Discussion: How Kurt Cobain Modified His Guitar
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I recently started listening to the Nirvana band and noticed that the sound of the guitars in their songs is different from what is usually heard in modern bands. This is especially noticeable at the beginning of the song “Rape Me”. I don’t know much about music and would be very grateful if anyone could explain how Kurt Cobain modified his guitar to get such a unique sound?
Did other members of the group, except Kurt, make similar modifications with their tools to achieve this effect? If so, which ones?
Matthew Russell ( Matthew the Russell ): To start worth noting that most of its existence, Nirvana was an unknown and poor group. Therefore, they tried to save as much as possible on the purchase of equipment. Their tools were good, but not of impressive quality and, most likely, used.
Kurt has used different guitars throughout his life. It could often be seen with the Stratocaster guitar released by Fender (pictured above).
Jaguar Guitar:
Mustang Guitar:
... and the most famous Jagstang guitar, which combines the qualities of Jaguar and Mustang guitars. She is depicted in the picture below, which Cobain made:
He also used other guitars, such as Univox, a copy of Mosrite. This proves that any guitar can sound like Kurt Cobain if Kurt Cobain plays it. Guitarists often say that it all depends on who plays the guitar, and to some extent this is true.
Guitars Jaguar and Mustang at that time were not very popular, as all groups tried to imitate such giants as Van Halen or Guns & Roses, who used completely different brands of instruments. It was for this reason that used Fender guitars could be bought at a very low price.
The main modification that Kurt made for his guitars was to install a humbucker instead of standard singles. The sound received with the help of humbuckers is usually more powerful, more voluminous and has a pronounced emphasis on the middle frequencies. They are twice as many singles (compare the size of the black humbucker on the Stratocaster with the two usual white pickups in the pictures above), so to put a humbucker on a guitar designed for using singles, it was necessary to remove the upper protective part from the guitar deck or even cut it deck.
This modification was done with Jaguar Kurt (in the picture above), but he did not do it, but the previous owner of the guitar. Sometimes Kurt used the Seymour Duncan Hot Rails pickups - these are humbuckers reduced to single sizes. They could be installed on Fender guitars without any problems. He also used the Seymour Duncan JB pickups, if it was possible to build the guitar.
To get such a sound, Kurt modified not only the guitars, but also other equipment. I found information that Cobain was not serious about equipment selection and used very different components. During the tours, his standard equipment was the Mesa Boogie preamp and separate low-frequency amplifiers. This system caused a lot of problems to a team of technicians who despaired of convincing Kurt to use something more reliable.
He also used the BOSS DS-1 and DS-2, Distortion effect pedals, and the Electro Harmonix Small Clone chorus pedal, released in 1970. With their help, he achieved a “floating” sound, such as in the song “Come As You Are”. Distortion effect pedals are footswitches that are usually turned on between the guitar and amp.
They are used for a sharp transition from a quiet “clean sound” to a loud aggressive “dirty sound”, as in the introduction of the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. They can also be used to produce a constant “dirty sound”, regardless of which amplifier the guitar is connected to.
The BOSS DS-1 pedal can be seen in the foreground of the photo below. I can explain to you how Kurt achieved such a guitar sound, but I have no idea how he makes this headstand while playing one of the modified Stratocaster's.
Various techniques used during recording also played a role. For example, the location of a microphone in a studio could affect sound quality. Steve Albini, who helped record the In Utero album, recorded the bands in one take — they played in a room with several microphones. This technique allows you to get a more “raw” sound, which cannot be achieved by other methods, for example, when group members are recorded separately.
Kurt's technique, or rather its absence, also influenced the final result. This brings us back to the theory that everything depends only on the guitarist himself. Cobain was capable of much, but he was not a virtuoso guitarist. He put more feeling than skill into his game: he hit hard on the strings, getting a unique sound. He did not try to play in the same key with the other members of the group or constantly get into the notes - all this was reflected in the sound of his guitar.
Cobain used the “wrong” equipment and played very aggressively. He was inspired by such styles as punk and alternative, as well as rock that was popular at that time, so he did not want his guitar to sound “clean” without any defects. He used equipment that could not produce high quality sound, even if Kurt wanted it. Cobain worked together with a producer who was also not interested in “good” sound, so he helped the musician strengthen the aggressive sound of the guitar using various recording methods.
Levngton Leon ( Leon Lewington ): Here's a great interview, in which Kurt explains how he got such a unique sound: "Kurt Cobain of the equipment and many other things in his recent interview for the magazine« Guitar World ».
No one in the group paid much attention to how their instruments were tuned. Everyone just tuned in to Kurt's guitar. He, too, was not worried about the state of his guitars: how they were tuned or in what condition the strings were.
Dylan Nobuo Little ( Dylan Nobuo Little ): In short, several factors made his music so unique. First, he used guitars that weren’t designed for such a game (Kurt preferred Fenders that weren’t created for punk rock and Distortion pedals, and Jaguar, which Cobain is often associated with, was created for surf rock).
Secondly, the unique tone was created by the keys in which he played, and by more powerful humbuckers (they better take mids and their sound is considered warmer and fuller). The sound was also influenced by the equipment used and Kurt's playing style (which were very atypical). Now let's move on to the description of all the guitars on which he played (in chronological order), and other equipment that he used.
