Alex Lifeson's guitar strings: the Rush gauge, sourced

Alex Lifeson has played guitar in Rush since he co-founded the band in Toronto in 1968, originally alongside drummer John Rutsey and bassist Jeff Jones. Geddy Lee replaced Jones within a month; Neil Peart replaced Rutsey in 1974, completing the lineup that recorded every classic Rush album from 2112 (1976) through Clockwork Angels (2012). Born Aleksandar Zivojinovic on August 27, 1953, in Fernie, British Columbia, Lifeson has long gone by the nickname "Lerxst." Geddy Lee still uses it in public, including in Rush's own 2025 tour announcement.

Rush stopped touring after the R40 tour closed at the Forum in Los Angeles on August 1, 2015. Neil Peart died in early 2020, and for years afterward Lee and Lifeson said publicly that a reunion wasn't going to happen. That changed in October 2025, when the pair announced Rush would return for a new 2026 tour, covered in detail below.

Between Rush's last tour and its return, Lifeson kept working. He released a solo album, Victor, in 1996. After Rush wound down and Peart died, he formed the supergroup Envy of None with Andy Curran, Alfio Annibalini, and Maiah Wynne, releasing a self-titled debut in 2022 and a second album, Stygian Wavz, in March 2025. Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Rolling Stone ranked Lifeson 98th on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Mainly a Gibson Les Paul Axcess signature model strung with a heavy Dean Markley set, run through a pair of Hughes & Kettner amps.

Most gauge claims about working guitarists are guesswork stitched together from gear-aggregator sites. Lifeson's isn't. In a June 2007 Guitar One interview conducted while Rush was promoting Snakes & Arrows, writer Mac Randall asked him directly: "Are you still using Dean Markley strings?" Lifeson's answer: "Always and forever, but I've gone to a much heavier gauge, and I think that's because I've been doing so much writing and playing on acoustic. Heavier strings feel more comfortable to me now. So I've gone to a .010-.052 gauge on most of my electrics."

That gauge range, .010 to .052, matches a real, current Dean Markley product: the Blue Steel Light Top/Heavy Bottom set, model 2558. Dean Markley's own product page lists it among the Blue Steel line's stock gauges, and B&H's spec sheet breaks down the individual strings as .010, .013, .017, .030, .042, and .052, a cryogenically treated nickel-plated wrap over a tinned hex core. It's a genuine "light top, heavy bottom" build: the top three strings sit close to a standard 10-46 set, but the wound strings jump noticeably heavier for a fuller low end.

One honest caveat: this is a dated, specific, sourced quote from 2007, not a current confirmation. Aggregator sites list other Dean Markley gauges for Lifeson at various points in his career, but none of those claims trace back to a source CYS could independently verify this round, so they're left out here rather than repeated as fact.

Lifeson's reasoning ties directly to how he was playing at the time. In the same 2007 interview, he described leaning on acoustic guitars more than on any prior Rush record while writing Snakes & Arrows, a change he credited partly to a conversation with David Gilmour about writing on acoustic first. "When you're writing a song on an acoustic guitar, you know right away whether it works or not," he said. Heavier acoustic playing tends to push a player toward heavier electric gauges too, since the hand gets used to more string tension, and Lifeson said as much: "It sounds so much better, especially when you hit those big chords."

A Light Top/Heavy Bottom set is a common way to get that heavier low-end feel without sacrificing bend-friendly top strings, which matters for a player whose parts constantly move between big open chords and fast lead lines.

Read the full Dean Markley Blue Steel 2558 review for the full spec breakdown and how it compares to Ernie Ball's equivalent gauge. The lighter sibling in the same line is the Dean Markley Blue Steel 2552 (.009-.042), built on the same cryogenic process at a lighter gauge.

On October 5, 2025, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson sat down at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for what was billed as a conversation about their 2013 induction. The next morning, Rush announced it was touring again. "After all that has gone down since that last show, Alex and I have done some serious soul searching," Lee said in the band's press release, adding plainly that the two of them missed it too much to stay off the road.

The tour, called Fifty Something, is built around a 35-song rotating catalog and features German drummer Anika Nilles, previously known for touring with Jeff Beck and for her own instrumental albums. Neil Peart's widow, Carrie Nuttall-Peart, and daughter Olivia both publicly endorsed the choice, calling it a way to "honor Neil's extraordinary legacy as both a drummer and lyricist."

Shows began June 7, 2026, at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, the same venue where Rush played its final show with Peart on August 1, 2015. What started as a 12-date, 7-city run expanded to 23 shows within days of the announcement, Rush's own site cited "incredible demand," with extra dates added in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Fort Worth, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Cleveland. It's the first time Lee and Lifeson have toured as Rush in over a decade.