Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

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Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by figgypudding18 » Tue Sep 28, 2021 6:01 am

Hey there, I’m trying to decide if I should go for a Jazzmaster or jaguar. I’ve owned a Jazzmaster before and really liked it, but I love the Jaguar sounds too, and I also like that the overall length is a bit shorter due to the overall scale. I’m not a big guy (5’7”) and I feel like that could be even more comfy than the jazz, altho that was pretty comfy as well.

when I have tried a Jaguar in person, I noticed the smaller size of the upper frets was new to me, and I struggled more to fret an E13 chord (x79799) on the short scale than I did with the Jag. My question is, do you think I would get used to the scale length after a while? Not sure if my fingers are too thick or something maybe? Here is a picture of my hand:

https://imgur.com/a/78Ydlza

Based on my hand size and height, which would you recommend? Maybe a bit of a weird question, but much appreciated!

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by GreenKnee » Tue Sep 28, 2021 7:18 am

Honestly, I think you get used to quickly. I mainly play jags but I switch to 25.5" scale sometimes and I don't really notice the difference.

A good test is to put a capo on the first fret of a 25.5" guitar. Your guitar is now essentially 24" scale length, albeit a semitone higher in pitch. Give that a go and see what you think :)

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by HarlowTheFish » Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:37 am

5'8", average hands for my height -- I'm pretty fine with any scale length up to 27", but I find my Vintera Mustang is the least fussy with stretches and wider chords. Yeah it's a bit tighter on the higher frets, but really not by much compared to my parts Mustang (which is 25.5") or my Kiesel (25.5"-26.5" multiscale). It's more of a habit/muscle memory thing, because I did have some trouble with hand positioning when I first got it, but after a few hours of playtime I wasn't even thinking about it. For comparison, I still have issues on my Ormsby (25.5"-27.5" multiscale) because that one's way too long and the fan is very extreme on it.

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Stephen_42 » Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:04 am

I don't think it makes a world of difference. I'm fairly tall (6-foot-something) but my Mustang naturally feels big to me because my original instrument was violin. But if I've been playing bass for a while, my Jazzmaster feels small.

Whichever you choose, you'll get used to either/both. If you're deciding between buying one or the other, try them both and get the one you enjoy playing more. There are lots of other little differences that might make you prefer one over the other, so my advice would be to not over-analyse scale length (or any other single difference) and just go with the one that most makes you want to pick it up.

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Embenny » Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:13 am

Don't worry about hand size and guitars. People who have heard my rant before will sigh and skip it, but I'll give you the abridged version.

There are large men who play mandolins with 16" scale length and ukuleles in the same range. There are small women who play 34" scale basses. They don't filter larger people into the viola and cello sections and smaller people into the violin sections of orchestras. A piano is a piano. They don't scale it up or down 5% based on hand size. Same for flutes and saxophones. 10 year-olds are already expected to be using 2" nut width, 650mm scale classical guitars.

So don't worry about matching an electric guitar to hand size. Buy the guitar you are interested in and/or like, and practice on it. With appropriate technique and practice, 99.9% of people can adapt to any spec of guitar. Very rarely is there a physical or medical reason that a particular spec of guitar is necessary.

It's just that a lot of people buy a wide variety of guitars and don't actually practice enough on them, so they conclude that some specs are "harder" to play. And it's fine to develop a personal preference. But my instruments range from 16" to 35" scale and 1.5" to 2.5" nut width, and the only issues I've ever had have resolved with practice, as would be expected.
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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by marqueemoon » Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:28 am

My feeling is if a Jag is the sound you want you’ll be able to make it work.

I’m 6’2 and play a shorter than Gibson scale guitar capoed in one band and a Jazzmaster (usually sans capo) in another.

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by guitalias » Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:16 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:13 am
Don't worry about hand size and guitars. People who have heard my rant before will sigh and skip it, but I'll give you the abridged version.

