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Suede·Social·Issue No. 20
Tone recipes·2026 · JUL
Rock1992easy to fake

01Radiohead

Creep

The crunch BEFORE every chorus — Greenwood famously hits dead-strings as a violent ka-CHUNG before each chorus chord lands. Telecaster bridge pickup through a clean amp with a Boss SD-1 for the verse and a wide-open Big Muff for the chorus. The 'ka-chunk' is muted strings hit with hard right-hand attack, not a real effect. Verse tone is clean and bright; chorus tone is wall-of-Muff fuzz.

02Signal chain

Guitar to amp, 2 pedals between.

  1. In
    Guitar

    Fender Telecaster Plus

  2. 01
    Verse light overdrive
    Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive

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

  3. 02
    Chorus fuzz wall
    Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi

    Sustain: 2 o'clock, Tone: noon, Volume: 1 o'clock

  4. Out
    Amp

    Fender Twin Reverb (per Greenwood's setup of the era)

03Field note

The secret sauce

The pre-chorus 'ka-chunk' is Greenwood furiously palm-muting all six strings while strumming — it's a percussion sound, not a guitar sound. The Muff hits one bar later. Reverse-engineering this without the muted strikes makes the chorus sound conventional.