Do YouTube Channels Get BETTER Guitars? - Let's Find Out!

hey guys welcome back to the channel i hope you're having a great day today well we've got an interesting comparison lined up uh something i've never done before but i've always been curious about on one hand i've got a donner stratocaster i did a review on this a few weeks ago left pretty impressed tore the whole thing apart looked at the guitar really closely played a bunch of tones and turns out it's just a good guitar for the money now this was sent into the channel by donner for review so this is a review guitar and in the box is the exact same guitar i went out and bought the same model because what i want to do today is compare a review guitar versus something that just an average person would buy are they the same quality is the review guitar nicer than what somebody would buy well let's find out all right so let's start by unboxing the guitar that i purchased that should do it so let's open this sucker up and we'll just kind of go through step by step in the same way as i reviewed the other guitar and of course do a direct comparison so in the box strap of course the little donner mini amp i didn't i never plugged it in or used it last time but it does come with like some sort of little tiny amp to get you going i guess a little donner bag uh oh yeah that's right yeah tuner uh set of strings picks that kind of stuff uh all comes in the package but here's what we're most curious about get rid of that now as you guys know i demo a lot of entry-level guitars on this channel and what i usually do once i'm done with them is i just give them away to fam family friends anybody who is you know interested in music in my local area you know anything i can do to you know promote music in just a small way i do so usually when i'm done uh doing you know entry-level guitars i just give them away to whoever needs them now i did still have the donner from that review which is why i bought another donner but it could be any brand so here it is same exact guitar same exact color well let's dive in and see how similar they are now the first thing i did when i unboxed the donner review guitar was to check out how straight the neck was always curious to see how a guitar is set up you know from the factory now i'm going to do the same thing with the guitar i purchased here so there you guys go you can see this is 12th fret right here and so middle of the guitar right there and hopefully the camera will show but there is no gap there at all so i would say the guitar i purchased is set up almost identically to the one that donner sent in so you can see it is dead straight there is no gap in the middle so you know the strings are very out of tune just like the other one so as we put some tension on there we probably will get a little relief right there which we want so i'm gonna go ahead and tune it up but so far so good the necks were set up identically which is to say dead flat doesn't matter if it was the review guitar or my guitar here they were set up the same now the next thing i did in my review was to tune up the guitar and check out the act hang on a second this is going to be way too confusing boom just got the dimarzio upgrade cheapest upgrade known to man slap a sticker on it okay so this is the initial review guitar this is the one i just bought okay we got that straight now the action if you're new to guitar just simply means how high the string is off the fret if the action's really high that means it's going to be hard to press down on the string and it's going to put your string out of tune now on this guitar i found that it was a little high especially on the sixth string and i had to lower it let's check it out on my guitar now as you guys can see that sixth string is very high this is seventh fret here so kind of in the middle of the guitar we need to lower that down and that is the same as the review guitar as well middle strings not as bad first string maybe lower that down a bit i think i might lower them all a little bit just for my playing style but yeah that six string is very high and i think i know why they probably do that you know so that there's no fret buzz as you play it but it is too high uh you know if you play some bar chords or whatever it's going to put it out of tune so we're going to lower that down just like we did with the review guitar right so both guitars had necks straight as an arrow which is a very good thing both guitars had action that was too high which is not a great thing and i think if you are you know looking to purchase a brand new guitar if you're you know a kid or you're just learning you might not have the skill or confidence to lower the action even though it's a very simple job um and maybe nowadays it's not a big deal you can just hop online and learn when i was learning youtube wasn't even a thing so maybe it's not a big deal but yes both guitars needed the action lore now when i did my initial review of the donner from donner i said that that was basically cheap plastic but it was cut clean and it was cut nice and i said the fretwork was above average the fret ends were actually quite smooth and there was no grittiness on the front face which you don't always see in this price range so what we're going to do is compare them you know a to b and see what we got all right so let's start up on the headstock and look at some of the smaller details now as i said in my initial review the nut on the donner here is nice i mean it matches up on the shoulders on the sixth