[gratefulredhead]

Q: What buffer is in the AO guitar?


And, the 2mm Adamas pick is a requirement for sure. I'd be curious to know what was going on inside the Twin, what cap's and mods he's using. I find that with a Jerry setup and tone setting (definitely more mids than zero!!) it really comes down to the pick technique. Pick too hard and it's a gnarly ice-pick with a very dull note that rings after it. But a light nudging of the strings gives a jazzy warmth with a sweet sparkle from the grit in the graphite of the pick. Even with a Mac I've found that I do need to roll my guitar tone back a hair to balance out the glassy top end a bit. But when it comes to the ice-pick, that largely relates to the pick attack spike or transient, and again much of that comes back to the right hand skill, takes many years to get a handle on it. And when sitting down with a guitar, it can take an hour to even get THAT tone to come from your hand and the strings. The light and accurate touch is everything. The loud, clean rig is ruthlessly unforgiving - a brutally honest presentation of exactly what your pick is doing. It all comes back to that once we've got a good rig set up.

Here's an anecdote from my buddy who hung with the Dead's catering chef on tour of '89. My friend had an all access pass and went out into the venue, some outdoor midwest amphitheater. My friend is an excellent guitarist, so he had a good mind for this experience. He was out sitting in the seats of the empty venue watching various things get sound-checked. Then the stage emptied and Jerry came out for his personal 45 minutes. My buddy was freaking out that it was just him and Jerry and then some crew running around. He said Jerry took his time warming up and getting his tone. Jerry started with his reverb off or very low. He would noodle and run scales, fiddle with volume levels, etc. For the first 15 minutes he said Jerry sounded horrible, no tone, no fluidity, pretty rough. Then Jerry found his stride, got faster, smoother, more warm, and the tone began to sound more like him. Then Jer would start playing with fx, bringing up his reverb, turning up the amp, working thru the pedal fx and adjusting them, going thru all the combinations. By 30 minutes it was really getting good and by the end of the 45 minute private Jerry concert, he said it was amazing Jerry, just awesome.

The point here is that even Jerry can't just plug in with this kind of setup and have great tone. My buddy's observation was that it was 90% warming up and picking better, and 10% rig and effects tweaking.

And we should all remember what Jerry said about how he used to warm up way back in the '60s - how he'd plug in and crank the amp and guitar and play his scales as quietly and EVENLY as he could. Once he got every note even, the same loudness, then he'd go to the next round, one click louder - once he got all the notes even at that level he'd go to the next louder step, on and on until he was shredding loud and ripping. Jerry was a MASTER of the pick dynamics, he had astronomically underrated talent with playing clean and controlling the loudness of every single pick attack - an astonishingly amazing master of this particular skill. His rig evolved along with that skill. So it's not surprising that so many of us struggle to come close to sounding like Jerry, even when all the gear is right or plenty close enough. Jerry was noted for saying that he knew he could blow his speakers simply by picking too hard. He had that much control and awareness. He never ceases to amaze me - frickin Jerry!!!

B

I always appreciate your perspective and ear Brad. Thanks for the great story. In all the times i saw them from 87 to 91, i was only ever in the pavillion, or front a couple of times. One time at Alpine in 88 i was just a few rows back on jerrys side and hearing his tone from his amp vs thru the PA back in the lawn, was huge! So punchy, sweet, clean but dirty in all the right places. It was sonic heaven.

[MattMan]

Great piece of historiography Brad. I am having to practice and essentially relearn my picking technique now that I have the Wald Maestro mod in my Twin. Waldo has really created something innovative and very Jerry that is extremely sensitive to picking intensity. With the guitar gain pot set at the sweet spot threshold (balanced holistically with my MC 2100 and two K120's 4ohm load into 8 ohm tap upward mismatch), gentle picking technique gives me clean tone, and as I pick a little bit harder and harder, clipping starts to occur to give me that classic Jerry "natural" clipping. I really had no idea how crucial and sensitive picking technique is. Doing some tone tests now for review, and also comparing sentry mod for review. Pretty frickin' awesome to play in my band with this new setup!