See how dense, complex, serrated post-hardcore pummels and blooms—thanks to some pawnshop prizes, a scratch-and-dent steal, and a unison bass tuning.
Shiner sprouted from the fertile, black-dirt underground rock scene of the Midwest. Cofounded by guitarist/vocalist Allen Epley in 1992, the band toured with contemporaries Sunny Day Real Estate, Chore, Jawbox, Season to Risk, the Jesus Lizard, and Girls Against Boys, recorded with Shellac’s Steve Albini, and released four albums between 1996 and 2001. Injections of new blood for 1997’s Lula Divina (bassist Paul Malinowski) and 2000’s Starless (Josh Newton on keyboards/guitars and Jason Gerken on drums) helped carve fresh ground and broaden their sound.
Shiner’s sweet spot lives among the smoldering soundscapes that brood, blossom, and bolster their cannonball core. The Egg, from 2001, was a crowning achievement—the early career apex of the band’s evolution from noisy dissonance and powder-keg rock to mosaic, prog-like orchestrations that were equally brutal and beautiful. And after nearly two years of touring behind The Egg, the quartet split up in 2003.
Over the next 15 years, Shiner reunited for special one-off appearances and very short tours. And with the help of the internet and streaming services, their low-key, dormant profile was elevated. Finally, in 2020, Shiner came back to the table with Schadenfreude–a shockingly logical evolution from and continuation of The Egg’s sonic flavor. The album has the lyrical earworms, head-nodding rhythms, gut-punch oomph, and palette-cleansing space travel you’d expect from a band that said goodbye with the jewel “The Simple Truth.”
Ahead of Shiner’s show at Nashville’s DIY arts collective, Drkmttr, PG hopped onstage to dissect the current setups of Epley and Malinowski. Epley details how a lunch-break pawnshop visit landed a remarkable Hohner T for under $100. Malinowski reveals the unique tuning (and demonstrates the monkey-grip it requires to play) that allows his setup to charge like a rhino. And both walk us through their practical-but-powerful pedalboards.
(Unfortunately, renowned gearhead, resident of Pudgemont County, and a regular at the Chug Suckle, Josh Newton, was not on this run as he was tech’ing for Kings of Leon. Spotlights’ Mario Quintero played the role of Newton for this batch of shows, and we featured his setup—along with wife/Spotlights bassist Sarah Quintero’s rig—back in 2021.)
Brought to you by D’Addario Nexxus 360 Rechargeable Tuner.
A “Trashy Toy Tele” Becomes the One
If you’ve seen Shiner and Allen Epley, you’ve seen this T-style that’s been to hell and back. Epley’s live staple is a Hohner HG-428N—a Japan-made copy of a Fender Telecaster Deluxe. While Epley has owned the instrument for 30-plus years, he contends that its abuse was dished out prior to scoring this prize at Sol’s Pawn in Kansas City, Kansas. Shiner bassist and extreme bottom feeder Paul Malinowski did the wheeling and dealing and helped Epley land it for under $100. It’s been overhauled several times, to keep it running strong, but Epley feels this one provides a live tone that’s unmatched by anything he owns and adds to Shiner’s sting. He goes with Dunlop Performance+ strings (.011–.050) and is locked into D-standard tuning.
Blacktop Backup
If anything haywire happens to the Hohner, Epley has this Fender Blacktop Jazzmaster HS that was picked from Chris Metcalf, who plays drums in Allen’s other band, the Life and Times. It’s been upgraded with a Staytrem bridge by fellow Shiner bandmate and tech extraordinaire Josh Newton.
Mind the Gap
The solid, stratified sound of Shiner starts with Epley’s stereo setup. The first part of the potent platform is his 1997 Vox AC30 Top Boost reissue that he bought brand new. He loves how it sits in the mix and “fills the gaps in the middle” like double-meat in a club sandwich.
Tommy's Hiwatt?