string on the first string side there's no adhesive you know leaking out anywhere and the slots are clean very nice and when we look at the top down view again very clean so you know great guitar no flags there let's check out uh the one that i bought so as you can see very similar you know it matches up on the sixth string on the first string slots look good again it is just cheap plastic but as i said in my initial review it seems to be you know cut nicely and again when we look on the top down view um you know nothing that would cause any sort of flags now when we look at the truss rod cutout this is the review guitar nice and clean again you know this is not an expensive guitar and all the little details seem to be quite nice when we jump over to the one i bought again very similar i would say maybe even a slightly cleaner on there so both guitars are really great now moving on to the fretwork as i said in the initial review well the donner had above average fretwork it was smooth all the way up and down the neck the front face was smooth for vibrato and bending and the fret ends well as you can see looked pretty good even on the upper upper frets uh they were all kind of filed and nicely they were not neglected and when we zoom in like crazy far well you can see some file marks but you're gonna pretty much see that on almost any guitar and yeah as i said for the price range it's great now let's jump over and look at the guitar i bought and see how it compares so this is mine as you can see well about the same it looks good when we look at a couple frets when we jump up again not neglected on the upper upper frets which is great and when we zoom in crazy crazy far well most of the frets look like this which is even less filing marks you know than the review guitar so i would say so far that's a pass so overall you know the guitars are again very consistent well so far so good these guitars are startlingly similar which is a very good thing and it all really comes down to i think the proliferation of the cnc machine if there's one thing you know guitar related that happened in my lifetime in terms of you know entry-level guitars it was the fact that cnc machines became available to everybody which means the neck carve is going to be the same the body carve is going to be the same the neck pocket how the neck attaches to the body is going to be the same and very very consistent and that's kind of why i wanted to kind of key on um you know some of the smaller things like how the nut was cut the fret work uh finishing and all that kind of stuff because that's unrelated to cnc machines that has to do with how the quality control is on these guitars but yeah in terms of construction like the neck joints all of it is like tight and clean so these guitars are are like i said very well made all right so let's plug these guitars in and see how much they sound like one another but before we do just for fun let's throw them on a scale and see what each one weighs all right let's start with the review guitar here put that on there looks like right around seven pounds six point nine seven so very light let's try the one that i bought it they feel the same to me but i have no idea oh it's lighter 6.7 sweet so anyway yeah the one i got was actually a little bit lighter than the review guitar but in the hand they basically feel the same [Music] so [Music] [Applause] now i've wanted to do a comparison like this for a very long time so i'm glad we could make it happen and as i mentioned i just had the donner around uh which is why i'm using them they have no idea i'm doing this video but it is good news for donner because these guitars are basically identical for all intents and purposes to the point that if you blindfolded me and said daryl we've got two guitars tell me which one's better or which one's more expensive or anything like that i would swear that you're handing me the exact same guitar every time that's how similar they are so that's good news for donner for sure but i think it is representative of a lot of low-end brands um you know companies just simply can't get away by you know sending a reviewer an awesome guitar and selling everybody else crap you can't get away with it these days not with like online reviews user reviews forums all that kind of stuff so that is good news for consumers for sure thanks for watching if you guys enjoy videos like this be sure to subscribe to the channel we've got lots of great content lined up for you guys including a massive schecter giveaway we're giving away three schecter guitars you got to be subscribed to the channel so if you're not be subscribed and when the channel turns over 700 000 we're gonna do a massive giveaway then as well so uh stay tuned to this channel uh subscribe and other than that all my information will be down in the video description below have yourself a great day i love me some di marzios but sorry you gotta go sticker free

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 205,012

Keywords: stratocaster vs telecaster, stratocaster vs jazzmaster, telecaster vs jazzmaster, fender telecaster, fender stratocaster, fender jazzmaster, jazzmaster vs mustang, jazzmaster vs jaguar, jazzmaster vs les paul, stratocaster vs sg, stratocaster vs les paul, telecaster vs sg, telecaster vs les paul, squier vs fender, squier telecaster vs fender telecaster, squier classic vibe stratocaster, squier classic vibe telecaster, squier tele vs fender tele

Id: tY3YkPCGkds

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021