Jerry Garcia Rig Breakdowns

Jerry began to use more effects other than a Colorsound Wah, possible Univox Wah or Morley Fuzz Wah used prior to 1976. On December 31, 1976 his OBEL(OnBoard Effects Loop) and Jfet Buffer in his Travis Bean 500 #12 arrives. With the new Buffered OBEL on his guitar he started to incorporate more effects units into his rig.

December 31, 1976 Cow Palace

Photo Credit - Steve Schneider

"All those gadgets are voltage-sensitive. If you have them after the volume control their behavior is affected by the loudness setting on the guitar. With my system, on the other hand, the effects always see the guitar as if it had full output voltage. The effects are also controlled by a DC power supply rather than batteries. Since the effects' input voltage- the guitar's output- is always fixed, they behave exactly the way I want them to. The whole thing is so stable that it's completely repeatable in every situation, and I never run into a weirdness of any sort. I'd used effects in recording before, but they were always too unstable for me to use onstage until we came up with this." - Jerry Garcia ~ Guitar Player Magazine October 1978

"I would say that Jer and I both came up with the buffer idea. What happened is that he complained that the pedals changed the sound of his pickups. I reckoned a two step solution. First to use a buffer and second that if I returned the pedal output back to the volume control then the pedal effects remained the same at any volume setting. I put the idea together and it worked as expected." - Dan Healy

Note: The OBEL bypass switch wasn't added until Fall of 1978

Rig Breakdowns.

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