INTRODUCTION
Until the mid-20th century the top three strings of Ouds were installed with gut, a material that had been used for thousand of years and that combines excellent promptness of attack with brilliance of timbre – very different, in other words, from modern nylon strings. And until recently the typical sound quality of gut has been a constant point of reference for Oud-makers, composers and performers alike. A fundamental aim of our research has therefore been to make a new synthetic product having the same acoustic properties as gut – but without its typical defects – (high cost, limited duration and high instability under varying climatic). The New Nylgut® has precisely these qualities: allowing one, on the one hand, to rediscover the sonorities familiar to the great 19th and 20th century Oud masters; and guaranteeing, on the other, a stability of tuning higher even than that of the best gut and nylon strings.
Please notice
Just like gut, New Nylgut® is liable to suffer from cutting edges. Before stringing the instrument do make sure the nut and bridge are free from sharp edges and the nut grooves not too deep and perfectly smooth. You can get rid of sharp edges with very fine grit sandpaper (600, for example) or the finest steelwool (000). The best sound quality develops when the strings have completely set, which may ordinarily take sometime. To achieve a stable intonation in just a few minutes you can repeatedly pinch each string at midlength with your fingers, pull it decidedly sideways and tune it up again. Stop when the string does not pull out of tune anymore.
Iraqi Ouds
All these types are made in standard tension (3.4 Kg average for each string= silvered copper wound strings).
All the wound strings are red copper.
String conversion: New Nylgut® gauge = Nylon gauge x .91
example: .71 mm Nylon x .91= .646 mm Supernylgut ( .66 mm available)
Code: 61 O
Strings: Iraqi tuning (3.4 Kg per string) ff; cc: gg; DD; AA; F
