How do I change a companion's default weapon in the CK?

[TheRealPinkoScum]

I created a few mods to change some of my companion's default weapons, such as replacing Nick's awful pipe revolver with a Defense gun from the mod made by YonaTaku. I made a custom weapon, made it use the companion .45 ammo, put the weapon in Kick's inventory as well as some more .45 companion ammo just to be sure, and then deleted his pipe revolver from his inventory. When I loaded the game he still has the pipe revolver and wont use the defense gun I made for him either. This happens every time I try to do the same thing with any companion and any weapon, even if I make the new companion weapon out of base game weapons. What am I doing wrong? I'm not using any other mods that alter my companions. 

[DieFeM]

I'd suggest to test it in a new game instead of a saved game.

The actors in the CK are "base actors", a kind of "template", when you place it in the world it becomes a "reference" of this base actor, once the actor is a reference it has its own inventory, and its content is unrelated to the base actor.

There are a couple of ways to add things to the inventory of a reference, by a script or a quest alias, and you can only remove things from it using a script or, obviously, in game, trading.

Therefore, having this in to account, loading from a new game it will create a new reference from your modded base actor.

[Skidgeroonie]

Does the companion defintely have the new weapon still in their inventory? Companion weapons are usually set to "Can't Drop" so it can't be taken and they'll always have a weapon to use.

But what DieFeM said is super important and could be a large part of this. I recommend disabling all mods, start a new game and call your character something like "CLEAN SAVE" so you can refer back to it when needed. Leave the vault, make a hard save and you can use that whenever you make changes to base actors.