TONY IOMMI Talks Gear, Tone And Early BLACK SABBATH In New Interview

December 18, 2010

Issue 210 of the U.K.'s Total Guitar magazine (on sale December 24 - January 20) features legendary BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi on the cover and contains 11 pages of Iommi coverage, including an in-depth interview and a complete tab of "Planet Caravan". A couple of excerpts from the first part of the chat follow below.

Total Guitar: Is it true you started using banjo strings on your guitar after your accident?

Iommi: Yes. I had big problems when asking string companies to make me sets of lighter gauge strings. They kept saying they couldn't do it, even though I'd made my own setup from banjo strings. I used banjo strings at first because I was trying to find anything that was light that I could use, and I dropped the gauge down so that I was using a fifth [string] as a sixth. That worked for me. Of course, it was also an art of trying to tune a guitar with lighter strings — old tuning pegs and the lighter gauge — created other problems.

Total Guitar: What amps were you using in the early days of SABBATH, around the first album, "Black Sabbath"?

Iommi: I think I was using Marshall early on, and then Laney on the first album, but when we first wrote ["Black Sabbath"] songs I was using a Marshall 50-watt. I switched to Laney because they started up around the same time as us and they're a Birmingham company. To be honest, they offered to give us all this gear when nobody else did. What do you say to that? "OK!" So I used them.

Total Guitar: Are you happy with the tone you have now?

Iommi: I'm never, never satisfied. I'll do a tour and think, "I want a bit more of this and a bit more of that." I just have that thing where I have to try something else. At the moment I'm having a new pedalboard built. Sometimes I experiment on the road, which is difficult. Last year I ended up using Engl amplifiers and Laney, which were two different sounds altogether. That was last year's experiment. I'm looking forward to the next one!

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