That Lifeson Sound...
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Category: Other music related lounges
Forum Name: Tech Talk
Forum Description: Discuss musical instruments, equipment, hi-fi, speakers, vinyl, gadgets,etc.
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=55082
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Topic: That Lifeson Sound...
Posted By: missiongonewrong
Subject: That Lifeson Sound...
Date Posted: January 27 2009 at 19:03
| Does anyone know what amps Alex Lifeson of Rush uses? im in the market and looking. Thanks in advance! |
Replies:
Posted By: Petrovsk Mizinski
Date Posted: January 28 2009 at 01:35
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You mean his current rig or what? He used Marshall back in the day, but meh, Marshall is boring as hell and good luck finding a Super Lead head fora reasonable price , because the vintage ones are expensive and the re-issues are always really expensive too. And yeah, Super Leads are designed to be cranked all the way up, so they are practically useless nowadays unless you play stadiums and don't try and use an attenuator to try to reduce the volume, because by the time you reduced the volume to neighbor friendly levels, you would have lost a lot of tone because of the attenuator. Today Lifeson is using Floyd Rose equipped Les Paul's (urgh, I hate Gibson), Hughes And Kettner Switchblade heads, TC Electronics G Force multi effects rackmount processor, TC Electronics 1210 spatial expander and a Loft 440 Delay Line/Flanger. The Switchblade is obviously a more practical and IMO, much better sounding alternative to the Super Lead head, although obviously it's not going to sound like a Marshall, but who gives a poop, because they sound good anyway. If you're more serious about capturing the Marshall sound, get a JVM head and unlike Super Leads of old, these Marshalls sound good at low volumes too and have signifcantly more gain on tap to the point where you no longer need an overdrive pedal to push the front end. The one thing I never liked about the modern Marshalls, is the high noise floor compared to other modern stuff stuff like Bogner but then again Bogner is boutique (and well, better sounding) and Marshall isn't. But of course, if it so happens you already own an ISP Decimator G string, no problems with noise anywhere:P |
Posted By: missiongonewrong
Date Posted: January 28 2009 at 13:36
Thanks man just what i was looking for
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Posted By: UMUR
Date Posted: January 28 2009 at 13:46
Oh my God Harry youŽre a goddam guitar and amp GOD. IŽll take some advice from you sometime in the future when I need a certain sound. Great description .
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Posted By: The Quiet One
Date Posted: January 28 2009 at 13:51
He was talking about guitars and amps??!!!   I thought he was talking some kind of Zeuhl   |
UMUR wrote:Posted By: UMUR
Date Posted: January 28 2009 at 14:16
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Posted By: JulioSouth
Date Posted: January 30 2009 at 09:24
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You forgot a lot of Barbie-like dolls in adoring positions by his pedalboard for inspiration.
No kidding, just saw it on the new DVD!
 ------------- "I'll be right there, I'll never leave; All I ask from you is Believe" |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: January 30 2009 at 10:41
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Be careful spending too much money. 90% of your tone comes from your fingers. I've discovered this the hard way. I still sound like me no matter what amp and guitar I use. Buy the equipment that makes your sound sound best. But knowing what the greats use is great fun!!! ------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: Trademark
Date Posted: January 30 2009 at 16:50
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^^ This is so very, very true. Rick Nielson of Cheap Trick used to brag that he could make any guitar or amp sound like sh*t., and Clapton tell some great stories about playing through B B King's rig, but not being able to sound anything like B.B.. |
Posted By: missiongonewrong
Date Posted: January 30 2009 at 21:14
 Good advice i will keep this in mind...
