Product Description

Dean Playmate JTJ Steel String Acoustic Guitar is well made, easy to tune, and very playable. The perfect starter guitar for youngsters with its 1/2 size, it gives them the feel of a real 6-string.

Playmate JTJ

• Linden Body
• 18 3/4" scale
• Maple neck
• Covered Tuners
• Celluliod Binding
• Mosaic Rosette
• Designed for very young children to learn the basic guitar skills.
• Gloss Natural

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146 in Musical Instruments
• Color: Gloss Natural
• Brand: Dean Guitars
• Model: PLAYJTJ
• Released on: 2008-06-10
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 5.00 pounds

Features

• 1/2 Size Student Steel String Acoustic
• Set Neck
• Chrome Hardware
• Signature Dean Bridge
• Chrome Tuners

Customer Reviews

Mixed Feelings
We all know Dean Makes great guitars, yet this one, does NOT have a trust rod. If the neck is bent or over time moves from the pressure of the strings the guitar is garbage. This guitar will NOT last you very long, certainly not a novice. You are better off paying extra (like 70-100) to buy a guitar with a trust rod. This will enable you to bring the guitar to a repair man. He can fix the neck of the guitar so it is playable. Guitars without trust rods are harder to tune and do not stay in tune. Dean makes a great guitar, but you get what you pay for. Hope this helped.

Just a bit more than a toy.
The main points for me in deciding to buy this little guitar were the cheap price and the affiliation with Dean Guitars. As a long-time guitar player, it can be a lot of fun to play a little guitar in places a full-size guitar won't work, like in the car. I believe an experienced player will get more out of this than a beginner. Although the quality of this guitar is higher than a toy guitar you find at retail toy stores, it still leaves much to be desired in terms of easy playability. Even with a zero fret, the action on this guitar was way too high. The result was that it was hard to play and hard to tune because the intonation was off. These are the least desireable things for a good beginners guitar. What I did was to file down the grooves in the bridge to lower the action. I also put new strings on the guitar--light gauge because the guitar sounds best tuned to A, in otherwise standard tuning. With these changes, it's become a fun guitar to play. For under $30, I wasn't disappointed by the plastic fretboard, painted-on binding or cheap tuners. The finish is nice and the bridge is distinctive. So, I'd say it's a good toy for an experienced guitarist but a bad guitar for a beginner.

For the Price You Can't Beat This Guitar
I bought this Dean JTJ for a few reasons: price, size (my hands are small), and the sound. The Dean JTJ gives me a lot of pleasure to play and I'm always glad I bought it. It's not a deluxe Gibson, Martin, or Taylor guitar, so you may not feel that the JTJ is on par with those pricey, well-regarded instruments, but for me, an amateur looking for a practice guitar that wouldn't break my budget, or be so bad that it would fall apart quickly, I can't falt the JTJ. Now, I realize that there is no truss rod, but I've never had any tuning problems, and I play the JTJ nearly every day. And you know what, if the JTJ breaks, I'll get another one, but I think that the quality of this Dean guitar is better than that. In fact, I bought it in the hopes of passing it on to my daughter when she gets ready to learn guitar.