My "Jerry Garcia" customized PRS Custom 24

[Myoung6923]

I play the Jerry Garcia role in a Dead tribute band out of Boston called Fennario http://www.fennario.us.

I have always loved PRS and finally decided to do these customizations to a brand new, gorgeous Custom 24 10 top. In "jerrifying" this guitar I had the pickup cavity routed to accommodate 3, Dimarzio super 2 pickups in an aluminum pickup ring that I had machined. I also put an effects loop system into the guitar much like Jerry's guitars had. This is pre-volume pot and this allows for the effects to always get the full signal directly from the pickups which remains constant no matter where the volume pot is set. This means that your effects will sound and react the same way no matter where you set the guitar's volume. There is a toggle switch for a loop bypass - which can get me from effects to a clean sound directly to my amp with the flick of a switch. 2 more toggle switches are for the pickups coil configuration, Hum/Single/Parallel, For this, I had to change out the volume pot to a 10k because of the lower impedance - there is a unity gain buffer also installed, which converts the signal to a low Z signal to reduce loss across long cable distances.

The jack cavity was routed bigger to accommodate 2 - jacks for the effects loop and send. One jack is TRS for the loop send and return - I use a stereo cable with a breakout box on my pedal board.Tip is send and ring is return. The other jack is also TRS and is the post-volume final send output to the amp but uses a regular mono guitar cable. the ring and sleeve are the negative connection for the unity gain buffer. This way, the battery is only engaged when the cable is plugged in, bridging the negatives and completing the circuit.

I also had the tremolo system blocked. For my kind of playing, I just need the guitar to stay in tune while bending strings...

Recently, I bought a PRS P24 which sounds amazing. I am going to leave the PRS pickups in this guitar, but I am going to put in the effects loop system soon.

Anyhow, here's a couple of pics with links to higher resolution pics. I thought folks over here might appreciate this thing.

http://www.fennario.us/graphics/guitar/IMG_5209.jpg

http://www.fennario.us/graphics/guitar/IMG_5211.JPG

my pedal board...

http://www.fennario.us/graphics/guitar/IMG_5208.JPG

 

[LJD]

Great Jerrification! Checked out your band on youtube, you're definitely getting the Jerry tones out of that guitar. What amp are you using? What contributes to that Jerry sound more, the amp or the guitar electronics (preamp), etc.? Middle pickup split? Love the Row Jimmy!

 

[HANGAR18]

Wow! That's very interesting.

 

[Myoung6923]

Great Jerrification! Checked out your band on youtube, you're definitely getting the Jerry tones out of that guitar. What amp are you using? What contributes to that Jerry sound more, the amp or the guitar electronics (preamp), etc.? Middle pickup split? Love the Row Jimmy!

Thanks for the kind words. I use a modified Fender Twin that used to be a 73 Silverface. The head was taken out and converted by a friend at Shakedown amps to be more like what Jerry's Twin had done to it. I use JBL E120 speakers in a separate cabinet. These speakers are rated at 300W, so they can take anything that I throw at them with almost no distortion. I do get a nice clipping from the amp when I dig into the strings.

What gives the Jerry sound the most? I think the combination of the amp, speakers and the middle single coil sound - and then the preamp colors it a tiny bit. That's my opinion anyhow...

Here's a page with a bit more about my whole rig - http://www.fennario.us/gear.html

 

[László]

Nice!