Tenor/mandola scale length

[arbarnhart]

I am thinking about a 4 string tenor electric - CGDA tuning. Whether you call that an electric mandola or tenor guitar seems to be more a matter of generalization by scale length than anything else; anything 18" or under is probably considered a mandola by most and anything over 20" is almost certainly a tenor guitar. In between is a gray are, but I am not hung up labels. I play electric bass and just started playing mandocello in addition to mandolin, so a long scale isn't too much of a concern if there are good reason as far as sound goes, but it would be nice to have a compact little 17" scale instrument as travel instrument and it would be a simpler build (I am building this myself). But how much different do they sound? I am thinking small solid body 4 string.

[Shelby Eicher]

My instrument which I am newly calling an Alto Guitar has a 16 3/4 scale length. It's perfect. You can still reach all of the jazz shapes for chord melody but the strings are long enough to sound good. String gauges are 1st/A - .013, 2nd/D - .024, 3rd/G - .036, 4th/C - .052.

[arbarnhart]

Thanks! After posting I found the clips at this luthier's site which show his 17" scale instruments in action and lead me to conclude that a tenor/mandola tuning at this scale is capable of doing what I want. Whether I am capable of getting that out of it as another matter entirely.

[mandroid]

H style 8 string of mine is 400mm, 15 3/4" .

switched the dual source 4 string over to CGDA with an .049 C.
its on normal 13.875" scale, likewise the Jazzy converted A50..

Wonder what length of string-scale is on Ted's custom one?