Donner Arena 2000 Guitar Multi-Effects Pedal with 278 Effects, 100 IRs, Looper, Drum Machine, Amp Modeling, XLR and MIDI Support

The best accessory next to the guitar itself. If nothing else you will be educated on the many styles and sounds out there. This has a ton of presets that are super fun and useful . The loop is perfection. Its super easy and intuitive, although there is SO MUCH ! It still takes some time to process it all. You have so much freedom to experiment and record. For just over 200.00 this is an essential "pedal" It eliminates the need for a few other pedals , i still use my crybaby and my voodoo vibe. I can't wait to use it and i can't stop once i start. My fingers hurt! Love the Arena 2000!

For the amount of amp and speaker cabinet modeling and various sound effects I'd give it a big 10, 2 thumbs up, it's great! Amazing! I love it! For ease of controls use only a 1. For customer service, a negative 10. I bought this to replace a ZOOM G1X FOUR, a decent effects unit, as an upgrade. It's far better for the amount of sounds I can get out of it using my electric guitar as the input and a small Marshall amp as the output. Extremely happy with that. For ease of use on the various unit controls, not so much. It's a fair amount of learning curve involved. Helps a bit using the Android app for it on my smartphone, and that syncs up easily to the unit using bluetooth. The user manual is near worthless for all that, it only provides bare-bones info on what the various controls do and I'm left to figure out all the other complex stuff on my own. My big negative is customer service. I had a simple question about how to turn up drum tracks volume in relation to my guitar volume coming out of my amp. It's so much lower than the guitar I can barely hear it. I would think volume adjustment for drums would be one of the first things I'd see when opening the interface for it, as with my ZOOM unit, but I can't find it. Calling customer service was pure misery. No answer for several attempts, and during hours listed as being open for business, no leave a message option. When I did get someone it was a young-sounding woman, naturally with a sing-song foreign accent, who was obviously "programmed" to get rid of me. When asking about my simple question and her putting me on hold a few times she mentioned tech support but that she would need my email address for that. I asked to be connected to a support rep and she said she could not do that, and repeated that when I asked again. So I gave my email address and am waiting for a contact that will probably never happen. Utterly ridiculous. Can't even talk with someone about a very simple question, that someone familiar with the unit could probably answer in seconds. I also separately emailed their customer service link, zero reply yet. I'll update all this if someone contacts me. FOLLOW-UP EDIT: I got a call back from the sing-song voice girl, saying she had talked to tech support about my question and they needed me to make and send a video of my problem. Beyond ridiculous, I told her to forget about it. The absurdity of making a video for "how do I turn up drum tracks volume" is astounding. EDIT TO THE EDIT: A tech support person finally contacted me with a very simple answer to my volume question. All good now, but it's a shame I could not quickly get to a person that actually knows the product to begin with.

** Update #2: The folks at Donner reached out to me after my initial review and really made it a point to work with me by respectfully asking for a chance to make things right. They sent me another device – and this one sounds and performs much better. I retract my earlier statement about the FVACM technology – although it doesn’t provide a complete tube like feel, it does a great job making the digital platform more organic and warm sounding than one would expect. Also completely remedied is the XLR output issue I experienced. In fact, I got a great acoustic tone with an acoustic amp selection and going XLR direct to a PA. Still very impressed with the smartphone app to modify settings. This really is a great value and I will be gigging with this again very soon.** Update: I did use this on a gig tonight after being encouraged using the Arena 2000 with a different amp of mine. And I feel I had great results. It really cut through the mix and delivered enough grit and bite to cut through the mix and make me satisfied overall. This was previously at a 2/5 rating, but it’s now up to 3/5 after tonight’s success....but I'm a primarily roots rock/blues rock player.I'll give Donner this – they really seem to know how to target prospective buyers. This showed up in my social media feeds and web searches for days – I'm not complaining; that's the world we live in now. And one high profile guitar magazine gave this a 4.0/5.0 rating – and that was enough to get me to start giving this serious consideration. Although the device is digital, it's advertised FVACM technology to reduce the "plastic taste" intrigued me. After all, my amps are analog solid state and technology is advancing in capturing warmer, responsive tones without the need for tubes and such.— Before I go further, allow to share that I purchased this *with my own money*. I went through an affiliate link on a YouTube review of this and used a coupon that was available but I have not been in contact with anyone from Donner.First of all, the footprint of this is ideal. My primary multi effect pedal is probably 2.5x the size as the Arena 2000 – maybe more. And the construction is solid.The interface is impressive and intuitive; while the display may appear a little dated, I didn't have much of a learning curve at all in navigating, changing the order of effects, saving and making presets. The companion smartphone app is also a huge plus; it connects to the unit via Bluetooth and simultaneously adjusts levels, settings, names and more. With my primary rig, I usually have to get on the floor to trust knobs and save patches. It's too bad there's not something like this for my rig; my back and knees would really appreciate it.Well, you've probably already figured out... this has not replaced my primary rig. Although there are some usable tones, it lacks warmth and depth. The advertised FVACM technology doesn't seem to have much impact.The day that I received this, I scored a "pick up" gig that night with my blues rock band and thought it would be a great opportunity to try this in a live setting. The intuitiveness of this device made it a breeze to dial in a tone that I felt was definitely useable. But it wasn't totally convincing. I left the possibility open that maybe I was being too critical.Another big plus of this: Instrument cable in, instrument cable out, power it on and you're ready to go. Although I pointed it out earlier, it bears mentioning that this can feasibly go in a gig bag.Back to the gig: Everything about it is going well, and the tone is fine but lacking warmth and depth. Midway through, I turn to our front man and point out the new Arena 2000 and ask his thoughts on the tone. His response: "It sounds cold." Unfortunately, I had to agree.I've since worked with it more, but just can't get it to go with my style of playing. Those into heavy rock, metal, and even emo, R&B, Funk, and Hip-Hop might find this to be very useable. But to me, the effects their models are based on sound like distant cousins twice removed.Another point, and this is in it's favor: there's practically every kind of connection type available: 1/4", 1/8", XLR, USB, MIDI. However, I encountered a disappointing drawback to this which hopefully may be isolated to this particular unit I received. I ran two XLR cables to my PA and worked with an acoustic-electric. I was getting to the point where I was getting a tone that was encouraging enough to take this on an acoustic duo gig. Unfortunately, a loud 'pop' occurred and a very significant drop in volume came as a result. I thought this might have been a fluke so I went back to this process a couple of days later and... very same result. That really bummed me out because my partner in my acoustic duo will occasion kick in a low overdrive and even a wah and I was hoping to have a similar result.This is also powered by a simple 9V – meaning your pedal power supply is sufficient and doesn't need anything proprietary. (Thank you Donner for this!)More plusses: it's tuner is easy to read and accurate. Adding additional effects to presets on the fly again is very simple – I really did enjoy having my base tone and assigning two of the foot button controls to tremolo, boost, chorus, etc. My multi effects unit isn't this user friendly. Furthermore, the multi-function treadle for wah, volume, parameters is really responsive, practical, and can be engaged without hard pressing – small size notwithstanding.I have used the drum beats that are included – and they are fine, although nothing that made me want to go further or return back to them on a regular basis. The looper I found to be user friendly.At the end of the day, I just can't get around the rather one-dimensional tones for my style of playing. Everything else about this though is smartly designed and efficient – Donner really took a great approach here but the tones and the XLR issue described above have had this largely residing in my gear storage.