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Posted By: Petrovsk Mizinski
Date Posted: January 30 2009 at 22:06
Sorry, but the notion that tone comes from the fingers is garbage. Playing style comes from the fingers. Tone comes from the equipment. If tone came from the fingers, why use a guitar amp? Because according to your reasoning, we can get most of our tone without equipment (just need the guitar). We can just pick a guitar up, not have to plug it in and we get our tone. No amount of good equipment and tone is going to save a bad player. You can have a Bogner Uberschall and if you can't play anything worth a crap, you will sound bad, but this is nothing to do with tone, this is due to a lack of being able to play properly, hence playing style. And no amount of the best playing in the world is going to make a 40 dollar practice amp that has been beaten up sound good. Shawn Lane will have crap tone through a 40 dollar, 10 watt solid state, 6.5 inch speaker practice amp that has been thrown off the roof of a house a couple of times and keeps cutting out and in as he plays. But he would (would, as opposed to will, because he kinda isn't alive to be around to play anymore  RIP Shawn Lane) still be an immense player and have amazing playing style.No amount of good technique and ability to play will make someone playing through a Fender Twin reverb with no effects set on the clean channel will sound like a Soldano SLO 100 with the gain maxed out and boosted with a Keely moded Ibanez TS-9 Tube Scream, with a TC electronics rack mount effects processor through Vader 4x12 speaker cab. You still play the same (essentially) through those two set ups. Same playing style. But through the first set up, you will sound like you Fender Twin reverb with no effects set on the clean channel, but you have the tone of a Fender Twin reverb with no effects set on the clean channel. With the other set up, you're playing style remains as always, but your tone is a Soldano SLO 100 with the gain maxed out and boosted with a Keely moded Ibanez TS-9 Tube Scream, with a TC electronics rack mount effects processor through Vader 4x12 speaker cab.. This is inescapable fact. I really wanted to get that distinction between playing style and tone out there, because they are commonly confused with each other. BUT......when you said this, you got it right : Buy the equipment that makes your sound sound best. To an extent, you play for your equipment. That sounds weird, but it's the reason why people will choose a particular amp over another. Some amps, you literally have to learn how to play them, they almost become instruments themselves, because you have to know what amps can bring out certain nuances and aspects of your technique for your playing style in the best way possible to be truly happy with your tone. For example, some people give the Mesa Boogie Rectifer a miss because they are too unforgiving for sloppy playing and will make your playing style sound bad if you don't have the technique, but on the other hand, because they are so dyanmic and reactive to how you play, if you have good technique you will be rewarded by blowing away other guitarists with the sheer power of your tone. If you've ever heard an extremely proficient and powerful rhythm guitarist in a metal band playing through a Rectifier, you're face will be torn in half, because few amps on the planet can sound that amazing and crushing for metal playing. To an extent, certain pickup choices can enhance or decrease how unforgiving the amp will be. Steve Vai, for example, use a Carvin Legacy, well known for being unforgiving to guys that can't play well, but they absolutely scream in the right hands, like Vai's hands because he learnt how to play for the amp and to get the best out of it. Or you can get a more forgiving amp if your technique is not up to scratch, but on the flipside, guys with their technique down well might not be as blown away by the amp because it isn't as reactive to their playing. Joe Satriani uses the Peavey JSX head, although he no longer uses the distortion channels in the amp but used to anyway. And of course, you would be well aware of his credentials as a virtuoso with incredible technique and ability to inject subtle nuances into his playing to boot. The amp has a reputation of being in the middle ground between unforgiving and forgiving, but because Joe Satriani uses pickups that are highly sensitive and will pickup mistakes in playing that other pickups wont pickup (if you've ever played Dimarzio PAF Pro pickups, you'll know how sensitive they are......imagine that, magnified by 10 with the pickups that Joe uses) , he can still sound explosive and incredibly dynamic through an amp that is in the middle ground between unforgiving and forgiving, but it has also to do with the fact the amp is of course designed with lead players in mind, and as a result will help a good lead player sound dynamic. |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: January 30 2009 at 23:40
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I'm afraid I'd tend to agree with Hamish the Irrepressible here, and though good equipment doesn't change you, it does change your reality and range of possibilies.. you can in fact become a better player with better equipment, though only to a certain point of course as to Lifeson, he really used that chorus pedal a bunch which was a very distinctive sound in the late 70s cause he incorporated it as a regular part of his tone, but I guess these days you just need a good processor |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: January 31 2009 at 10:21
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Umm, no. It is legendary how many people would play through EVH's rig and have nothing near his tone. I'll be back to explain later but I'm heading to work. I have a computer there. ------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: January 31 2009 at 11:43
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Equipment sets boundary conditions on what sounds can be produced. What actually comes out depends on your fingers. There is no doubt that distortion sounds differnet than clean tone and Soldano and Marshall heads give you a different range of possibilities if you know how to play them, but the tone itself comes from the attack of your pick, fingers, washer, or whatever you're sounding the strings with, how much tension you put on the strings, how fat your fingers are, whether you use your pinky or not, your thumb, whether you use upstrokes and when. And it's not just where the notes sits in relationship to the beat (which forms alot of a player's identity) but also which overtones come out of the instrument. You say no amount of equipment will save a bad player. But also no amount of equipment will make you sound like another player of even semi-pro quality, let alone the masters you mention. And those masters will, in fact, blow you away with what they can pull out of a cheap rig or even and unamplified electric.
