|  Defining features for egyptian or arabic oud:
* Lack of Frets: The oud, unlike many other plucked stringed instruments, does not have a fretted neck. This allows the player to be more expressive by using slides and vibrato. It also makes it easier to play the microtones of the Maqam System. This development is relatively recent, as ouds still had frets ca. AD 1100, and they gradually lost them by AD 1300, mirroring the general development of Near-Eastern music which abandoned harmony in favor of melismatics.
* Strings: With some exceptions, the oud has eleven strings. Ten of these strings are paired together in courses of two. The eleventh, lowest string remains single. There are many different tuning systems for the oud which are outlined below.
* Pegbox: The pegbox of the oud is bent back at a 45-90° angle from the neck of the instrument.
* Body: The oud's body has a staved, bowl-like back resembling the outside of half a watermelon, unlike the flat back of a guitar. This bowl allows the oud to resonate and have a more complex tone.
* Sound-holes: The oud generally has one to three sound-holes.
Mandolin forms
Mandolins come in several forms. The Neapolitan style, known as a round-back or bowl-back, (or tater-bug, colloquial American), has a vaulted back made of a number of strips of wood in a bowl formation, similar to a lute, and usually a canted, two-plane, uncarved top. The Portuguese bandolim, a flat-back style, is derived from the cittern, but is tuned the same as most mandolins. Another form has a banjo-style body.
Example of an f-hole A-style mandolin
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Example of an f-hole A-style mandolin
Example of an oval-hole A-style mandolin
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Example of an oval-hole A-style mandolin
Other American-made variants include the Howe-Orme guitar-shaped mandolin (manufactured by the Elias Howe Company between 1897 and roughly 1920), which featured a cylindrical bulge along the top from fingerboard end to tailpiece, and the Vega mando-lute (more commonly called a cylinder-back mandolin manufactured by the Vega Company between 1913 and roughly 1927), which had a similar longitudinal bulge but on the back rather than the front of the instrument.
Carved and round backed mandolins (back)
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Carved and round backed mandolins (back)
At the very end of the nineteenth century, a new style, with carved top and back construction inspired by violin family instruments began to supplant the European-style bowl-back instruments, especially in the United States. This new style is credited to mandolins designed and built by Orville Gibson, a Kalamazoo, Michigan violinmaker who founded the "Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co., Limited." in 1902. Gibson mandolins evolved into two basic styles: the Florentine or F-style, which has a decorative scroll near the neck, two points on the lower body, and usually a scroll carved into the headstock; and the A-style, which is pear shaped, has no points, and sometimes has a simpler headstock.
These styles generally have either two f-shaped soundholes like a violin (F-5 and A-5), or an oval sound hole (F-4 and A-4 and lower models) directly under the strings. Much variation exists between makers working from these archetypes, and other variants have become increasingly common. The Gibson F-hole F-5-style mandolins have come to be considered the most typical and traditional for playing American bluegrass music, while the A-style is generally more associated with Irish, folk, or classical music. The differences are more than cosmetic or aesthetic since the F-hole models have a distinctly different sound than the A-style models. The more complicated woodwork also translates into a more expensive instrument.
Internal bracing in the F-style mandolins was usually achieved with parallel tone bars, similar to a violin's bassbar. Some makers instead employ "x-bracing" which is simply two tone bars mortised to each other to cross into an X supporting the top. Some luthiers are now using a "modified x-bracing," which incorporates both a tone bar and x-bracing.
Numerous modern mandolin makers build instruments that are largely replicas of the Gibson F-5 Artist models built in the early 1920s by Gibson acoustician Lloyd Loar. Original Loar-signed instruments are sought after and extremely valuable.
As with almost every other contempary string instrument, another modern variant is the electric mandolin. These mandolins can have four (single), five (single) or eight (double) strings. courtesy of http://www.wikipedia.org
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