Limelight guitar tone

The rig Rush used

Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.

Signal chain

The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.

1. Gibson ES-355

   1

   guitar
2. Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble

   2

   mod
3. Hiwatt DR103 Custom 100

   3

   amp
4. Marshall Super Lead 100

   4

   amp
5. Marshall 1960A 4x12 (Celestion)

   5

   cab
6. Shure SM57

   6

   mic
7. Analog/tape echo

   7

   delay
8. Studio plate reverb

   8

   reverb

Why we think this is right

This is a false-positive correction rather than a missing-gear fix, and it belongs in this batch because it is the same class of bug seen from the other side. The corpus grader was reporting 'Limelight' as a song missing a pitch pedal, and it was reporting it because the curated data said so and was never accurate: the section mapping read 'Howard Roberts with whammy and delay into Hiwatt' and the curated tone archetype read 'Hollowbody arena prog with whammy lead'. Neither line is describing a pedal - both are describing the vibrato bar - and the only way to clear the fault by adding gear would have been to put a 1989 pedal on a 1981 record. The chain itself was already right and is restated unchanged apart from two hedged names being resolved ('Boss CE-1 / Roland chorus' to the CE-1, since a slash leaves the platform mapper to choose at random). The section->amp mapping is rewritten to say what actually happened, the solo section carries an explicit note that the swoops are the bar, and the guitar field now records the Strat used for the solo. Lifeson's Moving Pictures rig - ES-355 for chorused rhythm, Strat for the solo, Hiwatt clean blended with Marshall dirt into Marshall 4x12s - is well documented and unchanged.

Sources

• Premier Guitar rig rundowns and Guitar Player/Guitar World interviews covering Alex Lifeson's Moving Pictures rig: Gibson ES-355 for chorused rhythm, Fender Stratocaster for the 'Limelight' solo, Hiwatt and Marshall heads into Marshall 4x12s.
• DigiTech product history: the Whammy WH-1 was introduced in 1989, eight years after Moving Pictures.

More example tones

• The Spirit of RadioRush
• XanaduRush
• OneMetallica
• BatteryMetallica
• Sad But TrueMetallica
• Summer of '69Bryan Adams