Since Alex Lifeson has switched to Gibson, his sound is f'ing awful.

Well, his tone has definitely veered wildly over the years...when they were heavy in the "keyboard era" is when his tone was the most thin and shrill, but it was his remedy to be heard over the walls of synths :shrug:.

I forget which interview it was, but IIRC around the time of the rehearsals for the R30 tour, he said that while he was still favoring PRS, it was Geddy who convinced him to lean more on the Les Pauls, saying that he thought they sounded much fuller and rounder...I also think he uses the Axe-FX mostly for some mod/delay effects over the amp modelling, but...:shrug:

FWIW, I haven't had a problem with his tone in recent years :shrug:
 
The other thing - he was using Mainstage for effects you can't get with rackmount or pedals, sort of el-specializo digital type fx.
I'm not 100% convinced on the AxeFX thing either but it can produce decent sounds. I know Bill Ruppert sold his and got another VG-99 so that says something.

I think the biggest problem is that for Clockwork Angels the guitars got tuned lower and lower to accommodate Ged's changing voice and guitars just don't ring well at those uber low tunings - they're great for the "chunk/djent" thing. But it's hard to get an idealized tone in a live environment.

And a live tone with a ton of reverbs and delays and choruses ends up sort of diluting the tone a bit.

Also, the Lerxst amps were supposed to be modern replicas of the Marshall Silver Jubilee amp that he rented and liked - he didn't get those amps until day one of the
tour - I wonder how many days he had the amp when that stuff was recorded? I still think the Mesa Mark V probably would have given him a better distorted lead and/or
rhythm tone.

I've heard some reports that he was going back to PRS guitars in the future but who knows.
 
Well, when one of the most foremost fx programmers around dumps his for something else you know they might not be suitable for some things.
 
Didn't he use an ES-335 a ton to n the classic Rush stuff?

And Les Pauls, plus his white 355.

I think he used Marshalls early on, switched to Hiwatt for A Farewell To Kings/Hemispheres (maybe PW as well?) back to Marshalls. Not sure what he used during the '80s new wave sound Rush had...I know I saw ads with him and Gallien Krueger, Carvin, and a few others. Hughes & Kettner in the '90s I think.


Personally I thought his lead tones on the early albums are killer. Very chimey, bell-like tone, you can clearly hear the pick attack. Even on Permanent Waves...listen to the solo on Natural Science and others. A very clear yet singing overdrive tone. He started to lose that on Moving Pictures.
 
I was never really a big fan of his guitar tones. Love his music, but his guitar sounds me always kind of meh. Anyway, I would blame it on his change in taste of what HE wants to sound like more than the guitar. A guy like that can just tell his guitar tech how he wants to sound with just about any guitar and it happens. :shrug:
 
I don't think it's a Gibson thing more than a floyd on a LP doesn't work well.

All the good that is in an LP is tossed out with that trem.
I don't even think it's the trem because he didn't sound very different when he switched to the 335, which is his OLD guitar.

I think it maybe the MojoTone Lerxst amps.
 
I think Alex' best tones came from around the "Permanent Waves" period where he had the 355. But part of the issue is, Alex had a terrible ten year dependency on massive FX. He still kinda does but at least he isn't afraid to do the hard rock unadorned thing once in a bit.
 
I'm an ole fart so I remember hearing them even way before this lil' prop. And this absolutely kills. And it's some impromptu Dutch TV back in the day.

To reiterate, ES335 und Hiwatt.

 
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