i love Adam Jones or Tool's tone and want to figure out how he gets it. any suggestions/comments/death threats?
Thanks for listening to this small piece of me.
TOOL
this seems pretty obvious now doesn't it?
i love Adam Jones or Tool's tone and want to figure out how he gets it. any suggestions/comments/death threats?
i love Adam Jones or Tool's tone and want to figure out how he gets it. any suggestions/comments/death threats?
# 1
You've entered my realm of work, my friend.
Here's the thing, you will never be able to COMPLETELY emulate Adam Jone's tone. You can come very close (amost 98% perfect), but a small part of his sound come from the type of guitar he uses. It's a type of Gibson (I can't remember off the top of my head what type), but they cancelled that series of guitar after customers who bought it complained about weird noises coming from the pickups. It turned out that the metallic silver paint was interferring with the electronics inside of the guitar. Almost everyone didn't like this. But this was the exact reason why Adam Jones DID like these guitars. And now, it's almost impossible to find one of these guitars. But still isn't impossible to get his sound down.
Both Adam Jones and Justin Chancellor (bass) of Tool love Mid's and Highs. Base your sound on this. When you're equalizing your distorted section (on your amp or pedal, how ever your set up is), keep your mids very high, your high's very high, but don't forget about the bass. Turn it down a bit, but not all the way. Every guitar needs at least a little bass.
That's the main part. Another thing is your distortion. An old, like, blues/classic rock distortin won't really pull it off. A heavy metal/death metal pedal does it very nice, but those pedals tend to have A LOT of saturated distortion. You don't want that. Adam Jones takes a minimalist approach to the amount of distortion. Turn down the dist so that you have enough that when you palm mute you can still hear it, but when you're open you still BLAST, so to speak.
Then there's the effects. He uses a wah pedal, but in an unconvential way. He never really SOLOs, as you probably already know, so you've just got to listen to the CDs or concerts to check out how he uses the wah.
He likes flange, but he uses it more in "Aenema" that he does in "Lateralus" (I mean the CD's, not the songs). I'm almost certain he puts the flange before the distortion, but don't quote me on that. And he only uses it once and awhile, so if you don't have a flange pedal or effect, don't cry.
He also uses delay, and often. You need a delay pedal if you don't have one. Most of the songs are all set the same way. So, once you figure out the timing/echo/decay of his delay (and as each delay pedal is different, I can't just give you the settings) you will most likely have every Tool song's delay down, minus a few tweaks here and there.
His clean tone is basically just everything I mentioned before, but with no distortion. Most of the time he doesn't even do that. He'll just turn down the volume knob on the guitar to get rid of the distortion for the time being. It's that dirty clean sound that he uses. And other than flange once and a while, there's really no effects on his clean tone except for the delay (which I have already mentioned.)
I hope this helps. If you've got any other questions, post 'em. If you tell me what your set-up/equipment is, I could probably help you out a little more, but this is basically the base of his sound.
[Edited by toolfreak001 on 02-24-2003 at 08:44 AM]
Here's the thing, you will never be able to COMPLETELY emulate Adam Jone's tone. You can come very close (amost 98% perfect), but a small part of his sound come from the type of guitar he uses. It's a type of Gibson (I can't remember off the top of my head what type), but they cancelled that series of guitar after customers who bought it complained about weird noises coming from the pickups. It turned out that the metallic silver paint was interferring with the electronics inside of the guitar. Almost everyone didn't like this. But this was the exact reason why Adam Jones DID like these guitars. And now, it's almost impossible to find one of these guitars. But still isn't impossible to get his sound down.
Both Adam Jones and Justin Chancellor (bass) of Tool love Mid's and Highs. Base your sound on this. When you're equalizing your distorted section (on your amp or pedal, how ever your set up is), keep your mids very high, your high's very high, but don't forget about the bass. Turn it down a bit, but not all the way. Every guitar needs at least a little bass.
That's the main part. Another thing is your distortion. An old, like, blues/classic rock distortin won't really pull it off. A heavy metal/death metal pedal does it very nice, but those pedals tend to have A LOT of saturated distortion. You don't want that. Adam Jones takes a minimalist approach to the amount of distortion. Turn down the dist so that you have enough that when you palm mute you can still hear it, but when you're open you still BLAST, so to speak.
Then there's the effects. He uses a wah pedal, but in an unconvential way. He never really SOLOs, as you probably already know, so you've just got to listen to the CDs or concerts to check out how he uses the wah.
He likes flange, but he uses it more in "Aenema" that he does in "Lateralus" (I mean the CD's, not the songs). I'm almost certain he puts the flange before the distortion, but don't quote me on that. And he only uses it once and awhile, so if you don't have a flange pedal or effect, don't cry.
He also uses delay, and often. You need a delay pedal if you don't have one. Most of the songs are all set the same way. So, once you figure out the timing/echo/decay of his delay (and as each delay pedal is different, I can't just give you the settings) you will most likely have every Tool song's delay down, minus a few tweaks here and there.
His clean tone is basically just everything I mentioned before, but with no distortion. Most of the time he doesn't even do that. He'll just turn down the volume knob on the guitar to get rid of the distortion for the time being. It's that dirty clean sound that he uses. And other than flange once and a while, there's really no effects on his clean tone except for the delay (which I have already mentioned.)
I hope this helps. If you've got any other questions, post 'em. If you tell me what your set-up/equipment is, I could probably help you out a little more, but this is basically the base of his sound.
[Edited by toolfreak001 on 02-24-2003 at 08:44 AM]
# 2
hey thanks. that's really helpful.
i guess someone called toolfreak would really know what they're talking about.
i guess someone called toolfreak would really know what they're talking about.
Thanks for listening to this small piece of me.
# 3
i beleive the guitar that adam jones uses is a 1978 gibson silver burst les paul. gibson just reissued it for a short run, but i think they stopped again.but i do beleive you can still purchase them here and there at places that still have left over
# 4
