Tom's tribute to Jerry Garcia's Alligator guitar Jerry played many guitars over his career, but one of the most famous was his "Alligator" guitar which was his main go to guitar in the early 1970s including the Grateful Dead's iconic Europe '72 album. Jerry acquired the guitar from Graham Nash when he played on one of Graham's solo albums. It was a 1950s Fender Stratocaster with a nicely grained Ash wood body with a clear stain that really shows off the grain. Ash is also a d

I wanted a nice short scale (30") bass guitar which is a lot easier for people that are primarily guitar players to play than the standard 34" bass guitar scale. For versatility, I wanted one with a P/J pickup configuration which combines the neck pickup from a Precision Bass with the bridge pickup from a Jazz Bass. In the Fender line, the Jaguar SS Vintage Modified Bass fits those needs very nicely (the SS meaning Short Scale). I found one that I could get for a fantastic pr

I saw a Univox Ripper inspired guitar on sale at Eastwood Guitars and thought the natural finish and cream colored open humbuckers looked way cool and so I scooped one up. The setup on this was better than most guitars you buy. No string buzzing, but I still did a little bit of fret leveling just because I'm a perfectionist. Fret ends were perfect. Intonation just required minor adjustment to be perfect. It's definitely a 3 piece body and on mine, the right side of the body

The guitar that Jerry used most frequently over the last 16 years of his life was a custom guitar built by Doug Irwin called "Tiger."...

What's more nostalgic than an Etch A Sketch ? Invented in France and marketed in the US starting in 1960, it was on every baby boomer...

I previously wrote about building a cigarette pack-sized amplifier . The inspiration for the one I built came from something called the Smokey amp which was conceived in the 1980s by Bruce Zinky. The original amp came in a couple of different styles. One was in a plastic case and the other was in an actual recycled cigarette pack. So the original Zinky amp looked cool and it could fit in your shirt pocket. It had no volume or tone control and had a couple of other problems. T

Monoprice makes a great 15 watt tube amp, but it has this ugly mashed potato colored Tolex covering on it it which I couldn't stand...

I've been making a lot of mini amps lately and was wondering how small I could go. Like maybe a size that would fit in a shirt pocket...

Fender makes a wonderful model called the Acoustasonic that gives you the sound of an acoustic guitar with the light weight, smaller size...

Back during the 1976 bicentennial, Michigan issued this beautiful license plate with the stars and stripes. I was going to school at...