The world's most expensive guitar....official !!

[Scotland]

It sold in auction in 2002 for £957, 500. With today's exchange rate, that is $ 1,747,438 U.S.
Can you guess what it is and who the guitar originally belonged to?
Not Clapton.....not Hendrix....not Peter Green

[Telecaster65]

Bruce's Gibson Les Paul?

John Lennon's Rickenbacker?

Elvis Presley's Acoustic Gibson?

[Scotland]

None of them.

[jwz]

Acoustic from the Mickey Mouse Club?

[showard44]

Was it even some one in the music business?

[Scotland]

It certainly did belong to a very prominent musician, a guitarist would you believe? The guitar was neither a Fender or a Gibson. It was an electric solid body though.

[Telecaster65]

Mc Guinn's 12 strings Rickenbacker?

[Iain]

What were all the outputs for on it? 3 diff leads (cords) feeding out from it.

[Scotland]

Originally Posted by Iain

What were all the outputs for on it? 3 diff leads (cords) feeding out from it.

Yep, that's the one. Took 6 years to build, he got the Doug Irwin "Tiger" in 1978. He had stereo switching and leads to go to two amps in mono along with other weird combinations. Personally, I'd rather have a 50's MIM Classic !!

[Telecaster65]

I have found that Jerry Garcia sold two guitars for that price!

:evil:

TIGER SOLD FOR $957,500
WOLF SOLD FOR $789,500

Anyway...

[jordanl]

Originally Posted by Scotland

Yep, that's the one. Took 6 years to build, he got the Doug Irwin "Tiger" in 1978. He had stereo switching and leads to go to two amps in mono along with other weird combinations. Personally, I'd rather have a 50's MIM Classic !!

Everything in the Deads gear was set for live performance. Jerry ran his effects loops from the guitar. The Tiger hides the acess to a buffered loop. that signal went to his effects rack out the A side of a stereo chord, and Back to his guitar on the b side, than ran through hhis volume and tone controls and then out to the amp. This ensured consistent performance on the envelope filter, which is a volume sensitive effect. If their was a problem in the effect rack it was bybassed with the flick of a switch. His Humbuckers were also Splittable. The tiger and Wolf both had thsi two chord arrangement. The guitars he played after this(Lighting bolt AKA florida1 and Rosie) added a third chord to connect to a Roland GR synth.

The Alemmbic Bass that Phil Lesh used in the seventies was wired fro quad, each string could be routed to seperate parts of the PA.

[Scotland]

All that hassle, or it seems like it to me. Nah, give me my Fender amp and Classic 50's anyday. If he played a standard Tele, would he have gotten the same price for it? Now that's an impossible question I think !

[blue floral]

Originally Posted by Scotland

All that hassle, or it seems like it to me. Nah, give me my Fender amp and Classic 50's anyday. If he played a standard Tele, would he have gotten the same price for it? Now that's an impossible question I think !

Actually I think he would have gotten close with a Tele.
There is that mythical element to the Dead; that emotional attachment that has nothing to do with money.

Mebbe not the price he got for a custom built as opposed to off the rack, but I still think a Garcia Tele would be worth a lot of money to the right fan.

[jordanl]

A lot of the value attached to those guitars was clearly emotional. Also Jerry did little in the way of switching guitars, the Tiger was his "Number one" From Mid '79 till sometime in '88 or '89. BTW the guitars were not sold by Garcia or his estate. Jerry' will left them to the Luthier Doug Irwin. He had some hard times and chose to auction them off.

BTW try a tele into a Mutron III, it doesn't work well.

[lenny]

Originally Posted by jordanl

BTW the guitars were not sold by Garcia or his estate. Jerry' will left them to the Luthier Doug Irwin. He had some hard times and chose to auction them off.

right about now that's one rich luthier huh?

[Scotland]

Kevin, keep making them...you never know, you just never know !!

[Bob Mc]

I only wish they had sold years before he died.


I watched in amazement a video of the Dead closing the Winterland, and boy oh boy, and ding dang heckamadoodle! I STILL DO NOT get the electric Dead.
I really do like his acoustic recordings with Grisman, really really like them in fact.

[TeleMark]

Originally Posted by Bob Mc

I watched in amazement a video of the Dead closing the Winterland, and boy oh boy, and ding dang heckamadoodle! I STILL DO NOT get the electric Dead.
I really do like his acoustic recordings with Grisman, really really like them in fact.

Ah, this is one of those things that you either like, or you don't... Sorta like brussel sprouts. For me, when it worked, it was magic. When it didn't , well... let's just say it wasn't magic.

Originally Posted by blue floral

Mebbe not the price he got for a custom built as opposed to off the rack, but I still think a Garcia Tele would be worth a lot of money to the right fan.

Well, there should be a few strats out there, so there might be a Tele or two... I've seen photos from the 70s where Jerry played a natural Strat, and when I saw them back in `89, he was using a Strat because he was just starting to play with the Roland synth pickup.

TeleMark

[ehren]

He was such a humble musician. He'd laugh at the fact that somebody would pay that much for one of his guitars.

With all of the bad vibes that came about over the will and the fate of his guitars, I'm glad to see they've finally been sold. A very bad chapter in Dead history is finally closed.

[ehren]

In the early days. Strats mostly, but Les Pauls, SGs and even a Travis Bean or 2 could be seen in his hands.

The Dead was an amazing thing, but they weren't a studio band simply hashing out well rehearsed numbers. They were a rock band reforming themselves on a nightly basis. For me, I always saw something at a show that was reallly intriguing musically.

1972 when Jerry was playing a Strat through 3 twins, well lets just say he had "Tone."