How much can you stretch?

[Genesis]

What's the maximum number of frets you can reach with your fretting hand fully stretched (and I mean comfortable enough to execute a note quickly and cleanly)? Mine is six and I think it's because I have small hands. If you have noticed, most shred guitarists have really HUGE hands. Buckethead, Paul Gilbert.... Shawn Lane could do a nine fret augmented stretch in his sleep. Is this really related to hand size or is it just my excuse to practice lesser?

[Robman?]

Its somewhat related to hand size, but over time you can learn to stretch your muscles further.

How are you doing your measurement? From the first fret?

[Genesis]

How are you doing your measurement? From the first fret?

From the 7th fret.

[St_Jimmyuk]

from the 7th fret i can stretch 7 to fret 14 however if im playing fast i would probably miss it more times than not so i can comfortably hit 13 so can stretch 6

[Robman?]

from the 7th fret i can stretch 7 to fret 14 however if im playing fast i would probably miss it more times than not so i can comfortably hit 13 so can stretch 6

same here 

[Grouse]

I just hurt my hand by testing how far I can stretch  7th to the 17th freth is the absolute max, now ofcourse I wouldn't be able to do that while seriously trying to play a song.

During a gig I can comfortably reach the 13th freth but anything beyond that is just pushing it ...

[w.axl.rose]

i can only go to 13th and it feel a bit unconformable. reason is i broke my when i was very young and had a cast and being a kid i would never keep my arm still and my arm never healed properly so because of that i have a little trouble with my left pinky / ring finger when playing guitar. really sucks to. cant even make a proper gun with my left hand without those two finger sticking out a bit and my hand shaking 

[Genesis]

Check out this Shawn Lane video:

Shawn Lane Sick Lick

At 0:17, he plays a 7 fret stretch diminished scale in 1 second. Of course, the rest of the video is just sick, plain sick. Be warned, after seeing this video, you'll wonder why you bothered to to pick up a guitar in the first place....

[Layne Staley's Sunglasses]

i can only go to 13th and it feel a bit unconformable. reason is i broke my when i was very young and had a cast and being a kid i would never keep my arm still and my arm never healed properly so because of that i have a little trouble with my left pinky / ring finger when playing guitar. really sucks to. cant even make a proper gun with my left hand without those two finger sticking out a bit and my hand shaking 

7 frets for me as well.

[St_Jimmyuk]

seems to be pretty much the average then

[Dayle1066]

Why does it matter that much? the same note is just one fret up and a string down(for a 6 fret stretch)

[Genesis]

Why does it matter that much? the same note is just one fret up and a string down(for a 6 fret stretch)

It does, because if you are playing down the fretboard like that, you run out of fretboard real estate quicker...

[Slipdisc]

Shawn Lane could do a nine fret augmented stretch in his sleep. Is this really related to hand size or is it just my excuse to practice lesser?

Shawn had relatively small hands, compared to those other names his hands really weren't that big. I think that hand size is a factor, but there's a lot that can be achieved by training. My sister's boyfriend is a freakishly good player with relatively small hands, but when he stretches his fingers he looks like a freakin' insect.

Or look at my nephew's former guitar teacher, another example of small hands going great distances in technical proficiency:

Marcel Coenen - Dutch Metal Anthem
Marcel Coenen - Race Against Time
Marcel Coenen - Fusion
Marcel Coenen - Moyra
Marcel Coenen - Shredding I
Marcel Coenen - Shredding II

-PEACE-