My Iron Lung guitar tone
Radiohead · Jonny Greenwood
The Bends (1994)
clean glassy verse erupting into mid-forward distorted chorus (Shredmaster dirt)
The rig Radiohead used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Fender Telecaster Plus (Lace Sensor pickups)
Amplifier
Fender Twin Reverb (clean); Vox AC30 cited as the period-secondary amp
Cabinet
Fender Twin 2x12 (combo)
Microphone
Shure SM57
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
Get this tone on your rig
Pick your amp or modeller and we’ll build My Iron Lung for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
The featured electric on 'My Iron Lung' is Jonny Greenwood's dynamic part: glassy clean arpeggios in the verses that erupt into savage, mid-forward distorted stabs in the chorus. Jonny's core Bends-era rig is very well documented: a Fender Telecaster Plus (Lace Sensor pickups) into a Fender Twin Reverb for the clean voice, with a Marshall Shredmaster distortion pedal supplying the aggressive chorus tone (the Shredmaster is Jonny's signature dirt box of this era), and a Vox AC30 as the period-secondary amp. The recorded sound is completed with a close SM57 and light spring/room ambience. Confidence is high on the guitar and the Shredmaster; the main soft spot is Twin-vs-AC30 for the clean amp, which does not change the two-tone (clean/erupt) recreation.
Sources
- Guitarist / Guitar World - Jonny Greenwood rig features (Telecaster Plus, Marshall Shredmaster)
- Premier Guitar - Radiohead gear retrospectives
- The Bends production/session histories (John Leckie)
- Manufacturer references - Fender Telecaster Plus (Lace Sensors), Marshall Shredmaster