- 4 hours 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!
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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.
05:18I'm in the other one.
05:26So,
05:35you
05:37you
05:37you
05:41you
05:43you
05:44you
05:45you
05:47Theoretically, 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 footswitch, but right now you have it all within your fingertips.
06:44As you bank through some of the more quieter presets, you can really utilize that kind of
06:48almost like footswitch control with one touch control where you can pretty much change your
06:53sounds on the fly, which is really nice. But more importantly, this guitar is great to take with you anywhere.
07:13What's great about the Donner Hush X Pro is its case slash gig bag. You can see it's extremely
07:24portable and compact thanks to its headless design where you can just take this and sew this easily
07:31in an overhead airline bin or just simply carry it. Let's take a look and see what you get what's
07:37inside this case. So let's open it up. It has two sections, the top half and the lower half. The
07:43lower half has the actual Hush X Pro guitar. The top half has all the accessories that you need to
07:51get this up and running. So let's take a look. You'll see the top over here has the upper bracing
07:59easily stowed there and then the lower half bracing to rest on your leg. Over here we can pull some
08:09stuff out. We have picks 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
08:35and not bother anyone. And you can see that, but it's a really high quality and also comes with all
08:40the proper fitting ear buds 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 as well.
08:58Polish cloth, which is nice. Instruction manual. Quick start guide, I should say, which is real helpful
09:06if 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. Real
09:27helpful 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 great
09:42job of Velcro hold to hold the neck. You protect the top of its headless design with this foam. And
09:52then this keeps it in place this sort of strap over here. And then this other foam protector protects the
10:00actual controls of the guitar. Let's talk about the connections. Over here you can see we have the
10:04quarter inch instrument cable connection. There's also a headphone connection as well with the included
10:09headphones so you can silently practice. There's also a small hole here called the reset hole. In the
10:16unlikely event the DXP processor kind of freezes, you can reset the system. And then finally here is the
10:24USB-C port for firmware updates and of course charging. When you start to get a low battery you'll start
10:29to see the preset not become red. And then you would just charge it and then when you see the halo
10:35lights here turn green you know you're fully charged. Let's put the upper brace in. I will line it up here
10:42by pulling this out and inserting it and then lining up this part, pushing it into its hole up here
10:55by the neck and then pushing down and locking it in place. Real simple. Same idea over here on the bottom.
11:04I'm going to pull that back, drop it in and then lock it in place as well. So there you have it. You have
11:14the upper and lower bracing so it makes it easier for you to play it on your lap and gives it a little
11:20more depth as a guitar. The strap pins are over here on the back if you want to use the included guitar
11:26strap to play it standing up. On the back of this guitar if you pop this out we also have the allen
11:34keys over here which allows you to make adjustments to change strings and to adjust string height for the
11:42saddles and to lock and tighten the strings up here. So these come in handy and of course one of these as
11:51I mentioned before you can use that to insert in the reset hole in the unlikely event the system
11:58malfunctions or freezes. This is where you put the ball end of the string so you can string through
12:04out to the saddles and then lock that back into place.
12:09So the other things to note about the Donner Hush X Pro this is a mahogany body with a multi-layered neck
12:18over here and it's also a great slim C profile on this particular neck and because it has stainless
12:27steel frets Donner really went the extra mile to have no sharp fret edges so you get a smooth playability
12:36across the whole fretboard. You can also make neck adjustments if you need to but this neck is very
12:41straight with the heel truss rod adjustment wheel over here. So as you can see there's 22 frets. It's
12:47a zero fret design. What's great is the bridge design has come a long way from the other Hush series
12:53instruments. This time around they really nailed the tuning wheels. I can easily adjust these tuning
13:00wheels on the former versions of the Hush headless guitar designs. Some of them weren't as grippy.
13:07These are incredibly grippy and just a slight turn and you're pretty much in tune and you can see
13:13there's also notches here in case you want to really put sort of like a flat head and really adjust
13:18quickly. But honestly you won't need it because just turning these left to right in incremental moves
13:24you'll pretty much get to where you want to be in tune very quickly. And of course thanks to the
13:30onboard built-in tuner you'll get there even faster. Let's talk about the DXP system otherwise known as the
13:37Donner X processor. This is the built-in effects with the tone sim which gives you the guitar model
13:43simulation amp modeling with sampling and as well it supports IR imports or impulse responses. You have
13:51a tap tempo and tuner over here. Simply you can tap tempo this you can see where it's at right now and
13:58if I long press it I will bring up the built-in tuner. And then long press again. I'm back to the
14:08preset. There's a bluetooth button that you can activate or deactivate. Right now I have it deactivated.
14:13This allows you of course to pair your bluetooth devices. Down here in the bottom we have a menu knob
14:18which allows you to access more than 60 effects. There's the tone sim at the very bottom over here
14:26which allows you to simulate legendary guitars. From what I gather there's seven guitars that you can
14:33simulate. S style guitar, an LP style, a T style as well as what looks to be a jazz master style and then
14:42three acoustic guitar simulations. Simply by selecting that and once it's highlighted then I can get into
14:49it and start editing the parameters. So simply selecting and then you can just start going to each
14:55value and selecting the value you want to edit. Moving up one we have also an FX menu as well over
15:02here. There'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 effects 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
15:30to scroll through as you see the blocks of reverbs that you can choose from and then once you select
15:35one you 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
15:58about having the presets you can use these presets as a launch pad to create your own presets or you
16:03may keep meszes and tweak them just the way you want them. But it's also cool just that you can see
16:09by the way Donner sets it up what effects modules are in play by the way they're highlighted under the
16:16presets. So you can see for example in A3 we have an amp module in play there's also a delay and a reverb
16:24in play on this particular effect. And what's great is if you need to adjust any of the values you just
16:29simply hit the value knob and then basically switch to the effects module you need to adjust
16:36and then just start moving along and select the highlighted highlight the value you need to adjust
16:46and then if you want to save that you can long press it to allows you to
16:49save the current preset volume as well as save the preset.
17:01Donner's Hush X Pro electric guitar is probably their most formidable Hush series guitar yet.
17:08With built-in multi-effects amp simulation guitar model simulation and one touch knob operation you have
17:15all the possible guitar sounds at your fingertips. Not to mention you have a solidly constructed electric
17:22guitar that's amazing to play and easy to play. What more could you want? Definitely check it out.
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