“DIY shell stickers included”: Behringer be warned – Donner’s $29 Embark series is changing the ultra-cheap pedal game with metal enclosures and customizable designs

NAMM 2025: Over the past few years, Donner has gone from budget secret to heavy-hitter in the pedal market – a reputation that certainly rocketed in the wake of last year’s Jack White collaboration, the Triple Threat.

That unit was the talk of NAMM 2024, but now it looks like Donner is set to repeat the trick for 2025, with the launch of its $29 Embark Series pedals.

Like much of the Chinese firm’s pedal range, the Embark series is aimed at players taking their first steps into (or, rather, onto) stompbox territory. But here, it covers off a range of effects at, frankly, rock-bottom prices, and the metal casings will set it apart from plastic-based price-point rivals like Behringer.

What’s more, offering a more durable enclosure will likely turn the heads of more experienced players looking to add new elements to their board, or experiment with some bargain buys.

“Designed for beginners and budget-conscious users,” says Donner. “The series boasts durable metal casings and compact, portable designs that integrate seamlessly into any pedalboard.”

Taking inspiration from the JHS 3 Series aesthetic, the austere, uniformly white finishes (more on those later) might make it hard to tell, but the series encompasses six effect types, including Echo Delay, Distortion, Phase, Analog Chorus, Overdrive and Octave.

The DSP-based delay, 01 ECH, offers up to 600ms delay time and tap-tempo functionality. The 02 DIS distortion runs from classic to high-gain territory, with the traditional Volume, Gain and Tone dials.

Then you have the 03 PHA which it says will “allow musicians to explore subtle shifts and intense swirling effects, suitable for electronic and experimental music”.

The 04 CHS is a BBD-basedz analog chorus with a simple Rate and Depth control set, while the 05 O/D offers a classic Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive in an analog circuit. Finally, the 06 OCT promises “precise pitch detection” and has perhaps the most complex control set with volume options for -2, -1 and +1 octaves, alongside a master Tone dial.

All of them run off a 9V power supply only, measure roughly 3½” by 2” and weigh about 7.4 ounces,making them a small, lightweight option.

Donner does budget builds very well (as evidenced in our Triple Threat pedal review) and usually punches well above its price point tonally, so I have pretty big expectations from these, despite the compromises inherent to the budget market.

Of course, one gripe is that if you pick up several units, the artwork (or lack thereof) will make it impossible to tell which one you’re hitting.

Anticipating this, Donner has, rather smartly, included stickers with each unit, so you can customize them, prominently noting “DIY shell stickers included” on its Amazon listings.

However, I reckon that, given the price, you could easily justify cracking out the Sharpies and creating your own DIY artwork right on the surface of each of the pedals.

And that is just the sort of shareable, Instagram friendly sub-culture that can make or break this kind of model and become a selling point in its own right. The pedals you can doodle on? It just might catch on…

The Donner Embark Series is priced at $29 each and is available now from Amazon.

For more information, head to Donner.