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Garcia played this TB500 at more than 90 shows in the late ’70s, including the Grateful Dead’s three-night stint at the Winterland Ballroom in 1977, approximately 35 Dead shows, a benefit for Greenpeace and with the Jerry Garcia Band. The TB 500 #11 guitar was debuted at the Grateful Dead show on December 31, 1976, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. Since then, it’s made its rounds and been played by various artists, including Tom Hamilton (JRAD), Dark Star Orchestra, and more. The guitar sold for $700,000, and was played by Warren Haynes on his Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration tour. After a legal dispute, Irwin won back the rights to Wolf and auctioned it off in 2002. The guitar was predominantly used during the 1970’s, though it resurfaced in 1989 for a MIDI synthesizer experiment, and was last played by Garcia in 1993. Wolf was made from purpleheart and curly maple, and features an ebony fingerboard and twenty-four frets. We’re celebrating 45 year’s of Jerry’s Doug Irwin custom “Wolf” guitar which made its live debut on this day in 1973 aboard the SS Bay Belle in New York Harbor at a Garcia/Saunders show! /68EJtrxHxL Irwin eventually incorporated the Wolf into the design, thus giving the instrument its name. The guitar actually originally contained a peacock logo, followed by Irwin’s eagle logo, but it was Garcia that placed the blood-thirsty wolf sticker on his guitar. That was the inception of Wolf, which Garcia first played with Merl Saunders at a private party for the Hell’s Angels on September 5th, 1973. Eventually, he contacted Irwin and asked him to create a custom guitar for his own use. While Garcia was in contact with the luthiers of Alembic Guitars, he came upon an instrument built by Doug Irwin and bought it on the spot.
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It currently resides in the Jerry Garcia archives. Their last modification came in August of 1973, though Alligator’s last live appearance came on Garcia’s birthday, August 1st, of 1973. Technicians Frank Fuller and Rick Turner of Alembic Guitars modified the guitar regularly, so much so that they referred to it as a “Frankenstein” guitar. Alligator is a customized 1957 Fender Stratocaster, and was used between 1970-1973. As the band started to garner more commercial success, it was Graham Nash who would give Garcia his first name-worthy guitar. The band was just coming up, and the guitarist played whatever he could get his hands on at the times. In the earliest days of the Grateful Dead’s career, Garcia played a lot of different guitars. Let’s take a look back at these s guitars that Garcia used throughout his career… Alligator
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A true musician’s musician, Jerry Garcia has not only left us with a rich legacy of music, but one of musical instruments as well. Though he played many in his career, there are a handful of truly noteworthy axes that have stood the test of time. Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia took great pride in his guitars.