Of course, as one should know, the obvious guitar(s) we are talking about, are the special custom designed guitars by Paul Dean - the lead guitarist from the band "Loverboy". I know I already have a Google Site on this subject - albeit more focus on the first two runs of Odyssey and Hondo, but here's sort of the more "personal slant" version. Since these articles are more about how we musicians get into the guitars the players we like play, and how they influenced us and our tastes as players and/or builders.

At the time, nobody knew WHAT these early red/black guitars were. Actually, being the 1990's, few cared at the time, and most people made speculations Dean was playing a modified Fender Lead III or a Rickenbacker - at least, that's what WE thought in the United States. I had a hunch though, these were possibly custom built guitars, possibly made by a Vancouver Luthier, and oh how right I turned out to be.

The 64' Stratocaster - which I recall was said to have been a daphne blue model with a tremolo originally - was at some point "smashed imitating Pete Townshend". Unlike most smashed guitars though, this one was put back together using a lot of interesting construction techniques that can be quite inspiring for those of us trying to find our own sound.

Basically, the body was glued back together, the tremolo route filled in with Oak, Fir, Pine - per more recent reviews, he said he does not remember exactly. Apparently there was some chisel-work inside the body, which as re-filled with DAP PLastic wood. The neck was put back together with LePage's Bondfast using 2 Drumsticks for Splints, and it had a break at the 10th Fret. The guitar was then left in a hot car where the glue on the neck went for shit and finished off the original neck - a shame because the guitar had an amazing resonance, attributed to the open pockets of air inside the neck, particularly the 10th fret where the neck likely broke the most. Among other specs, possibly performed after this event, included using a Gibson Les Paul Stoptail tailipece for a bridge like a LP Jr, being ground into "intonation" somehow, a Anti-Scratch metal-backed and rubberized pickguard, custom wiring of Dean's own design to allow him to get neck, neck+bridge, bridge, and then turn on the middle pickup with a toggle switch for all three or neck+middle or bridge+middle (omitting the middle pickup setting alone).

So he put a brand new Telecaster neck on the guitar and it "had sustain but no real tone". So Dean tried soaking the neck in the bathtub, putting it in the oven, shaving it...all sorts of weirdness. So Paul copied the neck style but in his own home made neck with a deliberate break at the 10th fret to recreate that "resonance". This Stratocaster would become his main guitar. I think he was using it as early as Streetheart's "Meanwhile Back in Paris" - Pressure, Just For You, Action, and a ton of other songs on that record sound like that guitar, and it sounds a whole hell of a lot like it does in Loverboy - a very fat, but spikey, Strat tone, with a bit more gain than usual, leading me to wonder if Dean's stock Fender pickups were overwound at the factory (possibly another set of those legendary Abigail Ybarra pickups?).

The Strat is pivotal because this was the guitar that would lead TO the "Dean Machines" and ultimately his work with Odyssey and Hondo - and later Kramer/Larrivee. All the pedigrees were already there, moderate output pickups, custom wiring, a Gibson style stud tailpiece/bridge combo, specially chambered body, specially chambered neck, and his own very skinny neck profile. Go look at the "Lesson for the Weekend" Video which gives a ton of closeups of this guitar - I can see even from the video, that Paul's neck profile from this guitar was copied to his "Dean Machine" - and then Odyssey and Hondo followed suit.

I surmise the first of these was a 3 single coil pickup "Dean Machine" with a 3 ply egg shaped MusicMan Stingray Bass style pickguard on it, and rear-routed controls. It had 3 single coils, a gold Leo Quan Badass bridge, a slightly longer and thicker horned version of the Paul Dean body style (the Paul Dean body style is similiar to a Stratocaster - but the horns have a Rickenbacker style shape to them), what looks like a copy of the Tele style neck he put on his Stratocaster - meaning this guitar CoULD be 25.5" scale. He used this guitar in the "Gangs in the Street" video, and I think, based on the pictures, it showed up at the late end of the first tour or early in the second tour, and shared the lineup with the aforementioned Strat in the last section, and a Les Paul Special "Bicentennial" model with dual P-90 pickups (which was in the video for "Lucky Ones"). Dean was quoted around the time of those guitars were on stage as only having single coils in all of his guitars at that point.

