Talk:Scale length (string instruments)

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This article (stub at the time of writing) came out of the splitting of Fender Bass VI to create Fender Baritone Custom. I play one of the latter, but was unaware that the scale length of the original Bass VI was different, despite having done what I thought was thorough research before buying the Bari (with which I am delighted, just BTW).

There's not a lot on scale lengths on the web, Wikipedia included, and what there is reveals that I'm not the only one making bad guesses.

For example, those who rave about the short scale length of the Fender Mustang and Jagstang seem largely unaware that the 24" scale length is identical to that of the Fender Jaguar, with the exception of the first few Mustangs which were seriously short at 22.5".

And I'm still trying to sort out the scale lengths of bowed strings. I think what I have there is accurate, but there are lots of puzzling comments elsewhere on the web about changes to violin neck lengths since Stradivarius. I suspect that at least some of the writers who talk about these are confusing the changes in pitch which certainly have occurred since the strads were built with changes in scale length. That is, I'm guessing that just the sound posts and bass bars of the strads have been replaced rather than their necks too, and that any necks that have been replaced have been replaced with ones of the same length as the originals. But it's still a guess at this stage. Any help appreciated!

Lots still to do! Andrewa 01:44, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Some expansion, and some corrections. Interesting stuff about the viola!

Some obvious outstanding questions:

• What is the Stradivarius scale length for the cello? Several websites refer to it saying such-and-such an instrument has this scale length, but none of them say what it is!

• At what time(s) did the conventional student scale names such as 3/4 come into use for violin, cello and bass?

• How standard are they? At what time(s) were they standardised?

Add that information, and we'll start to have a good article. It's already a substantial contribution to the WWW coverage of the topic, IMO. Andrewa 23:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

From http://www.lemur-music.com/aspbass/bass_nsd.asp describing a 5 string electric cello:

The scale length is standard at 695 mm.

From elsewhere it appears that their 4 and 5 string instruments have the same scale length. I'd still like some more confirmation, but I think it's enough to go on for now. Everyone just seems to assume that it's a well-known figure. Andrewa 17:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

ummm..... (root(12,2) / root(12,1)) /* i think someone made a typo in the "''''math" thing....

also, "this page is objective/well-typed/etc" -- maybe add option "I studied this extensively in college, but it wasn't my *primary* field of expertise"... dunno, was just thinking. probably belongs to a more global wikipedia-ism-or-some-thing-ism..... Delt01 05:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Delt01 (talk • contribs)

Good Start; Needs Work

I think it's great that someone has attempted to do this. I do have some suggestions for improvement, and I may add some information to the article as I find the time.

• I think the article would be both more useful and more authoritative if it gave scale lengths for classes of instruments, rather than specific manufacturers' makes and models. For example, a class might be "full size solid body electric guitars", rather than individually listing "Fender Mustang; Gibson Les Paul Recording; etc." Perhaps manufacturer-specific information chould be included in a sub-chart or footnote. Other classes could be "classical guitars"; "steel-string acoustic guitars"; "3/4-size guitars"; etc., and the same thing for violins, mandolins, etc.

• A range of scales lengths should be given for each instrument, with perhaps one or two of the most common being cited as "typical". For example: Classical Guitar: 24" - 26" (25 5/8", typical). This is essential because scales do vary considerably within a particular range for most instruments. For example, mandolins come in all sorts of scales from 33-41cm, but the article gives only 36cm as if it were a fixed constant. I have steel-string acoustic guitars with scales considerably longer than most of my classical guitars. I have bass guitars with scales anywhere from 21" to 42".

• I suggest giving both English and metric measurements for all instruments (right now some have both; others have one or the other).

• There should be consistency in the units used: right now some instruments have the metrics in mm, and others in cm. With English units, fractions are more commonly used than decimals (e.g., 25 1/8" rather than 25.125"), but with metric decimals should be used (e.g., 67.5cm rather than 67 1/2cm).

• There are a lot more instruments which could be added. The "Stringed Instrument Tunings" article lists over 200 stringed instruments, but the "other instrurments" section here only contains mandolins and ukuleles -- not even a banjo in sight.

