Do childrens electric guitars work on rocksmith?

[Dennis]

Hi everyone!
My son has been watching me play on rocksmith and he really wants to try it and have a go, he is 5 years old. So i thought why not and started looking around ebay and amazon for electric guitar packs for kids which ill be able to get one with an amp, bag, strap etc for $100au or around about.
But does anyone know if it will work ok? Has anyone else plugged in and played a small guitar?
Rocksmith wont read my acoustic/electric for some reason and i was sure i read somewhere that if the guitar had a 1/4 inch jack it will work but id feel better spending the money if its been done before.
Any advice would be really appreciated.

[Dennis]

Thanks for the reply my acoustic electric has a battery though not a fresh one (need to go to the store for that )
Ill put a new battery and try it again it was just out of interest really cos i purchased the guitar bundle for myself so i have the ep lp jnr to play with which is cool.

[troma67]

We had 3/4 size guitar, but it didn't work because it used a different tuning.

[Bickalicious]

I use a guilele which is very small and it works quite well, so you're should work.

[SnackyFudge]

Small sized guitars usually have less frets and/or a different tuning. Don't listen to the guys above. It's not going to work properly. Better off buying him a cheap Epiphone Les Paul Special II for like 90 bucks or some cheap Squier.

[Riavan]

I had some troubles with my brother/sisters acoustic electrics, just gotta make sure that battery is nice and juiced from what I can tell.

That is full size though, be careful if it has different tuning like swagdog said.

[pimento]

Yes, you can use 1/2 size and 3/4. It takes work. The problem you have to solve is intonation. Look up short scale guitars on the web for info. You will need to
1/ make the action as low as possible. Pressing down on the strings raises the pitch so you have to minimize the distance.
2/ Get the intonation right. ie e at the 12th fret should be the same as open e.
3/ If there isn't enough adjustment you will need fatter strings (look it up to understand why) Small guitars come with 9 guage. They are more affected by pushing the string down. So start with 10s and if necessary you can put slightly fatter strings on the out of tune strings. I've got the strings from a set of 11s on one guitar.
Last tip is to buy a Tanglewood 1/2 size. They (most of the 1/2 size) have truss rods so you can get a thinner neck for small hands. Look at Tanglewood Elf on youtube

[Dennis]

Ok thanks for all the advice you've given me alot to think through as a beginner myself i didn't think about different tuning. The one i saw on ebay was a Karrera 30'' and it has 21 frets where my epiphone les paul jnr has 22 and yeah i would expect that it would have different tuning now that you mention that.
Ill do a bit of research like you said pimento and try to get a better understanding of all this.
Thanks again for the help

[MomentaryHero]

I don't know why not. If you mean a student guitar like the kind that are just a little bit smaller scale it probably would be fine. If it's very small scale I would be concerned that the tuning would be affected. Game is rather funny about making you tune just so to play a song and it has lots of songs with multiple tunings. I'd check into that with some official Ubisoft type people to be sure....

[carlk]

My sons Ibanez Gio Mikro works fine with both the original Rocksmith and 2014.

[KinoTheMystic]

Originally posted by SwagDoge:

Small sized guitars usually have less frets and/or a different tuning. Don't listen to the guys above. It's not going to work properly. Better off buying him a cheap Epiphone Les Paul Special II for like 90 bucks or some cheap Squier.

I'd rather not go with any Les Paul, they are heavy. So go with the Squier or an Ibanez.

[MomentaryHero]

Originally posted by Kino:

Originally posted by SwagDoge:

Small sized guitars usually have less frets and/or a different tuning. Don't listen to the guys above. It's not going to work properly. Better off buying him a cheap Epiphone Les Paul Special II for like 90 bucks or some cheap Squier.

I'd rather not go with any Les Paul, they are heavy. So go with the Squier or an Ibanez.

Just go to your music store and play both a Les Paul style, Stratocaster, and Telecaster style guitar. That's your big three right there. Les Pauls have a warm sound with a lot of sustain and Strats and Teles have a thinner more twangy sound that cuts.

[Azza]

I got my 5 year old daughter a Luna Neo Mini electric guitar. 22 1/2 scale. Very light. The length of the neck isn't that much shorter if at all than a full size guitar. But the body of the guitar is smaller and the bridge is set back on the body to make the guitar more compact. No setup problems, works flawlessly with RS. And will last her as she grows. Would recommend.

[pimento]

If I coul clear up a misunderstanding, it's not the length of the fret board, it's the length of the string from nut to bridge that matters, If you put a 9 guage string in a 1/2 size guitar, you don't need to tighten it much to get it to E. That's because it's short. But a thin loose string will change pitch quite a lot when you push it down. If it is thicker, you have to tighten it more to reach E and it is less prone to going out of tune. The result of all this is that if you press down at the 12th fret, it's going to be sharp, so you have to make the string longer to compensate. The bit that then vibrates between the 12th fret and the bridge is longer and therefore lower in pitch. You generally have to move the bridges nearly to their limit, and if you need more adjustment you have to fit a thicker string.

[Sofa King Awesome]

pimento has good information, and I'll add that you're local guitar store could probably do all the work for you and show you about what pimento is saying. Also, look for "silk and steel" strings. They will be softer on little fingers than plain steel or bronze strings.

[benjiboo63]

My 4 year old loves the Guitarcade games. He has a 1/4 Rosa electric but it won't work with the normal tuning. I've been wondering if it might work using a higher tuning then routing the guitar signal through a pitch shifter before going into RS so the pitch into RS is the same as a full-length. Any one here tried this?