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I have a small practice amp, with no usb port. I was thinking of buying an audio interfere and connect to my PC.

Can I use digital pedals and amps, add reverb, distortion, overdrive?

How do I know how to get my guitar to sound like the music I like? Let's say I want to play Nirvana's Come As You Are. How do I know which pedals I should use?

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  • Go to a good local gear store where you can try out pedals, and hopefully there are employees to give you advice in the hopes that you buy stuff.
    – Andy Bonner
    Aug 22 at 15:51
  • Yes, you can get good results using amp & pedal modelling plugins on your PC just playing direct into your audio interface. Some DAW even come with them for free (e.g. if you have a Mac then it came with GarageBand and that comes with amp + pedal models built in). For pretty much any song you can google for details about what amp and pedals the artist used - all guitarists are obsessed with this kind of info and discuss it endlessly!
    – blueskiwi
    Aug 23 at 8:49

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This is really far too broad, but this is a long journey to be starting on, so let me throw you a bone - from where you can go off & do some more research of your own.

Kurt Cobain mainly used Fenders on Nevermind - Mustang, Jaguar & Strat. The Strat had humbuckers retrofitted. The Mustang & Jaguar are unspecified, so we don't know whether it used simple single coil or P90s. He owned both at the time.

He used a Mesa-Boogie Studio head, Crown amp & Marshall 4x12. Also on the album was a Vox AC 30 & a Fender Bassman. Other than the Bassman [Lithium], we don't know which amp was used on which tracks.

Pedals were a Boss DS-1 distortion & Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus - which is what you hear on Come as You Are.

So, what does that boil down to?
A lot of money.

I'm a big fan of modelling amps, which usually come with a slew of effects pedal sound-alikes too. The basic distortion & chorus in most of these tend to be based on those two pedals, so they come 'free' with another 10 or so amps… including MesaBoogie , Vox AC30 etc.

I use an old Line6 UX2 which is guitar/mic amp, FX pedals & computer interface all in one. It took me about 4 minutes to copy the Come as You Are sound. I used a Telecaster* with the tone rolled off [it sounds like his guitar strings are pretty old & I've just changed mine] The chorus is such a significant part of the sound that I found it didn't really matter what amp I put it through, I could get close enough on a Vox, Marshall & MesaBoogie (though I had to back the Boogie off a long way, it's too hot otherwise). I could get pretty close with a Strat too - again the chorus pedal does most of the heavy lifting.
He plays his guitar tuned down to D, which I didn't bother with for this test, I just transposed.

A friend of mine uses a more modern equivalent of my Line6, a Yamaha THR II. You can now edit these things from your phone. Mine needs the computer. Apart from that, they're the same kind of thing. Multiple amps & pedals, dial in what you need. USB to computer. Some even come with a free DAW to get you started on recording.

These days it's really easy to Google what gear someone used on a record. Once you figure it out, you just dial in the same amp & pedals on your modelling amp. All you need to be able to do then is figure out exactly how they played it.

Info predominantly sourced from GuitarWorld - The definitive Kurt Cobain gear guide

* I also use a modelling guitar, so I've got literally 50 guitars to choose from

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    A modelling guitar! How does that works? Is the embedded pre-amp doing all the job?
    – Tom
    Aug 22 at 17:40
  • @Tom - The 'pre-amp' is really a 'computer' doing all the modelling. Like an amp modeller, it takes a known input & shifts it to match a modelled output. The Variax uses piezos, one per string, to do the modelling. It can do anything from a Strat or Paul to a Martin acoustic, Rikki 12-string or banjo. It's really quite convincing. They don't make the 'pure' variax any more, now they have actual pickups too, but it's still the same idea - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variax lists all the guitars modelled. Mine is the original 500 from the early 2ks.
    – Tetsujin
    Aug 22 at 18:07
  • Quite odd-looking things, until you get used to them… no pickups [& therefore absolutely no hum] - i.stack.imgur.com/45kZw.jpg The modern ones look more like guitars - line6.com/variax-modeling-guitars
    – Tetsujin
    Aug 22 at 18:09
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    @Shayne - interesting they're modelling guitars too - it makes me wonder, though, how you shape the output if you're not in control of the input. The Variax is a known quantity, the Bias could be literally anything.
    – Tetsujin
    Aug 23 at 7:58
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    @EricDuminil - yeah, my friend swears by it for recording these days. I'm still happy enough with my UX2 which does everything I need. I used to use Guitar Rig, & recorded the guitars 'clean' but seriously fell out with that when I found I couldn't get amps I'd used on old projects back with a newer plug-in, even though I had every version between then & now. I vowed never to touch it again. All my guitars now go 'to tape' with the amp/speaker sound already on it… so I can never lose it again.
    – Tetsujin
    Aug 23 at 15:54

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