Feramis Aktas Ouds
Feramis Aktas has built Turkish ouds in Izmir since 1981 — forty-five years of unbroken craft, traceable in a direct lineage from his master Sinai Ozkan. This collection brings together the carved-bowl Turkish ouds that have come to define his name among performing musicians of the Anatolian tradition.
Each instrument is built from carefully selected tonewoods: aged spruce soundboards for clarity and projection, walnut or maple staves for the bowl, and ebony or rosewood fingerboards for response. Bowls are carved and assembled by hand rather than pressed — a slower, traditional method that gives Feramis Aktas ouds their distinctive low-end depth and sustain. The geometry of the soundboard is tuned to the Turkish oud’s higher register, where ornamentation and taqsim phrasing live.
The Sinai Ozkan lineage matters here. Ozkan was one of the central figures in twentieth-century Turkish oud making, and the construction principles he passed down — bracing patterns, bowl proportions, neck angle — are present in every instrument Feramis builds. What you hear when you play one of these ouds is not a recreation of that tradition; it is the tradition itself, made today by a luthier who has carried it for four decades.
The Tapadum collection of Feramis Aktas ouds includes both standard Turkish concert instruments and the Professional Electric Oud line, suited to studio recording and amplified stage work. For the broader category context, see also our Turkish Oud collection and the Oud category overview — and the dedicated Yildirim Palabiyik collection for a complementary Turkish/Arabic perspective.
What makes a Feramis Aktas oud distinct?
The combination of hand-carved bowl construction, aged spruce soundboards, and the bracing geometry inherited from Sinai Ozkan. These choices produce a warmer fundamental and a longer sustain than mass-built ouds, which lets maqam ornamentation breathe across long phrases.
Which Turkish maqams suit these ouds best?
Feramis ouds are tuned and voiced for the core Anatolian repertoire — Hicaz, Rast, Saba, and Hüseyni, and the related modal families. Professional players also use them for taqsim improvisation and fasıl ensemble work, where the instrument’s clarity in fast passages is an asset.
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