Tom Morello Tremolo Guitar Mod

There is a great guitar mod that Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has made significant use of in his radical playing style, and that is the tremolo switch mod. What this entails is a selector switch that can silence the guitar's output instantly. By switching this back and forth rapidly, you can create a dramatic tremolo effect, and keep in mind that I mean tremolo in the real sense, which is a volume change. Not like how tremolo bars really just change the pitch, which should be called vibrato.

With this modification to his guitar, he has created some really memorable sounds, such as the DJ scratching sound he uses in various Rage songs. While the variety of different effects that Tom Morello gets with his instrument may sound like he is using a bunch of effects pedals, he actually has a pretty simple setup. The tremolo switch mod allows him to obtain many more sounds with his guitar than just regular effects pedals can get.

Although Morello has his guitar professionally modified to handle his frequent use of the tremolo switch, any guitar with two pickups and a volume control for each pickup can make this effect. Most of the Gibson guitars are setup this way. To get a quick version of this guitar mod, you can set one of your pickups to silent in volume, and set the other one as loud as it can get. Then use the selector switch to toggle between them. This should produce an identical sound that can be further modified and customized into many other effects that Morello uses.

You should not do this too much with your regular pickup toggle because they are not made to handle that kind of constant strain. Instead of using his stock selector, Tom Morello had his guitar customized with an additional selector on one of the fins of his instrument that is built to withstand heavy use. If you are really going to be making this type of sound with your guitar a lot, you should think about getting it professionally modded so that you don't have to worry about breaking anything. If you are very adept with guitar customizing and modification, you might be able to do this yourself, but it would seem like a pretty serious task.