Mike's Oud Forums

for string experimenters : black nylon d'addario

juju - 12-9-2014 at 01:20 AM

I know a bass player that uses black nylon strings ... as far as I know, it's impossible to make very thick strings with nylon ... I suppose there is a metal string inside the nylon. No ???
http://www.daddario.com/DADProductFamily.Page?ActiveID=3768&familyid=20&sid=bda3eac4-f410-4f5d-90de-684a182477fe

Do you think those strings should be an option to replace the wound strings of the oud ???

Marcus - 12-9-2014 at 04:50 AM

Could be an option if you want your oud to sound more "mellow" in the deep courses.

It`s kinda funny- you think of nylon strings for the low strings
others think about to use
wounded steelstrings for the trebles:)

Always great for me to recognize that there is more than "black or white" and everybody have his own "good".

juju - 12-9-2014 at 05:19 AM

you're right :)...

I think that what we have in a common is to find a string material that would sound great for every string... at present the most common option is to use nylon (or PVF) for trebles and wounded metal for bass ... it to say two diffrent kind of materials that create a gap in term of sound ... the option to use only wounded metal strings is interesting but I find the thin strings are too fragile ...

Jody Stecher - 12-9-2014 at 08:44 AM

I am not at all sure that a uniform voice across the whole range of the oud (bass, mid, treble) is desirable. Different string materials give different qualities. Why not maximize this as a virtue? Human singers have different sound qualities in low, mid and high register. I don't find this to be a deficit. It adds richness to the listening experience. If the oud can seem alive (like a singer) maybe that is better.

Jody Stecher - 12-9-2014 at 08:58 AM

I would think these would rip the bridge off the oud and break the pegbox off within 24 hours. These are wound on a hexagonal steel core. Look at the tension chart at the D'Addario link. It's for the length of a guitar-bass string, much longer than oud, but still even if these were used as single strings instead of double courses on an oud of the usual scale of 57 to 63 cm I think they would destroy the oud. And how would you get them through the string holes in the bridge?

Quote: Originally posted by juju  
I know a bass player that uses black nylon strings ... as far as I know, it's impossible to make very thick strings with nylon ... I suppose there is a metal string inside the nylon. No ???
http://www.daddario.com/DADProductFamily.Page?ActiveID=3768&familyid=20&sid=bda3eac4-f410-4f5d-90de-684a182477fe

Do you think those strings should be an option to replace the wound strings of the oud ???

journeyman - 12-9-2014 at 02:40 PM

This Pyramid set ( Yellow Label #652/11) has black nylon trebles. The bass strings are bronze wound. Has anyone here tried these? Brian has them for sale on his oudstrings.com site. http://www.oudstrings.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=...

Brian Prunka - 12-9-2014 at 03:57 PM

Though some people claim a difference, in principle there is no difference in nylon based on the color.
It is possible that the dyes could subtly affect the frequency response, but it seems unlikely.

The #652 set's bronze wound strings definitely sound different than the standard silver-plated copper strings. I'm not sure how to characterize it. They are calculated to the same tensions as the 650 set, but they are slightly heavier gauges, so presumably the bronze strings are less dense. It's the sort of thing that you would have to try to see if it worked on your oud.

Jody Stecher - 12-9-2014 at 06:32 PM

The strings under discussion are not the usual "nylon through and through" strings. They are a metal core over which there is a winding of flat nylon "tape" that happens to be black.

Brian Prunka - 12-9-2014 at 07:39 PM

Yes, those are obviously not suitable for oud. Roy brought up the 652 set so I was just responding to that.

Savarez makes some plastic wound strings on a nylon core, but they will not fit most ouds due to the size of the holes in the bridge being too small.

journeyman - 12-10-2014 at 08:06 AM

Savarez makes many different types of strings for guitar and I thought about experimenting. I was especially interested in their nylon wound and plastic wound treble strings, but I think the tension of these and most guitar strings is three or four times that of oud strings. I wish they would publish a chart with the tensions of ALL their various strings, but they only have charts for certain string sets. In general I'm personally satisfied with the Pyramid orange label set with two plain trebles. Still, it would be interesting to experiment. I guess lute string manufacturers would be the place to look for choices.

