Dean Guitar Review

Dean Guitar Review

Dean Guitars are a famous company specialising in building electric guitars, primarily versions of Gibson's standard Modern series of guitars. As well as this Dean make high {quality|{}} acoustic guitars and mandolins and banjos.

The company was based in 1977 by Dean Zelinsky, subsequently whom the company is called. He needed to make better guitars for rock and metal musicians than existed when the company started. When the company first began the main models in the range were the V, a copy of Gibson's fifties Flying V design, and the Z, a copy of the Gibson Explorer, the other guitar from the Gibson Modernistic series that was actually made and sold (there was a third guitar in the series, the Moderne, of which none were successful, not even in prototype level, until 1982).

Dean Guitar Review

There was also a third guitar in Dean's range, the ML, which was a very well-executed blend of several the aforementioned Dean guitars - it comprised of the bottom half of a V and the top half of a Z. The guitars differed from Gibson's designs by having no scratchplate and Dean's trademark headstock, a larger-than-normal model with a V shape.

Early adopters of Dean guitars were Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, who could often be heard onstage in the eighties with matching Dean bass and 1 string guitars.

The 1980s experienced several new models added to the range to accompany the V, Z and ML models. These included the Cadillac from 1980, a Gibson Les Paul bottom half and a Dean Z top half that works better than may be expected, and the 1983 Bel Aire, a pointier and smaller-bodied version of the Fender Stratocaster with one humbucker and two single coil pickups, which means it could be a prototype for the up-and-coming superstrat movement of the 1980s, which favored pointy Strat-shape guitars with a easier choice of pickups and more playing alternatives than Fender's first design.

Dean Guitar Review

Likewise entered in the 1980s was the Baby series, consisting of downsized editions of the V, Z and ML models. These guitars had 3/4-sized bodies, but full-sized 22-fret necks. The standard Dean models, in particular the ML, had very deep bodies which made it harder for earlier players to use.

Dean Guitar Review

Dean have also exclusively planned many guitars for shred guitarist Michael Angelo Batio, who for a time held the record for fastest guitar player. He has also been voted the fastest guitarist in the world by Guitar World mag.

One such Dean custom guitar was a "quad guitar", with 3 necks arranged in an X shape. Dean also made a double guitar for Batio, which looks much like the top half of this quad guitar. As of 2008 Batio has a new signature model, the MAB-1 Armorflame, a superstrat-shaped guitar with a silver flame paint .