Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Couldn't agree more - for all its faults, Exit...Stage Left (original mix) has an absolutely wonderful Rickenbacker tone.

"That is quite a coincidence Alex!"

Well, not necessarily...I had bought a lot of Rickenbackers over the last year, and I found that "Moving Pictures" is a great album to "test drive" them to. I just never took the tape out of the deck!

Geddy's tone on "Exit Stage Left" to me is the quintessential Rickenbacker tone...it's at least 1/3 of the reason I play & collect them.

I try not to mention the 'updated and re-mixed' (ruined!!!!) ESL. Thinking about it makes me want to weep! LOL!

I'm not sure I've heard that, Mark...what's different about it?

I remember the original ESL being rather muddy.

I put on the remixed ESL and listened thru my Sennheisers and was in bass heaven. Sounded 300% better IMHO.

With remixed "Exit...Stage Left" do you mean the DVD? The album was only remastered a few years ago.

Interesting that Geddy used the Jazz on "Moving Pictures" with only the neck pickup on but it makes sense when you listen to it. Other Jazz tracks before the "Jazz Years" (1993 onwards) seem to have both pickups on: The Spirit Of Radio, Entre Nous, Digital Man, New World Man.

Should I buy an anorak or what?;)

Yeah I mean the ESL DVD. Part of the Replay x3 set. Alex Lifeson 'remixed' it. It sounds like s**t. All the Rick goodness has gone. Also an annoying sub bass distortion and a wimpy snare drum. I could go on, but I won't. Picture quality is definitely better.
The remastered ESL CD is as good as ever. I've never found it to be muddy, just very punchy.
A guy who bought the Replay DVD set gave a very in depth and scathing review, pointing out good and bad. I've been a Rush fan since 'Fly by Night' and I thought he was spot on. Although different people will hear different things. It's all subjective in the end.....

I own that DVD set, but haven't watched/listened to it yet.

One of these days...

"I remember the original ESL being rather muddy."

This is what I think of the remastered CD, actually. The Ric sounds great, but I feel like everything else is a bit . . . not present? I've only watched the ESL video once, and I didn't A/B it with the CD, so I don't remember what it sounded like. Also, my TV speakers are ****, while my CD player speakers are great, so I can't say it would be a fair comparison.

Personally, I think that every Rush live album has something AWESOME about it, but also something lackluster about it . . . "Exit . . ." feels muddy on the guitar, "Different Stages" is a bit too clippy, "A Show of Hands" feels muddy, but differently from "Exit". I dunno. As much as Rush are awesome live, studio albums are where you'll tend to find the good mixes.

As long as you don't bring up Vapor Trails.

Pfft, I remastered my Vapor Trails. Sounds pretty good now. I like that album much more that I can stand hearing it.

You know it's wierd (and I'll probably get flamed for this) but although I love Rush, both the times I've seen them live I've been completely underwhelmed (although I have to say Geddy was great the first time - he was using the 4001 and that was all you could hear- nice!). Maybe my expectations were just too high....

No flaming from me. Rush are my favourite band. Every band has good and bad periods. I saw them on the Roll The Bones tour. They were good but not great. Best gig I've ever seen was Iron Maiden. Fantastic!!!!

"I saw them on the Roll The Bones tour."

Didn't Primus open for them? That must've been quite a show . . . when I saw Rush on the R30 tour, they were absolutely amazing, but it was definitely a combination of factors . . . good venue, good song list, having never seen them before, and so on . . . they were just "on" that night.

That was the second show I saw of theirs, and I was very interested in seeing Primus, having only seen their brief appearance in the Bill & Ted film previously. To be honest they blew me away. Les was just amazing; now everyone does that stuff, but then I felt like a caveman seeing a computer for the first time...

I have a live Rush tape somewhere from a BBC radio broadcast on the Hemispheres tour and that's actually my favourite Rush live recording. If only I hadn't accidentally hit pause and missed a chunk of the Xanadu intro it would be even better. That was the first time I ever heard Rush and I thought they were fabulous.

I feel so unlucky having been born after so many great Rush albums . . . actually, after so many great bands and albums in general . . . Dad tells me all these stories about seeing like Pink Floyd on their "Animals" tour and the Who before Keith Moon died, and I'm like, ". . . I saw Rush on their 30th anniversary and a KISS comeback tour . . ." I would've LOVED to have seen Rush perform back around "A Farewell to Kings"/"Hemispheres" . . . not that they don't kick *** now.

Also, a friend of mine saw one of Les Claypool's side projects (I think it was Bucket of Bernie Brains, but I'm not sure) in concert last year, and he said it was absolutely crazy. I wanna go see him sometime.