Donner Telecaster DTC-100 The ULTIMATE Cheap Guitar!!!
I picked myself up a cheap Donner Telecaster DTC-100. Like really cheap, this one at the time of purchase was $159 on Amazon. (Check my link) I have done a few of these cheap guitar videos. And most of them have been the same story, poor build quality, terrible pickups, the rest of the hardware and build suspect. This one however was different in a lot of the categories. I’m convinced you won’t find a guitar in this price range with good pickups, it honestly would shock me if you did. It really seems to me that’s where the line is drawn for most cheap guitars, hardware.
While i’ve picked up many guitars at much higher price points that had pickups I wasn’t fond of, most of them were playable as is and the stock pickups were just not to my taste. . However when you start to venture down the road of really really budget guitars I generally find they need at a minimum a new set of pickups, machine heads (Tuners) and a nut. Which can quickly add a few hundred dollars to your cheap build making you question if you should just step up to something better.
But, with modern manufacturing and everything being CNC’d that takes a ton of the potential problems out of the equation. Then it just becomes a quality control and assembly problem. Which unfortunately I’ve seen my fair share of poop. This however was not poop, it actually is a really decent guitar, with some not so great pickups but workable and not as microphonic as a lot of these cheap guitars. A guy probably won’t want to play a live gig with this guitar as is, but you probably could and seriously the pickups are the only thing standing in the way in my opinion.
Donner Telecaster Nearly Good Enough
I have tried a lot of these cheap budget guitars. Some have been sent to me and some (Like this one) I purchased on my own. But I generally purchase these with the intention of giving them away as a gift or something. They honestly, never ever are up for consideration for a guitar I would actually use but this one is different.
I have played many a Tele in my life time and while I am primarily a metal player as I get older, fatter and more docile my taste for different types of music has not only greatly expanded but also revisited some things I used to really love. Minneapolis sound funk for example. And if anyone remembers, the tele that his Purpleness played his entire career was a Hohner Mad Cat that he found at a gas station in the 70’s.
In the 70’s even cheap instruments were known to be made at a much higher quality. For example it is thought that Princes Mad Cat was part of a small batch made OEM for Hohner USA with the H.S. Anderson logo on it. In general old USA made instruments used to be of much higher quality than cheap imports. And Donner has that type of potential with this build. While I get a lot of questions about beginner guitars this one this is one that hits well above its weight class and would we perfect for someone that has never played up to a professional if some upgrades were made.
Expensive Guitars Are Unnecessary
I am in the middle of putting together an article about expensive guitars vs cheap guitars. Because one hill I have always died on was that the $10k guitar offers very little compared to a guitar in the $1k range. Live, I never wanted to play expensive guitars for a number of reasons but most of which being theft and damage. And at the end of the day my old used Ibanez RG550’s felt the best to me and their super expensive brothers offered me no real benefit. Maybe this mentality came from not having any money in my youth like most players I know but it’s still applies to me today after all these years.
But now I have an army of RG’s some Fender Strats, Kiesels, high end Ibanezs, and some PRS CE’s in the stable. But the honest to god truth is… meh… they all do their job and all have different sounds. If the electronics and hardware is solid… You’re 99% of the way there.
But back to the Donner I would love to try some of their other offerings as I am as much of a player as a habitual noodler. The one issue with searching these guitars out that I have found is models seem to come and go. For example, there seems to be a semi hollow currently in place of the solid tele. But at the price point of these guitars, I wouldn’t hesitate picking myself up one to try out, and I would certainly test drive one before buying the entry level big name variant.
Watch the video, and let me know what you think. Check my link and let me know how you feel about Donner in general. I was pleasantly surprised!
Want to look at another cheap guitar ? Check out the Grote Strat Here
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Donner Telecaster – https://amzn.to/3V59hGI