Surrounding and supplementing the Vox’s mid-focused heft is the above 1971 Hiwatt Custom 100 that chimes in with glassy highs and plenty of low-end heft. He plucked this gem from fellow KC rocker Duane Trower of Season to Risk for $500 cash and a lesser amp. (Epley clearly won that trade.) During the Rundown, he semi-confidently asserts that the head was used for the touring production of the Who’s rock opera Tommy. He uses it with guitar and bass, and it’s been souped-up by turning the normal volume control into a throttle for the pre-gain, giving the amp more grind and growl. The Custom 100 hits a 2x12 cab (procured by Josh Newton) that has a pair of 35-watt speakers.
Allen’s Arsenal
The first two parts of Epley’s pedalboard start on the floor. The TC Helicon Harmony Singer integrates with his guitar—reading whether the chord he’s playing is major or minor—and then accompanies his vocals with a predetermined harmony either above or below his singing key. Next in line on the floor is the Ernie Ball 6166 Mono Volume Pedal. After that is a double dose of dirt compliments of MXR: a Super Badass Distortion and Micro Amp+. Following those is an Electro-Harmonix Micro POG that Epley calls a “kaleidoscope of sound.” A MXR M300 Reverb provides plenty of canyon far and wide, while the Line 6 DL4 spreads Epley’s tone to both amps for stereo delay. A Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner keeps his guitars in check and a MXR ISO-Brick M238 powers the pedals.
Paul’s Project P
This P bass started its life as a ’90s MIM Squier model. The only thing stock on the entire instrument is the body. It has a new pickguard, enhanced electronics, a custom-wound pickup from Fountain City Guitarworks (Kansas City), a NOS Kramer Schaller bridge from the ’80s, and a custom neck finished and fine-tuned by KC producer/luthier Justin Mantooth. The secret sauce to Paul Malinowski’s setup and rhino-charging tone has nothing to do with gear, but rather the unison tuning (C-G-C-C) that he employs for most of Shiner’s songs. He hammers away on Dunlop strings (.050–.110) with Dunlop Tortex .73 mm picks (yellow).
A Blast From the Past
Prior to bringing the project P into the mix, Paul would rely on this 1983 Fender Elite Precision Bass II. As with a lot of instruments made in the ’80s, there was some serious innovation on deck. Fender’s high-end attempt at an active bass features noise-cancelling, split-coil passive pickups (Paul mentions the bridge pickup is thin sounding and never stood a chance in Shiner), an active preamp that boosts output and improves control operation, and a Bi-Flex truss rod (allowing adjustments in both directions). This one often rides in D-standard tuning (D-G-C-F). Paul feels this instrument has “a little more throat to it” than the Squier P. And a big reason this Elite looks anything but is because Paul shredded away its finish when he played with flexible copper picks for years.
Pulverizing With Peavey
During Shiner’s initial run, Malinowski pumped his Ps through a Mesa/Boogie 400+ and 2x15 cab. After the band stopped touring, he sold the rig to a friend. On the lookout for a new setup, he found luck with this Peavey Classic 400 that he scooped for $50 from the Musician’s Friend scratch-and-dent warehouse in Kansas City. The fault was resolved with a fresh fuse cap. The 400-watt bruiser runs off 14 tubes (eight 6550s, five 12AX7s, and one 12AT7). Malinowski lives in the crunch channel.
Ranger Rock Ready for Duty
This custom-made Ranger 2x15 was built by fellow Kansas City dweller Scott Reed. The design removed the industrial vibes of the ported Mesa Diesel cab he previously used for an heirloom furniture look. It does have a pair of EV15L drivers in it, too.
