Dimebag and Dean are done - lawsuit follows

[MaxOfMetal]

Dean was more responsible for those guitars than Dimebag's napkin sketches ever were.

His Washburn stuff was equally tasteless (stripper girl camo, rebel flag, tacky flames, cutout flames, lightning bolts over all kinds of bursts, tacky "horror" graphics, etc.), so I'd bet that it was more Dime than anything else since it was pretty much the same guitars no matter which company he was with at the time.

 

[mmr007]

Imma just say it. Dime's guitars were ugly as fuck and every guitar was ruined with a terrible finish or graphic...and the Washburns were lopsided which irked me.



Dean is better off without having to make those nightmares.

Now Dean can make MLs that look like they've got some sense. Let Rita take that tacky ass hillbilly nonsense to another company so we don't have to see it anymore

 

[lewis]

Rita is still dressing like she is side stage at a Pantera concert circa 1994. And now she has complete control. It will be exactly as shitty and tacky as you described.

What's her fashion got to do with marketing ffs?

Deans whole style is out of touch, cheese, dad rocker vibes.
It's not exclusive to Dime.

Look at the difference In website design, style and marketing between them:

Tacky /\
Modern \/

Tacky /\
Modern \/

If anyone can make Dimebag guitars look sick asf and current in 2021, it's companies like Solar.

 

[soul_lip_mike]

Solar is all cheap indo crap. Imho there needs to be a USA high end model that actually looks like a model dime played such as the bolt and slime. The rest of the crappy graphics can be used on the imports but I don’t see a point if there isn’t a top shelf model of a guitar we actually saw him play.

 

[ArtDecade]

What's her fashion got to do with marketing ffs?

It has everything to do with it. She still thinks it is 1994 and Pantera is riding high. Do you think that if she moved the operation to Solar that all the Confederate, Mud-Flap, Wild Flames, and Slime is suddenly going to disappear? She is a card carrying member of the Tacky Guitar Club For Dimebags and that will never change. She will maintain that legacy and to think it was all Dean's call is ignorant. It was what Dime wanted at the time and Rita hasn't evolved since.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

His Washburn stuff was equally tasteless (stripper girl camo, rebel flag, tacky flames, cutout flames, lightning bolts over all kinds of bursts, tacky "horror" graphics, etc.), so I'd bet that it was more Dime than anything else since it was pretty much the same guitars no matter which company he was with at the time.

Equally tasteless? That's a high bar to clear. I won't sit here and argue Dimebag had good taste for anything but his own music. Yet I think he was attracted to Dean precisely because they made the kind of tacky guitars he had a soft spot for. The vast majority of the Washburns were orthodox by comparison even if a few (and seemingly rare) finishes were garish.

Was Dimebag responsible for Deans like this, too?

 

[mmr007]

In fairness tho.....

...if I were Dean I would still rather have a sig guitar for dead artist with a confederate flag trucker stripper girl mud flap motiff on it than.... well....other options

Anyway...let me put my dead nazi guitar back in its case so I can finish my thought.....

Why are we talking about Solar and resurrecting Dime models? Is it just because Ola's a fan? Has there been actual talk between Ola and Rita that is documented? Why would somebody buy a Solar Dime? That's not a thing. That makes as much sense Ibanez releasing a Van Halen Frankenstrat RG or Aristedes releasing a Jimmy Hendrix tribute. You can love Van Halen the artist and love Ibanez the guitar manufacturer but do you really want to see two things with no sensical association married?

I can see a limited run of anything, I suppose, working as a curiosity for investment as a collector, but a Dime related line of guitars is not sustainable for a company that has NO association other than their owner and CEO is a fan.

I applaud Dean for (however it ended) ending the relationship with the Dime estate. I will think more highly of Dean moving forward because my historical negative impression of them can best be summed up by someone commenting on this forum years ago and it stuck with me...that Dean is devoid of ideas other than to make money off Dime's corpse by churning out one tacky tribute sig after another. Crass but accurate I believe.

It would be nice to see the relationship repaired for one model only....not a fleet of sig guitar or something that Rita can retire off the royalties. make a USA and important version of the Dean from Hell for the Pantera fan that is still out there and that's it.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Why are we talking about Solar and resurrecting Dime models? Is it just because Ola's a fan? Has there been actual talk between Ola and Rita that is documented? Why would somebody buy a Solar Dime? That's not a thing. That makes as much sense Ibanez releasing a Van Halen Frankenstrat RG or Aristedes releasing a Jimmy Hendrix tribute. You can love Van Halen the artist and love Ibanez the guitar manufacturer but do you really want to see two things with no sensical association married?

Not an RG, but I bet an Ibanez EVH Destroyer would sell decently.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

Equally tasteless? That's a high bar to clear. I won't sit here and argue Dimebag had good taste for anything but his own music. Yet I think he was attracted to Dean precisely because they made the kind of tacky guitars he had a soft spot for. The vast majority of the Washburns were orthodox by comparison even if a few (and seemingly rare) finishes were garish.

Was Dimebag responsible for Deans like this, too?

So Dean lets artists do whatever, that's the only point you're really driving here.

Washburn kept Dime on a shorter leash...maybe. Though it's revisionist to say that all he played were monochrome Stealths and Slimes while at Washburn.

But it's not like Dean made Dime tacky, Dime made Dean tacky.

Can you point to anything other than artist signature models as far as tasteless Deans go?

 

[v1nter]

Was Dimebag responsible for Deans like this, too?

