Daisy Rock Guitars Daisy Short Scale

I am reviewing a child's Daisy Rock daisy-shape guitar with leaf-shaped headstock, flower inlays. The finish is solid purple with white carved-out ornamental lines around it. The neck is maple with a rosewood fingerboard poly finish. I believe the body is probably basswood; it is very light. It is a very short-scale instrument with 22 frets, only 22 1/2" for the scale length, and the neck is very thin. It comes with a single soapbar-type humbucker and volume control (and no tone control). The bridge is a hardtail with sliding blocks like a recent stratocaster, and the tuners are 3-on-a-side. This instrument was purple; I think this is a discontinued color. I bought it for my kids to use but of course I had to check it out too. The instrument came with a gig bag. It was set up with D'Addario strings, 9s I think, with the multi-colored ends. The "string through body" design lets you load them from the rear.

This is a good feature set for a child's guitar - not too much to mess with.

I played the instrument through a Digitech RP350 with amp simulation into a couple of powered speakers. The humbucker is not noisy. It has, as they say, a surprising amount of tone -- it picks up all kinds of harmonics, and seems to be sitting right in the sweet spot for a nice rich crunch tone -- it is definitely made for playing loud, distorted rock tones. With only a volume knob, there is not a lot of variation in the tone; you'll have to play with outboard EQ and effects for that.

With the very short scale and small body, the tone is a little nasal, without a lot of resonance in the lower registers, but that is to be expected. It sounds good enough that I had a lot of fun playing some hard rock solos and could hardly believe the sound was coming from this tiny little thing.

This guitar was made in China but had a sticker on it saying that it was set up in the U.S.A. There is good news and bad news about the fit and finish:

- There is some fine cracking in the finish here and there. It is going to be played by young children, so I don't care that much.

- The neck is amazingly well-done with well-dressed frets, low action, and just a bit of relief. It comes with a truss rod wrench and can be adjusted from the headstock without removing the neck. Playing and bending is extremely easy (although access to the high frets is not great, and my fingers are too big for the narrow fret spacing up high, naturally).

- The little inlays are amazing. How they could be done on such a cheap guitar, I don't know!

- The intonation was terrible. Every string intonated very sharp. I had to adjust them a lot. The low E string saddle couldn't slide back far enough so I had to cut down the spring that goes on the adjustment screw. After adjustment the intonation was a bit better, but even with the tension on the spring cranked up, the low E string rattles audibly at the bridge (the low string tension again). And read on:

- The tuners seem like they are of reasonably good quality, but they were all a bit loose, so I had to tighten up all the adjustment screws at the ends of the knobs; before that tuning stability was _awful_.

- The nut is terrible. It feels far too soft. I am not an expert at this kind of thing so I have not attempted to fix it yet, but the high E string twangs against the first fret when played open and the G string "thuds" (just sounds somewhat dead). I don't think it is the frets -- I think it is the nut. All the open strings have poor sustain. I suspect this is partly the nut material and partly the way it was cut. With low string tension you would want a very hard nut material.

- Behind the nut is a bar that pulls down all the strings at an extreme angle, on their way to the tuners. With a very short-scale guitar you have very low string tension. This attempts to compensate, I guess. But the end result is that the strings seem to bind up. It is somewhat difficult to tune this guitar and bending puts it out of tune very quickly.

- In fact, it seems like it is impossible to get it to really sound in tune all over the neck. If the fretted notes at the octave and fifth and third are about right, an open E major or A minor chord sounds _really_ off. Basically, it seems like the compromise that has to go into such a short scale makes it very difficult for the instrument to sound in tune all over the fretboard. I am not entirely sure why. In any case it is a compromise for the sake of small hands and ease of play, but bigger compromises seem to have been made for the sake of the low price point. In my opinion the ease of play is very important, and it has that, and the sound quality is very important, and it has that too, but if it won't play in tune, the young learner is not going to develop a good ear, which is a really important skill, and will have a very hard time learning to tune up the instrument.

- Maybe it would intonate better if the whole thing was pitched up a couple of steps, or set up with heavier strings?

- The output jack is flimsy and keeps loosening up. When I opened it up to tighten it, I found that the solder work on the connections was poorly done (a long length of exposed wire with some broken ends that were in danger of shorting the connection when wiggled). Done properly, this would be soldered securely with shrink tubing over the connections. The solder job on the volume pot and wires from the pickups has a similar flimsy look. I may see if I can get a better part for the jack, because the pickup actually sounds pretty good. Maybe I'll just have a luthier rewire it; the wiring scheme is very simple, but the work ought to be tidier and the jack needs to be more solid.

It seems pretty tough, strap buttons are solid, finish is solid, tuners are solid, bridge is fairly solid, but see my above comments about the plug jack -- that is not going to last. Also, it is worth pointing out that the cool leaf-shaped headstock design comes to a fairly sharp point, and that's going to get dinged and damaged really fast. That little detail seems poorly chosen for a child's guitar.

No contact.

I've been playing on and off for about 25 years; various electrics and acoustics.

I would have liked to know more about the intonation/tuning problems before purchasing.

I wouldn't compare it to any other guitar except another short-scale such as a Mustang. However, those certainly tuned up better.

Because these are so cheap, I am considering buying another one for myself. I got this one as a closeout via eBay. It is possible that this is an older model year and Daisy Rock may have addressed some of these problems.

I am giving it an 8 because of the value for such a low price.