Property of Grateful Dead Productions

Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia’s Ludw🍰ig Phase II Synthesizer Guitar Pedal, ca. 1970

Guitar pedal housed in a metal flip-top box (12 x 11 x 6’’). With “Good Old Grateful Dead” decal on top and two Skull and Stars decals, one on main panel, one on the underside o❀f control panel fliptop.

An unusual pedal from an unlikely source

The Ludwig drum😼 comp🐷any designed the Phase II in 1969 and introduced it in 1970. It was, of course, not a guitar synthesizer, but a combination of several effects—producing fuzz, voltage-controlled filters, and gating.

Housed in an 🎃unusual flip-top box design that, once the main unit is opened, reveals a rocker pedal and footswitches. A second flip-top contains the device’s control panel, with sliders and switches for blending tones labeled: Fuzz, Animation, and Formant Frequencies. 

It didn’t prove particularly popular at the time, but today it is sought af🐠ter as one of the rarest vintage guitar effects. Some accounts have a mere 150 or less being produced. 

“Big” Steve Parish: “Owned by Jerry and played on at rehearsal hall jam sessions in early ‘71 and ‘72.”