How To Get The Paramount Tone

In late 91 hes probably using a mesa studio preamp live. Its set clean and bright, not sure if he used the graphic eq, you would want to consult Google,, I'm sure there are lots of reddits where nirvana obsessedkids discuss it in depth. That preamp is like all the 80s mark amps, a modified blackface fender circuit.

Actual amplification was probably a crown solid state stereo power amp intended for pa uses. No idea about the cabinet or speakers but as Nirvana blew up that year he bought a number of stock jcm900 era marshall straight 4×12s. Thd key here is that all the tone is in the pedals and fendery preamp... and his strumming style. Not a great guitarist but certainly distinctive. A piece of Kurt's sound wss that he was Kurt. A fender head and a marshall cab will get you close but if he was using the graphic eq then I dunno. If you have a fender with an fx loop you could stick an eq pedal in the loop and fiddle around? His live rig was weird as hell. Nirvana was also notoriously loud. Tons of stage volume. The crown he had could easily pump 800 clean watts into an 8 ohm or higher load if he bridged the channels. You would not want to stand in front of kurt's cabs without shooting headphones. The extreme spl is a big part of that sound.

Edit: I also just remembered kurt saying in a guitar magazine interview that he cranked the midrange knob all the way up, so whatever you're playing thru you could start there. Mids at 10.

Yea a recording is always a problem, you have to respect that the Tone engneers in the Studio did also their job and modified a lot to the record, also you listen to the mp3 or cd on your HiFi Speakers. But as far as we know on "Smells like Teenspirit" there was used a Mesa Boogie Studio preamp , Rhythm Chanel clean, Crown Power Base 2 power amp and several Marshall 4x12 cabinets, a stratocaster with a duncan humbucker pick up in the bridge , effects are used probally the Boss DS-1 or SansAmp and a Chorus for the Solo and picking part what might be the Electro-Harmonix Small Clone. Further more the cabinets Kurt did used were all modified as far as we know from insiders , he had there different speakers in cabinets, what had a great influence on the sound, but I do not know which one now, I only know they are not produced anymore and rare , because most people did not like them. Cobain did not like the Teenspirit song, so we do not care much about it. Kurt said that the Nevermind Record was mixed in the studio a bit like pop album and for him it was not aggressive enough and too smooth.

As far as the audio from the concert video the OP mentioned goes, I would bet that the guitar was gated to mute bleed when kurt wasn't playing. It's common practice to high pass the guitars so they don't eat into the bass. A live track might need low passing above like 6k ir so if there's cymbal bleed. A lot of folks will notch out some low mids, scoop a little 3k and shelf up 5k to redistribute the harmonics if the sound at the microphone is muddy and/or ear fatiguing... maybe compression to even things out a little, that might help with Kurt's clean tone. In this type of music you would be surprised how little mix processing was employed at the time. Even on nevermind. Andy Wallace mixed that and he doesn't use much in the way of outboard but reverbs and delays.. everything else is judicious use of dynamics and eq on an SSL. The minimalism can be heard when you listen to Vig's mixes and realize the finished version isn't all that different. A live nirvana recording isn't a frickin journey record. I think Kurt really percieved more polish in the mix than there actually is. I think what kurt objected too most was the kick and snare samples Andy triggered which isn't a very punk rock trick but sometimes it really helps out.

The guitars are probably not tampered with all that much, probably not any more than whatever theFOH guy sent to the PA and that's what the audience heard. I'm not trying to be totally dismissive, often guitars are heavily processed in post production, I just doubt that happened here. And it usually pains a good engineer to heavily eq a guitar track... if the guitarist likes his sound and is satisfied with the capture, the last thing you want to do is make it into something else, you do only what's needed to get everything to sit together and put the song over.

OK so, not so much get changed on the Guitar Sound in the Studio , interessting. So with the Set-Up you should be close to the Sound. In respect of course , to the HiFi effect, when you hear a record on very good Headphones it can sound much better then on a Headphone you did get Free on a Plane Flight, what can influence for the sound you searching for. It does mean the equipment can sound much better then what you did hear on your headphones or the sound might be something you did not expect to end-up with. But at least the Direction is right and when you will record it, you will have nearly the same results too , no matter what you choose to listen to the recording. I need to learn more about recording and sound engeneering. But I do also think , you can not really match perfectly a Sound, but you at least go in the direction of it, it does always sounds different in the end, the most important is then you love and enjoy the result of it, it might be even better then what you was looking for, does also a lot happen. Sometimes Sound is also what your own mind does like or not, I heard someone playing his music over a Dolby Atmos Sound System and I did not like it, be he did love that.

I didn't exactly say that. Some records have gobs of processing. I doubt this live record has highly processed guitar. Nevermind doesn't sound all that processed when you compare Andy and Butch's mixes, however the guitars are highly layered, that's Butch's thing. I'm sure the neve that was at sound city colored the sound as did the tape, but these effects are overstated to sell vintage gear and plugin emulators. Microphone choice and placement has more effect. A lot of times the processing on a live guitar track is to compensate for a poorly placed sm57, which isn't a good enough mic to place willy nilly like live guys do. Ok, not willy nilly, but live mics tend to be positioned for minimize bleed and the deficiencies in the sound get made up with eq to mire closely approximate the sound in the room.

Not everyone needs to be a recording engineer despite what people seem to think these days. It would probably be better for music if less people DIYed their recordings.

As I said above, a strat with a humbucker, a mesa studio preamp and a crown amp into a 4×12 with gt65s, g12m70s, gt75s or cl80s (kurt probably used all of those at the time in one cab ir another, dude did not care) will get there if you can intuit the settings beyond "I turn the midrange all the way up." Good luck, the mesa studio has a lot of controls to fiddle with. The missing ingredients will still be kurt's caveman playing and massive, deafening volume. Kurt played loud. I never really liked Kurt's tone anyway, every other seattle band had a better, or at least more interesting guitar sound.

Fender Stratocaster with a humbucker in the bridge, Fender Jaguar with humbuckers —> Boss DS-2 —> EHX Small Clone —> Mesa Boogie Studio guitar pre-amp —> Crown Power Amp —> Marshall 4x12 cabs

Simple.

Maybe this here will help you too.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ9aVcJVPxE

and this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6sU8o6rS4

And this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEYPAbpTOcE

.... but like I said please do not over do this, you will get only very close, not exactly right, ... the best is you check your own sound and find out what is missing and you impove just the one you are not happy with, then after did make the changes, check your sound again and do not ask yourself does it match by 100%, just ask yourself is this a great sound and does sound similar, ..... when not again , check what you got and make when needed another move in the direction and try to improve only the thing you do not like with your sound you got so far ....