Tom Morello's guitar strings: the RATM rig, sourced

Thomas Baptist Morello (born May 30, 1964, New York City; raised in Libertyville, Illinois) is the founding guitarist of Rage Against the Machine, the Los Angeles-formed rap-rock-and-political-rock band whose 1991-2000 / 2007-2011 / 2019-2023 catalog of three studio records (Rage Against the Machine in 1992, Evil Empire in 1996, The Battle of Los Angeles in 1999) is foundational to rap-rock as a genre. After RATM's 2000 dissolution he co-founded Audioslave with the remaining RATM members and vocalist Chris Cornell (2001-2007), then Prophets of Rage (with Chuck D and B-Real, 2016-2019). His solo work includes the acoustic-political project The Nightwatchman (2003 onward) and the modern collaboration project Atlas Underground (2018 onward).

His lead vocabulary, integrating avant-garde noise techniques (kill-switch stutters, tremolo-arm pitch dives, scratch effects) into a hard-rock context, is among the most-distinctive lead-guitar voices in modern rock. The Fender Tom Morello Soul Power Signature Stratocaster has been in continuous production since 2020.

Two primary instruments across his career. 'Arm the Homeless,' a hand-painted Strat-style instrument built around a body he bought at Performance Guitar in Hollywood, with EMG humbuckers, a kill-switch toggle, and an Ibanez Edge tremolo that replaced the guitar's original Floyd Rose unit. And 'Soul Power,' a black Fender Stratocaster with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails bridge humbucker, a kill-switch, and a Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo, the basis for the Fender signature instrument.

For strings, his Premier Guitar Rig Rundown documents an Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky (.009 to .046) on his vibrato-equipped guitars, Arm the Homeless and the Soul Power Strat, and an Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010 to .046) on his non-trem 1982 Telecaster 'Sendero Luminoso,' picked to match the trem guitars' tension. Drop D and Drop C are the most-cited tunings across the RATM and Audioslave catalogs. The Hot Rails humbucker delivers high-output, saturated signal into Marshall tube amplification; the resulting tone is the foundation of his recorded sound across the catalog.

His pedalboard is uniquely simple for a lead guitarist of his stature, a DigiTech Whammy (the signature pitch-shift pedal heard across his catalog), a Boss DD-2 / DD-3 delay, a Dunlop Cry Baby wah, a Boss tremolo. The avant-garde lead vocabulary comes from his right-hand technique (kill-switch toggle, scratching strings with the side of a pick, tremolo-arm pitch dives) more than from the pedalboard itself.

The Hot Rails humbucker (a Strat-sized humbucker with high output) is the secret behind his canonical lead tone. Compared to standard Strat single coils, the Hot Rails delivers approximately twice the output, which drives the front end of his Marshall tube amp into clean, controllable saturation. The result is a high-gain rhythm tone that retains the bright, articulate response of a Strat (rather than the warmer, more compressed response of a typical humbucker-equipped guitar).

The kill-switch is wired to short the signal to ground when toggled; by rapidly toggling it during a sustained note, he produces the on-off stutter effects that define his lead voice. The DigiTech Whammy adds the pitch-shift effects (the famous 'Killing in the Name' solo is built on Whammy-pedal manipulation), and the combination of kill-switch + Whammy + tremolo arm gives him a wide range of pitch-and-rhythm-modulation tools without compromising his core Marshall-tube-saturated tone.

The Fender Tom Morello Soul Power Signature Stratocaster (in current production since 2020) carries the canonical Hot Rails-and-kill-switch spec. For strings, the documented choices are Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky (.009 to .046) on his vibrato-equipped guitars, plus an Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010 to .046) on the non-trem Telecaster 'Sendero Luminoso,' both per his Premier Guitar rundown; a Marshall tube amp at moderate-to-high saturation; a DigiTech Whammy, delay, and wah pedalboard.