A "Rush" Patch Thread

He is using the rackmount Cry Baby wah on the Clockwork Angles tour / rig.

And no cabs. Palmer speaker simulator / load boxes.

One AxeFx II for efx and another AxeFx II for an acoustic guitar patch for his piezo bridge output of a Gibson Les Paul.

It's hard to tell listening to the DVD how much if anything was done in post. And Rich Chycki is so frickin' monster at producing guitar tones. But the guitar tones are to die for. So clear but with balls.
 
I would still love to get the acoustic tonematches and his fx presets

I listened to "The Garden" on the Clockwork Angels DVD. You can really hear the AxeFx acoustic patch.

It does sound good. Really clear and pretty cool since he is using a piezo saddle pickup system on an E GTR too!

I would say if you could do your own tone match, you could probably come really really close. On the DVD it didn't sound so super tweaked out that the preset would be unobtainable by mere mortals :)

I don't know how much experience you have in live sound, but you would be shocked at how crappy the AC GTR usually sounds. Even for big acts. They just live with crappy acoustic sounds. Any AxeFx tone match done decently would be so much better than the usual plugged in acoustic guitar with quacky under saddle transducer.

Usually only in serious folk / bluegrass or solo acoustic guitar acts and the like do they usually sweat getting great acoustic guitar tones.
 
He is using the rackmount Cry Baby wah on the Clockwork Angles tour / rig.

And no cabs. Palmer speaker simulator / load boxes.

One AxeFx II for efx and another AxeFx II for an acoustic guitar patch for his piezo bridge output of a Gibson Les Paul.

It's hard to tell listening to the DVD how much if anything was done in post. And Rich Chycki is so frickin' monster at producing guitar tones. But the guitar tones are to die for. So clear but with balls.

Hey barh, which version of the CA live disk did you get? Just the standard DVD? I have heard some feedback that the BluRay 5.1 mix of CA live sounds like crap, anybody here played it through a good system?
 
Hey barh, which version of the CA live disk did you get? Just the standard DVD? I have heard some feedback that the BluRay 5.1 mix of CA live sounds like crap, anybody here played it through a good system?

The blu-ray is pretty boomy on the low end
 
Hey barh, which version of the CA live disk did you get? Just the standard DVD? I have heard some feedback that the BluRay 5.1 mix of CA live sounds like crap, anybody here played it through a good system?

Regular DVD. The sound is great on my system. Atlantic Technology 7.1 THX speakers.
 
Blu Ray through Golden Ear Triton Two 7.1 system. Sounds great to me. Much clearer than it was in person (I was 3rd row center for the Dallas show that's on the video)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Ahh a thread I can relate to! Being in a Rush Tribute band and a new Fractal Axe-FX user I've been spending my evenings trying to build Rush patches. Here's a couple of my favorites so far:

View attachment 19734
View attachment 19735

Working Man is, well, Working Man :)

The other one works really well for various Alex parts such as Natural Science (after the acoustic intro), The Trees (middle section), The Camera Eye (During the 'They seem oblivious.." part), etc. I almost always use it with the neck pickup, coil-tapped.
 
Ahh a thread I can relate to! Being in a Rush Tribute band and a new Fractal Axe-FX user I've been spending my evenings trying to build Rush patches. Here's a couple of my favorites so far:

View attachment 19734
View attachment 19735

Working Man is, well, Working Man :)

The other one works really well for various Alex parts such as Natural Science (after the acoustic intro), The Trees (middle section), The Camera Eye (During the 'They seem oblivious.." part), etc. I almost always use it with the neck pickup, coil-tapped.

Welcome to the forum! Lots of rush fans here, contributions are always appreciated! I will give these patches a try. Hemispheres tone in spades out of the Axe, I am still struggling with those 80's GUP/PW/HYF tones, and also of course SOR which no one, including Lerxst himself, seems to be able to recreate.
 
The Hold Your Fire tones are the ones I have the most trouble with, at least so far. I know he used a Telecaster for those 'glassy tones' you hear all over the place, but there's also a ton of layering. We're currently recording a 7-song-demo which includes Mission, and that one is the killer of the 7. Hopefully I'll have some results to post soon.
 
Any Rush fans able to closely match the slightly overdriven phaser tone in the main vocal parts in Anthem?


Yes, by running my Maestro Phase Shifter straight into the Ax-Fx using a Marshall 50 watt amp sim with some Tape delay.

: )

Two things I really would love to see in terms of FX models in the future

1. Maestro Phase Shifter - all three settings with ramp up and down
2. GK-250 ML chorus and reverb.
 
Thanks. Any idea if the Heptode clone is worth the $300?

I have the Heptode and several Maestro PS1-a Phase Shifters. I would say it's close but not exactly the same / identical to the Maestro. It is definitely the closest pedal out there and it is convenient due to its size and ability to be powered by a power brick. I like it a lot and have it hooked up in front of my Axe II. Additionally, the original can be noisy, so the Heptode has that added bonus of being cleaner sounding. I find with most clones that they usually get 'close enough for rock n roll' but if you want the exact sound, find an original, but be prepared to invest in repairs to replace worn out parts.

I'm considering in finding a tech to convert one of my Meastro's to a small enclosure with three buttons and powered with the Boss style power adapter. The Maestro is a special sounding pedal, like the Electrix Mistress.
 
Mistress as well! Hey, you aren't Alex Lifeson are you?

