Kurt Cobain’s Dean Markley 2502 Guitar Strings
According to a recently published receipt from the 1990s, Kurt purchased these strings from a shop called Music 6000 in Lacey, WA.
The DM 2502 is a light set of strings (9-42), while Kurt is mostly known for playing heavy strings, which is confirmed by various sources to be Dean Markley 2504s (10-52). But, based on this receipt, Kurt did at some point at least experiment with a lighter set.
Some further research is needed on figuring out the date on the receipt. If you happen to know anything, leave it in the comments.
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If I had to guess. I would say Kurt used these till he got his hands on a jaguar and due to its short scale he added heavier gauge strings. If you listen to Kurt’s old songs we wrote in the 80s before “Bleach”, his playing was very fast and full of bends and hammer-ons and pull-offs. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to do this type of playing on heavy strings. But that it’s more likely Kurt, who even himself said when starting out on guitar he wanted to play “As fast and nasty as possible” would’ve used 9’s for more speed and agility.
right！
All those stangs he had were short scale too. And the Univox Gibson scale. I used these exact strings and guage in the 80’s 90’s (think they are branded as Vintage or heritage now) and have always played shorter scaled guitars.. Gibsons, Jags, 1 old stang, a couple hiflyers.. Had a few strats, hated the length.