Reverend Contender RB

The Great Contender

As soon as you plug one of these guitars in, there's no coulda, woulda, or shoulda about it: you ARE a contender in the contest for most monstrous tone! The Reverend Contender RB is a brand new design that marries Reverend's iconic retro-futurist style with the classic single-cut body shape, and it is a lean, mean rock and roll machine!

The first reason that the Contender is in the hunt for the title is great defe--I mean, its resonant korina body. Korina sounds similar to the mahogany used to build the classic single-cuts of yore, but with a couple of key differences. Like mahogany, it sounds warm, punchy, and round, but it has more harmonic content in the high-end and is generally a bit livelier.

Mini-Hum Magic

Korina and Reverend's new Retroblast mini-humbuckers are made for one another. These marvelous mini-hums have the punching power and muscle of a regular 'bucker, but they are tighter and brighter, and they have a P-90-esque chime in the high-end. They have exceptional string separation and clarity, and they manage to sound robust while maintaining sculpted frequency response. Personally, they sit smack-dab in the center of the Goldilocks Zone for me: beefy enough that I feel like a rockstar when I play a big E chord through a distorted amp but articulate enough to handle complex chords and intricate rhythms. Single-notes are punchy enough to cut through a mix, but they have plenty of mass, too.

Not to mention, these RB pickups really play well with Reverend's famed bass contour knob. When you roll it off, the neck pickup has a Gilmour-esque vocal quack, and the bridge pickup sounds like a whiteguard T-style pickup on steroids. With these two additional sounds at your disposal, you can cop just about any sound you need at the gig, jam, or recording session.

Power to the Player

Reverend has kitted out the Contender RB with a metric ton of appointments that enhance the player's experience and while making the instrument supremely reliable. The medium oval neck profile is home to 22 0.110" wide x 0.050" high frets and a fingerboard with a 12" radius, a configuration well-suited to most techniques and playing styles (and, it's especially good for bending strings). Also, it has pin-lock tuners and a Boneite nut to ensure excellent tuning stability, and it comes equipped with boutique-quality pots and caps and a Pure Tone jack for consistent sound.

Contender for the Six-String Crown

The Contender RB is a workhorse mini-hum-equipped monster that can excel in a wide variety of genres. Its versatile voice, supreme playability, and incredible reliability are to inspire you to embark upon all sorts of musical adventures and make tons of joyous racket!