Ortega R121-3/4OC

Visually, this is a brilliant guitar. My son is six and had been playing a smaller guitar, so we decided it was time to upgrade.

Brilliant that the guitar also comes with a gig bag.

I chose to spend a little extra and go one step above an absolute beginner guitar. He practices regularly, and I was hoping to buy something he could grow into rather than having to upgrade again in a couple of years.

Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks, the intonation is quite poor and the guitar goes out of tune very quickly. It may simply need some time to settle, so I’ll give it a few more weeks before changing the strings and giving it a proper setup to see if that improves things.

My main concern is that if you’re buying this for a child or beginner and don’t have an experienced guitarist in the household, you may need to budget for a professional setup. Otherwise, I can imagine it being quite frustrating for a beginner to have an instrument that won’t stay in tune and sounds slightly off even when they’re playing correctly.

For context, I was previously a guitar teacher and have played and worked with many entry-level classical guitars that do stay in tune reliably. So I don’t think these issues are simply something that should be expected at this price point.

It looks fantastic and I really want to like it, but at nearing 2,500 NOK I expected better tuning stability and intonation out of the box.