This is a technical guide to these guitars, both to assist in setup, and also to explain the hows and whys of how the Paul Dean guitars work.

SERIAL NUMBERS & DATING

**UPDATE - ODYSSEY Paul Dean Serials & Dating 4/17/2017 - I met another owner of an Odyssey guitar via e-mail, he e-mailed me the serial# of his guitar, apparently the Odyssey guitars DID indeed have serial# on them.  Seems Odyssey dating works like this...

82012 = 1982 guitar #012 - weather this means it's the 12th Paul Dean made that year, or the 12th Odyssey guitar made that year has yet to be figured out.  I know that Paul had 50 commissioned, but what makes it tricky is the Odyssey site seems to show mostly guitars from the 1978-1981 period so I dunno about Odyssey production from 1982 onward - maybe the Paul Deans were the only guitars made that year (they were also making Aoyette drums, or at least sharing a factory with them).

So it's safe to say that ALL Odyssey guitars are likely 1982 model year guitars.  Which would make sense since Paul commissioned them all at the same time.  

I'm still working out how to find a value to these guitars because they had a VERY limited production run (only 50 guitars), slightly less than a quarter of them went to friends/family/Paul himself, and the rest were split roughly 50/50 for Charity/Auction and Sale at local Vancouver music shops circa 1982-1983.

More recently another viewer contacted me with another Odyssey with a serial number over 50 - having me wonder 2 things on these guitars - if there were actually more than 50, if Odyssey pulled a Charvel like Charvel did with EVH's Bumblebee and made a few out of the commissioned for sale?  Or if maybe Dean commissioned a few more than expected.  Not really that important but if so he probably has one of the last ones built.  I also speculate having a higher serial than 50 means that it could have had some other guitars stuck in between members of the Odyssey production runs - ie - there's been a Flying Vee on Reverb as of a year ago that has VERY similar features to the Paul Dean guitars (Super II pickups in both positions, odd since most guitarists only put a super II in the neck, and a Leo Quan badass bridge....for all we know, could have been another custom guitar Dean ordered given the specs, either that or Odyssey adopted Dean's specs across the product line to some extent at that point).  See picture of said Flying V below.