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Suede·Social·Issue No. 20
Tone recipes·2026 · JUL
Rock1992easy to fake

01Rage Against the Machine

Killing in the Name

Stripped-down riff tone — a 'Arm the Homeless' Strat-style guitar into a Marshall JCM800 with a DigiTech Whammy and a wah, both used as expressive scream-effects. The main riff is dry and articulate; the chorus tone gets the wah parked for a midrange honk; the solos are Whammy dives and scratching. The amp itself is fairly clean — Morello does most of his sound design with pedals layered over basic Marshall grit.

02Signal chain

Guitar to amp, 4 pedals between.

  1. In
    Guitar

    Custom 'Arm the Homeless' guitar (Performance neck, Kramer body, EMG-81)

  2. 01
    The scream/dive effect on solos and pre-chorus stabs
    DigiTech Whammy WH-1

    Pitch range: 1 octave up, expression pedal swept

  3. 02
    Parked-wah midrange honk on rhythm sections
    Dunlop Cry Baby Wah

    Pedal parked around 1 o'clock

  4. 03
    Short slap delay on solos
    Boss DD-2 Digital Delay

    Time: ~250ms, Feedback: 30%, Mix: 30%

  5. 04
    Used as a 'jet' effect on signature moments
    Ibanez DFL Flanger

    Range: extreme

  6. Out
    Amp

    Marshall JCM800 2205

03Field note

The secret sauce

Morello's 'effects' are mostly physical techniques — scratching the kill switch, scraping picks across pickups, using the Whammy as a pitch-stomp rather than a smooth glide. The pedals enable the technique, they don't create it.