3 Ways Tony Iommi's Homemade Thimbles Created Heavy Metal's Sound

Iommi lost the tips of two fingers on his fretting hand in a factory accident. He fashioned homemade thimbles from melted plastic bottles to replace his fingertips.

He tuned his guitar down to make fretting easier with his injured hand. This lower tuning became a defining characteristic of Black Sabbath’s heavy sound.

The combination of thimbles and downtuning directly shaped the genre of heavy metal. Iommi’s adaptation turned a limitation into the genre’s sonic foundation.