One of my old pal asked me to mix his Punk rap rock garage type of project.

He asked me to make the guitar sound like Nirvana Lithium and the whole mix sound like some early 2000 Sublime.

He's sending me some naked fender DI fed tracks which I will need to process as needed.

That's definitely not my forte but I love some challenge and was wandering on google trying to get as much info as possible.

Now from what I gathered (from this video) , Kurt used a Big Muff (Civil War, Russian or Pi !?) into a Fender Bassman amp.

My friend told me that they didn't play on a click track and that it's really not on point and they want to keep it that way (no editing or re-sequencing , Woohoo !!) . So I guess, what I'm asking here is a plugin chain that will get me as close as possible to Kurt sound without trying to buttfawk a fly (sorry, French expression that doesn't translate well. But you get what I mean)

Novoselic tone info on replication would also be welcomed if any avail.

I'm attaching Kurt and Novoselic Alt track of Lithium avail on the internet for reference HERE.

So to make it short, what I'm looking to do is get as close as possible, in the box, to those tone without going nuts.

Thanks for your help on which plugin and setting I should use to get a ''close enough'' sound.

 

My favourite Muff is the one in BYOD. You should be able to get a very wide range of Muff sounds out of it. Has more options than any other Muff plugin I know of.

If I needed a Bassman in 2023, I'd try a neural capture (ToneX/NAM/AmperiumNNM/Proteus) first (out of curiosity). As for standalone plugins - I have the bx_bassdude and it seemed perfectly fine at the time.

 

there's a preset in Native Instrument Guitar Rig "Kurt In Bloom" that already sound close, maybe start build from there.

It uses ProCo Rat in the chain, can experiment with replacing it with Muff or the Red Fuzz and make sure to add Chorus pedal after the Muff to soften the edge, it's what Kurt did.

Faster, no fly will be harmed.

Novoselic bass tone is as simple as it can be, straight into Ampeg SVT on default settings. But all the tone lies in the Gibson RD bass he used which might need EQing the Bass DI to get to its range. Kush REDDI plugin also can be helpful to get all those midrange on the DI.

 

Last edited: Sep 1, 2023