Tools On Parade
Tom’s weapons of riff construction
’Sendero Luminoso’ 1982
Fender Telecast er Sta ndar d
“This one was my roommate Scott Tracy's, god rest his soul, he was a Hollywood musician and we were roommates for about five years. Maynard [James Keenan] from Tool taught me how to do drop D tuning, I was over at his apartment, which all the Seattle bands were doing at the time. But I couldn’t do it on [Arm The Homeless] because that one had a locking nut on it. My roommate had a Telecaster that could do it; I had an extra Marshall head and we had a prisoner exchange. [Scott] was a really great musician, had a band called Liquid Jesus who had a deal on MCA and he was one of the great woulda/coulda/shoulda artists and he passed away some years ago. He never got to tour so this tours for him everywhere.”
‘Arm The Homeless ’
homebr ew fra nkenst ein
“Only the body is original. [Points to neck pickup] This one is a single-coil [in humbucker casing] and this one [bridge] is a humbucker [EMG]. I use the lead [bridge] pickup but for the most part all the riff stuff is on the single-coil. I’ve had the same guitar tech, Slim, since 1992. I’m a creature of habit. We have our little weird family – these are the children and I’m his tour husband [laughs]. This one spends a lot of time in the air. When we end the big shows with the band I always chuck it to him as high and as hard as I can and only a couple of times… if he doesn’t catch it it’s usually my fault. I step on the cord or something.”