Tom Morello

Tom Morello, a graduate of Harvard University, became famous playing guitar with Rage Against The Machine. He's also known for playing with his collaboration with Chris Cornell in the band Audioslave, and most recently, Prophets of Rage.

Tom has some unusual practices with respect to music identity and presentation. For example, while he owns a 50-watt Marshall JCM 900 amp head, he has taped over the Marshall logo. This is because Morello believes that since music companies do not pay him to advertise their product, it's only fitting that he not display the names and logos of the brands of the music equipment he uses. "No endorsements given or asked for," as Tom says. This is quite different from most musicians who want to be seen associating themselves with, and prominently displaying their affinity for the particular musical gear that they've chosen to use.

Style Notes

Neck Pickup Use

One of the things that makes Tom Morello and "his sound" different from most other guitar players is his almost exclusive use of the neck position pickups in the guitars he plays. He'll only use the bridge position for solos and when he "scratches" and needs the shorter length / higher note reach of the bridge position pickup. The famous Rage Against The Machine tune, "Killing In The Name Of" was done on the neck pickup of Morello's black telecaster, "Sendero Luminoso".

Killswitch

Morello has called out many Hiphop influences, especially "scratch" DJs. This, in turn, has lead him to incorporating a Digitech Whammy pedal that he uses in combination with his guitar set to a "killswitch" configuration. Tom's "Arm the Homeless" guitar has two pickups and each pickup has its own volume pot. He'll set one pickup to zero volume, the other to full on. This isn't so unusual. What Morello will then do is rub his picking hand against the strings while using the pickup selector switch as a "stutter-switch" recreating the sound of a DJ "scratching" on a record.

"Done Tweaking"

Tom is unusual in that at one point, unlike most other guitar players, he decided he was done tweaking his tone. He marked his settings on his Marshall head and decided "Those are my settings - I'm never going to sound any better than this", and from that moment has concentrated on making music, not on tweaking his gear so that he could sound better.

Guitars

• stock black Fender Telecaster: "Sendero Luminoso"
• stock (with binding) black Fender Stratocaster: "Soul Power" (with locking whammy bar and nut, and "killswitch")
• "parts bin" light blue Soloist: "Arm the Homeless"
• "burned up" Gibson Les Paul

Amplifiers

• 50 Watt Marshall 2205 / JCM 900 with Channel Switching

Cabinets

• 4x12 Peavey Cabinet

Pedals

• MXR M101 Phase 90
• DOD Graphic EQ Boost
• Boss DD-3 set to Long Delay
• Boss DD-3 set to Short Delay
• Digitech Whammy
• Dunlop Crybaby
• Boss TU-3
• Digitech XP300 Space Station

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Additional Sources

• https://youtu.be/WpY4IIy6b98