I bought two and sold the one that I did not like as well. THe more I hear about others' experiences with these lutes the luckier I feel to have received one of the better ones.
The main problem with the Pakistani lutes is quality control. Sometimes they arrive in playable condition and sometimes not. Sure, the rose is not very elegant and the case is not exactly form fitted, but these are not problems related to the playability of the instruments. The problems I had with the lute I sold were not so much about the action, which was fine, but rather the string spacings at the nut on one of them were so bad that the courses were too close together and grouped incorrectly. Obviously, whoever made this lute had never tried to play one. I modified the nut so that the instrument was at least playable and sold it. If I had not bought two of them I would have thought that none of them was playable. I still have the other one as a backup, just so I can practice on something should my decent Tumiati lute (God forbid!) should ever need to go into the luthier shop for some reason. If I had more time to spend on the Pakistani lute that I kept, I would replace all the nylon frets with gut. I have already replaced some of the strings with Nygut. So many music projects and so little time... Cheers, Marion -----Original Message----- From: Herbert Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Mar 28, 2005 7:01 AM To: Tim Beasley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Lute net <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Subject: Re: Questions from a newbie > I've heard that the cheap S. Asian (Pakistani?) lutes on ebay are > trash. More trouble to make them into a lute than they're worth. I got one of those lutes. It cost me many hours of work (maybe 50-90), many trips to the hardware store, and 4-5 questions posted here to this list (for which I received generous answers). I got it into a playable condition, but I feel lucky. They are not playable as they arrive (action _way_ high, frets won't lay down against fingerboard, ...). To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
