Reverend Double Agent OG: A Guitar Built to Play Both Sides

For this specific guitar, there’s no Kid Rock or Billy Corgan photo permanently welded to the Double Agent’s identity the way there is for some of Reverend’s signature models. But the name itself tells you everything you need to know about why this guitar has quietly become one of Reverend’s best-selling models for two decades: it’s a guitar designed to be two different instruments depending on which switch position you’re in, and it’s spied its way into a surprising number of genres without ever needing a single famous face to sell it.

Detroit, a Bicycle Shop, and a Guitar With Dual Loyalties

Reverend Musical Instruments was founded in 1997 by Joe Naylor, a Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery graduate working out of a shop behind a bicycle store in East Detroit. The company’s actual first design — the one Naylor and current CEO Ken Haas still informally call “the OG Reverend guitar” in interviews — was the Avenger, built around a patented resonant body construction: a solid mahogany core wrapped in acoustic chambers and finished with phenolic laminate sheets, a construction philosophy borrowed loosely from Silvertone and Gibson ES-335-style semi-hollow thinking. That guitar, produced from 1997 to 2005, is what put Reverend on the map before the company ever touched Korina wood or Korean manufacturing.

The Double Agent itself came later, as one of Naylor’s core early body shapes, and its name is a clever bit of misdirection: unlike most humbucker-plus-single-coil guitars that just bolt two different pickup types onto one body and call it versatile, Reverend built the Double Agent’s whole electronics package — including its signature Bass Contour Control — specifically to make the guitar convincingly impersonate two different instruments. It’s not just a P90 guitar with a humbucker option bolted on; it’s designed so each pickup can be reshaped toward the other’s territory, blurring the line between “Gibson-style” and “Fender-style” tone in a way genuinely useful gigging guitarists have quietly appreciated for years without needing a magazine cover to tell them about it.

The “OG” in Double Agent OG stands for Original Guitar, and refers to a specific chapter in the model’s history rather than being just a marketing flourish. Reverend has offered the Double Agent shape in more than one configuration over the years — most notably the offset, vibrato-equipped Double Agent W — and the OG designation marks the return of the model’s original single-cutaway body with a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece, aimed squarely at hardtail players who wanted the classic Double Agent tone without a vibrato system they’d never use. Guitar World’s coverage of Reverend’s 2017 twentieth-anniversary lineup specifically referred to the Double Agent Series as the company’s best-selling line, releasing commemorative OG (hardtail) and W (vibrato) versions side by side to mark the occasion — a strong signal of how much quiet commercial weight this unglamorous, no-single-famous-owner model actually carries.

Full Specifications

Construction and Tone

The Double Agent OG’s tonal trick lives almost entirely in Reverend’s Bass Contour Control, a passive circuit found across the brand’s entire lineup and one of the company’s genuine engineering signatures. Rather than a conventional treble/bass tone stack, the BCC works as a low-end roll-off that reshapes both pickups simultaneously: dialed one way, the HA5 humbucker fattens up into full rock-and-roll punch and the 9A5 P90 rounds off into something closer to a warm jazz box; rolled the other way, both pickups tighten up and brighten into a twangier, more Fender-adjacent voice. Reviewers and forum owners consistently describe this as the guitar’s single most useful and distinctive feature — genuinely different territory from a standard tone knob, and a real reason to choose a Reverend over a more conventional HB/P90 guitar from another brand.

Korina — also called African limba or white limba — is the wood Gibson famously used on its 1958 Flying V, Explorer, and Futura models, and Reverend has used it across its entire catalog since 2007, when Naylor switched over from mahogany specifically for its more consistent weight and resonance from piece to piece. It gives the Double Agent OG a tonal foundation reviewers describe as mahogany-adjacent but slightly airier and more open, which pairs well with the HA5’s hotter-than-vintage wind and the 9A5’s cleaner, more open take on the classic P90 formula. The roasted maple neck — heat-treated above 300°F to drive out moisture and sugars — adds a stiffer, more climate-stable neck than an untreated equivalent, along with the honey-caramel color roasted maple is known for.

One detail that surprises first-time Reverend buyers: every Reverend guitar, including the Double Agent OG, ships with a Pure Tone output jack and a treble bleed circuit built into the volume control, meaning rolling the volume down doesn’t dull the tone the way it does on many budget and mid-range guitars. Combined with the Pin-Lock tuners, it’s the kind of unglamorous, unphotographed engineering detail that explains why Reverend owners tend to become repeat Reverend owners.

Family Tree

The Double Agent name covers more ground than the OG and W split alone. Reverend has periodically released Chicago Music Exchange and other retailer-exclusive versions of the Double Agent OG with alternate pickup configurations — one notable CME exclusive swapped the standard HA5 for a Railhammer Hyper Vintage humbucker, chasing a more open, PAF-adjacent voice while keeping the 9A5 P90 unchanged in the neck. The 2017 20th Anniversary editions, offered in both OG and W configurations, dressed the same core guitar in flame maple tops, brushed aluminum pickguards, and a commemorative “1997-2017” fretboard inlay, limited to a single year of production and now something of a minor collector’s item.

