An acoustic emission (AE) linear location system was proposed, which employed fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) as AE sensors. It was demonstrated that the FBG wavelength could be modulated as the static case when the grating length was much shorter than the AE wavelength. In addition, an improved AE location method based on the Gabor wavelet transform (WT) and threshold analysis was represented. The method was testified through AE linear location experiments based on a tunable narrow-band laser interrogation system using ultra-short FBG sensors as AE sensors. Results of the experiments showed that 86% of the linear location errors were less than 10 mm.