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I was a friend of Doug Irwin for a while in the 90's (before he fell ill).Funny but Jerry played the Irwin at the last show...Trey, by the way, plays a Languodec, a guitar made specifically for him.
1993- The Stephen Cripe guitar "Lighting Bolt"
Garcia's next guitar arrived in the mail at the Grateful Dead office in 1993. Stephen Cripe, a 39-year-old Florida woodworker who spent years building custom interiors for Caribbean yachts, decided to try his hand at making a guitar. Using a few photos and a well worn "Dead Ahead" video., he knocked off Irwin's design of Tiger with a few flourishes of his own, like carving the body out of a piece of East Indian rosewood recycled from a 19th century Asian opium bed. It had an acoustic piezo pickup built in. Built "totally by feel", the cocobola through-body neck has a recycled Brazilian rosewood fingerboard (note: Jerry's interest in the rain forest) with an unusual accuracy in the higher end allowing him to play where he usually avoided.
" Garcia was amazed when it came around," said band mate Bob Weir, "at the guesswork he had to make -- and got right -- to give that guitar Irwin's look and feel. It was astounding." Garcia gave the piece to San Francisco repairman Gary Brawer to fix the electronic guts, but it was a miracle guitar.
He pronounced the piece "the guitar I've always been waiting for" and began playing the instrument exclusively. It came to be called Lightning Bolt. Garcia met with Cripe briefly backstage at a Florida concert and commissioned a second guitar for $6,500, known as Top Hat, although Garcia almost never played it. Cripe, whose hobby was making fireworks, died in May 1996 when his work shed blew up. He used an exploding firecracker as the insignia on his guitars' headstocks.
In April of '95 Jerry ordered the backup "Top Hat".
1994- Summer Tour Jerry brings back out Rosebud but in the fall back to Lightning Bolt.
1995- Lightning Bolt was in the shop on the last tour. In his final show at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995, Garcia started out playing Rosebud, but midway through the show, the guitar developed problems. Garcia strapped on the tour's spare guitar -- Tiger, out of mothballs for the occasion -- and finished his final concert on his old trusty ax.
Others:
Martin D-18 "American Beauty", "Wokingman's Dead"
ZB pedal steel 70-74
Takamine acoustics 1980 acoustic shows & benefits
Alvarez-Yairi "Garcia/Grisman" + live shows
Jerry used "Rosebud" at the last Grateful Dead show in Chicago. On Aug 4, 1995.
Jerry recorded "Blue Yodel # 9" using a mint condition 1939 Gibson Super 400N acoustic that seen in the video for the movie "Smoke". Its likely the last guitar Jerry ever graced...
Effects:
Effects used during the early '70's were limited mostly to the Vox wah-wah pedal being occasionally used.
By the late '70's, he was using the Mutron envelope filter (which was used for Estimated, Shakedown, etc.), and he continued to use it until the very end. A Mutron Octive Divider, MXR Distortion +, Phase 100 and Analog Delay.
By the late '80's, his effects consisted of mostly Boss effects: Octave Divider, Turbo Overdrive, Super Overdrive, EQ's, etc. in two effects loops. He also used some extremely expensive Lexicons a PCM-42 or PCM-60, with a PCM-70) reverb/delay units in the rack behind him; these are studio units.
By 1993, he was using these effects, but used a Groove Tube TRIO preamp as well as a Real Tube Reverb unit to go direct to the soundboard, when all of the power amps & speakers were removed from the stage. They used in-the-ear monitors instead of floor monitor wedges.
Chandler Stereo Digital Echo
Korg O1R/W
Korg M1R
Emu Proteus/1
ADA MicroCab
Alesis Midiverb
Boss OD2
Turbo Overdrive Boss OD1
Overdrive 2
Boss GE7 Equalizers
Boss OC2 Octave
Mutron III
MXR Phase 100
Groove Tubes Trio
Tube Works Real Tube Reverb
some ADA rack mount FX box
More guitar info:
65,66 - Guild - cherry red
6/21/67 - black 1956 Les Paul w/p-90's p/u covers removed
8/4/67 - ditto,but this guitar has a Bigsby tailpiece/tremelo bar. It could've been installed,or could be a different axe.
3/3/68 - gold-top Les Paul with single coil p/u's (aka soap-bars,aka P-90's) three Twin Reverbs w/two ext. Fender 4x12 cabinets, JBL speakers
3/1/69 - cherry Gibson SG. I associate this gtr with the "Live Dead" sound. Vox Crybaby wah-wah pedal
10/24/69 - sunburst Strat. He's pictured playing this one on several 1970 dates,but he's back on an SG on 5/6/70 and pics captioned "1970" on p.257 in the Compendium. The SG gets some studio use w/Crosby,12/70. 3/24/71 - page 310. Looks like a Les Paul neck on a handmade body. I'll take a guess that it was an early effort from the Alembic guys, because the raised pickguard appears to be made of hand-cast metal,and they were into that.
4/71 - page 313. Same guitar or a Les Paul? I can't tell.
