Tone library / Nirvana / Smells like teen spirit

Smells like teen spirit amp settings — Fender Champion 20

The Nirvana guitar tone for “Smells like teen spirit”, dialed in for a Fender Champion 20 with a Gibson Les Paul Special. Studio version, Nevermind (1991) — iconic main riff / heavy chorus tone

Original rig

Fender Stratocaster with Seymour Duncan JB humbucker, Mesa/Boogie Studio Preamp (clean) into Crown Power Base 2, Marshall 1960B 4x12 cab, Boss DS-1 Distortion, EHX Small Clone

Aggressive, abrasive high-gain grunge crunch with biting upper-mids and scooped low-mids

Amp settings — Fender Champion 20

CHANNELMetal voice (Voice setting 11 / '90s Metal)

Knob	Setting (0–10)
Gain	7
Bass	6
Treble	7
Reverb	0
Master	5

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Guitar

PICKUPbridge TONE10 VOLUME10

Signal chain

01Boss DS-1 Distortion

RECOMMENDED — not currently owned

Tone 6 · Level 7 · Dist 8

02Electro-Harmonix Small Clone Chorus

RECOMMENDED — not currently owned

Rate 4 · Depth 10

Why these settings

The Champion 20 lacks a dedicated mid knob, so set the Voice selector to the '90s Metal setting to provide the saturated Mesa/Marshall preamp gain naturally. P90s or humbuckers on your Les Paul Special push the front-end harder than Kurt's single-coil/JB setup, so treble is pushed to 7 to retain the cutting high-end bite. Clean verse: switch the Voice knob to 'Blackface Clean' and roll the guitar volume back to 7.

PRO TIPDig in hard with aggressive downstrokes and use the edge of your palm to mute the four percussive 'chugs' between the chord changes to capture the explosive dynamic contrast.

Get this tone on your amp

These settings are for a Fender Champion 20. ToneAdapt matches any song to whatever amp, guitar and pedals you own — first match is free.

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Song, artist and gear names are used to identify the tone being matched; ToneAdapt is not affiliated with or endorsed by the artists or manufacturers mentioned. Settings are AI-generated starting points — trust your ears.