Donner39 Inch Jazz Electric Guitar TL Thinline F Hole Beginner Full Size Hollow Guitar with H-H Pickups,Bag, Strap, Cable,Sunburst(DJC-1000S)

This review is for the Donner Thinline Telecaster with two humbuckers- I clarify that because reviews tend to get clumped together.Although this guitar seems to be clearly pointed towards beginners, as a season player, I can tell you that any guitar player of any skill level deserves this guitar and would be happy with it.First, the guitar arrived safely and well packaged. The guitar itself was inside the gig bag. The gig bag is actually very nice. Although it would probably not stand up for traveling/gigs, it’s perfectly fine for basic storage needs. Along with the guitar came a quality, Donner strap, along with a Donner cord, which actually is very nice and usable unlike what you usually get with a “” budget guitar “. There was no damage or scratches to the guitar-it was in literally perfect condition straight out of the factory.Going from the headstock down: the head stock is very nicely shaped. I’ve heard horror stories about the tuners being bad, but these seem to work quite well. As with guitar strings, you might want to change them to your preferred tuner, but these do just fine. The plastic nut is nicely cut and no problems there. The neck and fingerboard are maple and have a very nice yellow tint. The frets are in a word perfect. There’s no grainy feel to them. They are nicely polished, and there are no sharp ends. The profile of the neck is not what you would expect from a telecaster. It’s actually kind of chunky and feels good in your hand. The body is nicely shaped the F hole is nicely cut.The Humbuckers are surprisingly good. I’m not sure what kind of magnets are inside. They are probably ceramic however they have a nice balance of being hot and able to handle mellow playing and tones. The neck was straight and the action was kind of high as as usual straight out of the factory. These elements are easily solved by a set up, which you should be able to do yourself, if not someone in your area should be able to set it up well for you.Playing the guitar-it fits nice and is very comfortable, especially for a blocky telecaster fits well against your body. The tone of the guitar is absolutely excellent. Both clean and dirty. The guitar delivers what you needed to do. With distortion the volume control can clean it up nicely and the tone control is actually usable. There is a three-way switch that is probably an economy type, but for now works well. The hardtail Bridge works well.This is an excellent guitar for playing blues and classic rock. You could probably get away with hard rock and metal with this guitar but honestly it’s really not pointed in that direction. Think Rolling Stones, The Beatles, the Eagles, etc. As stated before a guitar player of any level would enjoy this guitar. Especially one who loves the telecaster feel and shape but wants/needs humbuckers.