There are large men who play mandolins with 16" scale length and ukuleles in the same range. There are small women who play 34" scale basses. They don't filter larger people into the viola and cello sections and smaller people into the violin sections of orchestras. A piano is a piano. They don't scale it up or down 5% based on hand size. Same for flutes and saxophones. 10 year-olds are already expected to be using 2" nut width, 650mm scale classical guitars.

So don't worry about matching an electric guitar to hand size. Buy the guitar you are interested in and/or like, and practice on it. With appropriate technique and practice, 99.9% of people can adapt to any spec of guitar. Very rarely is there a physical or medical reason that a particular spec of guitar is necessary.

It's just that a lot of people buy a wide variety of guitars and don't actually practice enough on them, so they conclude that some specs are "harder" to play. And it's fine to develop a personal preference. But my instruments range from 16" to 35" scale and 1.5" to 2.5" nut width, and the only issues I've ever had have resolved with practice, as would be expected.
Good point.

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by JSett » Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:56 pm

You'll quickly adapt to whatever you put the time into. I've predominantly played 25.5" Jazzmasters for most of my adult life (5' 10", standard size L in gloves hands) but recently found myself having handstrain due to my job and early tell-tale signs of arthritis. I've moved over to Jaguars and Mustangs to try and mitigate some of the issues and its only taken a few months to get over the change. Even the A-width neck on my old Mustang isn't a problem anymore. I still pick up my, now solitary, Jazzmaster regularly and it still feels like 'home' - but the differences aren't an issue anymore.

You'll be surprised how easy it is when you stop thinking about it and just play.
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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Logrinn » Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:42 am

I disagree with most replies here.
I am confident that there is a huge difference in scale length (and neck sizes - but that’s a different story although related to this).
There are people of all sizes but very few sized guitars. We get shoes and clothes in the right sizes, but seldom with guitars. Fenders are an exception. They actually thought of people in different sizes (although they probably thought ”adults/students”).
Because of the size of your hands you might find it easier to play certain - or a lot of - stuff on a guitar with a certain scale length. Perhaps you won’t. Good for you.
I started out on a 24,75” scale guitar 48 years ago and have had guitars with most scale lengths.
I found - and this is my personal opinion (YMMV) - that guitars with a 24” scale length is perfect for me. It allows me to play stuff that is harder to play on a 24,75” scale and impossible to play on a 25,5” scale guitar. (The piano example mentioned earlier in a post above illustrates this - only people with huge hands are able to play certain music, Rachmaninov comes to mind.)

One thing that really made me realise the difference is when I play and not look at the neck.
Try this: pick up your guitar, stand up and hang it on your shoulders and without looking then play, let’s say an A-minor barred chord on the fifth fret.
Did your left hand (right if you’re left handed) place itself on the right fret? Or did you accidentally place it on the sixth fret? If you’re off, you might have a wrong scale guitar. With a 24” scale guitar I don’t have to look at the neck to know where I am.

Also - doesn’t anybody think about the fact that so many women play Mustangs and Jaguars? Both 24” scale guitars. There’s exceptions of course, but still …
I’m thinking that many guitar companies are missing a huge demographic - not only women but everybody that is smaller of stature.

The opposite is of course also true. If you’re a big guy, perhaps a 25,5” scale guitar is to small for you.
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Just my 2 cents …

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Ceylon » Thu Sep 30, 2021 4:28 am

I don't think that little bit of scale length really matters much. I'm a tall guy with big hands and I own both a Jaguar and a Jazzmaster. A lot of rhythm work feels a bit more natural on the Jaguar and some lead parts come easier on the Jazzmaster. So it comes down to what you want to play mostly. A lot of people say they can't get along with the shorter scale but I think that's largely about what you're used to. I see Jaguars and Mustangs getting more popular lately after Jazzmasters having had their renaissance for a while, so obviously more people are adapting to 24 inches.
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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Steadyriot. » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:12 am

