Come As You Are guitar tone
Nirvana
watery chorus-drenched riff (clean-to-crunch)
- Tempo
- 120 BPM
The rig Nirvana used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
A left-handed, Mosrite-shaped offset solidbody with humbucking pickups. Producer Butch Vig names 'his Mosrite' for this song's distorted sections; Jack Endino describes the same-looking guitar from the earlier sessions as a Univox, and the band's tech recalls Japanese Stratocasters with full-size bridge humbuckers for this album.
Amplifier
Fender Bassman, cranked, for the distorted sections - named on this song by producer Butch Vig. Vox AC30 for the clean chorused riff and the solo, named for the Nevermind guitar tracks but not for this song specifically.
Microphone
A close dynamic microphone on the combo speaker, in at the edge of the dust cap and about three inches back. No account of these sessions names the microphone that was used.
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
Get this tone on your rig
Pick your amp or modeller and we’ll build Come As You Are for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
The watery riff is an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, and it is the rare Nirvana effect that is documented rather than deduced: MOJO's 1998 feature on these sessions says, in its section on this song, that Cobain's guitar sound "derived from an old Small Clone guitar effects pedal", and producer Butch Vig separately credits the pedal with the watery sound on this track. The same feature has Vig asking Cobain to "crank up his Mosrite through a Fender Bassman amp for the distorted sections", so the loud parts are an overdubbed track through a cranked amp rather than a pedal. The amp behind the clean layer is never named; a Vox AC30 was rented and used across the album. Nobody published the settings, the microphone or the mix reverb.
Sources
- https://www.livenirvana.com/sessions/reading/mojo54.php
- https://guitar.com/features/artist-rigs/the-humble-gear-used-by-kurt-cobain-on-nirvana-nevermind/
- https://reverb.com/news/talking-with-earnie-bailey-nirvanas-guitar-tech
- https://mixdownmag.com.au/features/gear-icons-vox-ac30/
- https://www.ehx.com/products/small-clone/
- https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/nirvana/come-as-you-are/MN0067113
- https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/nirvana/come-as-you-are/MN0073197
- https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/nirvana/come-as-you-are/MN0073198