Dimebag Darrell’s 1980s Dean ML Standard (Sunburst)

Dimebag’s first Dean guitar was a 1980s sunburst model which he got from his father the same day that he won his second Dean – the one that would eventually be known as “Dean from Hell”. This all took place sometime in 1981 when Dime was just 15 years old.

As a kid it was always my dream to be with Dean guitars, to play a Dean guitar – to own one some day. And funny enough, how this whole thing evolved, after countless days of skipping school and gawking at the Dean catalog, learning inside and out everything about it, and dreaming it would happen some day, there was a guitar contest that came to town, and the a prize was the Dean ML guitar.

And at the same time – I didn’t know, my dad ordered me a cherry burst Dean ML Standard. The day when that thing came in was the night of the contest – and I won it! That was the best day of my life. I won the guitar, and my dad got me a bad-ass fu**ing Dean standard.

Dimebag Darrell – original source needed

Usage

Dimebag used this sunburst Dean as his man guitar from for around two or three years after he got it. As the story goes, he sold the Dean from Hell about a year later after he won it, and kept the sunburst Dean, either because it held more sentimental value since he got it from his father, or because he simply liked it more at that point.

In any case, basically, every single photo of Dimebag young shows him using this guitar, up until around 1983 when he started using a different, white-colored Dean. Soon after that, he got his Dean from Hall back, and that became his main guitar.

What happened to this first sunburst Dean is unknown. In an interview with Hard Rock Cafe, Dime said that he still has the original headstock from this guitar, but the guitar itself is nowhere to be found.

This was my actual very first guitar. We don’t know where the body of it is, we don’t have the neck… You can see how many times I’ve re-glued it. So, we have the headstock, but we don’t know where the hell the guitar went.

Dimebag Darrell for Hard Rock Cafe