Raul I was able to open that webpage and download and watch and hear the video.

What a beautiful instrument! I want one! Dang!

Video sound: On my computer, I could hear the instrument and simultaneously a huge amount of high frequency noise. The noise was always coincident with the sound of the instrument. It may be an artifact of the recording or encoding process, and not necessarily my computer. In any case, the sound of the instrument to me sounds like

1. metal strings
2. the strings of each of the five courses he played sounded like they were close to the same pitch, not an octave apart. (my video may be clipped off before the end, but I never saw or heard him play the sixth course, the lowest course)
3. the strings of the fourth and fifth courses were not completely in unison.
4. I could not a huge improvement over cumbus sound, but again the sound quality of the video was pretty bad on my computer.

Appearance on video: Playing style looked like oud or cumbus with left hand, and right hand picking, but the manor he holds his pick looks like how many saz players hold their picks. Picking style did not look like saz playing.

Photos: The body looks like wooden ribing, fairly or perfectly round and flat wooden face, small skin patch where bridge sits, bridge is a cumbus bridge stings look like metal cumbus strings, neck and head and tuners are cumbus, finger board looks like mother of pearl inlay on a regular cumbus finger board, and dimensions look like cumbus. Sound holes in the face look oud style, as do the inlaid-looking borders for the holes and for the face edge. My overall conclusion is that the makers is making the body and and skin face, and perhaps also the string attachments, but using cumbus parts for most other parts.

I am curious now as to what nylon strings would sound like on this intrument, and also what they'd sound like on cumbus. After my October concert I'll try a single set of nylon strings on my cumbus.

Karadeniz/Denys

Agaphios Tomboulis was great. He played oud, cumbus and yes this instrument we know as the Ahenk.

I don't know if thats what it was known as then, but it certainly was popular.

I have actually played an Ahenk built by Cengiz Sarikus, Raul. The link you posted.
It should be pointed out that the Ahenk has nylon strings rather than steel. It is a very nice instrument, I would like to have one someday. It sounds very cumbus-like, but retains the sound of an oud at the same time. They are expensive however. I would think Carmine could get an Ahenk sound by using nylon strings on his wood-backed cumbus.