8/71 - sunburst Les Paul
4/72 - natural finish Strat.As heard on Europe '72.
5/20/73 - same guitar,it now has an extra knob and a custom-made plate covering the electronics. ....in a GP interview he sez the plate broke (when tweaking electronics?) and they fixed it such that it looked like 03/23/75. Mesa/Boogie MkI as pre-amp > MC2300 > 3 2x12's
06/17/75. mxr distortion+, mxr phase100
09/28/75. Travis Bean MC1000 w/humbuckers
76 Travis Bean MC500 w/single-coil pickups and fx loop +Mu-Tron III +Mu-Tron Octave Divider +MXR analog delay
early '77 Travis Bean MC500 recieves Jerry's first unity-gain buffer/fx loop jack combo, placing all effects in front of Jerry's gtr vol. knob.
05/77. 1 (silverface)Twin Reverb as pre-amp > McIntosh MC2300 power amp > 3 JBL 2x12's; BF Twin as reserve backup head
09/28/77. return of "Wolf", w/added buffer/fx loop, still with 3 single-coil p/u's... Bean returns for select JGB shows through '78
mid '78 "Wolf" gets new Dimarzio pickups:(b,m)Dual Sound;(n)SDS-1
fall '79 "Tiger" Irwin custom:(b,m)Dual Sound,(n)SDS-1
Feb. to Mar. '80 JGB tour Mesa Boogie MkIIa head> MC2300> Hard Trucker JBL 3x12
'82 "Tiger" gets pickup change:(b,m)Dimarzio Super 2,(n)SDS-1... that.
More info on guitars
Garcia began playing electric guitar with the Warlocks, before the band changed its name to the Grateful Dead. He used an inexpensive cherry-red Guild Starfire. He played that instrument for several years and used it on the band's early recordings.
But as early as 1971, Garcia expressed dissatisfaction with factory-made guitars, even though he played models favored by other rock guitarists -- the Gibson Les Paul and the Gibson SG. Until he walked into Irwin's Sonoma studio in early 1972, he had been playing a vintage '57 Fender Stratocaster, a classic rock 'n' roll guitar given to him by Graham Nash, with an alligator decal on the body that gave the guitar its name, Alligator.
Garcia bought the first guitar Irwin ever made for $850 (known as 001) and ordered another one custom-made. Irwin delivered Wolf, named after its distinctive inlay of a wolf, in May 1973 for $1,500. (Garcia gave Irwin's 001 to original Dead road crew member Ramrod. Garcia gave away a lot of guitars.)
After a brief dalliance with an aluminum guitar designed by Southern California maverick Travis Bean, Garcia replaced Wolf with Tiger in 1979. The guitarmaker spent more than six years working on it, and Garcia played the heavy 14-pound guitar for 11 years.
Irwin mixed exquisitely detailed, intricate brass work with dense, exotic hardwoods in his designs. He also incorporated a lot of special features Garcia himself devised, like a loop that ran the signal back through the guitar so he could control his special effects with knobs on the body of the guitar or a built-in pre-amp hidden beneath Irwin's inlays. "Jerry knew more about his guitars and equipment than anyone," said Parish.
Wolf briefly came out of retirement in 1988 as a guinea pig for MIDI synthesizer experiments. After a Roland synthesizer was successfully attached to Wolf, Tiger went back to the shop for retrofitting. Garcia used the synthesizer attachment to make his guitar sound like a trumpet or other instruments.
In 1989, Irwin delivered his $11,000 masterpiece, Rosebud, with MIDI controls built in. "Everything he had learned about guitars went into Rosebud, " said Parish.
Garcia's next guitar arrived in the mail at the Grateful Dead office in 1993. Stephen Cripe, a 39-year-old Florida woodworker who spent years building custom interiors for Caribbean yachts, decided to try his hand at making a guitar. Using a few photos and a Dead video, he knocked off Irwin's design of Tiger with a few flourishes of his own, like carving the body out of a piece of East Indian rosewood recycled from a 19th century Asian opium bed.
Garcia was floored. He gave the piece to San Francisco repairman Gary Brawer to fix the electronic guts, but it was a miracle guitar.
"Garcia was amazed when it came around," said band mate Bob Weir, "at the guesswork he had to make -- and got right -- to give that guitar Irwin's look and feel. It was astounding."
He pronounced the piece "the guitar I've always been waiting for" and began playing the instrument exclusively. It came to be called Lightning Bolt. Garcia met with Cripe briefly backstage at a Florida concert and commissioned a second guitar for $6,500, known as Top Hat, although Garcia almost never played it. Cripe, whose hobby was making fireworks, died in May 1996 when his work shed blew up. He used an exploding firecracker as the insignia on his guitars' headstocks.
Lightning Bolt was in the shop on the last tour. In his final show at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995, Garcia started out playing Rosebud, but midway through the show, the guitar developed problems. Garcia strapped on the tour's spare guitar -- Tiger, out of mothballs for the occasion -- and finished his final concert on his old trusty ax.
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