Limp Bizkit: The One

I enjoy odd instrumentation and one of those infrequently used variations of the guitar is the tenor guitar. In doing research for a week long feature on the tenor guitar, I read that Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit played an unusually tuned tenor guitar on a number of the band’s songs. Unfortunately, just because it was a four-string guitar doesn’t mean that it was a tenor guitar.

Wes Borland (in body paint) with his baritone guitar

What the unusually adorned Borland actually played was a custom made Ibanez AX baritone guitar. I think the confusion lies in the fact that baritone guitars typically have six strings and not four, while tenor guitars always have four strings, a shorter scale length, and thinner strings. In addition to these aspects, Borland tunes the instrument as F#-F#-B-E. The F# stings are an octave apart.

For our Saturday bubbling under cut, an album cut from Limp Bizkit’s 2000 CD “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water” – “The One” is our feature. The song features Borland with the nu-metal band and his custom baritone axe.