So sayeth Geddy:
GC: What factors come into play when choosing which bass to play?
Lee: Mostly I'm always wanting to use my number one, my old Fender. There are some songs on which we use some dropped D tunings and things like that, so I'll switch to another Fender. I've got some great basses that Fender Custom Shop made for me that are also really good sounding Jazz models. A lot of the older songs that people think I was using the Rick, I was using my Fender. Like "Tom Sawyer" for example is the one song people always ask me, "How come you don't use the Rick for 'Tom Sawyer'?" I never used the Rick on it actually.
GC: Was that about the time you switched back to the Jazz?
Lee: I was using both on that album. Like a song like "Red Barchetta" is pure Rick and "Tom Sawyer" was Fender. That's when I started realizing that the Fender was capable of giving me similar sound but a better bottom end. That was the main reason for changing from a Rick. I would run a separate setup for the top end and the bottom end. It really required a lot of playing around with the right kind of compressors, the right kind of a cue, to get the sound punchy enough in the bottom end. When I tried to do that with the Fender I found it's just a lot easier to reproduce a Ricky-like top end and keep the great punchy Fender bottom end.
GC: More recently though you've used some different basses?
Lee: Yeah, but I got a little tired of it and went back to the Fender.
.... On the other hand, Geddy probably didn't spend the early 80s glued to MTV, so he didn't have this live vid indelibly etched on his brain, forever equating TOM SAWYER = RICKENBACKER:
