These were yesterday's indulgences; Ibanez RGD321 & Aria STG mini. It's 26.5" vs 22.2" respectively in terms of scale length, both aren't the standard guitars scale lengths but I find owning them to be beneficial.
Longer-scaled instruments forces me to stretch my digits so if I slack, make no efforts to reach my destination & not persevere (because lethargy sets in rather quickly), there will be lots of mistakes. Due to the nature of my playing- a fair share of riffing & soloing- I find playing extended scale instruments do give the fingers a good workout. However, there are a good number of players out there who restrict themselves to the lower frets of the guitar because they are more attuned to the lower notes more than anything else. To them, this type of guitars are more useful as riffing tools.
The shorter-scaled guitars do not win too many fans with guitar players namely because they see it as a kiddy supplement; small stuff for the small people. If you hand one of these to a guitar dweeb, chances are, it's going to be a mistake extravaganza. The main protest: Frets are too near one another so they hamper 'natural' movements. But even with shorter-scaled guitars like the STG Mini, the distance between the initial two frets (the farthest) require some stretching but that stretch is less for this one as opposed to the standard scale model. So what's the lesson learnt here? Control- you reduce your stretch in trying to adapt to a shorter scale length. Once you get round this struggle, it's second nature.
