On the whole, guitar players seem to fall into two distinct categories.  The first are the modern tone chasers.  These are people constantly looking for that new piece of gear or innovation that will give them the best sound possible.  On the other end of the spectrum are the purists,  who listen to their favorite albums from decades past and lust after the vintage instruments that were used to create them with all of the benefits and flaws inherent in them.  For a guitar manufacturer, crossing between both of these sides and keeping everyone happy is difficult at best, impossible at worst.  Luckily, Reverend Guitars have made their name dealing with this problem and, with their Six Gun model, bridges the gap between the vintage and the modern effortlessly.

Construction, Finish, and Hardware

The Six Gun features a solid Korina body, a resonant light-medium weight wood which is heavy enough to lead to a comfortably balanced instrument that is not prone to neck dives but light enough that it doesn’t feel like an anchor around your neck during long playing sessions.  It’s body shape, while obviously inspired by other more common “S-Type” guitars, has a unique flair, giving the guitar a surf-rock aesthetic without compromising the ergonomic details that a gigging musician will demand.  It is well balanced and the body is matched with a long scale, medium oval neck featuring 22 jumbo frets and a Rosewood or Maple fingerboard (depending on the color option).  The neck has a Satin finish, making it comfortable and easy to move quickly up and down the fretboard without becoming tacky during long playing sessions.

The Six Gun comes with a Wilkinson WVS50 IIK tremolo.  Combined with the Six Gun’s low friction graphite nut and a set of Reverend Pin-Lock tuning machines, this trem system is by far one of the most stable and user friendly I’ve ever had the chance to play, able to stand up to even the most aggressive dive bombs without throwing the whole guitar out of tune.  This bridge also features a push-in friction based trem arm.  Unlike the majority of tremolos that have a screw in arm, this push-in system allows the player to position the arm exactly where they want it and have it stay there without it swinging away and become awkward to reach during a solo.

The guitar used for this review was a Cream colored Six Gun.  The finish has little to no gloss and is impeccable, with no paint drips or other issues.  The neck is held on with a 6 bolt mounting plate.  The joint itself is very well done and is as tight as can be expected from a bolt-on neck guitar.  No gaps are visible between the neck and the body cavity and, to put it simply, it just feels solid.  The Chronic Blue and Cream colored guitars have a subtle mint green pickguard and tremolo cavity cover, adding just a little bit more to the guitar’s already vintage styling.

Electronics

The electronics consist of 3 single-coil ‘Salnico’ pickups, custom designed by Reverend to provide a classic ‘S-style’ tone with a bit of added warmth.  This pickup configuration is for the newer Six Guns only, older models featured Salnico pickups in the neck and middle positions with a Talnico at the bridge.  These pickups are controlled by the expected 5-way selector switch found on nearly all guitars of this type.  Where the Six Gun differs from many of it’s competitors is with it’s tone controls.  While most ‘S-style’ guitars will come with two passive treble roll-off knobs that will separately control bridge and neck pickups (with the middle pickup being tied to one of the two), the treble knob on the Six Gun plays double duty by balancing the tone of all three pickups by itself.  This treble roll-off is then paired with a bass contour knob which acts as a low frequency roll-off.  When used in combination, the tone and bass contour knobs give the Six Gun a wider tonal palette than one would expect on a traditional 3 single-coil ‘S-style’ guitar.

Conclusion

This tonal flexibility makes the Reverend Six Gun a fantastically versatile instrument.  With manipulation of the bass contour, the bridge pickup can give the guitar a crystalline clarity for country rhythms or a southern rock crunch.  Adding some more bass into the mix and switching to the neck pickup can give a great roundness to the tone, great for blues and classic rock leads.  Take this same setup, add a bit of gain (or a bit too much if you’re anything like me) and this guitar can truly growl.  My tastes run wide so while testing this guitar I enjoyed played everything from early era Pink Floyd to late 70’s punk rock and this guitar held it’s own in every way.