“Askin’ you nice, now, keep the mother rollin’ one more time.” – Robert Hunter
Making a second guitar—one that had been ordered by a customer, not some spec job on a crazy whim—would prove at first to pose an interesting challenge. Its maker might have pulled off the mad feat of crafting Lightning Bolt and actually getting it into Jerry’s happy strumming hands, but one thing the woodworker hadn’t done was take notes. Or photographs, for that matter.
It wasn’t as easy back then—nobody had a phone in their pocket, much less one with a ten-zillion megapixel camera attached. During the time Cripe waited to hear whether Harriet Rose would agree to deliver Lightning Bolt to Jerry, the guitar sat around his workshop for over a month. “Dumb,” had been Cripe’s only reaction to not photographing his work before shipping it off, but let’s face it: for many artisans, it’s the process and not the outcome—sometimes being in the moment of creation holds more energetic juice than the finished object.
In any case, once Cripe began work on the guitar soon to become known as Top Hat (or ‘Florida 2’), after a certain point he realized he needed information about his own work in order to replicate it. Not so much to standards Jerry had laid out, rather the musician’s expectations from having handled the prior instrument—and with apparent gusto.
But making a second version of an approved design proved challenging without record keeping of the specs. Other than the feel of the wood in his hands and an eyeball squinting at a fuzzy videotape frame-grab, he had simply created in the moment without writing anything down. Again, however—Lightning Bolt had been a mad whim. Who knew it would lead to Jerry ordering another one.
At last Cripe decided he needed at least secondhand access to Lightning Bolt. Now into September and with the new guitar fully up to the technical specs necessary to fully interface with the Dead’s digital, top-of-the-line hardware array, the band had taken the instrument on tour. The best he’d be able to do would be another in a series of phone calls.
Cripe reached out through channels sufficient to catch up to Steve Parrish at Madison Square Garden, about two hours before showtime.
The guitar tech got on the line, wondered what was shakin’. As Cripe recalled in an article he wrote for the fanzine Unbroken Chain, “I asked for measurements or templates of the neck of Lightning Bolt. [Parrish] didn’t understand, asking how I had shaped the neck. I told him I had winged it; I kept cutting until it felt good. He told me to wing it again.”
Then the legendary guitarist Garcia himself got into the conversation. He, too, instructed Cripe to trust his woodworking instincts the way he had in building Lightning Bolt. Besides: “If I don’t like it,” Jerry cautioned, “I’ll send it back.”
Unlike with Bolt, Cripe took a picture of Top Hat before sending it to Garcia.
The novice-turned-pro luthier may have been expected to once again work his artisanal magic on the body, neck and headstock of the instrument, but he also had help this time: the expertise of Gary Brawer was only another dial tone away, with the gear-head ready and willing to provide guidance on the electronics for the second custom Garcia guitar to emerge from the chrysalis of the Cripe workbench.
Cripe kept shaking his head—another guitar for Jerry. One was a fluke, but this time the man himself was waiting on the damn thing. The mission was clear—it had to be organic but done right. Nothing much was at stake except the pleasure and satisfaction of the most revered musician known to Steven Cripe. That’s all. And some money, which always helped.
At last ready for the final touches, Steve placed the Firecracker logo and the embossed icon which would identify the guitar—this one depicts a bedecked dandy of a ‘Deadhead’ wearing a top hat. The guitar bearing this name was delivered to Jerry in November, 1993.
Just in time for a holiday season capping off one crazy and magical year, a check arrived in Florida. It covered the agreed-upon price of $7,000 for the two guitars. Steve considered the first one a gift, so the fee was mostly to cover the construction and delivery of Top Hat. That’s the way he thought of it.
The check’s memo field read:
Two Custom Guitars For Garcia — OK Per Parrish.
Top Hat, while never played in public—according to Parrish, Jerry took it home for a period and played it there quite a bit—was never returned. Not part of the deal was a third guitar, Eagle, that Cripe built at the same time as Top Hat. “It was probably going to be Jerry’s next guitar,” Steve said to Hal Hammer, Jr, who transcribed note for Cripe. Maybe so, but with no additional orders from a Garcia about to enter a creative fallow period stemming from health problems, Eagle would remain in Steve’s possession, as did Tribute AKA Saturn, which turned out to be the last completed guitar intended for Jerry.
Not that the lack of an official order from the Grateful Dead office kept the luthier from planning—and even building—guitars intended for his rock idol. Whoever ended up playing the fine instruments, Steve Cripe had now achieved a level of mastery of the craft to which he’d turned his creative sights, and it would ultimately produce another beautiful “one for Jerry.”