mecanim dynamic animation choice

So I'm trying to use mecanim for my current project but I'm having trouble with something.

I want to have different animations for every type of weapon. In the old system I would have just put them all in an array and called the appropriate one depending on the weapon that is equipped but I'm not sure how to do this with Mecanim.

I could make an individual state for each and every animation but then I would have to make the same transitions over and over and the state table would be a spiderweb of death.

What's the best way to do this?