[JamminJommy]

The regular old mid, neck, or bridge position super II, tapped, through a squeaky clean pre-amp direct to the PA (or something of that effect) is that tone. Period.

The band was trying to minimize the on stage sound to both save the hearing of the members of the band as well as improve the overall product, making everything easier to hear. Jer's tone was an unfortunate side effect. Keep in mind; Bobby had been playing through full range stuff for years and most of what we heard of Phil was DI anyway, so their sounds didn't appear to change all that much.

But I'm with Brad on this one... why? Only Jerry knows why he "settled" for that sound in those last few years. It's really not a pleasure to play with and only works on a few things (if that).

But all this said, if you WANT that sound, the means of achieving it have been stated.

Peace,

Jommy

[eric]

Come back to the light, don't stray into the darkness my brothers. That era of Jerry's crispy direct '93+ tone was his most unforgivable sin. The death of his legendary, beautiful, sacred, and holy Mac/JBL tone being replaced by that direct-tone abomination was a tragedy of such great proportion that it was only to be bested by his actual death.





B

.....now that's thats deep! don't hold back...tell him how you really feel!!!

[The Stag]

[quote="SarnoMusicSolutions"]Come back to the light, don't stray into the darkness my brothers. That era of Jerry's crispy direct '93+ tone was his most unforgivable sin. The death of his legendary, beautiful, sacred, and holy Mac/JBL tone being replaced by that direct-tone abomination was a tragedy of such great proportion that it was only to be bested by his actual death.

\

if you dont like it fine. but if anyone else is like you and hates the "sinn" tone and has dvds or cds of this sound send them to me id be glad to take them off you hands late 90s and early 80s are the best for me its unbeatable. also at jammin jonny do you honestly think Jerry Garcia the man himself would settle on a sound he wasent happy wth? really? after all the modds and money and time spent on his guitar sound he would just settle i dont think so.

[The Stag]

also i have tried my tiger guitar through a peavey p a head through 2 18s and it sounds pretty close hanks for the help my guitar im still waiting for will have a peizo in the bridge but it will have a separate conrol so i can have crisp 82 or sweet 94 95 with the fick of a switch. will a piezo sound good through jbll e120s? thanks again Dan Jr

[deadagainband76]

I sure would love to see Jerry and hear that horrible tone just one more time.

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

if you dont like it fine. but if anyone else is like you and hates the "sinn" tone and has dvds or cds of this sound send them to me id be glad to take them off you hands late 90s and early 80s are the best for me its unbeatable. also at jammin jonny do you honestly think Jerry Garcia the man himself would settle on a sound he wasent happy wth? really? after all the modds and money and time spent on his guitar sound he would just settle i dont think so.

I'll take ANY Jerry tone from the Warlocks right up till that point in '93 when they stopped using the JBL's and went direct instead. Right there is the turning point for me, tone-wise. The only upside I can say about that tone is that it sort of created an acoustic-like effect that was interesting on fingerpicked, acoustic-ish songs. I agree that late '70s (I think you meant to say "late 70s" because Jer was gone in the late 90s) and early '80s tones are pretty unbeatable. But I still pretty much full on love his tone up till the '93 change.

And it's pretty widely talked about in the circles of those who knew Jerry and worked with him that by '93, Jerry really didn't give a shit about his tone in the Dead, not like he did in the decades before that. He wasn't in love with that Trio/DI rig. It was just utilitarian and experimental and worked functionally with the in-ear experiment. From '93 till the end, Jerry was burnt, done, tired, and played in the Dead far more out of obligation than sincere drive. JGB was his real outlet, and even there you could feel his exhaustion. All that said, I saw a bunch of '93, '94, and '95 shows and there were tremendous, magical moments, in fact some moments were absolutely as good as anything I'd heard, full on majestic moments, but it came in infrequent spurts, maybe 1 in 3 shows would have a some magic, but the energy wasn't sustained in those years, there weren't those magic runs where every show in a week was legendary. It was fortunate to hit a show that gave even a glimpse of the greatness that once was. The band (besides Jer) was on fire, but Jerry was disconnected, broken, frail, wasted, resentful, and Bob/Phil were frustrated at the lack of synergy and communication with Jerry, and that tension on stage was hard to watch at times and put a cloud over the whole experience for me. So I guess that I personally have a load of emotions connected to that DI tone Jerry went to in '93. It's connected to the downhill slide of the end of the Grateful Dead and watching Jerry slowly decay. It's connected to the deep heartbreak that we all felt when Jerry left us.

