DONNER DST-80 Electric Guitar 39” Beginner Electric Guitar Kit with Amp, Classic SSS Pickup Complete with Gig Bag, Tuner, Capo, Strap, Picks, and Free Online Lessons

Nice kit – everything for a beginner… a few things
Plenty of solid reviews on this guitar. I picked it up for my 10yo that is starting to play and has been a bit scary unaware of banging around my nicer guitars. Also, in a house that already has 10+ guitars in the hands of several members of the family, it’s his. And really, that’s kinda important for the youngest in the family not to just get hand me downs. In the future if he progresses, we can certainly pick up something more handcrafted than the Donner.For the price point, you’re getting a heck of a deal that you’re not going to get walking into a music or guitar shop. None of the accessories are anything but functional — but they are functional and useful and WHEN he destroys them there just isn’t going to be the same angst of destroying a $2 capo versus a $20 capo.The guitar body is solid and certainly will get him used to the weight of a solid body electric. It’s a strat body and has a nice chamfer on the back for comfort and scalloping on the top of the body for arm comfort. The pickups are nothing to write home about, but they do produce decent sound, and the 5-way selection is clean. the bridge is a basic block, and I’ve told him not to bother with the Tremelo bar. It can stay in his drawer and never get installed on this bridge. It will only drop it out of tune quickly.The neck is smooth on the back, and the frets won’t slice your hand – there’s been some work done to take off the factory cut. But it’s certainly not slide happy without more filing work to be done. They are jumbos and I’ll probably do some work on them when it gets its first restring. The tuner’s hold decently and the guitar shipped very close to being in tune. The extra strings are a nice touch along with the electric tuner.The matte grey paint on the body that shows the open grain of the ash body isn’t my favorite. It seems to snag clothing and to me just appears unfinished. In the short term we may just do a very high grit sanding to get rid of the snaggles. That also may be a future teaching project for him to learn how to refinish the body and maybe do a nice natural stain with a smooth urethane coating or even a fun color dip. In any case, this is a much better guitar to modify than a block kit.So — for EVERYTHING that you get in one package — this is an awesome kit. You can’t beat it. There’s much to pick at, but for a starter they first have to be able to play before investing into expensive kit.

heavy guitar, good beginner kit
I got this DST-80 electric guitar from Donner for my 13-year old son. He’s been learning acoustic guitar and wanted to try out electric. I thought this would be a good intro guitar for him.I had his guitar teacher help us give this a look, so most of this feedback is from him. Overall, he was pleasantly surprised. Most beginner kits are poorly made, but this is actually a decent guitar for a beginner.The guitar body is surprisingly dense and heavy. While many cheap guitars have sharp edges of the frets, these are all smooth. It took a little while to get it to stay in tune, but it’s been fine with that once it adjusted.They include a decent set of materials for a beginner. The extra set of strings is really nice and helpful. The tuner does okay. It’s nice and small.It shouldn’t be a surprise that for a kit like this to be in this price range, there are a few cut corners. The amp is mediocre and runs on a 9-volt battery–having a wall adapter would have been nice. The strap works but is really on the cheap side. The bag isn’t padded. It’s fine for storage or careful transit but isn’t like a padded gig bag. The bridge pickup isn’t very good at all. Thankfully the others are decent.There are a few things that could be limiting as your player advances. The frets could use a little smoothing to help with sliding the strings and the back of the neck doesn’t glide as smoothly as it could. With a little work those could be improved.My son is really pleased with this and is making good progress in learning to play. For the price, this is a good kit for a beginner.

Kit arrived all ready to play (aside from tuning guitar). Reasonably good sound and volume for a guitar at this price point.

