Gibson Les Pauls with a Seymour Duncan Invader at the bridge. He used the Les Pauls on select tracks of Enema of the State before retiring them in 1999. Beginning with the Enema of the State tour, he used Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters with Seymour Duncan Invader pickups. This eventually developed into his signature model, released by Fender in 2001. In 2001, during the recording and touring of the eponymous album by DeLonge's side project Box Car Racer, he began using a Gibson ES-335. He removed all electronics from the guitar except for the bridge volume control and replaced the stock bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan Invader. This eventually lead to the creation of the Gibson Tom DeLonge Signature ES-333, which was released in 2003. This model consisted of a single Gibson Dirty Fingers pickup in the bridge position with one volume control. It was available between 2003 and 2009. A lower-priced model manufactured by Epiphone was released until 2019. In December 2022, DeLonge revealed that he began using Fender Starcasters, moving away from his endorsement deal with Gibson and coinciding with his return to Blink-182. Like previous signature models, this guitar consists of a single humbucker in the bridge position (namely a Seymour Duncan SH-5 Custom pickup) and one volume knob. DeLonge endorses Ernie Ball strings and has used their Skinny Top Heavy Bottom strings on his electric guitars and Earthwood Phosphor Bronze Medium Light strings on his acoustic guitars. Amps and pedals The Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier was key to DeLonge's early sound; he employed them to create a distorted sound. "A Mesa/Boogie is like a nuke: you plug it in and it fills up every piece of the sonic spectrum," he said. As his sound gradually grew cleaner, he grew away from the Mesa/Boogies. DeLonge employed the Marshall JCM900 amps for his work on Dude Ranch, in which he improved his guitar tone. In a September 1999 Guitar Player article, DeLonge outlined his intentions: "I'm the kind of guitarist that wants the biggest, fattest, loudest, sound he can get." When Blink-182 initially broke up in 2005, DeLonge altered his equipment setup for his work in Angels & Airwaves, pairing Vox AC30H2s and Fender '65 Twin Reverbs, and using less distortion. He carried this setup over into Blink-182 when he first returned in 2009. Beginning with his work on Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001), he began