Tom Morello Rig

Tom Morello made Rage Against the Machine sound like a DJ booth by treating a small, stubborn rig as an instrument. Since 1986 his main guitar has been the custom “Arm the Homeless” superstrat — a Performance Guitar USA alder body he rebuilt with a graphite Kramer neck, Ibanez Edge tremolo, EMG 85 bridge, EMG H neck, and a Les Paul-style toggle used as a killswitch — while drop-D riffs ran through a stock 1982 Fender Telecaster labeled Sendero Luminoso. All the gain comes from a Marshall JCM800 2205 50-watt head, bought used in 1988 after a theft, into a Peavey 4x12 loaded with Celestion G12K-85s; the 1992 loop was a DigiTech WH-1 Whammy, Dunlop GCB95 Cry Baby, DOD FX40B EQ used as a flat solo boost, Ibanez DFL Flanger (the swirl on “Killing in the Name”), and a Boss DD-2 delay.

He never replaced that JCM800. Audioslave added the black “Soul Power” Aerodyne Strat (Seymour Duncan Hot Rails, Floyd Rose, killswitch), an MXR Phase 90 in place of the Ibanez flanger, a second Boss DD-3, and a DigiTech XP-300 Space Station. Fender released the Soul Power Stratocaster in 2020 and a production Arm the Homeless in 2025 (EMG 85/H, Gotoh GE1996T, hockey-stick headstock); Dunlop’s TBM95 is the same GCB95 circuit he has always used. Onstage he still plugs the original parts-guitar into the 1988 2205 — Neural DSP’s 2023 Archetype: Tom Morello models the whole chain.