Reverend has expanded its Billy Corgan signature guitar lineup with a limited edition release commemorating 30 years of the Smashing Pumpkins’ bravura double album Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
Unveiled in time for the Chicago alt-rock institutions’ Rat in a Cage Tour, the Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness is available as a standard six-string electric guitar, and as a baritone guitar – and if it looks familiar then maybe that’s because you caught the Pumpkins’ set at Lollapalooza. Corgan was debuting them onstage, just to test them out.
He’s one of the lucky ones. Reverend are not making many of these. There are 60 in total, 24 of which will be the Drop Zero baritones.
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Both versions share the Black Sparkle finish, the solid alder construction, and ebony fingerboard – and the Melon Collie graphic that sits just south of that six-saddle hard-tail bridge. Indeed, they share a lot of features.
Both have Railhammer humbuckers at the neck and bridge positions, a pairing that’s served by the volume, tone, and bass contour knobs (bass contour! I know, right?), with a three-way blade switch to select them. Note the signature etching on the covers. That’s pretty neat.
In the hand, that bolt-on maple neck should feel familiar; Corgan’s preferred ‘medium oval’ profile is a crowd-pleasing shape – not too fat, not too thin – but you get a bit more neck on the baritone. With a 26.25” scale, it’s not quite a Sleep Token IV-style octave-down monster, but it will eat up drop tunings, and you’ve got 24 frets as opposed to the 22 on the regular Z-One.
Reverend hasn’t actually specified this yet, but those dot inlays look glow-in-the-dark to us. That’s another plus point if true. Each guitar in this series comes with a certificate of authenticity, a two-tone soft guitar case, plus a poster of Billy Corgan’s Mellon Collie Moon artwork.
The standard model will set you back $1,899, while the baritone rings up at $1,999.
And, if you buy one, you’ll be buying the same guitars that Corgan plays onstage. In April last year, Corgan explained to Guitar World why he played off-the-shelf Reverends onstage and in the studio.
“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give,” he said. “I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever. That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.
“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument.”
The Reverend Billy Corgan Z-One Infinite Sadness is available now. Head over to Reverend for more details.