Which leads me to likely what was prototype #2 - the Dual P-90 Dean Machine, which had something more like the final body shape, and might have been the first to have the Paul Dean style headstock, and was seen in the music video for "When It's Over". I believe this and the one above were on the "Get Lucky" album along with the Strat. However, I've never seen this one and the Les Paul at the same time, so I have to wonder if this build came later. It seems starting in 1982, it took over as Paul's main guitar for shows, usually playing it the whole show, and then swapping to the Strat for the encores (usually Working for the Weekend and The Kid is Hot Tonite - which is the guitar those were recorded with). This one had a very high gain, distorted, grindy tone. I have to wonder if the reason teh Les Paul was not there, was because Dean took the pickups from that and put them in this.

Apparently, the guys at Odyssey felt the guitar had "weird design elements" that made it "only playable by Paul Dean himself" and that they needed to refine the design. I recall mention that they wanted Dean to go with something more like what Odyssey usually built - ie expensive hardwoods, fancy neck. I believe the "Working for the Weekend" video guitar to be one of these attempts. That guitar has a Paul Dean body style, but it's bound, with a top veneer possibly, Brass Odyssey hardware (one of Odyssey's hallmarks was their in-house made brass bridges, tailpiece,s pickup rings, knobs, and other stuff), 2 humbuckers (likely early Pre-Epoxy case Super IIs), and a 24 fret neck with a 3x3 headstock. A far cry from the much more simple design Paul came up with.

Seems somewhere in there, Paul and Odyssey managed to come to a conclusion with what Paul wanted. The result was a Maple bodied guitar, with a 3 piece maple neck with maple 21 fret fretboard, custom jumbo fretwire, black dot inlays, resonance slots parallel to the truss rod, 10 degree headstock tilt, mild taper neck joint with no neckplate on it, 2 DiMarzio DP104 Super II Humbuckers in the neck and bridge positions, Leo Quan Badass wraparound stud-tailpiece bridge, and a Haircell Black Plastic "Anti-Scratch" pickguard. 50 of these guitars were made, with Paul only keeping 2-3 for himself at most, giving another 5 or so to friend's, family, business acquaintences, etc, and then the remaining 45 or so of these guitars being split in half - one half going to Vancouver music stores, the other half were shelved in Paul Dean's garage and trickled out slowly at Loverboy concerts as a part of charity raffles and donations and whatnot.

Paul had at least two fo these that would turn up on the 1983 album Keep It Up and the supporting 1983-1984 tour in support thereof, as well as the one-off song "Destruction" for the Girogio Moroder "Metropolis" movie resto soundtrack, and possibly Almost Paradise. Apparently there may have been some Paul built as well. One of the earliest guitars was sent out really fast and did not have time for the paint to properly cure because Dean needed it right away.

While still on the 82' tour while the Odyssey thing was going on, ZZ Top was touring with Loverboy, and at the time, Billy Gibbons, and most likely Dusty too - were using guitars built by Erliwine quite a bit. And Erliwine's guitars - including the Chaquita, Lazer, and I think some of those really out there pointy models, were recreated by Hondo/Samick/Matsamoku as a part of their "Designer Series". Through Billy, Paul got in touch with Hondo and starting having a more affordable version of his "Dean Machine" produced.

