Jimi Hendrix - The Musical Hoarder

Hendrix got his first Stratocaster in the summer of 1966, and the rest is history. His favorite guitar, he would buy them right handed and restring them to be left handed since there weren't very many left handed models around back then. Hendrix predominately played the Stratocaster much more than any other guitar. His most famous Strat is the 1968 Olympic White model that he played at Woodstock with.

Jimi's second favorite guitar was the Gibson Flying V. His first Flying V he hand painted himself with a psychedelic design, but his second one is much more intriguing. Gibson gave it to him as a gift, which had unique custom built with gold plated hardware, a bound fingerboard and "split-diamond" fret markers that were not found on other 1960s-era Flying Vs. Hendrix can be seen playing this custom Flying V at the Isle of Wight, and the concert at Rainbow Bridge in Maui. Today, the guitar is enshrined at the Hard Rock Cafe in London.

Another guitar that Hendrix owned was the Gibson SG. Like his Stratocasters, his white SG was right handed, but restrung to be lefty for him. He rarely used the SG in concert, however Hendrix can be seen playing it at his concert at Stockholm in 1969, and on the Dick Cavett Show, also in 1969.

Henry Goldrich of Manny's Music in New York recalls selling him everything from a Gibson ES-330, to a Gibson Firebird, to a Mosrite electric resonator guitar. His other guitars included a Guild 12-string acoustic, an Acoustic Black Widow Spider, a double-neck Mosrite, a Hagstrom 8-string bass (played on "Spanish Castle Magic" from Axis: Bold as Love), various Rickenbackers (a bass, a 6-string, and a 12-string), a '67 Gretsch Corvette, a left-handed Guild Starfire Deluxe fitted with a Bigsby tremolo, a '67 Gibson Flying V, a '55 Gibson Les Paul, a '68 Gibson SG Custom, a black, left-handed Flying V, a Gibson Dove acoustic, a Martin acoustic, and a Hofner electric. Modifications to his instruments were minimal, and his frets were rarely reworked because the guitars didn't last long enough to become worn.

Jimi's route to the Marshall stacks that eventually drove his incredible sound was a process of elimination. He owned a Silvertone amp with a matching 2x12 cab during his days in Tennessee in 1961 and 1962, but he mainly borrowed amps for gigs. From 1965 through 1966, Hendrix played through a Fender Twin Reverb.

In 1968, Hendrix agreed to a 5 year contract with Sunn Amplifiers. In exchange for all the free equipment that the Experience needed, Hendrix agreed to offer his input for research and development. Hendrix started out with a 100-F cabinet, loaded with one JBL D-130 in the bottom and an L-E 100-S driver horn in the top. Later, the Sunn setup included up to five Coliseum P.A. tops - altered for guitar at 120 watts RMS each - with ten speaker cabinets loaded with two JBL D-130s each. Hendrix soon stopped using Sunn because he got a lot of noise from the amplifiers that he didn't like when playing at high volume levels.

Hendrix' Marshall of choice was the 100-watt Super Lead driving two 4x12 cabs, and his standard setup would quickly grow to three Super Leads and six 4x12s. He plugged his guitar into one amp, and linked it to the others by running a cable from an adjacent input (the Super Leads had four inputs) to the second amp's input jack, and so on. Since Hendrix performed with his amp settings nearly always on full, his systems wore out fast. This was a long way from the band's humble beginnings, when Hendrix and Noel Redding shared one miked 100-watt Marshall during the sessions for their first album.

One of the things that particularly shaped Jimi's' sound, especially on "Are You Experienced?", was the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face. It was the Fuzz Face that gave him that unmistakeable over-driven and raw sound. Dunlop's JH-1 Fuzz Face is an exact replica of the Dallas Fuzz Face that Hendrix used and toured with.

Effects pedals were a relatively new thing when Hendrix began touring in England. Always the innovator, Hendrix saw the potential of the Wah when he first heard it on Cream's "Tales Of Brave Ulysses." Soon after, the Vox Wah became an indispensable part of his equipment.

After meeting a young effects builder named Roger Mayer in London in 1967, Hendrix was introduced to the neutron bomb of fuzz technology - a prototype design that Mayer called the Octavio. A fuzz box with frequency-doubling circuitry that synthesized a second note an octave above the fingered note, the Octavio was first used by Hendrix on "Purple Haze" and "Fire".

Another essential part of Hendrix' effects pedal chain was the Uni-Vibe pedal. The Uni-Vibe mimics the sound effect of a rotating Leslie organ speaker. Hendrix mainly only used the Uni-Vibe live, and can be heard on his rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, and "Machine Gun" at the Fillmore East.