guitar.solutions

The technical reference your tone needs. An engineering-grade, footnoted catalog of guitar signal-chain knowledge — pickup output through speaker excursion. Compiled and maintained by Suede Labs.

This is a static Next.js site. No backend, no DB, no auth. Long-form guides are authored as MDX in content/guides/.

Stack

• Next.js 16-ready (currently on next@^15.0.3, App Router)
• TypeScript (strict)
• Tailwind CSS v4 (beta)
• @next/mdx for guide rendering
• gray-matter for frontmatter parsing
• Geist Sans / Geist Mono
• pnpm

Quick start

pnpm install
pnpm dev          # http://localhost:3000
pnpm typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
pnpm build        # production build

Project structure

app/
  layout.tsx              Root layout, Suede IP Terminal palette
  page.tsx                Landing — editorial, recently-filed index, subject rail
  globals.css             Tailwind v4 + design tokens
  guides/[slug]/page.tsx  Dynamic guide page, dynamic-imports MDX module
  categories/page.tsx     Subject index (grouped by category)
content/
  guides/                 Long-form MDX guides (one file per slug)
lib/
  mdx.ts                  Frontmatter loader + index helpers
mdx-components.tsx        Per-element MDX styling map
next.config.mjs           withMDX config
tailwind.config.ts        Tailwind v4 content scan
postcss.config.mjs        @tailwindcss/postcss

Adding a new guide

1. Create content/guides/<slug>.mdx. The filename slug must match the slug field in frontmatter.

2. Required frontmatter:

   ---
   title: "Title in title case"
   slug: "kebab-case-slug"
   category: "Signal Chain | Electronics | Amplification | Speaker & Cab | Recording"
   published: "YYYY-MM-DD"
   description: "One sentence, ~150 chars, used in landing index and meta description."
   authors:
     - "Suede Labs"
   ---

3. Write content. The MDX renderer styles h1, h2, h3, p, a, ul, li, blockquote, code, pre, hr per the Suede IP Terminal typography scale. Use footnotes ([^1]) for citations.

4. The guide appears automatically on / (newest-first), /categories (grouped), and at /guides/<slug>.

Design language

This site uses the Suede Institutional IP Terminal palette:

• Rights Red #9f101a — accent, current state, route emphasis
• Registry Cyan #22d3ee — interactive elements, links, focus rings
• Deep Ink #050b16 — page background

Editorial layout: hairline rules, mono labels in uppercase tracked-out caps, a single accent color carrying the system. Avoid card grids; prefer ruled ordered lists. This site follows the broader Suede design vocabulary and the anti-template policy it is built against.

What's intentionally not here

• No analytics
• No marketing CTAs
• No gear-of-the-month roundups
• No affiliate links
• No DB, no auth, no API routes (yet)

Provenance

The taxonomic decisions (signal-chain categories, decade range, archival tone) draw on patterns from the Suede DNA project — a separate rig manifest site at dna.suedeai.ai. guitar.solutions is the engineering reference sibling to DNA's archival catalog of rigs.