The roots of the "Dean Machine" or Hondo/Odyssey Paul Dean start with a 1964 Fender Stratocaster Paul got in trade for a Les Paul Jr. that had a broken neck that he fixed up. The guitar was used somewhere about the late sixties/early seventies stock (Scrubbaloe Caine perhaps?) and then smashed whilst "Imitating Pete Townshend".
Paul was no stranger to building or modifying guitars even at that early time when most people would not dare take a chisel to an instrument as these things were seen as being made of "black magic" at the time. Paul "put humpty back together" using LePage's Bondfast, and it had an amazing resonance effect all of a sudden, but it was not to last. One summer, Paul left the Strat in a hot trunk, the glue melted, and it "went for shit" obviously due to the glue softening from the heat.
This would be around 1973. Paul then rebuilt the body, but scrapped the neck as it was pretty much trashed. The body was reinforced with fir, or pine. Some extra routing was added, too much was removed, so the excess was re-filled using Plastic Wood (DAP I presume). The body was painted red, a Leo Quan Badass bridge was put on in place of the stock Strat bridge, and a new pickguard was fashioned out of Anvil Case material. I have read somewhere that some DIMarsio Strat pickups were put in it at some point, but most likely those are the original 60's Strat pickups in there. Also, the wiring and control positioning was modded to get the volume knob out of Paul's way and get rid of the second tone knob.
The neck was a key element. Paul bought a new Telecaster neck and tried to retrofit it to the Strat. The result had great sustain, but no real tone. He tried everything with that neck - shaving it, putting it in the oven, soaking it in the bath tub, nothing appeased the gods of good tone with that neck so Paul took to making his OWN neck for the guitar - complete with the 10th fret break that supposedly made the original neck sound so good after smashing the guitar the first time. I've never heard him mention headstock tilt or tone channels but it may have those as well.
The end result is the guitar he's seen holding on the back of Loverboy's first record in 1980, and the one he has referred to more recently as his "real favorite guitar". All of the hits in Loverboy were written and recorded on that guitar - Turn Me Loose, The Kid is Hot Tonight, Working for the Weekend. It also was used as an encore guitar at concerts as it was used on those tracks. He also still used it even on Unfinished Business some as well apparently as there's a clip of a promo for that album where Paul is playing the strat. Most recently, Paul released a video lesson on "Working for the Weekend" using this guitar - complete with some GREAT closeups of the neck, pickguard (which looks like the anvil case material was removed or came off).
WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND - The Odyssey guitar
The guitar seen in the Working for the Weekend video, it's unclear weather that's a very very early prototype, or a guitar given to Paul by Odyssey guitars. I'm guessing the latter as it has the Paul Dean body shape, but it appears to have a 24 fret neck, an extra switch, and a 3X3 headstock rather than Paul's custom six-in-line headstock his Strat and Dean Machines used and it also appears there is the brass Odyssey logo on the headstock (pre 1981 Aoyette drum Odyssey made a lot of their own hardware including the headstock logos which were brass). It also appears to have different pickups in it than the DiMarzio Super II full cover units Paul would specify for the production guitars.
THE PROTOTYPES
Paul had 3-4 prototype versions of his "Dean Machine" they were used on various songs on the Get Lucky and Keep it Up Records, and possibly further ahead (I still think Steal the Thunder is one of these). I have given them special "Nicknames" - and things CAN get confusing towards the end of this speculative history as I believe some of these got modified to look consistent with his other guitars at the time.
"P-90" - P-90 is one of the first three or four Paul Dean prototypes. It appears in the music video for "When It's Over", and all over 1982-1983 Get Lucky tour footage (he pretty much uses it the whole show until the encore where he swaps to the strat). It also has a unique neck in that it has no 21st fret position marker, a boxier headstock, and what looks like a large, round, string tree covering 4 of the six strings (NOTE: This could be that Chaquita Banana sticker - a way Dean points out which guitar is his main perhaps? Looks like his old funky strat wears that sticker now). It's tone is a bit more stinging and trebly than the later humbucker equipped guitars. On a recent discussion with Paul he wishes he still had this one, because it sounded awesome (I concur). I'm pretty sure it saw quite a bit of studio use on Get Lucky and possibly Keep it Up as well.
