MarkScudder

Sweet! I miss 80s Rush, period. Alex may not have liked it but his frustration made his playing extra emotional and desperate, which is a great sound for Grace.

Friend of mine just traded emails with Russ from Signature. The Evans passives were offered, but Alex used the actives. They were made by Fernandes, or for Fernandes by EMG, and Russ says the closest thing currently available is the EMG S; it's an active ceramic bar pickup that can be preamped at 9 or 18V.

I've got a good Hentor logo image you can print on decal paper. But just FYI, in case you want it to be accurate, the red one never had a custom/funny logo on the headstock. That particular Strat's headstock was painted and finished the same as the body, with a standard CBS-era Fender Stratocaster decal in gold.

I really cannot understand, nor can I accept, the mindset of anyone who doesn't think Rush can do whatever the hell they want now including break up, start making polka records, stop touring, take up needlepoint, and that they owe us nothing. They've earned the right to a retirement on their terms more than almost any entertainers, musicians, etc. in the world.

Believe it or not, a friend of mine just talked to Russ while I was typing this. He didn't ask who made the actives, but Russ said the closest current pickup is the EMG S series, which is an active ceramic bar that can be run at 9V or 18V. http://www.emgpickups.com/guitar/single-coil/strat/s.html

Thanks guys. As for dual signal chains, the only splitting is in software. There's one input, into my audio interface. It splits the signal. In fact, since I use Apple Mainstage as a plugin host, I've been working on actually splitting it out into three amp channels and pre/post effects to make the thing easier to deal with. My studio is a wreck right now, waiting for the weather to get nice so I can finish painting, but after that I'll make some videos, as my Hentor Sportscaster is now officially done, and not having anything better musically to do, I will be dialing this patch in more.

The pickups in the Signature Aurora were made for Fernandes by EMG. A lot of things people are saying in here are correct: Alex used different guitars and different amp setups on almost every album, and while you can get close with the same gear, every guitarist plays a little differently and Al plays like Al, I play like me, you play like you. You can play like you're pretending to be Al playing like Al, but I've heard a lot of people play Rush and they miss a lot of nuances. Like when prog-metal guys play YYZ; it's too clean because they're used to doing the Yngwie type stuff, and if you listen to the isolated guitar from Moving Pictures, Al's playing is actually kind of messy compared. People miss that. Real heavy prog-heads, the first thing they do is take the human-ness out of Al's playing. Learn the songs but when you play, feel it, don't think it. Al used a Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion on Moving Pictures (Tom Sawyer, Camera Eye), the ESS-355 (Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta), and the Strats with stock (not Shark) necks and '59 Gibson PAFs (not Lawrence L500Ls) (Vital Signs, Limelight). He was using ultra-rare 100W Marshall Club & Country combo amps (2x12 x 4, two dirty, two clean, plus a Rockman, mixed in various combinations for different songs) as far back as MP, but exclusively on Signals/Grace and then mixed with a Dean Markley Combo and (I think) a GK combo with the speaker bypassed and run through a Club & Country speaker on various things on Power Windows. Signals was mostly the Strats - might have had Shark necks at this point with ebony fretboards - but still the PAFs. Grace Under Pressure introduced the Lawrence L500Ls in the bridge and the Letraset on the headstocks - "Hentor Sportscaster" for the white one, "Hentor Porkflapsocaster" for the black one, and as far as I know the red one's headstock was not modified. Power Windows brought back the Howard Roberts and Al had a couple of stock Strats at the time too, with three singles, though I don't know where/how he used them (remember the baby blue one in the Big Money video?). Alex said in interviews that the Sportscaster (white) had a cleaner, brighter sound, the red one was preferable for leads, and the Porkflapsocaster (black) was the workhorse, presumably why he used it for 3/4 of the p/g concert video. Hold Your Fire was the Signatures with the active Fernandes/EMGs through GKs and the clean stuff was also run through a Jazz Chorus. He brought out the 355 again in places on Presto but it was mostly the Sigs but I just learned last night the intro to "Show Don't Tell" was the Hentor. If you want the Alex sound, never buy a guitar that "looks" like one he used. Look for things that would make them *sound* like the ones he used. When I was building my Hentor Sportcaster last year, it started as a '99 Squier with an agathis body. Replacing the bridge pickup with an L500L helped a lot. Replacing the body with an alder body dialed it in quite a bit. If I can ever afford to get the right neck (either from Freddy or somewhere else, it's impossible to get CBS-era headstocks with ebony necks for what I can afford), it'll get me the rest of the way there. (Freddy also insists that the Sportscaster had "mojo" compared to the other two, for what it's worth.) Far as I know, only the Fractal Axe-FX II, through a recent software update, got a model of the Club & Country. No other effects unit or software models it. I use Guitar Rig 5, and I didn't figure out a way until I read that the Club & Country was Marshall's answer to the Fender Twin Reverb, which *everyone* models. So I took the amp section of a Fender Twin and ran it through a "British 2x12" cabinet model. Remember, things get better as time goes on. A 2015 Squier isn't going to sound *exactly* like a '73 American Strat, but it's going to sound better than an old Squier. If you're strapped for cash, buy a recent Indonesian Squier with an agathis body, or better yet a Made-In-Mexico Strat with an alder body, get an HSS pickguard, and a Bill Lawrence (Bill & Becky, not "Bill Lawrence USA") L500L and you're as close as you can get without spending thousands of dollars. If you want a Moving Pictures sound, get a '59 PAF instead of the L500L. If you want the Signature sound, uh.... um.... I heard one of the EMG single coil sets will get you close, but the Signatures had 18V preamps and strange pickup switching. Most important thing is pickups, second most important is tonewood. Then you tweak your amps and effects to that. I'm speaking from experience, that's the only way not to drive yourself crazy. Somebody (and by that I mean it'll have to be me) needs to put together a definitive Alex gear guide. So much of it around the internet is wrong, especially about the Hentors and Signatures. One great resource is the article transcriptions over at Cygnus-X1.net. There were a few really in-depth gear breakdowns in the 80s regarding Lifeson's rigs. http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/rush/bios.php

