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Jerry Garcia Alligator Strat

Jet-Jaguar

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This isn't my guitar, but I thought this would be something a lot of you guys would be interested in. SF GuitarWorks is putting together an "alligator strat" similar to the one used by Jerry Garcia.

http://sfguitarworks.com/?p=1365

img_1851.jpg




The pickguard reminds me of bonepickerx's aluminum one.
 
This is one of Jerry's guitars that I didn't have any real interest in until now!!!!

Someday I will replicate all of Jer's guitars.  I have my own 'Jerrycaster' now, my take on Doug Irwin's classic shape (of course it's a WGD) done in flame maple on maple with an all maple neck, cause I obviously have a maple fetish.  But eventually I want to do more accurate 'replicas' so to speak, with darker woods and a real hippie sandwich. 

I do have a couple jerrycaster projects in the works for the fall, one for a very dear friend that is getting a body from me as a gift, and I have two other jerrycasters in the planning stages with some local musicians.  I think this is gonna be fun, building 4 guitars at once, 3 righties and one for me!!!  These are most likely gonna be walnut, maybe I might do one walnut and mahogany, and the one request from one of my customers is a chambered Jerrycaster, so I am gonna experiment with going a full 2" thick, maybe even bump it up to 2 1/2" and see how that sounds and plays.  I'm scratch building these bodies, this is mainly why I bought a WGD in the first place, so I would have a good pattern to make the guitars with!  The WGD's proportions on the 'horns' are really good, although I am going to modify my template slightly to extend the points slightly......

Now if I could only find a good template for a 'Wolf' shaped guitar, I would be in business, I could duplicate all of Jerry's Irwin's!!

Back to the point, this is probably the easiest of Jerry's guitars to replicate, as it is a strat and all, I just might throw one together.  Heck I bet I could probably pull one of these off for under $100 if I started searching the 'bay for cheap parts!

Definately a cool build, and it's good to see that this guita is showing enough interest for a someone to replicate it!!! Awesome!!!
 
You are definitly right BigBeard, This was a really cool build and relatively inexpensive to do. Most of my $$ went to a Warmoth body and Fender custom '54 pickups. Took the neck off a 90's Squier I found in a pawnshop for $40, maple with a 12" radius. Bridge from ebay, brass plates were cut from an old door kickplate, decals from jackofroses.com and some assorted parts came in under $400.
 
jwl68th said:
You are definitly right BigBeard, This was a really cool build and relatively inexpensive to do. Most of my $$ went to a Warmoth body and Fender custom '54 pickups. Took the neck off a 90's Squier I found in a pawnshop for $40, maple with a 12" radius. Bridge from ebay, brass plates were cut from an old door kickplate, decals from jackofroses.com and some assorted parts came in under $400.

That is sweet, man you nailed it.  Good looking guitar
 
Thanks for the compliments. One thing I changed in the build was using a hardtail bridge, I really didn't want that mess of a bridge Jerry had on his.  I was going to try a Wolf build myself but I have decided to try a variation on the Alembic Skylark instead. I hope you'll be posting pics of your other builds.
 
I am one of the mudstickers who think Jerry did his absolute best work on that guitar. I do think the primitive prototype Alembic preamp had something to do with the tone, but he was personally just on fire from 1972 to '74. I have about 15 "Dark Stars" from that era I copped off of sugarmegs.org and loaded onto an iPod, golly. IMO the Mahavishnu Orchestra were instrumental in waking the boys up, they opened for the JGB on one tour (kinda a mismatch) and the Dead were stone cold freaks for the band, they'd fly in to see them on the rare occasions when they weren't touring. The early "Dark Stars" used to get weird with feedback and wahwah'd pick scrapes, but after the Mahavishnu light came on they started using music to go weird and deep - you can hear it in Jerry's note choices and odd timed note groupings. Of course you can't steal McLaughlin licks exactly, even the mighty Jeff Beck only approximates that fire.

