Jerry Tone Components

  • Fender Twin Reverb Preamp

    The sound of a Fender Twin Reverb is, unmistakably, Jerry’s sound. Even with the modifications that were done to Jerry’s amps throughout the years, the sound of a Twin Reverb is probably as close as you can get to an “off-the-shelf” Jerry tone. From here, you can learn about modding it to get closer to “the” sound.

    There are several rackmountable options for a Fender Twin style preamp circuit. Solutions like this are often preferred over a Twin because they are lightweight, and don’t require any modification to use with a power amp. The Fender Twin has to be modified with a preamp output in order to separate the preamp from the power amp section. Despite its heavy weight, there is a magic “feel” factor that only a Twin Reverb can provide. The general consensus for Jerry’s EQ settings is Treble = 10, Middle = 5.5, and Bass = off. The bright switch should be in the down position. On Waldo-modified Twin preamp circuits, he uses the “down” position for his mods, rather than adding another switch.

  • McIntosh Power Amplifier

    Jerry’s MC2300, dubbed “Budman” due to the Budweiser-affiliated mascot sticker placed on the front, is the longest continuously used piece of gear in Grateful Dead history. This amp sees its first shows in 1973, eventually getting christened with the sticker in 1974, a unique & fun way of identifying Jerry’s specific MC2300 out of the many that powered the Wall of Sound. It is one of the only components from the wall to continue traveling with Jerry, until 1993, when it was replaced with a cab simulation system. Many refer to this transition circa 1993 as the end of a golden era for Jerry’s guitar tone. For most, a 300 watt amp, weighing north of 120 lbs is not practical in any sense. There are many lower wattage McIntosh models that will accomplish the same task. If you need a place to start, MC-50 and MC-100 are two very popular lower-wattage models to look for.

  • JBL Speaker(s)

    Whether it’s a D120, a D120F, a K120, or an E120, a vintage JBL speaker is a crucial part of achieving Jerry tone. These speakers are no longer manufactured, like much of this equipment we search for in this realm. If you are lucky enough to find one (they’re out there!), you will understand the magic for yourself. These speakers are voiced the best when pushed to louder volumes, so it doesn’t take more than 1 or 2 to get an incredible Jerry tone (and shatter your windows). If you are looking for more information on the types of JBL speakers and their differences, check out this guide to vintage JBLs.

    A general, quick reference guide to this: D120s are the lowest wattage speakers, K120s can handle more power, and E120s can handle the most power (and have ceramic magnets, rather than alnico like the other models). The tones are similar, but each speaker has its own specific characteristics and response. You may find you prefer a certain kind over another based on how loud you play.

  • Buffer & Onboard Effects Loop (OBEL)

    This one is a complicated one - first, an onboard effects loop - created by Jerry & Dan Healy, and first used on the Travis Bean guitars (and later on all of Jerry’s guitars), is a brilliant design that sends the full, unaltered, pre-volume signal from your guitar to your pedals. This then returns the signal to your guitar, and it passes through the guitar volume and, finally, is sent to the amplifier. This effects loop, when combined with an impedance-lowering buffer circuit powered by a 9V battery, allowed Jerry to use his guitar volume knob as a master volume control, and mix himself. All tones sounded the same at all volume levels, which was a necessity for a band as dynamic as the Grateful Dead. OBEL circuits can be run without a buffer, but you will lose high-end frequencies as you roll back your volume. You also risk the dreaded “squeal” - if you know, you know - running a high-gain overdrive or distortion pedal on a passive buffer circuit. This is why buffers are such an integral part of the sound, along with the OBEL circuit. For any of your buffer needs, please visit the store.

  • Pedals & Pickups

    I’ve never particularly felt that Jerry’s tone came from his pedals, but there are a couple essential sounds in his arsenal. Mu-Tron envelope filter, an overdrive, and a distortion. Between these three effects, you can get just about any Jerry tone from any era. Yes, phaser on Candyman, and yes, octave pedals and delays for space, but I think the magic lies in the hands, guitar, preamp, and power amplifier primarily. A good clean tone, at the volume you prefer, is what we’re after! If that sounds good, your pedal choice doesn’t matter!

