Dean Vendetta XM is a pretty cool-looking guitar in the entry-level price range.
The market for electric guitars has grown over the years, and frankly, the quality of entry-level instruments that beginners can afford has also improved by a lot. These days, you can get a decent ax for just a couple hundred bucks and if you know where to look, you can get some pretty sweet deals!
I know the trouble beginners can get into when trying to find great-sounding electric guitars. Speaking from experience, budget brands like Epiphone and Squier can really help a guy out when deciding.
In this guitar review, we’re going to take a look at this instrument in detail and decide if it’s a good value for the price. I understand that most reading this would be people just starting out learning the guitar, so this will be beginner-friendly and helpful, I hope.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Overview of Dean Vendetta XM
Dean Vendetta XM Electric Guitar
What We Like
- Double-cutaway cool design
- Rosewood fingerboard with a satin finish
- Maple neck and Paulownia body
- Slim C-shape neck
- Long-scale
- 22 medium jumbo frets
- Dean dual hum pickups
Our Verdict
The Dean Vendetta XM is an amazing budget guitar packed with tons of wonderful features fit for any beginner or an intermediate. It’s a great choice as your first guitar as well.
Dean – The Brand
Dean is a quality manufacturer of top-notch budget guitars in the entry-level range. Many guitarists like to think of Dean as a solid competition for brands like Squier, Epiphone, and Ibanez.
The guitar brand has been selling for over 40 years and these instruments make a great choice as a quality piece of gear.
The brand actually rose to popularity when the Pantera beast- Dimebag Darrell used one of these cheap guitars to smash as a prop on stage. Contrary to that, Dean guitars are not only cheap ‘props’ but actual musical instruments with decent playability.
Dean guitars have an aggressive edge that makes them ideal for rock and metal. It’s certainly not the price of an instrument that makes a musician, and it’s the actual chops and technical finesse that matter. It’s more true for demanding genres like metal that features lighting fast solos that require extreme precision and speed.
The Vendetta series feature a lightweight and cool design with a slim neck, superb electronics, and excellent playability.
It’s also very affordable which certainly helps you choose the Dean Vendetta XM. While it’s certainly not the best guitar for professionals, it’s one of the best ones for mastering fundamentals of technique and practicing for hours on end.
The construction shows decent craftsmanship and while not superior in any way, it lasts for a long time.
Most Dean guitars are outsourced from Chinese factories to reduce costs, and the Vendetta XM is no different. Doing so doesn’t help with quality but can bring down costs by a lot.
The biggest edge, in my opinion, that Dean guitars have over other brands is that they do things differently. While Squier is known to produce affordable copies of authentic Fenders with decent electronics, Dean has an entirely different approach. These guys build cool-looking innovative instruments and have their own DMG pickups that sound pretty good.
Dean is a brand that not only produces unique electric guitars but also beautiful acoustics, resonators, banjos, amps, and basses.
The Dean Vendetta XM is a great choice for a budget guitar if you cannot afford expensive guitars and amps.
Aesthetics
The body on Dean Vendetta XM has a smooth finish and the satin finish looks neat and beautiful with an aggressive essence.
The neck finish may not be up to par with your tastes but consider its price and it seems very reasonable. Since they had to keep prices low with quality electronics and playability, they may have gone through with a less appealing finish on the neck. For a beginner, it’s a non-issue.
If you like colorful colors, you’d be surprised to know that it only comes in a black finish. I like dark colors, so, at least for me- it’s nice!
The shape of Vendetta XM resembles that of a humble Strat. Being Asian-made seems to have taken its toll on this guitar.
Dean guitars are made for metal. That’s why they feature easier playability and humbucker configurations.
Furthermore, its hardware turns this guitar into a gig-ready instrument.
Tuning
The tuning on this guitar is handled by die-cast tuners which do their job pretty well. As long as you’re not actively trying to get it out of tune by bending as much as you can, it’s easy to keep it in tune.
Neck
The maple neck on this is a beautiful touch to the exotic body and to be honest, it adds a bit of weight to the light body. If you look at the headstock, it looks awesome for an inexpensive guitar.
I do like the natural finish on the neck better, so I am not too happy with the finish on this. They did a great job on the pearl evil eye inlay as well as black hardware on the body but really left a few things to be desired when it comes to sanding the neck properly.
The maple neck has a slim C shape to it and it’s bolt-on which is pretty common on most electric guitars. This means that it’s a bit below glued electric guitars with incredible resonance but at the price point, you can just overlook it.
I really love to see maple on electric guitars and I’m fond of the maple and mahogany body pair. It’s Pawlonia on this one, but it compliments it well.
Epiphone necks are usually smaller, and the one on the Dean Vendetta XM guitar is a bit bigger. I don’t think it makes much of a difference really. If anything, string skipping is easier, maybe.
If there’s one thing I don’t like about this instrument, it’s that the fingerboard has a finish on it that can stick to your hands.
The overall sanding and setting up seem to have been done without a careful eye, so that’s the real problem here.
I really like the fantastic shape of the Dean Vendetta headstock. But if you intend to carry it around in your normal case, you’ll have a hard time with it. It’s probably worth having the cool headstock even if you have to find a new bag for it.
It’s got a 25.5 inch scale length and 24 standard frets with dot inlays. It’s just two extra frets than the typical electric but you can use them in your solos as much as you want. That’s certainly a nice point!
