Krist’s Equipment

What did Krist play in Nirvana? Quite a lot, it turns out. Krist went through Ibanez basses, a run of Gibsons and a famously complicated HiWatt amp rig. Much of the detail below comes from Nirvana guitar tech Earnie Bailey, who described Krist’s rig in an interview with Alex Roberts for LiveNirvana‘s equipment guide. We’ve summarized it in our own words; the full guide is worth reading. We’ve also used Krist’s own comments from a 2012 Bass Player interview, republished by Guitar World (Bass Player via Guitar World).

Want the whole story, after Nirvana too? Our Krist Novoselic gear guide goes era by era, from Nirvana through Sweet 75, Eyes Adrift, Flipper, Giants in the Trees and the Bona Fide Band.

A note on this page: earlier versions of this page reproduced long passages from Earnie Bailey’s and Andy Marshall’s LiveNirvana interview without credit. We’ve replaced them with a summary and links to the original.

Basses

Krist’s first “bass” in the early band was actually a Fender Mustang guitar strung up as a bass. Then came a borrowed 1960s Japanese bass, and then a black Ibanez he bought for $300 (Bass Player via Guitar World). The rest of the Nirvana years, roughly in order:

• Ibanez Roadster. The bass in a well-known very early photo of Krist sticking his tongue out (LiveNirvana).
• Ibanez Black Eagle 2609B. Krist had three or four, toured them throughout the band’s career, and used them in the “Sliver” video. His original Black Eagle is on display at MoPOP (formerly Experience Music Project) in Seattle (LiveNirvana).
• Gibson Victory, silver. Smashed at the Riverside in Newcastle upon Tyne on the first night of Nirvana’s 1989 European tour (LiveNirvana).
• Fender Precision basses. At one Seattle Kennel Club show Krist borrowed a ’62 Precision from TAD’s Kurt Danielson, and smashed another Precision (LiveNirvana).
• Gibson Ripper. The bass most people picture Krist with. He had several in ebony, natural and sunburst finishes; a sunburst Ripper appears in the “Come As You Are” video (LiveNirvana). Krist says he played a blonde Ripper on Nevermind, that two of his Rippers were later stolen, and that he “stuck with Gibson basses the whole way through, because they’re so dense” (Bass Player via Guitar World).
• Gibson RD Artist. Two of them, toured heavily (LiveNirvana).
• Zen-On. A 1960s Japanese bass seen in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. Bailey suspects it was a pawnshop find bought for the shoot (LiveNirvana).
• Ampeg AEB-1. Bailey’s own bass, lent to Krist for the 1960s-styled “In Bloom” video (LiveNirvana).
• Gibson Thunderbird IV. One sunburst and one ebony; Krist gave the ebony one to Matt Lukin of Mudhoney in 1994 (LiveNirvana).
• Gibson RD Standard. A “Kristmas” present from Bailey, played at the Brazil festival shows in 1993 (LiveNirvana).
• Gibson EB-2. A 1960s Pelham Blue EB-2 that went out on the In Utero tour (LiveNirvana).
• Warwick Dolphin. Borrowed from the studio for a Dutch radio session, the 2 Meter Sessie, while the band’s own gear was being set up for a concert that night (LiveNirvana).

Effects

Krist kept it simple. He used an MXR Distortion+ in the Bleach era; after that, his pedal of choice was a ProCo Rat 2. For a while in late 1992 he used Kurt’s old Boss DS-1s, but he asked for the Rat back on later tours (LiveNirvana).

Amps and cabinets

• Bleach era: a Laney Pro-Bass head and a Peavey 2×15 cabinet (LiveNirvana).
• Fender BXR 400: an earlier head that became a seldom-used backup in his rack (LiveNirvana).
• Ampeg SVT 400T: arrived around early 1991 and was probably used to record Nevermind. Cabinets in the Nevermind era were Marshall 4x12s plus Mesa/Boogie Road Ready 4x10s and 2x15s (LiveNirvana).
• HiWatt Custom 100: the heart of Krist’s later sound. Bailey found the first one in a Seattle pawnshop for $300. Andy Marshall of THD Electronics modified it to run KT90 power tubes, and the crew usually took the preamp’s line out through a Groove Tubes speaker emulator into separate power amps, including a Crest 4801 borrowed from Kurt’s rig (LiveNirvana).
• Gallien-Krueger 800RB: used on the In Utero tour, along with a wall of Ampeg SVT cabinets (LiveNirvana).
• 1968 Marshall Super Lead: converted to 6550 tubes and used for the In Utero demos at Reciprocal and Nirvana’s last studio session, at Robert Lang Studios in 1994 (LiveNirvana).

Why the HiWatt? Andy Marshall told LiveNirvana that Krist wanted the bass tone of Kurt Danielson of TAD, which Krist considered the best bass sound he’d ever heard, so Marshall built Krist a copy of the amp he had set up for Danielson (LiveNirvana). Krist still had his In Utero HiWatt in 2012, by then driving an 8×10 cabinet (Bass Player via Guitar World).

Unplugged

Krist didn’t own an “unplugged” bass, so for MTV Unplugged in New York the crew rented a Guild B30E acoustic bass from S.I.R. in New York. On the Meat Puppets songs he played Curt Kirkwood’s Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar, and the accordion on “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” was a Dobren that belonged to Kurt (LiveNirvana). Strings throughout the Nirvana years were Rotosound RS66 long-scale, standard gauge (LiveNirvana).

After Nirvana

In 2011 Gibson released the Krist Novoselic Signature RD Bass. Krist told Bass Player he had shipped his own RD Standard to Gibson because he found its pickups “kinda dull,” and the signature model kept his changes: Seymour Duncan Hot Stack pickups and a longer headstock (Bass Player via Guitar World). It has a maple body and neck and an ebony finish (No Treble).

That same year Krist guested on the Foo Fighters song “I Should Have Known” from Wasting Light. Nate Mendel covered the low end, so Krist played “lead bass” on a Gibson Ripper the studio had on hand, through a Rat distortion pedal. When he asked them to roll Pro Tools, the band reminded him the whole album was going to tape, so he had to nail full takes (Bass Player via Guitar World). Sound On Sound’s account of the sessions confirms that Grohl insisted on recording entirely to tape (Sound On Sound). In the same interview he named John Entwistle, Geezer Butler, Paul McCartney and R.E.M.’s Mike Mills as bass players he looked up to.

Lately the accordion has come back out. Ahead of a 2024 show with Krist Novoselic’s Bona Fide Band, he told The Comet, “I also play a little accordion” (The Comet).

For more on the music Krist made with all this gear, see Krist in Nirvana, the complete discography and our Krist Novoselic timeline.

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Last updated October 2026.