Jonny Greenwood — £500 · Sweet Spot Tone

• The Whammy pedal is central to the "Just" and "Planet Telex" guitar sounds — set to octave up or two octaves up, it creates the screaming harmonics
• Jangly clean is equally important — "High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees" use clean Telecaster into AC30. Contrast between clean and extreme is the Radiohead guitar vocabulary
• Prepared guitar techniques — sticking objects on strings, playing with a bow, tapping on the body. These textural elements appear throughout OK Computer and Kid A
• Chord voicings avoid conventional root-position triads — inversions and suspended chords (sus2, sus4, add9) replace standard major and minor chords for a more ambiguous harmonic character
• The tremolo arm is used for controlled noise, not melody — a sharp downward dive followed by a slow rise creates the wrenching effect on some tracks
• Study "Just," "Lucky," "Karma Police" and "How to Disappear Completely" — four completely different approaches within the same band's catalogue
• Layering guitar and orchestral elements is a Greenwood strength — in solo orchestral work, he understands how guitars interact with string instruments
• Noise is composed, not spontaneous — the feedback and distortion are controlled and placed intentionally, not random

• ✗Running the Big Muff into an already-driven amp channel — fuzz into a driven amp creates uncontrolled intermodulation that sounds chaotic rather than musical. The Big Muff works best into a clean or barely-clean amp
• ✗Setting the Big Muff tone control at noon or above — this position is where the Big Muff's scooped mid character becomes harsh and cutting. The musical range is 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock on most units
• ✗Ignoring the neck pickup position as a usable tone — the neck pickup on a Tele produces a warm, jazz-like sound completely unlike the bridge. It is not an afterthought.
• ✗Using a high-gain distortion pedal instead of amp gain — British crunch amps have a specific harmonic character when driven from their own gain stage. A pedal changes this character.
• ✗Clean amp at too low a volume — even a clean amp provides warmth and tonal character that the pedal sits in. An amp at minimum volume has no character for the pedal to interact with.
• ✗Setting gain too high on the overdrive pedal — most overdrive pedals are most useful at gain settings of 2-5, where they add character without dominating the tone. High gain settings on an OD pedal become a distortion, not an overdrive.
• ✗Ignoring alternative tunings — many of the most iconic riffs and chord voicings in the genre are impossible in standard tuning.
• ✗Homogenising the tone — playing at the same volume and gain level throughout removes the compositional impact of the loud-quiet dynamic.

If you like Jonny Greenwood's tone, these players use a similar approach — same gear philosophy, comparable sound characteristics.