Dean V Ltd Edition Exotic Electric Guitar (Maple)

Luke Elton
August 10, 2009

Rating: 9/10

Product -

I recently bought this Dean V Exotic Spalted Maple finish guitar, for the vastly reduced price of £300, from Dolphin. It is made in Korea, but I am not certain of the year of production.

Features -

Dean V Mahogany body
Spalted Maple Top
Grover Tuners
22 Frets
Rosewood Fingerboard
Soft V neck profile
2 Volume controls (one for each pickup) and 1 master tone control
Set neck (24.75 inch scale)
Fixed Bridge
String thru body
Classic black Dean \"V\" headstock
2 Dean Humbuckers (covered)
Abalone Dean logo and inlays
All satin hardware

Review -

Looks- The exotic tops on these guitars obviously vary naturally, so I would suggest that if possible you try out the guitar you are going to buy, to make sure you like the look of the top. I was fortunate enough to get a fantastic top, with beautiful flame as well as the black veins and patterns. The satin hardware looks great but the shape of the volume and tone knobs aren\'t quite my thing, so I may change them in the near future. Nevertheless, the hardware finish complements the guitar very well. The back of the guitar is a lacquered Mahogany which looks beautiful and is almost reddish in colour. The rosewood fingerboard looks great, as do the magnificent abalone inlays. Top class looks and you are guaranteed to stand out from the hordes of black guitar users in metal and rock these days.

Sound - The pickups on this guitar are very nice indeed, although I had to tweak them to get the sound I wanted from them (raising the height of the pup closer to the strings). A change of pickups is definitely not necessary with this guitar, but it is clearly down to personal taste. The pups have a nice warm clean sound, particularly the neck pickup, but it when saturated in filthy distortion that these pickups come into their own. They have great bottom end and very strong mids and highs. Great sounding guitar. The sustain is also very good, helped due to the string thru bridge.

Playability - The guitar arrived with awful action and was set up poorly (hence the 9 and not 10), but after a bit of tweaking which is very easily done I had it playing just like my Razorback with superb action. The V neck profile fits like a glove and is fantastic, but is not too harsh (somewhere between C and V) so if you haven\'t played a v neck before it shouldn\'t be too hard to adjust. This thing never goes out of tune and is shipped with gauge 10 strings. The axe balances very well, and seated practice is far from a chore, but seriously... who sits down with a v? haha. There are also no problems with the input jack, as has been reported with other Dean import models, this keeps the jack tight in and nice and secure.

Impressions - This is a great guitar and do not delay in getting one, if you have not got your wings yet, don\'t miss out on this deal, it truly is fantastic. I mainly play 2 styles of heavy metal - New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal and this guitar handles them both better than I could have hoped for. In short, this guitar is class and a great deal.

Positive -
Nice and light, so easy to have a bit mosh with.
Stays in tune excellently
Looks great
Sounds great
Cheap
Comes quick in the post (2 days for me)

Negative -
Run the risk of getting a bad top if you buy online
Cases are expensive
Poor set up in my case (I also had to set up my Razorback when that came, not from Dolphin, and that was a nice 4 hours setting up the Floyd as a tremolo noob haha)

9/10

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