Donner 10W Guitar Amplifier, Electric Bass Guitar Amp Protable with APP Effector Input for Recording，Acoustic Guitar Combo Practice Amp Protable M-10 with Distortion Tone for Heavy Music Player

Today I got my hands on the Donner DEA-1 Guitar Amplifier. Though I first started doodling around on the guitar a quarter century ago, I haven’t really gotten serious about it until recently. Consequently, I’ve been trying out every bit of gear I can to find what works for me.This amp works for me.First off, I realized before buying it that the amp was meant for practice, not for gigging. Its light weight and easy portability makes it ideal for toting with you wherever you wish to go--the bedroom, the front porch, the bathroom, your friend’s house, your friend’s bathroom. Wherever.Just kidding about the bathroom bit. Unless that’s your thing. Who am I to judge?Anyway, I knew I wouldn’t be taking this on stage, and I held no illusions that I would be heard over a drummer or a bass player with a 100 watt Fender Rumble. This was just for messing around in the bonus room. With that in mind, let’s get to it.Shipping/Packaging Condition: It arrived safely in two days’ time. The packaging was impressive. It was shipped in a box within a box. Does that make sense? The larger box was stuffed with brown paper filler to minimize product movement, and the actual Donner box was securely packed with Styrofoam corners to keep the amp well protected. The amp came with simple directions (see attached photograph) and adapters for auxiliary inputs such as MP3 or CD players. That’s always a nice feature. With it, you can plug in your smartphone and jam along with your iTunes catalog, YouTube videos, or whatever else tickles your fancy.Weight/Quality of Build: At ten and a half pounds, this thing is super lightweight. But that doesn’t mean it’s flimsy garbage. This thing is built tough. The exterior is armored with heavy-duty black plastic or rubber or perhaps some other synthetic space-age material. Whatever it is, it feels good and protective. The corners are reinforced with extra layers of the same stuff. The front, however, sports a handsome silver grille cloth with the Donner logo tastefully displayed in its upper left corner. The control knobs are a thick black material that sort of gets lost against the black control panel. It would be nice to see them changed to silver or white. That would help them stand out better, and since those colors are already present on the grille cloth and logo, it wouldn’t seem out of place.Clean Sound: After admiring the amp’s appearance, I plugged in my old FrankenTele (a Telecaster with an actual Telecaster neck, but the body and electronics of some knock-off brand; at least I think so. I bought it from a friend in the 90’s who had pieced it together from parts purchased on Ebay). As gear reviewers often do, I decided to start off by checking out the amp’s clean sound. With a little fiddling, I was able to dial in a pleasant clean tone. It sounded warm and full, without requiring me to shape the tone with effects pedals. Of course, since I love effects pedals, I did that too. In fact, I hooked up my Danelectro Fab Chorus (love me some Chorus) and my Donner Yellow Fall delay pedal (an awesome pedal that deserves it own review) and happily noodled around for far longer than I had planned. Sounded awesome.Overdrive: Like many amps made over the last decade, this one boasts an overdrive setting. It isn’t labeled overdrive; it’s simply labeled Boost, which is fine with me. With one press of a button, my clean sound was replaced with a much thicker, crunchier distortion. Since the control panel offers EQ adjustments for Treble, Middle, and Bass, I was able to tinker with that boosted sound to a significant degree, dialing in a tone that worked quite well for classic rock and saturated blues. Of course, I had to see how the amp paired with distortion pedals, so I plugged in my Donner Stylish Fuzz pedal (that one needs a review too) and chugged away on some old Smashing Pumpkins tunes. Loved it. I also tried the Danelectro Fab Distortion and the Behringer Ultra Metal (UM300). The amp handled both pedals admirably.Volume: Again, I knew before ordering that this amplifier wouldn’t be super loud. I simply wanted something I could practice with that was built tough, sounded decent, and wouldn’t wake the neighbors. This does all that. I compared it to my old Marshall MG10CD and found that the Marshall beat it for sheer volume. Of course, I expected that. Marshalls can get stupid loud. But that Marshall is 49% more expensive than this Donner, so there is that.Headphones: I plugged the same headphones I use for my XBOX One into the amp and it sounded crisp and clear. It also allowed me to crank it as loud as I wished without disturbing the wife and kids. They appreciated that. In fact, I’m pretty sure they all began clapping and sighing in relief the moment they no longer had to listen to my amateurish attempts at playing.Final Take: Ultimately, I dig the amp. It’s inexpensive, yet built way more solidly than would be expected from an amp at its price point. The Donner company has really staked out a claim for making quality guitar gear at affordable prices. I may have to check out their Stratocaster copy, the DST-1. If it’s as good as this amp, then it would be an absolute steal at $129 bones.

