The Truth About Buying a Baby Taylor Guitar for Kids

I'm currently watching roughly three hundred and fifty quid’s worth of solid Sitka spruce being used as a battering ram against my Ikea coffee table. My twin daughters, who possess the combined destructive power of a small localized tornado, have discovered that if you hold the neck of an acoustic guitar and swing it with enough momentum, it makes a highly satisfying thud against particle board.

This is my fault. I brought this upon myself.

I bought a baby taylor. It’s a 3/4-scale acoustic instrument. As a sleep-deprived father of two-year-olds, I saw the word 'baby' in the product name and my former-journalist brain completely short-circuited. I had this cinematic, utterly delusional vision of our future weekends. I pictured myself sitting on the rug with my full-sized acoustic, the girls sitting opposite me with their tiny, perfectly proportioned miniature version, and us all softly strumming along to some indie-folk anthem while the afternoon light streamed through the bay window of our London flat.

What I failed to factor into this embarrassingly hipster fantasy is that a toddler doesn't strum. A toddler strikes.

So, here we're. I'm frantically prying a beautifully crafted, steel-string acoustic guitar out of sticky hands before it snaps in half, and I'm writing this to warn you. If you're considering buying a premium travel guitar as a starter instrument for a small child, there are a few very messy realities you need to understand.

The cheese-wire reality of acoustic strings

Let me rant for a moment about steel strings, because this is the single biggest hurdle that nobody warns you about when you buy a real guitar for a child. A Baby Taylor is an actual, professional-grade instrument. It's not a plastic toy from the high street that plays a pre-recorded robotic tune when you press a flashing red button.

Because it's a real acoustic guitar, it comes strung with steel strings. Have you ever pressed your unprotected fingertip into a taut, thin steel wire suspended under fifty pounds of tension? It's agonizing.

Adults who learn guitar have to suffer through about a month of blistering pain until their fingertips develop thick, callused skin, but we somehow expect a child to just power through it. My mate Dave, who has taught music for a decade and possesses the patience of a saint, told me over a pint that putting a factory-setup steel-string guitar in the hands of anyone under the age of seven is basically a guarantee that they'll quit within three days. They just don't have the padding on their fingers, and the sheer downward pressure required to fret a clear note is brutal.

If you absolutely insist on buying one of these for an older child who's actually ready for lessons, you basically have to take it straight to a guitar technician who smells vaguely of patchouli to lower the strings closer to the fretboard and swap out the factory strings for 'silk and steel' versions that won't immediately slice their tiny fingers to ribbons.

As for the gig bag it comes with—it’s a soft fabric backpack that offers roughly the same structural protection as a damp paper towel when a twenty-eight-pound child decides to use it as a trampoline.

A brief lesson in fine motor skills and hummus

I had dressed the girls up for what I assumed would be our grand musical debut in the living room. They were wearing matching Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesies. I bought these mostly because our GP made me paranoid about synthetic fabrics irritating their skin (though frankly, I’m fairly certain the constant smearing of yogurt and saliva is what actually causes most of their rashes). The bodysuits are fine. They’re essentially just very stretchy vests that handle a 60-degree wash cycle reasonably well after a pasta disaster. They don’t magically make your child sleep through the night, but the snap closures at the bottom are robust enough to withstand me violently ripping them open during a code-red nappy situation at four in the morning, which is all I really ask of clothing at this point.

Anyway, they were sitting there looking adorable in their organic cotton, and I handed over the baby t. Maya immediately tried to eat the tuning pegs.

During a recent visit to the clinic—while our doctor was aggressively scraping what turned out to be dried hummus off Chloe’s knee to check a suspicious-looking bruise—she casually mentioned that the fine motor dexterity required to individually place three fingers on three separate strings to form a chord doesn’t fully develop until a child is in primary school. Wrap your head around that. Their little brains are still trying to figure out how to successfully pilot a spoon of porridge into their mouths without blinding themselves, and I expected them to master the fretboard mechanics of an E-minor chord.

What actually works right now

After wrestling the guitar away and hiding it on the top shelf of my wardrobe (where it currently sits, slowly detuning itself in the dark), I needed a distraction. I brought out the Gentle Baby Building Block Set.

These blocks are arguably the only thing currently keeping my sanity intact, and I love them purely for survival reasons. They're made of a very soft, squishy rubber. This means that when Maya inevitably decides to launch a number 4 block directly at my temple from point-blank range because I had the audacity to cut her morning toast into triangles instead of squares, it just bounces harmlessly off my nose instead of sending me to A&E with a concussion.

