Krist Novoselic’s bass tone

Hello, I was watching some live Nirvana videos (specifically live at the Paramount) and his bass tone is one of the best I heard. I Know he uses Gibson basses, but I am not sure of his amp settings.

I don't know what to tell you because in that era its ampeg or possibly hiwatt. I think the ampeg was all tube, 400 watt rackmount SVT type with the classiv bacandall/active mid tnone circuit as well as a solid state gaphic EQ... the hiwatt was a modified DR103 but he may have been just using the preamp (still a pretty unique tube design in that amp with totally unique bass and treble controls as far as the FMV tonestack goes not to mention a unique layout of the gainstageing, nothing is like a dr103)... both those amps have pretty unique tone circuits so you're probably not replicating his settings, plus the guy sued 4x12 cabs for bass so thatw as further influencing the shape of his sound. If you're dead set on his sound I can build you a hiwatt preamp in a floor box or a 1ru box no problem for a few hundred bucks. The SVT, even wihout the graphic EQ would cost a lot more, the midrange on the V series uses an expensive multitap inductor. WIthout those oddball amps knowing his settings will do little for you. Getting an isolated recording and running a spectrum analyzer on it would help you know the general frequency response but there's a lot of other stuff going on in circuits like these.

Thanks,I remember reading somewhere that he used a bass driver. But his "Pedal Board" at the was pretty bare. On here it says that Krist used a Pro Co RAT distortion on many recordings, most notably In Bloom which was around that time, that probably gave it some more grit.

he definitely used a rat and some sort of chorus or flanger when I saw them... pedals were duck taped to the stage

understanding tone controls: http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/