- 1 day ago
Paul Riario demos the Donner HUSH X-Pro, a headless electric with built-in effects, amp modeling, IR support and pro playability. Practice anywhere — no amp needed!
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00What's up? It's Paul from Guitar World and today we're going to be checking out Donner's latest
00:28Hush series guitar, the Hush X Pro, or as Donner would like to put it, the Donner Hush X Pro
00:37multi-effects electric guitar for travel. That's if you look it up online. Now this guitar has
00:44everything. It is amazing. It has obviously a built-in multi-effects processor called Donner
00:51X processor. You have the tone simulation, noise gate, overdrives, modulation, amp and cab, delay,
00:58reverb, EQ, and then you can bypass, as well as the ability to support impulse response IR imports.
01:06And of course Donner will always be there to give you firmware updates to the Hush X Pro. It's just
01:11a fantastic guitar with so much built-in, an OLED display, and does it have a built-in tuner? Of
01:17course it does, but it has so much more. So let's get into it and check it out. First things first,
01:23let's power up the guitar simply by pushing the preset knob here on the face of the guitar, a long
01:31press. Now we are powered up. You have total one-touch control via the preset knob on the face of the
01:39guitar, simply by pushing or rotating the knob. Now there are presets A through G, and I can cycle
01:47through A through G presets by simply rotating the preset knob. A, B, C, D, E, F. So we can say I
01:57consider each of these banks, and within each bank of A through F, there are three presets. So you can
02:05save up to 16 presets. And the way I can cycle through that, so once I rotate to the bank I want
02:11to be to go through the three presets, I just press now, and that'll take me through A1, A2, A3. And
02:18then if I want to get to the next bank, just rotate to B. It'll bring me to B3, and then just press until
02:24I get to the preset I wish to explore. At the top over here, we have a volume knob on the bottom,
02:32your tone knob at the top, these concentrically stacked knobs, so it's all in one here, and then
02:38your three-way selector switch, which allows you to select whether you're using the bridge, middle, or
02:44neck pickup. I have it coming out of the headphone input, so you really get to hear what it sounds like
02:50through headphones.
03:08And then I'll move on to B by simply rotating. I'm in the next preset. This is where we get to more of
03:26the modulated type of effects, which is really nice.
03:44Keep in mind, I can change the parameters and edit how much effect I want, or even the voicing of that effect.
03:51And then here's another one.
04:12Then I'm moving over to the next block of presets, which is the C section. This is where I start to
04:18encounter some drives, and these are really well-voiced overdrives.
04:48And then we move over to the D-bank, which has even a little more gain, which really sounds good.
05:18So, let's get started.
05:23And then we move over to the next block of presets, which is called, which is the C section.
05:27We'll see you next time.
05:28We'll see you next time.
05:29We'll see you next time.
05:30Bye.
05:31So, let's get started.
05:38Bye.
05:39Bye.
05:41Bye.
05:42Bye.
05:44Bye.
05:46Bye.
05:47Bye.
05:48Theoretically, you can actually set up one bank as sort of like your clean, your rhythm,
06:13and your solo. And just by hitting that, you're, in essence, doing the same thing as you would do
06:19with the foot switch. But right now, you have it all within your fingertips.
06:43As you bank through some of the more quieter presets, you can really utilize that kind of
06:49almost like foot switch control, but with one touch control, where you can pretty much change
06:53your sounds on the fly, which is really nice. But more importantly, this guitar is great to take
07:00with you anywhere. What's great about the Donner Hush X Pro is its case slash gig bag. You can see
07:23it's extremely portable and compact, thanks to its headless design, where you can just take this and
07:29stow this easily in an overhead airline bin, or just simply carry it. Let's take a look and see
07:36what you get, what's inside this case. So let's open it up. It has two sections, the top half and
07:42the lower half. The lower half has the actual Hush X Pro guitar. The top half has all the accessories
07:48that you need to get this up and running. So let's take a look. You'll see the top over here has
07:57the upper bracing. Easily stowed there, and then the lower half bracing to rest on your leg. Over here,
08:08you can pull some stuff out. We have
08:11picks and what looks to be a tremolo arm, but I don't believe it's a tremolo arm.
08:19I believe that's an adjustment tool. So yes, you have picks included. Over here in this baggie,
08:25we have headphones and a really, really like premium pair of earbuds. So you can quietly practice
08:34and not bother anyone. And you can see that, but it's a really high quality and also comes with all
08:40the proper fitting earbuds for different types of ears. There's also the USB-C connector for charging,
08:48as well as being able to do firmware updates. They also give you a quarter inch instrument cable
08:56as well. Polish cloth, which is nice. Instruction manual, quick start guide, I should say, which is
09:05real helpful if you have no idea how to utilize this. And over here, we have a guitar strap.
09:13So if you want to play it live or standing upright, you can. And finally, these are the shoulder straps
09:23that you clip onto the back of the bag so you can carry this around your back on your shoulder.
09:27Real helpful so you don't have to actually use the handles. And then once you open the bottom half
09:33of the case, lo and behold, we have the actual Hush X Pro. Here is the guitar. And they really did a
09:41great job of Velcro hold to hold the neck. You protect the top of its headless design with this
09:50foam. And then this keeps it in place, this sort of strap over here. And then this other foam
09:57protector protects the actual controls of the guitar. Let's talk about the connections over here. You can
10:03see we have the quarter inch instrument cable connection. There's also a headphone connection as
10:08well with the included headphones so you can silently practice. There's also a small hole here called the
10:15reset hole. In the unlikely event the DXP processor kind of freezes, you can reset the system. And then
10:23finally, here is the USB-C port for firmware updates and of course, charging. When you start to get a low
10:29battery, you'll start to see the preset knob become red. And then you would just charge it. And then when
10:34you see the halo lights here turn green, you know you're fully charged. Let's put the upper brace in.
