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I would appreciate some advice from those that have built short scale classicals. I am planning a build for my wife (who has very small hands) with a 635 to 640 mm scale length and a narrower fret board. I have seen advice to scale the width down at the nut end, but leave the saddle spacing about the same as even small hands need about the same plucking spacing. That makes sense.

I am planning on using the same plantilla of my other builds (37 Hauser) as it is already a fairly small guitar and she plays one now (650 scale with normal width fretboard).

My question is: should I brace the top like I've been doing and just shift the bridge and bridge plate towards the neck as required? Or should I pull the sound hole and associated transverse braces towards the neck as well?

Since we are only talking moving the saddle a quarter of an inch or so, it seems like I could go either way, but I don't want to guess! If I don't move the sound hole and transverse braces, I would need to add a fret or two to get the board all the way to the sound hole.

Thanks for any help,
MIke

I wonder if you could move the neck towards the body and lose the last fret?

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

The 12th fret is always at the body junction so
For a 635mm scale the 19th fret is 2.5mm closer to the 12th fret than for a 650 scale.(433-325 vs 423-317.5)
If you want the soundhole to cut the 19th fret in the same manner you could move the soundhole location 2.5mm closer to the body/ neck joint

Lots of people want a 20th fret, anyway.

If making the string spacing closer, still be sure to leave plenty of room so that the e-string isn't easy to pull off the fingerboard--a problem many of us have.

The Torres model 'La Leona' (or any model near it's size) makes for a good match for shorter scale classical Guitars. It's at 465 mm body length, as opposed to 480 mm for his largest model. I use the Leona model as a basis for modern Classical Guitars at anywhere between 620 mm to 635 mm string length and it still retains very good bass depth, not quite as 'heavy' sounding as some of the larger modern classicals. You lose nothing on the trebles or volume (IMO) and many think it has a better bass to treble balance. I changed the waist details because La Leona has quite a flat waist (which I don't like) in comparison to some of his other models.
I can readily play a 48 mm width neck without inadvertently dampening adjacent strings and my fingers are a touch on the tubby side. Some women have very small and very slim fingers (almost child like) so a short scale and narrow fretboard makes perfect sense. If she has 'very small hands' I wouldn't bother with the 640 scale. The difference isn't enough to justify the change. I would move to 630 or even 620 mm's.

I sometimes play a 632mm string length with 48mm nut and 55.5mm string spacing at the tie block and love it. The body is smaller like a Torres FE17. I originally built it for a friend with arthritis in her hands.

I've built a couple at 630, and so have a couple of my students. We've just used the standard box and moved the bridge up. I don't use a bridge plate, so that has not been a factor.

Alicia Kopfstien-Penk wrote a small book called 'The Healthy Guitar' on this subject. She is a Classical guitarist who always had problems making the stretches. People would tell her to just practice until she got it. One day it occurred to her that, at five feet two, she's never going to reach the top shelf in the kitchen, no matter how much she practices. She then worked out a system for figuring out what scale length would work for her hands. I've found it to be pretty conservative: it usually ends up specifying a shorter scale than most of my students feel they need. OTOH, none of them are pursuing the top level of the Classical guitar repertoire. It might be difficult to find the book, but worth it if you can.

On my first few classical builds, I was using the GAL Rodriguez plan. The Rodriguez was usually a 660, but Tom Blackshear provided plantilla outlines for both 660 and 650 scales. The 650 is achieved simply by pulling in the upper bout a little to shorten the body by 5 mm. Nothing below the lower transverse brace is changed, and the position of the upper transverse braces is also unchanged. In the plan, Tom did shift the soundhole center by all or part of the 5 mm towards the bridge, and I build the several I made that way. As pointed out above, this is maintaining the soundhole to body/neck joint distance, while the change in scale is making the 12th to 19th fret distance shorter. My experience was that the resulting 19th fret split was minimal or not even needed depending on how the fretboard end was rounded. The soundhole should have been left in the original position as well, to move it proportionally closer to the 12th fret.

So, I would proceed by shortening the body in the upper bout, leave all the real estate below the lower transverse brace unchanged (particularly the bridge position relative to the body shape), and move the soundhole not at all or at most a mm or 2 towards the bridge - certainly not the full 5mm.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

As always on this forum, I've received great advice. I'll share the results when the guitar is built. Thanks and Merry Christmas to all!
Mike