Kurt Cobain’s Secret Behind In Utero Uncovered at Last]

i finally found kurt cobain’s REAL in utero amp – YouTube

Aaron Rash, the guitarist who has been obsessively chasing Nirvana‘s In Utero guitar tones, has uncovered the amp Kurt Cobain used to track its peculiar cleans – and it was hiding in plain sight.

While 1991’s chart-smashing Nevermind is widely regarded as the grunge giant’s magnum opus, it’s the record’s successor, In Utero, that has so enraptured Rash’s imagination.

combo amp that Cobain used for the record featured only one working power tube.

“I didn’t really know what to think when Kurt told me about the Quad with one tube,” Albini states. “But when I looked in the back of it, sure enough, there were three shattered tubes and one working one pumping away.”

The issue is that a single power tube wasn’t enough to produce clean tones, and that, alongside a Randall RG-120 PH Commander head, was dismissed. But there was faint hope.

“On a song-by-song basis, Kurt would decide which amp would be the main sound and which would be the overdub sound,” Albini notes. “So the Randall, Quad, and one other amp – I forget which – would be done live, the other guitar part overdubbed.”

Guitarist and YouTuber Aaron Rash with a Fneder Twin Reverb II amp

(Image credit: Aaron Rash)

So, what was the mystery third amp? Well, for four years, Rash hit dead end after dead end. A Marshall Plexi modded by Cobain’s guitar tech, Earnie Bailey, designed to be a clean amp, was ruled out, as was his beloved 1982 Ultra-Linear black-panel Fender Twin Reverb. And there was no evidence that Cobain used an amp belonging to Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.

“I started to feel pretty hopeless, like I’d wasted four years trying to figure out this stupid guitar tone,” Rash sighs. “I can’t tell you how many times I was close to giving up.”

The answer came from an interview with Bailey, in which he mentions a Rivera Twin Reverb, a dramatic revamping of the Fender amp by esteemed amp builder and modder, Paul Rivera. Billed as the Twin Reverb II, and released in the early ’80s, the joyous laugh that comes out of Rash after plugging into the amp says all you need to know.

“I felt like I’d just found the cure to cancer,” he beams. “I literally cried tears of joy.”

Photos from the studio sessions show the Twin Reverb II lurking in the corner, confirming that this was the amp that produced the tones that have been turning Rash inside out for four whole years.