My video tells you pretty much everything you ned to know but if you’re unable to watch it, I’ll sum up here.My first impression is that this is a fantastic guitar for the money. I’ve been playing guitar since 1997 and have experienced terrible guitars as well as very good ones. These days, a cheap guitar can still be a great instrument, and this guitar is one of those. I would recommend ignoring the accessories though. These sets are put together as an incentive to buy as you get everything you need to play, which is strictly true, but the guitar is the only good quality item in any of this. Almost everything else will need replacing at some point. I’ll write a bit about each item.The GuitarI am a left handed player and this guitar is right handed, but I can play it well enough to tell that it’s a great instrument. Aside from the finish which has been rushed, the guitar is excellent quality. The action (string height) is very low, possibly too low for some, but that can be adjusted using the small Allan key provided (this gets into how a guitar is “set up” so it’s not that simple. Check a tutorial video first, or take it to a guitar shop to get it dome professionally). The frets also feel a little “rough” if you bend a note (see video) so that could also be a setup job, they might need a polish. Then again, this is a guitar aimed solely at beginners so there might not be too much note bending going on at the start.It’s a standard S shape (Stratocaster, but they can’t use that word) guitar, with three pickups: bridge, middle, and neck. The five position selector switch lets you choose between them in various combinations, which effects the warmth of the sound. There are two tone controls, one for the bridge pickup and one for the neck pickup (so the reviewer who said one didn’t work no doubt had the selector switch in a position where he wasn’t using the pickup he was trying to control) and a volume control. These knobs are all excellent, giving a smooth transition from one end of the spectrum of volume/tone to the other. The same cannot be said for a lot of guitars I have played in the past, so I was amazed that this budget guitar did it so well.The AmpIt sucks. Ditch it. Ditch it as soon as humanly possible. If you are new to guitar you’re not going to sound that good straight away, and playing through this amp will amplify that, and it will sound bad. I can play, and this amp still made me sound bad (see video). A 5w amp like this simply cannot deliver a good tone. It has no bass, so the selector switch on the guitar seems to make no difference when you play through this amp. It’s good to hear a sound from the guitar, but that’s it. You can get better practise amps, headphone amps, and they’ll all sound better than this. Suitable replacements which are still small but infinitely better would be the Marshall MG10, Orange Crush 12 or a Vox Pathfinder 10.AccessoriesTuner – This is fine. I’d probably still never use a clip on tuner myself, I have a strobe tuner app on my phone I’ll use if all else fails.Capo – Again, this is fine and does the job, but I’ve never been a fan of these huge tuners. They do make it easier to put on and off in a hurry, but I prefer something a bit more subtle.Strap – Just a plastic weave strap. It’ll do the job but it might slip around on your shoulder a bit. For a guitar like this it’s not so important but further down your guitar journey you might want a better quality strap and some strap locks, which prevent the guitar from accidentally popping off the strap and hitting the floor. For a guitar like this that’s an extravagance though.Jack Cable – I just used my own cables as they were handy so I didn’t try the one bundled with this set but I’d bet again that this is a budget item and cables is one place you really don’t want to scrimp. If they’re unshielded (which I imagine this will be) they will pick up interference which will present as a hum through your amp. This problem increases if you’re on a stage or in a venue where there are lots of cables around. After the amp, this is the next most important thing to replace.Strings – I can’t tell how good these are as the spares are in an unbranded packet but again, they’ll be budget strings. I’d recommend keeping these as spares and getting a set of Ernie Ball Slinky. They come in all sorts of gauges. If you’re playing heavy stuff (grunge, metal, punk) get heavy strings such as Power Slinky (11-48) so you can thrash them and they won’t break. Regular Slinky would be a standard set (10-46) but these days I prefer Hybrid Slinky (9-46) so I can chug away on the thick strings but still easily bend notes on the thinner strings. It’s all down to personal preference though.PicksThree picks, all the same thickness. Would it have killed them to put in one thin, one medium, and one thick? Again, depends on the music you play but you might want a thinner pick for strumming and a much thicker one for thrashing or playing lead (Brian May uses 1947 sixpences).Tremolo ArmThis is just a bent bit of metal. Screw it into the bridge and you can use it to bend notes. I noticed another reviewer stating that the guitar kept going out of tune. I didn’t experience that at all, so I wonder if he was using the trem a lot. No guitar (except with a Floyd Rose) will stay in tune if you keep using the trem arm. Again, new players probably won’t use it much (I’ve been playing for 27 years and I don’t use one much) but if you do, it’ll detune your guitar. IT’s not the arm, it’s just the nature of the whole system.ConclusionAfter ten minutes of video and paragraphs of waffle, do you really need any more? If you’re thinking of getting this for yourself or as a present for someone who wants to learn, I think it’s perfect. It’s cheap and it’s not amazing quality. That might not sound like a selling point but guitars will take knocks, and new players might pack it in, so you’re better that happening with a guitar like this. Also, this guitar could still last years and years. They can easily be upgraded and if they’re looked after they’ll last a lifetime. Replace almost everything else you get in this set as you go along, but the guitar is great.

Ve lo dico subito, se state pensando a questa chitarra per fare un regalo ad un ragazzo che si vuole approcciare al mondo della chitarra elettrica, allora di sicuro, nei suoi occhi, quando aprirà la scatola vedrete un’inconfondibile gioia per la bellezza del modello Fender, ma di certo dopo qualche mese di lezione la riporrà su uno scaffale perché il suono non è un granché e rispetto ad una Squier by Fender è molto inferiore anche se il prezzo si avvicina molto.Devo ammettere che Donner ha fornito proprio tutto per poter cominciare a suonare non appena si apre la confezione; infatti oltre alla chitarra e alla custodia in confezione c’è un piccolo amplificatore alimentato tramite una batteria a 9V, l’accordatore, la cinta, tre plettri e un capocorda.La chitarra è pronta all’uso, si collega all’amplificatore con il cavo Jack presente in confezione e si può cominciare a suonare.La chitarra è realizzata interamente in legno. È una versione a tre ponti e ha anche il distorsore per imitare i grandi della musica rock.I potenziometri e il selettore del ponte sono posti in maniera comoda sotto alle corde e sono di facile regolazione.Devo ammettere che il suono anche quando perfettamente accordata non mi fa impazzire non è pulitissimo neanche se collego la chitarra ad un amplificatore serio che ho acquistato a parte.Non pensate di acquistare la chitarra definitiva perché onestamente non lo è, anzi è abbastanza mediocre, ma se volete acquistare il vostro primo kit, avete un budget limitatissimo, questa Donner è quella che fa al caso vostro perché oltre a costare davvero molto poco ha anche tutto l’occorrete per iniziare subito a suonare, anche delle lezioni gratuite online a cui partecipare.Niks