Distortion pedal with mismatched clipping diodes

Were there ever any photos from the recording sessions?

A Fender amp with the tubes all missing and/or fucked up might sound cool but also sounds like a good way to throw money away and/or set something on fire. Remember, Kurt could afford to hire a full-time amp and guitar tech--Nirvana were a multi-million dollar industry at this point.A quick google search for "Distortion pedal" "asymmetrical clipping" will bring up literally dozens of results. Kurt liked the DS-1; in my experience those pedals suck shit, but the Keely modded ones are supposed to be decent. Start there, and if you still have teh Kurdtz get yourself an OG Hi-Flyer or carve up a Jag to put a Super Distortion in there. I would probably opt for a lower wattage Fender amp (Silverface Deluxe Reverb, Bandmaster, Bassman, etc) before I started fucking around with pulling tubes or intentionally using faulty ones.

I don't know. I'm not exactly trying to copy the sound, i'm just curious to learn about asymmetrical distortion, how it can be achieved, if it's just the sound of all tube amps or not, if the missing tubes are creating the asymmetrical property or not...

HiCan the In Utero "asymmetrical" distortion sound be recreated with a pedal ? If so, which ?Source : œThe first song we recorded was Serve The Servants. We did a sound check before getting started and just before that first take Kurt added a booster pedal into his amp set up “ he was using a Fender Quad Reverb that was missing a tube so it had an asymmetrical distortion. It s a very characteristic sound of that record, this gnarly overdrive. ""According to Albini the "strained, distorted guitar sounds" came from the use of a Fender Twin Reverb amp, with three of its four power tubes broken or missing"Thanks

Give an SD-1 a whirl, it distorts assymetrically. That pedal it sounds a bit 'hairier' or edgier? see what happens but as for getting that sound in a box, there's a lot more going on. Hell the speakers in the cabinet alone probably play a bigger part in the overall soundOn some level there won't be symmetry in a push pull amp with unmatched tubes, bias not set exactly the same etc. There will def. be a different thing going on if some odd number of tubes are pulled... but if you've never played/owned a tube amp before I would just start with one that works normally before you go down this rabbit hole

Pro tip: Use your bandmate's head and pull the tubes out of that, screw around for a little while and then leave everything strewn about the jamspace and don't tell her/him what you did until it breaks months later

Durham Crazy Horse is good for broken sounds. It wasn't designed with Nirvana in mind so much as Neil Young, but you might want to check it out.

KentuckyFriedChicken wrote:Looks like every web forum has turned into a competition of not answering questions but judging them and figuring the worst scenario that would have lead the OP to ask for it.Or maybe it's always been the case and i'm just old and fed up with it ? There are 7 replies to your post. 5 of them answer your question. one asks if there are photos of the session you're referencing and one is a bit of a joke. How is this a competition to not answer your question?