“Back with a Vengeance and Zero apologies”: Following Gibson’s lawsuit, Dean is selling V-shaped guitars again under a new name – and, like the design, it’s rather pointed...
Dean Guitars has announced the arrival of a new V-style electric guitar: the Vengeance Select Evertune Fluence.
The news is significant, as despite the fact the Vengeance was first unveiled two years ago, it seems it never made it into stores.
As such, this flagship model – alongside another two Vengeance Select variants listed on the Dean site – hails the brand’s first step towards actually selling V-style shapes following Gibson’s lawsuit.
The new(-ish) model, made in Indonesia, therefore represents something of a relaunch for the brand, which has faced strong headwinds as Dean producer, Armadillo Enterprises, deals with foreclosure action from its lenders, alongside lawsuits involving previous CEO, Evan Rubinson.
The spec of the Vengeance Select combines a mahogany body with a fetching flame maple top (finished in Black Cherry Burst) and a three-piece maple neck, in a set-neck construction.
The body shape is a more pointy affair than the firm’s previous ‘V’ model, with sharper tails and a neck batwing-style headstock, all befitting the Vengeance name – as does, it seems, the inspiration behind the changes.
As Dean puts it on its site, referencing both the V and new Z-style Zero models: “Back with a Vengeance and Zero apologies.”
The neck offers an ebony fretboard with a 25.5” scale-length, 24 jumbo stainless steel frets and pearloid ‘ultra diamond’ fret markers.
On the electronics side, it’s equipped with two Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers, as favored by an increasing number of heavy players. These are controlled by a three-way pickup selector, plus two volume pots and one tone pot.
One of these is actually a Fluence KT-5 Push Pull pot, which will enable you to switch between the three voicings offered by the Fluence pickups.
Finally, on the hardware side, you have a GraphTech NuBone nut and the Evertune bridge. That component stills leads the market when it comes to tuning stability, particularly, among metal players, while at the other end, you’ll find 18:1 ratio Mini Grover tuners.
A final nod to new standards for heavy players comes in the form of the Luminlay-style glow in the dark side dots along the fretboard.
Expect to find the Vengeance Select Evertune Fluence packaged up with a price tag of $1,499.
For more information, head to Dean.
