This is my 1982 Dean Baby Z. There are a lot of options on this particular Baby that make it stand entirely away from the rest of the line.

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Here is what was offered in 1982/1983
1982: The new Baby Z is offered.
The new baby Z has a Poplar Body with an unbound Poplar neck and Rosewood Fretboard w/ Dots.
A single Dimarzio Super Distortion. Schaller wraparound bridges, Chrome Schaller M6 Tuners.
Available in Red, White, Opaque Black,Pearl Red, Pearl Blue, Pearl White, Pearl Pink and Blueburst.
Blueburst and Pearls are an Upcharge.A Schaller Vibrato and 2nd pickup are Advertised options.
During 1982 and into 1983 Not much changed with the 3 Z Models. The Baby had some Leo Quan Badass bridges mixed in with a couple flavors of Schaller Bridges. The New “Shripmfork HS” was introduced in 1982/83.
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I found this information on the Dean Guitar forum and the author is wstoll. He’s a vintage Dean Guitar collector and has a lot of experience in identifying vintage deans. The second vintage collector I was in touch with was (via the JCF forum) a user known as lepard who is also a vintage Dean collector and author/web host of Vintagedeanguitars.com.

From the tag book images hosted online this was discovered...
Page 0210 line 31 notice The start date at the top of the page 10-4-82 she received a mahogany body & set neck, Cadillac binding head & body, ebony fret board, MOP block inlays, 2 DiMarzio super distortion pickups, Cherry Burst paint, gold Schaller hardware and a finish date of 6-6-83 BUT!!! It doesn’t finish there looking further at the recorded build information you see “added Kahler 10-24-83 ”. So she hung around the factory for a yr and received one of the very first Kahler tremolo systems as we know them today, in gold!

  • Fun fact:
    Kahler started in 79 mostly making brass classic /standard claw bridges for Fender. They went to NAMM in 1982 and took more than $3,500,000 in orders for the tremolo systems that appear on this baby model which say “PATS APPLIED FOR” on them.

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The serial numbers are cut off at the end of the page all you can see is 82 0 as it was hard to scan them without damaging the books I guess, but the serial number is not the identifier the tag number located under the bridge pickup( for this one #4538 CB) is. This wasn’t a limited run 1 of xxx like they offer today. This is 1 of 1 and a true masterpiece of handmade craftsmanship!


  • The bridge pickup is the only non-factory piece someone replaced the DiMarzio SD with a Seymour Duncan of the same time period.
  • The shop I bought it from knew the original owner and he kept telling me the instrument was “special” but was unable to give a name due to privacy… I asked. I’ve dealt with him for more than 15 yrs , he’s a musician ( hard rock/bluegrass) and knows a lot of artists.
  • The tag book shows a name Randy Bishop then Apple Tree written underneath, Apple Tree was a music store, where who knows!



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