Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UrO1Tu4ehvM

From the ESL video. Best solo section of By-Tor ever! Geddy goes nuts and is all over. Plus he has a Rick.. and that amazing sound... *drools*

OH MY GOD!!! THE BASS TONE!!! And wow, Neil is really spot on there. I wish they would go a bit wilder in concert these days (like they did in the video), but then again, they're in their 50s, and they've done it for 30 years. Who can blame them for being more laid back?

Has Geddy got a flanger going on there???

I don't think he has a flanger (or any effects), just the usual Ric-O-Sound thing going on.
"Exit...Stage Left" should be coming out on DVD but not the whole concert which is a big disappointment.

there were absolutely effects on the bass there ... he used some sort of chorus back then ... I think he was using an ampeg bass amp those days ... also there is midi of that grunting distorted p-bass pig noises in there as well ...

They did always tend to do greater live versions.

This was pre-midi wasn't it? In the recent Bass Player Magazine with Geddy on the cover he talks about how he got that sound on the album:

"I used the Rickenbacker on nearly every track on Fly by Night. But on ‘By-Tor and the Snow Dog,’ a fantasy tune that featured characters representing good and evil, I was given the role of By-Tor, the evil one. So I developed an interesting sound—there’s a monster sound that growls during one really chaotic musical segment. I put my ’69 Fender Precision Bass through a fuzztone. It was distorted all to s**t; we added phasing, and ultimately put in everything but the kitchen sink. I had all that sound going through a volume pedal, so every time the monster was supposed to growl, I would lean on the volume pedal. It sounded like a real monster!"

So it may have been triggered, but I'm really pretty sure that was pre-midi in which case it may have been on tape. But there's no reason why he couldn't do it live like he did in the studio.

(The magazine article has a bunch of really cool pictures of Geddy with various instruments, including I think two double-neck Rick shots - definitely worth picking up! Unfortunately the online version only has a really old shot of him with a P-bass...)

Yeah, the growls were still on tape back then. And his rig was Ashley pre-amps through BGW 750B power amps.
The BEST solo section I've heard is on the St. Louis 1980 radio broadcast bootleg. And Alex tears it up on a Strat. Awesome version of 2112 on there too.

ya ... of course ... tape ...

"Neil has a new instructional video. Have you ever thought of doing one?"
--
"I’ve thought about it, but I don’t see myself as much of an instructor."

That would be very cool

It would be cool.

I like those p bass grunts. They're crazy. Sound very mean. Geddy goes nuts during that solo section, and it makes me wonder why he's so tame now a days when he can do that!

That was just...AWESOME! Man... I dont know what to say... Iv watched it like 10 times already. Thats just great.

Nate... whatever happened to your anti Pbass kick?

The link is dead

The tone and playing is great. Geddy should go back to playing Ricks.

Another excerpt from the interview I linked before:

"When we started working on Counterparts [1993], the whole band started going in a retro direction, sound-wise. I went back to using an Ampeg SVT, and I rediscovered the glorious bottom end of the Fender—I haven’t stopped exploring it since. The Jazz Bass has a really sweet neck, and I feel far more fluid playing it than I ever did on the Rickenbacker. The Ricky was a real slam-bam kind of instrument that I had to play more aggressively. The neck was pretty big, and the action was high, because that was how I got the tone I wanted."

A little off-topic, but I eat up every little reference...