Say the word “Dean” to your guitarist friends during a game of word association and chances are pretty damn good they’ll reply “Dimebag.” (If they say “Howard,” maybe they’re just pretending to be guitarists.) Dean Guitars enjoyed a very illustrious run during the late Seventies and early Eighties, but Dimebag Darrell kept the company’s image burning brightly from the early Nineties through the present day, introducing these ultracool guitars to a new generation of shredders and ax grinders. Dimebag played various Dean ML model guitars, but the one with a custom blue finish with white lightning bolts that Dime dubbed “The Dean from Hell” (featured on the cover of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell) remains his most iconic ax. In 2005, Dean produced a limited run of 150 made-in-the-U.S.A. reproductions of Dime’s favorite ML, which sold out faster than a case of smuggled Twinkies at a teen weight-loss camp. But don’t despair if you missed the boat or couldn’t afford the $4,000 or so that these guitars sold for—Dean recently introduced the Dean from Hell CFH, an accurate reproduction of Dime’s most-beloved Dean that lists for a much more reasonable $1,625. FEATURES As you might have guessed, CFH stands for “Cowboy from Hell,” a fitting name for this truly wicked solidbody. From the glowing–lightning bolt finish to the riveted volume controls, the Dean from Hell has many of the details and distinctive touches as Dimebag’s original ax, sans the Kiss decal and years’ worth of wear and tear. But you don’t have to be in a Pantera tribute band to appreciate the CFH— it’s a devastating piece of heavy artillery that any shred warrior will be proud to add to his or her arsenal. The CFH has a mahogany body with a mahogany set-in neck mounted so seamlessly to the body that it seems as if the guitar is crafted from one continuous piece of wood. The neck features a bound rosewood fingerboard boasting simple dot inlays and smoothly polished jumbo frets. Chrome-plated Grover tuners grace the oversized V-shaped headstock. Dimebag’s “secret” weapon—a dualblade Bill Lawrence L-500XL humbucker—is mounted in the bridge position, and a specially designed Dean zebra-coil humbucker resides in the neck position. The matte-black licensed Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo is precisely mounted and set up, with the bridge cavity carved deep enough to permit extremely sharp pitch raising (essential for performing “Cemetery Gates”). The cavity is protected by a foam insert, which does limit the tremolo’s upward pitch range somewhat but also prevents the fine tuners from chewing up the body like a pack of rabid beavers.