Brian Prunka - 12-12-2014 at 05:48 PM

I have tensions for the plastic wound somewhere I think, but the issue is that they don't fit on ouds. I know someone who modified the strings to fit, I could put you in touch if you wanted to explore it.

Tension-wise, you could probably use the Savarez strings tuned down (i.e., e' could be c', b could be g, g could be d). They no longer make the whole line of plastic-wound strings, just the guitar ones I believe.

rojaros - 12-19-2014 at 03:02 PM

Bass black nylon strings are steel strings wound with flat nylon wrapped around it, similar like flat wound jazz guitar strings or polished bass strings. I suspect it would be suicidal for your oud to bring such a string up to any usable tension.

There are some gauges of aluminium flat wound classical guitar strings wound on nylon multifilament, that coud work with some experimentations.

Svarez has these white plastic wound treble strings, which is g, b and e at 65cm scale length, so one can finde use for them on the oud. I tried it and found that the windings are too rough and the strings too thick for a nice playing feeling... If mellow sound is what you are after, try half polished guitar strings (Daddario and La Bella make some) or polished ones (Again Daddario, Labella and Hannabach make some) Beware of Thomastik classical polished strings, some of them have a steel kernel ...

fernandraynaud - 12-19-2014 at 11:55 PM

I had installed a 3rd D course of plain nylon (transparent, but black nylon is the same) on a Sukar Model 1 once. The gauge was 0.039". The tension felt similar to the 0.024" silvered wound strings they replaced. I thought the timbre was a bit dull. But it moved the timbre discontinuity from between the gg and the DD course to between the dd and the AA course - note how cleverly the DD course becomes a dd course ;-)

I respectfully disagree with Jody, in that I find the change in timbre between plain and wound strings an unexpected and irritating anomaly more than a different voice, since we have limited choices as to which string to sound a given note on. Personally I prefer the brighter tone of (fish leader) PVF over nylon anyway, and the slightly more metallic timbre of PVF plain strings also solves the discontinuity issue for me quite well.

But prepare for a bizarre twist! Recently I had a D wound string break on an old oud, and didn't have a wound 0.024" string on hand. Remembering the 0.039" plain nylon 3rd course, I installed one such (classical guitar) string as a replacement, leaving the other string as it was, 0.024" wound, thus creating a Dd course! It's an interesting effect, but to my surprise it didn't sound strange. It mainly mellows out the 3rd course, so that it could blend better with a plain nylon 1st and 2nd course. Has anyone in his (or her) right mind tried such a thing?

Of course that's completely unrelated to "taped nylon" bass strings which have a massive steel core, humongous tension, and would surely would rip an oud to kindling.

D'Addario recently released a new string calculator in an applet that's on their web site. It covers both plain and wound strings. Wound strings have until now been very difficult to calculate tensions on with any degree of certainty. I laboriously entered a set of 11 oud strings, let the applet calculate tensions, and found they agreed closely with the values I had from when I was using Arto's Tension calculator to derive an "effective mass" for wound strings and interpolating, as a means of deriving wound string tensions.

The only problem was that their PVF string gauges ran out around 0.024", leaving out the 0.018" that works well for an Arabic cc, let alone the 0.015" ff course for the F crowd. I have to remember to write them. But check out the applet, it's being beta-released at

http://www.stringtensionpro.com/


journeyman - 12-20-2014 at 09:45 AM

Cool ideas Rojaros. Here is another one to try. One string of each pair tuned to standard pitch and the second string of each pair, or at least the bottom 4 courses, replaced with a thinner string and tuned up an octave, like a 12 string guitar. I'd be curious to hear it.

rojaros - 12-20-2014 at 01:51 PM

I have tried that, because I have all kinds of fluorocarbon fishing lines for experimentation here ... didn't like the result; the whole thing gets too bright for me.

Brian Prunka - 12-20-2014 at 03:04 PM

Quote: Originally posted by journeyman  
Cool ideas Rojaros. Here is another one to try. One string of each pair tuned to standard pitch and the second string of each pair, or at least the bottom 4 courses, replaced with a thinner string and tuned up an octave, like a 12 string guitar. I'd be curious to hear it.


There is a Moroccan oud-ish instrument that does this, it's pretty neat but ends up sounding a bit like a buzuq/oud hybrid or a lauta.