 Six months before signing a full contract with Giant / Rockville , Uncle Tupelo recorded the tracks for No Depression over ten days in January 1990 at Fort Apache South , a musician @-@ run studio in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston , Massachusetts . As the trio could not afford the cost of recording at a twenty @-@ four track studio in nearby Cambridge , they settled on the cheaper Fort Apache studio . The album cost US $ 3 @,@ 500 to produce , $ 1 @,@ 000 of which went to in @-@ house producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie . The band was interested in working with Slade and Kolderie after hearing their production of Dinosaur Jr . ' s album Bug . The producers allowed Farrar to use the same 1961 Gibson Les Paul guitar that J. Mascis used on Bug , which gave the power chords on No Depression a richer tone . 
