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Tone recipes·2026 · OCT
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 into a Marshall ShredMaster, the distortion he used across Pablo Honey. 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 ShredMaster crunch.

02Signal chain

Guitar to amp, 1 pedal between.

  1. In
    Guitar

    Fender Telecaster Plus

  2. 01
    The chorus crunch
    Marshall ShredMaster
  3. 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 distortion arrives with the chorus. Reverse-engineering this without the muted strikes makes the chorus sound conventional.