"GANGS" - three single coil guitar seen in the Loverboy video for "Gangs in the Street", at least, that's what I speculate Gangs to be now based on this newly found photograph of a guitar believed to be the "Gangs in the Street" guitar. The guitar we found may very well be "Gangs" itself, because it has the eggshell pickguard that to my knowledge never appeared on ANY production Paul Dean instrument, and the headstock says "The Dean Machine" in the classic Loverboy courier font and has a peculiarly slimmer and slightly different overall shape to it, a bit more like a Telecaster and less like the Paul Dean headstock shape on most of these other guitars. I have a picture of what we think is Gangs currently and a picture of the guitar with Paul Dean back circa 1981-1982 making this possibly one of the first three or four prototypes for the guitars this page tends to focus on. It is also now speculated this guitar MAY be the one that Paul used on "Take me to the Top" (reference - Guitar Player September 93' - Paul Dean Lead Loverboy) as it seems like a very early one, and can be seen in the music videos for "Lucky Ones" and "Working for the Weekend" sitting on a stand next to the backline, as well as in the video for "Gangs in the Street" hence the name. Also, recently Paul Demystified the wiring on his various 3 pickup guitars - the 3-way switch switches between the neck and bridge pickups or both together like a regular guitar, the tiny switch is for turning the middle pickup on allowing for all three or the classic 2 strat combinations. The only differences I see between the two are the knobs and the bridge. But those could have been easily swapped out at some point. This one may also be 25.5" Scale, it almost appears Paul was trying to replicate some aspects of his "Funky Old Strat" on this one.
"Girls" - Girls is similar to P-90 except she's got 3 singles instead of a pair of humbuckers or P-90's. It's named after the video it appears in. I think "Girls" had the same sort of wiring setup as the above "Gangs" guitar as three single coils are visible in the video. It's considered a different instrument from "Gang's" above because "Girls" has a different pickguard and a different control layout (obviously), and a regular Odyssey style headstock. In the video for "Hot Girls in Love" we never see the controls of "Girls", just the pickguard. It's also a logical assumption this may be the one homebuilt "Dean Machine" that Paul Dean still has since someone else owns the "Gangs" guitar currently, and "Gangs" has a black switch tip, and Dean says the one he still has had a white one.
"Machine" - Machine may be P-90 after some modification. Machine has a headstock label that says "Dean Machine" in cursive on it, and has the large round thing on the headstock seen on P-90. However, the body does look a little more sculpted, it has a haircell plastic pickguard, and 2 DiMarzio Super II humbuckers (early, expoxied units with black plastic covers). I believe this guitar was also one of the ones used on the 1983 Keep It Up tour. The only thing holding me back from thinking this guitar is the P-90 is because of a short few seconds of the "Heaven In Your Eyes" music video, Paul is seen playing a Kramer guitar, and the P-90 prototype is in the background. Machine's headstock can be seen on the cover of "Canadian Musician" - some issue from 1983 or 1984.
"Queen" - Queen Used to be speculated to be the same guitar as "Gangs" was, but this has been confirmed untrue both because Gangs can be seen above, and in the guitar section, and to the right to compare the backplates between "Gangs" and "Queen". Queen was possibly another home-built Prototype guitar that Paul Dean equipped with the DiMarzio Super II's, which it seems he started using those in 1983 after the Get Lucky tour ended. Also, Gangs has a different screw setup for the neck bolt pattern, a apparently thinner neck, and the rear cover plate is entirely a different shape. Queen could also be the same one as the Canadian Musician guitar, it's really hard to tell since you only see the FRONT of that one.
This guitar appeared in the "Queen of the Broken Hearts" video hence the name. It's very likely Paul was changing parts out and moving things around and testing out new ideas frequently on these guitars to get the design just right, so just take this as a general guide and not the gospel. For all we know there were multiple variations of "Gangs" built originally before the newer pickguard style started to appear (it seems P-90 was the first to have the actual Official Hondo/Odyssey pickguard shape).
ODYSSEY GUITARS
In 1981, Paul Dean went to Odyssey guitars of Vancouver, B.C., to commission 50 instruments. What he wanted was a guitar with a chambered neck, straight string pull, 10 degree headstock tilt, and it came with a Leo Quan Badass bridge, "Anti-Scratch" pickguard treatment, and dual DiMarzio DP104 Super II Epoxy case humbuckers. It was a radical departure for Odyssey being essentially a Fender-style design with a bolt-on neck using off-the-shelf-hardware (other Odyssey guitars, including the guitar from the Working for the Weekend video featured hand-made brass hardware made in-house by Odyssey). Apparently this was toward the end of Odyssey guitars time, and around the same time a Flying V I showed on this page was built (utilizing a few familiar features of the Paul Dean guitars).
Paul kept one or two for himself (those used on the 1983 world tour), gave four or five to friends/family, and the remainder were split in half - one half going to giveaways/charities/raffles, and the other half going to local Vancouver B.C. music shops. Paul apparently gave the last one away sometime in the early 2000's at a Loverboy concert charity raffle. Paul still owns one of these.
Accounts on the manufacturing of these guitars can be quite interesting. Such as the neck profile per Paul himself is that he left a prototype with them on the wall as he had to go off on tour. The necks of the newly built guitars were described as being like "Baseball Bats". Much later on, while working with Jean Larivee while working with him on what became his Kramer model (which Larivee exclusively built), he had the necks on the remaining 25 shaved down to spec.
