Presidents of the USA

The Presidents of the United States of America formed in Seattle in 1993, building a triple-platinum debut from the most unconventional gear in alternative rock. Dave Dederer's primary guitar was a Harmony H-802 he bought for forty dollars — a department-store instrument whose cheap construction and unpredictable tone gave the band's debut its lo-fi character. He paired it with a Fender Stratocaster and ran both through an Electro-Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff Pi for the fuzzy, overdriven textures beneath songs like Lump and Peaches. Chris Ballew's approach was even more radical: he played an Epiphone SG-400 modified into a two-string basitar, strung with heavy bass strings to create a hybrid instrument that occupied the sonic space between bass and guitar. Ballew amplified the basitar through a Kustom Tuck-N-Roll combo he described as indispensable, later adding an Orange AD200B MK3 bass head for more power. The band's stripped-down approach — two strings on bass, three on guitar — forced creative constraints that produced some of the catchiest alternative rock of the 1990s, proving that limitation could be a greater asset than gear.