Hope this is at least somewhat helpful, and as I said, I'll add information myself as time becomes available to do so. Carry on. :)

It would also be handy to have a chart somewhere on the page, that lists the various instruments and gives max, min, and typical scale lengths. That way the amount of numbers in the text itself could be minimized, making the text easier to read, without losing any information, since all the numbers would still be there in the chart. For example:

Instrument	Typical	Max. Scale	Min. Scale
Violin (modern)	~13" (328mm)	13" (330mm)	12-1/2" (320mm)
Violin (Baroque)	etc.
Viola	15" (381mm)	15-3/4" (400mm)	13" (330mm)
Guitar (classical, modern)	25-5/8" (652mm)	24" (609mm)	26" (661mm)
Guitar (steel string)	etc.
Mandolin	etc.
Banjo (tenor)	etc.

And so on. I haven't tried for accurate numbers in the example; just wanted to show a possible format. It would probably make sense to group instruments by category (violin family; guitar family; etc.) and perhaps subgroup by period (modern; classical; Baroque; etc.)

Just a thought.

74.95.43.253 (talk) 21:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Dubious Stradivarius measurements and others

Not a single Stradivarius violin survives with its original neck. (The one instrument with a baroque neck is a restoration.) Possibly drawings or templates survive as evidence of his original sounding string length (?), but that has nothing to do with the string length of a violin in modern setup.

695 is perhaps on the long side for cello by a few millimeters. (68-69 cm is what I think of as normal; perhaps more towards the 69 side.)

Viola string length isn't mentioned. Like body size, it varies (and NB a different body size does not NECESSARILY imply a different string length). Between about 14.25 and 15 inches would be about the range for instruments of a size suitable for use in a professional orchestra (body from around 16 to 16 3/4 inches).

It should perhaps be noted that the convention for these measurements for bowed strings is to measure from the edge of the center of the nut to the edge of the center of the bridge (i.e., in the middle, between the third and fourth strings). Thus the actual vibrating length of the strings is fractionally longer than the measurement since the strings are not parallel and fan out a bit from the center line where the measurement is taken. (The height of the bridge, which varies from string to string, will also have a small effect.)

The information on bowed string instruments duplicates (and to some extent contradicts) information in the articles on the individual instruments.

No sources!!!!

Yes, needs work.

72.76.5.211 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:53, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

shorten the intro section

A suggestion, though somewhat emphatic. The opening is informative, but IMO entirely too voluminous and somewhat daunting. Shouldn't this be more of an abstract (summary)?? With that as the goal, most of the (sorry, but it's true) infodump ought be moved to after the Contents. resolved
Weeb Dingle (talk) 14:45, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

units

1 inch is exactly 25.4 cm. Conversions should be more accurate, specifying two decimal places for both units. As they are, they are too inexact, and not even consistent, with 25.5 and 25.6 both supposed to be 650 mm. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.29.81.232 (talk) 21:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I suppose you wanted to say "1 inch is exactly 25.4 mm" not "cm" Rohalskyy (talk) 23:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

No 1 inch is 25.4 mm, not cm. Also, cm are deprecated as part of the old CGS and should not be used in an encyclopedic context, and the article certainly should not mix mm and cm. Given the variation inherent in most musical instruments, 0.1" or 1 mm should be accurate enough for this article, as adjusting the action or changing strings on many instruments is enough to require scale length changes (to adjust intonation) of this much or more. This would give 648 mm and 650 mm for the two examples cited. Stub Mandrel (talk)

It is quite common for luthiers to use inches as their chosen unit, and also for others to use cm or mm, so both measurements should be given.

It is also true that when inches are used, it is more common for them to appear with fractional values, rather than as decimals.

That said, major parts of most of these instruments are worked in wood, and often by hand, so tolerances can be fairly large, at least as compared to standards for machining metal parts.

So even though technically 330mm is 12.9921" and 328mm is 12.9134", it would be correct to give either metric as 13", since in instrument woodworking the difference is really negligible, and there might easily be more than that much variation even between two supposedly "identical" instruments.

74.95.43.253 (talk) 21:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

For some critical dimensions, 2mm or 5/64" is way too wide of a tolerance, far from negligible. For violin work, since you mention a scale length near 330mm, some wooden parts are made to a tolerance of a tenth or even a twentieth of a millimeter, say four thousandths or two thousandths of an inch. It's not rocket science, using knives and scrapers, checking with a vernier caliper, a seventeenth-century invention still in use today. Just plain Bill (talk) 03:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)