tim gueguen wrote:I'd guess Rush have a warehouse of some sort, someplace. So the remnants might have been sitting in a box for the last 30 years. On the other hand it's possible they were sold off at some point, and someone has some or all of that 8 Voice and doesn't know it was a celeb owned instrument.
i grew up in Toronto. in the spring of 1990, there was an ad in the local entertainment weekly NOW announcing there would be a live one-off auction of a lot of used professional music gear in the former gymnasium of a converted elementary school downtown.
it was obvious from the quantity and type of auction items that the equipment had to have been from Rush. no other band in the area would have had as much stuff let alone duplicates of many. as an example, i won one of the two Oberheim Xpander lots that were available. i bid on some other synth (don't remember which - MemoryMoog?) but the bids went beyond what i could afford to put on my credit card.
apart from the professional auctioneer who was hired in to call the auctions and bids, everything else was nominally run by Saved by Technology, the local retailer whose founder, Jim Burgess, had a strong Rush connection - check the album credits.
even though all of the auction items were there at the school for examination prior to the start of bidding, everything had to go back to the store for pickup a couple of days later. it was made very clear that the store was only acting as a temporary agent for the unnamed seller. the auction items were not their back stock or excess inventory. they weren't warrantying any of the auction items nor accepting returns.
i had a few conversations with Jim Burgess at industry events a couple of years after the auction. i don't remember any specifics but i'm sure i would have mentioned the auction and remembered if he had said that equipment had come from some other band or source.
i left Toronto in 1994 and have only been back a few times several years ago. if anybody cares to, you can probably call up the store and fact check it with Jim Burgess but that is what happened to a chunk of their gear.