Jerry Garcia tone question

[Red Square]

After reading the thread about the sonic maximizer, I got to thinking about Jerry Garcia's tone.

Specifically, in the treble area.
Forgive my lack of vocabulary with this, but he seems to have a compressed sparkly brightness that leaps out at you in live recordings. There is no harshness in this brightness. The nature of it eludes me. Is it in the compression? The reverb? Both? Neither?

I know his rig was very high tech and specific...especially with regard to his guitar wiring, etc. and I don't discount or overlook his hands/technique/judgment. I also am familiar with his amp set up.
I imagine this sound could be a result of many things in combination?


But is there a pedal/unit that can begin to approximate the way his treble range sings?

I know I'm not articulating this well....perhaps some folks could chime in and both clarify what I'm trying to describe and suggest a way to get close to this sound.

 

[greggorypeccary]

http://dozin.com/jers/guitars.html

http://dozin.com/gearheads.html

No pedal will get you that tone.

I played a replica of Tiger a while ago an it had 90% of "that" tone, in terms of that bright (but not harsh) treble and really even, loud and solid sounding throughout it's range.

So I guess the obvious question is, with what guitar are you trying to get that tone?

 

[Manolete]

He used the middle pickup a lot, from what I've heard. That would cut down on the icepick tone without being too muddy. Round about Live/Dead he was using a wah pedal in a fixed setting to control highs. You can hear that on Dark Star. I understand he was running the preamps of his Fender amps into Macintosh power amps in later years.

 

[Manolete]

Ok I know this makes it a double post but I've been doing more sleuthing around with Garcia's tone.

The sparkle tone you talk about appeared after he quit using SG guitars. He moved onto strats as early as 1970, he also used a Travis Bean around this time and an early Alembic with the super rare Peanut body (not my favorite). He used a strat, for example, on all the material on Europe '72. This strat had the whammy blocked off, a custom brass bridge fitted and an Alembic Stratoblaster booster added. He was using Fender twin amps with the speakers removed sitting on their sides so that the reverb springs didn't get shocked by onstage movement. These twins were somewhat hotrodded with higher quality components and tweaks to remove hiss or hum at stage volume.

image removed

Although its a later image that wooden box behind his left shoulder is the gutted black and silverface twin reverbs stacked on their side. The twins would often be channel jumped, and the preamp was tapped by Alembic (right from around 1968 I believe) to feed Mcintosh MC3500 power amp. I think he used several Mcintosh models including solid state models (though they were designed to still sound like a tube amp even in the late '60s this was being considered).

In around 1976 he was using a Mesa Boogie which was also preamp tapped into Mcintosh gear (and that Travis Bean guitar again).

It seems the idea here was to keep from having to crank the amps into serious drive territory by using a seperate Mcintosh preamp to cleanly boost the signal up to stage volume.

 

[LightninMike]

Alrighty, here goes....

Most of Jerry's sound starts at the beginning.... he gets the pickup to come through clean.... once he added the OBEL into the mix, it had a furthur level of gain staging.... this picked the signal directly off the pickups, and didn't color it with anything in the chain except what pedal he chose... it as well made the tone controls work more effectively, especially considering they were mil spec....

the silverface and blackface twin heads were just used for the pre-amp.... they had the vibrato cut, but included in the "power" section.... even when he used the Mesa heads, it wound up being the same as the Mesa's were just power.... the Macintosh amps were modded as well.... all to give the cleanest power they could....breakup was due to the speaker being at it's limit or introduced in the form of a pedal

for the pre-amp and Macintosh circuit: http://www.wald-electronics.com/preampmods.html

for the internal info: http://www.wald-electronics.com/misc.html

there is a lot of info out there to get his tone, but as many people have stated, it ultimately comes down to the player....

 

[Manolete]

Even the Mcintosh amps were modded by Alembic with upgraded caps and quarter inch jacks to make this hifi amp more guitar friendly.

The settings on his twins were apparently Volume on 4.5, treble on 10, mids on 5.5 and bass on 0. Reverb was set to 5 as well.

For effects Garcia seems not to have used that many and when he did it was often quite sparingly. An MXR Distortion + was apparently used as a booster. He also apparently used an MXR analogue delay though I've never heard it in recordings. The most known (and at times hated) effect was his use of a Mu-tron III which is clearly used on Estimated Prophet (and other cuts off the Terrapin Station). Later he got into midi stuff using first the Wolf guitar and later a black strat and a Roland pickup to trigger synth effects.


As I previously mentioned he used Strats from about 1970, and even his first custom guitar aka Wolf first arrived with Strat pickups. These were later swapped out for DiMarzio humbuckers. Prior to the Strats he was using an SG with humbuckers (1969 and also a different one surfaced in 1970), a Les Paul with P-90s (Goldtop and a Black one) from late 1967 to 1968 and before that a cherry red Guild Starfire heard on the debut album (not my favorite tone).

He seemed to like his action high (though you still hear fret buzz and jangle on some recordings) and had quite a unique picking style that was more part of his banjo heritage than anything. Here is perhaps where you can make the biggest inroads into Jerry's style. There are guys on youtube with the custom Alembic inlay guitars, the Mutrons, the Mcintosh gear, the actual amps out of the wall of sound etc... but unless you play like a banjo player (trying to make the guitar sound like a trumpet) you won't be hitting the mark. Every note is played cleanly Jerry often moved his picking hand closer or further away from the bridge to get tonal changes.

