Tiger (guitar)

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Tiger
Manufacturer	Doug Irwin
Period	1979
Construction
Body type	Solid
Neck joint	Set-Neck
Woods
Body	"Hippie Sandwich" of Cocobolo, Maple, Vermillion, Flame Maple, Vermillion, Maple, and Cocobolo, with brass binding and inlay.
Neck	Western Maple with Padauk "skunk stripe"
Fretboard	Ebony with pearl inlay and brass bindings; 25-1/2" scale
Hardware
Bridge	Brass Schaller tune-o-matic style
Pickup(s)	One DiMarzio SDS-1 single coil (neck); two DiMarzio Super II humbuckers (mid and bridge)
Colors available
Natural

Tiger was Jerry Garcia's main guitar from 1979 to 1990. It was built by Sonoma County luthier Doug Irwin. The Tiger is named after the tiger inlaid on the preamp cover located on the guitar's top, just behind the tailpiece. The body features several layers of wood laminated together face-to-face in a configuration referred to as a "Hippie sandwich" by employees of Alembic Inc., where Irwin worked for a brief period in the early 1970s. The combination of several heavy varieties of wood, plus solid brass binding and hardware results in an unusually heavy instrument that tips the scales at 13-1/2 pounds. After 1990, Garcia switched to a different Irwin instrument, the nearly-identical Rosebud, as his primary guitar with the Grateful Dead. The Tiger was thenceforth kept as a backup; a problem with Rosebud meant that the Tiger was the last instrument Garcia played at the Grateful Dead's last concert, on July 9, 1995.

[edit] Electronics

The electronics of Garcia's Irwin guitars are unique, and feature an onboard preamp and effects loop. Much like a Stratocaster, the three pickups are selected with a five-way switch. From the switch, the signal passes through a null-gain buffer preamp, which is designed to prevent signal loss due to capacitance when long cables are used. From the preamp, the signal could be routed via a switch on the guitar's face to pass through a cable to Garcia's effects rack, and thence back into the guitar. This onboard effects loop serves to send the full output of Tiger's pickups to the effects while allowing the guitar's tone and volume controls to vary the final output. The effects loop could be bypassed by the aforementioned switch, sending the guitar's signal from the preamp to the tone and volume controls, and thence out to Garcia's amplifier. Each of the Super IIs is equipped with a coil cut switch. There is one master volume control. One tone control affects the neck and bridge pickups; the other controls the middle pickup.

[edit] Disposition

After Garcia's death, a dispute arose between Irwin and the Grateful Dead regarding ownership of Garcia's Irwin guitars. In his will, Garcia gave possession of these instruments to Irwin; the Grateful Dead challenged whether Garcia had the right to convey title and insisted that the band owned the instruments. The parties reached a settlement where Irwin was awarded Garcia's more famous instruments, and the Grateful Dead took possession of the majority of the guitars. Irwin sold his guitars, the Tiger and the Wolf, at auction on May 8, 2002. The Tiger was purchased by Jim Irsay for USD 850,000.