Scale Length - String Tension ?

[advid]

..is a Gibson type scale length neck (24.6) with 11's on eqivalent to a Fender scale (25.5) with 10's as far as string tension / 'bendabilty' and overall feel factor - especially for fingerstyle type playing... ?

[Peter C]

Yes, more or less. D'Addario make a 10.5-48 set (EXL110+, I just checked for you), so you could also try that.

[GuyBoden]

You can check your string tension by changing the scale length and string gauge with this very good online String Tension Calculator:

Stringjoy Guitar String Tension Calculator

[Cunamara]

..is a Gibson type scale length neck (24.6) with 11's on eqivalent to a Fender scale (25.5) with 10's as far as string tension / 'bendabilty' and overall feel factor - especially for fingerstyle type playing... ?

That's the rule of thumb. Hmm, a remarkably apropos term for guitarists.

OK, pedanticism warning. You asked for the time, I'm going to tell you how to build a wristwatch. The curse of being an old guy with too much time on his hands, apparently. I am writing this partly to avoid having to go out and shovel the April Fool's snowstorm that just put nearly a foot of snow in my backyard. Again. Feel free to skip if you don't care.

For a given vibrating length, a heavier string requires higher tension than a lighter string to achieve the same pitch. With a shorter vibrating length, the same gauge string requires lower tension to achieve the same pitch than a longer string scale (increasing string tension shortens the vibrational frequency of a given string at a given length). That is the primary thing you are asking about, but there are some other factors affecting feel- hence the alert about pedantic nonsense ahead.

Think of fretting or bending the string as creating a right triangle. The opposite side of the triangle is the natural line of the string between the nut and bridge; the adjacent side of the triangle is the amount the string is deflected to fret and/or bend it; the hypotenuse is the line of the string from where it is fretted to its end points at the nut and bridge. Resistance to bending or "feel" is related to string tension- the force pulling along the axis of the string- but is not exactly a linear relationship (I'm not positive, I think it is a bidirectional tangent relationship between the amount of deflection at the fretting location and both of the string endpoints, but someone more trig savvy than me can address that). Fretting the string at the 12th fret on my archtop with 25" scale would result in an adjacent side of a right triangle being 4/64" and an opposite side of 12 1/2" in both directions. Higher string action requires more deflection of the string and lower action requires less deflection, making the instrument feel more or less stiff. Fretting at the 5th fret results in right triangles with opposite sides of 6 3/8" to the nut and 18 5/8" to the bridge. Bending a note here is more difficult than at the 12th fret because of the effective greater stiffness of the shorter opposite side to the nut. Bending at the first fret is hard because the length to thickness ratio is very low there and thus the string is effectively much stiffer.

The thickness of the string versus its length affects stiffness which has audible as well as tactile effects. A 1/4" steel rod 4 feet long is fairly easy to flex, but that same rod 2 inches long is extremely difficult to flex. The longer rod will vibrate much more freely than the shorter rod. Play a string open or on the first few frets and then listen to how the tone and sustain changes above the 12th fret; as the vibrating string gets effectively shorter, it also gets effectively stiffer. Sustain is reduced and overtones become less pronounced. Lighter gauge strings show this effect less than thicker strings (e.g., .046 vs .056 or .008 vs .013)- part of the traditional "jazz guitar sound" of heavy gauge strings comes from this effect, basically choking the tone as you play on the higher frets. Heavier strings also display more fundamental and fewer overtones because of greater stiffness, lighter gauge strings have more "sparkle" which is the opposite effect. This is more obvious on wound than on plain strings to my ears. Rick Beato posted a video about this promulgating light strings (.008s) as having better tone but that was oriented towards rock tones and distortion; in jazz, we seem to prefer the strong fundamental and less overtones. Pushed too far and it becomes part of the "blanket over the amp" effect.

String construction (roundwound, flatwound, etc.) also affects stiffness and thus tone with flatwounds having a stiffer feel, all other things being equal. Some string makers use thinner versus heavier cores in their wound strings, which will affect stiffness and feel. That is why TI strings feel "softer" than equivalent gauge strings from many other makers- they use a thinner core wire. And, as has been discussed many times, string material has a significant effect on tone, probably largely related to hardness with harder wire having a brighter, more overtoney sound versus softer materials (stainless steel versus nickel, for example). Round versus hex core probably also has an effect here.

Sharper break angles at the nut and bridge probably also affect tone and feel by reducing movement at those contact points, although I don't know how great an effect that really is. It seems as though there would be less elasticity in the system, if the string is more tightly locked at those points. This might be responsible for the difference people here between a top-loader or through-body Telecaster or archtop guitars with an adjustable tailpiece that can increase or reduce the break angle over the bridge.