I'm a guitarist of on-and-off playing for nearly 15 years, and several bouts of Gear Acquisition Syndrome has seen me owning numerous amps. When a niece and nephew were living with me and my parents last year, I worried one of my nicer small amps in my bedroom would get damaged, so I bought a Fender Frontman 10G. I like it's clean tone, and if something were to happen to it, I'd be a lot less stressed than if it were one of my nicer amps that got damaged.I recently decided I wanted another amp to run in stereo with the Frontman, with the niece and nephew gone now. None of my tube amps would really voice well with the little Frontman, so I decided to try another "beginner" amp. I bought a LyxPro 20 watt amp and it literally fell apart when I took a peek inside of it. It was haphazardly assembled, and I wasn't impressed with it's shrill tone.I got this Donner, and as my review title states, I find this to be the best sounding "beginner" amp that's priced below $80. This amp sounds almost as good as, and better than the Fender Frontman 10G.What do I mean? This Donner has a nice clean channel, but it doesn't quite have that lovely Fender shimmer. However, the Frontman's overdrive channel sounds terrible. It's badly over-compressed and has literally no dynamic. By comparison, the overdrive on this Donner sounds more bearable. It's not as compressed, and thanks to it's 3 band EQ, can deliver some dynamic range in the overdrive.The 3 band EQ (Treble, Middle, and Bass knobs) is in my opinion what makes this little amp so great. This feature is very rarely seen on low priced amps like this Donner, and while it makes little difference to a beginner, I as an experienced guitarist with many different guitars appreciate the 3 band EQ, since this really helps my various guitars voice their tone properly through this amp. If I had to choose between this Donner and the Frontman, I would take the Donner, much as I like the Frontman's clean tone.I also did open up the back of this amp, and found it assembled much more cleanly and thoroughly than both the Frontman and the LyxPro. Both the amp's PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and input transformer are mounted to a metal chassis, and the PCB is grounded to the chassis in a few places. So the quality of this Donner as an assembled unit also lends weight to my argument that this is one of the best low price beginner amps.Since I have several nice amps, I am going to gripe about this Donner's speaker. It's a cheap unit that really can't handle the tonal spectrum of this amp. The speaker shrieks in pain at higher mid and treble settings, and farts and flabs when you dial up the bass. But I can't dock points off my review score for this though; Again, this is a low priced amp, and one cannot expect a high quality speaker to come with it. Heck, just ONE of the six speakers I have in my custom designed 3D printed speaker cabs cost more than this amp does!While I've recommended a number of amps to both beginners and experts alike, I can also recommend this Donner. A beginner (or a family member/friend that wants them to try playing guitar) can get this amp, knowing that it's a well assembled unit that can sound good without spending a lot. An expert can get this amp for a low price, still find it sounding decent enough and either use it as an amp that may take some abuse, or even do some "hacks" with it.For my part, I'll run this Donner in stereo with the Frontman for a while, using effects pedal for overdrive and distortion. Eventually though, I see myself calculating the impedance of this amp, and seeing if I can rig this Donner to my 3D printed speaker cabinets to hear how the amp sounds with nice speakers.

I have recently started playing the guitar and this amp is really nice! Its really loud if you want it that way and it can also be really soft as well. the sound quality is very good. I would recommend you get a Bluetooth adapter with this as it works really well when you put it in the aux cord. We use this for karaoke and its a great combo volume wise because the two inputs do work well together!I don't have many bad things to say but I guess it would have to be that it can get VERY loud so you just gotta find that sweet spot for this amp!I would defiantly recommend to anyone who likes to play your guitar and loves karaoke!

The media could not be loaded.  Overall this is a very neat amp. I'm really liking this trend towards making tiny amps that utilize technology to increase their flexibility and sound quality. The result here is a very light, small, portable amp that on one hand sounds very British in its voicing. And on the other hand it can produce a drastically different sound with the smartphone app.My only issue is that I was not able to find a free app that produced no lag. I got very close but not quite there. A part of that is down to how the sound has to travel through your smartphone as the preamp but really that shouldn't add any noticeable lag on its own. What is nice about this system here is that because it just runs the sound through your smartphone as the guitar preamp you can use a variety of different apps. It also turns this from just a solid, basic guitar amp into whatever amp you might need. You're not restricted this way and at the mercy of whatever support Donner would provide for their software in 3-5 years. Instead you're at the mercy of Android developers, which with the way the market is trending should be fine. There's already numerous apps and I expect more will arrive in the future.The amp without the app has a real nice gritty British tone to it. Whether that's clean or distorted. It would greatly benefit from a gain knob and a mid EQ knob but there is some charm to it just set flat. The sound is tight and sharp. You can tell it's a small amp but it doesn't sound like a cheap small amp, which is nice. It could really use a built in reverb as well, even if it was a small amount and not user controllable. It really opens up the amp. Still on it's own this is a really great little travel amp. It's got all you really need on the top panel for practicing on the go, and with the right app it's got a ton of flexibility.

A good practice amp, a bit on the tinny side sound wise. For the price a fair sound

Leider fehlt das Netzkabel

The media could not be loaded.  When you start out playing an instrument (in my case guitar) it can become a costly start up cost, especially when you get a half decent guitar and all the gear that is required for you to enjoy the learning process.I was doing research to find a budget, but still a great amp for quite some time and this little guy was recommended by sites and many reviews I have come across.The price was in my range, I like that it has a fair amount of settings, distortion effect (boost) and that you can plug your mp3 player in to play along with music or just play music and use it as a stereo... and of course I really liked the old-school look!Keep in mind the settings on the amp are for your instrument, if you want to play songs you will have to use the settings in your equilizer. Just a good thing to know!I am attaching a little video for you to get an idea of how it can sound, don't mind my NON-skills as I honestly only been playing guitar for 3 days but it can give you an idea anyways.I think it is a perfect amp for a beginner on a budget, or even a more advanced player. I have the volume below half at all times with the settings about half way and it puts out alot of sound, in boost I even have to turn it down as it gets way to loud... not that I have neighbors as I live on 10 acres in a house, but it just becomes to noisy for myself.Give it a try, you will like it.

The media could not be loaded.  The sound quality of this is great. It's a bit finicky at the start to get acquainted with how the overdrive knob works together with the master volume knob, and the bass/treble don't do much for how my wife's guitar sounds, but once you got the hang of it, this makes very good sound for the small form factor. Build quality on this is great. It's nice and retro-looking; pretty sturdy from what I can tell. Only complaint is that the power cord could be a bit longer.I didn't try out the app integration, but it has a button to use Garageband and other phone apps to control the filters instead of the fixed analog overdrive.