You should be aware that cutting a fret board designed for a different scale length as suggested may get you in the ball park so to speak with the fret spacing, it is not going to be spot on. It's a simple check of the fret to fret spacing on each of the scale lengths that will tell you how far out they are going to be. Really depends on how fussy you are about those sort of things.
Allen, I don't think that is quite right - neither from a mathematical nor from a phisical point of view. If what you mean is that you end up with a scale length of 374 point something instead of 380, then that is certainly true.
Here is a little test to check whether it works: You go to the
stewmac fret calculator and set up a tenor ukulele fretboard with a scale length of 420 mm and 14 frets. The measurements you get look like this:
420 mm fret scale
fret -- from nut ------ fret to fret
01 -- 23.573 mm --- 23.573 mm (nut-1)
02 -- 45.823 mm --- 22.250 mm (1-2)
03 -- 66.824 mm --- 21.001 mm (2-3)
04 -- 86.646 mm --- 19.822 mm (3-4)
05 -- 105.356 mm -- 18.710 mm (4-5)
06 -- 123.015 mm -- 17.659 mm (5-6)
07 -- 139.684 mm -- 16.669 mm (6-7)
08 -- 155.417 mm -- 15.733 mm (7-8)
09 -- 170.267 mm -- 14.850 mm (8-9)
10 -- 184.283 mm -- 14.016 mm (9-10)
11 -- 197.513 mm -- 13.230 mm (10-11)
12 -- 210.000 mm -- 12.487 mm (11-12)
13 -- 221.786 mm -- 11.786 mm (12-13)
14 -- 232.911 mm -- 11.125 mm (13-14)
OK, now you subtract the value up to the second fret to get the resulting scale length if you sawed the fretboard off there:
420 mm - 45.823 mm = 374.177 mm
OK, now you set up a new fret calculation with 374.177 mm as the scale length and 12 frets, and it looks like this:
374,177 mm fret scale
fret -- from nut ------ fret to fret
01 -- 21.001 mm --- 21.001 mm (nut-1)
02 -- 40.823 mm --- 19.822 mm (1-2)
03 -- 59.533 mm --- 18.710 mm (2-3)
04 -- 77.193 mm --- 17.660 mm (3-4)
05 -- 93.861 mm --- 16.668 mm (4-5)
06 -- 109.594 mm -- 15.733 mm (5-6)
07 -- 124.444 mm -- 14.850 mm (6-7)
08 -- 138.460 mm -- 14.016 mm (7-8)
09 -- 151.690 mm -- 13.230 mm (8-9)
10 -- 164.177 mm -- 12.487 mm (9-10)
11 -- 175.964 mm -- 11.787 mm (10-11)
12 -- 187.088 mm -- 11.124 mm (11-12)
The only differences in the fret-to-fret measurements are by one thousandth of a millimeter, which you definitely will
never hear. The touch of your finger on the string will make much more difference than that.
There is a certain challenge involved that has to do with one of the oddities of ukulele tunings: With our truncated fretboard we are "capo-ing" up two frets but our scale stays the same, it doesn't go from C up to D tuning. In order to get back down to C tuning we have to reduce the tension on the strings and possibly also the string guages, both of which can affect the sound, the intonation, etc.
But... if the fretboard is "spot on" to begin with, then it really doesn't matter whether I play in open position, or fifth, or ninth... An A is always an A and a whole note is always a whole note.
Keep rockin' :music:
Erich