They have little numbers and animal symbols on them, which is supposedly brilliant for early cognitive development and logical thinking, but I mostly appreciate that I can step on one barefoot in the dark without shouting words that my children will parrot at nursery the next day. They also squeak slightly when you squeeze them, which is the only acoustic performance we're getting in this flat for the foreseeable future.

If you're desperately trying to find toys that won't ruin your furniture or your skull, you can browse our collection of soft play and sensory items here.

Wood requires maintenance (and I can barely maintain myself)

Here's another thing about premium acoustic instruments that the marketing brochures gloss over: they're basically fragile, temperamental houseplants.

The baby taylor has a solid wood top, usually spruce or mahogany. It sounds gorgeous, projecting a surprisingly warm tone thanks to its slightly arched, layered sapele back. But solid wood is highly susceptible to humidity changes. If the air gets too dry, the wood shrinks and cracks right down the middle.

Living in London, my flat is either a damp, drafty cave in November or a bone-dry sauna in January when the radiators are blasting. You're supposed to buy a specialized sponge humidifier, wet it with distilled water, and suspend it inside the soundhole of the guitar every few days to keep the wood hydrated.

I barely remember to drink a glass of water myself. I'm surviving on cold coffee and the crusts of my daughters' discarded sandwiches. The absolute last thing I've the mental bandwidth for is ensuring that a tiny guitar is adequately moisturized.

The ghost of playtime past

Looking at the guitar hidden in the wardrobe makes me deeply nostalgic for the first few months of their lives, back when 'playtime' didn't involve me acting as a UN peacekeeper. Before they were mobile, we had a Wooden Baby Gym set up on a rug in the corner.

It was a beautiful, simple A-frame wooden structure with a few dangling animals and geometric shapes. You just laid the baby underneath it, and they would lie there, completely mesmerized, occasionally batting a tiny fist at a wooden elephant. No tuning required. No danger of structural damage to the flat. No bleeding fingers. Just pure, quiet, developmental stimulation. I didn't realize how good I had it until the day they figured out how to walk.

The nylon string compromise

So, where does this leave us?

The 3/4 size guitar is an exceptional piece of musical engineering. If you're an adult looking for a travel guitar to throw in the back of your car, or if you've a highly motivated nine-year-old who has outgrown their starter instrument, it's a brilliant investment that holds its tuning and sounds far bigger than its dimensions suggest.

But for toddlers? Absolutely not. For preschoolers? Save your money. If you're dead set on getting an instrument into the hands of a four- or five-year-old, skip the steel strings entirely. Buy them a cheap plastic ukulele with nylon strings. Nylon is soft, it doesn't require immense finger strength, and when they inevitably drop it down the stairs, you won't weep over the financial loss.

My grand musical dreams haven't been entirely crushed, just postponed. I figure I’ll bring the guitar back down from the wardrobe sometime around 2029. Until then, we’re sticking to rubber blocks and trying to make it to bedtime without any major property damage.

Ready to invest in toys that seriously make sense for your current stage of parenting? Check out our full range of developmental toys that are designed for real life with toddlers.

Questions I get asked by other delusional parents

What age is honestly appropriate for a Baby Taylor?
Honestly, unless your kid is a certified prodigy, I wouldn't hand them a steel-string acoustic until they're at least seven or eight years old. They need the hand strength and the emotional maturity to handle the initial physical discomfort of pressing down the strings without having a total meltdown.

What strings should I put on it for a beginner?
Don't leave the factory medium-gauge strings on it if a kid is learning. Ask a guitar shop to string it with "Silk and Steel" strings. They have a softer core, which means there's significantly less tension, making them infinitely easier on soft, uncalloused fingertips.

Is the soft case enough protection?
If you're just throwing it in the boot of your car to drive to a lesson, yes, the gig bag is fine. If you've toddlers in the house who view every flat surface as a potential diving board, no. A soft bag won't save the neck from snapping if someone steps on it. Buy a hard case.

How do I clean sticky toddler fingerprints off the wood?
Avoid harsh household chemicals or furniture polish, as they can ruin the finish of the guitar. Just use a slightly damp (not wet) microfiber cloth to gently wipe away the crusty yogurt stains, and immediately follow it with a dry cloth.