Reverend Wolfman

Just received this guitar yesterday. This is a premium series Wolfman, made in the USA. It has a maple neck, 22 frets, rosewood fretboard, graphite nut and sperzel locking tuners. It's a semi-hollow body guitar with a mahogany center block, plastic sides and a phenolic laminate top in '69 Orange, wich is a very cool color for this guitar. Electronics are two Rev-Tron humbuckers based on the TV Jones Filter-Trons (5% hotter), three way strat style switch, master volume and master tone. Unlike the previous reviewer I have the (licenced) Bigsby with the roll-o-matic bridge wich can also be adjusted sideways. The guitar came with a very good quality and cool looking two-tone teardrop case. This guitar has about all the features I want but you can get more, so I'll give it an 8

Time to plug this baby in. I use a Hughes & Kettner Tube Factor into a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe into a 2x12 Band Master cabinet. For the rockabilly stuff I use an analogue slap echo. According to Reverend it sounds like a cross between a Telecaster and a 6120 and thats the best way to describe the sound. The first thing that surprised me is the loudness, the pick ups are alomost as loud as EMG-81's! It does all the typical Gresch stuff from rockabilly to hard rock. Setzer, Heat, AC/DC, you name it. Very nice sparkling and bright clean sound, punch in a little overdrive and you get that typical mid growl Filter-Trons are known for. With flat-out overdrive you get a huge, punchy hard rock sound. For the Molcolm Young sound you'll have to turn the guitars volume down a bit and great thing is that it doesn't compromise the tone at all! To sum it all up: punchy bass, growling mids and chiming highs. No hum and no unwanted feedback. Cuts thru the mix better than my Tele. This Reverend can preach heaven as well as hell. I play about anything with the word 'rock' in it and this guitar is perfect for the job. It will do country and surf as well but it lacks warmth for jazz 'n stuff. Judging a sound is very subjective and in my opinion the perfect guitar sound simply doesn't exist but I'll give it a 9.

These guitars are built to order and you can specify the set-up. I requested a low as possible set-up and man, did they deliver! Excellent low and fast action. The neck on this guitar is awesome! It felt like I have played it for years. The feel and quality of the neck is like someting you'd expect on a custom shop Fender. I reqeusted D'addario 9's on it but it came with SIT's. They live up to their name; the guitar was in tune when I got it and it travelled all the way over the Atlantic. The pick-ups were adjusted a bit weird but that was easily changed. Other reviewers have mentioned this before; the top and back of a Reverend look like your Formica kitchen counter.Looks very...uhm...different. Guitarists are very conservative and for hundreds of years we've been told guitars are made from wood, so this will take some getting used to. However, it makes the guitar very lightweight and there's no more waxing and polishing. The guitar is very well balanced and comfortable, also has a nice chrome arm rest. The Bigsby is very smooth. Overall a very good building quality. I can't take off any points for the pick-up adjustment because it's a personal taste thing. I'll have to give the guys at Reverend a 10 here.

It's really to early to tell but have you ever seen Guano Apes or Kid Rock play these things live? I have little worries about the durabibility. Its probably not as unbreakable as my Tele wich you can throw at a wall (not that I do this) or use as a bat if the crowd turns into a mob (wich never happened to me). Remember the Reverend is semi-hollow. It stays in tune very well. The body is not painted, the material is simply coloured this way so I think it will stay good for a long time. Strap buttons are Fender style, no need for strap locks. If this guitar was any lighter it wouldn't need strap buttons at all,...it would hover. I always use a backup in case of string breakage.

Reverend is known for it's excellent customer support. Dealt with Joe and Kristen Naylor. Something went wrong with the Credit Card payement but that got sorted out. They were always friendly, patient, helpfull and willing to answer any of my questions. 1 year warranty and 14 days trial period.

I've been playing for about 10 years now. Other guitras I curremtly own are a customized Fender Nashville Tele (SD PG in the bridge, flame bridge and control plate) and a Gibson Les Paul Studio with EMG anniversary pick ups. I've owned plenty of other guitars. If it were lost or stolen I'd get one again.(Don't steal it, I'll hunt you down.) I thouht it was impossible but this Wolfman is better on all fronts than my Tele. No need for me to get any more guitars but I'm a guitar-holic. Excellent value for money. If you like Teles and Gretsches I recommend the Wolfman highly.

Ordered mine as a Wolfman premium w/ morrocan gold flame sandblasted finish, matching trem plate, hipshot trem (w/ graphite saddles), maple neck, and phase switching. Comes 2 RevTron pup's standard w/ a 3-way switch and locking tuners. Phase switch runs the pups out of phase when flicked up, in phase when down. 3-way pup switch does neck/both/bridge. Quality hardware throughout. Only feature gripe is a lack of drilled holes in the trem plate, it has to be completely removed to change strings. Not sure if this is intentional or not, I plan to call and find out. Bigsby is also a bridge option, but I've never been a big fan of those. Price I paid included the 2-tone hardshell case that has that great vintage mojo going on.

I mostly play blues/rock, and this axe seems like it can handle all that in spades. Pups are nice and noise free, good tonal possibilities with the switching setup. Tone is hard to describe, I only received it yesterday, so I haven't had a chance to mess with it too much yet. Tried it out on both my Marshall JTM30 and '66 Bassman, sounded great through both. I'll do a follow up review later, just wanted to share my initial impressions since there aren't too many of these in circulation yet. First impression is a nice full clean tone that's not too bright and it loved the gain channel on the Marshall, very unique tone w/ overdrive. I'm not going to rate the tone yet, since I only got it yesterday and only played plugged in for an hour or two.

Had it setup for 11's with the action as low as it could go, and it delivers big time. Nice sustain w/ minimal fret buzz, plays nice and quick. Intonation and neck are pretty much perfect. Looks like this sucker is going to scratch easily, but the pickguard is nice and big to help avoid that. The metallic gold with sandblasted flames definitely grabs attention, real sharp. I've never been too big a fan of SIT strings which come standard, have some GHS packs laying around that I'll probably try out. I usually like my strings really bright.

The hardware is all quality throughout, no concerns there. Durability may be a concern though, it's a semi-hollow type body with a sandblasted finish. If you drop it on something solid, you may run into issues and the finish looks like it will scratch easily if you aren't careful. As long as you are careful, I don't see any issues though.

Reverend rocks in terms of support.

Been playing since '95 and wanted a guitar customized to my liking that was versatile enough for rock/blues/rockabilly/some country. Looks like it will fit the bill nicely. So far what I like the best is the finish and the pup's. Very unique sound and simply gorgeous to look at. The wait was long to get it (12 weeks), but well worth the wait. Right now I'll give it an overall rating of an 8, but that may go up or down as I get to use it for a while.