[never mind]

Yeah, the tech doesn't exist. But I'll play guitar on any GUP/PoW covers anybody wants to do, or anything Al played the Hentor Sportscaster on (with the L500L). I read last night he used it on the intro of Show Don't Tell, I never knew that. PM me.

This is correct. The white and black Strats that became the Sportscaster and Porkflapsocaster, respectively, had some sort of Gibson humbucker in them (I'm sure Cyg is right about it being a PAF). Alex was trying to make his Strats sound like Les Pauls at the time. The Lawrence L500L has a different sound than the PAF that's a little hard to classify; it's almost in a sweet spot between sounding like a traditional humbucker and having two single coils (say like two Strat singles), one out of phase, turned on at once.

And you're 3,000 miles away. QED. :-)

I am one of the thousands of people who submitted vocals for the "Universal Choir," and I have been hotly anticipating this album for six months, since Dev released the guide tracks for "Before We Die," "Z2," and "Dimension Z." The "Dark Matters" disc needs to be approached with the attitude that you can't outdo the first Ziltoid album, and you can't take Ziltoid too seriously as a concept. Despite the writing and performance, Ziltoid was meant to be a joke, a shock, and a slightly childish outlet. "Sky Blue" needs to be approached with the attitude that you also can't really outdo Epicloud. Both discs are "sequels" for a guy who doesn't do sequels; his best work is when he can go off in a completely unexpected, uncharted direction. That's the catch-22 about Ziltoid; the first Ziltoid record was so shockingly unexpected and funny in a "WTF?" sort of way that you can't outdo it if only because not expecting a record like Ziltoid was part of the fun in 2007. I think Devin was under a lot of pressure to satisfy Ziltoid fans. You can't ever do truly groundbreaking work in that scenario. From that point of view, Z2 is amazing. Part of Devin's personality is that he's self-effacing. So once Ziltoid gets big enough, Devin needs to poke fun at Ziltoid to keep it interesting and relevant. Knowing Devin and understanding this, I was able to attempt to manage my expectations for Z2. But it was hard even for me; the demos/guide tracks for the Universal Choir songs were so burned in my mind, it's taken some work to get used to the final versions. (I heard the leaked first mix too, and that didn't help.) Parts of Z2, especially Dark Matters, feel like purpose-written bridges between disparate ideas. Like I said above, I think that's because Devin isn't a sequel guy. But there's some genuinely awesome stuff in there, and the best parts are when he's making fun of himself or the whole concept - the announcer guy, the Poozer in the wormhole, Ziltoid yelling "Oh crap!" when Captain Spectacular is shot, Ziltoid saying "oh, so lame!", the fact that Chris Jericho is Captain Spectacular in the first place, Ziltoid and the attorney, the ending, etc. It's supposed to be goofy. The fact that it's good is gravy. It disappoints me that people demand anything from Devin, even with good intentions. Z2 will always sound a little forced, and in that sense fans got what they deserved, because Devin isn't a record-industry cookie cutter (that's a good thing, by the way). I have the three-disc version as well, but I rarely if ever listen to the version of Dark Matters without the dialogue. Why? The dialogue is part of the joke. It's part of the environment. There are killer riffs and excellent musicianship throughout, but the point of that stuff is that it is absurd to have this level of musicianship in something with a narrator and fart jokes. The absurdity and juxtaposition is what makes it funny, what makes it work. Anyone can riff with enough practice, and Devin has said millions of times he's a "good enough guitarist" to do what he needs to do, and most of his riffing was learned in high school because he couldn't get laid. Anybody who doesn't understand this is always going to be disappointed with Devin. Me, I still laugh out loud every time I hear that stupid Poozer going through the wormhole, because it's so bad it's good, and I don't care who knows. In fact I'd rather have a DVD-ROM of stems than a mix without narration. If I want to appreciate the musicianship let me listen to isolated instruments so I can really dig into what they're playing. Let me really appreciate the work that went into taking a thousand vocal submissions of varying quality (I know mine sucked!) and turning it into that monster on the record.

