Guitars used by Kurt Cobain have been deemed by the vintage guitar market to be quite the commodity.
The two most expensive guitars ever sold at auction both belonged to the late Nirvana frontman – the Mustang he used in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video sold for $4.55 million in 2022, and the Martin D-18E he used for Nirvana’s legendary MTV Unplugged performance sold for $6 million in 2020.
One Cobain guitar that’s not for sale, however, is the 1953 D-18 acoustic he affectionately referred to as “Grandpa.” Given to Cobain by singer/songwriter Mary Lou Lord, the D-18 now sits in the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
A few months ago, Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson, guitarists for Swedish metal perennials Opeth, stopped by the Martin Museum, and were given, much to their delight (the former called it “the Holy Land”) free rein to take even the museum’s most valuable acoustic guitars for test drives.
Though Åkerfeldt was left in awe by a 19th century acoustic he got to play – “I got scared,” he told Revolver in a recent interview – he was decidedly less moved by Cobain’s D-18.
“It was very beat up,” Åkerfeldt told Revolver of the guitar in a recent interview. “It didn’t feel that good. There was nothing special about it, other than it had belonged to Kurt.”
Åkerfeldt also shrugged off the spooky lore that apparently comes with the instrument.
“Someone told us that guitar was haunted, like people who had that guitar had accidents,” he said. “I’m a Nirvana fan, but it was just a regular guitar to me.”
According to MartinCobain received the “Grandpa” D-18 shortly before the release of Nirvana’s history-making Nevermind album.
It would be another two years before he purchased the oddball, already-rare Martin D-18E that would later become the most expensive guitar ever sold.
According to Nirvana guitar tech Earnie Bailey, Cobain was largely nonchalant about the value, age, and such of guitars, viewing them primarily as tools.
“I don’t believe he had any idea how rare it was before he bought (the D-18E),” Bailey told Guitar World in 1995.
“Kurt was neither a collector nor a connoisseur of rare guitars. I think he saw it as an oddity, hoping it would sound as good as it looked.”
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