The Donner Arena 2000 Multi-Effects Guitar Pedal is a “generally” well-made device that sounds pretty good. My unit came with a nonfunctional “A” button. This was a simple fix but shows that there could be some quality control issues. Buyer beware.
How does the Donner Arena 2000 Sound?
It sounds pretty good, but it has some problems. Before I talk about them, let me say this: it sounds good.. mostly. The drum tracks sound a little flat. The Revebrb is pretty good. The noise gate sucks. The overdrive sounds thin but is usable with an EQ set. Overall you get a lot for your money and it sounds good; not great, not bad, but mostly good.
What’s bad about the Donner Arena 2000?
The looper is terrible for my needs. No count in, and it doesn’t sync with the drums. This is crazy because Donner Musical Instrument Company makes a very good looper called the “Circle Looper”. The circle looper is a very good budget drum and loop machine with synchronized drums and loops. You get a count-in, lots of drums, and 40 loop tracks that are up to 4 minutes long with unlimited overdubs, clear, undo, redo, and pause. I love it. But the Arena 2000 couldn’t get this basic feature right. For me, that’s a deal breaker. I returned it.
The Donner Arena 2000 is deceptive.
The looper shows a graphic of the cabinet, fx, chorus, drive, reverb, etc. as if it was a DSP block-chain process modeler. Think about the Helix HX Stomp. It uses “blocks” placed in a chain, that can be moved around, to achieve different effects and sounds. There is a huge processing engine powering that kind of digital effect. It has a certain look, one of the blocks representing cabinets/amps/effects/pedals on a chain connected by a line flowing from input to output. This block-chain is completely user assignable and moveable. The Donner Arena 2000 looks like that block-chain, but it is all a lie. The user can not move effects around, cannot put one cabinet in front of an amp, or anything like that. The user must use the effects in the order Donner placed them. if not, the only choice is not to use that effect. No good.
Is the Donner Arena a “Get it” or “Skip It”?
For me, It’s a skip. It doesn’t sync drums with the looper, the looper is just one loop and only one minute long, and the power of DSP block-chain amp modeling is lost on the Arena 2000. It sounds good for the most part and maybe a nice first multi-effects pedal for you, especially if you play metal. For the money, I would suggest saving up for the Flama FP200 or getting a couple of physical pedals.
Hey Rob,
You said that you canāt move the blocks around in the chain, but you absolutely can. It shows how right in the manual and in multiple other videos on YouTube. Just thought Iād let ya know!
Hey. Yes you can. I agree with you. I found that out after sending mine back. My experience with the pedal was kind of bad. I did not see anywhere in the manual I downloaded anything about moving the blocks around, nor was it intuitive for me to figure it out just through using the device. That being the case, that was kind of the final nail in the coffin for me. I did not like the drums, the looper, or the fact that you could not bind the drums and the looper together. Add in the fact that I had a hard time trying to switch the effects blocks around, and that the app did not work for me, and I was over it. I doubt that I will ever try it again, but I might. I thought the effects sounded good. Of course, you know I didn’t like the noise gate, but that wasn’t a very big deal. I’m glad you know how to work yours, and I hope that it works well for you. Thanks for checking out the video. Also, thanks for putting this comment up here so that others can see it in the future. Cheers.
Hey Rob.
Just wondering if you also tried the Line6 Pod Go and if so how did you think the tones compared?
I know you said the overdrives on the Arena sounded thin and the noise gate sucks (can you elaborate on this as well?) but wondering how the actual amp models sound compared and perhaps the other effects as well?
Hi, Nick. I ended up getting the Headrush MX5 and it sounds amazing, noise fate and overdrives, all of it really.
Compared to the Arena, it’s in a different class. I wanted to like the arena, and after I published the video several people contacted me about changing the order of effects and other things. All that being good, that the Arena was more flexible than I originally thought, I still didn’t like the noise fate, the looper, and the sound of some of the OD effects.
I would say that the sound overall was good, and objectively, I think people would like it for many reasons. I didn’t, but that was because of all that it was lacking for me. The sound quality was at the bottom of the list compared to the actual hardware and use case.
Tou may recall that he didn’t like the looper, and wondered about the drums.. Donner makes a great looper with drums.. why wasn’t that in the Arena? The overall user evperience was bad, I couldn’t even get the phone app to work without allowing permissions for an app that was in Chinese.. to have access all the time.. It was terrible integration.
When I thought about all of that and some weak modeling and effects (IMO) then I decided to return it.
If it had worked better, had a better looper, used interface, and app; I probably would have kept it.
That’s all can say about it. Cheers.