UPDATE - 7/25@3:10PM: Here are a few other recent articles posted by Brad Madix at the Avid Technologies site (thanks RushFanForever):

Apr. 9, 2011: Welcome to preproduction for the RUSH Time Machine Tour
Apr. 22, 2011: First run-through for the RUSH Time Machine Tour
May 20, 2011: 10 Seconds in the Time Machine

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Rush sound man Brad Madix was one of the Rush road crew members featured for a Canadian Music Scene article posted earlier this month, parts of which were also reprinted for a MusicRadar.com feature earlier today. Brad also recently posted an article to the Avid Technologies website blog titled Final Rush Rehearsals—Geddy Helps Fine-Tune His Own Sound where he describes utilizing some Avid Technologies audio equipment to help Geddy finalize his sound during Rush rehearsals earlier this year:

... Geddy and I have discussed his bass sound on any number of occasions over the years, but Eleven and the API EQ are new to this last set of rehearsals, so we revisited his tone. He stopped by the room one morning before rehearsals and sat down in the chair with me while I soloed up the bass subgroup on the Genelecs. The first thing that showed up on the screen was the API EQ. When Geddy saw that, he remarked how much he loved those things, and that it was great that you could really “wang” something right up, and it sounded fantastic. One point for the engineer! The next thing we listened to was the instantiation of Eleven. I think we really nailed that old Bassman sound, personally. Geddy wanted a little more overdrive, and I brought the speaker breakup down a touch.

Then we started digging into the balance. I rode up the Avalon fader and brought up the Palmer next to it—about equal level. Geddy asked for a bit less of the Palmer, favoring the midrange point that the Avalon gives his bass. Next into the mix was the Eleven channel. This came up and instantly added realism to the bass tone. Then I added the more distorted elements to the mix. First up was the SansAmp channel, which I rode in slowly until Geddy said, “Stop.” Next, I added the Orange amp channel. When I reached the point where the Orange was even with the SansAmp, we both concluded that it was too much.

I pulled both of the distorted channel faders down to the bottom, stood up, looked at Geddy and said, “There’s the faders. Put ’em where you want ’em!” He sat down in the driver’s seat and brought both faders up until he heard what he wanted and told me, “There, that’s where I like it.” And that’s where they’ve been ever since. Total time elapsed—about 20 minutes. Try that with a cassette tape!

You can read the entire post at this link. Thanks to Robert for the heads up.

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