Smalls hands....

[athompie]

I've only been playing guitar for two years and I'm at the point where I can get a decent guitar. My price range is about five hundred so I've been looking at the masterbilt series. I think I should get the AJ-500M but I want to start up fingerstyle guitar (I'm practicing on my own but I'm going to get lessons soon). I'm wondering if the EF series guitars would be too difficult for me to play because they have a bigger fretboard and i'd have to stretch my fingers out more (takes too much time and my finger strength isn't good enough); I have smaller hands. Should i stick to the AJ-500M for ease in chords or get an EF series for ease in finger picking?

[mishmannah]

Whatever you feel comfortable with. I have small hands too, and not all narrow necks feel comfortable and easy to play on.

You can go so narrow on the neck, it's difficult to form chords.


I even believe a wide neck with deliciously low action can be a real pleasure to play on even if your digits are small.

[Kitchen Guitars]

I had a Fingerstyle Collings 000 All Mahogany, sunburst....... my dream guitar and I couldn't play it because of a combination of my small hands and only having played for 2 years. The first 5 frets were ok but heading up towards the 12th fret it just got too wide for me. I kept gravitating back to the Gibson AJ and a Yamaha FG300. So one day I measured everything and found that the neck, nut and profile of my 300 (a hummingbird lawsuit copy) and my AJ were vertualy identical. It's 1.75 for me. I still don't know the definitions of the various profiles. My next aquisistion I'm thinking of is going to be a Epiphone Masterbuilt with a 46mm neck. So, I looked up the conversion; 46 Millimeters equals 1.81102 or roughly 3/16"'s more than 1.75. I hope it's not too wide. The Epiphone is a Nylon so I guess the strings are wider.
I don't know if hand size tells all for what neck is comfortable. Try out a bunch.

[buddiesorg]

I have small hands with short fingers. It's taken awhile (probably mostly because my head said I couldn't), but I can easily go up to 1 7/8 (though if set up isn't just right, a 1 7/8 is difficult) ... and if I let my hand relax, I can usually play classicals over 2.

I found out that finger picking is actually easier on a wider neck because the spacing at the bridge is also wider, and I've come to prefer it.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by athompie

...I'm wondering if the EF series guitars would be too difficult for me to play because they have a bigger fretboard and i'd have to stretch my fingers out more (takes too much time and my finger strength isn't good enough); I have smaller hands.
...Should i stick to the AJ-500M for ease in chords or get an EF series for ease in finger picking?

Hi athompie...
Welcome to the group. Glad you joined. I'll address your questions from a guitar teacher's perspective.

A guitar's size and neck width - certainly not a 1 11/16'' versus a 1 3/4'' neck - do not have to determine whether you can play it. The neck profile and action have more to do with that than the width of the neck.

One of my best guitar students is a short lady (about 5 feet tall) and she has the smallest hands I've ever seen, and her main guitar is a Taylor 714ce with a full 1 3/4'' neck like the Epiphone EF series. She has no problem with the neck width. Her guitar in college was a wide neck (1 7/8'') Martin D-35.

If a guitar is setup properly, and the action is low, you can learn to relax your hand as you stretch because you don't need a ton of strength to press the strings. Speed changing chords comes with time, and learning to relax and anticipate chord changes. After you go and play some guitars and find one that is comfortable to your hand, make sure the action is set low enough to press strings easily.

[BigRed51]

Originally Posted by athompie

I think I should get the AJ-500M but I want to start up fingerstyle guitar (I'm practicing on my own but I'm going to get lessons soon). I'm wondering if the EF series guitars would be too difficult for me to play because they have a bigger fretboard and i'd have to stretch my fingers out more (takes too much time and my finger strength isn't good enough); I have smaller hands. Should i stick to the AJ-500M for ease in chords or get an EF series for ease in finger picking?

The only way to learn what is comfortable for you to play is to keep playing as many guitars as you can find, and keep good notes. Be patient. As you start to zero in on a few that feel good and sound good to you, play them on a couple of different occasions. I also highly recommend buying from a retailer with a liberal return policy, so that you can play it in several different environments, and for longer periods of time before you are committed to keeping it. 30-45 days no question asked return policies are getting easier to find ... just make sure you don't ding it up!

I too have very small hands. Some guitars that people love, I find unplayable. But there are different kinds of small hands. I have small hands, and short stumpy fingers. Some people with small hands, still have long, slender fingers. To really confuse the matter, I have three guitars that I play every day ... one is 1 11/16", one is 1 3/4", and one is 1 23/32". My preference is the 1 23/32 ... but part of that is because the neck is very slender in depth, which is equally as important as the nut width.

Keep in mind that having a wider nut-width for fingerpicking and narrower for flatpicking is not a law, it is a personal preference. Before I gave up fingerpicking in favor of flatpicking, I was very comfortable with the narrower necks. The tendency is to get used to what you have, and that becomes your "preference." The more comfortable you are with a guitar, the more you will tend to play it, and the better you will become. But don't compromise the sound you like for comfort ... if you are patient, you will find a guitar that meets both criteria. In your price range, there are some wonderful guitars to explore ... you have discovered Masterbuilt, and there are also good choices from Blueridge and Johnson (Carolina and Recording King). Be sure to find places near you that tend to have used guitars come through, and check with them office to see what is in your price range ... and play them all, whether you think you will like them or not. You just might be surprised!