39 Inch Electric Guitar, DST-550 Solid Double-cut Poplar Body Electric Guitar for Intermediate & Pro Players, 7 Tone-switching Options & Tremolo Bridge, Bonus Bag, Ice Blue

I've been playing guitar 45 years and have owned dozens of guitars and amps. Back in the 70s a $35 electric guitar was practically unplayable. Recently I set up a Squier strat for a friend and it ended up being as good as an Am Std. So I took the plunge with the DST 550. Out of the box I was pretty surprised at the overall look and quality. 7 lbs, balanced no neck dive, nice C shape carve. I was able to get VERY low action with no issues, and it didn't require shimming the neck. Within hours I dug in and put some vintage wind Alnico 5 single coils in for a huge tone upgrade. The pots are those tiny ones so eventually I'll replace those along with the humbucker. It was wired strange as the bucker read 14k or 8k split, but the middle and neck pickups were reading wacky numbers. The new ones I installed are reading 6k middle and 7.2k neck. So it has lots of quack at the in between settings now. A great project guitar for a long time player gigging guitarist, or a beginner just as it is.

The good. 5.0 Thick light body. 4.5 Fit and finish is beautiful and spotless with the exception of one small scratch where the heel attaches to the body. 5.0 Locking tuners 5.0 Tremolo 5.0 Neck is thin and awesome! Since this is actually an Ibanez knockoff, that's understandable. 4.5 The humbucker pickup is the best pickup I've ever played. The harmonics are better than than the Pearly Gates, and the Fred! I don't know what Donner did but damn! The single coils are ok. The bad. 3.0 Fret sprout, Yikes! Gonna file that down! 4.0 Fret rock, four upper frets have a slight rock. The rest are perfect. About 5 minutes of filing will fix that. 3.0 Double winding the locking tuners. Now why did yall have to do that? Now I gotta change the strings out! Summary. This is a damn good guitar. In fact it is better than any Fender Stratocaster I ever played period, including all the expensive models out there. However, work needs to be done. If you're not good with tools, you may need to pass on this one, wait..learn how to set up a guitar or you'll never have a good one. If you are a pro, grab one of these for your gigs, and leave your expensive strats at home. That humbucker though. Wow! Ok, after all the filing and general setup, my conclusion is that this is the perfect affordable guitar. What would make this the "perfect" guitar? Medium Jumbo frets. That's right! Going back to the Thunderforge humbucker, you can turn the gain all the way up (I have a Peavey triple xxx) and it's still articulate, and not noisy. Go find another pickup that can do that. The natural harmonics are better than any pickups I ever owned.

Ok, first the neck is fat as hell..think fat strat. My first experience with a roasted maple neck and the look is good but if you ignore the roasting and look at the grain underneath it's just a maple neck with no frills. They say there's a process to strengthen the neck. I say the neck is strong because it feels like a railroad tie in your hands..I mean fat. Never played a fatter neck than this one. Also the neck is not compound radius it is same throughout which makes it harder to play some things in some places...like Jimi for me. The fret ends are pretty noticable on your fingers but they don't cut the skin. The locking tuners seem pretty good and function well. The nut could have been rounded at the ends a little nicer but is fine as is and slotted correctly. The fret ends could have been much better and made with better material as we're beginning to see stainless frets with ball ends at this price point. I love the truss rod functionality I've never owned a guitar that had this type of rod adjustment...I like it a lot. The satin finish on the neck is very smooth and with the roasting is pleasing to the eye. On to the body!!... I got the blue color and it reminds me of my old '96 Mex strat with exact same deep sparkle blue color but less lacquer on the Donner than the strat. Electronics work well and knobs and switches are all placed appropriately. The pickups are very sterile and will need to be replaced but at least they have an evenly sterile sound that isn't too displeasing to the ear. I found the back of the body at the neck joint the most interesting and yet completely useless feature of the guitar. When I looked at pics I thought the nice upper and lower cut aways were functional and would help your hands get closer and therefore allow your fingers to reach the upper frets easier......WRONG!! These cut out literally do nothing at all. As I looked at my hand holding the guitar as high on the neck as possible as if it were playing on the last fret. I noticed my hands don't even come close to cradling in those spots and neither cut out os needed in order to easily reach the upper frets. So.....one of the main features of this guitar is absolutely useless and non functional. At this price point there are definitely better choices out there. However this is still an excellent beginner guitar for a fair price. If you take it to a guitar tech and have it setup and the frets filed and leveled then highly polished this guitar will play and feel as nice as much more expensive guitars. The question is do you really want to spend around the cost of the guitar to have the work done on it to make it playable? I could not or would I ever take this guitar straight to a gig...that would be a bad night waiting to happen. I forgot about the bridge which is nice and works smoothly. Seems substantial and not super thin metal or anything. Lastly, the guitar was obviously sold and returned as the plastic over the pickguard was halfway off and places that were supposed to be taped up (protective paper over the strings) were untaped and hanging loose. I'm not a fan of buying certain things from Amazon because of this. The box was mishandled and torn at both ends due to the box being stuffed in the truck but the guitar wasn't affected, it was out of tune but it's winter so that is probably why. Mine has scratches and noticable handling marks.

Awesome guitar!! , it looks incredible and plays fantastic and sounds great!! , you are getting way more guitar than you paid for!!

This guitar is surprisingly good for the price. Frets have no sharp ends, it is light and the neck is thin. It is extremely comfortable to play and has a ton of options tone wise because of the coil split. The tuning stability is good so far. I would definitely recommend this guitar to a beginner over other more popular brands that charge you more because of the brand name. If you are also looking for a solid base to mod, this guitar has a lot of potential as well. Some things it needs work on are adjusting the neck so the action is lower, saddle adjustments so the intonation is better, and the whammy bar hole which gave me trouble because it has debris that didn't let me twist it all the way in, for that I think this is a solid 4.3/5

JUNK!!! Wish I could say it’s a great guitar. Needed a ton of tweaking to get it somewhat playable. Lots of different options for this price range. I’d probably buy another brand than this one.

Very good guitar for beginners or just something to fiddle around with. The neck is a bit darker than I'd like, makes it harder to see the frets clearly in low light. The action is a bit lower than I'd like, just by a tad bit. But it is very beautiful and nice to have. I like to experiment with alternate tunings and I use this primarily for that.

As far as the look of the item in the make of it, it looked and was made. Well, plugged it in and could not get it to work. Electronics were messed up.