Dean Guitars began producing instruments over thirty years ago in Chicago, IL under the supervision of owner Dean Zelinsky, and was founded on the idea of modernizing the classic designs like the Flying V and Explorer guitars. Aiming to produce a more original design, Dean combined the shape of the two guitars—half V and half Explorer—and named the new guitar the ML (after Matt Lynn, a friend of Zelinsky who passed away from cancer). The forward half of the body is the Explorer and the rear half is a V. Among the greatest admirers of this guitar was a luthier from Arlington, TX named Buddy Blaze. He acquired a used Dean ML that had once belonged to Darrell “Dimebag” Abbott and made quite a few alterations to the instrument, including sculpting a V-shaped neck profile, adding hotter pickups, a Floyd Rose tremolo and a snazzy graphic paintjob. Blaze gave the guitar to Abbott and the rest is history: Abbott took that guitar into the annals of rock with his groundbreaking metal band Pantera.
Blaze went on to design a guitar for Kramer named the NightSwan in the ‘80s that featured a Strat-influenced body. Along with other trendsetting standards of the time—low-action necks and Floyd Rose tremolos— Blaze designed this guitar to have two humbuckers, one at the bridge and the other in the middle position rather than the neck position, which is more typical of a two-humbucker design. Another distinguishing Blaze feature was the offset fretboard position markers that swoop diagonally along the length of the neck. The new Dean Buddy Blaze ML wraps all of these design elements into one guitar similar to his original Dean, painted blue with a striking chrome flame graphic. This guitar was definitely designed for speed, volume and visual appeal.
Construction
The Dean Buddy Blaze ML is a set-neck design featuring a mahogany neck and body. Despite its size, the body is a mere 1.5" thick, unlike the 1.75–2" thickness of most guitars of this type. The size of the body makes up for it in the guitar’s overall mass, although it isn’t really that heavy when you strap it on. The weight feels evenly distributed and well balanced. The scale length is 24.75", with a two-octave neck and 24 medium-height frets on a rosewood fingerboard.
The pickups are made by Dean’s DMT division (Dean Magnetic Technologies). In the bridge position is a Blaze Bucker, codesigned with Buddy Blaze. It has an Alnico 8 magnet with a hot output of 15.7k. The middle pickup is an old-style humbucker called the Nostalgia that has a low output of 8.1k. Like some other classic guitars, offsetting the outputs of paired pickups can offer some tonal benefits. A single Volume knob controls the output of this guitar. It’s positioned quite a distance away from the right-hand playing position, way past the bridge, which could be a good thing if you’re an arm-swinging windmill strummer, but a bad thing if you need to do volume swells with your pinky. It in the same location as the bridge Volume knob on most all Dean MLs, and Blaze says that he chose to keep it there for the benefit of ML fans and players. He also notes that he kept the full, traditional control cavity of the ML so that an additional Volume or Tone control could be easily added if the owner desired.
Rounding out the construction features is the all-black hardware. Grover Rotomatic tuners are standard on all Dean high-end guitars. An original Floyd Rose tremolo is top-mounted and non-recessed—like all the classic hot-rodded guitars—with a 37 mm sustain block inside the body.
Performance
Because of the V-shaped spine along the lower fretted area of the neck, chording is palpably easy, as is accenting single notes. An innovation from ‘50s-era strats, it has a very vintage feeling. In the upper register, the neck gets rounder and fades to a comfortable U-shape where the neck joins the body at the 22nd fret. Even with these attributes, though, playability becomes somewhat cumbersome because of the use of medium-height frets. Bigger, taller frets are more common on a modern “shreddable” guitar and would increase speed and agility on the fingerboard. Wretching out single-note bends is a little more effort-ful than effortless. According to Blaze, however, the aim was not to simply modernize the Dean classic, even through there are many design improvements in the Buddy Blaze ML. The fretwire he chose is similar to that found on the original Dean from Hell, and other Dean MLs of that era. “Darrell and I both loved the feel of that fretwire,” he explained.
What is a breath of fresh air to guitars of this type is the non-recessed Floyd Rose. With the neck-to-body angle pitched properly, the Floyd is aligned parallel to the surface of the body with enough clearance to pull up or down. This is the way the Floyd was originally intended to be mounted on a guitar, and recessing it into the body is somewhat unnecessary. This also means the Blaze ML’s Floyd Rose is so much easier to maintain because of top mounting vs. recessed mounting.
Matched with the mass of the guitar, the Blaze Bucker bridge-position pickup is quite a screamer with its super high output, without any chimey peal to the tone. Plugged into a gain-enhanced amp, the sound of this pickup by itself is full-metal-jacketed, high-octane metal. When coupled with the middle- position pickup, the tone is chug city. Thrash metal never had it so good. All of this is great, except when the middle pickup is selected to perform on its own: where this pickup is positioned, the physical, vibrationary movement of the strings just seems to be too unusable in a high-gain application. It lacks clarity when playing rhythm lines and treble definition when soloing. Its main benefit is in adding lower midrange to the bridge pickup when both pickups are on. This is perhaps the most distinguishing thing about this version of the ML against all the other ML models in Dean’s product line.
The Final Mojo
The Korean-built Dean Buddy Blaze ML is a well-made guitar, and the design elements are well thought out with a particular kind of guitarist in mind. It seems that this reviewer would be the old-school metal instead of modern metal type, but with the advances in guitar technique, even the old-school metalists have matured, and for ease of playing this beast would be better suited with bigger frets (the fabled Dunlop 6100s). Altogether, this is a great demonstration of Dean’s gift for modernizing a classic guitar design—in this case their own.
