Chords for Rush's Geddy Lee on his Fender USA Geddy Lee Jazz Bass | Fender

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I was in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
It was a boring day off.
We were just out on the street, bumming around, killing time.
And we went into a pawn shop.
And I wasn't one of those pawn shop guys.
I never went to pawn shops.
But one of the guys I was with, _ I think it was one of the guys in the crew,
loved to go to pawn shops, so I went with him.
_ _ _ And there was my number one, my black 72,
with the cigarette burn and the neck and everything.
_ _ And the guy wanted $200 for it.
I said to myself, _ that [N] seems really inexpensive.
I didn't know anything about the price of jazz basses or what the market was.
It didn't have a case.
It had this shitty cardboard case.
_ And it was $200, so I just bought it.
I just thought, well, I'm going to buy this.
I bought it and I played with it for a couple of years and we tweaked it a little bit.
I didn't use it in the show and I didn't use it in concert, I mean on record.
I didn't use it on record, but I kept it at home.
And I think it was when we _ were recording moving pictures _
that I pulled it out because I thought,
let me try a different bass instead of using the Rickey all the time.
I was surprised when we plugged it in
how easily I could shape the top end to sound _ like a Rickey top end.
But I was getting a different kind of shape in the bottom end.
I was getting a bit more punch.
And I ended up using it on Tom Sawyer,
which many people to this day [B] don't realize is a Fender bass, not a Rickenbacker bass. _
That sort of began my _ curiosity about _ my number one.
[Abm] And that's how I came across it.
[Gb] _ _ [E] _ _ [Gb] _ _
There's [N] never been a bass that sounds like that bass.
Like I have now, _ I don't know, 25 jazz basses.
And none of them sound exactly like that bass.
_ So there's a particular _ mojo to that instrument.
And we've made changes, like the neck, _ the original neck on my number one
_ had been through just a few too many gigs.
So we finally had to change that out.
The frets have been dressed just too many times.
And the truss rod had been adjusted just too many times. _ _
Once we changed the neck to a custom shop neck, _
and I could then _ _ tweak that,
_ it was kind of a real eye opener.
Because usually when you buy a bass, you get used to the thing as it was born.
But when you have a neck that's kind of custom shaped to the way you like to play,
your playing improves.
It just does.
The neck makes it easier for you to do what you gotta do.
_ That's particularly of interest in this American bass,
because it's really the same bass neck that I would use.
We put the same markers in.
I know some people prefer the black block markers,
but there's something really subtle about the tone, there's a particular tone.
And we went back and forth with them about the color tone of these markers
to make sure they really _ were like the ones that I was using on stage. _ _ _
_ _ It's just nice to be able to have that kind of control.
And when you pass it on to the public, hopefully they'll [A] appreciate it.
_ _ [Abm] _ The signature is very close to my number one.
And when _ we decided to make a signature bass,
_ _ _ I wouldn't let my number one out of [D] my hands.
There's something about that bass.
And so all the Fender guys were really accommodating.
They came down to the show and we measured every _ _ square inch of the bass.
So the original signature is pretty darn close,
as close as we could get with the parts that we had.
It's very acceptable.
You have to understand that every bass sounds a little different.
_ Every pickup is wound a little bit differently.
So there are always _ tiny _ peculiarities. _ _
That's why people become fanatical _ instrument collectors,
because they're all a little different.
Everybody has a different theory about the mojo in an instrument.
So we spent a lot of time A-Bing pickups, A-Bing the tone.
I think we've come up with a bass that's affordable
and very close to what a custom shop bass would [A] deliver.
I _ _ _
[E] _ [N] was always very proud of the quality that went into my signature basses
that Fender was making. _
We tried hard to make a bass that was a decent price, an affordable price,
and had a high quality, _ good necks, good parts.
Then they approached me to do an American-made one.
And we said, okay, if that's going to happen,
then let's include some of the custom things that I have on my number one bass.
And that has evolved over time.
Over the last five years or so, I've gone away from the standard _ finish on the necks.
So we sand the finish down on mine, and we oil them a bit.
And I was really pleased with how fluid _ _ _ the neck felt.
There were no sticking points, especially because I play really hard on stage,
and I sweat a lot, and the sweat doesn't seem to stick to the neck.
So _ it was a _ really _ nice change.
And so we said, well, let's include that in the U.S. version.
_ And we've done a transition from the badass bridges
to _ what we're calling the Getty Lee Signature Bridge.
It's a high-mass bridge.
We didn't really want a change from badass bridges,
but there have been production problems over the years.
We weren't getting enough of them, and it was becoming an issue.
It was becoming a problem.
So _ my tech, John McIntosh, _ myself, and the Defender Custom Shop
got their heads together and came up with a slightly modified version of that kind of thing.
And it's working so far very well.
It sounds very [Ab] close to the original bridges that we had.
So that's a nice kind of [E] addition, too.
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_ [Ab] It's a beautifully made bass.
I mean, _ _ obviously, to have a Custom Shop bass is the ideal.
To have a master builder build you an instrument is hard to beat.
I still think the Signature bass is a great bass and a great price range.
But if you want a slightly better instrument,
_ _ _ a slight step up, then the American Made [Ab] instrument is that kind of instrument. _ _
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