Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I’d had my eye on the Donner DST-1S for some time. A kit that included a guitar, amp, cord, capo, tuner, gig bag, extra strings, and four picks for $129? What wasn’t to love? Especially considering the Stratocaster-style guitar came with two single coil pickups and a humbucking pickup (S-S-H), which, while not uncommon, is still harder to find than the more common three single coil pickup configuration. At first glance, I imagined the guitar would be mostly trash. It had to be at that price point, right? But the few existing reviews were positive, and I was already a fan of other Donner products like their 10 watt amp (the DEA-1) and their effects pedals. Could it actually be a decent guitar? Turned out it was. Let’s start with its appearance. Its high gloss sunburst finish was equally as sharp as my Telecaster’s. Its neck did not share the gloss. It had more of a dry, matte finish, which I was not mad at. Felt fine. I did wish the frets were filed and polished. Like many affordable guitars, this one had frets that were a bit poky on the ends. That wasn’t a deal breaker. With a little work and a bit of YouTubing, anyone could learn how to fix those frets and make them feel as if they were on a high-end guitar. The action, right out of the box, was playable. It was lower near the headstock, and a bit higher near the bridge, but it didn’t seem to impact the tone or the way it played much. At some point I’ll adjust that action, but for now it works. I noticed no string buzz, and the intonation seemed mostly accurate. Though the guitar was fit with a tremolo, I put the the tremolo bar (also known as a whammy bar) away. Even on high end guitars, tremolos are famous for wrecking the guitar’s tuning, so I sure didn’t trust this one to keep the guitar on pitch after a good old fashioned Eddie Van Halen dive bomb. Not that I could sound like Eddie. Because I couldn’t. Not on my best day. The strings were fine. I doubt they were as quality as Ernie Balls or D’Addarios, but they were plenty slinky for my playing and sounded good. The pickups, as far as I could tell (I’m no expert), sounded okay. There was a significant difference in volume when switching from the single coils to the humbucker. The humbucker was way louder. I could see myself playing a rhythm chord progression with the single coils and then flipping to the humbucker for a lead solo. The humbucker would provide that necessary volume boost to let the lead cut through the instrumental mix and be heard over the other players. Many players simply hit their stomp box to achieve this (Tube Screamer, anyone?), but the humbucker does the job. The amp, a tiny little 3 watter, was surprisingly good. It charged with an included USB cord, and included both a clean and a distorted channel, plus knobs to adjust gain, volume, and tone. It also had inputs for headphones and for auxiliary items like an MP3 player. It was so small and so light, you could easily toss it in a backpack and take it anywhere. The gig bag was way more sturdy than I anticipated. I’d purchased cheap guitars before and found their gig bags to be little more than burlap sacks. This one had decent zippers and was even reinforced with rubber padding at the bottom. The capo was better than some I’ve purchased in the past. The spring was strong enough to solidly grip the guitar neck, and clipped on with no problem at all. The tuner worked fine, and came with a battery. I hate it when I buy something that requires batteries, especially those weird coin-shaped batteries, but doesn’t come with batteries included. Burns me up. Thankfully, Donner anticipated my needs. All in all, I was really happy with this guitar. At $129, I’m not sure how they even make a profit. Nicely done, Donner. Nicely done.