Oud

A Turkish oud made in 1916 by the luthier Manol, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Look at the neck: there are no frets, so a player can slide freely between notes and place pitches that a fretted guitar cannot reach. The strings run in pairs over a deep, pear-shaped body and are plucked with a plectrum. Its Arabic name, al-ʿūd, means "the wood," and the European lute grew out of it.