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I’m considering a build for a 14fret short scale acoustic. No real details yet, but was just mentally thinking through what would be involved. I realize the bridge will need to move up a bit, and am concerned about it crowding the sound hole and looking weird.

What considerations should I be thinking about / what body shapes would work best for such a thing?
Thanks
B


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How short are you calling short scale?

Some things to consider…

Make sure your x’s hit the bridge wings where you like…

Make sure you bridge pin holes don’t hit the x’s…

Make sure there is enough space in front of the saddle and the x brace joint to fit a SBT of your choice if you plan that, and if you plan a UST make sure your saddle slot ends don’t hover over the x’s…

Make sure to adjust your bridgeplate to accommodate the new bridge location and check to see that there’ll be room for an SBT if you’re planning one. May be prudent to plan carefully pickup ramifications even if you’re not adding one today so that some future P/U installer just doing their thing doesn’t doesn't get hit with less than ideal circumstance and accidentally doing something silly.

As for the aesthetics of crowding the sound hole, it’s easy enough to slide it forward a bit, but even going from 25.5 to 24.75, the bridge would only move forward to the neck joint by about 3/8”…

In theory, my layout templates can accommodate 25.5-24.75 without changing anything, in practice, well, my thoughts above come from experience, lol.

I don’t worry too too much about scale/body size looks wise, after all J45’s are 24.75, AJ’s are 25.5 and they share the same body shape and they both look fine…that said, a short scale 00/000 can be a nice change from a dread.

I also think it’s a good idea to widen the nut a touch on a short scale, if your 25.5 scale has a 1 11/16 nut ala Martin/Larrivee dread. Mine are almost universally 25 and 1.75…

Snow—

Do you have the G Thang software? I find it to be really helpful when running through the “what-ifs” of changes like this.

Agreed. G Thang makes it a breeze to see the effects of changes in things like scale lengths and the position of the neck/body joint on the bridge position, whether or not the sound hole gets crowded and whether you can fix that by moving the sound hole a bit, and whether changes you try out make the overall appearance funky or not. The program comes with a selection of several standard body shapes that you can use to try out your ideas or you can modify one of those body shapes to suit your tastes and then try out stuff. The one limitation is that it only runs on PCs.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Brown craft paper is your friend. You can draft out the scale, soundhole placement, bracing, and other details pretty easy that way.

One I always struggle with is getting the neck width at the body joint right. Drawing it out makes it easy, as you can just draft and measure.

I think Truckjohn's got it right. This is your guitar, you can do anything you want. There's no design police. There is quite an array of dimensions to keep track of, though. Make as many drawings as you need. I suggest starting with the body outline, locate the position of the saddle slot, and start filling in the blanks. Time you get done, the fingerboard, soundhole, bridge plate, bridge, saddle, and x-brace will be on the drawing.

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Peter Havriluk

When Martin started building 14 fret bodies they "pushed down" the upper bout compared to the 12 fret bodies. That helped the bridge position in the lower bout remain close to where it was.
Nigel Forster's tenor guitars seems to have taken this concept a bit farther, so you might check out what he has done. Tenor guitars usually have a 22 to 23 inch scale length, but I'm not sure what he uses.
https://www.nkforsterguitars.com/instru ... or-guitar/

Here's a composite pic I put up here when the occasion arises. Both halves of the image are Martin 00 size, aligned according to the frets. It shows the differences between the "squashed" 14 fret and the longer body 12 fret 00. Personally, I love the tone from the longer body.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

If you are considering 24.7 inch as being “short scale”, versus 25.4 - don’t stress to much as it is not a huge difference and you can shift things to compensate. It is also interesting to think that Gibson made L-00 models with 12 or 13 or 14 frets to the body without changing the body shape or size. They just moved the bridge and the bracing a bit north or south. I would really recommend a short scale 13 fret design. It kind of balances out to put the bridge in a really good spot to drive the lower bout in a 00 or 000 sized body. Check out the Santa Cruz H-13, or the vintage Gibson Nick Lucas 13 fret L-00.

My 13 fret deep body 00 is my best seller…

Thanks y’all. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything super weird I wasn’t thinking of:) I’ll be alright shifting braces / sound hole and such:)
Peace:)


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I've made (2? 3? lost track) 13-fret short-scale guitars with roughly OO sized bodies and I've found them to be happy combinations of playability and tone. As mentioned above that puts the bridge in a happy place and allows me to use 1 tone bar, the neighborhood is otherwise crowded inside.

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Peter Havriluk