Has anyone ever played a Reverend guitar? These guitars re pretty unreal. They have a lot of new type designs and are a top-notch guitar.
They have a contour knob that allows you to adjust the bass way up or way down. They're made in Korea but are a very fine guitar.

USA all the way

I agree, I play an '81 Les Paul made in the USA but these Reverends are very sweet and I understand are played by a lot of studio musicians because of the variety of tones you can get from them. I think I'm going to buy one but the choices are from $600 to $2500. Would like to talk to someone that has one and knows more about them so I can decide what to spend.

I guess I came late to this party. I'm the GM at Reverend Guitars, a USA owned and operated company based in Detroit MI. We do all of the design work here, and have the guitars made to our specs by a small factory in Korea. We then bring them to our shop in Detroit where our techs do complete setups so everything is ready to play, right out of the box. A certain Japanese company had a similar business model in the 70's.

My first real guitar was a RG570 in '89, still have it, and I've added a few Jems to my collection as well.

This thread amused me. How are you going to get on the Jemsite and insult asian-built guitars?

Happy to answer any further questions.

I've always wanted a Reverend guitar - they look cool and have a bunch of neat features. I've been turned off by the bound fretboards though! That's one thing I've never been a fan of.

i would love to try out the V model. the vids i've seen on these guitars look great

edit:
nevermind

I reviewed a Buckshot once and loved it. The Reeves Gabrels model is fantastic too. Nice necks and lots of character.

Coming over here from another thread!

I was asked if Ibanez has had any influence on the design of Reverend Guitars...

Reverend Guitars are designed by Luthier / Amp Builder Joe Naylor. He owned a vintage buy-sell store for a while, and our designs are based on just about everything he saw come through that shop. He loves the classics, obviously, but also the more obscure brands from the US and abroad. Alot of these guitars had some great individual features, but overall lacked the "it" factor, so many of the brands from the electric guitar "boom" era are gone.. Joe sought to take influences from all of the guitars of that era, and create something unique, high-quality, and with it's own character. I like to say that what we do is traditional enough that vintage guys "get" it, yet fresh enough that younger players want to have it as well.

One of the things we pride ourselves in is build quality and playability.. As the GM of Reverend, I look back to the brilliant marketing that Hoshino pioneered in the 70's. They did market research in the states, and discovered that a lot of the new guitars hanging on hooks in the stores were very poorly set up, and basicly unplayable to a pro player. So they set up shop here in the states, brought over a great product, and then went the extra mile to set up all guitars shipped to dealers. So at the time, a player could walk into a shop and try a LP, for example, then grab a 2663 and have a guitar that played better, looked cool, etc. Then they went hard after pros.. and had some steady endorsers in Steve Miller, Grateful Dead, and others before they really hit the nail on the head with Vai, Satch, Gilbert, and so on..

I'm taking that approach with what we do now. The difference is we're an American owned and operated company, we just also happen to help employ some really cool folks over in S Korea.. the head of the factory we use is a 4th generation instrument builder.

We did build bodies here for a while - and we found the quality of what we're having made for us rivals the work we were doing here. The classic misconception is that we build in Korea to be cheaper - but we do it to be better - and it keeps the pricing competitive in the marketplace at the same time. Win-win.

Sounds like a custom shop is sort of "against the grain" then, ehh??

I remember what your saying about Ibanez in the early days.......of course I didn't find them until the mid 70's. They were great guitars at even better prices. Not a bad business model at all!!!