10:40I will line it up here by pulling this out and inserting it. And then lining up this part, pushing it
10:52into its hole up here by the neck. And then pushing down and locking it in place. Real simple. Same idea
11:01over here on the bottom. I'm going to pull that back, drop it in, and then lock it in place as well.
11:13So there you have it. You have the upper and lower bracing so it makes it easier for you to play it
11:17on your lap and gives it a little more depth as a guitar. The strap pins are over here on the back
11:24if you want to use the included guitar strap to play it standing up. On the back of this guitar,
11:31if you pop this out, we also have the allen keys over here, which allows you to make adjustments
11:38to change strings and to adjust string height for the saddles and to lock and tighten the strings
11:46up here. So these come in handy. And of course, one of these, as I mentioned before,
11:52you can use that to insert in the reset hole in the unlikely event, the system malfunctions or freezes.
12:00This is where you put the ball end of the string so you can string through out to the saddles and then
12:08lock that back into place. So the other things to note about the Donner Hush X Pro, this is a mahogany body
12:14with a multi-layered neck over here. And it's also a great slim C profile on this particular neck.
12:25And because it has stainless steel frets, Donner really went the extra mile to have no sharp fret edges.
12:33So you get a smooth playability across the whole fretboard. You can also make neck adjustments if you
12:39need to, but this neck is very straight with the heel truss rod adjustment wheel over here.
12:45So as you can see this 22 frets, it's a zero fret design. What's great is the bridge design has come
12:51a long way from the other Hush series instruments. This time around, they really nailed the tuning
12:57wheels. I can easily adjust these tuning wheels on the former versions of the Hush headless guitar
13:04designs. Some of them weren't as grippy. These are incredibly grippy and just a slight turn and
13:10you're pretty much in tune. And you can see there's also notches here in case you want to really put
13:15sort of like a flat head and really adjust quickly. But honestly, you won't need it because just turning
13:21these left to right in incremental moves, you'll pretty much get to where you want to be in tune very
13:28quickly. And of course, thanks to the onboard built-in tuner, you'll get there even faster.
13:34Let's talk about the DXP system, otherwise known as the Donner X processor. This is the built-in effects
13:41with the tone sim, which gives you the guitar model simulation, amp modeling with sampling,
13:46and as well it supports IR imports or impulse responses. You have a tap tempo and tuner over here.
13:54Simply you can tap tempo this. You can see where it's at right now. And if I long press it, I will bring up
14:00the built-in tuner. And then long press again. I'm back to the preset. There's a Bluetooth button
14:10that you can activate or deactivate. Right now I have it deactivated. This allows you, of course,
14:14to pair your Bluetooth devices. Down here in the bottom we have a menu knob which allows you to access
14:20more than 60 effects. There's the tone sim at the very bottom over here, which allows you to simulate
14:28legendary guitars. From what I gather, there's seven guitars that you can simulate. S style guitar,
14:35an LP style, a T style, as well as what looks to be a Jazzmaster style, and then three acoustic guitar
14:43simulations simply by selecting that. And once it's highlighted, then I can get into it and start
14:50editing the parameters. So simply selecting and then you can just start going to each value and
14:56selecting the value you want to edit. Moving up one, we have also an FX menu as well over here.
15:03There's also a drive menu that allows you to select the multiple distortions and drives and fuzzes
15:10from this built-in FX. Here's where you get your amps and your cabinets that you can swap to kind of
15:17really fine-tune your sound. Here are your delay FX options. It gives you that selection of delays you
15:24can choose from. The next up, of course, is your reverbs. And then you can use the value knob just to
15:30scroll through as you see the blocks of reverbs that you can choose from. And then once you select one,
15:36you can get into editing. In case you want to plug this guitar in to use it just as a normal regular
15:41guitar, you can go right down to bypass mode and just use the Donner custom Alnico 5 pickups.
15:48What's cool is that depending on the guitar simulation, you can reconfigure the pickup voicing.
15:53If you don't want the guitar simulation, you can always set it to normal as well. So what's great about
15:58having the presets, you can use these presets as a launch pad to create your own presets, or you may
16:03keep meszes and tweak them just the way you want them. But it's also cool just that you can see by
16:09the way Donner sets it up what effects modules are in play by the way they're highlighted under the
16:16preset. So you can see, for example, in A3 we have an amp module in play. There's also a delay and a
16:23reverb in play on this particular effect. And what's great is if you need to adjust any of the values,
16:29you just simply hit the value knob and then basically switch to the effects module you need
16:35to adjust and then just start moving along and select the highlighted. Highlight the value you need
16:42to adjust. And then if you want to save that, you can long press it to allow you to save the current
16:50preset volume as well as save the preset. Donner's Hush X Pro electric guitar is probably their most
17:05formidable Hush series guitar yet. With built-in multi-effects amp simulation, guitar model simulation,
17:13and one touch knob operation, you have all the possible guitar sounds at your fingertips. Not to
17:19mention you have a solidly constructed electric guitar that's amazing to play and easy to play.
17:26What more could you want? Definitely check it out.
17:49Here we are.
Recommended
10:04
6:09
5:23
5:23
5:23
5:23
11:25
44:27
5:34
12:55
4:16
Be the first to comment