Tom Morello

Arguably Tom Morello's most famous guitar, the "Arm The Homeless" custom electric guitar, which he used extensively with Rage Against The Machine. In a MusicRadar interview, he talks about the origins of this guitar.

He got it in 1986, from a place in Hollywood that builds guitars. After getting the first version of it, Morello was extremely displeased with the way it looked, felt, and played. Over the next two years, he ended up switching out almost all of its parts, save for the wood used for the body.

After trying dozes of necks, pickups, and whammy bars, he settled for a graphite knock-off Kramer neck (which he found at Nadine's Music store), EMG pickups, and an Ibanez Edge whammy bar.

He then goes into how the pickup sound contributed to his Rage Against The Machine guitar sounds: "The bounce that's in my contribution to the riffs of Rage Against The Machine have a lot to do with that front pickup. I never really liked that sound; in fact I was quite disappointed with it, because it has a very single-coil sound. But that is the sound – that front pickup."

The source MusicRadar article can be found here.

In a interview,he said:"This is the soul power guitar.When i was transitioning from Rage Against The Machine to Audioslave,i want a new sound,a new guitar,a new vibe,a new slogan write on her...I wondered that i need some "Soul power" with Audioslave.It was the main guitar for Audioslave records,and shows.And for a time replaced all the other guitars.For six years."

This guitar was custom made for Tom in the late 90's. It has been used exclusively live for Guerilla Radio, though it has been used in the studio

At 2:06 into this video named "Tom Morello Guitars & Home Studio," Morello talks about his 1982 Fender Telecaster "Sendero Luminoso." It appears to be a standard American Telecaster (he reveals in other interviews it is a 1982 model), with a black finish, white pickguard, and a maple neck. From the looks of it is stock, and is adorned with several stickers. He says:

"This is my main drop D tuning guitar for my entire career. Inexpensive, made in the USA Telecaster. I traded my roommate (he was in a band called Liquid Jesus). He needed a Marshall head and I needed a guitar that I could tune down, play grunge-worthy heavy riffs with. And so the exchange was made, and this is in a song with all the Rage [Against The Machine], Audioslave, Street Sweeper [Social Club], The Nightwatchman songs that are in drop D tuning. Killing in the Name, Freedom, Testify, all those that are in drop D, played and written with the band on this."

Tom used this guitar in rage against the machine to play The Ghost Of Tom Joad, and also he used it in Prophets Of Rage to play the Cypress Hill song How I Could Just Kill A Man

"Tom got this guitar around the time he was heading of the college, and used it with Lock Up and in the early days of the RATM. The guitar is basically a cheap Ovation knock-off with steel strings."

In this live performance of "How I Could Just Kill A Man", Tom is seen playing his custom Ibanez Talman at :29s.

In this video Tom Morello is seen with the Les Paul Gibson!

Tom talks about this nylon string guitar in this Music Radar article saying "That ended up being the Galvador, which turned out to have a really beautiful sound. Much of The Nightwatchman catalogue was composed, from that point forward, on the Galvador, because it did have a pickup – you could plug it in anywhere. I went on a tour in 2003 with Billy Bragg and Steve Earle, and with the Galvador I could be a professional performer (laughs). So it's the 'Whatever It Takes' guitar."

At 0:26 in the music video for Carry It, by Travis Barker, Tom Morello can be seen using an Ovation Breadwinner.

"This was my main guitar that I practiced my countless hours on...I ruined it's sound by putting in a Kahler Tremolo bar..." says Tom Morello, about his Gibson Explorer, at 0:44 in this video.

"This is my main drop D tuning guitar for my entire career."

"This here is my very first guitar...still doesn't stay in tune very well but it's a good old friend," says Tom Morello, at 0:20 in this video, about his Kay SG Style.

This is Tom’s main steel string acoustic guitar which he’s been using as The Nightwatchman. The guitar is completely black and features Morello’s own design on the left of the bridge which combines the Kenyan,Italian and American flags along with the hammer and sickle symbols.

The guitar is dubbed “Black Spartacus”, and Tom even wrote a song about it called “Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine” – name inspired by Clash’s Mick Jones Clash who referred to his guitar as “heart attack machine”.

Tom had at least two of these. First one was used in the earlier years and had bare metal finish and two Hot Rails pickups, while his second Steelcaster has Hot Rails in the bridge and Alnico pro II in the neck position and features red star graphic finish.

In this Instagram posted by Tom Morello, his backstage practice setup for Prophets of Rage can be seen. The guitar is a D'Angelico EX-DC in Surf Green finish with gold hardware, hooked up to a small Orange practice amp. He says:

"From small things big things one day come. Warming up backstage in Massachusetts. @prophetsofrage"

This guitar is the backup for the "Arm the homeless" Guitar. Basically is a Ibanez roadstar with the specs of the "Arm the homeless" (Killswitch, EMG pickups, floyd rose)

In this video of Tom Morello's guitars and his home studio, he says that he bought this cream colored ST George Goya Rangemaster Copy guitar for 40 Canadian dollars. He talks about it 2:46 into the video:

"This was a guitar of indeterminate name and origin that I got at a pawn shop in Toronto for 40 Canadian dollars, because I sort of liked the way it looked. I’m not even sure it’s made of wood! But I liked the way it looked, which is sort of my main criteria for getting guitars at the time. And we wrote and recorded Rage Against the Machine song Tire Me entirely with this guitar and with a 20 watt solid state amp, which is in that room over there... and that was our first Grammy."

The bridge pickup looks to have been replaced with a black DiMarzio DP218 Super Distortion S Strat Humbucker Pickup.

Tom has used this guitar for his new record ''The Atlas Underground''

He has this in the background

He can be seen playing the guitar throughout this video, starting clearly at the twenty five second mark.

The guitar can be seen used in the video for "Road I Must Travel" several times, notably and visibly at 0:54, 1:10, 1:35, and 2:02. The guitar is frequently used during Morello's Solo project, The Nightwatchman, and is inscribed with the slogan Whatever It Takes, and a star insignia.

The guitar was gifted to Morello by Matt Bellamy of Muse on 9th June, and pictured on his Instagram.

In a MusicRadar article, Tom Morello talks about how he ended up getting a Marshall JCM800 2205 50-watt head, which he uses in conjunction with a Peavey cabinet.

After his gear got stolen out of his van, he headed to Nadine's Music store, and ended up buying the Marshall head and Peavey cab simply because he needed them in a pinch to record a demo, and they didn't have much other selection at the time.

Morello also mentions that he found a knob combination on his amp that simply works, which he has used for quite some time. The original article can be found here.

In this video he mentions that he uses a peavey 4x12

In this Instagram photo posted by Tom Morello, his backstage practice setup can be seen, which consists of a D'Angelico guitar and Orange Crush 12 combo amp. The amp can be identified by its 6 black knobs, with an input jack on the right of them and a headphones output on the left of them. Also, the black lines on the body of the amp give it away as the Crush12 model. Morello says:

"From small things big things one day come. Warming up backstage in Massachusetts. @prophetsofrage"

At 3:08 in the YouTube video, Raga Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello explains, that he used this Marshall Lead 20 Model 5002 20 watts Combo Amplifier to write and record the song "Tire Me", which would go on to win the first-ever Grammy Award in the category of Best Metal Performance for the band at the 39th Annual Awards in 1997.