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/gd1973-11-11WinterlandArenaSanFranciscoCA.asx
(let it load and skip to 1:51:05, if need be)

I like Wolf  and 1977 too, Dick's Pick's 10 is the one I play for people who don't "get" the Dead (cause then they do) but by then the deepest weirdness was already starting to mutate into mere,,, professionalism.  :sad1: And the heroin sure didn't help anything, after that. :sad1: :sad1: :sad1:
 
Alligator was the strat that Graham Nash gave to Jerry.  It was modified a number of times, good discussion here:

http://www.wald-electronics.com/alligator.html
 
I'm a huge fan of the '77 + Grateful Dead, although I will concur with you that he did do some awesome work with the Alligator.  I think you pretty much nailed it with your statement, honestly.  Even if I prefer the later sound.  I tend to look at the band as more of a whole, and I really think that musically they didn't get cranking till about the Dick's Picks 10 era of Dead you speak of.  Then the Reverend Mydland joined!!!!!!  I happen to love the Brent era, I love the way he played the B3 with Jerry in particular, and seeing them on stage together, their banter was truly awesome.  Also I think Weir's playing didn't really come full circle till the late 80's early 90's, some of the shit Weir did, I thought was misplaced noise until about 85 or so.  But, yeah, back to the point of Jerry's guitar playing, I think as far as him going out on a limb and experimenting with what he could do he perfected with the Alligator.  I think in later times, (Blues for Allah and the hiatus) he tried to perfect his 'sound'  And I think that may have coincided with Jerrys' switch from LSD to cocaine, and eventually heroin.  I don't listen to much Pigpen era Grateful Dead these days, because I feel that they were trying to be something that they weren't.  With Pig is was a different drive musically, you know, trying to be a straight blues or R&B or something like that.  If Pig would have lived, they might not have ever evolved into the jam machine that they did.  I mean when they were running right, it was like "Nine hundred thousand tons of steel" rolling down the track, unstoppable music and well that sound blows me smooth away!  When Pig died, it forced Jerry and Bobby to take over his part and to take the music to the place they had evolved to.  That place is the sound I go for.  I can only take so many Pigpen "Midnight Hour's"  or "Lovelights"  It all had to happen the way it did, I guess.  It never would have turned out the way it did without it happening the way it happened.  God I miss Jerry!!!!

What I think is really cool is how this music in particular is staying so alive.  I mean you are always seeing some sort of Jerry inspired guitar popping up on here.  And it says something that Warmoth offers the WGD, doesn't it?  Too bad they don't offer the Wolf, too.  But that has to speak volumes for the music, I think.  Bobby and Phil still tour, as do the drummers.  I would love to see them bring the 'Grateful Dead' name out of retirement, just one more time.  If they ever get to a point where the must say goodbye to the live setting, I would hope that they could do a 'farewell tour' as the old band, with the old name.  But I don't like to think about the day when there is no more Grateful Dead. 

I'm free to talk Dead anytime. 

stubhead said:
I am one of the mudstickers who think Jerry did his absolute best work on that guitar. I do think the primitive prototype Alembic preamp had something to do with the tone, but he was personally just on fire from 1972 to '74. I have about 15 "Dark Stars" from that era I copped off of sugarmegs.org and loaded onto an iPod, golly. IMO the Mahavishnu Orchestra were instrumental in waking the boys up, they opened for the JGB on one tour (kinda a mismatch) and the Dead were stone cold freaks for the band, they'd fly in to see them on the rare occasions when they weren't touring. The early "Dark Stars" used to get weird with feedback and wahwah'd pick scrapes, but after the Mahavishnu light came on they started using music to go weird and deep - you can hear it in Jerry's note choices and odd timed note groupings. Of course you can't steal McLaughlin licks exactly, even the mighty Jeff Beck only approximates that fire.

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/gd1973-11-11WinterlandArenaSanFranciscoCA.asx
(let it load and skip to 1:51:05, if need be)

I like Wolf  and 1977 too, Dick's Pick's 10 is the one I play for people who don't "get" the Dead (cause then they do) but by then the deepest weirdness was already starting to mutate into mere,,, professionalism.  :sad1: And the heroin sure didn't help anything, after that. :sad1: :sad1: :sad1:
 
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