Dinosaur Jr.’s first album since 2021’s Sweep It Into Space, this past August’s There Near, ditches fancy amps for a back-to-basics approach. Specifically, it was recorded with help of the equipment that guitarist J Mascis used back in the ’80s.
His reasoning? “I was just kind of getting sick of these awesome guitar tones I’ve been getting,” he tells Paste Magazine.
“I have these awesome amps and guitars – I have the same setup that Pete Townshend used on Who’s Next. I just got sick of having this perfect guitar sound.”
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So, perhaps puzzlingly, he was on the hunt for a worse tone. “It doesn’t have to be so great and everything. It’ll sound fine.” He dug up the kind of Marshall he used on the band’s second record, 1987’s You’re Living All Over Me, and a ’70s Mesa Boogie Mark I.
According to him, it’s “not the best Marshall sound I can get, it’s just one from my past.” That was the whole point. “I was trying to go back to, like, when I didn’t have the opportunity to do that and I didn’t know any better.”
However, according to Mascis, the experiment didn’t totally work. Apparently, their very first record was cut to tape, and the amp is the same model but not the exact same amp. The guitars are different, and the mics, are of course, way different than they were back then.
“It just doesn’t sound the same,” he concludes. “It doesn’t really matter. I wasn’t precious about it. I just thought it would be interesting.”
J Mascis has always had an experimental relationship with guitar tone. Last year, he told Guitarist how a heckler helped him unlock the sound that would define Dinosaur Jr.
