The great DeQuervain's scale length experiment, part one

I have DeQuervain's tenosynovitis. I've had it most of my life. You can read the details here if you like. It sucks. It really gets in the way of my guitar playing. So you could understand how not noticing it would be something I notice.

For the last week or so I've been playing my Les Paul Special (I tend to rotate my guitars based on nothing in particular). One day, I made a casual observation - I haven't experienced any DeQuervain's symptoms. This intrigued me, so I did some research on DeQuervain's and scale length and found that some people have decreased their symptoms by playing guitars with a shorter scale. This concerned me, as only one of my four guitars has a shorter scale.

After reading this, I decided to conduct an experiment. I would play guitars with different scale lengths for a few days and then deliberately try to induce a DeQuervain's reaction.

For those who may not know, scale length is the length of the string from the nut to the bridge (or more accurately, the length from the nut to the 12th fret doubled, because strings intonate at slightly different lengths). Also, Fender and Fender-derived guitars use a 25.5" scale length, while Gibson and Gibson-derived guitars use a 24.75" scale length. Of course, there are exceptions, but I'm talking about the standard Strat/Tele/Les Paul guitars that dominate the guitar landscape.

For part one of my experiment, I chose my new, amazing Fender Telecaster HH. For two days, I played and practiced as I normally would in order to get my hands used to the guitar. Then, on day three (which happened to be yesterday) I induced the DeQuervain's. Since it happens mostly when I play a lot of barre chords, I did just that, including playing the evil chord progression from "Distant Early Warning" that gave me so many problems when I was in high school. Sure enough, after only about 10 minutes of this, the pain came on strong. It was really bad this time. I spent the rest of the evening massaging and stretching my wrist and hand and it still hurt a little in the morning.

Part two starts today. I put away my Tele and took out the Les Paul again. I'll play as usual for the next two days and then try to induce a reaction on the third day. I actually hope it hurts just as bad. That would mean that the problem is my wrist and it doesn't matter what guitar I play. Otherwise, I don't know what to do. Like I said, I have four guitars and only one with a 24.75" scale. I'd have to make some tough decisions if it turns out that I can't play them anymore.

For sake of argument, I'm going to have a part three, where I conduct the same experiment using my Strat. It still has the same 25.5" scale as the Tele, but it has lighter strings on it, so maybe that will make a difference. I sincerely hope so.