I mean come on, you literally choose one of the most wacky ones lmao. If i remember correctly the MAB always had single colour options available, and even the entry models looked very tame with good looking finishes =

Edit = also if you look at the site currently its very hard to find graphic style finishes on the guitars. Definitely a sign of the new direction they take.
The Far Beyond Driven ML which is a Dime sig doesnt even have the related logo on it anymore.

 

[DrakkarTyrannis]

I get what you're saying but it's all in the marketing. Do you think if Ola for example did get the contract to make solar Dime guitars, the marketing, visuals and style would scream Hillbilly mullets meth lab RVs?

The answer would unequivocally be no, no it would not.
For me it's more what Dean as a whole represent, its not just specific to Their dime range.

Dean catered to the hyuck-brained white trash wannabes because Dime was their star attraction. Since he hasn't been center stage they've pretty much kept the tacky shit for his guitars because that's what his fans like. Rita still looks like she should be a Firefly from Rob Zombie's movies so yeah she would wanna keep the formula she believes will make money. Obviously she doesn't have much in the way of business sense which is why this is all happening in the first place.

Dean made other models look like shit as a way to get Dime fans into their other models and into Dean as a company. They made their money off of Dimetards so they gave them options other than Dime's stuff. When his people stopped being the focus, they got a lot better

A non-Dime focused Dean has managed to do well for themselves. I like that direction

 

[MrBouleDeBowling]

I like Dean. I think they're cool guitars. They don't get much love in the guitar community and I totally understand why. But when they do get things right, they're great playing instruments (at least in my experience). The best sounding guitar I ever owned was a Razorback V 255.

If parting ways with the Dime estate means they'll focus on making cooler looking ML's instead from now on, I'm all for it. Hell, I'm glad they lost Mustaine. They're finally doing something awesome with the new Vengeance V and the Zero now that they're no longer his signature models.

 

[BigViolin]

But it's not like Dean made Dime tacky, Dime made Dean tacky.

Fun times. Remember when Dean and Hamer were all double cremes and better Gibsons? I remember being blown away by the mash up designs like the caddy and ML while Norlin was...Norlin.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

Fun times. Remember when Dean and Hamer were all double cremes and better Gibsons? I remember being blown away by the mash up designs like the caddy and ML while Norlin was...Norlin.

Talk about memory lane. I was still hearing that in the 90's.

 

[ArtDecade]

To be fair, US-made Dean and Hamers more than match for Gibson. Still.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

To be fair, US-made Dean and Hamers more than match for Gibson. Still.

Now I remembered that Hamer is gone.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

So Dean lets artists do whatever, that's the only point you're really driving here.

Not really--and I don't agree that the Dean artist signatures are primarily the vision of their endorsees if that's what you're implying with this statement. Stephen Jensen is the missing piece of that puzzle. More on that below.

Washburn kept Dime on a shorter leash...maybe. Though it's revisionist to say that all he played were monochrome Stealths and Slimes while at Washburn.

Can you point to anything other than artist signature models as far as tasteless Deans go?

I didn't say that's all that Dimebag played. Regardless, that seems to be the majority of what Washburn sold. Dimebolts, Slimes, Stealths, etc. seem to far outnumber the rarer, more tacky designs you mentioned.

As for Dean, many of the standard lines were rife with stereotypically tacky Dean designs. Just a few Vendettas for sake of example:

I mean come on, you literally choose one of the most wacky ones lmao. If i remember correctly the MAB always had single colour options available

Dean differed from a lot of their competition by offering artist "lines" rather than guitars. Sometimes there was a plain Jane variant in addition to a slew of graphic-laden guitars.

Contrary to Max, I don't believe for a second that Dean let their endorsees "do whatever"--I think they solicited vague opinions from those artists and left it to their in-house designer to come up with a graphic that was characteristically "Dean".

But don't take my word for it, let's listen to the chap in the flamed-out cowboy hat (around 1:45):



That's Stephen Jensen, the designer of most or all of Dean's guitar graphics (to my knowledge, anyway). As Rusty says in the interview, he was hands-on with every part of the prototyping process except for the designing of the graphic.

Here's an example of a non-Artist guitar Stephen Jensen designed in 2007. Does it look fundamentally different from any of the artist guitars below? For that matter do any of the artist guitar graphics look that different from each other?

If Jensen designed most of the graphics Dean produced back in the day, I have to assume that's why just about every Dean endorsee had multiple whacky graphics-laden guitars, all done in a similar style when in many cases those artists had bands with different aesthetics.

In other words, it's misleading say the artist guitars don't represent Dean's "true vision". They do. If anything, the artists were an excuse to hawk outlandish designs that Dean might've felt wouldn't sell without a name attached. They could iterate on the designs every few years and sell to collectors.

Dimebag was a particularly extreme example of how Dean used their endorsees but it doesn't surprise me a dead guitar hero got exploited more than others.

 

[ArtDecade]

^ FFS. The guy from the Dream Theater thread escaped.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

^ FFS, the guy who can't read continues to complain in another thread.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

@Sermo Lupi can you point to a particular Dean Dime guitar that you feel Dime was not involved with the design of?

We know the Slime, FBD, Flame, DFH, Cross, Plate, D-O-Flage, Dixie, various camo motifs, and a few others came over from Washburn. There are notes and interviews where he talks about the Razorback and Razorbolt.

So that leaves what? Those Dime/Pantera tribute ones?