Paul Dean reached out to me in 2020 about this via e-mail while looking for one of his old guitars and saw my site. He confirmed to me that the production of the Hondos started off really crappy - plywood, bad necks - like I'd surmised. But after a few pre-production attempts they finally got it right. Hondo basically said "but you wanted it to be cheap" - but Paul, not wanting his name on something sub-par, really seems to have pushed them in the right direction. The resulting guitar was pretty much identical to the Odyssey Paul Dean - released as the Hondo Paul Dean II - except the body was Sen Ash, the bridge is a Leo Quan Badass import copy, and the pickups were either Samick X14s or DiMarzio K10s from the factory (though some reports of Super II's being used have also been mentioned). As a result, these became something along the lines of a Japanese Fender product, not 100% top of the line, but not a junky approximation either. They actually have good wood (Sen Ash), good pickups (the DiMario K10s and Samick X14s are no slouch), and sound and play really really well for something in the $300 pricepoint from 1983-1985, and the fit and finish is well above Korean build standards of the time, leading me to think some of these were actually made by Matsamoku in Japan instead of Samick in Korea. There also was a second model, the Paul Dean III - which tried to mimic his Strat somewhat with a push/pull volume knob to get the all three and neck+ bridge pickup combos, and was availiable in more colors than just Cherry w/ the ABS plastic haircell pickguard in black - such as white/red Zebra Stripe, Black/red Zebra Stripe, and Tobacco Sunburst with a Flame Mapple Veneer on it, and the option fo a Rosewood board and Grover rotomatic machine heads. Also, the III had a regular Strat vibrato, Dean told me he was not aware there even was a III model. Though ti seems someone (maybe Odyssey in recent yearS) gave him a Paul Dean III with Fender Custom Shop pickups in it per e-bay - but you know how much we can trust that kind of source, lol.

Everyone on forums tends to go off about how Paul Dean played a Hondo - but the truth was, he never actually did. All of Pauls actual guitars were either built by him, or built by Odyssey at that point. The only chance I think there was a Hondo was on the "Good Rockin' Tonite" Canadian TV show, where all of Loverboy was hanging out, goofing around, and hosting music videos. Paul Dean is seen with what could either be a Hondo Paul Dean II, or an Odyssey guitar - there's no telling, and the resolution is too low to see if those are Super IIs or K10s in it. And that particular show was in 85'.

At the same time, Kramer guitars were seeking some outside building houses, and Larrivee was one of those in the running (they were also using ESP in Japan, who they ultimatley ran with, and Sports in Canada).

The new designs, as they wound up, were a maple neck-thru design with mahogany wings, 22 fret 25.5" Scale neck with a tilt Kramer "pointy" (though some of Paul's guitars had the Banana headstock), aforementioned pickup config, with individual on/off switches for each pickup, 1 volume, 1 tone, Floyd Rose original locking tremolo (usually in black). These guitars were produced as the Kramer Paul Dean - with the earliest models being manufactured by Larrivee in Canada - who lifted Paul's body design for the Langcaster and RS-series models over the next 2 decades periodically. Later models were made by ESP in Japan, and I've heard rumors some of those were bolt-ons (not 100% though). They came most often in Harvest Yellow, White, Flip Flop Blue/Pink, Flip Flop Red, Black, and Candy Apple Red. Paul most notably had a Harvest Yellow one (seen at Expo 86'), a Purple one (86-87'), a black one (This Could be the Night video).

It seems sometime in 1987 or 1988, as Kramer was parting ways (ie SCREWED) Larrivee, Paul started making partscasters again. Per a Loverboy Newsletter I read on Tami's fansite years ago, Paul was literally putting guitars together in the studio, so it could have been a whole wacky mix of Odyssey, Kramer, Fender, and Gibson going on on Wildside. I know one of them was a black Kramer Paul Dean, because on Hardcore, paritcullarly the "Sword & Stone" video, Paul has a Kramer Paul Dean with the album cover painted on it and what appears to be a DiMarzio Super II humbucker in the bridge (likely to preserve the paintjob over the pickups). I think the "Break it to Me Gently" guitar from that album also was a partscaster using possibly Bolt-On ESP Build Paul Dean parts - but I'll need to re-look at it. So he was still using these in 1989, but it seems he found a favor for Robin/Chandler Mosrite copies (The Robin Raider) - and from there, it'd be a good 30 years before we would see another "Dean Machine" styled guitar officially his.

About six months later imagine my surprise that on the Odyssey fanpage there's a familiar Odyssey Paul Dean with the headstock logo removed, and then in picture 2, there's Paul peering over the buckle-rashed back of it holding one of the Strats he'd been using for over a decade at that point.

