ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS: Ed Sheeran looks like he uses smaller acoustic guitars than usual. What are these?

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS: Ed Sheeran looks like he uses smaller acoustic guitars than usual. What are these? Is there a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY; or email charles.legge@dailymail.

co.uk By Charles Legge Published: 00:50, 26 September 2024 | Updated: 00:55, 26 September 2024 e-mail View comments QUESTION Ed Sheeran looks like he uses smaller acoustic guitars than usual. What are these? Ed Sheeran started out as a teenage busker on the streets of Galway and Dublin, playing a Dean Performer E Acoustic-Electric Guitar.

This was a standard-sized guitar featuring a 251⁄4in scale length neck. A scale length is the distance from the nut (where the neck joins the headstock) of your guitar to the bridge saddle (where the strings are anchored). In 2008, Sheeran made a couple of early media appearances — one on BalconyTV and another auditioning for the ITV series Britannia High.

Here he used the Martin Backpacker, a lute-shaped, steel-stringed guitar weighing less than 2.5 lb. Martin was the brand with which Sheeran became associated as he rose to stardom.

He graduated to the more traditionally shaped but small-bodied Martin LX 'Little ­Martin' guitars (LX1E). The LX1E is a 3⁄4-size guitar with a 23in scale, which means the frets are slightly closer together than they would be on a full-size acoustic, though the nut width.