Reverend Guitars, Large Inventory of Unique Reverend Electric Guitars

Six Strings and an Attitude: The Reverend Story

Wildwood and Reverend go together like macaroni and cheese. From the moment we began carrying their instruments, we have been blown away by Reverend’s outstanding build quality, supreme reliability, inspiring tone, and player-friendly prices. The fine folks at Reverend have become good friends of ours over the years, and their passion for music and sense of fun are a continual source of inspiration for the Wildwood staff.

The first Reverend guitar was born in 1997, but the story starts much earlier in 1980 when Reverend founder Joe Naylor first picked up the guitar. Just a year later, he had a diploma in hand from the Roberto Venn School of Luthiery. After graduation, he immediately began working as a repair tech. To complement his education in the art of guitars, Joe also decided to get a degree in Industrial Design from Western Michigan University in 1986.

With his formal education finished, Joe opened a repair shop that he ran for years while also dipping his toes into the world of boutique amplifiers by starting Naylor Amps. After years and years of gigging in bands by night and repairing guitars by day, Joe decided to start building his own. Voila! Reverend was born in a garage behind a bike shop in Detroit.

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After a decade and a half of repair work and gigging, Joe was well aware of everything that could possibly go wrong with an electric guitar. Armed with this knowledge, he sought to make Reverend’s guitars impervious to Murphy’s Law.

Two decades later, the fine folks at Reverend carefully spec out every component from the input jack to the tuners with an eye towards making the guitar as bulletproof as possible. As a result, they are among the most consistent, durable, and reliable instruments on the market today.

But, it doesn’t matter if a guitar is built tough if it doesn’t have a powerful voice. Thankfully, Reverends are also sonic titans thanks to their resonant bodies and their sweet-sounding electronics. Every Reverend guitar has proprietary custom pickups, and Joe Naylor actually builds some of them through his pickup company, Railhammer. So, they are able to voice their pickups to complement the natural tone of each model, which makes sense—after all, who knows the voice of the instrument better than the guy who designed it?

Speaking of design, Joe drew upon his formal education in design to come up with Reverend’s signature look. Though they certainly make a few guitars inspired by classic guitars, most of their body shapes are entirely original. For each and every model, Joe hand-drafts a full-scale drawing of the instrument without the aid of a CAD machine, which the team at Mirr Music in South Korea turns into a prototype. Perhaps this is why Reverends always feel like they have received a personal, homespun touch. And the designs themselves are spectacular! With their retro-futurist aesthetic informed by classic cars and punk rock, Reverend’s are sure to catch people’s eyes before they even have a chance to tickle their eardrums.

After a decade of owning the company, Joe stepped down from his role as the owner to focus on the design side of the business. Joe’s friend Ken Haas took over, and his steady hand has steered the good ship S.S. Reverend across the musical seas ever since. Ken is a delightful fellow and a monster player, and it is an absolute hoot to watch him and Greg Koch trade licks and stories (which they often do on our Youtube channel).

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the guy whose initials are on every Reverend headstock: Zack Scot Green, guitar tech extraordinaire. Though Reverends are made overseas, they always go through Reverend’s Toledo offices before they ship out to dealers. There, Zack personally inspects every guitar and gives it a full setup to ensure that it plays easily and intonates well. The “ZSG” on the headstock is his seal of approval, signifying that the guitar has met his sky-high standards for quality.

We are proud to partner with Reverend to bring you the beautiful smorgasbord of instruments below. You’ll find a wide variety of models that suit just about every style, technique, and genre under the sun. You’ll also find limited runs of guitars Wildwood-exclusive finishes that are SO COOL that we feel the need to SHOUT ABOUT THEM in ALL CAPS! We invite you to browse our selection and find the Reverend that inspires you. We have no doubt that any of their fine instruments will enrich your music-making experience and help you make lots of joyous, raucous noise.