Buy if...
you’re looking for a visually striking guitar with the tone to match.
Skip if...
you’re into more ordinary guitars with less output and inconspicuous looks.
Rating...
Street $999 - Dean Guitars - deanguitars.com |
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Vox’s Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
I spent a day workshopping ideas in my studio using just the Vox Valvenergy Smooth Impact compressor and Tone Sculptor EQ, and a dash of amp tremolo and reverb to taste. In the process, I produced more arresting sounds than I had heard from my guitars in many days. There were radical direct-to-desk-style Jimmy Page/Beatles distortion tones, sun-sized, cosmic electric 12-string, Bakersfield twang that could burn through crude, and many other sweet and nasty colors. Most decent EQ and compressor combinations can achieve variations on all those themes. But the Smooth Impact and Tone Sculptor also reveal interesting personalities in unexpected places.
The individuality and energy in the Vox Valvenergy pedals is attributable, in part, to the Nutube vacuum tube used in the circuit. Though it looks little like a vacuum tube as most guitarists know them, the thin, wafer-like Nutube is, in fact, a real vacuum tube like those used in fluorescent displays. Fluorescent display tubes have limitations. A maximum operating voltage of around 40 volts means they aren’t useful for bigger power tube applications like a 6L6, which has an operating voltage of about 400 volts. But it can work quite well as a preamp tube in concert with an op amp power section, which is how the Nutube is used in the new Valvenergy pedals, as well as older Vox products like the Vox MV50 and Superbeetle amps.
Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
When you think about “cinematic” effects, you likely imagine big reverb or modulation sounds that create a vivid picture and feeling of space or motion. But narrow, hyper-focused EQ profiles can evoke very different and equally powerful images. Radical EQ settings can add aggression, claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts more evocative of Hitchcock’s Psycho than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Any of these moods can be summoned from the Valvenergy Tone Sculptor. Six sliders cut or boost 10 dB frequency bands spanning 100 Hz to 5.6 kHz. A seventh slider cuts or boosts the master output by 12 dB. This platter of options might not sound like much. But you can use these seven controls together to very specific ends.
“Radical EQ settings can add aggression, near-claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts.”
For example, bumping the high-midrange and the master output produces narrow cocked-wah-like filter sounds with enough push to produce extra amp overdrive—effectively turning the Tone Sculptor into a buzzy, almost fuzz-like filter effect. But unlike a wah, you can carefully scoop high end or add a spoonful of bass to blunt harsh frequencies or give the tone a bit more weight. You can also broaden the palette of an amp/guitar pairing. I matched a particularly trebly Jazzmaster bridge pickup with a very hot and toppy Vox AC15-flavored amp for this test—a recipe that can be spiky on the best days. But with the Tone Sculptor in the line, I could utilize the same sharp, fuzzy, and filtered Mick Ronson wah tones while shaving some of the most piercing frequencies.
EQ pedals exist on many points along the cost spectrum. And at $219, the Tone Sculptor lives on the high side of the affordable range. Does it offer something less expensive models can’t deliver? Well, for one thing, I found it relatively quiet, which is nice whether you’re shaping toppy high-contrast effects or performing more surgical adjustments. And the sliders feel nuanced and nicely tapered rather than like a dull axe with a few basic frequency notches. But in many situations I also liked the color imparted by the circuit—generated, presumably, by the Nutube. “Color,” in audio terms, is a broad and subjective thing, and one should not necessarily expect the warm, tube-y glow of a vintage tube Pultec. Still, the Tone Sculptor has many forgiving, flattering qualities—typical of studio EQs—that enable fine tuning and experimentation with more radical and creative applications of the effect.
Valvenergy Smooth Impact
As with the Tone Sculptor, the Smooth Impact’s use of Nutube engenders certain expectations. It’s easy to surmise that because Smooth Impact has a vacuum tube in the circuit that it will behave like a little Teletronix LA-2A leveling amplifier. That’s a big ask for a $219 stompbox. On the other hand, the Smooth Impact exhibits some appealing characteristics of studio tube compression. At lower compression levels, it works well as a thickening agent—adding mass without much additional noise. And at higher compression levels it can sound snappy, crisp, and tight without feeling like you’ve bled every trace of overtone from your signal.
The Smooth Impact’s controls aren’t totally atypical. But because it lacks some familiar features like variable attack and release, yet is more complicated than a 1-knob DynaComp, you have to trust your ear to navigate interactions among the controls. The most unfamiliar of these is the 3-way vintage/natural/sag toggle. The first two are defined by preset attack and release settings: Vintage is slow attack and long release, and natural is the opposite. The sag mode’s compression is more like what you get from tube saturation, and it’s useful for adding thickness and complexity to a thin amp tone at modest compression levels.
Though the vintage and natural modes certainly have a different feel, they don’t always sound worlds apart. And like the sag mode, the thing they have in common is the way they enrich lifeless amp output at low to medium compression, with a bit of grind from the tube gain and a little extra makeup gain from the output. At the most aggressive settings, the tube gain can get a little crispy. And really crushing the compression can flatline your tone without adding much in the way of extra sustain. These are limitations common to many compressors with similar features. But unless I was chasing very ultra-snappy Prince and Nile Rodgers fast-funk caricatures, I enjoyed the Smooth Impact most in its in-between ranges, where mass, mild, harmonious drive, and low noise showcase the pedal’s sometimes studio-like personality.
