“I was looking for it and he said, ‘Oh that? I threw it away. It was crap.’ I couldn’t believe it”: How Tony Iommi found the secret to his Black Sabbath tone (and how he lost it)

Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi perform as Earth, just before the band was renamed Black Sabbath.

How Tony Iommi got his electric guitar tone in Black Sabbath is the stuff of legend. It is the origin stories of origin stories.

There was the brutal machining injury to his fretting hand, requiring the use of thimbles to play again. If Django Reinhardt was an inspiration, the determination to continue came from within. Iommi sized down his electric guitar strings, mixing them with super-light banjo strings to go easier on his fingers. He would arrive at his downtuning epiphany soon enough...