Elsewhere in Reverend’s catalog, the Double Agent’s HB/P90 pairing philosophy echoes through several other models without being a direct copy: the Charger series pairs two P90s or two humbuckers depending on variant, the Club King brings the same pickup-mixing logic to a semi-hollow body, and the newer Kingbolt applies a similar hot-rodded, mix-and-match approach to a more aggressive, trem-equipped bolt-on platform. It’s a useful reminder that the Double Agent OG isn’t an outlier in Reverend’s design language — it’s one clear expression of a philosophy the whole catalog shares.

Famous Players

No single artist has built a stage identity around the Double Agent OG the way Billy Corgan has around his own signature Reverend models, or the way Reeves Gabrels has around his Spacehawk. That said, the guitar has quiet, genuine fans rather than zero connections. Indie singer-songwriter Maria Taylor of Azure Ray is listed directly on Reverend’s own website as an owner, playing a custom-painted Cadillac Pink Double Agent that started life as a standard sunburst model — a nice example of the kind of personal, unforced gear relationship Reverend tends to cultivate with working musicians rather than chasing arena-level endorsements. The Blue Stones’ Tarek Jafar has also confirmed using Reverend guitars in place of the Gibsons he once relied on, though without pinning down the exact model in that specific exchange.

It’s worth understanding this within Reverend’s broader artist story, even though none of these names are Double Agent players specifically. Kid Rock was one of Reverend’s first major-label faces, photographed with one for the cover of The History of Rock in 2000 — a relationship that traces back to Naylor’s early days running a vintage buy-sell-trade shop in the Detroit scene. Ron Asheton of The Stooges was close enough to the company that Reverend still builds his signature Avenger AG model today, with proceeds supporting the Ron Asheton Foundation after his passing in 2009. Pete Anderson, longtime guitarist for Dwight Yoakam, worked directly with Naylor to solve a chronic feedback problem on his hollowbody guitars, resulting in the Uni-Brace bracing system now used on his signature PA-1 models. None of that history belongs to the Double Agent OG directly — but it’s the reputation and relationship-building that made a guitar with no famous owner still worth building, stocking, and reissuing for two decades.

Tone Recipes

Rock rhythm punch: Bridge humbucker, Bass Contour rolled toward full bass, guitar volume maxed, into a mid-gain tube amp. The HA5’s hotter-than-vintage wind pushes an amp into rock rhythm territory without needing a boost pedal in front.

Blues-twang hybrid: Neck P90, Bass Contour backed off toward the brighter end, amp clean to slightly breaking up. This is the setting that shows off the “twang from a humbucker guitar” trick the Double Agent name promises — a P90 warmth with more top-end snap than a vintage original.

Both pickups, bass rolled off: Middle toggle position with the Bass Contour dialed toward its brightest setting, light compression. Several long-time owners specifically cite this as the setting where the guitar stops sounding like “a humbucker guitar with a P90 option” and starts sounding like its own distinct third voice — the genuine payoff of the BCC circuit.

Modern indie/alt jangle: Neck P90, Bass Contour rolled about halfway, amp clean with a touch of slapback delay. This is roughly the tonal territory Maria Taylor’s indie-folk work occupies, and it shows off how far the 9A5’s cleaner, more open voicing sits from a muddy vintage P90 without losing warmth entirely.

Comparisons to Related Models

Within Reverend’s own catalog, the Double Agent OG’s closest relative is the Double Agent W, which swaps the Tune-O-Matic/stopbar setup for an offset body and a Bigsby-style vibrato — same core electronics and Bass Contour circuit, different hardware philosophy for players who want vibrato texture. Against a more traditional HB/P90 guitar like a Gibson Les Paul Standard loaded with a P90 conversion, the Double Agent OG trades vintage mahogany warmth for korina’s airier resonance and adds a genuinely useful tone-shaping tool the Les Paul’s standard two-tone-knob layout doesn’t offer. Compared to a Fender Telecaster for players chasing twang, the Double Agent OG can get meaningfully closer to Tele snap than most humbucker-loaded guitars manage, without giving up the humbucker’s rock-rhythm option entirely.

Buying Guide

• OG vs. W: Choose the OG for maximum sustain and simplicity with a fixed bridge; choose the W if vibrato texture matters more to your playing than raw sustain.
• Left-handed availability: Reverend offers left-handed Double Agent OG models built to the same spec and quality as right-handed versions — worth confirming current stock with a dealer, as left-handed runs are more limited.
• Pickup swaps: Some owners report swapping the neck P90 for other gold-foil or vintage-style units to chase a specific tonal target; the guitar’s wiring harness and Bass Contour circuit accommodate most standard P90-footprint replacements without major surgery.
• String stretch-in period: Several owners note the guitar needs 30–45 minutes of proper string stretching before it holds tuning through aggressive playing, especially on Bigsby-equipped W versions — standard practice for any new guitar but worth doing thoroughly on this one.
• Limited editions: The 2017 20th Anniversary Double Agent OG, with a Railhammer Hyper Vintage bridge pickup and flame maple top, was a single-year production run — a genuine collector’s variant if you find one on the used market.

Practical Ownership Notes

The Boneite nut is a synthetic alternative to bone, chosen specifically for consistency from piece to piece rather than the natural variation real bone can introduce — a small but sensible engineering choice for a guitar built on a factory assembly line rather than a boutique bench. The dual-action truss rod with headstock access means neck adjustments don’t require pulling the neck or accessing the heel, a genuine convenience for a guitar in this price range. Owners consistently report the guitar arriving well set up out of the box, with balanced weight distribution that avoids the neck-dive problems common on lighter offset designs.

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