John Petrucci was my next guitar man-crush after Alex, and I played Ibanez for many years because of him (and their price point, natch). But the whole thing leading up to when Portnoy left just soured me horribly. The "reality show" documentary they released about finding a new drummer made Petrucci, and especially Rudess, who is still the "new guy," look like bitter, impatient pricks who wanted to control everything. I know that's largely marketing and advice from their label and the producers of those videos, but this is a band that has stood up to record label and media influence, and especially after Falling Into Infinity, were able to prove that they knew better than any external force. I had so many years invested in them that I couldn't just never listen to DT again, but if you were to look at my music collection, you'd think DT disbanded when Portnoy left (and to be honest I didn't like Chaos or Black Clouds, so they went off the rails after the 20th anniversary tour for me). They learned a lot of chops from Rush, but they didn't learn how to be modest. The other thing is that it seemed that Portnoy kept the band American-sounding (and to a lesser extent, British-sounding). What little I've heard since whats-his-nuts joined the band sounds like generic Norse math-metal. People claim he's a "better" drummer than Portnoy but he's not as human, as emotional. And there was always emotion in DT stuff, it wasn't always just cold math. I'm sure I'm in the minority if I don't like prog from Sweden and Norway, but I just don't. Portnoy's influences, that ranged from The Beatles to Pantera to Rush, balanced DT's prog ambitiousness with a traditional heavy rock vibe that I thought made them a better, more enjoyable band. Other than the chorus in "Breaking All Illusions," which is unfortunately wrapped in eleven and a half minutes of crap, I can't stand anything they've released since. Unfortunately, I'm also not a big fan of anything Portnoy's been involved with since leaving DT. So it's just really tragic, I'm the only person left on earth who thought Portnoy needed DT and vice-versa, and they were perfect for each other, and I can neither stand new DT nor Winery Dogs. I'm grateful that in 2006 someone introduced me to Devin Townsend; his excellent work fills my jones for Portnoy-era Dream Theater, Rush-esque tongue-in-cheek humility, and often-undervalued anthemic wall-of-sound emotional music. Plus he's operating in the post-industry era where he can crowdfund projects that wouldn't otherwise ever get financed by a record company, like Casualties of Cool and Z2. Dev has essentially replaced DT in the #2 spot of my favorite bands of all time. I have a particular memory of one time I met Dev after a show; take it for what it's worth. He was talking to fans, most of whom obviously thought he was a god. One asks him, "Devin, where did you go to school?" and he replies, "Vancouver High School, why?" The kid replies, "No, I mean for music." The kid literally didn't understand that most successful musicians in non-classical genres don't go to school, they have an independent work ethic that makes them excel. And this kid just couldn't understand that Dev didn't go to school to learn what he does. I think about that when I think about the new drummer in DT, who gave up teaching at Berklee to join DT, and has a sort of cold, academic vibe to his playing. But everyone's different, I guess. It's just not my thing.

I have less than no idea.

Yeah. I have to clean it up but there's no other Rush fans around here who play bass or drums so I'm not motivated to do it, I'd rather just play.