Najarian E-1000

this is an awsome instrument. it does not need any additional features.

the piezo system is excellent. responsive and full.

the fit and finish are great. no issues. where joints are you cannot see any gap or defect. the choice of wood is first rate.

very solid construction

fine. one call for extra strings which were mailed to me.

I bought this directly from oud.net (Najarian Music) which is located in Southern California. It took about a month to make and receive. As you can see, the style is very cool. The sounds are great, and the possiblities from bending notes down (without the wobble stick) add a new dimension to your improvising. It was a little challenging to be fretless - took me a few months to really play in tune, but once i connected with the instrument, i found myself expressing in new ways not possible on the guitar.

I purchased this electric oud through Heart of Texas Music in Austin, who obtained it from the luthier--Mr. Najarian (whose company operates out of California, I believe). This oud is fretless and has 11 strings--5 in double-courses, and one single bass string. The highest two courses are nylon, and the others are wound silk (like classical guitar strings). The double courses are tuned in unison. This is a radical, only-one-like-it design by Najarian himself that has been available since '96. David Torn plays one (listen to it on the B.L.U.E. live CD w/ Tony Levin). Picture those frame-only electric violins, and you get the idea of this design. The "frame" is Honduran Mahogany, and the neck is ebony. There is a tiny piece of felt on the neck up against the nut under the wound strings (presumably to mute the sustain somewhat to make the instrument sound more like a traditional oud). There is one volume knob on the front, and a flip-out access port in the back for a 9-volt battery (which powers the piezo pickups--which are very hot!). The headstock follows traditional oud design and comes back off the nut at almost a 90% angle, and the tuning is accomplished via wooden pegs that run through the headstock. This makes tuning somewhat of a pain, but I suspect it is a concession to tradition (and maybe to avoid a "fatwa" a'la Salmon Rushdie for heresy in instrument design...). It would be nice if this thing came with a free hardshell case--instead, all you can get is a custom gig bag (and you have to pay extra for that).

Running the E-1000 through a Gallien-Kruger 250ML with the "echo" and "chorus" buttons pressed in makes the instrument sound very much like an acoustic oud. Truly subversive sounds can be achieved, though, by running it through the "hot" channel--no feedback, and a very elastic, tight distorted sound can be used for special recording applications or "outside" playing using pitch shifters, delays, etc. Not at all what you would expect from a piezo run hot. The E-1000 is not noisy at all--the electronics seem first rate. One complaint would be that the two courses of nylon strings are somewhat louder through the piezo than the other wound strings. If possible, it would be nice if the pickup was tweaked to account for that (it is not a phenomena that happens on my Martin/Shenendough piezo classical guitar). I have to say that this is a very cool sounding instrument (and you'll be the only person in your neighborhood/city/county/state etc. who has one, which is pretty cool too).

The oud was shipped detuned (which I guess is the prudent thing to do). The problem was that, since there are many oud tunings to choose from and I'd never played any oud before, I couldn't really tune it up in the store to test drive it. Ray Henning and the others guys at Heart of Texas sure didn't know any tunings to try, and I didn't either. I had to get on the internet and do some serious research to get a short list of tunings to try out, and ended up with "Armenian Varient #4" which maintains the same interval across all the strings. The workmanship of the instrument is very nice (though, oddly enough, Mr. Najarian woodburned his name on the front in a rather crude fashion). No complaints, really. No flaws found to date, and I've had it six months.

This is a very simple, elegant instrument that should hold up real well. One problem is that tuning is very time consuming--the wooden tuner pegs are not that precise, and the pattern of how each string is assigned to each peg is non-intuitive to say the least (weird alternations). These are not really complaints about the E-1000, though, since all ouds share these traits. It comes with the territory. A hardshell case, as I've said, would be huge--and there ain't much chance of finding one for this puppy if the manufacturer won't provide one. The finish seems durable, as do the strap buttons. I'm rating an '8' here because of the case situation.

Heart of Texas Music was able to get me one of these within two weeks of my order, which I consider pretty good for an oddball item like this. For an instrument that costs over $1000, though, it was disappointing that NOTHING was thrown in. Want a gig bag? Pay for it. Want the very brief home-printed "oud made easy" booklet? Pay for it. Want Mr. Najarian's CD of oud music? You guessed it....pay up. And, again, no hardshell case at any price. On the upside, Mr. Najarian agreed to put dot position markers on the side of the neck for a modest price (it doesn't come with them)--and I would strongly recommend this for any guitarists who are going the oud route. No warranty paperwork came with the instrument. I haven't yet had cause to inquire about warrant work, and hopefully won't have to.

I've been playing electric and acoustic guitar for 20 years, and have branched out into bass (fretted and fretless), mandolin, 6-string banjo, keyboards, percussion, theremin, samplers, sequencers, etc. as my songwriting and playing have developed and my home recording has become more sophisticated. I'm always in search of new sounds that will inspire new types of recordings and performances, and the electric oud is the most far-out thing I've irresponsibly charged on a credit card yet (and this includes the long-discontinued Yamaha G10 MIDI guitar system). If anything happened to it (and assuming the insurance company didn't try to screw me out of it), I would absolutely get another one. I've become more and more interested in North African and Mediterranean music in recent years, and you need double course strings to get that sound. Faking on mandolin hasn't really done it for me, and the electric oud instantly transports your sound to Morocco (or to Saturn, if you play it in heretical ways). If you liked Page/Plant's "Unledded" comeback CD, then you will like the general oud/North African sound. There isn't really any other electric oud out there to compare this with, but it's hard to imagine that one could be preferable to this one. It was clearly designed from the ground up to be an electric instrument, not an acoustic instrument with pickups schlepped onto it. And, I have to admit, that there is something very cool about having an instrument that no one else on the block has (or has even heard of!). Learning to play it is not that tough with the position markers installed on the side of the neck. Najarian's website has a good picture of the E-1000, plus his acoustic model ouds (which are evidently well respected within the traditionalist community). Now how about an electric solidbody Greek bazouki....?