What is the Diezel 'tone'?

I’ve owned the Herbert and Hagen. The Hagen was incredible, I kept it about 7 or 8 years and regretted trading it away. I’ll get another one some day for sure. I would describe it as polished clean and crisp sounding. A full bodied sound where the controls worked great, could get a great low mid thump but also could dial in the hair and sizzle if needed. Damn I miss it…

Herbert, while was amazing sounding, could get just brutal as hell with the mid cut section. It was good, but I found I didn’t actually like that mid cut at the time I had it, I was on the prowl for more mids. And I thought that the mid cut was the thing that really made it really different to my other amps, so I Sold it.
 
What @MetalHeadMike said was my experience with Diezel as well.

On paper the D-Moll seemed like a good alternative to my EVH 50W for gigging, and while the clean channel was easily top #3 best evah (for my taste), when it came to the drive channels, the thickish low-mid, almost fuzzy saturation could not be dialed out.
I found a tremendous deal on a used one, went there, money in hand, but after putting it through its paces, decided it was just not for me and walked away. But please note I wasn't looking for modern metal tones or anything, I wanted it to do 70's/80's stuff as well, and IMHO that wasn't its forte.

Having played the Herbert and the VH-4 as well years ago in a store, I could see the family similarities in certain traits and that thick, compressed and overly saturated (not flubby!!!) low-mid thing was present in all three.
It's just that the Herbert could be voiced a lot meaner than the D-Moll, what I can remember from it.

I also remember at the time, my take was 'if I were in a thrash metal band, this amp would be the ticket'. To me, it felt a bit lacking in versatility when it comes to convincing 60's/70's tones, but hey, no one joins a Shadows or Ventures tribute with a Herbert, methinks. ;-)
But for menacing gain tones, it was beastly. Big, bold, gnarly, just ever so slightly polished. Which my Engl Invader also suffers from btw, but it definitely wins in versatility.
 
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The VH4 is great for running in a parallel with a more vintage-voiced amp, like a Superlead, JMP, 800, etc. Tons of low end and gain and compression and super tight. Pair that with an amp that has more of a barking mid-range and sweetness and not a lot of lows and you have a nice well-rounded, dynamic sound.
 
Speeddemon said:
but hey, no one joins a Shadows or Ventures tribute with a Herbert, methinks
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This just slammed my funny bone! :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:




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I don't find my VH4 very tight in the low end.

Smooth, polite, dark, balanced mids (higher than recto, lower than marshall), compressed.

Seems like a good blender amp but I generally don't like playing mine by itself most times.

Leads are pretty nice though.
 
I love my D-Moll with a SD-1 in front. Set the master and channel volumes higher and keep the drive knob lower. Then slam it with a boost. It really comes alive and makes up for a lot of the compression. It took me a while to figure it out, but this is the secret IMHO with this amp.

The other secret is to use the mid cut as a mid boost.
 
I have a Herbert. One of my favorite amps.

I play tuned pretty low though. The clarity and compression works for me.

Between my buddy I jam with, we have a couple different Oranges, a couple different 6505 variants, a couple Marshall variants, a Fryette, and some SS Randall stuff for old school thrash tones.

The Herbert is a different thing than those. Less cab specific than a lot of other amps, cleans are fantastic, ch2+ boosted is a fuckin monster. The Mid Cut is a great option, especially if it’s just us jamming and one of us is playing drums.

Try one if you can, it’s a great amp and I think it’d fit nicely in your stable, it doesn’t really sound like anything you mentioned above.
 
Racerxrated said:
If you can find an early Blueface VH4 I have heard from guys I trust that they are special and are worth every penny.
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The one above is a 1998 very first run of the silver face but blue spec per Peter and Billy Corgan who owned it before me.
 
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