Shayrgob,
How much is it dropping in tuning? do you mean like 1/2 tone or 8 tones? If it's dropping a little that's normal, that strings stretch, you have to
exercise them side to side; it takes 3 days or so to settle.
On the tuning, can you get a micrometer? It's not true that if you have so many wound strings it tells you you should tune a certain way. Only ONE
thing will tell you, and that's the thickness of the strings (that and the scale, but that changes minimally). If money is tight, can you buy a $25
micrometer, and then return it? Measure those strings and measure the scale from nut to bridge, before something breaks. A typical set of oud strings
is something like:
[ 0th 0.019 plain (arabic ff) ]
1st 0.022 plain (arabic cc)
2nd 0.028 plain (arabic gg)
3rd 0.024 wound (arabic DD)
4th 0.029 wound (arabic AA)
5th 0.034 wound (arabic FF)
6th 0.042 wound (arabic C)
Each gauge could be +/- 0.002" or even more. But that covers tuning FF to ff or C to cc or even C to ff (13 strings). In practice it allows you to
tune the 5th and 6th courses to any of the common drone tunings as well.
If your thinnest course is say 0.020", and your third a plain 0.032", that's meant for a C-cc tuning, it won't work as F-ff.
You can see that where the wound strings pick up a jump in thickness occurs, for the same pitch you need a thicker plain than wound string. Better in
any case to be conservative. Relatively much fewer people tune in F-ff.
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