My own is a 1983 Hondo Paul Dean II model# PD2-CH. I bought it from Underground Vintage in Florida online, in October 2010 for $200, and got it in November. It was the first guitar I ever opened with my then-girlfriend now wife.
In 2017, the original Hondo X14 Humbuckers were replaced with period-correct DiMarzio DP104 Super II Humbuckers like the Odyssey Paul Deans originally came with. I have used this guitar nonstop since I got it and it's my main "hardtail" (non-tremolo) guitar.
I chased this guitar for about 15-20 years after being mystified as to what the heck that bulbous horned strat-thing Paul Dean was playing, and I took to research. Luckily, my high school guitar class had a backlog of a few old Guitar Player mags and one was a 1983 issue with Paul talking about his "Dean Machine" and how Odyssey was making them and that he had sent one plus a bass he designed into Hondo to get them produced for the lower-end market.
Despite being a rare guitar, this thing is not a "case queen", it gets out and gets played, HARD. I have numerous recordings on Bandlab as well as YouTube, and have done work, playing this guitar, with bands such as Candy Apples & the Razorblades, The Sonic Dead, Murderock, Zombie Jihad, and Ancient Tongues. It also turns up on my collabs/forks with other people on Bandlab sometimes as well. Since the Pandemic most of my work is focused on BandLab and YouTube though.
Mine is strung up with Ernie Ball Paradigm .009-.042, and the tuning changes as I need (I use a lot of different tunings as I play in a lot of different projects that use a lot of different tunings). Other than the pickups, strings, and strap locks, everything else is original, original pots, original switch, original jack. I usually use a Perri's leather's Canadian made shoulder strap I bought from a Canadian guitar store while visiting Vancouver on a day trip in 2017.
I ALSO BUILD MY OWN GUITARS - I started building guitars at age 14, 100% self-taught, a lot of it learning by reading articles with Paul Dean and Eddie Van-Halen, and reading a book by Rod Shoepher (who built several guitars for Bon Jovi). I put some pictures above of the progress on a P-90 style build of my own that I'm making out of reclaimed pallet wood from work (I surprisingly ended up with some Maple in there !!). The guitar is basically similar to Dean's guitar from the 1981-1982 tour but it's of course quite a bit different being as I'm using some different wood, it has a rosewood board, it's the 2nd guitar on the planet to have the haircell plastic "anti-scratch" pickguard on it in white (my wife's H806 guitar is the first). This is the first guitar neck I've ever built and so far it seems like it's going to be awesome...it sounds like my Hondo's neck when tapped, and it feels a lot like it, which was the goal. Some other creative liberties include a slightly thinner body, Free-Way 6 way selector switch, and I may throw some of my home-made invention ideas (if they work out) at it someday as well. Usually, if I'm going to clone someone else's guitar, I'm going to do a few things to personalize it for myself, just so it does not appear to some that I'm just being an outright copycat.
ABOUT THE RESEARCH THAT WENT INTO THIS WEBSITE AND HOW/WHERE I GET/GOT MY INFO
aka. the history of how and why I built this site
So you might be wondering how in the heck some regular joe got his hands on all this information, and why. Here's the skinny on that....
So, as a teenager in the 1990's, through my sister's record collection, I got into a canadian rock group called Loverboy. I liked the guitar sound and wanted to get some of the elements of that myself. So, I watched their music videos on VH-1 80's shows, and noticed their guitarist - Paul Dean, had some pretty interesting looking axes. Curious, I took to the internet at the local library to figure out what these were.
At the time, there was Zero information out there on these things. NONE! Nada! Zero! Zilch. It was hard enough to find info on something as popular as a Fender Jaguar or Gibson Les Paul Standard even back then. I think the first line I had was someone claiming to have a "Paul Dean" guitar that turned out to be a red "Cort Effector" Les Paul copy.
I found out about the Hondo/Odyssey guitars through my guitar class in high school - yes, we had a legit High School Class for guitar, with a yearly concert no less. Anyway, one day Mr. Orr was sick and we had a substitute teacher who could not play guitar, so, I grabbed a guitar magazine off Mr. Orr's filing cabinet. It just so happened, aside from drooling at Kelli from Girlschool on the front cover, that Paul Dean was in there divulging on his "Dean Machine" guitar and what it actually was. This was around 2000 or so.
Knowing that Hondos were cheap, I started looking in all of the local pawn shops, thrift shops, and guitar stores, for this "elusive" model. My plans were to buy what I was expecting to be a totally crappy Paul Dean copy - plywood, warped neck, no chambering - and make a legit full on copy of it - and use that to make a legit GOOD copy of the guitar for myself...maybe take some creative liberties if I wanted.
Toward the later part of the 2000's a guy named LutzKibbutz came up in a lot of my searches for the guitar, and what he was mentioning was not exactly resembling the trainwreck I was expecting. Actually, what he described sounded more like one of my Japanese Fenders. So now, being as I love the two vintage Fenders I have (a Jag-Stang and a Jaguar), I was REALLY intrigued. I put a few bids on about 4-5 different Hondo Paul Dean II's between 2003 and 2010, eventually buying the one I have from Underground Vintage in Florida for $200 in September 2010.
But what about Odyssey...
Odyssey had ONE post about it the whole time in 10 years, and it was from a disgruntled employee claiming they were "plagued with screw-ups" including "oversized fretwire" and "misplaced bridges" and some such. I was always a little, uh, skeptical of that post because it sounded like someone who got burned in the past. But I took it into account.
Later a guy on DeviantArt posted up a actual Odyssey Paul Dean in hardshell case, and apparently was making a copy of it. So it was cool to see that and see how close it and the Hondo were.
Over time I found other resources which included a Vancouver guitar builder who with Dean was revisiting this project, Craig Jones who wrote the Odyssey guitar book sent me an early chapter, and even at one point, Paul Dean took some time out of his busy day to email. Pretty cool, never expected that kind of info.
I also still occasionally roam around the internet seeing what other old articles, writings, and whatnot have come up in the last several years. Interesting thing is while this site was taking off a little awhile ago, I saw a sudden small plethora of Hondo's popping up.
