These days Geddy Lee seems to be a rock purist, gettin’ down with his pawn-shop-purchased Fender Jazz Bass. It wasn’t always that way, though; as Geddy was probably the one member of Rush who was totally enamored of high-tech synthesizers, basses, amplifiers, and gizmos.
Geddy’s earliest appearances after becoming a “signed artist” were with that old warhorse of a million bass players, worldwide… the Fender Precision Bass. He played through a couple of battered old Sunn amplifiers with matching speaker cabinets.
After Mercury Records picked up Rush, and Neil Peart was brought onboard, the band received a large advance from the label and proceeded to update their equipment. For the next three years, Geddy’s stage setup would not change.
The Rickenbacker 4001 bass became Ged’s trademark. The amps he was using were the seemingly de rigueur Ampeg SVT model that most rock bassists of the 1970’s were using, although Geddy decided on using their V4 cabinets, which contained two 15-inch speakers, rather than their more common 8×10″ speaker cabinet.
With the recording of A Farewell to Kings, Rush’s expansion of sound required the addition of some new instruments, including the classic Mini-Moog synthesizer, and Moog’s unusual-looking Taurus bass pedal synthesizer.
This first set of Taurus pedals allowed Geddy to play either bass notes or, when interfaced with the Mini-Moog, high, sustained notes. These two pieces of equipment could be seen onstage with Geddy for the next nine years.
Geddy also added the beastly 4008 doubleneck bass/guitar, and changed his amp setup as well. He ran his Rickenbacker in stereo to two Ashley pre-amps, which then went to two BGW 750 power amps and a pair of custom-made speaker cabinets, along with the older Ampeg cabinets. Geddy would continue to use this bass setup until 1991!
His Fender Jazz Bass began making live appearances around this time, as well.
The keyboards Ged used were constantly changing, however. He acquired an Oberheim 8-voice synthesizer for the recording of Hemispheres, and used it up until the end of the Exit, Stage Left tour.
In the interim, Geddy went through the monophonic Oberheim OB-1 synthesizer, followed by their OB-X polyphonic model.
On the Signals tour, Ged replaced the old 8-voice SEM modules with an Oberheim OB-Xa synth. He also added a Roland Jupiter-8 which had its own dedicated sequencer, the Roland CompuRhythm.
For the next few tours, Geddy was using the PPG Wave synthesizer as his main keyboard. Along the way various other models, such as the Yamaha DX-7, and Roland D-50 would be used, as well.
During this time, Geddy retired the venerable Rickenbacker from the road and began using the headless Steinberger bass. He used a black GL-2 model during the Grace tour, and then got a white model, which he would use as a backup.
When the band recorded Power Windows, Geddy used a British-made Wal bass. At first, he didn’t use this live, opting for the Steinberger instead, but soon his black Wal would be used live. Along with a red Wal that was made later, he would use the brand for several years in the studio and onstage.
Geddy also began using larger 76-key controllers onstage to play or trigger what were now, more and more being loaded offstage into Akai-made samplers, which would record old sounds and “events” from their past songs.
The advent of programmable sequencers was a major addition to the Rush sound. They allowed the band to trigger keyboard passages, while they continued to play their regular instruments.
As the years go on, and technology became more sophisticated, keyboard parts and even background vocals would no longer need to be played from the stage, or even an offstage synthesizer. They simply could be recorded onto a sample and triggered from the foot of any one of the three musicians.
For the Roll the Bones tour, Ged changed his amplifier setup to Gallien-Krueger.
Because of the aforementioned sophistication of sound sampling, Geddy’s keyboard rig was now very streamlined. He seemed to enjoy the freedom that this provided, and didn’t feel like he was such a slave to the keyboards, anymore.
An even further step back to the basics came for the Counterparts tour, when Geddy started using his old Fender Jazz Bass again. He would have several different Jazz basses made for the Test For Echo tour, and for amplification he was using the Trace-Elliot amps and cabinets he had acquired prior to the Counterparts tour.
The Test For Echo tour also was also a “back-to-basics” change for the keyboard setup, which saw his keyboard rig come full circle with the resurrection of his old Mini-Moog from storage.
