Paging Rick Lee
 

Guy had some downtime.

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That is really impressive! I didn't listen to the whole thing, but I did listen to Jacob's Ladder. Guy is spot-on.

OMG.. That is AMAZING! One guy?? Every part was spot on. even the singing!! WOW.. Someone please tell me that Rush has been made aware of this guy!!

Thanks. The bass/keys/singer in my Rush tribute sent that to me last week.

One thing though. I can play the the whole album note for note on guitar too. But it's a different ballgame with a live band, even if the other players are spot on. Well, the others are just about never spot on for Jacob's Ladder. It's a tough one to count out near the end, and I end up relying on each little different thing the drummer does to keep track of where I am. In my last Rush tribute, the drummer was so spot on, I came to really use him as a crutch instead of counting things out. With my current Rush tribute, the drummer not only goes rogue, he always speeds up his tempo too. Will try to find some videos of us doing songs from PW.

Here's an old one. Lots of mistakes, but it generally does the song justice. I can surely play this a lot better when I'm home alone.

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Ok, found one of us doing Jacob's Ladder. A few minor mistakes, but pretty close. Drummer nails it all..

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Apparently this guy is Adam Lamberts drummer and has also played occasionally with Queen.

I thought this was going to be about some guy starting a cactus removal company.

Nice to be chatting with you again, Dr. Lee.

A good drummer or bassist can do wonders for helping everyone stay focused, relax and touch the base pads. Yes, live music is a different animal. It takes on a life of its own. Try as we might, we end up playing a very faithful......interpretation.

On a related note, a guitarist friend of mine (a local guy admired by the Pearl Jam and Soundgarden guys but who just did not get the luck break) who is still playing and a VERY good guitarist, and one of the smartest guys I know, said something to me. I was talking about tone. Tubes and strings and whatnot. After listening to me, he said calmly but with certainty, "tone is in the fingers."

Nice tones, Rick. Very faithful. And great banjoing.

Bloody impressive.

The good players say that. I'm still chasing tone by building and modding my Marshalls instead of practicing. Did a choke mod on a JCM2000 DSL 100 today (during a video conference call) and am now fighting bias issues and tube rolling.

There is a gun player round my way whose band did a stadium tour opening for Van Halen in the 90s. I read his comment in a discussion on the "Brown Sound" where he came out with this gem...."I played thru Ed's stadium rig, and guess what? I just sounded like me."

There are many versions of that story. Ed's old Brown Sound comes from a very special 12000 series '68 100w Plexi. There were many like it, but he got one of the good ones.
Their quality control was always iffy, but when you got a good one, there was nothing like it. I built a clone of that amp and it's really close in tone. Now, if I could just play like he does. That Soldano in the first clip I posted cost 4-5x as much and, IMHO, doesn't sound nearly as good.

Yeah, I had a 1959 100wSLP would've been around a 1970 model, and also 50w SuperLead back in the day. The 50 sounded better, but the 100w was better at setting itself on fire. Surely was LOUD though, and could kill a 100w quaddie in minutes.

My '68 12000 clone build.
http://www.fototime.com/D52509A42483AC9/standard.jpg

My '69 clone build.
http://www.fototime.com/442988258AD63E4/standard.jpg

Both sound amazing, but no expense was spared in components.

Certainly look the business.

Here I am, hanging with the man at Madison Square Garden in '94.
http://www.fototime.com/DA4DE73DC57F788/standard.jpg

Ha! The guitarist of whom I spoke has the best guitar tone I have EVER heard, and recording engineers think this too. He uses a '68 Plexi, but there's more.... He turns all the knobs to "10," and runs the signal into a power soak, bringing the signal down to preamp-level. Then he runs that signal through a somple old tube amp (Peavey, I think), and out to two half-stack cabs, separated about ten feet. One of the cabs has a slight reverb/delay.

In other words, he uses a WOT '68 Plexi as a preamp. You should hear this.

Thanks for posting, Scott.

Color me blown away.......