Malinowski’s Mass Distortion
The signal from the P goes into the Ernie Ball VP Jr that feeds the Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner. The first two tone ticklers are both always on. The Boss GEB-7 Bass Equalizer simply slides out the 500k frequency and the Maxon OD808 Overdrive reissue aggressively agitates the Classic 400. When Pete needs to restrain his buffalo bass tone, he pulls back the volume or changes his playing dynamics. The MXR EVH Phase 90 gets used along with an EBow. The DigiTech Bass Whammy gets used with the EBow and phaser, but is also engaged (in the low-octave setting) when he’s playing riffs on just the unison high strings to thicken everything up. The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone gets center stage for the Starless song “Giant’s Chair” or anytime he wants to ride the feedback bull. The MXR Tremolo has its moment during the intro of “Giant’s Chair” (joining the MT-2 to create a buzzsaw super chop). And the TC Electronic Flashback dazzles and delays in spacy sections.
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While creating her new solo record, Kim Deal was drawn to exploring the idea of failure.
Deal isn’t smiling on the cover of Nobody Loves You More, her new album, but the art bears some similarities: Deal is floating on a platform in an expanse of gentle, dark blue waves, accompanied only by a few pastel-colored amps, her guitar, a stool, and a flamingo. It’s an unmistakably lonely image, but for Deal, failure doesn’t mean loneliness. It’s not even necessarily a bad thing.
“I mean, at least something magnificent was tried, you know?” says Deal. “At least there was something to fail. That’s an endearing thing. I think there’s a sweetness to seeing somebody get their ass kicked, because they were in it. It warms my heart to see that, just people getting out there. Maybe it gives me the courage and confidence to try something. It’s okay if I get my butt kicked. At least you’re trying something.”
“I think there’s a sweetness to seeing somebody get their fucking ass kicked, because they were fucking in it.”
Nobody Loves You More feels at least a little like Van Ader’s journey: an artistic project so long in the making and so precious to its creator that they’re willing to break from all conventions and face the abject terror of being judged by the world. That might seem like nothing new for Deal, who’s played music professionally for over 35 years, first with Pixies, then with the Breeders. But this LP marks her first proper solo album under her own name—a thought that mortified her for a long time. (“I like rock bands,” she says.) Even when she recorded and released what could be called “solo” music, she released it under a pseudonym. Initially, it was to be Tammy and the Amps. “I still was so uncomfortable, so I created Tammy and the Amps,” explains Deal. “I’m Tammy, who are my band? It’s the amplifiers downstairs in my basement. But the Tammy thing sort of got on my nerves so I just dropped it, so it was called the Amps.” She also assembled a band around that concept and released Pacer under the Amps’ name in 1995.
The cover art for Nobody Loves You More echoes the doomed last voyage of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader.
This new record hums with the soft-loud energetic alchemy that defines much of Deal’s previous works. The opening title track is a slow, romantic strummer with string arrangements, while “Coast” is faintly ska-indebted with horns and a ragged Blondie chord progression. “Crystal Breath” gets weirder, with distorted drums, synthy bass, and a detuned, spidery guitar lead. “Disobedience” and “Big Ben Beat” continue the darker and heavier trajectories with fuzzy stompers interspersed with ambient, affective interlude tracks like “Bats in the Afternoon Sky.” It’s a patient, sensitive, and unmistakably scrappy record.
Some of the songs on Nobody Loves You More are as up-close and personal as solo records get. One in particular that’s drawn attention is “Are You Mine?,” a sleepy-eyed, lullaby ballad. At first listen, it could be taken for a love song. (In fact, Deal encourages this interpretation.) But it’s a song about her mother, for whom Deal cared in her home while she died from Alzheimer’s. The song title comes from a gut-wrenching moment.
“I was in the house, she doesn’t know my name,” explains Deal. “She’s still walking, she can form words, but she doesn’t know what a daughter is or anything. She passes me in the hallway, stops, grabs my arm and says, ‘Are you mine?’ She doesn’t know my name, she doesn’t know who I am, but there was a connection. I knew she was asking if I was her baby. I said, ‘Yeah, mama, I’m yours.’ I’m sure five seconds later, she forgot that conversation even happened. It was just a flicker, but it was so sweet. To have her not see me in so long, and then for one brief second, be recognized in some capacity…. She was such a sweet lady.”
