Tanglewood Evolution TB Baby has teething problems ... any suggestions?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Please forgive what may look like a gratuitous photo of my cat, Elsa, but her appearance here does help to put the size of this Tanglewood Evolution TB Baby acoustic guitar into perspective. This is Tanglewood's answer to the Taylor Baby. With a scale length of approx 22 3/4", the TB Baby is intended as an acoustic travel guitar, but despite its small size it is a quality instrument as I hope these photos help illustrate.

I bought this particular Tanglewood Evolution TB Baby recently; it was brand new but I got it for about a third of the normal retail price. However - as is often said - "there's no such thing as a free lunch". In other words, there's a good reason why I got it so cheap. 

It has a cedar top, mahogany back and sides, and mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard, attractive maple binding and an abalone soundhole rosette.

Check the detail on the heel of the neck (below), with the abalone Tanglewood "T" set in a heel-cap of maple.

Tanglewood guitars are a British company, and you'll notice they proudly display "United Kingdom" on the back of the headstock...

...and also on the label inside the guitar. Despite this open display of "British-ness" I can't help thinking that the guitar was probably made out in China or elsewhere in the Far East. Note it doesn't actually say "Made in..." anywhere, and the United Kingdom references may just be to the nationality of the company. But this wasn't what I really wanted to talk about...

It's actually a very sweet sounding guitar, with a very pleasing tone, quite unlike that of a full size dreadnought. Unfortunately, this guitar has issues. As I believe is often a problem with short-scale guitars such as this, the intonation is way out. At first I wondered if the bridge saddle had been inserted the wrong way around, but I have checked it and it seems fine. What I am not so sure about, however, is the fretting. I don't know what you think, but to me the distance between the nut and the first fret appears to be too large for the scale being used here. Take a look at the photo below and see what you think?

I have tried playing with a capo at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd fret positions and it does perform a little better - you can actually play so that the guitar manages to play in tune with itself. Even better, I found, is to tune the guitar up a semi-tone and then use a capo. However, this is far from ideal because it means that we're having to deal with an even shorter scale and are being forced into playing in keys we might not want to play in.

Anyway, the guitar is - supposedly - designed to play in standard tuning. If I was forced to keep in permanently in another key, just tuning it up a semi-tone seems hardly worthwhile. Tuning up to G would seem more useful, but when I tried tuning up to G, the tension on the strings was just too much. Different gauge strings might be an answer, but then again they may intone just as badly.

The way I see it I have three options:

1. Try the guitar with different gauge strings and see if a different tuning helps. However I'm almost convinced that this option will not bear fruit because I very strongly suspect that the intonation problem stems from the incorrect distance from nut to first fret having been used (my experiments with the capo would seem to confirm this), but it has to remain a consideration.
2. Try the guitar with nylon strings which are known to be much more forgiving when it comes to intonation. And - yes - you can get nylon strings with ball ends nowadays, but the nut slots would need widening.
3. Get someone competent to install a (tall) zero fret or maybe some kind of compensating nut such as an Earvana (although I'd prefer not to pay Earvana prices).

So, it looks like it's a case of either spend money on a bunch of different kinds of strings to see what works, or else spend money with a luthier or guitar repairer.

Does anyone have any further suggestions? Or maybe you have had intonation problems with a guitar like this? Please let us know via the comments below.

G L Wilson

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