Grateful Dead Gear: this book is just breaking all the rules

[Dozin]

Referring to Cripes Lightning Bolt,
his "acoustic tone" that SOOOO many people keep refering to as "weak" or somehow different from Jerry's previous sound was from a Mike Christian Tune-O-Matic Piezo saddle. It was an innovative (and invisible) bridge saddle system that ran six little wires from each saddle to a preamp which was blended with Jerry's electric buffered preamp system. This blend is also why from night to night the tone would sometimes change radically from VERY acoustic - almost jug band acoustic tones and back to the very usual electric tone we were used to hearing. I say it was invisible because the wiring was hidden under the saddles (which were direct replacements) and routed internally so there was nothing visible to notice.

Don't forget Mike, what you saw in 2000 isn't the same as 1993. The Grateful Dead was a traveling laboratory for sound. Things change daily, weekly, tour to tour, etc. I started Dozin.com in 96 and all my information came from interviews from Sievert's guitar player or from people within. I know you had the great opportunity to see these guitars up close, but 20 years later. To say never happened or it was never that way, I just have to disagree.

[waldo041]

Referring to Cripes Lightning Bolt,
his "acoustic tone" that SOOOO many people keep refering to as "weak" or somehow different from Jerry's previous sound was from a Mike Christian Tune-O-Matic Piezo saddle. It was an innovative (and invisible) bridge saddle system that ran six little wires from each saddle to a preamp which was blended with Jerry's electric buffered preamp system. This blend is also why from night to night the tone would sometimes change radically from VERY acoustic - almost jug band acoustic tones and back to the very usual electric tone we were used to hearing. I say it was invisible because the wiring was hidden under the saddles (which were direct replacements) and routed internally so there was nothing visible to notice.

Don't forget Mike, what you saw in 2000 isn't the same as 1993. The Grateful Dead was a traveling laboratory for sound. Things change daily, weekly, tour to tour, etc. I started Dozin.com in 96 and all my information came from interviews from Sievert's guitar player or from people within. I know you had the great opportunity to see these guitars up close, but 20 years later. To say never happened or it was never that way, I just have to disagree.

fortunately we have audio to disprove your theory that in a given night he could switch between the tone we loved and that acoustic tone. if you can prove that i am all ears. secondly, a LOT of your information comes from david fontaine and erik larson, both of whom i have corresponded with along with names like steve parish, dan healy, ron wickersham, john cutler, rick turner, dennis leonard, frank fuller, gary brawer. not to name drop, but i am not speaking out of my ass, HE DID NOT USE A PIEZO, no matter how much Mike Christian wants people to believe he did. there is a way to get that acoustic tone and it involves an impedance mismatch when going direct to a board. believe it or not.

while we are at it again, Wolf's midi was NEVER retrofitted internally, Tiger never was retrofitted for a midi, and Rosebud was the guitar played on the last set the GD ever played, not Tiger. these are also facts you continue to ignore.


~waldo

[Dozin]

I never disagreed with you on those statements and i told you this. No brainers.

[Dozin]

By the way, why I have your attention I need to get a buffer from you. ; )

[hawk900]

I honestly don't know why the passive pre opamp piezo bnidge wound wire is such an offending topic??????????? Meanwhile it's proven. Both buy the creator and jer's,guitar tech. and severel others like eg.Brawer Actually after the stratoblaster was not blended as I plain text worded before. It was wired into acustom secondary input added to the opamp into a volume pot(variable db's into jer's hard set 6db orig opamp and could be raised as high as 14db from that it went to bridge dp104 north coil hard wired via together in series pup selector spst switches.. Just like a piezo proper acoustic guitar location, I believe it is a 1st gutar innovation still today and one of jer's favouritefeatyres especially for like lazy river.FOTD and Peggy-O,etc.
Other than his lame pre<crest,trio worst ever tonal combo this was amazing.
I remebr Jer's BDAY in Michigan 93 he was messing around on stage before the start of touch he had the piezo db's maxed and it was tonally betterthan any acoustic guitar ever and we got a double touch lead to boot. I could tell as I handed my tix inhe had the acoustic crioe in hands.
Waldo I never realized they let you take the bridge apart. Cool if they did and how how was bridge grounded compared to the lame gibson way plus how was the piezo and pup cavities insulated compared to the irwin's? This baby had all the features of the RB and then some.
Every one hear wants to call me the wiring nazi being racist heads because of what I said about the tiger and RB diagrams . Yes theyre wrong both phasing wise and humbucker mode selection aspects.
We already talked about it. The middle HB's on both irwin dog eared diagrams are out of phase both magnetcaly and wired but hey I guess it doesn't matter since jer never used positons 2 and 4 of the 5way. LOL 99.9% is correct except the way he split and utilized either north or south coils on his mid HB's,grounding of the tone caps. and has their own take. on the innacurate wiring. Jerryizing your axe has to come with everyone's interpretation. That's part of the hobby.
Who cares as long as you got the tone you want . Also I wouldn't rant about the piezo if I didn't incorporate one in my custom SG in 94 with info coming direct from the creator/inventor.
Everyone has their own take So peace evryone and if you have nothing good2say then why bother. Amps,pre's and speaker setups are not my hobbty.Ive been building acoustic and electric guitars for over 15years now plus through body neck replica for a company that you all know. I guess you could just build a jerry type axe and use the behringer acoustic modeler mixed in hence cripe.
Share the love and I'll help anyone that asks.
PEACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hawk.