Kurt was left-handed, and despite the fact that right-handed guitars are cheaper and easier to find, he tried to play left-handed guitars as often as possible, as they were more suitable for his aggressive playing style. However, from time to time he used modified right-handed guitars with a changed order of strings, especially at a time when Nirvana was still a garage group, and it was difficult for them to get the necessary equipment.
During this period, Kurt used a lot of different used equipment (mainly copies of Fender and Gibson), including Mosrite Gospel, Epiphone ET-270 and Aria Pro II Cardinal, which became his spare guitars. The most famous guitar of this period was the Univox Hi-Flyer, a copy of the Mosrite Mark IV, which was lightweight and had a unique soundboard form that Kurt continued to use even when Nirvana became a popular band. Throughout his career, he has acquired and modified many guitars.
Starting around 1991, Kurt chose to play Fender guitars. After releasing the album “Nevermind,” he performed with the highly modified Sunburst Fender Jaguar '65 guitar, which featured a red and colorful deck overlay. Now Jaguar guitars, and similar to them Jazzmaster, are very expensive, but at that time these American models could be bought at a rather low price. Kurt bought his guitar for about $ 500 at the LA Recycler pawnshop.
It has already been modified by the previous owner (Martin Jenner of Cliff Richard and The Everly Brothers). He put on it double Dimarzio humbuckers (a PAF type sensor and Super Distortion bridge), Schaller's Tune-o-Matic bridge, like on Gibson guitars, and a second volume control.
He got used to such a set of elements and continued to modify his Fender guitars in the same vein. Then he replaced the standard pickup selector switch (3-way switch) with a three-mode push button switch. Prior to this, he sealed the switch with electrical tape, so as not to accidentally change its position, since he mainly used a bridge pickup.
Later, after recording the album “In Utero”, he replaced the Super Distortion humbucker with his favorite Seymour Duncan JB. It is also worth noting that he never used tremolo levers and fixed their string holders, increasing the sustain and tuning accuracy of the guitar. Moreover, all his guitars had Schaller belt mounts, and Ernie Ball belts themselves were black or white.
He always had at hand several Fender Stratocaster guitars (mostly white or black, but one was sunburst and the other red), which broke during the band’s famous concerts. They were assembled either in Japan or in Mexico, and were cheap alternatives to American models.
He put a JB humbucker on all these guitars. Sometimes it was Seymour Duncan '59, or when a large humbucker, Hot Rails, did not fit on the deck of a Strat. After the Strats were broken, new guitars ("Franken-Strat") were assembled from their parts. An example of such a guitar is the all-black Strat guitar (with a black deck, overlay, '59 pickup and controls, as well as a Feederz sticker) with a Fernandes Strat fretboard (the original fretboard was broken).
This neck lasted only a month, and it was replaced by a neck from Kramer (the group constantly took them with them for repairs). Most likely, Kurt liked them more than Fernandes vultures (although they were the easiest to get). All the other vultures of his Fender were with a rosewood overlay, which he liked more than maple.
During the tour with In Utero, Kurt's main guitar was Fender Mustang. He had several of these guitars: one in Fiesta Red with a spare white mother-of-pearl overlay and black pickups and two other in Sonic Blue. They differed only in appearance — one had a red mottled trim and white pickups, and the other had a matte red deck and white and black pickups.
The standard breeches were replaced with Gotoh's Tune-o-Matic, and the pickup next to them was replaced with the Seymour Duncan JB. As with the Jaguar, he did not use some pickups (except for some studio recordings) and tremolo levers. The tremolo springs were replaced with conventional washers, and the string holder was fixed so that the strings passed directly through it. This system is more common with Gibson guitars.
Kurt also began working with Fender to create the Jag-Stang guitar, a combination of Jaguar and Mustang guitars that combined his favorite qualities: the Tune-o-Matic bridge, bridge humbucker, short length (short 24 inch scale) and a unique shape itself guitars. However, he used this guitar only a few times closer to the end of his career - Kurt remained faithful to Mustang guitars. It is worth noting that the whole group tuned their instruments lower by half a ton.
For acoustic performances, Kurt used either an Epiphone Texan guitar with a removable Bartolini 3AV pickup (you could easily recognize it from the Nixon Now sticker) or a very rare 1950 Martin D-18E guitar. It can be heard in the album "Unplugged In New York", but as electroacoustics (with a Bartolini 3AV pickup, but already built into the guitar itself), which he connected through the pedals and mixer, so it can not be called purely acoustic.
Both of these guitars were modified right-handed models with a changed order of strings. The funny thing is that the guitar on which he played while recording the songs “Polly” and “Something In The Way” from the album “Nevermind” was in very poor condition, but he did not modify it and did not even change the strings on it. It was a 12-string Stella Harmony, which he bought for $ 30 at a pawn shop. She had only 5 nylon strings, and the bridge was held on glue.
As a true collector of mostly old, unusual and cheap tools, Kurt deliberately avoided buying new equipment. I did not mention the huge number of other guitars that he played: a pair of modified Telecaster guitars and other Mustang guitars (mostly the '69 model, known for its appearance in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video). Guitars Mosrite Mark IV and Fender XII (both destroyed along with home recordings and diaries, which Kurt hid in his bathroom to protect him from robbers - they were flooded with water).
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