Taking a look at some of the tools used by Tom Morello throughout his career in order to create his unconventionally iconic guitar tone.
In addition to his superb work with hard-rock supergroup Audioslave, Tom Morello has had an extremely successful career as both a guitarist and political activist, performing frequently with Bruce Springsteen and appearing on talk shows across America to discuss political justice in the increasingly unbalanced nation.
Read up on all the latest features and columns here.
The explosive creativity doesn’t stop there – he’s also a core member of Prophets of Rage, a group comprised of his Rage Against The Machine bandmates and fronted by Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Cypress Hill’s B-Real. Today, we’re taking a look at some of the tools used by Tom Morello throughout his career in order to create his unconventionally iconic guitar tone.
Guitars
Custom ‘Arm the Homeless’ Guitar
Possibly one of the most iconic guitars of the past 25 years, Tom Morello’s famous ‘Arm The Homeless’ is a whacky Frankenstrat comprised of a random body decked out with parts from various shredder guitars of the 80’s, including a knock off graphite Kramer neck and an Ibanez Edge tremolo. Fitted with active EMG pickups, what really makes this guitar stand out is its distinctive hippopotamus paint job, with the slogan ‘Arm The Homeless’ scrawled across the body in red paint. While it’s been Morello’s most used guitar since his pre-Rage Against the Machine group Lockout in the mid-80’s, Morello claims it took a while to come to terms with the mishmash of parts lumped into guitar form, telling Music Radar, “At this point, I gave up and said, ‘OK, it’s never going to sound like what I hear in my head, so I’m going to stop worrying and fucking around, and I’m just going to play music … When I made the decision to stop searching for a sound that just didn’t exist in that guitar, and I just started creating, I learned to take the sounds the guitar had and found ways to make music that I liked with them.”
Fender Telecaster
Morello’s dedicated drop D tuned guitar, this 1982 Telecaster, dubbed Sendero Luminoso and given a custom paint job, was acquired in a trade with a roommate back in the 80’s, which he discusses in the video below. “He needed a Marshall head and I needed a guitar that I could tune down, play grunge-worthy heavy riffs with … Killing in the Name, Freedom, Testify, all those that are in drop D, played and written with the band on this.”
Elsewhere in the same video, Morello discusses several other guitars used throughout his career, including his first guitar, a $50 Kay SG copy, a Gibson Explorer used frequently as a teenager, and a plywood ST George Goya Rangemaster copy purchased for $40 in Toronto, which was used to record the Grammy Award winning Rage Against the Machine song ‘Tire Me.’
Fender ‘Soul Power’ Stratocaster
Following the demise of Rage Against The Machine in the early 2000’s, Morello sought a new instrument to play with his new group Audioslave, comprised of Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell and his bandmates from Rage. Essentially a modded US made Aerodyne Strat, the ‘Soul Power’ guitar features a Floyd Rose style tremolo, a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails bridge pickup, and a custom toggle kill switch, frequently used by Morello to make his signature stuttering guitar solo sound.
Ibanez Artstar
Modified with extra knobs to control built in wah, echo and distortion effects, this Red and Black Ibanez Artstar was used by Morello frequently throughout his tenure with Audioslave, and also sees extensive use with his new project Prophets of Rage.
Gibson J-45
Inspired by folk singer Woody Guthrie’s iconic ‘This Machine Kills Facists’ guitar, Morello emblazoned this black Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar with the slogan ‘Black Spartacus,’ as well as a custom emblem near the bridge that combines the Socialist hammer and sickle with American, Italian and US flags. ‘Black Spartacus’ acts as Morello’s main steel string acoustic when playing solo with his folk influenced side project The Night Watchman.
Ibanez GA60SCE
Another guitar frequently used for The Night Watchman, this Ibanez nylon string is fitted out with a cutaway and an electric-acoustic preamp for live use. Morello has also inscribed the slogan ‘Whatever It Takes’ with a black star underneath the bridge to coincide with The Night Watchman’s socio-political edge.
Amplifiers
Marshall JCM800 2205
For the entirety of his career as a popular musician, Morello has played through a Marshall JCM800 2205 head with a Peavy 4×12 cabinet which he acquired after having his gear stolen from the back of a van in the 80’s. After trying out several different rack units and head/cab combinations, Morello decided to stick it out with this rig, saying in an interview “I was at rehearsal and I spent at least four hours tweaking knobs just a hair this way and a hair that way to a point where I felt the sound was reasonable, and I marked those settings. This happened in ’88 or ‘89 and those markings are the same ones I’ve used to this day. They are the same markings/settings I used at every show and [on] every record I’ve ever made.”
Effects
While it’d be easy to assume otherwise given the amount of crazy tones he manages to wrangle from his guitar, Morello actually doesn’t use many effects pedals, tending to rely upon his own knowledge of effects manipulation and external tools to come up with his signature sounds.
DigiTech WH1 Whammy
In the above image, you can see Morello’s longstanding pedalboard, comprised of a MXR Phase 90, DOD FX40B Equaliser, BOSS DD-2 Digital Delay, DigiTech WH1 Whammy, BOSS TR-2 Tremolo and a Dunlop Crybaby Wah-Wah, all powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power Plus Power Supply.
A renowned master of sonic wizardry, Morello is also well known for creating crazy tones with unconventional objects, ranging from his DJ ‘Scratch’ solo in ‘Bulls on Parade’ to him removing the input jack from his guitar and rubbing it on the steel of the guitar to create static in the solo for ‘Testify.’ In the below video he explains how he uses a pencil in conjunction with a delay pedal to create the helicopter effect that opens the Audioslave song ‘Cochise,’ once again demonstrating his outside-the-box creativity and intuitive work ethic that makes him stand out as one of the finest guitarists of the modern era.
Learn the guitar from Tom Morello himself in this Masterclass.
