Mik Bondy’s review of Tom Lieber’s 50th Anniversary “Tiger” guitar.

The 50th anniversary of The Grateful Dead is in 2015 and Tom Lieber has constructed a very fine musical instrument as a tribute. His new guitar is based on the ‘Tiger” and “Rosebud” guitars that Doug Irwin and Tom Leiber built for Jerry Garcia. When Jerry Garcia asked Irwin to build a guitar with no limits, Irwin wanted to build one that could not be easily reproduced. He selected unique, hard to work with woods and Irwin and Lieber came up with a unique shape for the guitar as well.

The new, 50th anniversary guitar is based on the iconic shape and the same build quality as the “Tiger” but is made with more standard maple wood and reproducible consistency. He is offering the guitars at $6,400 each and has sold almost all of them. I recommend that you get in touch with Tom right away if you want one of these for yourself.

Tom stopped by The Oneonta Theater (one of our most favorite places to perform our show) on October 11 to let me try out his new masterpiece. Upon first look, I was stunned by the simple elegance and beauty of the guitar. The fit and finish was top notch and the guitar just seemed to glow! The real test though would be how it played.

After finding an extra guitar strap, I picked up the guitar and started with “Sugaree” The low ends were nice and spanky and gurgely – just like they should be. Then I went into “Deal” and my bass player, Dan Crea and drummer Bob Mckeon joined in. Again the lows were nice and defined and I could start to feel how it was going to play. I went into the solo and bent some high notes. WOW. it was right there in the zone. I completely fell in love and did not want to give the guitar back. I next went through all of my effects. I noticed that this guitar reacted a bit differently to my effects than the Warmoth “Tiger” that I normally play. The effects all sounded great and once I started getting used to it, the guitar felt very comfortable in my hands.

The neck is fast and easy to play. I was hearing and seeing things in my mind that I could not visualize when playing my Warmoth. I could hear new musical passages and couldn’t wait to spend the many hours playing it that I really feel I need to get comfortable enough to do those passages effortlessly.

The body is partially hollow. I was told that Irwin’s “Tiger” was built the same way. The wings are completely hollow while the “neck-through” area is solid. Irwin initially built Jerry’s guitar as a neck through, but then him and Tom realized something was wrong and made it a set neck guitar. They had to fix many mistakes and that is where the ornamental brass came into play. Tom’s “Tiger” is made the same way, but no brass was used except for the nut and the woods were more consistent.

Tom let me play the guitar for the whole show. There will be a recording coming up on archive soon. Feel free to ask me or Tom and questions and if you are in the market for a Jerry style guitar that plays and sounds amazing, this is the one!

 

For more information about the 50th anniversary guitars, contact Tom at info@lieberguitars.com

http://www.lieberguitars.com/guitars/garcia/

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