This will no doubt be of interest to a number of us....
Colin

What?

I'm already interested to know what it is....

Oops.
 
www.cripeguitars.com

Interesting site.  I just read the bio.

That is interesting, thanks.

I just got through going through the whole site.  Pretty neat!

Cool.  Cripe is an amazing story.

Very cool Colin. Pat and Tim O'Donnell built a guitar for me that has some Cripe-like features. In talking to them during the process, I came to find out that, being Florida neighbors of Steve, they received some of the parts and wood left over from Cripe's shop. They also mentioned having some kind of agreement with the estate to continue to build Cripe designs. I've often thought I wouldn't mind having a guitar like the ebony Cripe owned by Kimock.
 
Thanks for the link.
 
Peace
Tom

I love Teak.
 
Bill, tgo

I find the fact  that Steve Cripe was self taught is incredibly inspiring to me. Anyone with that kind of determination is really enabling them selves to such a high life condition.  
Wow.
 
(Message edited by sonicus on June 07, 2009)

How responsible were these guitars for the thin tinny tone we witnessed in 94-95?  
 
Certainly the 'speakerless' stage system played a role, but it think the guitar played a large role.  
 
I just did a little research and listened to two Sugaree's from 1995 courtesy of archive.org. July 8th, he played Rosebud then Tiger.  I compared that opening with the March 27, 1995 (not certain but safe to assume it is Lightening Bolt) Sugaree and there is a noticeable difference; mostly in the mid and upper range, the tone is so much warmer on the Irwin rigs.

I think the tinniness you're talking about stems from Garcia's use of the piezo bridge built into the Cripes.  I remember when he started using the Cripe, he almost always used the piezo feature, which lends itself to sounding pretty thin.

That is correct. For some reason or another Ol' Jer just decided to use the piezo pickup more than anything else between 94-95. However there are some smoking shows during this time period where he elected not to use the piezo so much.  
 
Colin

Bolt never had a Piezo.  I know people think it did because of the thin sound, but the sound change came from the way Jerry was buffering his pedals and probably a little tone lost when they went wireless, not because of his guitar necessarily since Jerry's guitar never went wireless, just his vocals & monitor.  Get the GD Gear Book by Blair Jackson and you can read all this first hand,