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Jerry Garcia's Tiger guitar


Blue Strat

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I was reading an article in one of my old issues of GP and they were showing Jerry's "Tiger" guitar, and some of the special effects that he had installed in it. It had a stereo jack and another output jack on it. The stereo jack went out to his pedal board and then back to the guitar, then through an on-board master volume control, then out the normal input jack! :thu::cool:

 

Jerry also had a on-board buffer, better known in the electronics world as an emitter follower. It matches the impedance of the guitar pickup to the input of effects pedals, which prevents treble loss. I'm thinking of trying this mod on my Del Rey in a non-invasive manner, so I don't ruin the value of my guitar.

 

Do any of you folks have experience with a guitar with an on-board buffer?

 

I think Jerry was the James Bond of the guitar world. :D

BlueStrat

a.k.a. "El Guapo" ;)

 

...Better fuzz through science...

 

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Hi,

 

Originally posted by bluestrat

Do any of you folks have experience with a guitar with an on-board buffer?

I am not absolutely sure but I think most active guitars have an onboard buffer of some sort (the output impedance of an op-amp is usually way less than 100 Ohms), it is the case of my Ovation Breawinner. I am not sure however it makes a real difference with most guitar amps the input impedance of which is usually above 500 K Ohms, unless you use very long cables.

 

Just my two cents.

 

Bests.

 

Stan.

Love + Learning + Music = LIFE !!! (some money welcomed as well ...)
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Yeah. Active guitars are already "buffered".

 

What's unusual about the Garcia guitars is that they didn't just have a preamp, they had a whole loop. Garcia didn't move around a whole lot (obviously ;) ) so he didn't mind having two cords (one was stereo) coming from the guitar or playing guitars with a bunch of switches.

 

I think a more practical way to do this would be to use a loop switcher pedal (Boss makes one) to switch the effects in and out and either active pickups or a boost pedal in front (MXR Micro Amp, ZVEX SHO, the new one by Seymour Duncan) to buffer the signal. That way your guitar would remain stock and you wouldn't trip over all the cords.

"You never can vouch for your own consciousness." - Norman Mailer
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