Official Luthiers Forum!

I have the Ferrington guitar book in which Danny Ferrington has several photos of "little guitars" that have scale lengths of 17 and 19 inches. Other than parlor guitars and the occasional Size 5 guitars, I can't recall seeing any examples on the forum of nicely done little guitars. I'd love to see photos if any of you have smaller builds. Are these guitars tuned differently? Also, if you know of sources to obtain plans for smaller guitars, I'm all ears.

Thanks!

No one has responded to this, so I'll jump in. Short scale guitars can be tuned to standard pitch, but they'll sound a little ukuleleish. (Try out some "3/4" scale guitars at your local music store to see what I mean.) They can also be tuned up to a higher pitch, and then they can be pretty interesting. A good example is the Mexican requinto. Basically, it's like a small bodied standard guitar capoed at the third fret. Still, its sound is distinctive, and attractive. GAL sells plans for one, but I've seen better examples than the one in their plan. Another source might be some of the early 19th century guitars. Panormo is a famous name, but there were a lot of interesting luthiers back then. The University of Edinburgh seems to have a good collection of early guitar plans. (http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/uwl.html#Strings) I hope this helps.