :-)
2) in your post you mention sets for Arabic tuning at 58.5 designed for different styles. This is not apparent from the menu. I eventually found some
sets with a bit of commentary but nothing about what I would call "style" so I think I have not found the page. I did find a statement that does not
agree with what I have seen and experienced. : "A 58.5 cm scale length will likely be constructed as a Turkish build". Sure, there are some ouds made
for Turkish music in Turkey that people have strung and tuned for Arabic music. But there are plenty of fixed bridge ouds made by Arab luthiers in
Arab lands and elsewhere at a scale of 58.5 cm. *And* several excellent Turkish luthiers have built ouds intended for Arabic tuning and these are
braced differently from the ouds they build for Turkish music. Some of these sound very good but if your sets will make them sound even better, that
is a very good thing. My main point however is that I could not readily find the special Arabic sets designed for 58.5 cm.
Best of luck with your oud string business!
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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Hi Jody,
very nice to meet you ,and I look forward to helping you in any way I can!
Points taken on both fronts, and thank you for the feedback. I have added the URL in the signature to make it easier for folks to find the
business!
As to your second point, I'll go back and clarify my wording a bit. All your caveats are indeed correct, but I was trying to be more general, thus
the use of the word 'likely' rather than " always"  In other words, out of all
the ouds available on the market, those at 58.5cm are more likely to be a Turkish build than an Arabic or braced /tuned for Arabic. The set you took
the comment from is in fact a low tension set for Arabic tuning. A lot of Arabic style players like that low tension feel. But if it is (again, this
scenario more than likely) a Turkish build that youre trying to tune Arabic to , the instrument may be better served with a medium tension
set, as i explained further in the commentary on that set.
But youre absolutely right, I can word that better, so thanks again!
As to playing styles, what I meant was this, a missing paragraph that didnt make it into the Custom Sets header. I need to edit and add this in:
You'll notice some of these are carefully calibrated. Low and medium low tension sets are generally more closely balanced across the spectrum,
while some medium/medium high and the Turkish sets are designed with slightly stiffer trebles, as is sometimes found with Turkish players, to help
with the ornamentations of that style.
hope that helps clear up some things, and i look forward to setting you up with whatever you need!
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Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1373
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
Member Is Offline
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I see now what you meant by "style". I was thinking of Turkish oud music (for instance) as a genre. (Same for Arabic music, Persian music, Azeri
music, etc) Within a genre I was thinking of various styles that are personal, regional, technical etc). There are so many Arabic oud playing styles.
So I was looking for something like that. ( A good string set for playing in the style of Farid El Atrash for instance, or perhaps the style of
Aleppo).
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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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now thats an interesting idea, to go that granular.... im happy to research and put together such sets, and i welcome any ideas or feedback on those!
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Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1373
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
Member Is Offline
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Quote: Originally posted by norumba  | | now thats an interesting idea, to go that granular.... im happy to research and put together such sets, and i welcome any ideas or feedback on those!
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Usually the "secret" of a good musician's sound and style is that musician's own hands and mind. I know this but still I did get my hopes up when I
read about special sets designed for specific styles. You probably know about Hemen Sen the Bengali sarode maker who designed a sarode model that
enabled anyone to sound a good deal like Ali Akbar Khan, at least on the open strings. The funny thing is that Ali Akbar's own sarode, made by his
uncle, sounded nothing like a Hemen when played by anyone but Ali Akbar Khan. The sound came from the player. But yeah, the design (and string gauge)
of a Hemen sarode did allow even a novice to make some headway in making the wished-for sound.
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suz_i_dil
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1064
Registered: 1-10-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Excellent !
Congrats on the opening and all my best wishes
The offer regarding custom arabic sets is excellent
And , a quesiton, i have lost following the Aquila sets evolution.
Regarding their arabic sets, for which stringlength are they designed ? Or do you have reference of tension for one stringlength ? I mean for the
white set as for the red one.
looking forward to read about
Thank you !
| Quote: Originally posted by norumba | After some debugging, fine tuning, and tweaking, I'm pleased to announce oudstings.com is officially open for business and ready to help you with
whatever you and your oud may need!
While I have been filling some orders under beta /soft launch for a while now, I feel the site is ready at this point to go fully public and out of
beta. But if you see anything amiss or have weird experiences with the site, let me know.
To celebrate and to thank all of you, I am offering two free rishas with every order, through the end of the year! Let me know in the notes at
check out if you want a medium (.71) or heavy (.96), or one of each.
One of the new products I'm excited to offer are a number of premade custom sets for Arabic tuning at the 58.5 scale length. There has been increasing
demand for these in the oud community, and I'm happy to provide them for you. Take a look at each one, as some of them are very specifically
calibrated to certain playing styles.
If you have a special request, feel free to reach out and I'm happy to put a set together for you.
Thanks again for your patience, and I look forward to getting to know all of you, and to helping you sound your best!
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coolsciguy
Oud Junkie
Posts: 249
Registered: 5-14-2020
Location: Washington D.C.
Member Is Offline
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Mustafa and I had another round of consulting for my 57cm fixed bridge Arabic oud. As always, he pointed me to exactly what I needed and I'm getting
my ustom strings today! Thank you Mustafa!
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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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| Quote: Originally posted by suz_i_dil | Excellent !
Congrats on the opening and all my best wishes
The offer regarding custom arabic sets is excellent
And , a quesiton, i have lost following the Aquila sets evolution.
Regarding their arabic sets, for which stringlength are they designed ? Or do you have reference of tension for one stringlength ? I mean for the
white set as for the red one.
looking forward to read about
Thank you !
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Hi suz-i-dil,
Thank you -- and nice to meet you!
Aquila calibrates their sets to average at 3.4 kilos, in both red and whites, and they base that on the following scale lengths:
Arabic – 62 cm
Iraqi – 57 cm
Turkish - 58,5 cm
so they'll be a little floppy if youre at 60 cm... the other option is to build a set out of lute singles and NNG, but its a different sound,
warmer still than the whites , which Aquila says is warmer than the reds.
If there's enough demand or interest for a 60cm Arabic set in red or white, I'll ask them, see what they can do....
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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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| Quote: Originally posted by coolsciguy | | Mustafa and I had another round of consulting for my 57cm fixed bridge Arabic oud. As always, he pointed me to exactly what I needed and I'm getting
my ustom strings today! Thank you Mustafa! |
my pleasure! I love working with your collection, theres some interesting parameters with them , so problem solving like that is always fun!
let me know how they work out!
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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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just a quick note, good peeps!
im having a small surgery being done this Friday, so if you need strings soonish , get your orders in today or tomorrow please, as recoup time is
iffy and i may not be filling orders till next Tuesday...
thx!
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norumba
Oud Junkie
Posts: 220
Registered: 12-15-2003
Location: Taos
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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just to let yall know, im back home recuperating, and can handle business!
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