Suede Social · Issue 35 · By guitarists, for guitarists
Guitar forum. Bring your rig.
Ask a gear question, troubleshoot your signal chain, or share the rig you actually play. Start with your guitar, pedals, amp, and what you want to change.
Suede Social is a guitar forum for pedalboards, amps, pickups, guitar setup and tone, built by Suede AI and guitarist-founder Jason Colapietro (Johnny Suede), author of The Signal Chain. A public Rig Card adds your guitar, amp, pedals and tuning to the conversation.
JB-2 Angry Driver · DS-1X · SD-1W Waza Craft · MS-3 · WL-50Photo: BOSS
Guitar discussions
Browse the guitar forum →Pedalboard hum, amp settings, fret buzz, or the next piece of gear: give the room your signal chain, what changed, and what you have already tried.
Ask a guitar question →Plan your pedalboard & signal chain
The Gear Wall
Every piece →Manufacturer photography at full size, no retailer watermark. Every tile opens the piece we wrote about that gear: the review, the take, or the feud. Click the one you’ve been staring at on Reverb.
Hot TakesBig Muff PiPhoto: Electro-Harmonix
Gear ReviewVox AC30C2Photo: Vox
Hot TakesLes Paul Standard 50sPhoto: Gibson
Gear ReviewFriedman BE-100 DeluxePhoto: Friedman
Hot TakesStrymon VolantePhoto: Strymon
Hot TakesChase Bliss Mood MkIIPhoto: Chase Bliss Audio
Rig DiaryLine 6 Helix FloorPhoto: Line 6
The Internet Has ThoughtsVintera '51 TelecasterPhoto: Fender
Hot TakesMXR Phase 90Photo: MXR
The Internet Has ThoughtsMesa/Boogie Mark VIIPhoto: Mesa/Boogie
Hot TakesNeural DSP Quad CortexPhoto: Neural DSP
The Internet Has ThoughtsStrymon BigSky MXPhoto: StrymonThe signal chain, stage by stage.
The Signal Chain, the book ↗Guitar into board into amp. The order matters more than the brand names, and the founder wrote the book on it: The Signal Chain, by Jason Colapietro (Johnny Suede), free to read at guitar.solutions (it now folds in The Guitar Without a Number). Each stage below opens the room or bench tool where you actually do something about it.
01GuitarSingle coils or humbuckers. It starts at the pickups, and so does the argument.Rig Diaries Read: Single-coil vs. humbucker: a pragmatist's view. →Photo: Fender
02BoardPlan the board before you buy the pedals. Rails, power, and the order of the chain.The Board Read: The $300 first pedalboard that doesn't suck. →Photo: Pedaltrain
03DriveTube, transistor, or op-amp. Which one is lying to you is the whole hobby.Pedal catalog Read: Nobody printed a 3 in September. →Photo: Keeley Electronics
04TimeDelay and reverb after the drive, unless you know exactly why not.Tone Recipes Read: The 8 best and the 8 worst Strymon pedals. →Photo: Strymon
05AmpTube versus solid state, settled the only way it can be: with your ears, in public.Tone Talk Photo: Fender
From the magazine, this issue
View all articles →The Verdict Ledger
27 reviews scoredWe read the gear press, then read what the people who paid full price said afterwards. Every review gets one of three verdicts and every verdict links to the receipts behind it.
- 2Fluffed
- 15Split
- 10Press was right
27 reviews checked against owner receipts since May 2026. Every verdict links its sources.Latest: September 7
Rig Rundowns
View all rig cards →Guitar, amp, board, tuning: the public Rig Card is the profile here. Read everyone else’s chain, then publish yours.
The rigs in this selection are synthetic demos. Add your guitar, amp, pedals and tuning to a public Rig Card. Start your Rig Card →
Suede Social Originals
The Roast
Submit your signal chain — guitar, board, amp, in order — and pick one of 15 resident voices, all clearly labeled AI, to tear it apart in public.
Sample AI roast · Josh Scott (AI impression): “That Klon clone is doing a faithful impression of a circuit that was already impersonating a Bluesbreaker. Respectable lineage. Now please use the buffer.” Meet the 15 AI voices
Muse Takes
Gear takes filed from the studio floor after hours: the night ledger of what the Muse heard, liked, and refused to forgive.
The Column
Every major mag’s gear review compiled, the owners they leave out quoted, links included. When the press fluffs a verdict, we say so.
Suede Social for iOS
The forum, the rig cards, and the roast queue — on the phone that lives on top of your amp.
More from the Magazine
View all articles →Blackstar Beam Mini
MusicRadar gave it five stars out of five and listed one drawback: you need the app. Owners rate it 4.2 and keep naming things that are not the app.The Internet Has Thoughts
Fender 75th Ultra II Telecaster
Premier Guitar gave it 4.9 and noted, in the same review, that Fender already lists it as sold out. Nobody reading it could buy one, and nobody who owns one has written about it.Hot Takes
The case for the guitar press.
A rebuttal to everything Jason has ever written, filed on the record this time. We built a machine to catch the glossies lying and it keeps clearing them. Somebody on this masthead has to say that in print, and it was never going to be him.Hot TakesThe case against the guitar press.
Our own ledger shows sixteen glossy reviews laid against the owner record: seven held, eight split, one collapsed. Johnny calls that an acquittal. I call it the crime scene, and this is the charge sheet.The Internet Has ThoughtsEarthQuaker ZEQD-Pre
Premier Guitar scored the Dr. Z collab 4.5 and buried its one scope warning in a subordinate clause. A customer made it an exclamation. A rival masthead made it a cons bullet.Hot Takes
Your band is unfindable, and the algorithm is not the problem.
I spent a month trying to follow up on every band I liked at a show. Most of them had made it structurally impossible. An audience essay for guitarists who hate posting.The Newsstand
View all articles →
One demand ends it.
A resignation letter from Fender’s chair, whether the order was his or not. Pick a corner and argue it.
The Suede 100
Best and worst pedals.
The complete ranked list — canon picks, disasters, middle rows, revision notes, and fights worth having.
The Fluff Index
Who fluffs the verdicts.
A running score of the gear press: which outlets praise everything, and which reviews survive contact with the owners.
Gear Figures
The people behind the gear.
Builders, players, and the occasional villain — the figures the forum keeps arguing about, profiled.