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Alex Lifeson's L500 pickup question is ANSWERED!


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Finally, we know specifically what Bill Lawrence L-500 was in his Hentor Sportscasters! It's official! I can rest at ease because of this article.

 

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/interviews/...ex_lifeson.html

 

Doesn't take too much patience, read down a little and you shall see. He says it himself.

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great interview.

 

believe it or not, darrell from pantera also used bill lawrence pups early on. his duncan dimebucker is a tweaked version of that; i had one in a hamer chaparral that really got a great tone similar to alex's black strat.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/brooks/gear/bobpimped.jpg

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That is a really old article. I read it in print when it was first published. So, um, yeah.
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Great article. Lot's of good information on the rack stuff he used for the live shows. The bit about using one amp clean and one amp screaming is really key to getting the tone of that era IMO.

 

I have an L500-L in one of my Yamahas and it does nail the tone for GUP very well. I recorded Afterimage with that guitar I just never posted it. I'll try to find it.

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QUOTE (rushfanNlv @ Jan 22 2010, 07:21 PM)
I have an L500-L in one of my Yamahas and it does nail the tone for GUP very well.  I recorded Afterimage with that guitar I just never posted it.  I'll try to find it.

please do!

 

i have a L500-L that i orderd sometime ago, waiting to have a strat to put it in.

 

that hamer looks sick brooks

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QUOTE (mortkort @ Jan 22 2010, 09:56 AM)
QUOTE (rushfanNlv @ Jan 22 2010, 07:21 PM)
I have an L500-L in one of my Yamahas and it does nail the tone for GUP very well.  I recorded Afterimage with that guitar I just never posted it.  I'll try to find it.

please do!

 

i have a L500-L that i orderd sometime ago, waiting to have a strat to put it in.

 

that hamer looks sick brooks

Try this link Afterimage.

 

If that doesn't work, try this link and then click on "Afterimage 57 close". I need to get my stuff on the TRF musicians site.

 

It's not a perfect performance and my guitar goes out of tune a little towards the end (have the thing apart now trying to fix the problem) but for tone purposes, you can hear what the L500-L sounds ike. By the way, this is through one 4140 and one Peavey Classic 30. My other 4140 was dead at the time.

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Nice to know.

Cool article too. It's funny how much has changed since then.

 

I always got a great GUP tone with the L500R but I'm using a much different amp setup than Alex was using.

 

My current Strat has an L500 but I don't know which one exactly. It's a very old pickup. I've had it since 1980.

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He had a burst strat in '77 from what I've read. He used that on Spirit for the arpeggiated parts I believe.
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hmm, burst huh? maybe the black is a refin..?

 

Well, it looks like he first listed a fender in his gear rig in the hemi tour book, and the tour started on October 14th, 1978.

 

Actually, there is no way to be 100% even with the serial number.

The 76 to 80 strats have like an S76XXXX, S77XXXX, S78XXXX numbering etc...but even fender says having an S77 like I do is not really a guarantee it was produced in that exact year...could be +/- 1 or 2 because they print the labels years in advance. The neck pocket date is the more accurate.

 

I'm sure alex has no clue what his neck date was.....I'm guessing he picked up a 77/78 neck date strat in early 1978, but probably didn't touch it until 1979.

 

 

I think this is the earliest pic I've seen of it with the original maple neck, floyd nut, and Gibson ES/LP pickup. The 76 355 is there so this pic is between 76 and 78.

 

I'll browse the ladies thread for a bit to see if I spot a burst one...

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/sweetmiracle/CUPpix.jpg

Edited by jdouglas
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I JUST picked up an really old pre-lawsuit Ibanez 2402 for a song because the 6 bridge pickup didn't work. When I was trying out different pickups the only one that sounded good was the L500. As fate might have it I am a HUGE Dime fan as well.

 

 

http://chroniclesofrush.com/downloads/2402.png

 

Brooks:

 

I have a ton of love for Hamer USA!

http://chroniclesofrush.com/gallery/14/1.png

 

 

Edited by ChroniclesOfRush
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QUOTE (ChroniclesOfRush @ Jan 23 2010, 10:57 AM)
Brooks:

I have a ton of love for Hamer USA!
http://chroniclesofrush.com/gallery/14/1.png

ohhhh, fookin' SWEET monaco!!

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Welcome Mike....we like a man who is into details...ha rofl3.gif

 

The info here has been generally accepted as correct after much debate here...

 

http://www.musictoyz.com/articles/chopalex.php

 

The entry:

Black '77 Fender Stratocaster (the wild guitar solo on "A Farewell to Kings" was this guitar)

custom-built Pyramid solid body(which wouldn't actually be recorded until Permanent Waves)

 

is actually 2 separate guitars...you can see the Pyramid guitar in the pic above (the one with like alex and many guitars..the Pyramid is the one on the far left). It was an early Synth guitar, and at some point he probably did rip out the Synth electronics to put them in a higher quality guitar, but I don't think it was one of the strats.

 

I think he went to the Shark neck during/after the signals tour in the 80s. I was in contact with the owner of Shark guitars in Canada to score a NOS neck from them but it kinda fizzled. Yes, they were all Canadian Maple wood with rosewood fingerboards...he gave me some of the details on how they made them and it was all very interesting...nice guy too...