    Pickups should be DiMarzio Dual Sounds, also known as Super Distortions, or DiMarzio Super 2s for bridge and middle, and a DiMarzio SDS-1 in the neck (for Tiger/Wolf configurations). On Rosebud, all 3 pickups were Dual Sounds. Of course, depending on the era you are trying to emulate, a regular stratocaster can go a long way. In the right hands, any guitar can be a “Jerry guitar,” especially since Jerry experimented with so many guitars over the years. For a more detailed history of his guitars, visit waldotronics.com

  • The Head, Hand(s), Heart, and Soul

    The gear doesn’t matter if you aren’t playing through it with feeling. Regular practice will get you farther than any specific piece of gear ever could. Your right hand’s touch, velocity, sensitivity, accuracy, and your left hand’s note selection, response, etc, ALL have the biggest impact on what the guitar sounds like. The energy coming out of the amplifier is a direct result of your input, which starts in your brain and shoots out to your fingers. I’d rather listen to someone with bad tone and good touch than the other way around, because good touch implies getting a good tone out of every setup. There’s no such thing as bad tone if you have good touch :)

A Glimpse Into The Sound of Jerry Garcia

If not for the pioneers, we wouldn’t be here.

The Grateful Dead had a very special team behind them. This team of brilliant minds is directly responsible for helping Jerry Garcia find the sound he was searching for. It is important I acknowledge their contributions to not only the band and their community, but also live music altogether. These minds were, and still are, innovative beyond their years.

The Pioneers: Owsley Stanley, Dan Healy - who knows what the Grateful Dead would have sounded like without these minds driving that train. Additionally, Rick Turner, Ron Wickersham, Janet Furman Bowman, Doug Irwin, and the entire Alembic crew all are essential players in the “search for the sound,” particularly in the early days of the Grateful Dead.

The Next Generation: Mike Wald (Waldo/waldotronics). Without his desire to seek out the answers to these technological mysteries, we wouldn’t have even a fraction of the knowledge he has so graciously shared with us. Brad Sarno, Anthony Coscia, Brian White, Leo Elliott, and so many other talented folks, including some no longer with us (Jason Ferguson, we miss you dearly!) have built and are building wonderful tools for our community, and are all helping carry the torch in their own ways. I am especially grateful for their time and energy they have poured into this shared obsession!

That’s where we come in - sharing the things we’ve learned that have been handed down to us from the pioneers who came before us. Come learn with me!

 This is a deep rabbit hole. There are many things not covered in this short list, but it is a starting point and a roadmap of where to look if you feel overwhelmed with where to begin. One thing to note is that Jerry played very loud. Almost none of us have the freedom to play as loud as he did, so we often have to experiment with achieving his tone at lower volumes. Lots of cool options out there to accomplish this, but at the same time, there’s nothing quite like the full setup. That is an introduction to the “what,” but let’s also consider the “why.”

Why do we chase Jerry’s guitar tone?

 

You ever smell something that instantly takes you to that place or person you smelled? All the memories that flood in at that moment? That is what started happening to me whenever I heard Jerry after his death, except all the smells and tones flooded back in. That is what made me search for it; it was in my head, but not available to me by any other means. Sure, I had to learn how to play like him and master his technique and approach (still working on that part), but that wasn’t the smell that flooded back in - that was only what pulled me in. His equipment and the work performed to it was otherworldly compared to the modern stuff available. And, like the Kimocks, or anyone else who tried the same stuff, stock couldn’t do it either. I set off on my mission. And literally thousands of empirical tests and modifying later, I think that smell has now spread to soo many that i can hear it again, not from just Jerry, but many i have helped along my journey.

— Mike Wald (@waldotronics)