[Grant]

For all of 1975 (possibly some of late 74) and ending exactly on 10-3-76(for GD shows anyway), Garcia was using the Mesa Mark I preamp rather than the ubiquitous Twin Reverb.
Blair didn't use very much of the hard-date info I provided him... a bit over-the-top in geeking I suppose, but imho its nice to be able to compare sounds from neighboring shows and know what gear differences you are hearing... ah well.

Although GD 10-9-76 and all subsequent GD shows through 1992 feature the Twin Reverb duos, its quite likely he continued using the Mk I's for side projects and studio stuff for several years. A Reconstruction photo (1979) shows the Mk I's onstage.

For February-March 1980 JGB shows it was a Mesa Mark IIA preamp

Always into MC2300 solidstate power.

Now, the piezolessness of Bolt was a bit of a surprise to me, because it certainly did sound as crappy and thin as a piezo for the last couple of years at GD shows. Oddly enough, during the JGB 1993 East tour, Bolt sounds like an amazingly toneful and warm electric guitar.

Re. the boogie,
it definitely wasn't used with the Dead in 74.
In 75, I think Jerry acquired it during the middle of the year. The spring LOM shows are still the twin, and the June Winterland GD show sounds like the twin too. In August, notably the GAMH show (one from the vault), there is a striking change in tone. I think it was that show or slightly before that the mesa started being used.

[RiverRat]

I honestly don't know why the passive pre opamp piezo bnidge wound wire is such an offending topic??????????? Meanwhile it's proven. Both buy the creator and jer's,guitar tech. and severel others like eg.Brawer Actually after the stratoblaster was not blended as I plain text worded before. It was wired into acustom secondary input added to the opamp into a volume pot(variable db's into jer's hard set 6db orig opamp and could be raised as high as 14db from that it went to bridge dp104 north coil hard wired via together in series pup selector spst switches.. Just like a piezo proper acoustic guitar location, I believe it is a 1st gutar innovation still today and one of jer's favouritefeatyres especially for like lazy river.FOTD and Peggy-O,etc.

The only guitars made by Cripes for Jerry that contained a piezo bridge were Eagle (http://www.cripeguitars.com/eagle.html) and Tribute (http://www.cripeguitars.com/tribute.html), the piezo saddles were made by GraphTech and sold to Mike Christian who installed them in the bridge. This was corroborated by Dave Dunwoodie of GraphTech. It didn't have a UGB or a Stratoblaster, it had an off the shelf bartolini mag/piezo preamp (Waldo may be able to come up with the model # of it. I researched it and sent the info to him. It was also discussed why this was done and it had to do with the different impedance of the mag and piezo source.) There are both a photo of the internals as well as a hand drawn schematic by Gary Brawer regarding Eagle's electronics. The bridges on Eagle and Tribute looks nothing like the ones on Lightning Bolt, Top Hat, Tiger or Rosebud. The graphite saddles are a giveaway, neither of the first two Cripes guitars have them. Unfortunately, neither Eagle nor Tribute were ever played by Garcia since their builds occurred just shortly before his death.

There are several possible explanations for the tone heard post-Rosebud... One is the absences of the Twins and the Mac, the other is that he was in fact using a midi patch to achieve the acoustic guitar tone. But the evidence is pretty conclusive that there wasn't a piezo in Bolt or TopHat.

[Dozin]

I definitely can see how any of these claims can get spun by the creator, author, insider, whoever. I'm sure I've fallen victim to not the "whole" truth. I commend Mike for all his hard work and efforts getting the facts down, I really do. He's done a fantastic job with it.

Some people know I got into the gear back in the mid eighties. We didn't have much to go on and there was a lot of speculation about the gear of the Dead. I tried to bring light to the subject when I started Dozin.com I gathered all the articles from Guitar mags, Unbroken Chain, Relix etc. to one place. A lot of people reached out to help out with the information. I also asked a lot of questions too. I published a schematic of the interpretation of Irwin's Tiger how it was explained to me. I had the same chicken scratch schematic that Irwin himself drew out. Right or Wrong it got the ball rolling and made light of what was going on. I know it helped a lot of you get started in the right direction and that was my goal. My point to Mike is, do I believe that Jer's guitars were wired pretty basic at first? Yes I do. I think it was experimented with a lot and different configurations were done all the time. So to say one is right and wrong is kind of silly to me. I do think that these guitars were change up with different configurations all the way till Jer's death. I also think that Mike's interpretation of these guitars are probably the final product.

With all that being said. I started Dozin when I was in my late 20's. I'm in my 40's now. I don't have the same passion about this stuff as I did back then. I like my Bobby stuff and that's it haaha I know there's mistakes in some of the stuff that's on the site. For a long time I've said to myself I need to fix that but I'm lazy. No, I'm not lazy. I coach baseball, football, started my own business and have 3 kids. I just don't find the time. When I hear about this stuff now. I barely care and that's the truth.

What I care about now when it comes to this stuff is that I can come to a place with you like minded souls and geek out with this stuff.

PS. I never said Dozin is the official word and I didn't write the book...