The Guitar Gear Used on Bleach by Nirvana
1991 is often described as the “the year grunge broke” – primarily because it was the year when Nirvana released their first major label record, the epoch-defining Nevermind. But grunge had been percolating in the years leading up to that, and Nirvana themselves already had a healthy following. Case in point, the band’s debut album, Bleach had already sold 40,000 copies – great numbers for an independent release of that era, and a major smash for their nascent record label, Sub Pop.
READ MORE: The Humble Gear Used by Kurt Cobain on Nirvana’s Nevermind
Released in 1989 Bleach would lay the bedrock for the world-changing impact of Nevermind – its success played a significant part in generating interest in the Seattle scene, and Nirvana in particular from major labels. It was a rougher, rawer version of what the band was capable of – but it’s hugely impactful in its own right.
So let’s take a closer look at this diamond in the rough – specifically, the modest gear that was used to launch the recording career of a little band from Aberdeen, Washington called Nirvana.
The Recording
Bleach was recorded over the course of about 30 hours spread across six days (at five hours a piece) at Reciprocal Recordings in Seattle Washington. The studio is still there, albeit under a new name. Lots of great bands and artists have recorded there, such as Modest Mouse, Soundgarden, Low, and Mark Lanegan.
The album was produced by Jack Endino – Sub Pop’s go-to producer – who was no stranger to that studio, as he had previously recorded Green River’s Dry As A Bone in 1986 and Soundgarden’s debut EP Screaming Life in 1987. For the recording of Bleach, Endino billed the band thirty hours of recording at $606.17 ($1,541.34 in 2024) which even today is very cheap. Jason Everman put up the money for the recording and “joined” the band – that is to say he was credited on the album sleeve in the original pressings but wasn’t featured in any of the recordings.
In spite of the limited studio time and minimal budget, the band had some specific ideas in mind for what they wanted their record to sound like, drawing from a classic rock sort of sound. The entire album was recorded on an Otari MX-5050 Mk III half-inch 8-track recorder. The guitar cabinet was miked with a SM58 and the bass cabinet was miked with a Sennheiser MD 421. For vocals, Cobain used the same mic as his guitar cabinet – an SM58 with a foam windscreen.
The Band
Nirvana, at the time, consisted of static members Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic and drum duties on the album being handled by Chad Channing and Dale Crover. For the sake of this article, we will focus on the gear used by Cobain as there just is not much info out there on what Novoselic used aside from that the cabinet was a big 2×15 that was always missing a wheel. According to live photos, he was using a Laney Pro amp and an MXR Distortion+ during that era. As for basses, he used a lot of different stuff during that era from Gibson, to Ibanez, to Fender, and was no stranger to borrowing basses for gigs.
The Guitars
According to Endino, Cobain used a Univox guitar with stock humbuckers that looked, “sort of like a Mosrite” for the duration of the sessions for Bleach. Based on this description, and photographic evidence of live performances back then, we know this guitar to be a Univox Hi-Flier Phase III, which were made from 1974 until 1977. This was the peak years of production for the Hi-Flier and today they are the most common ones around. Humbuckers from this era are generally known to be very high output. Another interesting characteristic of these guitars was the bridge, which was a Jaguar style tremolo. Perhaps it was no surprise that Cobain later used a Jaguar on Nevermind and In Utero.
Photos from live shows suggest that Cobain may have had a few Hi-Fliers – one natural, one sunburst and one white, one red, sometimes they had stickers, sometimes not, but it could be one guitar that was subjected to alterations in décor between shows. In any case, they were all Phase III Hi-Fliers.
Kurt Cobain’s Univox electric guitar played and destroyed by Cobain at Nirvana’s July 13, 1989 concert at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey displayed during Julien’s Auction Music Icons Press Exhibition at Hard Rock Cafe, Times Square on May 16, 2016 in New York City. Image: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
The Amps
As for amplifiers, Cobain was using a solid-state Randall amp for his live shows at the time. Courtney Love has claimed it was a Commander II model. According to Endino, that amp was in the shop for the Bleach sessions, so Cobain used Endino’s ’68 Fender Twin through Cobain’s cabinet which was a 2×12 with 70 or 75-watt Celestions and a sealed back – based on photo evidence, this would appear to be a BFI Bullfrog model cabinet which were popular in the 1980s.
The Legacy
While Bleach doesn’t get the reverence that Nirvana’s later recordings do, it is still an integral part of who Nirvana were as a band. Some may argue that the album captures the band in its rawest form. Some people have made certain outrageous claims about those recording sessions, but according to Jack Endino, the band was very much focused on the task at hand and were trying to make the most of the time they were paying for in the studio.
A lot of fans have made a hobby of analyzing Cobain’s lyrics, but on Bleach, the main focus for the band was the sound of the record, not necessarily the lyrics. Cobain was often finishing up lyrics on the spot and later said in Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana, that he, “didn’t care about lyrics at all at that point.” Whatever your opinion is of Bleach, it contained the seeds of the cultural phenomenon that Nirvana would become, and certainly warrants another listen.
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