All-Star Gear: Tom Morello's Arm The Homeless guitar and Marshall JCM800 amp

Tom Morello has made a name for himself by producing sounds with his guitar that bear little resemblance to that of an actual guitar.

Alaska, AK (prHWY.com) December 18, 2012 - Interestingly, Morello's feats of six-string prestidigitation - starting with his major-label debut in the band Lock Up and right on through his triumphs in Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Street Sweeper Social Club and even on his mostly acoustic-driven Nightwatchman releases - weren't performed with the guitar of his dreams, but rather on an axe that for the better part of two years was more of a nightmare.

Such has also been the case with his rig, consisting of a JCM800 2205 50-watt head and a Peavey cabinet: Although Morello reveres the Marshall sound, he purchased the 50-watt model and the Peavey cab only after his favored Marshall head and its matching cab were stolen from his van back in 1988. With little money and no time to shop around (he had an important Lock Up demo session booked), the guitarist had to take what he could get.

Nevertheless, Morello learned to adapt, and in the case of the guitar (dubbed 'Arm The Homeless' in the early Rage days), he used its shortcomings as a springboard for his own fervent creativity.

In this, the first of a MusicRadar series called All-Star Gear, we spoke with Tom Morello about his famed Arm The Homeless guitar and Marshall/Peavey rig. "Misfit toys," he now affectionately calls them. While they may not be what he wanted, turns out they were just what he needed.

How did you first acquire the Arm The Homeless guitar?

"The origin of the guitar dates back to 1986, pre-Lock Up. I was bumping around between some crummy Hollywood jobs, making $13,000 a year - no goldmine, but it did provide for some income, and it allowed me to save up and get a guitar.

"I went to this place in Hollywood that builds guitars. I'm no luthier, I didn't know anything about woods and what have you - you go to this place, check off all these boxes, and they build it for you. They made me the shittiest guitar in the world, but it's what would ultimately become Arm The Homeless.

"Everything about it was bad: it looked bad, it sounded bad, it was grotesquely overpriced, and over the course of the next two years, I changed literally everything about it except for the piece of wood. I got the guitar and hoped I would sound like I was playing Mr. Crowley on it, but it was pretty bad. I didn't know what to do - I had spent all of my money.

"Over time, I swapped necks on it maybe four times; pickups came and went maybe a dozen times; the whammy bar - I tried every different version of Kahler and Floyd Rose; all of the internal electronics were gutted, just me trying to get it right. I'm not much of a builder, so every time I got an idea I brought it to some new guitar shop and had it worked on.

"Finally, I found a graphite neck in a bin at a place called Nadine's Music, and I put that on. It's not a Kramer neck, but it's got the Kramer end to it - it's a knock-off. Then I put some EMG pickups in it, and the whammy bar was changed to an Ibanez Edge.

"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.' Just to make it clear: I wasn't happy with where the guitar was at, but I settled."

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