Pete Anderson Signature
REVEREND GUITARS
BY MICHAEL ROSS
Pete Anderson came to prominence in the ’80s
as country star Dwight Yoakam’s lead guitarist
and producer. Along with the Blasters and Los
Lobos, Yoakam and Anderson brought roots
music into the Los Angeles punk and alternative
clubs, establishing a fresh audience for a new
genre that would soon become “Americana.”
Thanks to Anderson’s twang-infused Tele work
and back-to-basics production, Yoakam was
embraced by Nashville as a “new traditionalist,”
creating country-radio hits alongside George
Strait and Randy Travis. Not satisfied with sticking to chicken pickin’ and crying steel guitars,
the team crafted songs like “Fast as You” that
revealed elements of Anderson’s Detroit blues
beginnings. His post-Yoakam solo music delves
deeper into the blues, while his work with singer
Moot Davis explores swing and rockabilly.
Searching for an instrument that could handle the
variety of styles at his fingertips, Anderson joined
forces with Joe Naylor at Reverend Guitars.
Anderson had been playing a modified Epiphone
Joe Pass archtop on the road for a few years, and
the tweaks he made to that instrument inspired
him to design his own dream machine with
Naylor. The result is the Pete Anderson Signature
guitar—Reverend’s first hollowbody.
Hot-Rodded Hollow
The PA’s body consists of a laminated spruce top
and laminated maple back and sides. Reverend
offers the guitar in two finishes—satin vintage
clear (the color of the model we tested) and
satin black. The lack of a gloss finish gives the
guitar a funky, road dog look, while the set-neck
construction and cream binding on the body,
f-holes, and three-piece korina neck speak of a
classier instrument. It’s a combination that works
well to express Anderson’s fondness for pawnshop specials.
The guitar’s 2 3/8" body is fully hollow but
sports a novel top brace that Reverend calls the
Uni-Brace. This single wood strip starts at the
neck block and ends at a second block under
the bridge. This bridge block allows Reverend to
mount a fixed Tune-o-matic-style bridge, rather
than the moveable wooden bridge often found
on hollowbody and archtop guitars. If you’re
like Anderson—used to performing wide blues
bends and pedal-steel licks—a fixed bridge
is essential. The Uni-Brace runs the body’s full
depth, but because it’s only a ½" wide it allows
the instrument to retain the classic tonal characteristics of a hollow f-hole guitar.
Running along the bass-string side of the body,
the Uni-Brace divides the interior and limits internal air movement. This contributes significantly
toward reducing uncontrollable feedback at higher stage volumes. Connecting the bridge block
to the neck block, the Uni-Brace also increases
sustain and adds structural integrity. This reinforcement prevents the neck from pulling up and
forward over time. Stiffening the bass side of the
body also increases low-string punch and clarity.
Other modern specs include a 1 11/16" graphite
nut, low-friction roller saddles, and Reverend
Pin-Lock machine heads. These all help keep
the guitar in tune when using the Bigsby B70
vibrato. The nut and rollers offer silky string slippage, while the tuners eliminate the need for
any string windings that might loosen and fail to
tighten up fully as you work the Bigsby arm.
The electronics incorporate some tricks that
weren’t typically employed on vintage instruments. The two Reverend dog-ear P-90-style
single-coils are reverse-wound to cancel hum
when used together, and each pickup is sonically
calibrated for its respective position. In addition
to standard Volume and Tone knobs, the PA
also includes a Bass Contour knob—a passive
low-frequency roll-off control common to all
Reverend guitars.
Contemporary players will also appreciate how
the neck joins the body at the 15th fret for
improved access to upper regions of the 22-fret
rosewood fretboard. A moderate 12" radius and
medium-jumbo frets promote clean bends and
comfortable chording.
Plugging In
The guitar arrived set up with extremely low
action, yet it exhibited no string buzz through the
amps I plugged it into (all guitars will buzz acoustically with the action this low), nor did it fret out
at any point on the neck. I prefer my action a tad
higher, so I simply applied a screwdriver to the
task of raising the bridge a bit. Both acoustically
and amplified, the guitar exhibited more sustain
than a typical hollowbody, but a little less than
your average solidbody. The Reverend arrived
perfectly intonated and it stayed in tune despite
my severe Bigsby manhandling.
I played the PA through an Egnater Rebel- 30
and an Orange Tiny Terror, in addition to running it directly into Ableton Live with Line 6
POD Farm plug-ins. Through the Egnater’s clean
PRODUCT REVIEW
channel, the neck pickup produced warm jazz
tones à la early Jim Hall with his Gibson ES- 175.
The PA’s tone knob was voiced nicely for this
classic sound. Using the Bass Contour knob to
roll off the lows, I was able to coax a striking
Strat-like blues character from the neck pickup.
PREMIER GUITAR AUGUST 2010 177
Switching to the bridge pickup produced
plenty of Tele-style twang. At lower volumes,
I found it unnecessary to roll off any lows
with the Bass Contour. At increased—but still