 

Anywho, welcome again...and keep posting! Would like to see a pic of the Signature Pegasus...that sounds pretty cool. cool.gif

Edited by jdouglas
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Hey jdouglas! Thanks! I'm having a blast on here already! I was a bit confused I think because I had heard some people say that the Strat had a Pyramid body, so I assumed it to be the "Pyramid Solid Body" guitar, and therefore I went on a wild hunt to find info about the Pyramid Co. I'll have to go back and revise my notes ! laugh.gif I had seen the MusicToyz article, but I was wary of its authenticity when I noticed that some of Alex's guitars were missing from that article; the ones that come to mind are the fourth Signature, and (I think I saw it on here actually) he had some sort of doubleneck acoustic. In regards to the picture I have had people tell me that the guitar with all the electronics to the far left is the Roland GR500 guitar synthesizer.

 

Cheers,

Mike

 

Almost forgot! Yes, I'll see what I can do about getting some Pegasus pics. It's been cloudy here the past couple of days (NW of Boston) and I would like to do some outdoor shots as the lighting in my house is less than ideal except for certain rooms at certain times of day. I'll get them ASAP though!

Edited by Devidip Hentor
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ive tried to find out more about the pyramid guitar but ive only found out where it was built. hard to find anything else about them. the neck on the pyramid looks awesome.

 

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r113/mortenmat/Rush/753744057_l.jpg

 

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r113/mortenmat/Rush/FC1049_RUSH_6.jpg

 

edit: spelling

Edited by mortkort
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I couldn't find anything either, really, except for what I found above. However, I did type Roland GR-500 into Google Images (I didn't want to post anything because they were someone else's pics) and I found that the pictures of the guitar synthesizer look almost exactly like the guitar to the far left in the photo with all the guitars Do you guys see this too? Or am I seeing things? laugh.gif And those pictures of the Pyramid look splendid as well! Edited by Devidip Hentor
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Yup, good call...looks like that is a Roland GR500, and that tiger stripe thing is probably the Pyramid.

 

http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/images/gr500.jpg

 

Maybe be ripped the Synth eletronics and put them in the Pyramid at some point. These guitars don't get alot of posts since they were not widely recorded / used live etc...so you are charting some new "Territories" haha.

 

Nice work....ps i don't think anybody cares if you link to other photos as long as it's the original source photo and not a google thumnail (as that doesn't work much..)

 

Love the rare photos, nice. If you see Alex playing a sunburst start cicra late 70s please post as we are trying to determine if the black strat is a refin or not as well. Thanks~!

 

2.gif

Edited by jdouglas
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QUOTE (Devidip Hentor @ Feb 23 2010, 07:52 AM)
Hey jdouglas! Thanks! I'm having a blast on here already! I was a bit confused I think because I had heard some people say that the Strat had a Pyramid body, so I assumed it to be the "Pyramid Solid Body" guitar, and therefore I went on a wild hunt to find info about the Pyramid Co. I'll have to go back and revise my notes ! laugh.gif I had seen the MusicToyz article, but I was wary of its authenticity when I noticed that some of Alex's guitars were missing from that article; the ones that come to mind are the fourth Signature, and (I think I saw it on here actually) he had some sort of doubleneck acoustic. In regards to the picture I have had people tell me that the guitar with all the electronics to the far left is the Roland GR500 guitar synthesizer.

Cheers,
Mike

Almost forgot! Yes, I'll see what I can do about getting some Pegasus pics. It's been cloudy here the past couple of days (NW of Boston) and I would like to do some outdoor shots as the lighting in my house is less than ideal except for certain rooms at certain times of day. I'll get them ASAP though!

Yes, that is indeed an early Roland GR500 Guitar Synthesizer. The Pyramid guitar is the Black Gibson ES335-looking guitar that is to the right of Alex in the picture where he is seated playing the classical guitar. The Les Paul-looking guitar pictured, I believe is also a Pyramid. The Black Pyramid, was built as a substitute for his original Tobacco Sunburst 335 that was damaged, repaired and never taken on the road again.

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Good stuff! I saw a few pics of the Roland in tourbooks and official band photos. I was watching an interview with Alex on Youtube where he showed a gentleman his guitars and setup he was using for the S&A tour. When he was talking about the 355 he said basically that it was built by Gibson in the custom shop and he oversaw the assembly(which we knew) and he also mentions picking up his ES-345 around the same time. This seems to correlate with what the MusicToyz article states: that he picked up a black 345 to take the place of the 335 while touring after the speaker incident.

 

Thanks for telling me about use of photos by the way because I didn't know what you guys generally did about that here; as in whether it is ok. That was the exact photo I found haha!

 

Good find, mortkort, on the old pics. Looks like Geddy's Rick in the background too! That is a unique looking guitar, with the tiger stripes and all.

 

While searching for more on the Pyramid Co, I found a man, apparently a former employee, who commented on an article about Alex's return to Gibson guitars on tour. I'm on the phone now so I'll switch over to the PC and see if I can put it up.

 

 

Cheers,

Mike

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