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My Alex Lifeson Guitar Rig


rushfanNlv
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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

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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
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All and all the entire rig was around 3 grand accumulated over a few years. Funny thing is, once the recession hit, I ended up selling most of this stuff. You don't have to spend three grand. The key is to use two amps - one clean and one dirty. Blend the two together to create the sound. You can use chorus on either amp or both but using it on the clean amp will give you more of a shimmer.
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That's one thing I was always wondering, whether the Aurora was 18v or 9v.

I also asked Russ about the pickup switching. I wanted to know if it was just on/off for each pickup, reverse phase, or series/parallel because I had heard differently from different sources. Russ said, "I do not recall the technical details about parallel, reverse phase etc with any clarity so I would prefer not to comment."

I always assumed it was phase/off/reverse phase for each pickup, but I recall Alex saying series/parallel in an interview, perhaps he mis-spoke.

The other thing I asked Russ about was the two jack holes in Great White. I wondered if one was an output to a guitar synth or something. He didn't remember that at all but he said they fooled around with stereo outputs.

Also Russ did not that after Great White's neck broke on the toss to Jimmy, they did send Alex a replacement neck, but "the magic was broken for Alex"

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and mark, alex did not use the fernandes/emg actives..that circuit was created AFTER Rod Evans and Russ worked together on the compan. Alx' all had the 9v preamp made for him. i have them in my signatures that Rod kindly made for me to Alex' specs for use with the E1 Hot Lead Eliminator and E1 Hot Rythm p/u's i have, the same as alex used in his all of Sigs. It runs on a 9v battery, op amp based.the pots are lowered to 25 ohm, otherwise, it's as stock. Evans are apassive designed pickup with an "active preamp system" (in this case active just means essentially powered by a separate power source, in this case, a battery, not unlike EMG's). i still have a set of 3 single coil original Fernandes/EMG p/u's. quiet, powerful and bit sterile. in fact, they were the prototype design to the EMG SA p/u that is still available today.. thought that would help to clarify since you meantioned wring info on the web about alex' signature wiring. the three toggles are merely on and off switches for each pickup. the two output jacks were originally part of the IVL Pitchrider pickup system that Russ had installed in it when he FIRST gave Alex the prototype Great White, which he ended keeping, but ditching the pickup. the later use for the routed hole was for a stereo split that never came to fruition. Alex decided to just split it at the Rane mixers in his signal chain and have a third offstage setup with a digitech processor that their house soundman could fade in and out throughout the live shows for added "effect". hope that helps...:)
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