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Hey all, I once had a Guild that I could WAIL on without it producing that "fwap" sound. The strings were very tight. I currently build at a 25.5 scale but am experimenting with the idea of changing that to produce that desired "tightnes". Would I go longer or shorter?

The longer the wire the tighter the wire to get to pitch

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I recently built a guitar with a 27" scale. I strung it up with Mediums and it is meant to be tuned down to D so that application is different than what Paul is looking for.

I remember talking with Al C about tensions and I was concerned about what I should do for bracing etc. Anyway the jist of our conversation worked out to be something like this:

The frequency of a given string is inversely proportional to the length and dirctly proportional to the square root of the tension. So cutting the length in half raises the pitch by one octave, but to raise the pitch a octave at the given length you would have to raise the tension by a factor of four (sqaure root of four is two). So for a given string material and diameter, if you increase the length by 10% then you will have to raise the tension by (1.1*1.1)=1.21, or 21% higher.

I played around with some of that info to help me finish up the 27" scale guitar. It worked out quite well. Thanks for the help AL.