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Suede·Social·Issue No. 20
Tone recipes·2026 · JUL
Indie1994easy to fake

01Pavement

Cut Your Hair

Loose, ringing clean tone with a slight haze — like a Strat through a small Fender amp that's been turned up a bit too far, plus a little chorus to smear the chord transitions. The recording is famously rough; the tone has noise floor and amp hum baked in. Power chord choruses get a thin, slightly fizzy overdrive — not heavy, more like a tube screamer barely on. Everything sounds first-take, including the tuning.

02Signal chain

Guitar to amp, 2 pedals between.

  1. In
    Guitar

    Fender Stratocaster (Malkmus's road Strat)

  2. 01
    Subtle chorus on verses for the lo-fi smear
    Boss CE-2 Chorus

    Rate: slow, Depth: noon

  3. 02
    Light overdrive on choruses
    Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer

    Drive: 9 o'clock, Tone: noon, Level: above unity

  4. Out
    Amp

    Fender Princeton Reverb or similar small Fender combo

03Field note

The secret sauce

Half the tone is the recording — a 16-track in a basement, drum room bleed, no isolation. Trying to make this sound 'clean' kills it.