PG’s Perry Bean and Black Mountain’s Stephen McBean chat about McBean’s Hiwatt-and-Fender amp setup, his favorite Gibson solidbodies, and his funky home-painted stomps before the band’s June 18, 2016, gig at Mercy Lounge in Nashville.
Stephen McBean’s No. 1 guitar is this 1978 Gibson Les Paul Standard loaded with Sheptone Heartbreaker pickups. He strings it with D’Addario .010 sets.
McBean’s main guitar on his last album was this Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster loaded with Seymour Duncan Antiquity I pickups and strung with D’Addario .010s.
When Black Mountain plays older tunes in Eb, McBean goes with his Gibson SG ’61 Reissue with a Lollar P-90 bridge pickup. To keep the strings taut in this tuning, McBean uses D’Addario .011s.
For acoustic numbers, McBean relies on this Gibson Gospel dreadnought, which has a Fishman pickup and a finish that became gloriously cracked during a previous tour through frigid Canadian climes.
McBean uses a dual-amp rig that combines an early silverface Fender Super Reverb and a 1981 Hiwatt DR504 head driving a Marshall 4x12. He also brings a 1973 Marshall Super Bass 100 head along as a backup and switches it out with the Hiwatt every now and then. The cab McBean pairs with his 50-watt Hiwatt and ’73 Super Bass is an ’80s Marshall 1960 with Celestion 70 speakers.
McBean uses a Boss TU-2 tuner to keep his 6-strings copacetic, and relies on a handful of dayglow-painted pedals to conjure tones that range from sublime to weird and angry. His pedalboard includes a Robert Keeley Neutrino envelope filter, an Electro-Harmonix Octave Multiplexer, an ’80s DOD Phasor, a Fulltone SoulBender fuzz, a Union Tube & Transistor Swindle overdrive, a Vox V848 Clyde McCoy wah, a TC Electronic Ditto looper, a Framptone Amp Switcher, a Fulltone Supa-Trem, and a six-button, $80 loop-switcher of unknown make.