Getcha Pull!!!! New Guitar Day: Dean Razorback

I used to work for Dean Guitars.  I really dug Deans due to Dimebag Darrell playing a Dean ML.  That got my love affair started with Deans.  The funny thing was that, when I worked for them, I actually never bought a Dean guitar there despite me being able to get them for cost.  There was one Dean Hardtail in blue that I really liked, and should have bought, but never did.

I always thought about getting one of the Dean Razorbacks.  There's kind of a sad story behind them.  Dimebag Darrell himself cut out a piece of cardboard and drew on paper the next generation design he had for the ML.  That was the Razorback.  However, he was murdered before he could see his design finished. 

The thing about the Razorback is that, you either love them or hate them.  They are really wicked and pointy, so they are pretty much exclusively metal guitars.  They come standard with the Seymour Duncan Dimebucker, and that's a pretty metal pickup.

It just so happened that I was scanning the Craigslist musical instrument section when I noticed an add posting a Razorback Explosion for $200 including case.  Now they do make a bolt on Razorback that's more or less a starter guitar, and that's what I thought they meant.  However, the pictures did not lie.  It was a Razorback Explosion, a $900 guitar new.

So I make my way to Largo to the Pawn shop that was selling it.  And then I was really surprised.  They not only had two Explosions, they also had a Razorback Stealth.  He said he would also do $200 for the Stealth.  Now a few things surprised me.  When I worked at Dean, the Razorbacks were made in China.  Now they are made in Indonesia.  However, this one was one of the first runs, and was made in the UnSung factory in South Korea.  That's probably the best factory they have over there.  It's been open for over thirty years, and a lot of the workers have been building guitars for over 25 years. 

Also, I noticed that this Razorback Stealth still had the plastic on the back cavity covers.  This one was set up nicely and never played.  The pawn shop manager had bought all three of them for $250 a piece, but they had been in the store for over a year.  So he marked them down to $200 a piece just to get them out of there.

And here's the kicker, this one came with a true Dean hard case.  It wasn't the semi-hard case that a lot of them came with when I was with Dean.  This one was a true high end case.  And another strange thing....  Most of the time when I get a new guitar I have to fret dress it.  This ones' frets were in perfect shape, and there wasn't a dead spot on the fretboard.  That's very odd.  I never see that happen even on the best of guitars.  It's also very important for a Floyd Rose equipped guitar to have perfect frets.  So I was really happy that no matter how much I yanked on that Floyd, the guitar stayed in tune and didn't have any dead spots.

Now, my next fun thing may be to put a Dimarzio Super Distortion in the neck.  I have one in the neck position of one of my Dean ML's, and I love it there.  I think it would match up nicely with the Dimebucker in the Stealth. 

And now for the pictures.