Grateful Dead Music Forum

I've been listening to a lot of 72-73 lately and was wondering what is Jerry using in the jam sections of "Playing in the Band". Kind of has that underwater sound but I never really thought of it before til I almost crashed my van from the darn trance it almost put me into. Any thoughts, and Merry Christmas!!!

I don't think he used too many effects in that era, he was using a whah pedal though.

I think he was using a wah with the tone knob rolled back. He was using the power amp of the fender then to, so he might have had some natural tube overdrive to

High Peaks wrote:I think he was using a wah with the tone knob rolled back.

Agreed on that.

High Peaks wrote:He was using the power amp of the fender then to, so he might have had some natural tube overdrive to

Circa 1969 is when Ron Wickersham stated that they began to preamp-tap the Twins and send them to a number of McIntosh MC275 tube power amps (not sure if these were used in stereo with each 75w ch driving one 12" or bridged or what)... the MC275's can be seen in the 8/27/72 footage. However by New Year's of that same year, JG was using MC3500 power amps (as seen on Dozin's site). These are mono 350w tube amps. Then by early 1973 (2/9/73 being a good guess) the whole band was using the new MC2300 2x300w stereo solidstate amps (except for the vocals highs which were still MC3500).

I believe he turned his Twins volume up somewhat higher during the 70's, so you are getting a degree of preamp tube overdrive...

Thanks for the info Tiger. I was always under the impression he started with the mc2300 in 74. I didn't think to look back before then and assumed he used the whole fender. Have a great Christmas, and thanks again.

I was guessing a Wah pedal was in the mix, but had no idea how much some of the other equipment would have influenced that particular sound. Thanks for the answers. Merry Christmas!!

VoX Wah

unk0wndarkstar wrote:VoX Wah

not quite, but easily mistaken for one at a distance:

in the late 60's he was using a vox wah, right?

I wonder why he changed over to the color sound wah for 72-74.

74 is when he stopped using a wah? DO u know when he stopped using the wah and went over to the mutron III?

jenkins wrote:in the late 60's he was using a vox wah, right?

I wonder why he changed over to the color sound wah for 72-74.

74 is when he stopped using a wah? DO u know when he stopped using the wah and went over to the mutron III?

There's not really any conclusive evidence that I've been aware that JG used a wah before the ColorSound in 1971. There is one brief passage of the 2/21/69 Dream Bowl Dark Star where there is something very wah or phase like going on with JG's guitar but nothing I've been able to nail down. I for one believe the statement that he ever used a Vox wah probably originated from a misidentification of the similarly chrome-topped (and British) ColorSound.

He began using DOWN mode of the Mutron on Dancin In The Streets in 76 and UP mode on lots of stuff after beginning to use a pre-volume fx-loop in late 76. However he didn't totally discontinue use of conventional wah pedals, it still appeared in jams and tunes, notably GSET, well into the mid-80's.

on the dozin page it says he was using a vox wah at the time of LIVE DEAD.
So they are wrong there?

i never even heard of a color sound b4.

Is that a vol+wah like dozin says or is it just a wah wah? looks like a wahwah, is that a pic of jerry's wah?

Once again, I actually gave dozin that content about the ColorSound wah, and I don't know for certain (I haven't found an image where you could clearly read the model off the front of the pedal) but I think was a Wah+Vol rather than a straight Wah, because from time to time during the early 70's, you hear Jerry doing spacy segments featuring radical volume swells of a sort that would seem extremely difficult to pull off with the guitar's knob. An example of this is Garcia's noodling during the soundcheck portion of The Grateful Dead Movie.

As far as the "Vox in the 60's" info on dozin's page, I don't know where it originated. On Wikipedia this would have a little "[citation needed]" note next to it. Chris? Can you shed any light?

The knowledge of the minutae of Jerry's rig is most impressive.