Hi,
I am a extremely happy owner of Dean Cadillac Selecet for about 8 years now and I can assure you that they are truly wonderful instruments.
When it comes to quality even that they are made in Korea, the quiality is superb. Really, there`s nothing that I could complain about.
Only last year I`ve replaced all frets as well as nut, but that was after about 7 years and till that time I never had any problems with Dean.
Frets got little worn, but that`s quite understandably normal after that time. When it comes to the nut, the typical problem with all LP style (strings coming out of the nut in a slight angle) guitars has occurred but once again, there was quite normal and nothing to do with the quality.
Apart from that everything was fine, no problems. Gotoh tuners are fine as well, and never had any issue with them either. Pots? Same again. Alpha pots, but 2 push/pulls among the other two is a nice accent.
so QUALITY - truly great especially for the prize. You cannot go any better for about £500, really.
TONE. Well, to be honest stock pickup Dean DMT are not too bad fro stock pickups. Neck pickup is nice especially when splitted, bridge one is quite weak. But once again, last year I`ve replaced them with BKPs and now Caddy kicks ass!
So if you like the shape (Im a big fan of Cadillac by the way), trust me you cannot go any better than Caddy for this price.
Really good quality, good quality wood, nice finish, everything up to scratch.
The only thing that comes to my mind now is quite weak and dull sounding stock bridge pickup and sooner or later that would be a good idea to replace nut as well to the one which will be cut precisely for angled strings)
Last year I`ve replaced everything in my Caddy (just basically left wood only):
-locking Sperzel tuners
-new stainless steel frets
-Buzz Feiten Tuning system
-bone nut
-changed MOP inlays to Abalone ones
-BKP pickups (CBomb in bridge and Cold Sweat in neck)
-BKP pots plus one Mojotone PUSH/PUSH
-BKP Jersen caps
-Switchcraft input jack
-Graphtech Resomax bridge
-Graphtech tailpiece
but even before that major upgrade it was fine, solid, great quality guitar for that money.
Hope it helps.