Where do you start with a guitar like Donner’s Hush I-Pro? The newly launched and latest model in the Hush series is an acoustic electric guitar that defies convention, perhaps the ultimate travel guitar, but maybe the ultimate 21st century guitar, too, with a set of self-contained features that provide everything you need for practice sessions, performance, and recording.
Headless, compact, packable, shipping in its own gig bag, weighing in at just 1.7kg (though it is listed at 2.1kg on the Donner site), it certainly fits the profile of a travel instrument. Its “resonance free” body design keeps acoustic noise to a minimum, perfect for travel, for the home too. But there there is also a comprehensive suite of digital features that would make it a powerful tool for pretty much any venue.
Donner is offering the Hush I-Pro in two satin finishes, Natural Spruce and White, with laurel and maple fingerboards respectively. Medium stainless steel frets come as standard, and there is a dual-action truss rod to keep that neck in good shape.
These guitars have a neck-through body of solid mahogany, with a quick release detachable zinc allow frame that allows the guitar to stand on its own and to offer the ergonomics of a regular guitar.
And yet there is nothing regular here. Just look at the player-facing control panel for the digital features. It looks a little like the control panel for guitar multi-effects unit, and in a sense it is, because the Hush I-Pro is packing a lot of effects.
You’ll find overdrive, compressor, boost, a range of modulation effects including chorus, phaser, tremolo, flanger and auto-wah, and there are five types of delay and five types of reverb to colour your tone.
At the heart of all this is Donner's H1 chip, directing traffic and powering eight virtual acoustic guitar models, 18 factory presets, and 20 IR slots.
You can apply a 5-band EQ to these, with global tone sweeteners courtesy of the Dynamic Air Boost and Tone Boost. There’s Bluetooth, there’s an on-the-go recorder, a guitar tuner, a metronome, an easy-to-read digital display to show you which preset you are on, and which parameter you are adjusting.
Included in the package are monitoring headphones, a cleaning cloth and guitar picks, and a USB cable for charging it up. In short, everything you need. You should get up to eight hours of playing time from a single batter charge.
“Players can eliminate complicated wiring processes with everything they need ready to go in just one guitar,” says Donner. “Simply open the case and play.”
The Hush I-Pro is available now at a discounted price of £399/$377. See Donner for more details.
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