Reverend Rick Vito

Rick Vito is a well known session player who has been nominated for Grammies. He was a member of Fleetwood Mac and now he has a signature guitar with Reverend. Reverend guitars always have great features and his guitar is no exception. Let me start off with the cool art deco styling. This guitar looks like a 1940s building and has a really cool theme going on. From the tuners to the pickups to the body itself, the whole guitar carries the art deco theme. Like most Reverend guitars the body is made out of Korina. The neck is Korina as well and has set in construction. The fretboard is dark ebony with big pearloid block inlays and 22 frets. The headstock has the art deco theme on it and has some cool stepped tuners. The bridge is a tune-o-matic setup that allows for a good range of adjustment. The pickup configuration in this guitar is pretty unique. There is a P90 in the neck that is moved about 3/4 of an inch away from the fretboard to get more high end in the sound. The bridge pickup even though it looks like a humbucker is actually a single coil with a second blade polepiece. Both of these pickups are Reverends own design. The controls are cool and unique as well. There is a master volume and a master tone. Like all Reverend guitars there is a Bass Contour knob. The extra knob at the end is a pickup blend knob that is in place of the pickup selector. When you are at 50 percent on the blend knob you get a noise cancelling effect from the pickups since they are both singles.

UTILIZATION

While the art deco styling looks great it can be a little annoying when you play. The ridges on the body give a bit of an awkard feel. The tuners as well have pretty sharp edges on them and if you dont have a peg winder your fingers might get a bit sore if you do a lot of tuning with these tuners. Luckily they are locking tuners so they should stay in tune well. With the blend knob you get all the cool in between sounds but a drawback from this is that it is not as precise as a switch. If you were going from pickup to pickup and both pickups a lot in a song it might get frustrating trying to get the knob exactly in the middle.

SOUNDS

This guitar has a very vintage sound. It reminds me of a Gretsch Duo Jet or something. The bridge single coil is totally unique. It is like some of the crazy pickups you saw in the late 50s and 60s when the companies didnt really know what they were doing. The difference here is that Reverend knows what they are doing. It is kind of like a P90 but with more Tele twang to it. It also has a good amount of output and is kind of smooth like a humbucker. It is hard to describe because it is so different. You can tell its a single coil but you cant quite put your finger on what kind of single coil it is supposed to be. The neck P90 closer to the bridge is pretty cool. Being closer to the bridge you lose some of that neck pickup fattness that I like from that position. It also makes the neck pickup sound closer to the bridge pickup tonally. This is what Rick Vito wanted and thats what he got. He is a more famous guy than I am so why should I be complaining.

OVERALL OPINION

Like I said this guitar is a real throw back. It really reminds me of the old solid body Gretsch guitars. You would be a lot better buying one of these than a Gretsch nowadays if you plan on playing it anyway. With the Gretsch guitars the tone is all 50s and 60s but so is the playability and that is just not up to par with what the modern guitar player demands and expects. With Reverend and this Rick Vito signature model you get old school tone with modern playability and build quality. The Art Deco styling on this guitar just puts the whole thing over the top.