Welcome and thanks for your service. My family is full of servicemen and women too.
A Taylor GC is sized about like an 000 guitar. An SCGC 00 or Skye would be ever so slightly smaller I think. A Firefly smaller still and I’d recommend you put hands on that one before buying as it’s real short scale and pretty small. Nice guitar, but you really gotta play it first. Single-0 size is nice too but sometimes they have really thick bodies, which you will want to be aware of if this is a consideration. Single-0 guitars have a unique sound and I like them a lot too.
A 1929 000 would be the closest to that Taylor you have (except it will likely have a longer scale), and in my opinion has more texture and depth than typical a Taylor. I don’t dislike Taylors, I just like SCGCs more.
I think a safe bet for you is anything from an 00 on up to an 000 or OM. The 00s come in 24.75″ scale, the Skye in 24.9″ scale and most 000 and OMs are something like 25.125″ scale. I feel you on the small hands. While I wouldn’t call my thick hands small, they do sport fingers that aren’t especially long, which has led me to stick with 24.75″ scale guitars and never again look at anything else. The longer scale is just not comfortable for me and if your fingers aren’t long, maybe not you either, and you’re already used to 24.9″, which is what the GC Taylors are set at.
Other notes: The Skye is a pretty unique sounding guitar with that Adi top married to a Cocobolo bottom. Make sure the sound is what you want before buying. Eric makes it sound incredible of course. An 00 in EIR or Mahogany sounds a bit warmer in my opinion, the mahogany especially (I have both types of SCGC). The Skye has this mid-range and treble clarity though that I haven’t heard duplicated elsewhere but I ended up selling mine due to the wider nut, which, BTW, it has and you need to be aware of that too. The more you play the various models the more you understand their individual personalities. So my final advice is to play as many as you can because it’s tough to know exactly what will strike that chord in your soul until you hear and feel it directly.
Santa Cruz 00 — Goodall 000 — Martin 00-28