It's all a bit pedantic when it comes to Fender scale lengths as the shorter Jaguar/Mustang scale of 24" is literally a 25,5" fretboard with the first fret lopped off and 2 frets added to the end.
Effectively this makes every fret over a fraction smaller, the 12th fret on a jazzmaster is the 11th fret on a Jaguar. Saying a Jaguar feels cramped is only really realistic passed the 20th fret if you are used to a Jazzmaster scale neck.
Not to say that it doesn't make a difference, a few mm can change a lot in big stretchy chords; but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of practice.
Logrinn wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:42 am

One thing that really made me realise the difference is when I play and not look at the neck.
Try this: pick up your guitar, stand up and hang it on your shoulders and without looking then play, let’s say an A-minor barred chord on the fifth fret.
Did your left hand (right if you’re left handed) place itself on the right fret? Or did you accidentally place it on the sixth fret? If you’re off, you might have a wrong scale guitar. With a 24” scale guitar I don’t have to look at the neck to know where I am.

Just my 2 cents …
This relies way more on the way the guitar is built and hangs on your body than whether or not the scale is right for you.
I played one of these for a short while:
Image

Even though it has an average scale, the neck extended so far out of the body with the way it was constructed, that it felt like playing a bass. Normally my neutral position lays around the 7th fret. On this it was somewhere around 10. Had nothing to do with the scale.
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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Larsongs » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:52 am

I play both short & long scale type Guitars as well as various sized neck Radius’…. Sometimes it’s more difficult playing shorter scale Guitars but the more I play them the more comfortable they feel…

I think size is relative.. It’s more about what you want.. If you like a Jazzmaster you’ll figure it out… Same with a Jaguar or most other Guitars..

Play the one that you like…. If you can, get both… Each have their own unique beautiful design & sound…. I’m lucky to have an AV65 JM & an AV65 Jag… I like them both equally…. It’s always a hard choice to decide which to play.. But, I love playing both of them!

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by Embenny » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:14 am

Logrinn wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:42 am
Try this: pick up your guitar, stand up and hang it on your shoulders and without looking then play, let’s say an A-minor barred chord on the fifth fret.
Did your left hand (right if you’re left handed) place itself on the right fret? Or did you accidentally place it on the sixth fret? If you’re off, you might have a wrong scale guitar.
No, if you're off, you just need to practice more.

If you think a 5' tall person might "need" a 24" scale guitar compared to a 6' tall person, let's do some quick math. A mandolin player would ideally be [60/24*16=] 3'4" then.

It just doesn't work that way. Why would every instrument in the world work differently than guitar? I'm talking about mandolin a lot because it's so structurally and musically similar, with frets and a variety of playing styles from chords to fast lead work.

If you lose your place on a given guitar without looking, it's just because you haven't practiced enough with it. Playing without looking relies on proprioception, which is the brain's ability to know the position of body parts based on things like the degree of extension and flexion of joints.

A lot goes into getting to know an instrument well enough to use proprioception alone to navigate it. A Jazzmaster and Strat are the same scale length, but the bridge and nut are positioned differently relative to the waist and the strap buttons. Same for a Firebird and an SG, even though they're the same scale length. If you switch guitars too often without learning them thoroughly enough, you don't develop that accurate map of the neck through proprioception.

That's just one small piece of the puzzle when it comes to learning the ins and outs of a particular guitar - string spacing, fret spacing, ideal thumb placement, and all sorts of other things vary slightly from one guitar to the next. But you can learn on any of them. The biggest problem people encounter is simply not taking the time to practice on it.

There are men and women with fingers 30% shorter than Steve Vai or Paul Gilbert, but they don't need 17.85" scale guitars compared to their 25.5" Ibanez models. Similarly, those guys have way bigger hands than 99% of people who complain they feel "cramped" on a Jaguar.

The difference is practice. Feeling cramped is a symptom of insufficient dexterity to play what you're trying to play. Feeling like the frets are too far apart is also a symptom of insufficient dexterity to play what you're trying to play. Every beginner feels like every fret is 10 miles apart and every string is 1mm apart. Non-beginners are not immune to those same feelings.