Deal’s mother wasn’t the only loss that went into this collection of songs. Her father passed, too, after a prolonged illness. “My dad was this big bravado sort of personality and watching them get extinguished a little bit every day… I don’t know,” she says. “They both died at home. I’m very proud of that.” But writing “Are You Mine?” wasn’t painful for Deal; she says it was a comforting experience writing the gentle arpeggio on her Candelas nylon-string acoustic.
Deal assembled the bulk of Nobody Loves You More in her Dayton, Ohio, basement, recording with Pro Tools and a particularly pleasing Electrodyne microphone preamp. (Some of the songs date back more than a decade—versions of “Are You Mine?” and “Wish I Was” were initially recorded in 2011 and released as part of a series of 7" singles.) Deal recorded a good part of the record’s drums, bass, and guitar from home, but other contributions came in fits and spurts over the years, from old faces and new. Her Breeders bandmates, including Mando Lopez, Jim MacPherson, Britt Walford, and sister Kelley Deal, all pitched in, as did Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan from British post-punk band Savages, and the Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence.
Kim Deal cared for her parents in their Dayton, Ohio, home until their passing, an experience that colors the music on her new solo record.
Photo by Steve Gullick
Kim Deal's Gear
Guitars
- '90s Fender Stratocaster
- '70s goldtop Gibson Les Paul
- Candelas nylon-string acoustic
Amps
- Marshall JCM900
- 4x12 cabinet
- Kalamazoo combo
Strings & Picks
- .011-gauge strings
- Dunlop Tortex Standard .60 mm
One day, ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer stopped by the studio to see what Deal was working on. He listened to “Wish I Was,” and scrambled together a lead idea. Deal kept the part and expanded it over time, leading to Klinghoffer’s writing credit on the record.
Deal used her trademark red ’90s Fender Stratocaster HSS along with a ’70s goldtop Gibson Les Paul for most of the electric work, pumped through either her long-time Marshall JCM900 or a tiny vintage Kalamazoo combo. Deal has never been a gearhead—at one point on our video call, she uses a tooth flosser as a pick to demonstrate some parts on her Candelas. “Kelley is a pedal person,” she says. “I’m not doing leads. I’m just doing a rhythm that needs to sound good.”
“I don’t think I’m taking it very well still, actually, or I’m a sociopath because I don’t even talk about [Steve Albini] in the past tense.”Over the years, Deal’s sonic thumbprint has been tied up in the work of her good friend and frequent collaborator Steve Albini, the producer, engineer, and musician who died unexpectedly in May 2024. (Deal quips, “Steve’s the lead character in my own life.”) Albini and Deal began working together in 1988, on Pixies’ debut LP Surfer Rosa. Their friendship continued over decades—Deal even performed at Albini’s wedding in Hawaii, for which he gifted her a ukulele—and the final sessions for Nobody Loves You More were under Albini’s watch. His parting hasn’t been easy.
“I got a text: ‘Call me,’” remembers Deal. It was a mutual friend, telling Deal that Albini had passed. “He told me and I just said, ‘You’re absolutely wrong. That didn’t happen.’ I don’t think I’m taking it very well still, actually. I don’t even talk about him in the past tense. I say, ‘What he likes to do is this.’ I never think, ‘What Steve used to like to do.’ My head never goes there. I wanted to record a song that wasn’t working and I said, ‘I need to do it from top to bottom at Albini’s.’ That’s not going to happen.”
YouTube
Along with Rob Bochnik and Spencer Tweedy, Kim Deal plays two tracks from Nobody Loves You More for a holiday fundraiser in November 2024 in Chicago.
![Whores Rig Rundown [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/youtube.jpg?id=55366029&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
Since forming in 2010, Atlanta noise rockers Whores had only released one LP, 2016’s Gold.—until this year. Eight long years later, their new full-length, WAR., dropped in April, and Whores celebrated by tearing across the country and blasting audiences with their maelstrom of massive, sledge-hammering rock ’n’ roll.
