I don't know what happened to my earlier post... but here goes again...
Charles Koover was a big proponent of narrow frames and he was not a small cell beekeeper:
"With so many beginners wanting to know about eleven deep frames in a 10 frame deep Langstroth brood chamber I will have to go into further details. But first this letter from Anchorage, Alaska of all places. For that is as far north as you can keep bees. He writes, I'm a new beekeeper with one season's experience with two hives. A good friend is in the same boat he had read one of your articles on "Squeezing" the bees and tried one of his hives that way result a hive full of bees and honey. This year we will have eight hives with eleven frames in the brood chamber."
"If you, too, want to have eleven frames in the brood chamber do this. In assembling your frames besides nails use glue. It' a permanent deal anyway. Be sure your frames are the type with grooved top and bottom bars. After assembling the frames, plane down the end bars on each side so that they are the same width as the top bar. Now drive in the staples. As I mentioned last month make them by cutting paper clips in half. They cost but little and don't split the wood. Drive the staples into the wood until they stick out one quarter inch. The staples should be all on one side. This prevents you from turning the frame around in the brood nest. It's a bad practice and it upsets the arrangement of the brood nest. It is being done, but it leads to chilling of brood and it disturbs the laying cycle of the queen. I am talking to beginners, but even old timers should not commit this bad practice. As for the foundation, if you use molded plastic foundation just snap it into the frame and you are ready to go."-- Charles Koover,Bee Culture, April 1979, From the West Column.
But the big advantage to me is that when doing natural cell size, the cells are smaller. The bees seem to take the spacing as a cue as to whether it's the core of the broodnest, some drone or some honey storage.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesframewidth.htm