The Jerry Tone Story

My name is Jay Faires and I created Jerry Tone Store in 2022, after realizing just how much of my brain’s bandwidth was being occupied by thoughts of Jerry Garcia’s guitar sound. After 6 years of endless conversation with my friend Mike Wald (Waldo), participating in dead-centric musician facebook forums full of excited “jerry nerds”, and just being a nerdy kid who has always felt like a bit of a guitar alien, I found myself in a spot to create what has become my part-time business, known as Jerry Tone Store.

JTS Origins

In Feb of 2022, tiring of working a corporate job, I finally put a website together to advertise my guitar repair services under my own name, Jay Faires - two months later, in April, Waldo inquired to see if I’d be interested in selling his buffers on my website. This sparked an idea: it was difficult, as a beginner, to find all the information on how to sound like Jerry. While I enjoyed that aspect of the hunt as a nerd, I predicted there would soon be an influx of young players who maybe didn’t have the time to go as far down the rabbithole as I had gone, but who were just as curious about Jerry’s sound as I was. and with my obsessive interests, what better way to help the guitar community than to try to educate this new audience on Jerry’s tone. While there were sites like Dozin and Waldotronics that had some collection of information at that time, there wasn’t a single source that summarized the essence of what Jerry used, or a central place to purchase the gear from the builders in the community. Around the same time, the name “Jerry Tone Store” popped into my head. Game over! I purchased the domain far too late at night and posted my first TikTok video under the new account name. To my surprise, a video of me flipping switches on all the components within a Jerry rig started to go “niche viral,” eventually reaching 240,000 people. The least amount of thought I had ever put into a video, and it’s the one that finally clicked with the people, pun intended! I’ve always had a passion for sharing and making Jerry tone videos, but it was a dream come true to finally have an audience that seemed to care about it in the same way I did.

Deadhead Childhood

My earliest memory is listening to Victim or the Crime, probably age 3-4, with my dad (who was a taper in the early 1980s). I remember feeling this visceral fear from the tones and music - but at the same time, I was hooked. I already knew I loved music, but to experience such a strange emotion while listening to a song was something etched into my mind forever. From then, it’s been a perpetual chase to figure out the science behind the sound of Jerry’s guitar.

Musical Background

I began playing guitar at age 7, primarily learning bluegrass in the mountains of Tennessee. I was fortunate to have many great teachers along the way, who indulged my clear interest in electric guitar, although bluegrass was the only thing anyone in our area played. I learned acoustic guitar wishing it was an electric most of the time…I had an early love for the guitar tone of folks like Angus and Malcolm Young, and in 2010 I began to research the Grateful Dead catalog on my own for the first time. One re-listen of “Althea” from ‘Without a Net,’ and my childhood memories flashed back into my head - Victim or the crime and that strong emotion - but this time, at age 13 rather than 3, I was armed with the vocabulary to ask myself something like, “what makes jerry’s clean tone so emotionally transparent?” in other words, I was just beginning on my journey of discovering what is it about the sound of jerry’s guitar, not just his note selection, that simply lights some folks’ hearts on fire, especially mine.

That same year, still 13 years old, I played my first electric guitar shows through a Marshall MG50, a boss blues driver pedal, and a slash signature wah. I tried. Not the best tone. Loved the guitar, but knew there would be a lot to learn about amplifiers. After joining a wedding band in college in North Carolina (2016-2019) and later Blue Light Bandits (2019-2024), I was able to learn what amplifiers I liked, and what amplifiers I didn’t like, going so far as to make a spreadsheet recording which amps I used at each show, rating the tone 1-10, and printing out visualizations at end of year (only kept up with that for 2 years, but my ears earned a lot from being extra).

Tone Chasing

This routine gigging, experimenting, buy and sell and repeat, started the continual hunt for “jerry gear” that led to my eventual hoarding of JBL speakers. With around 600 shows under my belt as of writing this, I learned the only thing that ever took me out of the moment while performing was the occasional gear issue. It would ruin a show for me to have to suddenly worry about signal flow in the middle of trying to play music. I have a suspicion that one has to switch the side of their brain they’re using to go into “diagnostic mode” out of “music mode.” And as much as I enjoyed being in “tech mode” at home, I didn’t want to bring that mindset to the stage, so I began obsessing over how to roadproof my rig.

As a result of this obsession with making my gear as rugged and built-to-last as possible, I found the methods Dan Healy used on Jerry Garcia’s guitars, coincidentally, to be a great way to wire my own guitars.

Getting Into Tech

I have now been modding my own guitars for over 10 years. I eventually developed the ability to do things properly, after many frustrated nights staying up late trying to diagnose simple things. Enough sleepless nights banging your head against the wall only to realize you forgot to insulate a solder joint…that sort of lesson has a way of teaching you what not to do pretty quickly, especially when you have to perform with those instruments!

Electronics, for me, have been a unique and unconventional learning process, but through my part time job at Amplified Nation, working on my own instruments, upgrading my tools at home, and learning what I can on the academic side, my solder skills reached a professional level the last 5 or so years (sorry to my friends back in college whose pickup swaps and pedalboard projects I messed up). I credit Waldo for teaching me nearly everything I know about guitar circuitry, but I also owe a debt to the greater community of guitar and nerds for showing me how things are done. This is a practice that, if not properly preserved and passed on to the younger generations, could easily have been lost in history. Grateful for the work these passionate deadheads have done to preserve the history of the tech behind the Grateful Dead. Trying to do my best to follow in their footsteps.

Current Focus

After shifting focus from TikTok to Instagram in 2023, I found myself able to message with folks who, to my great surprise, wanted to send me their guitars to convert into jerry-spec guitars. This started with local customers only, but has expanded to customers around the country. And years later, I’m finally, slowly but surely, working on standardizing parts of the process. For now it is email only, but you can get some questions answered about me if you didn’t get the answer here over at the FAQ! Learning to manage all aspects of a business has been a wonderful journey for me (and great use of my entrepreneurship major), but it is a lot to manage along with performing and all that comes along with that - I really just enjoy soldering and playing music the most, so if anyone wants to help with any other aspects of admin, send me an email :)

After the success of guitar modding aspect of Jerry Tone Store the last year, I had to musically re-discover what I love - I’m currently performing lots of bluegrass, old time, funky swampy tunes with a four piece band called Mechanical Rat, and lots of Grateful Dead/JGB music with friends in numerous configurations. I am fortunate to be able to play and sing music, build amplifiers, and work on guitars every day. It is truly a blessing and I’m grateful you’re following along on the journey!

2025 Goals:

In 2025, JTS aims to continue:

  • modding customer guitars (mostly strats & silver skys, but I do take on the occasional side project!)

  • building loaded pickguards

  • beginning to build and sell pre-loaded jerry pedalboards

  • performing with the dead community/duo shows focused on that music

  • rig rundown videos

  • sharing information via all types of content on jerry garcia tone, playing, and the science behind it

  • curious exploration into what jerry’s tone was, and what it could have been

In 2025, I, Jay, will be: