Tokudai I had a similar issue with a plant very recently on my first grow...it actually had such tight nodes that they grew all messed up intertwined with each other...it was a male so I killed it but at a foot tall it had like 20 nodes and the light was pretty far away...Personally about 3/4 to 1 inch is ideal cause otherwise the bud doesn't seem to develop as well...you are probably right though about crossing it with a particularly tall sparsly noded sativa...