Show us your Garcia inspired guitars

[barefootdave]

Vic, how does the Moriarty stack up against the Walker? Been thinking hard about doing a Moriarty, and have seen / heard one in person in your old Tampa group (UJB) but after watching that Walker video...

[playingdead]

Different beasts, really ...

The Walker is like a fine work of art and it will be as unique as you want it to be ... you choose the woods, the metals, the electronics, and Scott makes it happen. Every one is unique.

The Moriarity is as good as a Jerry guitar can be in terms of fit, finish and playability.

I would say that the Moriarty guitar is way better than my own Resurrection in build quality. It's way better than any other tribute I've seen (Phiga, etc.). But the basic sound palette off of it is not really any different (wood and electronics).

If you want the best Jerry guitar out there, have Matt make it for you. If you want a unique instrument that can also do the Jerry tone but doesn't shout Grateful Dead at the audience, build a Walker. Both Matt and Scott are great to work with.

The only thing I didn't love about the Wolf itself -- and this is not a reflection of Matt's work -- is the effects loop switch being down between the output jacks. It's hard to reach down there on the fly, and that's probably why Garcia moved it on the next guitar.

Not sure what bridge is on the Resurrection, Pat at Resurrection would probably know.

[milobender]

I just finished this one a couple of months ago, keeping it for my main axe It has a combination of Jerry electronics... Wald UGB, OBEL, Stratoblaster clone, Active Electronics Bypass, PUP Series/Parallel/Single switches, and the usual Volume and Tone...

The body core is Jatoba, with layered walnut/quilted maple/walnut/cherry/walnut/quilted maple front and back from the same piece of wood... neck is Birdseye Maple in the center, purple heart and curly/flame maple on either side with a Pao Ferro finger board.

[tcsned]

She's a beauty, Brian! Great work!!

[keirweir]

She's a beauty, Brian! Great work!!

+1

[JonnyBoy]

I seriously love that guitar Brian. Holy shit it looks awesome. I am serious that this is a guitar I would buy. It has a cool classic look and a mix of the Jerry thing going on. The pick guard and peg head are great. I would be drawn to wanna play that for sure sitting in a shop. Great job!

[hippieguy1954]

I don't think I ever posted pics of the whole rig and my fav guitars.

[twofootskunk]

Here's a couple pictures from my phone that I took while building my "Jerry Caster" over the Christmas/New Year holiday. Mostly just "inspired by" and not made to look like or be an exact replica of anything. It's has Fender Custom Shop 69's, recommended from forum posts here. And a stratoblaster that I made using a combination of a post from waldo and the schematic at GGG.

Body Shielded, tuners installed on neck. You can see the tiger buffer and stratoblaster I made. I'm going with the stratoblaster for now, but I can swap in and out pretty easily. For now I have a bone nut. I might switch to brass.


Pickguard wired up. The DPDT toggle is wired true bypass, with the stratoblaster input grounded when off, like in a pedal. This way if the battery dies I can still have a functional guitar.


Trem blocked, stratoblaster and battery installed.


Assembled. It's strung up and setup now. It could probably use a little fret dress, but I'll have to leave that for someone more experienced.



It plays great and sounds awesome. Having just got into building pedals made the wiring and stratoblaster circuit a ton easier to do. Playing through my DIY Mutron Octave Divider and DIY Mutron III sounds really cool.

Things I didn't know going in. A switchcraft stereo jack doesn't really fit in the strat output jack route. The dremel took care of that for me. My toggle switch should have been a little closer to the tone knobs. Again, I had the break out the dremel and shave a small sliver off the route underneath the pickgaurd. Pushback cloth wire is pretty cool to use, but it does take up a lot more room, especially where all the ground tie into the volume pot.

[paulinnc]

Nice work twofoot. How easy was putting together the blaster? I thought about ordering on of their blaster kits to throw in my wolf.

[twofootskunk]

It was pretty easy. There aren't really many parts. I didn't use the kit. I basically just took the schematic at GGG and compared it to what waldo posted on this forum. I used the component values from the document waldo posted. I didn't use the pulldown resistor GGG suggested. I did keep the power filter cap from their diagram. I honestly have no idea if it's necessary with a battery.

Then I just drew up a layout of the components on a piece of paper. Stuck them in the perfboard and made any placement adjustments that I needed. Then it was just a matter of soldering it all together. I used the blue terminals so I can swap it out with a different circuit whenever I want. The switch was wired like a true bypass pedal with the effect input grounded when off. I used a 50k trimpot to adjust the boost. GGG suggests a 50k reverse audio pot in their kit since most of the boost is at the end of the travel of a linear pot. But I couldn't find a 50kC trimmer so I just used a linear. It's a set and forget thing for me, so no big deal. I bought a few J201 jfets and used a socket so I could switch them out. Honestly, the first one I put in sounds great, so I didn't try any of the others yet.

I'm a total noob at this stuff but I just built two pedals so that experience transferred quite nicely to making the stratoblaster.

[cincinnatiohio]

sorry gents... the amount of picture quota has been reached. can't upload picture. any suggestions?

[Tennessee Jedi]

sorry gents... the amount of picture quota has been reached. can't upload picture. any suggestions?

viewtopic.php?f=359&t=12940

Try this ^^^^^^

[cincinnatiohio]

why can't you just upload from a hard drive like normal? grrrrr......

[mkaufman]

This way, the site only contains links to images which saves lots of space.

mk

[cincinnatiohio]

here is my first strat. just had it fully redone jerry-fied. should be on the truck for delivery TODAY!! CAN NOT WAIT.

mkaufman- thanks for your help with the picture upload!