Description
The Arabic Oud Smyrna – Cedar Top is the warmer-voiced sibling in the Smyrna line, pairing the same striped walnut-and-maple bowl with a solid cedar soundboard instead of spruce. Built for the deep, vocal resonance that Arabic maqam performance calls for, this eleven-string fretless oud trades the spruce version’s brighter attack for cedar’s fuller, faster-blooming sustain.
The bowl is built from alternating walnut and maple staves in a fine rope pattern, the same construction as the rest of the Smyrna line — light maple strips add stiffness at each seam without adding weight, while the walnut keeps the fundamental warm and full. The bowl carries a high-gloss polished finish, and the neck-to-bowl joint is marked with an ivory-and-black mother-of-pearl inlay in a scrolling motif, echoed by a smaller pearl inlay on the fingerboard near the soundhole.
The soundboard is solid cedar, left in its natural warm tone. Cedar is a softer, less dense wood than spruce, so it responds to the string’s energy more readily — the trade-off is a rounder attack and a voice that opens up faster under a light touch, at the cost of a small amount of the spruce top’s projection at full volume. A fixed bridge, glued directly to the top, gives the instrument a settled, low-maintenance action with no periodic height adjustment. The fretless ebony-finished fingerboard is built for the quarter-tone slides central to Arabic maqam playing, and the bent-back pegbox, in the Iraqi oud-making tradition, carries eleven friction pegs for five double courses plus a single bass string.
| Bowl | Walnut & maple rope pattern |
|---|---|
| Soundboard | Cedar |
| Bridge | Fixed |
| Finish | Polished (gloss) |
| Strings | 11 (5 double courses + 1 bass), fretless |
| Tuning | Do–Do (C/C) |
| Body Length | 48.5 cm |
| Neck Length | 19.5 cm |
| String (Scale) Length | 58.5 cm |
| Depth | 19 cm |
| Width | 36.5 cm |
Players who prefer a rounder, faster-opening voice under the fingers — especially for solo taqsim improvisation, where dynamic touch matters more than raw projection — tend to reach for a cedar top over spruce. The settled, fixed-bridge action makes it forgiving enough for a committed beginner to grow into, while the walnut-and-maple bowl and pearl detailing give it presence for intermediate and professional players working through ensemble wasla and muwashshah repertoire.
Keep the polished bowl away from direct heat and sudden humidity swings, and wipe the finish with a soft, dry cloth after playing. Fretless fingerboards benefit from a light coat of fingerboard oil every few months to keep the wood from drying out under string tension. For a case, spare strings, and a risha plectrum, see our oud accessories collection; for the spruce-top version of this model, see the Arabic Oud Smyrna; for the full range, browse the oud category. Readers curious about the instrument’s broader history can find more on the oud on Wikipedia.
Worldwide shipping & 15-day return.
