Small variant of NSSearchField?

FROM : John Stiles
DATE : Mon Mar 10 23:27:01 2008

Interface Builder can easily make a small variant of NSSearchField—it's
right there in the size popup—but I can't manage to reproduce the effect
in code. The typical approach doesn't work:

    [[searchField cell] setControlSize:NSSmallControlSize];

does nothing at all, though this does shrink almost any other control
type I can think of.
I searched the archives and found that another user had this problem in
mid-2007, but there was no solution posted.
Any ideas?