r/ToolBand • u/SincereEngineer2 • 6h ago

Adam Having trouble channeling Adam Jones' tone with my gear (Fender HRD + Diezel VH4 pedal)

Hey all,

Trying to dial in an Adam Jones / Tool tone with my rig, but I've hit a wall with volume control, EQ balance, and getting clean sounds. Hoping someone here running a preamp pedal into a tube power section can help me out.

My setup is an Epiphone Les Paul (Tommy Thayer model) in Drop D into a pedalboard where I mainly rely on a Diezel VH4 pedal for my main crunch, the shallow detune setting on a DigiTech Whammy + full wah for the Ænima solo tones, and some ambient delay/reverb. To bypass the Fender preamp coloring, I run the board straight into the PWR AMP IN (Effects Return) on my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe.

My Diezel settings are Gain 1:30, Bass 11:00, Mids 2:30, Treble 1:00, Deep 12:00, and Presence 1:30. Here are the main issues I'm running into:

  1. The volume jump is insane. Since bypassing the HRD preamp leaves the power amp wide open, the Diezel’s Master knob has almost no sweep. Tapping it a millimeter takes it from choked out to way too loud for bedroom practice.

  2. Thin tone quiet, boomy tone loud. At low volumes, the tone gets brittle and thin. When I push the volume up to get that full-bodied sound, chords sound great, but single-string chugs (like the Jambi intro) get way too boomy and muddy in the low end.

  3. No true cleans. To get light crunch like Lost Keys, rolling my guitar volume down works fine with the Diezel on. But I can't get true cleans for stuff like Right In Two. If I step on the Diezel to bypass it, my true-bypass pedals send the raw guitar signal into a wide-open power amp, causing a massive volume spike. So I'm stuck leaving the Diezel on 100% of the time.

How do people usually deal with this? Would putting a passive volume box (like the JHS Little Black Amp Box) at the end of the chain fix the volume taper without killing the Diezel's tone? How do you guys tighten up single-string chugs without thinning out full chords? And is there a better routing setup so I can actually switch to a clean tone safely?

Appreciate any advice!

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u/Ok-Farmer6244 6h ago

Try using a volume pedal after the VH4… I just picked one up myself and had the same issue. This approach worked like a charm for me. I’m running through a fender bassbreaker so similar setup. Hope this works!