Turkish Oud Premium Maple

My new Turkish oud is wonderful! It shipped quickly, and aside from a small scratch on the neck, it looks great! I just polished out the scratch and was good to go. I think it got scratched because I was not careful to take it out of all the packing materials.

I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical about this oud before it got delivered. Yes, the photography on the site made this oud look fantastic. And I had never had one made out of premium maple, certainly not one that looked quite as clean or as bright as this one did. Still, you never really know what you’re going to get when you are ordering from a new company online, do you? All of those fears washed away the second that I opened the package that arrived. The package was secured, the instrument was safe, and it sounded incredible right out-of-the-box. I did a little bit of quick tuning to the oud to dial it in (but that’s to be expected). Other than that, though, everything just sort of works and a couple of my musician friends came over that afternoon to play, too. I think they were so surprised at how this instrument sounded that they are going to buy one, too!

I hesitated a little writing this review. The oud itself looks well made. I know the pics on the site really pulled me in, especially with all that maple. The problem is it arrived pretty dinged up. Nothing crazy, some dents and dings obviously from shipping (shipping was slow, but everything is slow these days) but I was pretty upset. I played it a little just to see if the sound was impacted. It wasn’t, but the dings were super noticeable. Especially in a quality finish like this. Reached out to customer service though and they took care of me right away. I got a full refund and was offered a replacement. Would have loved to keep this in my collection but really appreciate how good customer service was to me. I won’t hesitate to order in the future. Maybe beef up the packing though. Shame something this good-looking was so bruised.