Scale length and Bridge Positioning

[jwieties]

Boat Paddle 16" scale tenors? Andrew is inquiring about 16" scale concerts and 18" tenors. The famous Radio tenor uke was a 15" scale. Then of course you have the Mezzo sopranos of 14" plus and the 17.5" to 18.5" scale length tenors. I am not even going to talk about all the long neck, super this and that hybrids on the market. Maybe that is why the industry has adopted the standard lengths of 15" and 17" scale lengths?

I should have tried to find the article again before I commented. I dont want to misrepresent Boat Paddle. If I remember correctly he was simply talking about how hew was always trying new thing and experimenting. He wasn't suggesting that he was "on to something" or suggesting he'd solved some great scale length mystery. When I read it, it came across as a guy who liked to have fun in the shop.

 

[Chih-Wei Liu]

I also like 12th fret more. Super-something(soprano, concert, tenor...) can be the cure if 14th fret neck AND bridge located in the middle are both wanted. Or moving the soundhole (and the harmonic bar below, which restrics the soundboard movement more or less) toward north. Scalloping the north end of the fan braces more might help, too.

 

[Rick Turner]

Playing around with scale lengths is not a big deal as long as you understand the relationships among scale, pitch, and string gauge...or to be more exact, the linear density of the strings in question. It really becomes a matter of what is comfortable for the player. I make baritone guitars in both 6 and 12 string versions, and I found that 27" is about as long as you can go with scale length before it becomes too-un-guitar-like for comfortable playing with average hands. 28" sounds better on an acoustic, but it gets hard to play. Since most of what I build are to be amplified, 27" works great with reasonably gauged strings.

 

[BR Ukuleles]

I recently finished a tenor uke for a local musician and switched the standard 12 fret to body to 13 so that she had better access to the 12th for harmonics. I will be doing the same for her husband on a concert I'm building right now. Both of these mods are really at the limits of my body design in so far as bridge placement without changing the scale length for that particular body size. But as long as you have a grasp of what is possible, and of course draw it out before you start cutting up wood. There is a lot that can be done with what you have to work with.