I decided to return the first guitar and repurchased another despite having spent about 50% of the purchase price on set-up and fret work on the first guitar.The second guitar came and was well packaged as the first. It also required a setup. Don't believe any of the reviews that say the guitar is ready to go out of the box. ALL NEW GUITARS need a setup. If you're not very picky or don't understand intonation, you can play it out of the box, but you just shouldn't. Don't let this deter you, as I said, all new guitars need a setup. Just be prepared to buy some new strings and have some basic work done. You can actually do the work yourself. It's really not that hard. Lots of instructional videos out there. Just go SLOW. I did it all myself on the second guitar and I'm reasonably happy with the result. Read on.Before I even bought new strings, I did some preliminary setup using the crappy factory strings. They make sound and presumably they hadn't been played except. They ship slightly slacked from "in tune" so they shouldn't be too stretched out. You still want to change them ASAP because I don't think they're coated at all. Even with calloused fingertips they are uncomfortable to play for long. I was able to improve the intonation across all six strings without filing the nut. It wasn't perfect, but it showed signs of hope. What worked for me with the pesky unwound G string was the move the saddle ALL THE WAY back (away from the neck). This made the intonation flat at the 12th fret and pretty close, but still sharp, in the 1-5 fret range. None of the other strings required such extreme measures. I debated purchasing a set of strings with a wound G, but in the end I went with the old standby of Ernie Ball regular slinky strings.Upon removing the factory strings, all of the string ferrules fell out of the back of the guitar. Easy fix. Cut thin pieces of masking tape that just barely make one wrap around the ferrule and reinsert. Don't glue them in, unless you are 100% certain you will never want to take them out again. Masking tape works well because it compresses and should give reasonably even contact all the way around. And it is made of paper, which is made of wood (as are witches) so that would theoretically preserve tone better than contact through a glue product - if you believe such things make any difference whatsoever.Before you remove the factory strings, you may want to check the neck and adjust the truss rod. I did and found that I needed to put in a little backbow (tighten the truss). But you're going to want to do this again with the new strings so you could skip this.I found that I was getting some fret buzz on the high E and the B strings at the 4th fret. Closer examination revealed that the 5th fret wasn't quite seated properly. Work on that with the string change.Remove all the strings and check fret heights. I just used my Amazon Prime Rewards credit card. This is not a plug for the card other than it has a metal core and the edges are pretty durn straight. Good enough for our purposes. The verified that the 5th fret was indeed high on one side. Remember that masking tape from the ferrules, you should have plenty left, so mask up the fret board BETWEEN the frets. Take a small jeweler's hammer and give that fret wire a few smacks with the plastic side until it's fully seated and/or no longer showing up as high when you check with the credit card.I didn't do this, but now would also be a good time to do fret leveling and re-crowning. I probably will do this later on, but I didn't want to invest the time now. I did take the time to do a bit of polishing since I had all the strings off and already taped up the neck. Very light sanding with 800 grit sandpaper on that 5th fret and then a rubbing with 0000/fine steel wool across all the others. At the bare minimum to remove any factory residue oils, grit, etc and to just kind of shine them up a little. It made a difference you can see and feel. But still go easy. You can always do more again another day.Take off the tape and put on the new strings. Set the truss, the intonation and the action. GO SLOW. Make an adjustment, re-tune, check the result. Play the guitar. Only if necessary, and only as much as necessary file the but slots. GO SUPER SLOW. Just a few strokes at a time. It took me several days but I finally found a decent spot. In fact, I went a couple of weeks, and then decided I would file that G nut slot a tiny bit more. You can buy special files, or you can get a "torch tip cleaner" from the hardware store, or even use the waste bits of the wound strings you clipped off at the tuning pegs after re-stringing. Watch some videos and GO SLOW. A small amount of filing can yield big results.I could still work on the action a little. I am primarily an acoustic player, so it's definitely lower and easier to play.I didn't have any issue with the fret ends sticking out, but even if they did, it's an easy fix with small files and more masking tape.This guitar is now within my expectations for a guitar IN THIS PRICE RANGE. Those expectations are fairly basic but important. Intonation can be properly set. Stays in tune. Electronics work.I haven't bothered adjusting the pickup heights yet. They work where they are and can easily be adjusted.I don't often bother playing with an amp because the f-hole cutout DOES make this guitar *slightly* louder than a fully-solid body electric guitar. I don't have another electric guitar to compare it to, but if you strum a chord and then put your hand over the f-hole, you can hear the volume difference. It's still not as loud as an acoustic guitar, or even an arch-top, but you can play on the couch and hum or sing along gently without having to bother with plugging in.The overall sound is very telecaster-ish. Maybe a little less so due to the humbuckers. I find it to be pretty versatile. The C-shape neck plays easily.The only other issue was that 3 (or half) of the tuning machines are "loose." They all hold tuning just fine as long as you are only tuning up/increasing pitch. When you tune down/decrease pitch the knob that you turn with your fingers gets very wiggly and the post that the string winds around can slip. You should only be tuning by increasing pitch anyways, but if you overshoot it then this gets annoying. The other 3 don't do this. I contacted the seller and we resolved the issue to my satisfaction with is consistent with other reviews stating that Donner has good customer service.I do recommend this guitar with a few caveats. Most importantly, temper your expectations. It is not a big brand name guitar. But you only paid a fraction of the cost of a big brand name guitar. AND you got a cable, a strap and a pretty decent padded gig bag. Big brand name guitar maker would be happy to sell you any of those things (emblazoned with their logos) for more money. Second, it must be properly setup. You can do this yourself with a little patience and instruction. Then, just play. If you're a beginner, it's a good platform for learning. If you're more experienced, maybe you need a backup guitar, or a beater, or a guest guitar.Lastly, while I never had both guitars at the same time, this one seemed to be lighter than the first one. They both should be a little lighter than a fully solid guitar because of the f-hole hollow area. Which is better, a lighter guitar or a heavier guitar? This lighter (if it is in fact lighter) one seems to balance better.-----Original ReviewThe jury is deliberating:This guitar looks nice and the feel is good. I paid a local luthier to set it up and the low E intonation was sharp. Not unexpected. Every new guitar needs a setup. Older guitars can often benefit from a setup, too. However, now the G will not properly intonate at the lower frets. Off by about 20 cents at the second fret. Intonation is good at 12th fret. Common solution is to file the nut, but I'm concerned it can't go any lower.I'm disappointed after reading/watching several reviews that other units were good to go out of the box or after a setup.We also leveled, crowned and polished the frets and the playing feel is very nice. But if you have even moderate relative pitch, the G string will drive you crazy.I may (pay more money) and have someone else take another look at it. That could cause my rating to go up (if resolved) or down (if unable to remedy).

This guitar has been fun, I’ve had to do some work on it to get it to my standard. The included picture is year five with it . Not sure if they’re still shipping the same quality but mine was a 3/5 for total quality.Frets good, nut bad plastic , electronics were meh, and the bridge had plastic saddles . After swapping pickups and using it for tbt first couple years as a live guitar and for recordings it was a good/great lil guitfiddle . But after a fret dressing, tuner and saddle swap, new wiring and plate , and a bit of wear…. This is one of my faves!! I got mine during covid for 89$ shipped , gig bag, chord, Allen wrench, strap ….!!!??! These donner ones are great project platforms or a really good first guitar for beginners .UPGRADES: guyker locking pearl top tuners , pearl top knobs , Amazon prewired tele plate , musically brass saddles, Seymour Duncan pups , and bone nut . I have about 220$ into it total, and it’s better than any squire I’ve ever owned , rivals a mex tele, and is about G&L in quality feeling … wild considering I could’ve lived with everything but the noisy single coils on it stock.Now it sounds like a tele on steroids and I play it tuned to C standard with 54-11 set of D’adarrio’s ! Pic is April1st 25 , 5 years to the day I recived it .