Nirvana tone obsessive Aaron Rash has spent the last few years tumbling down the rabbit hole of Kurt Cobain’s feral In Utero electric guitar sound. Now, he's produced a painstakingly put-together pack of Impulse Responses that lets guitarists harness the iconic In Utero tone "without touching a single physical amp".
Nirvana’s Nevermind follow-up (which Steve Albini offered to produce for free, so long as they beat him at a game of pool) was released in 1993 to great acclaim. It saw Cobain take his guitar tones in a wiry new direction – a sound Rash has been determined to recreate.
As such, the Utero Sessions IR Pack follows years of investment into research and gear-chasing to nail the record’s distinctive sound. Even if at times he felt it was a fruitless endeavor.
“I have bought and sold probably seven different [Fender] Quad Reverbs to find the perfect sounding one, because – news flash – they don’t all sound the same, even with the same speakers,” he says of the process. “They really vary all over the place.”
“Every amp is different and it's going to affect the tone,” Rash said of his tone hunt to MusicRadar earlier this year. “I found speakers make the most difference, especially for distortion tones – it’s night and day.
“I’ve always thought about it like this: if you take white noise and you run it through a speaker, every speaker is going to have its own profile. Distortion is just like white noise, really – if you hear it without going through a speaker, it just sounds like trash. The speaker is really important.”
The problem Rash faced was that the speaker he longed for – one made by legacy speaker brand, Utah, specifically for the Quad Reverb – is extremely rare. Only a few were made.
But he couldn’t cut corners, saying: “With its undersized magnets, and 16 ohm voice coil, nothing else sounds quite like it.”
Away from the speaker intricacies, Rash endeavored to use the same 1940s ribbon mics Nirvana used, despite them coming at an “astronomical” cost.
Says Rash: “I sourced all the original microphones that were used on the record, preamps, literally everything. I honestly don’t want to know how much I’ve spent to do this, but it’s done! And I am so happy to share it with you guys.”
Rash also points out that the room in which the IRs were created was crucial, adding that Steve Albini and Cobain’s guitar tech, Earnie Bailey, helped guide him on his mammoth journey.
The software is compatible with amp guitar plugins, with Rash personally recommending the Softube Vintage Amp Room. However, he says any kind of Fender Twin Reverb-emulating plugin will do the trick.
“The amp’s not really important,” he confesses. “What’s important is the IR pack.”
The Utero Sessions IR Pack is available now for $49.99.
Head to Aaron Rash to learn more.