By December 2021, we got our first glimpses of what were prototypes. There were two, one Paul was already probably using - the "Woodshed" guitar, and then a second prototype with a hot rail in the neck, weird rotary switch pickup switching, a relocated Tonerider Generator Humbucker at the bridge, and a Stoptail Bridge with adjustable saddles - and 2 googley eyes on the pickguard.

Then in 2022, in February/March, we saw it, the Woodshed prototype on stage with Paul for the first time, with the famliar resonance, but now with a Floyd Rose. This guitar was used for most of the Unzoomed tour until about late 2022, where it was swapped with a Godin custom build, and 10 custom guitars - known now as the "Sweetheart Customs" were being annoucned as being for sale soon, and several of the inexpensive Paul Dean guitars, now called "Sweetheart Black Bar S" were posted to Reverb with a disclaimer about how "The Player's" name is covered in gorilla tape attached double with Krazy Glue - so if you try to remove it to expose the name - it'll remove the name. It also mentioned he did not dislike the guitars at all, he really liked them, but he wanted to prevent any further complications in developing a new model with a bigger company by not having his name on these. Makes sense.

Funny thing is though, in 2023, the Godin was mysteriously gone toward the later half of the year while touring with Foreigner, and the new Dean Machine was back, now with what looked like the old school Anti-Scratch Haircell pickguard on it. Wow. So that seems to be where Loverboy has been sticking since the start of 2024 gear-wise - Paul's been using that guitar a lot, so I think he likes it. Maybe he's got someone else working on it now.

I immediatley liked the guitar tones, and the earlier solos were easy enough for me to learn now that I had finally nailed the Blues Pentatonic, but there was more than enough challenges mixed in there to allow me to grow as a player - things like Always on my Mind for example. But I wanted to get into this Paul Dean guy's guitar tone as it was pretty close to what I wanted to sound like in my mind.

Problem is, this was 1997, not 1987. Loverboy, until later the year actually - were pretty much no longer a thing. They had a greatest hits album out in 95, and I had that, but the internet was a literal desert wasteland when it came to this band. That was the fun in figuring it out though. YOu could spend hours on an 80's band and come up with minimal info at best that was so interesting it'd pique your curiosity for weeks, and see a bunch of cool photos you'd never find elsewhere.

But the interesting thing was going back and seeing them on SNL, and seeing other videos like Hot Girls in Love, or Pop-Up Video had Workign for the Weekend and showed they shot two other videos in that session (Lucky Ones, and Gangs in the Street). And in these videos, here was this mysterious red guitar, it looked like it had a tele neck, but the headstock was too boxy, and the body looked like a Fender Lead III if it had the top half designed by Rickenbacker....and I was not sure what pickup selection these things had. One had P-90s, one had single coils, one had humbuckers - that's all I knew. Did not know who made them, did not know what they were. It was a pure mystery. When I found out Loverboy was from Canada, I suspected maybe they were indeed, made by a Canadian luthier....well....I was not far off hte mark.

In high school, our high school guitar teacher had a stack of old 80's guitar magazines and one of them just happened to be Guitar Player "Women Who Rock" with Kelley Hansen on the cover, and down the side articles was "Paul Dean: Lead Loverboy" - that's where I found out about Odyssey, Attila Balogh, and the Hondo guitars. So now I knew there was, at least, a announcement of a Hondo model. Well, I did a Yahoo! Search (remember, this is before Google became popular), and found what looked like a Gibson Les Paul copy guitar being touted as a "Hondo Paul Dean" - I was thinking "this can't be right". That Les Paul copy turned up all over the place to haunt me for the better part of a decade. What's weird though, is I went to the local Hastings, found a blue book on guitars, and the specs described more matched the Odyssey originals. So someone was definatley misinformed. It also did not help that I had the Loverboy Classics CD and inside was a picture of Paul Dean playign what I think is the yellow Les Paul from the Lucky Ones video.

