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Joe Naylor's Reverend Guitars out of Michigan has evolved their offerings since debuting in 1996 into an impressive line of bolt-on and set neck electric guitars. On the way, they have developed a large, cult-like following of players who appreciate the company’s high quality at affordable prices. Reverend’s models encompass stylish originals and signature models for more esoteric, often underappreciated artists. The guitar I received for review is one of their newest non-signature models: the Six Gun.
The Nuts and Bolt (Ons)
The Six Gun is one of Reverend's Bolt-Ons, and has a very classic, yet totally original look. Part classic Cadillac, part Fender, the korina body wears comfortably. All of Reverend’s Bolt-On guitars feature one-piece maple 25.5” scale necks. The neck definitely fits into the vintage category: 12" radius, medium thickness C-profile with 22 medium jumbo frets. The neck is comfortable, with a smooth satin finish, and bending notes and vibrato was a breeze. My Six Gun had the Vintage Clear finish, which ships with a maple neck and fretboard. Reverend also offers a rosewood fretboard on the Six Gun Metallic Blue model. The headstock has six inline Reverend Pin Lock Tuners—a great addition from Reverend. The tuners have thumbscrews where the gear cover would normally be, which allows you to clamp the string into the post for fast and slippage-free stringing. The guitar stayed in tune very well, and the few times I had to grab a tuner it felt great and turned smoothly.
The Six Gun has two Strat-style single-coil pickups in the neck and middle positions, and a fatter Tele-style pickup in the bridge. All three pickups are made by Reverend and have ceramic magnets. The middle and neck pickups are medium output, with custom spacing of the steel polepieces to ensure they properly line up with the strings. The neck and middle pickups are placed in the classic Stratocaster formation and the bridge pickup is placed in a Telecaster slant bridge position. The bridge pickup has extra windings to Joe Naylor's specifications for a hotter vintage tone. All three pickups are nicely balanced so that switching from one to the other or using various pickup combinations did not cause any drastic changes in volume.
The bridge pickup has a brass baseplate that sits a little high—it might take some playing adjustment for players used to lower profiles. The overall set up of the guitar is nicely done however, and I had no string height issues on the fretboard. Resting my wrist behind the Tune-o-Matic bridge (a bridge that lends itself to digging in), put my hand in a position to keep from plunging in too deeply. One note about the placement of the bridge pickup is that you are very limited in pickup height adjustment. If you like to keep a decent amount of space between the strings and bridge pickup for feedback, it's not really an option here. The bridge pickup sits close enough to the strings that it was easy to slap the plectrum against it. The neck and middle pickups sit in the body, so no right hand issues there.
Shooting Straight
All three of the Six Gun’s pickups sounded great alone and together. The neck pickup was pristine and bluesy, and I got a lot of sweet crunch on the bridge pickup. Lead lines using the bridge pickup gave me plenty of cut and sustain. It was bright without being strident, and thanks to the bass contour knob (more on that in the next paragraph), leads up and down the neck had excellent presence and body beyond what I would associate with an unmodified and unprocessed Fender. I am happy to say soloing with the neck pickup gave me shades of David Gilmour, even though I play review guitars sans effects. I rarely use middle pickups on their own. To me, they've always been the wingman pickup for the other two. A good middle pickup is measured by the tone you get when combining it with the bridge or neck pickup. The neck and middle pickups together sounded smooth—even jazzy—with a nice, mellow bite, while the bridge and middle pickups together had a sharper bite with a totally manageable single-coil twang. . Overall I really dug the way the guitar sounds on all five pickup settings.
Something unique to the Reverend Bolt-Ons is the Bass Contour Control found on the upper horn of the instrument. It is a passive trim pot that allows you to roll off the bass and therefore re-voice the pickups. I found this knob very useful. Wide open, the guitar is very beefy—especially for a single coil. Roll it off about 30% or so to introduce some Tele brightness, and further to really push the highs and accentuate the cutting tones. I found myself using this knob quite a lot. I often kept it rolled off just shy of the Tele stage, which gave me a vintage brightness without losing too much bottom. I then opened it up to solo with a fatter, big-bottom tone. With the Bass Contour Control wide open, this single coil guitar had a bottom that rivaled most humbuckers. It really was a best-of-both-worlds kind of tone, giving the instrument a versatility that could earn it a starting position in your guitar line up.
The Six Gun also employs Tele-style controls—a single pair of steel knurled volume and tone knobs, plus a five-way switch in place of the classic Tele three-way. It is important to note that the Six Gun's volume knob does not lose the highs when turning its volume down—I wish more guitars were wired this way from the factory.
Speaking of the factory, Reverend Guitars, while fitting the boutique bill to a tee, are constructed in Korea and set up at their headquarters in Michigan. If that gives you a moment of pause, I strongly suggest playing one before passing judgment. No doubt, being built in Korea factors into the Six Gun's attractive street price of $699.
The Final Mojo
The Reverend Guitars Six Gun has a lot going for it, and tone is top of the list, as it should be. It sensibly combines some of the best designs known to guitar-dom (Tune-o-Matic bridge, stop tailpiece and Tele and Strat pickup configurations), with new, very usable features like the Bass Contour Control and Pin Lock Tuners. Joe Naylor must know what he's doing because this guitar sounds really great.
Buy if...
you want a great looking guitar with great Strat/Tele-plus tone and innovative features.
Skip if...
you need a low profile instrument, or you have a tendency to dig when picking.
Rating...
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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