Grateful Dead Music Forum

So I was listening yesterday to Shining Star from JGB 1994.05.18 from San Diego (it's a fav) and I noticed two things, the significance of which did not hit me until then. 1. This show will be 19 years old tomorrow and it's a pretty good listen especially the shining star which is just an awesome exploration for like 25 minutes. 2. On my track of that song (aud) at about 6'38" into it I hear the distinct call of some sort of whammy or other digital pitch shift, there's only one real "whammy" sound but then he's playing in another key for like a minute or two. I'm thinking maybe he's half-lost in some pitch shifted setting (which might be why he didn't stick with the whammy?) I know digitech whammy's were available by 94. Does anybody know if he was toying with one? Obviously it never became part of the rig, but it'd be interesting to know if he was messing around or thinking about going that direction in the future. Or is it just some haywire setting on a delay? Decreasing the delay time?

forum/viewtopic.php?f=419&t=14065&p=127 ... al#p127355

Maybe this is what you are looking for ?

According to the Grateful Dead Gear book, he did experiment with one for the last couple of years, largely to mixed results. Haven't heard any specific examples... not sure I want to!

Chuckles wrote:Haven't heard any specific examples... not sure I want to!

6:30




1:03 he switches to the whammy, you can see it around 2:20 and 2:45

So is this where someone Photoshops a Bigsby on Rosebud?

How could we forget The Maker? Here we hear it at 3:50 and see him stomping on it beginning about 4:12.


It definitely was part of his rig through 94 and 95. It was all over 95 tour- FOTM and especially Corinna spring to mind.... starting around the 1:19:30 mark here:

Wow that is some cool stuff. You guys are on point. Definitely still in the experimental phase. Seems like he had some ideas for the device. Similar to his midi usage to my mind. Was he rocking the old red whammy 1?

shoreline 95 birdsong comes to mind

it almost became a crutch by 95 to cover up for his inability to play. I was listening to the Deer Creek gate crash show last night (no Im not a glutton for punishment , it was a IEM mix so hearing the onstage conversations was interesting) and he was using it all over the place that night. starting with Broken Arrow (which was normal) but then continued to use it on the next song, Desolation Row. When he could still play, my favorite examples were on The Maker as TS mentioned.

I've hesitated to post on this since my opinion of Jerry's whammy pedal use is pretty negative. I think Jeff hit it on the head for me, I associate it with a time where his playing was often atrocious, and he clearly was in a bad bad place. To me, more often than not, the whammy pedal detracted far more than it added. Reminds me of an audio clip I stumbled across on the tube recently, titled "Haunting Solo" with comments as to how beautiful it was (my apologies if it's someone here who posted it). To me it sounds disastrous, he seems completely incapacitated and struggling to play. Sad really. But of course many in the crowd eat it up and cheer like it's the most glorious thing they've ever heard.

He used this in 86 & 91 too. Check out 12-28-91. The Fire from 10-14-94 is a nice example of it sounding tasteful.