Apologies in advance if this is a well-worn or newbie topic to bring up. This post reflects on the reach advantage on a short scale neck, and offers the hypothesis that this is not a true advantage and is actually largely psychosomatic/subconscious bias, but the tone advantage of heavier guage strings is real. I'll go into some detail about the range of guitars I bought with different scale lengths to add some reviews on guitars for kids and also to elaborate on the range of scale lengths I was able to test. Short story: reach advantage on Jaguar vs strat is very small bordering on non-existent for most music, but tone difference with heavier guage strings is a big advantage depending on the type of music.
I began teaching my daughters guitar, one of whom is 6 and the other is 10. As such I bought a very small classical guitar for my 6 year old (About 440 mm scale length) and a 580 mm classical for my 10 year old. Along the way I accidentally purchased a 610 mm classical that was erroneously listed as a 580 mm. I thought I would send the 610 mm guitar back but was shocked at how much I enjoyed playing it. I realized that I have somewhat small hands, and wished I had learned about short scale guitars 30 years ago (I am 44). So I bought a used Jaguar Special HH MIJ, and have really enjoyed it. There was no way that my 6 year old could form chords on the 580 mm in the first position, as her index finger and ring finger would not line up on the 1st and 3rd fret respectively. Likewise for my 10 year old, her index finger and third finger would not come close to lining up on a 610 mm. Since 1st position is critical for initially learning the guitar, the small scale is mandatory to avoid frustration and quitting. I am not sure what make/model the 440mm is - I bought it several years ago as a toy and the sticker fell off. it has been fantastic though, and it looks like the top is solid spruce despite how inexpensive it was. The 580 mm is a Yamaha. Yamaha has evolved - their quality is much, much better now in children's guitars. While it is a laminate, I think it still sounds great as a learning guitar and should be more humidity resistant as a laminate. One should buy one that they have tried playing first and not accept one out of a box though, as reviews still claim that the manufacturing is hit or miss. Yamaha may have corrected that, but one can't be sure. The 610 mm was an Alhambra, hand made in spain, that cost $600 as the euro is low right now. It is beautiful and plays great except for some dissapointing string buzz on the second fret, fourth string. For this reason, I cannot recommend the Alhambra. I also own a standard 650 mm scale length Aria classical AC80S and an American Fender Deluxe strat (2007), 25.5" (650 mm) scale. I also spoke to a local luthier in coversation, and it turned out he was building a 580 mm handmade classical for one of his older customers who was developing arthritis. This surprised me - I would have thought 610 mm was enough of a decrease, why go to 580?
Meanwhile I bought an Ibanez Mikro for both kids to play on Rock Smith (Xbox). Fantastic software by the way and lots of fun. This guitar is 22.5" scale length, realistically I would call it a 580 mm scale length. While it is one of the only short scale electric guitars for kids with halfway decent reviews, it is still an awkward setup.
Takeaway: Going into these measurements I have a 440 mm, 580 mm, 610 mm and 650 mm Classical, and a 580 mm, 610 mm, and 650 mm Electric from which to measure.
Using a caliper I measured the difference between distance of the width of the first fret nut to wire between the Jaguar and the Strat. I measured only 2/16" (0.125", 3.18mm) difference. I also measured the width difference at the twelfth fret. Here the difference was only 1/16th inch (1.6mm). I was surprised. How could my Jaguar or my 610 mm classical seem to feel so much better if the difference is so small? Essentially, you are only getting about 1/16th of an inch per fret of reach.
Later, I used a phrase from a beginner's classical piece called "Romanza" to test this. As a guitarist with smaller hands I always found this phrase to be a little bit of a strain to quickly grab the chord form and execute the notes around it at tempo, though I was amble to master it well enough with practice, it was always not as fun as it could be. The chord form is simple, you bar the first three e, b, and g strings with your index finger and hold the g string on the 6th fret with your middle finger. So that's an A, D, and G# that you're holding as a chord form. Then you play the 7th and 9th frets of the first string as you essentially arpeggiate the chord with your three fingers and hit the bass E string. That's probably excessive detail - my point is that you hold a chord in fifth position and reach for the 9th fret with your pinky (4th finger), a 4 fret stretch from 5th fret to 9th fret. I decided this was a good marker of what a guitarist with smaller hands is ocassionally asked to do in the performance of music. So I measured the distance from the 5th fret wire to the 9th fret wire on each of the guitar sizes that I had. Here are the results:
Strat/650 mm Classical: This is my reference point
Jaguar/610 mm Alhambra: 4/16ths of an inch shorter reach (6.35 mm)
Ibanez Mikro/580 mm Classical: 0.5 inch/1.3 cm
Conclusion:
Stratocaster to Jaguar Reach: In my hands, performing the 5th to 9th fret 4th finger (pinky) work was easier and more comfortable on the 610 mm size than the 650/25.5" size guitars. However, this was only challenging because I had to bar the first three strings, which keeps my index finger fairly straight. Most 4 fret stretch, eg. Jimmy pages liks, I don't find myself barring strings and then doing that stretch. This is relatively rare. Music with 4th finger add-ons around bar chords tend to be only 3 frets up with the 4th finger working on the 8th fret if barred on the 5th fret. I'm sure in jazz and various sorts of music, these stretches could be more common, but I came to the realization that much of my love for my Jaguar with regard to reach was all in my head. 610 mm from 650 mm is not a huge difference.
Statocaster to Ibanez Mikro Reach: In my hands this was a big difference. Almost any 4 fret stretch was much easier with this guitar. The fact that this is the only well-reviewed electric near 580 mm and the setup is still marginal is a travesty. The market gap for true 580 mm short scale likely discourages many women (50%) of the population from the guitar. I imagine it is also hard on elderly guitar players, or anyone with arthritis (I'm talking to you Kieth Richards!). I'm not an anatomist, but I imagine that Asians also have small hands on average, and that takes out another couple of billion people who might be discouraged from the practice of the guitar.
So what I am saying here is that one should not buy a Jaguar or Mustang for reasons of reach alone. It will help a little bit, but not very much. If you have smaller hands, it is the best currently on the market in immediately playable format, but you might be better off buying an Ibanez Mikro or other small scale guitar for $130 and paying $1000 to get a top notch luthier to rebuild it for you, shield it, Plek or fret-work it, and install premium pickups in it.
Tone: With regard to string tension I am still experimenting with this. I installed Kinman P90 buckers in my Jaguar and with 11 guage strings (flatwound on top) I am getting an identical clean tone to my Fender strat with SCN noisless S-1 active bridge pickups. While the Kinman pickups are high end, I think it is still a big deal that I can get the same clean tone on my Jaguar as I get on my strat in the neck position. The distortion tones are also comparable. I am able to bend the 11 guage strings as easily as 9 guage on the Fender - unless that's all in my head too, but it certainly isn't straining my hand or in any way uncomfortable. I would love to connect both the Jaguar and Stratocaster up to a digital oscilloscope and contrast the tone quality in a more quantitative way. I need to shield my Jaguar in a big way before I can comment on the Kinman pickups noisless quality. There is still a lot of noise that I believe to be emf.
