R: Indian/middle eastern sounds, microtonality

["Bruce Comens" <bcomens@corelli.nexus.it>]

Love the way this thread has moved on to that wonderful Peterson guitar
neck--but I wanted to thank you all for feedback  re my original question
about percussion boxes; it was all very useful.  In the end I checked out
the
ASR-X Pro and
ordered one--everything I wanted and so much more that I hadn't imagined I
wanted....

And thanks, Drew, for pointing me to your website--great source of links 
and
info!

But to pick up the thread now--I've been thinking of going fretless guitar
or adding an oud (my local oud store has a nice little model i've been
eyeing...) for some time, as I'm always trying to work with inbetween 
notes.

2 questions i've been wondering about:

Do you guitarists/oudists generally adapt guitar tunings and right hand
techniques to the oud, or do you go the oud purist route?

On a fretless guitar, what happens to tone and sustain when the string is
between wood and flesh instead of against metal?   Can you make one by
simply defretting the guitar and filling the slots with some plasticky
material?  Any web sources on this?

Thanks again,
Bruce