So, after all of that long-winded and probably not very interesting or helpful palaver: shorter scale means lower tension to bring the string to pitch and makes the guitar feel looser. Longer scale will require more tension to bring the same string to pitch, resulting in a stiffer feel. The 3/4" difference between the "Fender" and "Gibson" scales is about a string gauge difference, in terms of subjective feel for most people.

[Jimmy Smith]

No. If you consult the string tension readings, you see they're actually about a half gauge apart, not a full gauge.

[John A.]

..is a Gibson type scale length neck (24.6) with 11's on eqivalent to a Fender scale (25.5) with 10's as far as string tension / 'bendabilty' and overall feel factor - especially for fingerstyle type playing... ?

I don’t know what the measured differences in tension are, but I don’t find the difference in feel to be especially noticeable, certainly not as much difference as a full gauge up. But there are other differences besides scale length between guitars that make these sorts of comparisons difficult.

For instance, I have a 24.75” * guitar and a 25.5”, both strung with 10s. They have different fingerboards radii, fret sizes, and bridge types (a strat whammy bar and a trapeze). Also I play other guitars strung more heavily, so my hands may be strong enough not to feel the the differences as much as I might otherwise.

* actual 24.75” scale, not the Gibson nominal 24.75” that’s actually 24.6”. I have one of those, too, but strung with 13’s.

[Dennis D]

......Somewhere in this discussion I'd like to see neck angle addressed.....I know it can be a factor, and really wonder how builders make the decision as to which to use.......

[Archie]

I asked chatGPT about this last night oddly enough.
Here’s what it said.

It also said that higher string tension allows notes higher up the neck to remain focused and clear but did not mention that in this example.

[Woody Sound]

You can check your string tension by changing the scale length and string gauge with this very good online String Tension Calculator:

Stringjoy Guitar String Tension Calculator

That's a great resource, thanks Guy.

[Woody Sound]

That's the rule of thumb. Hmm, a remarkably apropos term for guitarists.

OK, pedanticism warning. You asked for the time, I'm going to tell you how to build a wristwatch. The curse of being an old guy with too much time on his hands, apparently. I am writing this partly to avoid having to go out and shovel the April Fool's snowstorm that just put nearly a foot of snow in my backyard. Again. Feel free to skip if you don't care.

As a guy about to retire from day job, and just off the Lake Erie snow effect, I get that. BW already has a list of long overdue projects. Mine is organizing and tidying up the music studio.

[StringNavigator]

..is a Gibson type scale length neck (24.6) with 11's on eqivalent to a Fender scale (25.5) with 10's as far as string tension / 'bendabilty' and overall feel factor - especially for fingerstyle type playing... ?

Here's another internet tension calculator, but it disagrees by 2 lbs tension! Oh Dear...! Rockets have crashed for less.)
String Tension Calculator

For Guitar String No.1 "E4"
25.5" 10's = 16.274 lb Tension
24.5" 11's = 18.178 lb Tension

There's 1.9 lb less tension on your Fender's top string according to this.
It appears that in spite of the 1" longer scale length, the 10 thou reduction in gauge erased 10% of the Tension.

The Fender-Bender wins! That is, if the perception in feel is linear...
Also, it would appear that the string-gauge effect on tension is about 3x greater than that of scale-length, in this range.

::

[JCat]

..is a Gibson type scale length neck (24.6) with 11's on eqivalent to a Fender scale (25.5) with 10's as far as string tension / 'bendabilty' and overall feel factor - especially for fingerstyle type playing... ?

Bendabilty and overall feel factor is mostly about other things than scale length or string gauge.
Basically you could have 25.5" scale guitar with 11s play slinky and a 24.5" scale guitar with 9s play stiff depending on setup. It's an art.

[Tomcat]

Cool topic here, on the other hand the actual neck thickness and profile have also vital impact on "feel" and "bendability" imho. I've always felt the strat scale being more bending friendly (assuming the same string gauges on both) but I have one strat-type guitar with exceptionally thick neck and it feels more "gibby" to me ;0

[s11141827]

I figured out that for an Electric Guitar to sound great w/ Ultra-Light strings, its scale length would have to be over half a foot longer than 25.5 inches.

[GuyBoden]

Generally, you can have a lower action with larger string gauges with less fret buzz than smaller string gauges, because the more you increase a string's gauge the less they oscillate and don't hit the frets. Obviously, the larger a string's gauge, the higher the tension at the same pitch.