Alex Lifeson

Alexander Zivojinovich OC (b. August 27, 1953, Fernie, British Columbia), better known by his stage name Alex Lifeson, is a Canadian musician, best known as the guitarist of Rush. ("Lifeson" is a literal translation of "Zivojinovich".)

Tone and Gear

In Rush's early career, Lifeson used a fairly standard rock rig: a Gibson ES-335 guitar, various phaser and flanger pedals, and a Marshall "Plexi" amplifier. Beginning in the late 1970s, he increasingly incorporated twelve-string guitar (acoustic and electric) and chorusing in his sound. While Eddie Van Halen is usually credited as the inventor of the "super-Strat," Lifeson actually adopted a key super-Strat component--the Floyd Rose locking vibrato system--before Van Halen. By the time of the 1982 Rush album Signals, Lifeson's primary guitar had become a hot-rodded Stratocaster with a Bill Lawrence high-output humbucker (a type later made famous by Dimebag Darrell) in the bridge position and a Floyd Rose bridge, and as the '80s wore on he switched from passive to active pickups and from vacuum tube to solid-state amplification, all with an increasingly thick layer of digital signal processing. (Lifeson was the primary endorser of the now all-but-forgotten Gallien-Krueger solid-state guitar amplifier line.) In the late 1980s he switched to Carvin guitars in the studio and his short-lived Signature brand guitars onstage.

Related Topics:
Gibson - Phaser - Flanger - Marshall - Twelve-string guitar - Eddie Van Halen - Strat - Floyd Rose - Vibrato - Bill Lawrence - Humbucker - Dimebag Darrell - Digital signal processing - Gallien-Krueger - Carvin

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When recording 1993's Counterparts, Lifeson returned to rock guitar tradition: he used Paul Reed Smith guitars and Marshall amplifiers to record the album, and for the subsequent tour. He maintains this "classicist" stage rig today, although his signal processing chain is still so complicated as to make Pat Metheny's processing rack or Robert Fripp's "Lunar Module" look minimalist. Lifeson currently uses PRS, Fender, and Gibson guitars, and Hughes and Kettner amplifiers. In 2005, Hughes and Kettner introduced an Alex Lifeson signature series amplifier; $50 from every amplifier sold will be donated to UNICEF.

Related Topics:
Paul Reed Smith - Pat Metheny - Robert Fripp - Fender - Hughes and Kettner - UNICEF

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