Body
The Dean Vendetta guitar looks pretty much like a classic Strat but with some quirks. It’s very light to hold and comfortable to play, so that’s a win-win.
It features great value for a remarkably low price and unlike the neck which doesn’t seem enticing, the body is made with style!
The choice of woods on this is an interesting one. If you’ve looked into other Dean guitars, they use mahogany quite often, and the Vendetta series exclusively has mahogany guitars. Except for this one. The Vendetta XM has a Paulownia body which, if you ask me is just as good if not better.
Paulownia is a fast-growing exotic wood that has a characteristic tone to it. I can’t really put a finger on it but it sounds nice. Not having basswood or something like Agathis is great for the price. It’s also quite sustainable given that it grows fast.
The string through body is a unique one on this. Typically, electric guitars have strings held in place by the bridge but the body of the guitar is made so that the strings are held on the back.
It’s well-crafted with a beautiful gloss finish and it’s hard to tell that it’s a budget guitar.
Pickups & Controls
A good set of pickups and quality electronics is what can really make or break an electric. The pickups matter more on an electric guitar than the choices of tonewoods, so it’s necessary that the guitar you’re getting has good ones.
The Dean Vendetta XM has dual hum pickups that are pretty nice for anything from country to hardcore metal. You probably wouldn’t play folk or country on the Vendetta XM but you sure can.
Some electric guitars tend to be tight in the high end and really suck at the lower registers. The Dean Vendetta is well-balanced across all frequencies.
Just hook up this guitar to a decent PA and you can get some quality sounds out of it.
Now the controls on this electric guitar are pretty standard. It’s got a 3-way selector switch and basic knobs like you’d expect to find on a Strat. A simple volume and tone knob that does their job, and there’s nothing wrong with having decent simple components, right?
You can choose between the neck and bridge pickups as well as an intermediate position. It’s fairly straightforward and needs no explanation really.
If you’re new to controls on an electric guitar, you’ll find it very intuitive. The neck pickup is mostly used for playing rhythm stuff, bridge pickup for solo stuff that needs to cut through, and the mid-position for anything in between.
How it Sounds
So it looks okay- how does this lightweight baby on a budget sound?
Well, it’s not half bad compared to some entry-level metal guitars out there. It’s also made out of sturdy materials and decent electronics, so it’s fair.
One thing I like the most about this is the gain. You can go super heavy with it and still not lose the punch in the mix.
If you’re using an inexpensive distortion pedal which is nice enough for most players, it sounds crisp and clear. I play a lot of metal riffs and if you’ve tried playing any of that, you’ll know that most metal playing includes triplet rhythms on distorted channels.
In my opinion, the Dean Vendetta XM is more suited to metal than something like fingerstyle because of the muddy tone. Honestly, it’s got an edge for metal but played clean, you could play stuff but it wouldn’t sound very clean or full.
The sustain is a bit lacking but not much noticeable for most players.
You may have noticed that most cheap guitars have single-coil pickups as a distinctive feature. For a metal beginner, single-coils are a bad choice not only because they are noisy but also because they lack the punch and sound thin. With metal genres, you want as much tone as you can.
When you’re playing in drop tunings, the last thing you want is your guitar sounding non-aggressive, right?
If I were playing it for a gig, I would use it for distorted riffs, arpeggios, shreds, and harmonics. Add some overdrive and rock the show!
Who it’s for
The feature-rich Vendetta XM electric guitar is a steal for the price, and I’m not even making that stuff up. It’s really hard to beat this level of craftsmanship at entry-level.
It’s a good beginner’s guitar and a decent practice guitar for anybody to have. If you want to smash it at gigs, there’s that option too- since it’s cheap, but I would rather not go down that path. You shouldn’t break instruments- even cheap ones, because there’s somebody out there who would love to have it.
I believe that every musician should learn to do the repairs and tweaks by himself. It saves a lot of money in the long run and also helps you appreciate the subtleties of your beloved instrument.
The Dean Vendetta guitar is absolutely fantastic for learning how the electronics and wiring components work.
The only major issue I have with this one is the finish on the neck, so if you keep that in mind, it can be a great investment to learn. After all, it’s the musician and not the instrument and Zak Wylde ripping out Iron Maiden songs on a Hello Kitty guitar is good proof of that!
You would want a higher-end guitar for your gigs but this will just be fine for any beginner-intermediate player needing a practice companion. You could also gift your kids or friends this guitar and they’ll be very happy to have it.
Score
Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a budget option for learning metal without regretting your purchase the very next day, the Dean Vendetta XM is a great choice.
It has excellent playability, decent electronics, a fantastic dual humbucker setup, and a nice aggressive edge but skips out on the neck finish and sustain a bit. The string through body is also an interesting option. It makes for a fantastic beginner guitar if you’re on the search for one. For seasoned guitarists in search of a professional gigging instrument, options like the Gibson Les Paul Tribute offer a different level of performance and reliability.
FAQ
Is it good for playing metal?
Yep, it sounds great while distorted and is easy to play. Paired with a classic amp, it can deliver amazing sound.
Where are Dean Guitars made?
Dean guitars are mostly made in Florida and some high-quality ones also come from the Fujigen factory of Japan which is famed for top-notch Ibanez guitars. Some budget guitars are also sourced from overseas to keep the costs low.