Nirvana Nevermind & In Utero IR Packs

[Jarick]

Just wanted to give a shout out to this guy for completing a long and crazy journey to duplicate the Nirvana tones.

If you haven't watched any of his videos, it's been a really interesting path. He decided at some point he wanted to completely nail the Nirvana sound, mostly In Utero, but others as well. He made a bunch of videos where he collected different guitars, pickups, amps, cabs, and speakers to get the exact same sound. He even managed to interview Steve Albini, I believe just before his passing.

Pretty cool videos here:





Now I know you could just tone match and create IR's, but it's cool how he went through all the trouble of actually getting the proper instruments and tracking down the right amps/cabs/speakers.

If you want to kill a bunch of time, go back and watch his videos where he does shootouts of things like aluminum guitars and different speakers with the same amp.

 

[dronerstone]

I've been looking at these ever since he put them up.

Haven't tried, since I probably wouldn't use them often and rather spend the moneys elsewhere.

Maybe some day though, I am a huge Nirvana nerd after all.

I have a SansAmp, Poly Chorus, Dandy Horse, so yeah, the IR's might work nicely for "that" sound.

Tbh, as sophisticated as Aaron's work is, YouTube personas and clickbaity titles always succeed in driving me away. At 42, I'm feeling like the old man yelling at clouds + Larry David at the same time.

Sooo, have you tried the cabs? @Jarick

 

[norminal]

Just wanted to give a shout out to this guy for completing a long and crazy journey to duplicate the Nirvana tones.

If you haven't watched any of his videos, it's been a really interesting path. He decided at some point he wanted to completely nail the Nirvana sound, mostly In Utero, but others as well. He made a bunch of videos where he collected different guitars, pickups, amps, cabs, and speakers to get the exact same sound. He even managed to interview Steve Albini, I believe just before his passing.

Pretty cool videos here:





Now I know you could just tone match and create IR's, but it's cool how he went through all the trouble of actually getting the proper instruments and tracking down the right amps/cabs/speakers.

If you want to kill a bunch of time, go back and watch his videos where he does shootouts of things like aluminum guitars and different speakers with the same amp.

So these aren’t tone matches? I’m absolutely blown away from how close they sound to the album tones.

 

[Jarick]

I haven’t tried them and am not super interested but yeah I don’t think they are tone matches at all! Watch his old videos and he sits and tests amps and guitars and does AB comparison. It’s eery how close he has gotten!

 

[PLX]

He even managed to interview Steve Albini, I believe just before his passing.

Would've been weird the other way around.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Similar position where I have no real urge to recreate these tones. Respect to him for doing it the “right” way - brute forcing match eq generally sounds like ass to me, and it’s amazing how similar tones can be if you just find the right cab and mic combination. So many tones aren’t as processed or complex as people think and the raw tone is fairly achievable.

 

[DrewJD82]

I saw one of his vids a few months back when stuff first started popping up and yeah, that was pretty badass how close he got to those tones.

I’d LOVE to do this with Gilmour tones but I’d need funding to make that happen!

 

[norminal]

I’d LOVE to do this with Gilmour tones but I’d need funding to make that happen!

Count me in!

 

[[Nathan]]

I watched his older videos and the guy seems above board, but is there info on the gear combos he used for each IR? Would be cool if there was photos of the Cab/Mics that he shot out. Partly as general gear cool factor but also partly to just show that that's how it was done and wasn't just a tonematch or some software solution (which would be fine but that's not how this pack is being marketed as far as I can tell).

Softube stuff is cool but I guess his top to bottom solution requires you to pickup a bunch of softube amp sim stuff as well?
He mentions cablab in the video links, I'm guessing thats just to load the IR? It's not like some cablab recreation right.

I appreciate all the work but if its $50 for his IRs and then needing to pickup Softube stuff, you'd really want to be a Nirvana fan to go down this route. If it was paired with some NAM captures, ToneX captures, free VST solutions or even something pretty common and robust like Helix Native then those seem more accessible to me than Softube packs. He seems like one of the good guys and he has great videos. I love how close and accurate the sounds are and it's a pretty awesome feat.... but at the same time there's a bit of a disconnect between what he's done and if I'd be willing to shell out for it. I could be completely wrong and this could be amazing to the right people, just sharing initial thoughts with what I'm seeing.

 

[Tito83]

I really like Nirvana as a band, love the tunes, but I was never really interested in nailing those tones - even though they are a perfect fit for the music.

Watched every video he's made on this, and it feels very sincere, which is refreshing these days. Just someone working hard on something they really love and the results show it. For that alone I think about getting the IRs just for supporting his work. Great stuff.

 

[Jarick]

I really like Nirvana as a band, love the tunes, but I was never really interested in nailing those tones - even though they are a perfect fit for the music.

Watched every video he's made on this, and it feels very sincere, which is refreshing these days. Just someone working hard on something they really love and the results show it. For that alone I think about getting the IRs just for supporting his work. Great stuff.

Yeah totally agree, he's so passionate about it, almost childlike innocence? You can see his face light up when he stumbles on something. Was a really cool video series and I don't think he ever intended to make IR's at all but glad he did.

He was also working on an aluminum guitar based on these really rare Veleno guitars, Steve Albini had one and Kurt used it on In Utero. You can hear just how much difference that made in terms of the tone...just don't tell Jim Lill!

 

[TubeStack]

In Utero IR Packs​

Sounds painful.

 

[maddnotez]

Spot on tbh, not something I would ever want to use but impressive.

 

[paisleywookiee]

I watched his older videos and the guy seems above board, but is there info on the gear combos he used for each IR? Would be cool if there was photos of the Cab/Mics that he shot out. Partly as general gear cool factor but also partly to just show that that's how it was done and wasn't just a tonematch or some software solution (which would be fine but that's not how this pack is being marketed as far as I can tell).

Softube stuff is cool but I guess his top to bottom solution requires you to pickup a bunch of softube amp sim stuff as well?
He mentions cablab in the video links, I'm guessing thats just to load the IR? It's not like some cablab recreation right.

I appreciate all the work but if its $50 for his IRs and then needing to pickup Softube stuff, you'd really want to be a Nirvana fan to go down this route. If it was paired with some NAM captures, ToneX captures, free VST solutions or even something pretty common and robust like Helix Native then those seem more accessible to me than Softube packs. He seems like one of the good guys and he has great videos. I love how close and accurate the sounds are and it's a pretty awesome feat.... but at the same time there's a bit of a disconnect between what he's done and if I'd be willing to shell out for it. I could be completely wrong and this could be amazing to the right people, just sharing initial thoughts with what I'm seeing.

While I agree, I think the dude started on this shit WAY before ToneX/NAM became a thing, and Kemper might have been something he didn’t want to do, in order to make it more accessible.

 

[[Nathan]]

While I agree, I think the dude started on this shit WAY before ToneX/NAM became a thing, and Kemper might have been something he didn’t want to do, in order to make it more accessible.

Seems like he's been at it for 2-3 years based on Youtube and ToneX has been around for at least 2, could have been doable. Either way the Softube stuff is just the core amp tone and could have been duplicated at any point really.

At the end of the day I guess its more of a cool obsession than an exercise in making it re-creatable for the masses. Kind of seems like he did it for himself and if you really want to do it as well then here's the IRs and steps. I think if he was ultra interested in spreading it as far and wide as possible then yeah we'd see it on a lot of platforms... totally respect that side of it. But with all that said Softube is still a weird choice haha.