PG’s Chris Kies hung out at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville, Tennessee, with Black Pistol Fire’s Kevin McKeown who goes over the Epiphone and Gibson guitars he uses, explains why he has three Fender combos onstage, and demos his favorite tones that are on tap within his pedalboard.
Black Pistol Fire’s lone axe man admits that this current main love on the road is this ’90s Epiphone Casino. He’s been gravitating towards this one because he loves how the stock P-90s howl. The only mod he’s done to the instrument is placing the output jack on the guitar’s top. All of McKeown’s guitars use D’Addario EXL115 .011-.049 strings.
His only solidbody was a gift from Gibson. This Firebird is completely off the shelf aside from the Seymour Duncan Antiquity P-90s he swapped in for the normal mini-humbuckers.
Bought only a few days prior in Asheville, North Carolina, McKeown couldn’t leave this 1957 Gretsch Corvette behind in the Tar Heel State. He hasn’t pinned down what material he’ll use the Corvette on, but he thinks it’d work nice for his slide or Americana material.
This Epiphone Sheraton was Kevin’s first real guitar he bought with help of his dad in Toronto at Capsule Music. It was his longtime crush, but the years of touring and not wanting to damage it anymore, he relegates it to slide duty for “Crow’s Feet.”
Kevin rocks and rolls with three Fender combos onstage. Here’s the first real amp that bought growing up and it’s a Hot Rod DeVille 4x10. He plugs into the first channel because of prefers the organic overdrive and grit it can provide.
The DeVille gets daisy-chained into a Twin Reverb, which acts as an extension cab giving McKeown more stage volume. And of course, if the DeVille goes down, the Twin Reverb would be the next man up.
The last amp in the onstage equation for Kevin is a Fender Super Reverb. Although the amp is set for a clean tone, he puts a Cusack Screamer in front of the amp to get it to break up sooner without making the audience suffer.
Kevin McKeown is a man of many fuzzes. OK, so he only has three on his board—Third Man Records Bumble Buzz, Fulltone OctaFuzz, and Electro-Harmonix Big Muff—but each finds a way into the set each night. Other pedals include a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, MXR Phase 90, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, Fulltone Supa-Trem, MXR M109 6-Band Graphic EQ, Maxon AD10 Analog Delay, and a Morley ABC Selector/Combiner Switch.
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Chris Kies has degrees in Journalism and History from the University of Iowa and has been with PG dating back to his days as an intern in 2007. He maintains the website and social media, occasionally writes an artist feature, regularly hosts Rig Rundowns, and shoots/edits video for NAMM show coverage. Other than that, he spends time with his pitbull and enjoys non-guitar-related hobbies.
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