demonx Posted May 27, 2005 Report Share Posted May 27, 2005 Can someone explain the diffrence the neck scale makes to the playability of a guitar and the sound and the string tension and everything else that it effects. Please! (Not including the lenght of the fingerboard or the distance between frets) Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert_the_damned Posted May 27, 2005 Report Share Posted May 27, 2005 a shorter scale will make the strings slightly slacker for the same tuning. (though that can be countered with thicker strings) other than that it will obviously make the frets smaller! IMHO a 25.5" scale is just big enough so that all frets are easy to play. but I have head of people having success with other scale lengths. other than that it wont make a whole lot of differance. other than the length of your guitar! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian d Posted May 27, 2005 Report Share Posted May 27, 2005 Shorter scale means less tension on the strings for the same guage and pitch. Playability is personal...do you prefer more space between frets (long scale), or looser string to bend (short scale)? Shorter scale guitars have warmer tone. Some say this is because of the looseness of the string, others say it's because the nodes of the harmonic overtones are closer together, so the pickup picks up a wider range of overtones. Scale length doesn't have to change the length of your guitar. An inch of difference from nut to bridge can easily be made up in body and headstock. Brian D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pr3Va1L Posted May 27, 2005 Report Share Posted May 27, 2005 well, i'm not sure about that... i always tought that my current guitar (25" scale) had a long scale since, even on lights, strings never have had any slack... also, a Strat is the perfect example of slackness (as far as i tryed some) and its 25.5 ... anyways, personally i prefer smaller frets even with 24 frets... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allstellar Posted May 27, 2005 Report Share Posted May 27, 2005 I think this is a valid question.. are these available? (pre - fretted boards) and if so what does one do to find one (remember the original post - question...?) thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mledbetter Posted May 27, 2005 Report Share Posted May 27, 2005 well, i'm not sure about that... i always tought that my current guitar (25" scale) had a long scale since, even on lights, strings never have had any slack... also, a Strat is the perfect example of slackness (as far as i tryed some) and its 25.5 ... anyways, personally i prefer smaller frets even with 24 frets... ← If you put the same gauge strings on a strat and a paul, tune to pitch and pend the e on the 12th fret as high as you can go.. you'll get a wicked bend on the paul and on the strat you can get a whole step easily, a step and a half if you really dig in.. I've gotten 3 step bends before on a paul without feeling like the string is going to break.. If the strat you were playing felt slack, it may be more attributed to the trem giving way as you bent the string rather than slackness of string tension. All things otherwise equal, the longer the scale, the higher the tension.. that's just physics.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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