Alot of my understanding came from playing in folk circles on acoustic instruments. But when you come back to the electric after that, you realize how much more you can do with nuance without the gain maxed out. Many of the heaviest tones do not use as much distortion as many people think. This allows wide dynamics in playing that even us non-Satriani's can afford.
------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: January 31 2009 at 14:36
of course that's true, my point was that quality equipment can raise your playing.. it also presents it in a premium light ..it's the difference between working with quality materials and cheap stuff, your skills don't necessarily improve but the finished product is superior |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: January 31 2009 at 20:00
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I was responding to "Sorry, but the notion that tone comes from the fingers is garbage. Playing style comes from the fingers. Tone comes from the equipment." Which is foolish at best. But some things just take experience. ------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: Petrovsk Mizinski
Date Posted: February 18 2009 at 02:53
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^I think Dimebag Darrel is a great player, lots of feeling in his playing. Excellent technique, and even when he was drunk he could play cleaner than most guys playing sober. But I think he has some of the worst guitar tone in the history of heavy metal guitar. If he's playing is so great yet he has a horrible, thin, buzzy, harsh and grating tone, wouldn't you say that's the fault of his choice in amps? Not sure if you're a fan or not, but the album Cowboys from Hell is a great example of this. Listening to the solo in Cemetery Gates, it's clear he puts lots of nuances into his playing and that he could sound as professional a player as anyway out there. But let's face it, I can't stand listening to the album anywhere above a human talking conversation level, because his tone is so bad the higher you turn the volume up while listening to it the worse his guitar tone seems to get. He's tone (IMO) is bad, period, regardless of how amazing his playing was. Chances are, if he had plugged into a Mesa Boogie Rectifier instead of those garbage low end Randall amps he was using, his tone would have been good. And many people agree with this, not just me. Even Dimebag fanboys confess to hating his guitar tone, as much as they are in awe of his playing. Same with Randy Rhoads. I think his tone on Tribute was absolutely horrendously bad. Honestly, you could get a better tone from a 30 watt Line 6 Spider combo amp than he did from his expensive Marshall amps. It sounds buzzy and disgusting to me, and again, like Cowboys from Hell, I cannot listen to this album at high volumes because the guitar sound feels like it's piercing my ears. I'm blown away by his playing, and I think he's one of the greatest musicians that ever walked this planet, but it doesn't matter how amazing his playing is, I think his tone was terrible and just sounds like buzzing bees on that album. Tony Iommi, another example of a man blessed with great playing, but yet, again, proves my point that playing style is in the fingers and tone is in the equipment. His guitar solo in Paranoid is some of the worst guitar tone in history. It sounds like this strange, buzzy, plasticy mess. Again, I think had been able to have had access to better gear his tone would have been way better. I wouldn't be proud to have Tony Iommi's guitar tone to be frank. You notice the difference, for example, if you fast forward 28 years later to their "Reunion" album, he had access to fair better equipment and as a result, his tone improved massively from the Paranoid days and yet..........it's still the same guy playing with the same playing style On the other side of the coin, let's take Iron Maiden or more specifically, let's choose the album Piece Of Mind. Sure enough, neither Adrian Smith or Dave Murray had the chops of Dimebag Darrel or Randy Rhoads. But despite that, Piece of Mind, IMO, is some of the best guitar tone tone in heavy metal recorded with Marshall amps. Smooth, yet plenty of bite on rhythm guitar, and a nice, full, creamy and very pleasant to listen to lead guitar sound  |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: February 18 2009 at 09:17
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Standards for tone are very different now than when Randy and Dime were playing. I happened to love the tone on Tribute, and thought Dime's lead tone was a little over the top, especially on songs like Cemetary Gates it just didn't fit the song. But he could have smoothed that down with the knobs on his guitar, let alone just adjusting his amp right. That big fuzzy tone was felt to mean heavy back in the day. I'm certain it sounded exactly the way he wanted it to. The REAL definition of heavy for many years came from one place, James Hetfield's right hand. It's how you dig in and where and how hard you palm mute. When I played in Metallica cover band, I broke more A strings than the high ones because of how much you have to dig to get that sound.
