{"id":390724,"date":"2026-04-09T23:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T23:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/390724\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T23:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T23:52:12","slug":"nirvanas-bleach-era-touring-backline-goes-up-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/390724\/","title":{"rendered":"Nirvana\u2019s Bleach-era touring backline goes up for sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nirvana<\/a>\u2019s Bleach-era touring backline is being sold off, offering Kurt Cobain<\/a> obsessives a rare opportunity to nail the Promethean electric guitar<\/a> tones that would become the bedrock of the Seattle sound as the rising tide of the grunge revolution swept all before it.<\/p>\n

The collection is being sold from tomorrow (10 April) at 5pm UK time via London\u2019s Denmark Street Guitars, based out of Hanks Guitars, which is a place packed with grail-worthy items.<\/p>\n

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This is where Peter Capaldi found Doctor Who\u2019s \u201cjunk shop\u201d Yamaha<\/a> electric. A few weeks back they had Eric Clapton<\/a>\u2019s 1939 000-42 acoustic guitar<\/a> \u2013 no, not the MTV Unplugged 000-42 that sold for $4,101,000 as part of the record-breaking Jim Irsay auction, but a \u201ctwin\u201d that Slowhand got just for recording.<\/p>\n

Article continues below <\/p>\n

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Indeed, the last time we walked by \u2013 en route to speak to Zakk Wylde<\/a> \u2013 there was one of those stunning (and \u00fcber-rare) Jimmy Page<\/a> Les Paul Custom Shop replicas calling out from the window. It’s that kind of place.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the Nirvana<\/a> amps. Given their live-in-a-dive history, might well be quarantined behind some plexiglass \u2013 they look like the kind of tube amps<\/a> that would get a restaurant shut down on a health code violation.<\/p>\n

The collection includes Cobain\u2019s black and silver-panelled Fender Twin Reverb combos, all loaded with JBL speakers, plus a Marshall 4×12 speaker cabinet, and bass guitar<\/a> players aren\u2019t left out either, with Krist Novoselic\u2019s Ampeg SVT head also included.<\/p>\n

Cobain\u2019s Bleach tones are one of the gnarliest sounds every committed to tape. Raw, barely tamed yet unusually eminently listenable \u2013 certainly when compared with the totally hostile noise-rock engineering of In Utero<\/a>, when they went all in clang and feedback, and used every bit of Steve Albini<\/a>\u2019s nous to get a sound to unsettle the mainstream.<\/p>\n

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Bleach? According to producer Jack Endino, that was his \u201967 Fender Twin that had been loaded with a pair of Utah speakers \u2013 until Endino fried them. At the time, Cobain had preferred a solid-state Randall, using it on the 1988 recordings with Dale Crover playing drums.<\/p>\n

Endino remembers this as a febrile time for the band. Nirvana did not mess about in the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first demo I did for Nirvana took five hours and they did 10 songs, and it was recorded and mixed in one afternoon, and then they went and played a show that night,\u201d recalled Endino, speaking to Guitar World<\/a> in 2022. \u201cThat was the one and only show of that era that they played with Dale Crover on the drums, January, 1988. The songs were one take. If a band is really good then all you have to do is get out of their way and make sure the sounds are good, hit \u2018record\u2019 and let them do their thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When Cobain\u2019s Randall went in for repair he used Endino\u2019s Twin through a 2×12 cab loaded with a pair of Celestions. This particular guitar amp<\/a> would assume a certain notoriety.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, I still have it,\u201d said Endino. \u201cIt\u2019s called \u2018The Bleach Twin\u2019 because Kurt used it on Bleach. I can tell you Kurt, using my amp on Bleach, was using a Boss<\/a> DS-1, the orange [distortion] pedal<\/a> with three knobs. That was his sound in 1989.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cobain tracked Bleach with the Mosrite-esque Univox Hi-Flyers, then embarked on Nirvana\u2019s US tour with an Epiphone ET270, using his Randall head through a Bullfrog 4×12. That was in his Bleach-era touring rig for the US. The Boss<\/a> pedal made it out unscathed, the guitars, not so much.<\/p>\n

In Europe, the touring for Bleach was supplied by Protone backline rental in Holland, and comprised the complement of amps being sold via Denmark Street Guitars.<\/p>\n

You can register your interest at sales (at) londonvntageguitars.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nirvana\u2019s Bleach-era touring backline is being sold off, offering Kurt Cobain obsessives a rare opportunity to nail the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-390724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}