Jerry Garcia Alligator Tribute

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 dense wood that enhances a guitar's overall tone sustain.

The name "Alligator" came when Jerry started putting stickers on this guitar, first a Harley Davidson sticker on the body, then an Alligator sticker on the pickguard. The Dead were working with some of the people at Alembic guitars at the time and Jerry had them made some modifications like blocking the tremolo so the guitar would stay in tune better, adding a brass sustain block under a new brass bridge and adding a new brass tailpiece. On a cold night on the European tour, part of the plastic pickguard that included the control knobs cracked off. This was temporarily replaced with a piece of Masonite cut from a clipboard, which was later replaced with a more permanent brass control cover. They also added a brass "footman's loop" on the head to put more down pressure on the strings and correct a common problem with Stratocasters.

I love the Dead and Jerry's guitar playing. This was my second effort at creating a recreation of one of Jerry's guitars (see my blog post on recreating his later "Tiger" guitar).

I wanted to start with a really killer Ash Strat body and found a great one from GuitarFetish. I wanted a period correct 50s vintage neck and found an official Fender made 50s neck on Amazon. Replicas of the control plate cover, bridge with trem block, stickers, brass jack plate cover and tailpiece were all available through eBay. I got the 3/4" footman's loop from a leather works company (Amazon's were too large) and the black Raytheon knobs to match Jerry's on eBay (no longer made so you have to find used).

The pickguard and pickups came from a a Fender Squire Vintage Modified 70s Strat I picked up to make my Coodercaster tribute guitar. To give it more of boost like Jerry eventually had on Alligator and which he used on subsequent guitars, I wired in a GuitarFetish preamp that gives a nice mid or treble boost.

I added the footman's loop to the headstock as well as a scalloped brass nut.

I also added brass cover for the tremolo cover on the back. And customized the neck plate with serial number 7310 which is the same as Jerry's guitar.