My own sightings and hearings of these guitars vary wildly in small changes such as body shape or wood figure, and reportedly I've read someone the one Dean still has had 3 single coils instead of humbuckers. The one above for example has a slightly different body shape from the Hondo guitars below, but the Odyssey in the Hondo Ad from 1983 has almost an identical shape to the Hondo model. Some have the round brass "O" on the headstock, some have the same script as the Odyssey Paul Dean in the and the one in the picture above.
HONDO GUITARS
Sometime while on tour in 1981 or 1982 Paul Dean got in touch with Hondo guitars through Billy Gibbons while touring with ZZ Top. His goal with Hondo was to create an affordable, reliable guitar that stayed in tune and didn't break strings. An early sample of these guitars was true to the typical public opinion of Hondo making plywood guitars. Their argument was that he wanted inexpensive. thusly I speculate the first pre-production run was made by Samick. Paul worked with Hondo to make sure the guitars came out a quality product, as they were improved on future runs, and personally, he pulled that off in spades. The template guitar was the Odyssey Paul Dean seen in the "Designer Series" ad below.
The Hondo Paul Dean II was a 24.75" (Gibson Scale) guitar with a chambered maple neck, 10 degree headstock tilt, 1" nut width, and came standard with Hondo X-10 humbucker pickups. DiMarzios were available as an upgrade for $60. I have heard of 2 types of DiMarzio being used, one set being the actual Epoxy case Super II DP104 humbuckers, and the others being a set of special DiMarzio designed humbuckers that went by a different model designation but likely were close in spec. These models only ever seemed to come in the Cherry Finish - under the model designation PD2-CH on later runs.
The Hondo Paul Dean II and Paul Dean III were introduced in early 1983 in their catalogs available for $379.99 each, with or without hard-shell case, chipboard case, or gig bag at additional cost. The price was later reduced to around $100 less.
The Paul Dean III was introduced at the same time and has rarely been shown in the Hondo Catalogs, let alone is a very rare version of this guitar. It differs from the Paul Dean II in that it's more of a standard Stratocaster with a couple extra pickup selection options via a push-pull tone pot. Talking with Paul he was not aware they made this model, which I speculate means Hondo may have been making this version to make wider use of the bodies. It differs in having 3 Hondo X-14 single coils, standard Stratocaster type wiring with aforementioned push-pull switch (quite ahead of it's time TBH). It also is regular Fender scale (25.5" scale), has regular PVC pickguard material (single ply white is all I've ever seen), and seems to have mostly been sold in an interesting "Tiger Stripe" red/white or red/black paintjob the most, and also a tobacco sunburst version above that has a flame-maple veneer top. I also have seen a few of these may have left the factory with Grover Rotomatic tuners standard (maybe the Dean II's did). There was no pickup upgrade option on the III.
The Paul Dean II was the longer lasting model. Introduced for the same price as the Paul Dean III, available with a custom-order option for DiMarzio Super II pickups in both positions (explaining why you don't see too many Paul Dean II's with DiMarzios installed - it's very very rare - somewhere I read it was a $60.00 Upcharge for them). The Paul Dean II seem to have only came in "Cherry Red" transparent - and later the model designation became the PD2-CH model number when ordering - but a reader from Facebook showed me his 1985 model - probably one of the last guitars ever made - that had a BLACK finish, and it had a non-tilt, regular headstock shape - AND factory Super II's, making it probably one of the rarest of the rare Paul Deans I've ever seen. These models had a black plastic "anti-scratch" pickguard made of haircell plastic, and standard came with a pair of Hondo ceramic humbuckers measuring in at around 7.8K ohms on average, and a Leo Quan Badass style bridge. The necks on these only ever had maple fretboards, and the bodies are almost always 2 piece, non-bookmatched, Sen Ash, to simulate the density of the maple bodies on the Canadian Odyssey originals for sonic reasons. The Paul Dean II appeared last in the 1984 Christmas catalog and probably continued to ship up into Spring of 1985 - which was about the time Paul was revealing his new endorsement deal with Kramer.
Both Models were available with the HPD-129 Economy Case for $30.00 and the HC-1186 Hardshell Case for $86 - with these cases following the Paul Dean II through it's entire production run.
Finally, the headstock logo changed over course of production. Early examples have the "Script" logo similar to the one used on the original Odyssey guitars - it says "Hondo Paul Dean II" or "Hondo PAul Dean III" in large black and yellow script. The later guitars have what I call the "H-coin" logo - used on Hondo II guitars and so fourth. This logo was most likely used on 1984 and later instruments, also has "(H) Paul Dean II/III" in script next to the H coin logo but the font is smaller. This differentiates on production period.