Now, I knew Hondo at the time pretty well. They mostly made crappy Plywood Strat copies under the "Hondo II" brand. I was almost thinking "This was the 80's, probably had a run of these promotionally done, really cheap, and they probaby sucked! Which means I can find one really cheap and either copy it with quality parts, or soup up the chassis if it's decent (and has the resonance slots). - Oh how wrong I was on this unicorn of a guitar. Every week, I'd go to pawn shops secretly hoping a disused Hondo II Paul Dean or Hondo Paul Dean II would show up, for like....$50 max, and I could just buy it in cash, take it home, and use Stew Mac to soup it up.

But what would make a teenager think an ultra-rare guitar would be cheap? Well, this was 1997, and I mean no slight towards the band or anyone in it by bringing up the TEENAGE MILLENNIAL mindset of the time. In 1997, most of my generation listened to Sublime, Matchbox 20, Oasis, and had little to no interest in a leather pants and headband rock band from the early 80's - except this guy right here (points to self). And knowing how my ankle shorts clad, pink goatee guitar sliner worshipping generation of single-finger Drop-D'ers would make fun of me for liking a band that played in E-standard, wore leather, and had an album with fingers crossed over someone's butt....I kept this a secret, and also, secretly knew something pretty awesome. If I WERE to find a Hondo Paul Dean, it'd be cheap, because nobody younger than 20 at the time would know or care, and even if they did, everyone was in this stupid anti-80's malaise at the time.

Hence my assessment, if the Hondo was great, I'd keep it, if the Hondo was crap, I'd copy it, if the Hondo was alright but needed some tweaks - I'd pull it off!

By 2003, a Canadian named LutzKibbutz started posting images and making reviews about his guitar all over the internet - a 1983 Hondo Paul Dean II - similiar to mine. He left a glaring review on Harmony Central - that place was like the "Angry Guitar Nerd" website - think Angry Video Game Nerd, but guitars - but here's this guy making the first, and very positive review on the guitar. To be honest, I was a bit shocked, was this really a Hondo? Did Odyssey MAKE the Hondos in some batch? That really piqued my curiosity.

I bid on one in 2005, and later 2010. The 2010 guitar was the one I won, $200 smackeroos for it, and then I got it home, and uh....this thing did not look Korean made at all. All of the routs were clean, no polishing residue inside, it had name brand pots that looked original (Alphas), sure the switch was import, as were the Humbuckers (Samick X14s), the tuners were smooth, the finish was flawlessly intact - I mean, here's a $200 guitar that looks like it was built like a $700 Japanese Fender, so at least initially, they did Paul Dean good, though I hear rumors that he did not get compensated in royalties on these unfortunatley.

The Hondo Paul Dean II, as of October 2010, joined my rig as a permanant fixture. And while yes, this thing really nails songs like "Working for the Weekend" or "Stike Zone" perfectly, especially since the 2017 period-correct DiMarzio Super II upgrade, I use it a LOT for my own original music, where it fits right into my sound perfectly. This lead to me making a lot of jokes about "My "Paul" Is a "Paul Dean"" and whatnot, because I was using it in lieu of a Gibson Les Paul style guitar most of the time. You can tell because I have a sharper distortion sound, there's no whammy bar, and sometimes I'm really trying to wring out every last ounce of Sustain and resonance from that chambered neck. BTW, one of the biggest things LutzKibbutz's reviews sold me on this guitar with, was the description of the extrmely skinny neck, it's thinner than a 1.5" Fender "A" width at the nut. but unlike an "A" Width Fender, it widens out toward the body quite a bit.

So how did it influence me as a builder? Well, at the rooot, as a teenager, while Eddie Van-Halen "built" his guitars as in assembled out of pre-assembled parts, Paul Dean was making his own freakin' bodies and necks. So that's what I did, made my first body at 17 using free wood from the chop-off section at Lowes and went from there. And from there, I kinda' ran with it. Now I'm building from scratch using reclaimed wood, including another Paul Dean style build with P-90s in it.