washburn dime bag guitars,who knows about them?

[ravendouglas]

i have a chance to buy a washburn dime bag darrel guitar that appears to be a clone of a dean ml guitar..it even has the dean head stock but it has a washburn badge on it.......it has a hard shell case...and a green and yellow flame top finish that is in incredible shape.....asking price is 600 and its from semi famous player....so whos got the skinny on these are they good,are they crap?.....its a guitar i am ready to aquire now.

[crguti]

Hi Raven, what's up?

do you have a picture of the guitar?

[TheProphet]

Depends on the model number, but the ones I played were light years better than the Deans IMO. Probably due to Grover Jackson being involved in the build/design.

[formula73]

Dime 3=USA build. Top quality. For $600, I doubt it's a 3.

Dime 333=Korea (for the most part). The Boogiestreet and Funky Munky runs that were high dollar (~1k, new) and produced AFTER Dime's death are fantastic guitars with good pups, hardware, and fast necks. The Polkadot and Rebel Flag 333s are more like the 90s and early 2000s production lines which are JUNK. Sloppy neck joints, junk hardware, crappy frets, and crappy pups and electronics. Steer clear.

[jmh151]

The American made ones are top notch, I played them. Exact replicas of Dime's, including non recessed Floyd (Dime's originals were retrofitted with Floyds- which meant due to the neck angle of the originals, the floyd needed to rest high off the body- which still allowed pull ups)

Washburn had an import version, which had generic Washburn pickups, but most importantly, had cheaper quality Floyds, and alder bodies instead of Mahogany.

The American made Washburns and Deans are same quality wise. On the imports, ehhhh. I don't like Dean imports- tiny frets, mystery mahogany, probably Luan

[TheLivingDead]

Sounds like a Dime Slime. I've seen em around $500 on the Dean Forum.

[Grindspine]

I have a Korean made Washburn Dime 333 Dime Slime.

The stock Washburn Eliminator pickups were muddy crap. You can identify these pickups by the black open coils with the white W on them. I eventually replaced them with a Duncan Dimebucker and Duncan Alnico II Pro for a huge improvement in sound.

The chrome TRS licensed Floyd Rose bridge and nut were crap. Both had sharp corners that gouged my pick hand wrist and fret hand index finger. I eventually replaced these with an Ibanez Edge bridge and nut.

The wood was not the highest quality. While installing the Edge bridge, the luthier I visit found a crack in the mohogany under the trem cavity. He replaced a chunk of mohogany there to ensure the guitar's stability.

The fretwork was crap. My frets have corroded over the years with a slight green/blue tinge that looks like oxidized copper. My lower frets have started to lift. I need to take it back to the luthier to have it refretted.

I bought the guitar new in 1995 and have had to put a lot of money into making it play decently. The Dime 3 USA had far better hardware. I would avoid wasting money on a Korean made Dime 333 if it has stock parts.



Sure, it looks nicer now, but it has taken a lot of work and I still need some more done on it.

[Grindspine]

This is back in about 2003 with original hardware with the exception of the bridge being a William Lawrence Keystone K500-MS blade humbucker.



This is after most of the rebuilding was finished in 2010.

[Grindspine]

Also, the guitar is heavy as hell, which can be a good thing, or a bad thing... It's bad on the shoulder when standing for a long period of time. However, the Dimebucker and Alnico II Pro LOVE that huge mohogany body to resonate. It SOUNDS great, but is not the most comfortable to play.

The strap buttons are in a great location. I have actually changed the strap buttons on my other guitars to mimicthe balance on the Dime. That is one of the guitar's stronger attributes.

The case has always been a pain. The original Washburn case did not have rounded corners and was so large that it was difficult not to bash into things. That is not a matter of clumsiness. The case is at least six inches longer and three inches wider than any of my other non-acoustic guitar cases.

[ravendouglas]

Hi Raven, what's up?

do you have a picture of the guitar?

hey man ..im good...no pics but its the dime slime ...others have posted pics.

[ravendouglas]

thanks for the pics and info everybody.........i dont know yet if its a 3 or a 333.....i still want it regardless.....im actually selling a honey burst type dean flying v for the other half of the 600 tonight to a friend who plays in a pretty cool band here in houston called shaving susie.............i have to drive to sherman tx to pick up the washburn ...but its worth the drive just to f#$k...with a cowboy fan..lol

[Varg]

Wasn't Dime endorsed by Washburn BEFORE Dean? I always thought the lightning bolt guitar was a Washburn, then all the Deans were just copies of that?

[formula73]

Wasn't Dime endorsed by Washburn BEFORE Dean? I always thought the lightning bolt guitar was a Washburn, then all the Deans were just copies of that?

I sincerely hope that's in jest.

[DankStar]

They got the strap buttons right! I'm going to call this a victory.

[formula73]

This is one of the very recent 333s contracted by Funky Munky Music. It was almost a co-op type thing with Boogiestreet. As opposed to the weird neck joint, wrong body woods, tiny frets, and junk hardware/pups, these were actually spec'd out from a US Dime 3 and built in different factories. Fantastic neck with big frets, proper neckjoint (and angle!), Schaller Floyd, Duncan pups, etc.-they even had the diamond volute like the 3s.

Note that the upper side of the body on the 333 above is clunky and the points come to fat-ish points whereas this does not. I never understood why the production 333s weren't even close to the same dimensions as the 3s.












If you keep your eye out, you'll find one, though not this one-the run never happened. It was a proto. For a little while there, they were getting BLOWN out on ebay. They made Slimes, too, and they looked fantastic. There were also some bolts in white with multiply binding that were absolutely stunning. There were also some with maple boards and black blocks that just never did it for me in the looks department.

[Grindspine]

That black Dime 333 definitely had thicker frets and a smoother neck joint than my Dime 333 Slime. I also noticed that the jack plate in the photo is screw in, not a thin piece of plastic like on mine.

[formula73]

Yeah, towards the end of the run, some of the 333s were nice but most of them were SO bad that they gave the entire line (even the 3s) a bad name. I don't know how many of you remember 03/early 04 but you could pick up a real Dime 3 for less than 1k, used, and people basically used the 333s as doorstops and boat paddles.

I'll absolutely admit that the BS/FM runs were positively riding the post-death Dime wave but they were fantastic guitars-superior to the production versions in just about every way.

[DeanSweden]

Wasn't Dime endorsed by Washburn BEFORE Dean? I always thought the lightning bolt guitar was a Washburn, then all the Deans were just copies of that?

it went Dean > Washburn -> Dean

[Jocelyn]

it went Dean > Washburn -> Dean

Thats right

[formula73]

To take it further, he loved Deans but in the early-mid 90s, Dean was squarely in the crapper. It came time for him to shop for an endorsement because Dean could not deliver (importing JUNK superstrat copies, etc, though they did have a couple ghost-built for him to try) and of the few vying for his smiling face on their advertising (Washy, Hamer, BC Rich come to mind but I think there were a few more), Washy one out and Dean, who still owned the rights to the ML shape, licensed it out to them.

Rich (*ACK!!!11!!1!!*):


Hamer (honestly, my fav-topmount Floyd, reverse hockey stick, and all):


Mind=blown?

There's more than a few pics of him actually playing that one. Phil, too. I don't know that anybody ever asked him why he went Washy over Hamer but I figure it was because Washy's was close enough and, well, they had deeper pockets.

The original Dean From Hell 81 Flame Series ML (yes, it was a Dean and it looks even WORSE in person). One monster of a player. They let some of us play it down at the Dean Factory, in 06 or 07.