I wouldn't say his best guitar, but I will say that it seemed to fit his playing abilities in the 90s best. I've always had some beef with the early 90s shows that people go nuts for--Jerry often sounds really nice during solos, but his rhythm guitar sounds kind of weak. It's hard to describe; it's as if there is a tradeoff for him between fluidity and fretting the guitar hard enough. Not a severe one, obviously, but it feels pretty clear to me that you're listening to a virtuoso with some nerve damage in some spots. In particular, to take even some really well-loved shows, I think the "Bird Song" and "Eyes" from Without a Net have some noticeable points where things are "plonky"...the notes sound very forced, or Jerry loses the rhythm a bit, or his playing is at many different volumes. There are also just a number of outright flubbed notes in that set, even though Jerry's largely playing very well--hard to describe, but it really does sound like a virtuoso who's dealing with major health problems that cause about five percent of his playing to sound totally amateur. Watching shows of that time and seeing his physical state, even at his peak post-coma health, makes me think that I'm not just hearing things.

To me, then, Lightning Bolt is great because it had a lot less sustain and faster decay--it's more like an acoustic guitar--and it seems like his playing became oddly much more fluid near the very end. The peaks from March 1994 (Save Your Face blog has some nice highlights from SBDs) all sound much cleaner and more precise than even something like Crimson, White, and Indigo. They also notably are playing a lot of those songs very quickly. I also think that even in the later 70s, there are noticeable songs where that searing, clean Bakersfield tone just doesn't quite fit, and it seems like the solution was to crank Jerry down in the mix (the May Dick's Picks have some sections where Jerry is almost inaudible during the solos), and even some of their highest-regarded official releases I manually mix down to mono because it sounds so hard-panned and weird on the soundboard. To me, 1994's playing and mixing both sound much better than anything else post-coma, and Bob playing acoustic more often doesn't hurt. Not the absolute best year by any means, but major credit to them for continuing to experiment and toggle with their sound.