Thread: String Spacing
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Old 04-02-2013, 09:45 AM
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Larry Pattis Larry Pattis is offline
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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
<<snip>>

From my perspective, the player plays the string spacing at the nut, at the saddle (or thereabout) and the amount of clearance he has between the strings and the edge of the fingerboard. Done this way, there is no defined relationship between string spacing at the saddle and the width of the fingerboard at any specific fret. The fingerboard is as wide as it needs to be, where it needs to be, to accommodate the preferences of the player. That's how Charles Fox taught me to do it, way back when.

Hmmm.

My *opinion* (ahem) is that one can indeed take this a bit further, because there can be meaningful relationships beyond this approach.

I agree fully that one always plays the string spacing, because that's where the fingers go to find the strings!

However, the underlying palette of the fretboard can provide more or less real estate on the outside of the E strings, and some of these relationships can be advantageous to the player, not to mention somewhat confusing.

Here's a conundrum in this regard:

Martin sells three OM sized guitars with three different bridge spacings, 2-1/4", 2-5/16", and 2-3/8", in order of increasing string spacings at the bridge.

Each of these three guitars has a 1-3/4" nut.

One would think that each guitar would have similar distances beyond each E string as you travel up the neck, to higher frets, that is, the guitars with the wider bridge spacing would have fingerboards that taper wider. Instead, what one finds is that Martin uses the same neck/fingerboard for each of these three guitars....that is, they *all* measure 2-1/4" across the full fingerboard at the 12th fret.

So the wider string spacing guitars (wider at the bridge) have the E strings closer and closer to the edges of the fingerboard as you go up the neck.

This, quite frankly, is not the way to build a guitar, IMNSHO. Knowing these relationships, from the players perspective, is *quite* important.

Now, many builders end up with a guitar that has the bridge spacing as equal to the overall width of the fingerboard at the 14th fret. This is a common relationship, where intentional or not. Others (fewer) have the bridge spacing as the overall width of the fingerboard at the 12th fret, effectively tapering wider, to give the E strings more distance to the edges (or inset further).

In addition to this, of course, many builders (and players) will offset the strings slightly (at bridge and nut) so that the high E string is further from the fingerboard edge than the low E string.

Some players *like* their E strings closer to the edges, and some do not...so again, knowing these specific measurements, from the players perspective, is *quite* important. Some builders do also feel the same way...it's not just the players.

So adding one measurement (the overall width of the 12th fret) while looking at the string spacings can provide a big piece of information to the player...without assuming that the builder *knows* what is good for each player.

I know, it's a lot of words to describe a simple situation.

That's the way I roll!

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