2.04.2019

2019 already?!

Sorry for the years of not keeping this up. I got busy with college and graduate school.

I'm working on a complete revision here: http://kurtcobainguitars.com

I'm leaving all of these posts intact and creating all the updates on the new site.


2.05.2012

Hello 2012

No worries. This guide is not dead! It's just slow.

I've been waiting for Apple to announce what they are going to do about iWeb.
I built up a new version of this guide in iWeb but then Apple announced they were going to discontinue it and I didn't want to proceed with a dying platform.

Once I get that figured out, this guide will be a lot better. Right now navigation sucks. You have to click on the little triangles on the right to get to all the cool stuff. I want to do away with that.
Tips and suggestions welcome! Leave them in the comments.

In the meantime here are some minor news.

Fender has released a Kurt Cobain edition Jaguar and Mustang.

The Vandalism Strat info was recently updated with corrected information on the necks (Kramer necks?!)

There were two amazing contributions left in the comments of one of the posts. One was regarding Kurt's pedals, the other regarding a possible KC Univox find. I'll clean this up once the new guide is up sometime in the (near?) future.


Univox Mosrite Copy

The following is from Bruno. What a fantastic find! Thank you Bruno.


Hi, i don't know if this is the right place to contact you, but i couldn't find any other place to....I was just listening to that Nevermind 20th thing with Jon Stewart interviewing Krist, Dave and Butch Vig, and Dave starts telling a story about how they came up with Heart Shaped Box...They were at The Posies practice space and they started jamming on the song, and when Kurt went up to the microphone to sing he got shocked....so he was like fuuuck and stepped back and they stopped the jam...then they start the jam over, and he goes up to the microphone and gets shocked again, and smashes his guitar in rage...then Krist adds up to the story, saying he just played the Experience Music Project thing and Kurt Bloch from the Fastbacks had a Univox Mosrite copy and Krist was like oh cool he has one of those too...so the story is that apparently Kurt Bloch found a smashed guitar in a garbage can at a practice space, glued it back together and kept it in his closet for like 20 years and brought it back for this show...here's a link to the performance...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z5sQLHS8qc

i thought it was cool little story that he has kurt's guitars now and i don't know if you were aware of it...anyway ur site is awesome man, keep up the good work...cheers from brazil!!!

Pedals

The following was left in the comments for the entry on the reissue Jag.
It's too good to not post. The poster is "anonymous". Whoever you are, thank you!

When the new guide is up, I'll embed the pictures and make your contribution pretty.

people who were asking about pedals:

ds-1 japan silver screw (likely 1980ish...you can actually see the silver screw here):
http://www.nirvanaguide.com/images/1990/051390.51.jpg
and here
http://www.kurtsequipment.com/pictures/kurts_ds1.jpg
(the second one seems to be sent from bailey?)

kurt's polychorus (formerly bailey's? - sent in from bailey?):
http://www.kurtsequipment.com/pictures/kurtspoly.jpg

used an original small box proco rat (likely 86-88?) here:
http://www.nirvanaguide.com/images/1989/100889.10.jpg
http://www.nirvanaguide.com/images/1989/100889.15.jpg
along with that Arion mij tuner from the 80s black with white stripe
he also trialed it again when switching to the ds-2 - I've seen a photo where he's trying both the ds-2 and the rat together after putting the ds-1 away...I dunno if the ds-1 was really broken or if someone (earnie?) told him to stop using it live because that thing is pretty rare...like $200 on ebay rare not $25 mit ones...maybe it was broken I dunno...the distortion pot had it's knob removed or lost...hard to tell lots of things were taped or wired/modded to only function one way to avoid accidents live right


on a tangent, the univox custom (it is a custom, says so on the headstock) used on snl rape me, etc has the ibanez gibraltar bridge on it not a badass bridge and it has two humbuckers, likely a dimarzio paf type in the neck and a dimarzio sd (or maybe a sd jb sh-4) in the bridge - basically a univox that would sound like the jaguar...the original p90s are amazing though (see rio guitar) - this guitar is like 1968 and rare - the exact same guitar was made in Canada, just a different headstock logo/brand, same with the phase II flyers (see wikipedia - cheaper than erm $500 on ebay unless you want it to say univox and not something else...)

the small clone is rare 1980/81 version (the first version) that had mini chorus on it (perhaps because the first boss chorus was huge compared to the small clone) - see it here:

http://www.spin.com/gallery/instrument-stories-behind-kurt-cobain-bon-iver-and-more-artists-favorite-gear?page=2#main
http://www.spin.com/sites/spin.com/files/imagecache/gallery_landscape/sites/spin.com/files/images/cobain_1_B_Instrument.png

the ds-2 is likely a japanese ds-2 and those are a bit more rare as well:
http://www.bossarea.com/loadpage.asp?file=boxes/DS-2.xml

any ideas what these two are from 1989-06-27?:
ds-1 and??? pedal that is more red...
http://www.nirvanaguide.com/images/1987/062787.04.jpg

the rest is pretty decent on the equipment faqs

someone needs to figure out the story on the ibanez (pre-lawsuit?) 1970s set neck cherry sunburst les paul copy with the coil tap switches on it...saw a black lefty one on ebay before but that was a mid-late 70s model with bolt on neck, not the prelawsuit with the set neck...anyway this guitar is a total mystery to me and not in these faqs anywhere...super rare guitar.

the ultra-linear twin blackface rivera twin reverb from 1982 135w or whatever is rarer too

more info on the peavey vintage coming but something is in the works first.

8.28.2011

Kurt Cobain's 1965 Fender Jaguar - Photos soon?



Looks like close up photos of Kurt Cobain's 1965 Fender Jaguar are going to be released soon. Here is a screenshot from a teaser video on Fender's Facebook page regarding the release of the replica Jaguar.

The Jaguar in this photo is different from the replica in that it has the neck pickup in the correct spot and the strap peg on the left horn (for a right handed player). It also appears that the Jaguar is still strung up for a right handed player, which has been the case since it's last known whereabouts (Eric Erlandson of Hole).

Special thanks to Twitter user @Act902 for letting us know about this!

Here is a previous post regarding this guitar.
Here is a previous post about the replica that Fender is gearing up to release soon.




8.19.2011

Fender soon to release Kurt Cobain Jaguar Replica





Rolling Stone blog was the first release information about this. Read it here.

Fender has posted a teaser video on Facebook.
There is a frame in the video with what appears to be close ups of Kurt's actual Jag.
Watch teaser video here.


While it is not an exact replica, it's the closest that's ever been produced by Fender.
Here is a photoshopped version with the pickups placed correctly, angled bridge, single string retainer, right-handed strap peg, and the extra hole on the trem.





5.20.2011

White Fender Stratocaster






White Fender Stratocaster

One of two white Fender Stratocasters mentioned at http://www.kurtsequipment.com/ It is currently on display at the EMP's dedicated Nirvana exhibit. Long time friend of the band Rob took the photo above and hooked us up with this info:

"The story on the white Fender Stratocaster is that it shows up in Kurt's arsenal late 1991. It is first destroyed in Ghent, Belgium 11/23/91. It is repaired (new neck, pickguard, etc.) Then it sees it's final destruction 9/11/92 at the Seattle Center Coliseum show."


Videos



Source
Rob