If you've grown up as a guitarist in the era of amp modelling and affordable multi-effects processors, you are very lucky. I was in heaven when I bought my first little Zoom multi-effects and I still use it alot. So in some sense yeah the equipment is changing the color of the tone alot. But you get to a point where you realize that whether you're flanged, distorted, Twinned or Marshalled, you still sound like yourself. And what makes people turn arond and say "Holy crap, listen to that tone," a la Gilmour, Lifeson, Hetfield in the case of rhythm, is in the hands. You do need adequate equipment to get to the starting line (though there are multiple ways to get "adequate") but winning the race come from the player.
I love old guitarist stories, and the oft-repeated legend is that before Pantera, Dime got banned from multiple "fastest gun" guitar competitions in Texas after winning too many times in a row. ------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: jimidom
Date Posted: February 18 2009 at 10:30
Well said!
 I recall Allan Holdsworth saying the same thing years ago regarding how guitar tone comes from the player's own hands. I guess that must be true because AH always sounded like AH regardless of what guitar or amp he was using over the years. His tone sounded the same through his early Gibson SG's to his signature Carvin's, his old Marshalls and Lab Series L5's to his Yamaha DG80's.------------- "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - HST |
Posted By: Barla
Date Posted: February 20 2009 at 09:52
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I love the vintage Marshall sound, actually I think Alex's guitar on Rush's debut album has one of the best guitar sounds ever. Raw and heavy, ohh yeah! That's what I'm talking about!
------------- http://www.last.fm/user/Barla/?chartstyle=LastfmMyspace">  
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Posted By: progismylife
Date Posted: February 20 2009 at 10:07
| Hehe I agree with Negoba and Harry (Hughes JB4) in most aspects, you guys both have good points and just combine the two to make great awesome point. |
Posted By: Pekka
Date Posted: February 20 2009 at 13:51
Heh, I've always thought it has one of the best bass sounds ever. All in all it might be the best sounding record they made until A Farewell to Kings. ------------- http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=42652" rel="nofollow - It's on PA! 
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Posted By: cobb2
Date Posted: February 23 2009 at 20:45
| I have just been working on the guitar parts in Spirit of the Radio and Xanadu and have found something common between them both and of interest. Most of the bar chords leave strings 1 and 2 open and these two open strings are used as an integral part of the sound. In classical guitar terms this is called campanellas or the sound of bells. From this limited experience with Lifeson's guitar work, I have found that the amp sound is not as important as getting this 'sound of bells' happening- just a thought... |
Posted By: himtroy
Date Posted: February 24 2009 at 17:23
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Yeah, a Les Paul (which I no longer own) into my Hughes and Kettner sounds VERY close to Lifeson's tone, and thats without tweaking it to sound that way at all (never have, as I'm not a huge fan) |
Posted By: missiongonewrong
Date Posted: February 24 2009 at 18:41
Hmmm.... That actually is veery useful knowledge. Thanks! I'll have to try it out!
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Posted By: himtroy
Date Posted: February 24 2009 at 18:44
| Lifeson does a lot of that, Just any(well not any) chord rooted on E, and leave the top strings open, theres just certain notes that clash. For example, A Maj and B Maj are all good, Bb Maj with the open strings....not as much. |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: February 24 2009 at 19:36
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He also uses sus chords alot, especially barred Asus2. ------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |