[playingdead]

For the hell of it, I tried out the Bolt tone last night on Peggy-o. Basically, I hate it. LOL

However, it cuts through like a mad bastard onstage, so it's pretty easy to see why it appealed to Garcia over the in-ears.

There's a little tinge of fuzz to the peaks, I think we had a cable or snake problem last night. The guitar sound was very clean.

Two-minute sample: http://playingdead.net/peggy.mp3

Or, all of it: http://playingdead.net/peggyo.mp3

[Capt Rosebuddy]

Having seen the all of my shows in the '90 and the bulk of them in that '94-'95 time slot, I'll always have a little bit of a soft spot for that Bolt tone. And once again my friend you nailed it. Nice going.

[Stone]

Was this with the Axe Fx rig ?

[playingdead]

Yes, it's the AxeFX Ultra direct to FOH ... it's essentially the identical preset I use all the time, minus the cabinet block (with the E-120 impulse response files). Just a little extra low midrange in there so it's not quite as spindly sounding. And I ran the guitar in the in-between position with the neck and middle pickups.

[caspersvapors]

sounds great imo, then again ive always thought that tone really fit in well with peggy-o.

http://www.archive.org/details/gd93-09- ... sbeok.shnf

[nabco]

For the hell of it, I tried out the Bolt tone last night on Peggy-o. Basically, I hate it. LOL

DO NOT HATE IT JUST YET, GIVE IT TIME AND LISTEN TO THE RECORDING AGAIN IN LIKE A MONTH & THEN DECIDE IF YOU REALLY HATE IT.

I Like it a whole lot!!! I think it fits your style better than your normal tone (which is also incredible)!!!

The finger picking and percussive aspect of the tonal response is quite pleasing to the auditory pallette!!! (TOO MUCH WINE TONITE,I LIVE IN CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY AND THE THIS YEAR THE WINE IS BEING SHARED)
DO NOT GIVE UP ON IT TOO SOON, IT SOUNDS REALLY GOOD AND WILL BE GREAT IF YOU COULD THROW THAT TONE IN THERE FOR SOME SELECT TUNES, I THINK THE AUDIENCE MIGHT LIKE THE CONTRAST.

GREAT JOB!!! THE WHOLE BAND SOUNDS GOOD TOO.
THANKS FOR SHARING

[playingdead]

Well, "hate" is a strong word. I think the only tunes it works on, if it works at all, is Peggy-o, Lazy River Road, maybe another slow ballad or two. I guess it depends on your frame of reference, most of the 80 or so shows I saw were 78-88, so the Tiger is really my signature Garcia tone -- and that's such a fat, crisp, sparkly sound. But it's interesting to get a better idea of how he got to where he wound up and why.

[Stone]

Yeah im going to have to find a place or someone who has a AxeFx. The other night I had good success running a pod pro-xt straight to the board. I had abandoned that thing a few years ago. While i wont be going direct with that rig it proved that it can work. Pretty cool stuff.

Im not really much of a Bolt tone fan either , that said I think I like your Bolt tone a lil better..lol Although im glad it gave me a reason to bust out some of my later sbds, (some real clean sbds in the late 90's that i had forgot about.

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

Vic,

wow, very cool. You really did nail that "Bolt" tone from that era. It's very impressive how closely you nailed the worst tone Jerry ever had.

I have to agree with you. While "hate" is a strong word, I must admit that this tone Jerry tried was truly the most disappointing memory I have of the Grateful Dead. To me, Jerry's classic tone (Tiger, Twin, Mac, JBL's) was soul food, manna from heaven, ear candy. I really did experience nearly every note that dripped and squirted from Jerry's guitar rig as pure joy. When he went for that dry, crispy, sterile, raspy, cold, direct tone, my heart literally sunk and I truly couldn't enjoy the music as I had before. I wish I could have risen above it, but the tone was so god awful to my tastes that I just was heartbroken and saddened. I was blown away that the guy could suddenly go from the greatest electric guitar tone ever to the hands-down worst guitar tone I'd ever heard. The contrast was as stark is it could get. I couldn't even hear the great playing thru that horrendous sound.