“For reasons that I can only say that I’m glad for, I found Grateful Dead music and the music found me. And for me, like many, this music became the soundtrack for my life. It has been with me for every up and every down that life has thrown at me for as long as I can remember. Jerry’s tone/style was always the primary focal point in that vast sea of music for me. Along the way, I continued to focus more and more on guitar playing and as an adult, finally had the jack to spend on some good gear. While I’ll never have the full blown mastery that Jerry had, there are moments in my playing that I can find spots of that “thing”, that “sound”. And while a lot has to do with what I’m doing, it certainly helps to have the gear to support the effort. And whether I’m by myself or jamming with friends, it’s a fantastic way to celebrate a sound that has been a part of me for so long.”
— Randy Wilder
“As a Trumpeter I’ve always been intrigued by tone and I modeled my tone after famous trumpeters such as Bernard Adelstein, Miles Davis, and Freddie Hubbard. As a guitarist, I have looked to various models including Zappa, Metheny, Howe, and BB King. Garcia’s tone encapsulates all of those for me from the clean precision to the warm overdrive, to the bumble bee grit. How did he get those tones? Was it the guitar? Was it the amp? Was it the effects? Before I found rukind and Waldo I did what probably most folks do which is to look at pictures of Jerry’s rig and effects. That led me to purchasing a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Twin with EVs and a boss Heavy Metal 2 pedal and a boss Envelope Filter in the early 80’s. Not too far away at all and helped me learn how to play Jerry electric guitar. After I met Waldo online I kept sharing files and we had Lively discussions and I would try different things and he would make suggestions and I would say sounds good right? He’d say not bad but now try this. And he’d give me a suggestion to swap out the speakers for JBLs. Etc. Then I found Anthony Coscia and made the upgrade to the hippie sandwich guitar. Then I found Brad Sarno and Dan Laurie and moved to the rack Twin clones which Waldo modded. All the upgrades and mods and axe along the way, and all the practicing, and private and in vivo lessons with amazing musicians and continuous learning of how to play Jerry tone, and I find myself on stage often playing completely out-of-body psychedelic that this Jerry tone is coming from my rig and my hands. This is so much fun!”
— Matthew Cole
“I had been listening to the Dead for years through my teens but mostly the popular vinyl. When I got to college, a friend of mine sat me down and played Live Dead for me. All four sides in a row, but he had them on tape so it was continuous. The sound of the band took me to new places in my mind, but when I heard Garcia gradually build the Dark Star motif, then rip into it, it changed everything for me. His bell tone and his pace drew me in. The sonic journey took me away. Forty years later it still feels like a prayer to me, one I try to recite on my own, in my own way, whenever I can.”
— Evan Molho
“Around 2005ish, I wanted to build my own Jerry guitar. Never got there due to not knowing how to build a guitar, lacking the materials, and having very little money. But I got into the Jerry style and only scratched the surface. I moved on from the dead for quite a while after that though.. became more involved in the jazz world and then the indie music world and tried do my own thing. But the dead were always there as kind of my number one band in my mind.

When Long Strange Trip was released, I watched it as a band doc but it stuck with me and got me really back into gorging the dead’s music. I’ve been going full steam ahead ever since.

To me, the tone of Jerry’s guitar is really unmatched, especially early Wolf and Gator. What got me the most as a guitar player was that very conversational playing style Jerry had. I think it says so much about him that we aren’t exposed to through his singing, because he didn’t write the lyrics. That conversational playing just speaks volumes. And even the act of playing the guitar … it’s such a physical thing and knowing what the fuck you’re doing even slightly takes you to just a different place. There’s nothing like it in my life. It’s really been a life saver and I must say the Dead do that as well. They tick a lot of boxes for me - emotional, intellectual, and so on.”
— Cooper Reed
“Dead show in Atlanta (92 ish). I felt absolutely alone in the stadium. And for the first time in a while, I felt some peace.
I wound up going to a closed section of seats looking at stage left. There was a quiet calm in me in the middle of the set. I was tied in to everyone and everything on stage. The words to songs were familiar, and I didn’t know the tune. For a little while, they raised me back into life. And the seat security left me alone.”
— Michael Haar
“Every time I pick up the guitar - whether it is latin jazz, country, GD music - my first thought is WWJ(erry)D? From the first note at winterland in 1971, to today, the same thing. The tone, the phrasing. The standard has been set.”
— Randy Leach
“I just want to hear what Merl heard when I play Saunders-Garcia music in Hooteroll”
— Mike Lawson

I chase it for respect and to honor. I cannot replicate, not this lifetime and many more. So much love to those who can. Please continue the mastery.

— Tony Abrams

“I was blown away at an early and impressionable age by the purity of his guitar playing, the clear intention, emotion and the way it soared, leading and following the hurricane made by the rest of the band - no matter what tone or era or equipment. I started my journey in late ‘83 - early ‘84 … I couldn’t comprehend how much ground they had covered … I knew then what I still know now … there isn’t enough time to really understand it all, but that’s not gonna stop me from trying!”
— Jeremy Payne
“Jerry’s notes hit me like an arrow straight to the heart. He gave me the feeling that the notes were always there, but he was the only one with the code to find them and transmit them to us...it was as if he just plucked them out of the air as they flittered by, like catching butterflies. The notes were pure, angelic, golden. Thick and full of truth. I think Waldo said it best when he compared his tone to a scent - that’s how impossible it is to put into words. So I guess Jerry’s tone smells like the pure truth.”
— Jonathan Spitz

This quotation defines Jerry's sound/tone for me ...

"I got part of that from Miles, especially the silences. The holes." - Jerry Garcia ... it follows, imho my favorite quote ever, the Debussy quote: "Music is the space between the notes."