I don't consider myself some technical guitar god, but I was under 5' tall when I started learning on a 2" nut 25.6" classical guitar, and the solution to all my complaints was to practice.

It's unpopular advice because a lot more people like to buy new guitars than practice on any given guitar, so they just hone in on whatever combination of specs feels "natural", i.e. doesn't require any practice to adjust to. But I'm not talking about needing to spend 1000 hours running drills just to make a different guitar playable - the barrier to adjustment is far lower than people realize. It's just a matter of not bouncing between 5 different guitars you haven't practiced a ton on, and practicing on one at a time until it feels totally natural.

These are just my observations from my time as a guitar student and as a guitar teacher (not that I ever taught full-time, but I did do it for a while). We tend to stop viewing ourselves as benefitting as much from practice the more experienced we get, but as they say, you either work on growing or you start shrinking. If you never stick with a specific guitar and practice it, the variety of guitars you feel comfortable on will naturally shrink. If you work on playing a wider variety, your comfort zone grows.

I'm a small guy, and after years of only playing Jags, I found that only short scale electrics and acoustics were feeling comfortable. So, I bought a long scale acoustic and also took up the bass. I worked on it. Now my 35" scale 6-string bass feels manageable for chordal work up the neck and I don't even notice the stretch on the strats and teles I previously wrote off as uncomfortable for years. I also play the ukulele to keep smaller instruments from feeling cramped.

It's all doable for anyone of typical human size and anatomy. There are for sure some musculoskeletal conditions that impose limits (I knew someone with rheumatoid arthritis who had a very narrow range of specs that were physically possible for him to play), but for your everyday person, the answer is always to just practice on the instrument and you'll be fine.

Also, it's worth noting that a lot of guitarists are self-taught and never had a good teacher look at their technique. If you have bad ergonomics that limit your dexterity, then it's natural to feel like certain guitars are fighting you. The solution is still to practice, but you need to be practicing constructively with decent enough technique that progress is possible. Often, the fretting hand is being held at an angle that creates wrist strain and reduces dexterity. Can't tell you how many times I've seen that in people who have been playing for years.
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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by HarlowTheFish » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:02 pm

Logrinn wrote:
Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:42 am
One thing that really made me realise the difference is when I play and not look at the neck.
Try this: pick up your guitar, stand up and hang it on your shoulders and without looking then play, let’s say an A-minor barred chord on the fifth fret.
Did your left hand (right if you’re left handed) place itself on the right fret? Or did you accidentally place it on the sixth fret? If you’re off, you might have a wrong scale guitar. With a 24” scale guitar I don’t have to look at the neck to know where I am.
For me this is an issue with my Ormsby because of the ridiculous fan, but not a problem with my Vintera Mustang (24"), Eclipse (24.75"), parts Mustang (25.5"), Ibby RG (25.5"), Kiesel CL6 (25.5"-26.5" fan), or even on my Corvettte bass (34", but in this case mainly because it's my only bass I think).

Yeah maybe part of it is related to scale length, but frankly most of it is the nut position relative to my left shoulder, and even with these guitars all varying a lot in how they sit, after a couple of hours of play time I just have my peripheral vision on the neck, and after a few weeks to get used to it, I don't really have to look at all.

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Re: Would a jag/Jazzmaster be better for a person my size?

Post by s_mcsleazy » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:24 pm

ok. so jaguars/jazzmasters are naturally larger compared to something like a strat or a tele. even the mustang, dispite the shorter scale length, is still about the same size as a strat. the thing is, your arms are further to the left if you're right handed and further to the right if you're left handed. for some people (usually those with wider shoulders) this is more comfortable than say a strat or a tele. whenever i pick up a strat or tele, i feel like i'm playing a ukulele because my arms feel bunched into the center of my body. i'll give you an example. i'm 6ft2. i'm quite skinny but have wide shoulders. this is me with my affinity jazzmaster as a size comparison.
Image
and this is me with my vista jagmaster
Image

they look about right on someone my size. but mostly, it feels right for someone around my height
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