ML

Here’s how Dean builds its homage to the first year, and it’s aimed at one thing. A mahogany body, a mahogany neck glued in, an ebony fingerboard, and two DiMarzio Super Distortion humbuckers, which were about as hot as pickups came. Two volumes, one tone, a three-way switch. Even the bridge sits on a brass plate cut in the shape of a V, in case you forget what you’re holding. You weren’t going to play jazz on it, and nobody asked you to.

The scale is 24⅝ inches, in Gibson territory, so the strings feel a little looser under your fingers than on a Fender. Bends come easy. Add all that mahogany and those pickups, and it’s thick and happy to be turned up.

Every shape waits for the right person. For the ML it was Dimebag Darrell of Pantera, and his lightning-bolt ML, the one people call the Dean From Hell.

Once Dimebag was playing it, the ML stopped being half a V and half an Explorer. It was his. People who couldn’t tell you who Dean Zelinsky is can draw that guitar from memory, bolt and all. Dean has built Dimebag signature models on this shape, and the lightning bolt is still the first thing a lot of people picture.

A word of caution. Not every ML with a flashy finish is a Dean From Hell, and plenty of the photos floating around are replicas. The real one is a single guitar.

Because the ML is pointed and metal, it gets pinned on people who never played one. Tony Iommi is an SG man. James Hetfield’s pointy guitars are ESPs. Slash plays a Les Paul. And the ML isn’t a B.C. Rich Warlock, a Jackson Rhoads, or Dean’s own Cadillac, which is a different shape entirely.

It isn’t a 1958 korina Flying V or Explorer either. It’s their kid, and like most kids it went its own way.

Dean still makes the ML. There’s an import version, the ML 79, for most of us, and there’s an American one built to look like the first year, down to the nitro finish, the DiMarzios, and the patents-pending stamp on the big headstock. Dean doesn’t publish how many have been made, then or now.

In 1977 the ML was two borrowed shapes and a new name. Today somebody sees one across a crowded room and says “Dimebag.” It started out as Gibson’s ideas, and it ended up belonging to a guy from Texas with a lightning bolt on his guitar.