Like chicco's other toys, this one is of very good quality too. It is very sturdy and very colorfull. We bought this toy a few days ago and this is really a great toy. It works great and has super cute sounds. It has 20+ prerecorded melodies and is endless fun for little ones. Compared to other guitars out there it has more melodies and functions than any other you can find on the market. Fabulous toy for a great price too.
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We bought this little musical "guitar" when my son was 4 months old. He was slightly unsure of it at 4 months, but by 5 months, he really enjoyed trying to hit the buttons or having us activate the music for him. At 15 months we use it to calm him down in moments of toddler melt down. I keep looking for other little electronic guitars for him, but nothing I find seems like it would serve any better than this little toy, I'm glad we purchased it.
Chicco Toys (an Italian company) puts tons of R&D into the musical aspect of their toys (you don't see this from other companies), so I'll have to explain this toy:
1. Musical styles: Chicco says that these styles are: Rock, Pop and Blues. I have to disagree, to me they seem to be: Country-ish Rock, Country-ish Pop; 3. Sort-of Blues. In any case, the styles are still entertaining in their own right, at least they aren't public-domain standard-hear-everywhere -farmer-in-the-dell music. You won't recognize these tunes from anywhere, which is why they don't get repetitive the way other toys do. They don't bother me due to the variety of them, and I don't particularly listen to country (or rock or blues, I listen to Elmo....another story.....). The musical styles are controlled on a dial with these three settings.
2. Play Modes: There are three play modes, controlled on a dial with three settings
2.1 Short tunes: Press a button, guitar plays a short threesecond tune. My son likes this mode.
2.2 Long tunes ("pre-recorded"): Press a button, guitar plays about an 22 second tune. If you press any of the buttons during the tune, the animal sound on that respective button sounds. My son likes this mode as well.
2.3 "Follow me": Random button flashes, baby is expected to press the flashing button to hear music. If you press any other non-flashing button, nothing happens. At 15 months, my son still doesn't seem to be too interested in this one, it's definitely on the more advanced side.
3. Mixer functions: They add add sound and activate the lights on the "fretboard" buttons:
3.1 The drums button lets you hit a snare drum sound, it's ok, you can amuse the baby with this, or it can be used to help the baby learn to press a button, it's oversized.
3.2 The Whammy Bar adds in a whammy bar guitar squeal.
3.3 A blue spinner ball that the baby can spin to either accelerate or decelarate the music (only functional in the Long Mode play mode). The baby figured this one out quite quickly, by 6 months at least. The baby sitters all figure this out too, so it's quite intuitive.
4. Other functionality:
4.1 Strum button (like where you would strum the guitar, it's the yellow button you see in the image like where strings should be), and it plays its own little musical segment. But it interrupts the main ongoing music, which doesn't resume afterwards.
4.2 Animal sounds: When you are in Long music, "Pre-recorded melodies" setting (lower left, second dial over), then this allows you to keep presssing the keys on the fretboard and play the animal sounds while the music plays (similar to the Chicco walker). This doesn't work in "Short Tunes" mode, or in the "Follow-me" game (limited to the key being activated at that time). These animal sounds are the same sounds as on the Chicco DJ Walker, for anyone familiar with that toy, so Dog, Chick, Cat, Pig, and Frog sounds.
4.3 Volume: There is a dial with "Off" (turns toy off),"low" and "high". Low is happily decently low (that's what we use), and "high" still isn't super loud, so all I can say is yay.
4.4 Battery use: Toy is very good on battery use, I've only replaced the batteries once in the last year since we've purchased it.
Note: "Ghost in the machine": I'd recommend turning the guitar off at night, in my experience it can activate on its own, even when not super low on batteries (apparently this is common in children's toys electronics). Not great to go out and detect in the middle of the night.
In summary, we're very happy with this toy, it's lots of fun and the variety of tunes means that they aren't repetitive.
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Overall, this is a good buy. I purchased this guitar for my 1 year old nephew so that he would stop trying to play with his uncle's Guitar Hero and it worked.
Honest reviews on Chicco Toys DJ Guitar
There's really not much for a child to do with this but listen to the different tunes. If that works for your child it does a great job. If you want your child to learn from it I don't think it does much there.
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It was ok...I had bought a different one that I could no longer find for my granddaughter that had more cool features & sounds,but got this for my grandson,he likes it but not as much as his cousins...