Thanks for the therapy session everyone. Gotta process this Jerry-less world at least once every summer.
B

[vwjodyme]

my $.02
I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. 93-95 were the only times i got to see jer -on tour at 16 - so i guess i didn't know any better, but i loved every minute of it and still love hearing those shows.

[jdsmodulus]

OK I'll chime in...JGs 93-95 tone was awesome! I saw alot of those shows and I had no complaints then and still don't. It surely wasn't the tone of the old days but what he put out there was very good. I think in alot of ways the end of the Dead was the best of the Dead. The Bolt and Trio were excellent to say the least. Flame Away!

[The Stag]

i still highly disagree he didnt care about his guitar sound. though you can say he was frail or beat or smoked he still played better then anyone. who else can live up to his legend? jerry was constanly fiddling with his guitar and sound if he didnt care he would not have done this. also some dont like 82 to 86 because of his apearence and drugs but i dont think anything can beat a concert from that time and 10 years later he wanted a different sound so he used a acoustic like sound to keep things different. just like their set lists never the same. all was great. especially a well recorded so many roads him using the bolt wheeeeeeew unmatched. Dan Jr

[deadagainband76]

I think jer really liked playing acoustic country music which was where he came from musically.. His roots may have just brought him back to that sound. I sometimes think He knew the end was near and just wanted to pretend He was sitting on a couch playin with Grisman somewhere instead of the rigorous life of the Dead... Day in and day out. Maybe He had enough of the rock band.

[mijknahs]

I wonder how accurate the ear monitors sound for guitar tone. Maybe is sounded ok in the ear monitor but Jerry really had no idea how it sounded otherwise.

The thing that bugs me about the mid 90's is not the tone as much as the playing. I remember seeing him play Row Jimmy and thinking to myself "he's totally lost". Like he was embarassed and didn't know which way to go. Didn't have that "attitude" or authority in his playing like in the 80's.

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

I think jer really liked playing acoustic country music which was where he came from musically.. His roots may have just brought him back to that sound. I sometimes think He knew the end was near and just wanted to pretend He was sitting on a couch playin with Grisman somewhere instead of the rigorous life of the Dead... Day in and day out. Maybe He had enough of the rock band.

Absoutely Jerry had acoustic roots and a whole world of acoustic music. But the switch to the Trio preamp going direct had nothing to do with his aesthetic taste for a certain guitar tone. It happened as band transitioned into the in-ear monitor world and tried to take all speakers off the stage. It was an experiment and a HUGE technical/tonal compromise, not an upgrade or step into something he preferred. This isn't my opinion, but based on info gathered from people who knew him and discussed such things. Even in '94 Cutler, who replaced Healy at the board, openly and light-heartedly discussed with me how Jerry's tone was crap and they were still trying to find ways to make it sound better with the in-ears. He was very candid about it. Clearly no big love for Jerry's DI tone at the soundboard in '94. At the time, they had not yet tried an off-stage mic'd JBL, but John did say that was an idea that had been floating around. But it sure seemed clear, even from Cutler, that getting Jerry's tone perfected did not seem to be top priority at the time. It was based on the technology and logistics of in-ear monitoring and the practical compromises that come with it. I'm not saying Jerry didn't care at all, he obviously cared to a degree as he was into his newer guitars and trying various effects and MIDI sounds and stuff. My basic point is that the DI guitar setup was far from ideal and definitely not what even Jerry considered to be a great sound. When he played with JGB, he naturally pulled out the Mc2300/JBL setup to have a real guitar rig.

[Rusty the Scoob]

Sometimes I'm glad I never saw the Grateful Dead. It saves me from having to think back fondly to the 1994/1995 shows that would have seen, trying to convince myself that they were pretty good.

[deadagainband76]

I hear ya Brad, the jbl offstage would have been cool. Do you think they were close to doing that or is it more complicated than it sounds or what?

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

It's pretty simple and in this age of in-ear monitors, a lot of bands do off-stage amp miking. Typically it's in a sound-isolated box with the speaker cab and mic inside. Really a simple idea, but would take the effort to set it up.


I know I like to flaunt my opinionated distaste for the crispy '94 DI tone, but much of it is to stir shit up around here for kicks. And to be fair, there were points in '95 where I honestly wondered if they had maybe done the off-stage JBL thing because the tone had improved quite a bit in my opinion since '93. And in '95 I wasn't nearly as bothered by it as in the two previous years where it honestly made it hard for me to enjoy Jerry at times. Maybe in '95 it was still DI but with better EQ at the board, at the rig, some type of electronic speaker emulation, etc. I'd guess that it was still DI'd, but just refined to sound warmer and more natural like an electric guitar tone.

B