Creep amp settings — Marshall Vs100

The RADIOHEAD guitar tone for “Creep”, dialed in for a Marshall Vs100 with a Ibanez Ibanez GRGR221PA-AQB. Studio version, Pablo Honey (1993) — focusing on Jonny Greenwood's rhythm guitar tone

Original rig

Fender Telecaster Plus with Lace Sensor pickups → Marshall Shredmaster pedal → Fender Eighty Five amp. Clean verses are pristine Fender cleans; choruses engage the Shredmaster for aggressive crunch.

Verses: glassy, pristine single-coil cleans with subtle warmth. Choruses: aggressive, mid-forward British crunch with controlled saturation — not high-gain metal, but thick grinding overdrive.

Amp settings — Marshall Vs100

CHANNELClean channel for verses / Overdrive channel for chorusesBRIGHToffBOOSToff

Knob	Setting (0–10)
Gain	6
Bass	4
Mid	6
Treble	5
Presence	5
Reverb	2
Master	5

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Guitar

PICKUPneck TONE7 VOLUME10

Signal chain

01Marshall Shredmaster (or similar British-voiced distortion)

RECOMMENDED — not currently owned. The Shredmaster is the definitive sound of Creep's choruses. Affordable alternatives: Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion, TC Electronic Dark Matter, or Behringer VD400 (Shredmaster clone). Without this pedal, use amp's overdrive channel with gain at 6-7.

Gain 6 · Bass 5 · Contour 5 · Treble 6 · Volume 7

Why these settings

Your Marshall VS100 is voiced mid-forward like the Shredmaster was designed for, so it will naturally nail the chorus crunch better than a Fender amp would without pedals. I pulled treble back to 5 (original Fender rig was brighter) and pushed mids to 6 to compensate for your Ibanez's humbuckers having less midrange bite than Greenwood's Tele single coils. For clean verses, use the clean channel with gain at 2-3; for choruses, switch to OD channel at gain 6.

PRO TIPThe iconic 'chunk-chunk' noise before each chorus is Greenwood literally scraping his pick across muted strings with the Shredmaster engaged — it's not a chord, it's percussive string noise through heavy distortion. Mute all strings with your fretting hand and rake the pick hard across them to replicate this.

Get this tone on your amp

These settings are for a Marshall Vs100. ToneAdapt matches any song to whatever amp, guitar and pedals you own — first match is free.

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