What's up everyone? And welcome to 10 Years Later with Ola.
Today I'm trying out the Dean Dime D100 stack right here.
The 10 Years Later series is a video series
where I go back and revisit some of the amplifiers I tried out 10 years ago
on my YouTube channel.
And back then I didn't do any talking videos at all.
I was just playing, and you know, that was it basically... I did a song...
Maybe something like that.
You know, but today I'm revisiting the Dean D100 Dime stack.
And I get to talk a little bit about it, how about that? Holy shit.
So, the D100 is an amplifier that came out in 2009.
It was made for like 1 or 2 years I think.
The Dime D100 was made by Dean Guitars
back in 2009, 2010, 2011.
And it's a collaboration between Gary Sunda
which is the initial designer of the Randall
solid state amplifiers that Dimebag was using.
And Grady Champion, the guitar tech of Dimebag.
I remember when this came out and I saw the video from NAMM.
I was like 'Holy shit, that sounds so good'.
It was Grady with a Dimebag guitar playing through this thing.
And it sounded like 'F**** yeah, that sounds like Pantera'.
Instant Pantera.
And back then I didn't really know that much about the particular equipment
to get the exact same tone of Dimebag.
That's something I learned along the way.
You know, later on I started to really...
delve into the gear that he was using.
But back then I was like
'Holy shit', that's the first time I heard a guitar into an amplifier
sound like Dimebag immediately.
You know, I had to get one, and I got one, made a video...
And then I think I was a little bit underwhelmed with how it sounded.
But I have it here today again.
To check it out.
You know, maybe I'm more mature than 10 years back.
Maybe I know more, I don't know.
Probably not.
I'm gonna use 2 guitars today.
My Washburn Dimebolt from '95.
And also this 2021 Dean Cross.
Right there, so I'm gonna use 2 guitars.
This is in standard D, I think.
And that's in standard E.
So, what is a good starting point?
Well, I went to that same old video from 2009
where Grady was demoing this thing at NAMM.
And I basically pulled his settings off the video.
And this is what we have right here.
The guitar is connected straight into the amplifier, no bullshit or anything like that.
This cabinet by the way has Eminence speakers in it.
But it doesn't say what type of Eminence.
So I think it's kinda like a...
You know, probably a no-name Eminence.
Just to fit this speaker and this stack right here.
So this is the sound I pulled out of that video right there, OK?
And actually, it doesn't sound too half-bad.
Right now I'm running gain at maximum.
And boost on.
I mean, if you pull down the gain a little bit, it cleans up
uh... the low end a little bit.
But...
Even though it sounds good
it's not necessarily the same type of saturation that you would hear from Dime.
You know, with this.
But let me shut off the boost real quick.
And in my opinion, when you shut off the boost
it opens up the amplifier.
With the boost engaged, it's...
It's a little too much, you know?
You want that...
preamp punch.
But it's just not there, it's like it's just putting more gain.
Obviously I'm not Dimebag
and I'm not Grady in my playing, so you know, you can't really compare.
But I'm not getting that...
slapping Dimebag tone right there.
So I think I would need to use an overdrive with this.
Just to get it to that... you know...
5% extra saturation.
So, I'm bringing out a good old friend of mine.
The Horizon Devices Precision Devices Horizon Zero Dawn.
Uh... Precision Drive.
And I'm gonna use that as a boost in this case.
And the good thing about this is that it also has a noise gate.
So, right now with this boost happening
I feel that we're getting closer to Dimebag's real tone.
Now there's a lot of gain happening, which is great.
Now, lowering the gain on the amplifier
but having the boost, it feels way more like a Dimebag type of tone.
Alright.
I'm adjusting the gate a little bit.
If you shut off the gate...
Sounds like that.
If I turn it on...
It cleans up a little bit, OK?
So I guess in this sense, when you use a boost like this
that's almost all you need to make this sound very very Dimebag.
Much more like the, you know, the Randall Warhead
or like the Warhead 2.
I think this is probably one of the newer amplifiers
that are... it can get you pretty close
to Dimebag's tone.
Obviously if you can still find the RG100, that's great.
But if you can't, because they're pretty rare
and also people hype up the prices...
You know, you can probably find these.
These are like a dime and a dozen.
No pun, OK?
And also not that expensive either.
I'm gonna switch guitar.
Worth mentioning immediately is that this
pickup has way higher output
than this Bill Lawrence in this guitar right there.
This is the newer Seymour Duncan Dimebucker.
And it sounds way different.
At least in this guitar, it sounds different than this.
Let's shut off
the overdrive and then go back to...
OK.
Dial down the gain, on with this.
I don't think you see the settings on this thing.
But I think I have like the Volume at max
Bright a little over 12 o'clock
Drive at, you know, 8:30 maybe
and Attack on noon, basically.
Teching with Ola.
Don't mind me, I'm just gonna try and remove this little...
the spring noise, holy shit, it's really making a lot of noise.
So I'm just gonna do this.
A little spontaneous
teching right here.
Just remove the backplate.
I mean, that's how Dimebag did it, he always had the backplates off.
It's just easier, and way more accessible.
Teching with Ola.
Look at this, this is the inside of that...
Dean right there.
Let me put this on, see if this just...
That's working, great.
Ola, the technician, yeah.
I probably should do this proper, but you know...
This is Ola Englund.
I'm not proper, I'm...
I need something else.
Alright, zero mistakes Ola Englund.
I found some foam.
So that's good.
Alright, so what I'm doing here, I'm just putting the foam in.
Like this.
I'm not putting too much effort into this.
Let's just screw on the little screwface and hope that the ringing is gone.
I heard that only using 2 screws on your backplate
increases your tone.
OK.
Dude, it's gone, hello.
Dude, that fixed it so good.
Oh, killed by my hair.
I think it was my hair.
The hair mixed with the gate
f**** me over in the Floods solo.
So there you go, that's the Dime D100 for you right there.
The speaker cabinet though.
There's some spike in it that really hurts my ears.
I'm not sure if that's gonna translate into the recorded audio.
Uh... I'm using a Neumann TLM-102 microphone
And I mixed that together with a stereo microphone I have over there.
There's like a spike in there, man.
And it's really hard to dial away, you can't really dial that away with the treble.
The Presence knob is really diverse.
At least between the low setting and like 10 o'clock.
And then not too much happening over here.
I wanna try this out without the boost engaged on the amplifier, and then you know...
Push the gain.
That also works, man. Just saying.
So there you go, that's the Dean Dime D100 amplifier for you right there.
I think it sounds pretty good, I mean...
For this... I bought this for like 500 bucks.
The full set.
And I think these are fairly easy to come by.
So, if you wanna have like a quick go-to Dimebag-sounding amplifier
you can get one of these and just
have an overdrive put into it, and it's...
You know, it's pretty... it's pretty close, man
to the Dimebag tone.
Obviously you need to have, you know
a Dimebucker, or a Bill Lawrence as well.
Since the original Randall RG100 and the Century amplifiers
are pretty hard to come by.
I think this is a pretty good option right here.
Because these are way more available right now
and you can get 'em for pretty cheap.
And then people are gonna be like 'Oh, thank you Ola'
'You're gonna raise the used prices of these now after your video'
Well...
I'm sorry.
Thank you for watching, goodbye.