Suede DNA

Live: dna.suedeai.ai

A tonal genealogy archive of guitarists' rigs and signal chains — 409 documented setups from 390 artists, indexed by year and player. Built and maintained by Suede Labs AI.

The premise: every distinctive guitar tone lives inside a specific signal chain — the pedalboard, the amp, the mic placement, the unsung 9V power supply that everything depends on. Suede DNA is a browsable compilation of those rigs, sourced from the long-running guitargeek-archives on archive.org, normalized into a single searchable manifest, and presented as a static, fast, archival-feeling site.

What's in here

• A Next.js 15 (App Router) site that renders the rig grid, per-artist pages, search, year filters, and JSON-LD structured data.
• A canonical data/rigs.json manifest (~409 rigs, 390 artists, year-stamped) with a validate-manifest step that gates builds on schema integrity.
• A small build pipeline (scripts/build-manifest.ts, scripts/validate-manifest.ts) for refreshing and validating the dataset from the upstream source.
• Vitest tests covering the manifest, search, slug, and filter logic.

Tech stack

• Framework: Next.js 15 (App Router, Turbopack dev server)
• Language: TypeScript (strict)
• Runtime: Node 20+
• Package manager: pnpm
• Styling: Tailwind CSS v4 (beta), Geist Sans + Mono
• Testing: Vitest + Testing Library + happy-dom
• Hosting: Vercel

Quick start

pnpm install
pnpm dev          # http://localhost:3000 with Turbopack
pnpm build        # production build
pnpm start        # serve the production build
pnpm test         # run the vitest suite
pnpm lint         # next lint (ESLint)
pnpm typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
pnpm validate-manifest   # verify data/rigs.json schema + integrity
pnpm refresh-manifest    # regenerate data/rigs.json from upstream

A clean pnpm install && pnpm build should produce a fully static-ish Next.js build with the rig manifest pre-loaded.

Project structure

src/
  app/                 Next.js App Router routes (home, [artist-slug], about, sitemap, robots, og image)
  components/          UI components grouped by surface (grid, header, footer, search, filters, hero, seo, chrome, artist)
  hooks/               React hooks
  lib/                 Domain logic: manifest, search, filters, slug, seo
  styles/              Global styling
data/
  rigs.json            Canonical compilation manifest (generated + validated)
  artists.json         Artist-level metadata
  overrides.json       Manual corrections layered on top of the upstream source
  excluded.json        Items intentionally excluded from the compilation
scripts/
  build-manifest.ts    Rebuild rigs.json from upstream
  validate-manifest.ts Schema + integrity check
tests/                 Vitest suites
public/                Static assets (Suede mark, favicon)
docs/superpowers/      Design notes and plans

Data source & attribution

The rig images and signal-chain references are derived from the guitargeek-archives collection on archive.org, a community-maintained compendium of guitarist rig diagrams. Suede DNA is a presentation, normalization, and search layer over that source — not a re-publication of new material. See ATTRIBUTION.md for full credit and usage notes.

License

MIT. Code is MIT-licensed; the underlying rig diagrams remain the property of their original creators and are surfaced here under the same archival, non-commercial, citation-friendly spirit as the upstream collection.

About Suede

Suede DNA is one of several products in the Suede Labs AI family — a small studio building tools at the intersection of guitar, music, and AI. Sibling products include Strumly (24/7 conversational AI guitar coach) and FretPulse (holistic guitar care companion).

Founded by Jason Colapietro — Founder and CEO, published author, Forbes contributor.

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Keywords: guitar rigs, signal chains, pedalboards, amp settings, tonal genealogy, guitar tone archive, guitargeek, music history, Next.js archive site, guitar gear database.