Opinionated to the max,

Brad

[myoung6923]

I have to think that that tone sounded different in his in-ear-monitors than it it did FOH. It's just hard to imagine Jerry liking that tone since it's such a departure from his norm. Also - when he played Bolt with JGB he stuck with the Mac & JBL rig - further evidence that he wasn't "sold" on that tone.

I think that maybe Jerry could dial in what sounded ok in his ears and maybe didn't know how brittle it sounded FOH.

Vic - what did you do to make a patch that sounded like that?

[playingdead]

Turned the cabinet-E-120 simulation off, added just a little more low mids.

Basically what it would sound like with a Trio straight to the board, no speaker simulator, which is how I believe he wound up at that tone at the end.

And his JGB tone sounded normal because he went through his cabinet. That's the true A-B sign right there ... he used the same preamp, same effects, same guitar, same pickups ... minus the speakers for the Dead and through the cabinet for JGB. New "acoustic" tone with the Dead, old-school Garcia with JGB.

From a lot of listening to my own band multitrack over headphones, and playing with it as I tweaked the preset, a "true" Garcia tone doesn't cut through nearly as well over the headphones, even if you are cranking your level compared to the rest of the bands. But this tone stands out incredibly well. And that's why he used it, I think.

If you go back to archive.org and listen to the rehearsals for Blues for Allah, which were done in Weir's home studio, listen to how bright and trebly the guitars are on those recordings. Those rehearsals were done over headphones.

[JonnyBoy]

Don't try and fool us Vic, I heard from some horses mouth's that you used Piezo's!!!!!

Although similar, your tone is a little ore palatable. I am still curious as to why he would use that tone, then knowingly use his JBL's in different situations, Maybe it was what he was advised to do with the dead, it still makes no sense to me. I truly believe that tone would have been sort lived if he lied longer. Did the switch to another sound reinforcement system during this birth of bad tone?

[myoung6923]

I think that the idea was to move ALL of the speakers off stage. No monitors & no speakers at all.

[Stone]

Turned the cabinet-E-120 simulation off, added just a little more low mids.

Basically what it would sound like with a Trio straight to the board, no speaker simulator, which is how I believe he wound up at that tone at the end.

And his JGB tone sounded normal because he went through his cabinet. That's the true A-B sign right there ... he used the same preamp, same effects, same guitar, same pickups ... minus the speakers for the Dead and through the cabinet for JGB. New "acoustic" tone with the Dead, old-school Garcia with JGB.

From a lot of listening to my own band multitrack over headphones, and playing with it as I tweaked the preset, a "true" Garcia tone doesn't cut through nearly as well over the headphones, even if you are cranking your level compared to the rest of the bands. But this tone stands out incredibly well. And that's why he used it, I think.

If you go back to archive.org and listen to the rehearsals for Blues for Allah, which were done in Weir's home studio, listen to how bright and trebly the guitars are on those recordings. Those rehearsals were done over headphones.

Do you guys multi track every show ? If so what kinda PA system/mixer are you using and how are you getting your split?

[playingdead]

Yes, the "bad tone" coincided with removing speakers and wedges from the stage, and the use of cabinet simulators (or not, apparently, in Jerry's case). The JGB didn't use the in-ear system, hence he continued with the 3X12 cabinet.

We multitrack all the shows on my Presonus StudioLive 16-channel Firewire board. We usually unplug the house mains and monitors from the house board, and plug them into ours. If we can't do that, we have an insert snake we can use. But since the StudioLive will allow you to save "scenes" from the gigs, we have our monitor setups and basic EQ, compression and levels dialed in for each venue, so we can get set up and running in a hurry if we need to.

Since we have two drummers, we often will submix the toms for both kits on the house board and send that to two channels (L&R) on the StudioLive. We have a FOH guy who mixes for us every night which helps a lot with consistency. We get really good recordings of every show now. It's recorded on a MacBook Pro using Presonus' Capture program, and then mixed later in Logic Pro.

http://playingdead.net/042410johnnyds/set1/11deal.mp3

Just pulling board tapes night to night is really hit or miss, someone's always too loud or not loud enough, or it's all vocals and kick drums, you just never know.There's nothing worse than playing really well and listening back later and finding out the tape is terrible. And audience tapes can be good, but in a bar setting, invariably there's people in the back by the mics talking the whole time.