Is it possible to tune this toy guitar?

August 20, 2009 7:05 PM

Are Hearthsong's "Play & Learn" kids' guitars tunable?

Wife bought Kid3 a junior sized classical acoustic guitar from Hearthsong. The sticker inside says "Play & Learn" and nothing else. The website says they sell Hoehner guitars but this guitar doesn't say Hoehner anywhere.

The fret buzz and etc is insane on this thing, and I've never seemed to have been able to tune it. Are these even expected to be tunable?

posted by TheManChild2000 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (2 answers total)

I would expect short-scale guitars to be harder to tune, especially guitars this small. I bet the tuning pegs aren't properly adjusted to compensate for the fact that the strings are so much shorter. They probably pull the strings at the same rate as a full size guitar.
posted by Precision at 7:19 PM on August 20, 2009

If you're referring to the Kid's Guitar (the $39 one on this page), my wife and I have had a couple of these as backpacking guitars (one was sacrificed to forcibly break up a dogfight!) and they held a tuning about as well as I would have expected for a cheaply-made toy guitar. Not anything I'd use to, say, perform professionally, but fine for the campfire. Lots of fret buzz, and no reference to Hoehner -- that comes as a surprise to me, since we picked them both up at Toys-R-Us.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 7:30 PM on August 20, 2009