 

[Red Square]

Thanks for all the input.
I'm fairly familiar with the guitars and amps he used. I've attended quite a few GD shows in my day (96 to be precise).

Let me steer this another way then....what is the absolute best reverb unit you can get in pedal form. I'm aware there are rack units that blow away everything.
The reverb on my Blues Junior has not been gratifying as of late.

 

[Manolete]

Thanks for all the input.
I'm fairly familiar with the guitars and amps he used. I've attended quite a few GD shows in my day (96 to be precise).

Let me steer this another way then....what is the absolute best reverb unit you can get in pedal form. I'm aware there are rack units that blow away everything.
The reverb on my Blues Junior has not been gratifying as of late.

You could look for an upgrade spring reverb tank for the Blues Junior. Jerry was utilising the spring tank in those Fender amps so you need a little of the 'sproing' of a spring tank rather than a good studio reverb.

Have you tried these:

Or:

image removed

 

[Red Square]

I think much of "my issue" is that I've gone for so long straight into the amp.
Now just for the hell of it I've started throwing a few pedals into the mix and although it affords more options on the palate of possibilities, it also adulterates it a bit. Perhaps its time to put the pedals back in the drawer and get back to what works.

 

[Manolete]

http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/bjr/bjreverb.htm

Maybe give these mods a bash? Seems like some reverb tweaks on there and a means of better grounding.

 

[GlenParrish]

Dang, I miss Jerry...

I believe he also used 8's for strings and had a really delicate touch with the left hand. I don't know how long it was the case, but by the later years, his tech/guru triggered all his effects and midi from the front of the house so Jerry could just play to the sound.

 

[DaBender]

I've tried a few reverb units, and even though I'm basically of the school that believes you should be able to get a good sound out of anything, the Boss FRV-1 really stands above the others. Very easy to get a natural spring tank sound out of it.

 

[LightninMike]

How do you string your guitars?

With Vincis. They package up a special set for me consisting of a .010, .013, .017, .027, .037, and .047.

- Jon Sievert Interview Guitar Player Oct 78



NOTES: Per Steve Parish, later Jerry would go on to use a .049 and sometimes a .050 for the low E string. Gary Brawer also stated, Jerry sometimes used a .011 for the high E string.

as far as the midi gear, he had Bralove setting the sounds up, but Jerry would select them from the floor board or the onboard switching.... this was true of Vince and Bobby as well.... although Phil tried to do the midi gear, he couldn't get close enough tracking to truly play along during songs as the string took too long to catch up

with his spring units, it's why he started placing the head units on their side so they didn't feed off of the stage vibration

 

[Paul in Colorado]

There is no wah-wah on Dark Star/Live/Dead. Jerry didn't even use one until about 1971. Live/Dead is mostly Twin Reverbs with JBL's. Sometimes he'd use as many as six before using them to preamp McIntosh power amps running the speakers in different cabs.

Jerry used three different Strats, a '60's rosewood necked sunburst and a '50's maple necked sunburst before using Alligator, the blond Strat used on Europe '72 and the Keystone Sessions with Merl Saunders given to him by Graham Nash.

For a while part of the charm of going to a Dead show was to see what guitars they'd be playing. Weir used a deep bodied double cutaway Guild for a while, a black Les Paul Custom, a 335 or 345 and an SG and probably a few others between 1970 and 1975.

I saw Jerry with the Strats, a Les Paul Special, the "peanut" guitar (built by Rick Turner with a Gibson SG Custom parts) and a Les Paul Deluxe Sunburst before he got the Travis Bean's in 1975. Jerry also played a Les Paul Custom with Alnico pickups and a Bigsby after he quit playing the Guild Starfire around 1968. He played a Gold Top Les Paul with P-90's for a while in there too.

Back to the original post, I personally think that if you have a good Twin Reverb with JBL's and a Strat with good pickups, your at least 85% of the way there. And never turn your Twin Reverb past "7."

As for effects, there were none other then the wah (and sometimes after he used it, it was removed from the stage) until after the Wall of Sound, since the wall was the PA and the stage amps (Alembic Preamps and Furman Reverbs).

 

[Jubal81]

A good buffer will get you a lot of the way there. If you're up for a little DIY challenge, they are very easy to build.

I've never been a big Dead fan, but I love playing their tunes since my current setup falls right into that spot. I just run my Ric 620 through a buffer pedal into a clean boost and then the amp. Suddenly all those treble-boosting tricks and gadgets went out the window. Sweet, clean and a bit chimey.

 

[Earguy]

Guitar? I thought he was strangling a cat.

/ducks, runs away

 

[jglenn]

Guitar? I thought he was strangling a cat.

/ducks, runs away

And I thought I was brave dissing young country,you best hide sir.

 

[Earguy]

And I thought I was brave dissing young country,you best hide sir.

Oh, I'm just feeling silly tonight.

 

[Maxwell Street]

classic Jerry treble...

 

[adjason]

the pickup I have had to most luck getting to approximate his sound is the fender 54 strat bridge pickup wired to a tone control.