Eventually though, Paul would leave Hondo for the premier 80's guitar manufacturer, Kramer, whom had everyone as an endorsee at the time from Billy Squier, Gene Simmons (Kiss), Ritchie Sambora (Bon Jovi), to Edward Van-Halen most notably, and he would take only the body design with him to create a strikingly different instrument in the late 80's vein starting around 1984.
However, despite his Kramer endorsement starting, Hondo tried to use up bodies and necks, I suspect by late 84' or sometime in 1985, they ran out of regular Paul Dean necks and opted to use the necks used on their Explorer and Flying V copies (24.75" scale necks with the default Hondo Headstock) as they would fit the body to try and appease demand for the remaining orders on this model. Interestingly I surmise that what happened production-wise is the earlier models were made at Tokai or Kasuga, and then later the remaining parts were sent to Korea for Samick to build. It was kind of fitting though, occasionally one would still see the older Dean Machines sharing the stage with the Kramer guitars, such as in the music video for "Heaven In Your Eyes" (you can see Paul Dean playing a Kramer and there's an older Odyssey hanging around in the backline).
1986 Kramer Paul Dean in Harvest Yellow
see the KramerForumz.net for those
FINAL BITS ON THESE GUITARS
The Odyssey Paul Dean guitars, being so limited, hardly ever were mentioned or turned up much since the early 80's, and Hondo gained a reputation as "Pawn Shop Fodder" - ie. cheap guitars that beginners bought that were horrible to play, sounded bad, and did not hold up well at all. The Hondo Paul Dean guitars were practically a forgotten "diamond in the rough" of the Hondo guitars, almost to the point of being something of myth and legend. Below I think Paul MIGHT have a Hondo here which was probably given to the Good Rockin' Tonite people...
I only ever started to see them with any regularity online after I bought mine and posted it, and did a huge write-up on vintaxe forums, which triggered my eventual creation of this site.
Paul apparently kept at least one Odyssey into the 2000's which is pictured below and is being played by a lucky fan on stage. According to current mentions, he still has one with the logo removed from the headstock and a white switch tip and 3 single coils.
SIMILAR GUITARS IN DESIGN
Seems some Luthiers have been carrying on the body design, Larrivee in particular kept using the Paul Dean body style on their own instruments even after Paul left Kramer in the late 80's. A fun fact is the ealry Paul Dean Kramers were actually built by Larrivee.
It seems Larrivee adopted the bulbous horns for their own guitars in the mid 1980's for the RS series, and later revived it in the 00's for their "Langcaster" model (pictured above). As of recent, Odyssey guitars in Vancouver (yes, they're back) got a hold of an actual Larrivee "Paul Dean" model....extremely odd because it's red and black, has the same switching mechanics as Paul's strat/Gangs/current handful of home-built/modified strats he uses in Loverboy. Apparently according to this Facebook Post - Paul's design has been copied by at least 3 other makers without giving anything back in return.
Luthier of Bullock guitars made a somewhat modernized update of Paul's "Dean Machine" design in 2011. This version features a opaque Loverboy red paintjob, regular black 3 ply pickguard, the pickup selector located on the upper treble side horn, and adds a 22nd Fret, and has Sprezel Locking tuners. They did a GREAT job on this replica of capturing the original vibe. Note Bullock guitars does NOT sell these replicas. I have added their website to "Links" so you can see the picture gallery of this guitar and look at some of thee other cool things they have made. It appears Paul uses or used some of their guitars as well - who knows - maybe this was made for Paul to use in the studio, I dunno.
2021 - 2022 - Odyssey Sweetheart Series Guitars
In 2021, Paul worked briefly with Odyssey Guitars (more known now for their guitars used by Joe Keithly of DOA) and the result was Odyssey making several new guitars based on teh designs this page is about. I'm not going to focus on these models because they are sort of their own thing though they share traits with the Odyssey and Hondo originals somewhat.
In mid-2022 Odyssey could no longer use the player's name on the headstock but was allowing Odyssey to sell the guitars they made. There were two series under the new name - The "Black Bar S" series which were Korean/Chinese import parts assembled in Canada, said to be an attempt at an inexpensive model aimed at the average fan being able to afford. These were called "Black Bar S" because the name on the headstock is obscured by a piece of tape glued on with gorilla glue, so if you try to remove the label, it will rip the player's name off with it. This was a compromise so Odyssey could sell these guitars.
And then there was a group of 9 "Sweetheart Customs" which included a bass and a baritone and 2 Lefty's. I have not seen these go on sale. These 9 were all Canadian hand-made guitars and likely don't have the "Bar" on the headstock because they names were removed from the decals ala Fender "Nocasters" from the 1950s (speculation). As of 2023, ,Paul is now playing a Godin guitar model, which will not be going into production, and is a special instrument, probably separate from these models.