Reverend Hitman

I think it's time to add a counter-point review to the other one for this model.

2001 Reverend Hitman, made in Eastpointe, Michigan, USA. Fantastic 22 fret thick maple neck with maple board and medium jumbo frets. Mine has a pale yellow phenolic resin top and a gold pickguard. This guitar is a compact semi-hollow model, with an mahogany center block and a steel "sustain bar". While the construction is similar to a higher-quality Danelectro, this guitar is not neck heavy at all--the balance is great. Weight is less than 7 lbs.

Neck 'bucker, tele style bridge pickup, one tone, tone volume, and a coil split switch for the humbucker. Strat style through-body bridge. Decent (unmarked) tuners and a nice graphite nut.

The features are basic, but what's there is solid. The best feature is the fat, Eastpointe neck. I bought this guitar used, and it had a small crack (approximately 1" long,) near the input jack.

This guitar is roughly modeled after a thinline tele. As the others have noted, the balance between the neck hb and the single coil at the bridge wasn't very good "out of the box"--the hb totally overpowered the single coil, making the middle position kind of pointless, and switches from neck to bridge caused too much of a volume drop.

The first thing I did when I got this guitar home was to lower the neck humbucker almost down to the pickguard, and raise the bridge pickup a bit. After a few tries, I got them balanced pretty good. It made a big difference!

The neck hb is now smooth and refined (before it was a little overbearing.) I get a GREAT rock tone out of the neck hb, and a nice, articulate clean. I don't care for the sound of the pickup when it's split to single coil mode--it's too thin.

The bridge single coil does sound like a tele to me, but with a more pronounced mid-range, which makes it come off almost like a twangy P-90. The lack of the large tele bridge plate also takes some of the edge out of the pickup when compared to a tele. It still has a good amount of sparkle played clean, and plenty of bite when driven.

This guitar is semi-hollow, in the style of a Dano, but with a more sophisticated sound than the Korean models I've played. The neck hb is nice and full, and the neck has a nice hollowbody snap to it. I don't feel it lacks sustain, but I have to admit that long, Santana like sustain isn't what I was looking for in this type of guitar.

Because there are no f-holes, this guitar has none of the feedback associated with hollowbodies (for good and for ill, no controllable feedback on tap either.) This guitar takes distortion very well.

I am using this guitar to play indie-rock, in the style of Dinosaur Jr. (among others). It really fits the bill on every level. The pickups have a lot of character clean and dirty, and the sound has a complexity and character to it.

I bought this guitar used.

I went over everything when I got it home, from cleaning to truss rod and intonation. Nothign out of the ordinary.

The final piece of the puzzle was adjusting the relative heights of the pickups to balance their output. Since I've seen so many complaints about pickup balance on this guitar, I assume they left the factory with the neck bucker way too high.

The nut is very well cut and the construction is flawless.

The neck on this thing is beautiful--thick and straight. It will last another 50 years. Unfortunately, I bought this guitar with a 1" crack in the top. I fixed this with gap-filling superglue, and it is barely visible. Doesn't take a genius to figure that this is a potential trouble-spot in the future though.

This is a very light weight guitar, and is fragile. A hardshell case is recommended!

I've got mixed feelings about this. On one hand, Joe Naylor answered some of my questions of the Fender Forum's "Reverend Congregation".

On the other, I resent the fact that I can't buy anything from Reverend's webpage because there is a dealer 1 1/2 from me. Also, his "exclusive dealers" in the Metro Detroit area aren't especially knowledgable or enthusiastic about selling his stuff.

Ultimately, I'm unlikely to buy anything new from Reverend, as they don't make it easy for me. They also won't sell any replacement parts (like the odd-shaped pickguards.) If something breaks, tough-luck. People who don't live in SE Michigan may have a better time of it, but Reverend makes it hard for people in Michigan to buy their stuff new--You have to do it THEIR way, or not at all.

I'm giving this guitar an 7. The neck is great. The weight balance is great. The pickups are very nice, and the guitar is resonant and rich. I will very much consider buying another Reverend if I come across it used.

I don't like Reverend's business model, and I don't like being told I'm "not allowed" to buy directly from their web-page. This is too bad, because I'd like to support this local-business. Unfortunately, Reverend doesn't do much to support their local customers.

2001 model yr "Hitman" features the phenolic-resin body (non-metal) with one neck-position Humbucker (with split-coil switch) and one bridge-position single-coil. The bridge pup looks very similar to that of a Fndr. Telecaster, but does not sound like one. A 3-way pup selector switch plus one Vol. and one Tone knob complete the features. The neck scale is 25-1/2" made of maple with maple fretboard. The neck on all of these Reverends are the best I have ever felt, and playing all over the neck is effortless fun.

The sound has pros & cons for me: The neck pickup (HB, splittable to single-coil) is very expressive in either HB or single mode. There are full, warm lows combined with clear, pleasant highs. No mud at all, and I really enjoyed playing the neck pickup, but I liked it best in the single-coil mode. This also works best when combining both neck & bridge pups together, although the HB + single are not bad at all. The bridge pup is somewhat unexpected: it looks like a Tele, so I kept expecting to get some stinging leads out of it, but that just wasn't happening, and the bridge-only position was decidedly uninspiring. The other big difference in my expectations was the SHAPE of this guitar suggests something more Tele-like, but there is very little sustain at all. I finally figured out after reading some on-line articles that the design behind the Reverends was intended to recreate the sound of semi-hollowbody guitars. In that respect these seem to be an ouststanding success. Once I changed my mindset and my repertoire, I had a blast with this guitar. It fits the bill for great rhythm guitar chords, and for me that falls in the category of Bob Weir's work on Grateful Dead songs. Also, Alvin Lee, Ted Nugent, Tom Petty -- I was able to get much better versions of those styles through this Reverend than from my Strat or Les Pauls. I concluded that this plays very much like an old Gibson ES-335, only in a more compact, damage-resistant package. Reverend has gone on to making all their guitars with aluminum tops and backs now, I believe, and the metal bodies may (?) add more sustain than what this resin-only body affords. Unfortunately, this sound does not fit my own musical tastes so well, so my PERSONAL rating for Sound is lower, as one who does not favor semi-hollows.

I enjoyed the look of this thing, after awhile of getting used to it, and I LOVE the feel of the neck. The design of the HB pup is especially well done, too. The workmanship all seems fine on mine. I did not find any flaws with the way it was put together. Action was set a little too low for my taste, and there was a bit of string buzz as a result, but it was simple to adjust. Overall, it's a beautifully made guitar, but the "banjo armrest" - a piece of metal wrapped over the edge where your arm would be - is uncomfortable.

I'm not using it very much, as it doesn't meet my particular needs, so I don't know just how durable it truly is. It seems fragile, due to the lightweight resin body. I guess if you're used to taking care of semi-hollow guitars, you'd be careful. Even so, the neck-body connection seems like it could rip apart if you were to put too much "body English" on your performance. Your average acoustic guitar feels more solid than this does. The metal bodies they now make probably eliminate this concern.

Unknown

High marks for the best neck I've ever played, and the humbucker that splits to single and sounds great either way. Cool design and good parts. I believe it does what the builder set out to make, which is that semi-hollow sound in a great package. I wish I could fall in love with this guitar and make it my Number One, but it lacks the particular sound I'm looking for, and I worry about breaking it. For someone else this could be their perfect guitar, but it's just not my cup of tea. I might take a look at the metal-bodied Rocco model to see if I can cure this disappointment.