Ha, no, I'm not Alex Lifeson. Just one of a million guitarists who has been extremely influenced by him. He combines everything I love about guitar players. The Jimmy Page influence (plus a little Who/Townsend), Steve Hackett and Steve Howe, Andy Summers (Signals era) and modern players without the wankery. He's creative, basically originated the Sus2 and Add B/E chords in rock music, is prog, rock, new wave and modern all at the same time. Plus his solos are totally "out there." Finally, his stuff, while complicated and intricate, is playable by me. I've been a fan since 1978. His tone is always great, his taste in what to play and what not to play is always top notch and he comes up with great guitar lines over Geddy and Neil's writing. My favorite guitarist.

Edited due to my iPad deciding what I wanted to write instead of typing what I actually wrote!
 
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Over in a thread about dual amping a couple of people asked me to post my current Rush patches, so I am starting this thread for Rush patches in general. I look forward to seeing what others have come up with.

Here are my two patches. They cover the progressive era of Rush that ran from about 1977 to 1982. Other than a few interviews in magazines, there is not alot out there that gets into specifics of the studio recordings, and those interviews are far from complete enough to get anything other than a few hints. What is out there though is 30 years of tour books with photographs and not necessarily complete equipment lists, and the descriptions of the last 3 rigs. Since these represent the compromises that Alex Lifeson had to take to bring the studio recordings to a live audience, I thought it a great place to start for general Rush patches for that era. Because photos and incomplete equipment lists can't really tell whats on the inside of the equipment and how it's hooked together. I've researched and uncovered other things on my way to these patches from other sources, but in the end I've had to make some educated guesses based on what other rock musicians were doing at the time.

For the development, I used a PRS SC245 with 1957/2008 pick ups and a PRS Hollowbody I with 1957/2008 pick ups. The SC245 was checked against a Gibson Les Paul R9 Historic that a friend of mine owned, and it turned out to be very close. It was actually a better sounding Les Paul than the Les Paul Custom that I used to own. I generally play my guitars not dimed for rhythm and turn up for solos. I am also using two FBT Verve 12mA's for amplification.

Each one these patches is a three channel set up which was based on Alex Lifeson's current set up for the "Time Machine Tour," but with the equipment for those eras substituted in. Those three channels were a dry channel, a wet channel, and a special channel that makes it sound like there is an additional instrument.

The first patch, "Permanent Waves 1977-1980," is my representation of the all HiWatt rig that graced the stages of the Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, and Permanent Waves tour. My first Rush concert was Permanent Waves in which I was 14 rows from the stage, so I have heard that rig in person. It was loud, and it was shrill. There wasn't that much bottom to it, but Alex still ripped.

Since the HiWatts are a very loud clean amp, the distortion is mainly coming from a MXR distortion+. I have one HiWatt covering the high end and one covering the low end. The MXR distortion+ drives the kick on the low side while a triangle chorus representing the Roland Space Chorus is on high side adding some shimmer. The high side amp also has the effect of cleaning up the definition between notes for the more complicated runs. The cabinets are not stock which has been verified. It turns out that Alex's were actually loaded with G12M Greenbacks rather the Purple Fanes. I put the Electric Mistress Flanger and Roland Space Echo on the Wet Channel. It seems that Alex liked to kick both those in for every solo practically. The flanger can also be used to add some body to single note lines like the beginning of "Spirit of the Radio" and "Freewill." For clean passages like the interlude in "Trees," turn off the MXR.

The second patch, "Moving Pictures 1981-1984" is my representation of the HiWatt/Marshall 4140 Combo rig that graced every stage from "Moving Pictures" to "Grace Under Pressure." I heard this one live too. The first thing that I noticed when I first put on "Moving Pictures" was how much darker it was. That live rig is exactly what you hear in "Exit Stage Left" after the bass boost that Geddy Lee insist they do was applied.

The main hurdle with this patch was figuring out what the Marshall 4140 sounded like. The 4140 was Marshall's answer to the Fender Twin, so it was supposedly a loud, clean monster. From what I could glean from schematics, I thought it might sound a lot like a JTM45 with a blackface tone stack through some Brit speakers. Thankfully since SRV tried one, there are quite a few SRV wannabes on the YouTube demonstrating them. Of course, they were all playing Strats which was no help to me, but one of them did turn one up all the way in increments which allowed me to hear that it was much closer to a 1987XL going through a Brit flavored 2x12 cab than any hybrid JTM.

With exception of the 1987XL, everything else is pretty much the same as the last patch.

I'll close by saying I have enjoyed the journey to get here which started over on the Ultra, and I certainly hope that people will take these patches, learn from them, and make improvements.
Hi there, I really appreciate your time and effort in putting together and sharing all those Rush patches but I can't get any of them to work on my AXE-FX II
I'm not blessed with most technical of knowledge but wondered if you knew any obvious things I may or may not be doing to result in this
Thanks so much
Craig
 
Huge Rush fan here - the GUP patch that a kind soul shared earlier in this thread, for me, nails it! Been grinning like a loon playing Distant Early Warning and also Digital Man. Slight tweak for my EMG loaded Stormshadow Vanquish (mahogony body, Koa top loaded with EMG 89 inc always on PA2 boost, split bridge position hum with middle SA). Have also been having some success with the Power Windows/Hold Your Fire/Presto clean sounds by using a super clean amp with no cab and compressing it quite a bit, then layering with the above type patches. Seems to work for me!
 
Ahh a thread I can relate to! Being in a Rush Tribute band and a new Fractal Axe-FX user I've been spending my evenings trying to build Rush patches. Here's a couple of my favorites so far:

View attachment 19734
View attachment 19735

Working Man is, well, Working Man :)

The other one works really well for various Alex parts such as Natural Science (after the acoustic intro), The Trees (middle section), The Camera Eye (During the 'They seem oblivious.." part), etc. I almost always use it with the neck pickup, coil-tapped.

This is an old post, but FYI these patches are still very usable, especially the second one ("Rush Clean with Dirt").
 
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