Oh boy... Did this CL ad poster actually "repair" a justly tuned bouzouki?

[Ubersheist]

Bouzouki musical instrument - $425 (Ventura)

Date: 2011-05-02, 9:53PM PDT
Reply to: @craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Here I am offering for sale a Greek folk instrument called a bouzouki. They come with six or eight strings; this is an eight stringed instrument. When I got it some of the upper frets were not well spaced, so I had the frets redone by a luthier and now it is perfect. It is a lot of fun to play especially with a CD or a YouTube video. There are also lessons on YouTube. There is a vinyl case that comes with it as well.
Contact me if interested!

Location: Ventura
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests


PostingID: 2359432491

I suspect, although I could be wrong, that this guy actually took a justly tuned instrument, which is crazy rare in America, and forced it to be a equally tempered bouzouki. Odds are probably 50/50 that the luthier had never seen a justly tuned instrument and thought "wow, this guy messed up bad!"

[uethanian]

i think there may be some confusion here...most modern bouzoukis have metal frets set in equal temperament. the turkish baglama, which is a cousin of the bouzouki, has tied frets in a just intonation system. but who know what this guy did, people use these instrument names pretty loosely.

[Ubersheist]

Originally Posted by uethanian

i think there may be some confusion here...most modern bouzoukis have metal frets set in equal temperament. the turkish baglama, which is a cousin of the bouzouki, has tied frets in a just intonation system. but who know what this guy did, people use these instrument names pretty loosely.

I know there's lots of different stuff out there. There's two things that struck me as odd - first is the whole spacing of the frets business… That's usually not where instrument makers screw up. That's pretty easy compared to other things that can go wrong with an instrument. It's pretty strange to have that as the big issue on an instrument. Usually, if the fret spacing has issues, then the rest of the instrument probably has huge issues all over the place. This one doesn't seem to have other issues, if you go by what the seller says.

Second, the phrasing and wording that this seller uses makes me think that this person's not very experienced or not familiar with these instruments somehow. Especially the part about playing to a CD or on Youtube. Who really buys instruments specifically to do either of those? That seems to say to me that the instrument really isn't of very good quality, I suppose.

I dunno. That ad is just strangely worded and it got me thinking.