Nirvana...

[ZanaZulu807]

I'm not a big fan of the band, but the bassist's tone, particularly on the In Utero album, does he use some sort of effects to get that dark sound? I've read around and all I see is that he used a rat for distortion. Anyone know?

[benmoore88]

apparently the bass tone used to be even darker or muddier than it is on the album and it was 'tightened up' during the mix. from memory he was using a gibson grabber.

[Chris V.]

I'm pretty sure he was playing through a Marshall stack... The same one as Kurt was using.

[theunknowndude]

the bass in the hard rock cafe on the gold coast in aus (not sure which album its from???) is a fender,... I wish I could nail the dark muddy tone from the bleach album tho!!! :bassist

that album was just so... RAW

[ZanaZulu807]

The song that caught my attention the most was "Milk it", the bass in that interlude/solo/whatever sounded good, it kinda sounded like he was using a sansamp but the tone was more growley than grindy.

[gibsualdo]

http://www.livenirvana.com/equipment/krist.php

HiWatt Custom 100 watt

Here is the somewhat complex HiWatt saga: I found Krist his first one at a Seattle pawnshop for $300, and it had been previously drilled for a preamp output on the back. Andy Marshall at THD Electronics upgraded the preamp line out and modded the amp for KT-90 tubes (see below for more info). We bought a Groove Tubes speaker emulator to run the entire amp through the power amps and into the array of Boogie & Marshall cabs. The line out direct from the preamp sounded best, so we typically ran the HiWatt not utilizing the KT-90 output section at all, with the exception of the Crocodile Cafe show where I believe we used the HiWatts with 2 Marshall 4X12 cabs, and the recording of In Utero. For In Utero the HiWatts were sent out as was a 100 watt 1968 Marshall plexi Super Lead converted to 6550 tubes.

Andy: Krist came to me asking me to help him get the sound that Kurt Danielson from the group Tad had. From what Krist said, Kurt had the best bass sound he had ever heard. So, I helped him duplicate the amplifier I had set up for Kurt. It was a 1970s (I think) HiWatt DR103 100 watt guitar head. I then rebuilt the bias supply to allow the amp to properly bias the Yugoslavian EI brand KT90 power tubes that are rather important to the sound. They have a different bias requirement than the stock EL34 tubes. To add a bit more attack and tighten-up the bottom end, I doubled the capacitance in the first stage of the power supply. Also, I changed the driver-tube coupling capacitors to WIMA-brand 0.1 microfarad, 630 volt metalized polyester film capacitors, which, from my experience, gave the amps a more musical bottom end. I guess Krist liked it, because he seemed to use it a lot.