Grateful Dead Music Forum

From Showcase Live in Foxboro MA, 4-21-12. RIP Levon ...

A fitting and heartfelt tribute. Somewhere Levon's smiling!

Well done!

Thanks man ... my voice was fairly well shot by the end of the night. Levon was probably laughing as we were trying to work out the harmonies and arrangement for Up on Cripple Creek in all of five minutes during soundcheck. We played it during the first set ... it wasn't too much of a trainwreck. I'll post it if I'm feeling brave ...

Sounds good!!! We opened our show with me singing Ophelia. It's the first non-Dead tune we've done in YEARS.

Me and another of my bandmates are in another band and we do it there too. But never with these guys. But it went good!

sounds good Vic, post Cripple Creek too please

strummin I used to have a bus named Ophelia

Ask and you shall receive ...

Used the bridge pickup a a humbucker on this one.

Disclaimer ... we didn't even play it through at soundcheck. Video camera hitched for a second or two mid-song, too.

Sounds good! So much better than my encore suggestion Cripple Creek as well...it always seems like that tune would be so easy, but it's really not so...you guys captured the feel real nice...Peace, Joe

WOW! Vic that is really great, you guys are really nailing it. I dig the voice change, it actually sounds a little more like Jerry's smoke ridden vocal chords. Great job! I can't wait until we can start recording from our board like you guys are, we just started using the new presonus mixer.

just realized these are from Showcase Live...great venue!!

edit to add: love this tune, and you all played it perfectly to my ears. thanks for posting it!

p.s. your guitar tone is yummy

is that an SG or a custom?/ edit to add: never mind, I see now it's not an SG.. tell me what you've got if you have a few extra mins!

Thanks for the kind words. That's my trusty lefty Tiger guitar ... DiMarzio Super IIs, Waldo buffer ...

We will be back there on Sat. June 16th to do a fundraiser for cancer research into the rare form of disease that took the life of Matty, our late keyboard player. He passed in 2007. All proceeds and tickets sales benefit the Dana Farber Cancer Center here in Boston.

playingdead wrote:Thanks for the kind words. That's my trusty lefty Tiger guitar ... DiMarzio Super IIs, Waldo buffer ...

have a good direction in which to point me in regards to Waldo buffer? Dimarzio super IIs are pickups with distortion from what I read, I'm guessing Waldo buffer is an alteration of the guitar as well. What kind of amp(s) do you run this guitar into, and do you list a bunch of analog pedals off or one system like a Boss pedalboard, and have you gotten into Moog's at all? I've heard they're like driving a really smooth loaded car

easytoslip wrote:

playingdead wrote:Thanks for the kind words. That's my trusty lefty Tiger guitar ... DiMarzio Super IIs, Waldo buffer ...

have a good direction in which to point me in regards to Waldo buffer? Dimarzio super IIs are pickups with distortion from what I read, I'm guessing Waldo buffer is an alteration of the guitar as well. What kind of amp(s) do you run this guitar into, and do you list a bunch of analog pedals off or one system like a Boss pedalboard, and have you gotten into Moog's at all? I've heard they're like driving a really smooth loaded car

I don't actually know why they are call Super Distortion. The Super2's are the cleanest pickups I've heard!

Check this out: forum/viewtopic.php?f=419&t=9125

Most of us are using analog pedals like Jerry. The basics are Envelope filter>octave divider> distortion>delay>Twin Reverb amp or Delux Reverb or any good clean sounding amp. Some use Messa Boggie too. Some of us use just the pre amp section of a Twin utilizing a pre amp tap and run it to a McIntosh or other brand power amp. Some of us use a SMS Classic Tube Preamp (boutique twin reverb preamp that is a one space rack mount unit and run it to a power amp.

There is a huge amount of info here: forum/viewtopic.php?f=319&t=271

easytoslip wrote:have a good direction in which to point me in regards to Waldo buffer? Dimarzio super IIs are pickups with distortion from what I read, I'm guessing Waldo buffer is an alteration of the guitar as well. What kind of amp(s) do you run this guitar into, and do you list a bunch of analog pedals off or one system like a Boss pedalboard, and have you gotten into Moog's at all? I've heard they're like driving a really smooth loaded car

Waldo's buffer is just a unity gain device that changes the impedance of the guitar's signal. It doesn't do anything to change the tone, other than mitigate any high frequency loss due to the length of the cable runs, which people describe as a more "high fidelity" sound to the guitar.

The Super II pickups are the second generation of DiMarzio's Super Distortion pickups; they have more treble and less bass than the originals (also known as Dual Sounds, which Garcia used when the Tiger first came out (79-81). However, there is nothing distorted about the sound of the DiMarzios, they just have a hot output which makes it easier to make your amp distort if you want them to. The guitar will sound perfectly clean into a clean amp.

With Playing Dead, I am using the Fractal Audio AxeFX Ultra, a two space digital modeling device. I have designed a Garcia preset that emulates a Fender Twin Reverb preamp, solid state power amp, tube reverb, a 2X12 speaker cabinet loaded with JBL E-120 speakers (sampled off my own Hard Truckers cabinet), and all the effects I used to use analog -- Q-tron, octave, phaser, overdrive, wah, delay. I plug the guitar into the AxeFX Ultra, and the AxeFX Ultra gets plugged straight into the soundboard. I monitor the guitar onstage with a pair of QSC K-12 powered monitors.

I used to run a big analog rig, but I find this to be way more consistent, easier to hear onstage and it sounds good enough to my ears. Haven't changed a thing on it or bought a new piece of gear for several years now.

Well, I did buy the AxeFX II ... but I haven't played with it yet.

cool, thanks