Relating that to tone, I was captivated by the way Jerry filled his space of the greater "hole" with a bunch of pristine, clear, rich "holes" of himself. The more I get the structure and rules the more I appreciate each one of those holes

As to gear ... whatever it takes to hear those silences!!

— Marcus Keyser

“Jerry’s tones and techniques are hard to nail down for me. Whenever i think i’m “there”, I’m not really there and the feeling doesn’t last. When I try, it recedes and beckons, laughing at my clumsy attempts at facsimile.

then, frantically, I try making adjustments of all sorts in pure futility.

But when I give up and stop trying,

when I stop caring about how I sound and what I’m doing technically,

when I stop thinking that I can control the outcome and make it beautiful,

then -

I’m closer than ever, connected, in the flow, music music music. And those are the moments that keep me coming back, making the same mistakes and discoveries over and over.”
— David Fuller
“It hits a spot - the only way I can explain it is the frequency is therapeutic, healing, & soothing.”
— Anonymous

Straight From The Source:

I was very shocked when Jerry told me the bass was on zero. I called him on it. He said, “That knob, I turn all the way off because [leaving] it [on] takes away clarity and it sounds woofy. It's the wrong kind of low end." Then, I asked, “Might you use just a little bass, just slightly cracked so you can just hear a little, and the pot isn't electronically closed? And he said, “That’s what you want, the pot electronically shut off. No bass, man!”

Those were his exact words. Then we went to the next knob, the mid, and he said [to set it at] 5 and 1/2 and never above 7, for sure, because he made a sour face when I asked about the possibility of sometimes turning the knob up to 7. I think he might of turned the mid up a little for pedal steel.

The next knob was treble, and he said that is always all the way up. [When asked about] the volume - he rolled his eyes way up and came up with “betweeeen 3 and 1/2 and 4.”

I asked him about the possibility of [volume at] 5 and 1/2, and he loudly shook his head and said “NO, YOU’RE CLIPPING YOUR MAC AT 5 AND 1/2!”

— David Fontaine, on his encounter with Jerry Garcia in the 1980s

“The one thing that’s missing - in all the tapes and all the recordings - is, there were moments, in GD history, I’d be at shows, and I’d be standing beside (by the way) the world’s most fantastic lighting director that ever walked the face of this earth, Candace Brightman. She’s, to take a little sidetrack for a sec, I want everyone to look her up - she’s going through losing her vision, and that’s, for someone like her, that’s like - worse than me losing my hearing, which I’m [losing], but that’s another story. She was the “me” of lights - and that’s one of the things that was miraculous about [the Grateful Dead.] We both were those people. We ran the Grateful Dead, as much as the Grateful Dead ran us - I mean, it was a two way street. I’ve been at shows, and somewhere in the middle of the second set, I’d look over at Candace - there would be times during the music where you could hear a pin drop. Now I know that’s like asking what the sound of one hand clapping is, but it’s true, and anybody that was there and witnessed it will have testified that I’m speaking truth. There was a time, during the music, you could hear a pin drop. And I say that by means of meaning the attention of the audience was so unified - so “one” - all of us - that there was silence in between sound. There was UTTER silence between sound. That is like a nirvana in a funny way. A euphoria. And there would be times like that - and I would look over at Candace - and that’s another thing - we didn’t have to be prompted to look at each other, we would sense something was on our skin, and we would look over at each other and she would look at me and say, “are you seeing what I’m seeing?” And I’d go, “yeah, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” And she’d go, “yeah!” And the whole place - time stood still. It was just outrageous, many of times that happens. And that was the experience that was at the end of the cultivation of all this stuff. And that began happening, on a whole audience-wide level, by the 80s. And before that, there were random moments of stuff, and lots of individuals being stoned on LSD, and lots of psychedelic experiences and stuff, but this one - transcended drugs, it transcended all the facets of social intercourse. It was something that had never happened before, and it was something that I’ve never seen happen anywhere else.”

- Dan Healy, excerpt from "Jake Feinberg Show," March 2019

“[Jerry] felt that [Owsley’s acid test concept] was distracting from [Jerry’s] concept of the music. So, what he did is he walked away from the pre-arranged equipment and system that had been set up. He just went to a music store and bought a guitar, and bought an amp, and said “I’m gonna start playing this way from now on” and that’s when there was really nobody there - Owsley, I guess, took a little sabbatical from it. It really doesn’t matter what went on, but nevertheless, I sort of was cast upon that scene, thanks to my pal John Cipollina."

- Dan Healy, on how he got into the role of the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead. Excerpt from "Jake Feinberg Show," March 2019