Reverend Jetstream HB Hardtail

Reverend is a small guitar maker from Michigan in the United States. They are a small almost boutique maker but their guitars are very reasonably priced most selling for less than 1000 dollars. This is almost unheard of for an American made guitar. They have 2 lines of guitars based on construction. They have a set neck line up and a bolt on neck line up. The way they organize their line is very nice as you can get either construction with just about any type of pickup you want from humbuckers to p90s and single coils. This is the humbucker bolt on mainstay of the Reverend line up. This guitar has a Korina body like most reverend guitars. The neck is maple and has bolt on construction. The fretboard is rosewood with 22 frets. The neck has the longer strat scale to it. Up top you get locking tuners and the bridge is a tune-o-matic. You get two Reverend humbuckers with the standard Reverend control layout. You get a volume and tone and their bass contour knob. The pickups selector is a 3 way blade.

UTILIZATION

This guitar feels a lot like an old strat or tele. The bolt on neck feels familiar with its 4 bolt neck joint. The locking tuners are great and give you excellent tuning stability. The longer scale means you get more string tension and a firmer feel. They make a version of this guitar with a tremolo but I prefer the hardtail version for ease of use and tuning stability.

SOUNDS

With the Reverend electronics this guitar is very versatile. It can go from sounding like a full humbucking Gibson to almost single coil jangly thanks to the bass contour knob. The Reverend humbuckers are like hot rodded PAF's so they are medium output with a bit of bite to them. The contour knob really gives this guitar a slew of tones. With the knob wide open you get full humbucker tone with tons of body and low end. If you dial it off all the way the tone thins up and its almost like a coil split but you can still feel a bit of humbucker in the tone. The tones with the bass contour all the way off are even more stratty thanks to the 25.5 inch scale. This works on both pickups so you can go from full humbucker to single coil like tones on each pickup. This is a great substitute to having a coil split or something. With this knob you can dial in how much bass you want to cut so you do not have to be completely humbucker or completely single coil.

OVERALL OPINION

This guitar is great for anyone who is typically used to strats but wants to add more humbucker tones to their sound. With the bass contour knob you can go to a thin strat sound from a thick humbucker sound without even coil splits or taps. This gives the guitar a ton of versatility. The base tone on this guitar is more towards the strat end of the spectrum with its bolt on construction but the humbuckers and bass contour knob give it tons of versatility. If you are looking for a versatile bolt on guitar that can do humbucker and single coil tones for less than 800 bucks you will have a hard time finding a deal better than this.