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.

Late Night Luthiery: Dean ML Bubinga Edition

If you read a few posts back in my blog, you will see the hilarious amount of guitar trades I made.  I was trying to sell a number of guitars, but ended up trading most of them since everyone is heavy in guitars, but poor in cash.  One of the trades I made was for a Dean ML Bubinga.

 

I loved the guitar from the moment I saw it.  It was in perfect condition, with no dings or anything.  The only problem was the pickups sucked.  I mean, they were bad.  So I have made a few changes on the guitar.

The first was to fret dress it.  The frets were awful.  I admittedly tried to get a little ambitious with the action, but it needed fret dressed in the worst way.

Next, I changed the pickups out.  I had quite a time with that.  Here's the short version.

1.  I bought a Gibson 496R/500T set, but the 496R was broken.  That left me with a bridge pickup, but no neck pickup.
2.  I bought a GFS Crunchy Pat, and was happy with it.  However....
3.  I traded a guitar for a number of things, including a Dimarzio Super Distortion. 

So I decided to put the Super D in the neck, and the 500T in the bridge.  Simply put, it is awesome.

But that's not everything.  The one thing that I thought was strange was that the pickup rings were black.  I don't know if I have ever seen a Dean ML with black rings.  They have always been cream.  So I changed them out for cream rings.  This is the final product:

 

 

I tend to play more vintage style humbuckers, so this was a nice change.  I wanted something that Dimebag Darrell would say, "Hell yeah!!!"  This guitar is made to be played loud.  And I will do that.... in the afternoon.  Really I wasn't kidding about the "Late Night Luthiery title."  I'm writing this pretty late at night.  But in the afternoon, I will rock it out.

Craigslist: Strange Tradings, Part 2

For this to make sense, it might help to read this blog post first:

Craigslist: Strange Tradings
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2014/03/craigslist-strange-tradings.html

I have been trying to sell guitars on Craigslist for a few weeks now, but I am having a little trouble.  As I stated in the earlier post I have been "going sideways" in getting rid of guitars.  I've been getting rid of them.... by trading.  So I'm not actually going down in the number of guitars I own.  I kind of find it funny.

In the last post I talked about trading for the Jackson Dinky DK2M.  I'll admit, I'm just not a Jackson guy.  I'm not much of a Floyd Rose guy either.  So I knew I was going to trade the Jackson.  It turns out I was able to trade it much faster than I thought.

You see, I am a huge fan of Dean Guitars, but they just sit on the market.  A small percentage of people like them, and a lot don't.  So the re-sale value of them is jack squat.  So I found a Dean 79 ML Redwood on Craigslist, and offered the guy a trade for the Jackson.  He had one guy who was supposed to pay cash for it, but never got around to it.  Sine he could sell the Jackson for $100 more than he could the Dean, he agreed to the trade.

Well, he made it over, and we traded straight up.  I was more than happy after hearing his story about the Dean.  It seems that he got it from a Dean rep, and then it sat collecting dust.  The back control plates still had plastic on them, and they hadn't made this model in years.  I set it up, re-strung it, and checked out the electronics.  I also took my brush to it to knock off quite a bit of dust off of it.

It's much lighter in weight than my Dean ML Select from 1998.  It's also thinner, with a few changes.  The body is a touch smaller, the headstock bigger, and the dimensions just a touch different.  Dean has gone through different "series" of the ML, and this one is just a touch different, but I think easier to play.  At least it's not like a boat anchor like the other one.  This one was made in Korea at the Unsung plant.  They are known for their good work. 

So here's the pictures, cause as we know by internet's rule, pics or it didn't happen.