Tony Iommi Rig

Tony Iommi is Black Sabbath's guitarist and the player who turned downtuned, light-string riffs into the template for heavy metal. After losing the tips of his right-hand middle and ring fingers in a sheet-metal press, he built leather-and-plastic thimbles, switched to extra-light gauges, and dropped his tuning so the guitar would still feel playable. The sound on Black Sabbath through Never Say Die came from a cherry 1964/65 Gibson SG Special nicknamed Monkey — stock P-90 in the bridge, a John Birch Simplux-style single-coil in the neck — into a modified Dallas Rangemaster and a dimed Laney LA100BL / Supergroup 100-watt head.

From Heaven and Hell (1980) the main stage guitar became John Diggins's Jaydee Old Boy, a 24-fret custom SG with cross inlays, while Dawk Stillwell's extra-gain Marshall Super Lead 1959s replaced the lost Rangemaster on the Dio records. When Laney briefly left tube amps he ran Marshall 9000 racks and Mesa/Boogie Marks, then came back for the EL34 GH100TI signature (1993–2012). That head was succeeded by the 6L6 two-channel Laney TI100 in 2012 — the amp he used at Back to the Beginning in 2025 — with the Gibson Tony Iommi SG Special and Laney TI-BOOST as the current buyable line.