The day after their gig at Cobra Nashville, Whores frontman Christian Lembach, dressed in his Nashville best, met up with PG’s Chris Kies at Eastside Music Supply to run through his brutal road rig.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Earthy Esquire
When vocalist and guitarist Christian Lembach got sober over 20 years ago, he bought a Fender Telecaster off of a friend, then picked up an Esquire shortly after. That original Esquire stays home, but he brings this pine-body Earth Guitars Esquire out on the road. (It’s the lightest he’s ever played.) It’s loaded with a German-made reproduction of Schecter’s F520T pickup—aka the “Walk of Life” pickup intended to reproduce Mark Knopfler’s sound. (Lembach buys them in batches of five at a time to make sure he’s got plenty of backups.)
It’s equipped with a 3-way selector switch. At right, it bypasses the tone circuit; in the middle position, it’s a regular bridge-pickup configuration, with volume and tone activated; and at left, the tone is bypassed again, but an extra capacitor adds a bass boost.
Lembach installed six brass saddles in lieu of the traditional 3-saddle bridge. He often plays barre chords higher up the neck, and the six saddles allow for more accurate intonation.
All of Lembach’s guitars are tuned to drop C, and he plays with D’Addario Duralin .70 mm picks. They’re strung with heavy D’Addario NYXL sets, .013–.056 with a wound G. The 30-foot Bullet Cable coil cable attenuates some of the guitar’s top end.
Tuned-Up Tele
Lembach had this black Fender Telecaster—the one he bought from his friend—modified to his preferred Esquire specs, with a single bridge pickup and the same 3-way selector configuration as his other weapon. He prefers the 6-saddle bridge to this rusty 3-saddle version, but this one holds a special place in his heart all the same.
Favor From Furlan
When John Furlan of Furlan Guitars reached out to Lembach about building him a custom guitar, it was an easy sell. The two worked together on this beauty, based on a non-reverse Gibson Firebird body with a Fender-style scale length, roasted maple neck, and rosewood fretboard.
It’s got a bridge and locking tuners from Hipshot, and it’s loaded with Greenville Beauty Parlor P-90s. A typical Gibson-style toggle switches between neck, bridge, and both configurations, while another Esquire-style 3-way switch on the lower bout handles Lembach’s preferred bridge-pickup wirings: no tone, tone and volume, or bass boost.
No Logo
Lembach stays loyal to his twin Marshall Super Leads, with taped-over logos—an aesthetic Lembach picked up from Nirvana. A tech in Atlanta figured out that the one on the left is a 1973, which runs at eight ohms, or half power (Lembach removed two of the power tubes), into a 16-ohm cabinet. The power drop allows Lembach to coax feedback at lower volumes. The original preamp tubes from Yugoslavia—no longer a country, mind you—are still working in the amp.
The one on the right is a reissue 1959SLP from 2002 or 2003, which Lembach finds brighter than his vintage model. He goes into the lower-input second channel to dampen the edge.
Both amps run through Marshall JCM800 cabinets with Celestion G12T-75s.
Christian Lembach's Board
A Loop-Master Pedals Clean/Dirty Effects Switcher manages Lembach’s signal. Its A loop is used for verses, bridges, intros, and outros, and has the majority of the pedals in it. The first thing in the A loop is the ZVEX Fuzz Factory made specially for the band, followed by a Devi Ever Soda Meiser, Beetronics Swarm, Keeley Nova Wah, Spiral Electric FX Yellow Spiral, Boss NF-1, and Alexander Pedals Radical II Delay.
The B loop has a clone of the Electro-Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff, an EHX POG, and a ZVEX Super Hard On. The A loop is already pretty loud; B somehow gets even louder. An EHX Superego+ is a new addition that Lembach’s planning to integrate.
A CIOKS DC10 powers the board, and a Lehle device under the board cleans up unwanted hum and noise.
