Tiny guitar-making company is now a player in rock circles

WARREN, Mich. -- A shiny blue guitar with a palm tree pattern rests on a work table, waiting for its neck and strings.

All around the brightly lighted room sit guitar bodies in different stages of completion, propped against walls or strewn on tables below cubicle-like dividers with hanging tools.

It could be a high school shop class.

But artists ranging from Kid Rock to former Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan swear by these electric guitars. They are on a long list of major and minor players who use Joe Naylor’s instruments.

“It does have that ‘X’ factor that all guitarists are looking for. I can’t exactly put my finger on it,” says Nashville blues guitarist “Big Mike” Griffin. “It’s just a cool guitar with a fantastic tone.”

Naylor is the founder of Reverend Musical Instruments, a four-room shop tucked in an industrial park near a freeway in this city bordering Detroit.

The 41-year-old Ann Arbor native started the business in 1996 after a partnership manufacturing amplifiers ended. It’s now a six-person operation, custom-making guitars, basses and amplifiers. Naylor figures they produce 100 guitars a month.

The guitars, which range in price from $679 to $1,000, look like relics from the 1950s and ‘60s, with modern touches. They’re influenced by classic cars, Naylor says. “They have a very Detroit look in that respect.”

Reverend guitars are semi-hollow, producing an acoustic quality even when they are plugged in. Naylor describes the sound as lively, consistent and responsive, “like a high-performance sports car.”

The body starts with a plastic rim, a 6-inch white mahogany wood block, and two pieces of phenolic laminate -- like Formica -- that form the front and back of the guitar. The surface is shiny and metallic, shaded in whatever color the customer chooses, from sky blue to “aged” yellow to fireball red. Custom options include racing stripes, flames and a Hawaiian theme with palm trees.

Aaron Sands, bassist for the Christian band Jars of Clay, says he uses his Reverend Rumblefish bass in live performances and studio sessions.

“It cuts through while still providing a solid, consistent low end. The last thing I want to add to the instrumental mix ... is a bunch of mud,” Sands says.

As a guitar nut, Naylor was a late bloomer. He started playing and repairing the instruments as a student at Western Michigan University. After graduating with a degree in industrial design, he spent five months at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix to learn how to craft guitars.

It would be a few years before he started Reverend, first doing repair, then manufacturing amps.

“I was always mechanical. I was always good with my hands,” he says. “I played with a lot of Legos, things to build model airplanes, you know, and I was a bicycle mechanic and I was rebuilding toys since I was a little kid. I’d modify my Hot Wheels.”

Even the music he plays on his guitar at home is his own.

“I don’t like other people’s stuff,” he says.

The switch to guitar-making wasn’t hard, he says, because he already had established a reputation among musicians while in the amp business.

Naylor describes his customers as professional, semiprofessional and former professionals. It isn’t a guitar for beginners, he says.

The instruments are custom-ordered, initialed and carry handwritten serial numbers.

“We wanted it to have more of a personal, handmade touch to it,” Naylor says.

Willie Moseley, a writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, likens the interest in Naylor’s modern-retro-style guitar to the interest in cars such as the new Ford Thunderbird and the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which tip their hats to old-school designs.

“It’s a definitive example of the cliche about how ‘the only difference in men and boys is the price of their toys,’ “Moseley says.

Naylor won’t reveal how much money the business makes, simply saying cash flow is good. And he says he isn’t in it for the money.

“This is like a perfect combination of technology and art,” he says. “And it’s the most important instrument of the 20th century, and I like to be a part of that.”