What you say is true, but there is a big difference between using effects and using effects skillfully.
I do a lot of realtime digital synthesis, but that certinaly doesnt make me a Brian Eno. I was at a guitar shop and was bragging about how newer computers can easily replace pedals, and a Hendrix fan asked me if I could synthesize like Hendrix. I can replicate his pedals but I could never use them the way he did.
You can't deny - he plays the guitar like normal people speak. He probaly didn't even think in musical notation, he probably just thought of the tones he wanted and they "dripped from his fingers".

Also, regarding the bootlegs of Hendrix playing out of key. There is a long lineage of blues musicians that don't necessarily play on key all the time, but the detuning sometimes evokes a really nice emotional resonance - a new perspective if you will.

Just the opinions of this reporter...sorry if I am being pugnacious.

Hendrix was in a class above everyone else. He pushed the guitar as far as it could possibly go. His playing was pure, raw emotion.

RE Hendrix

 

Yeah but he's no Buck Dharma....

Mr. Roboto, I agree about his finger picking abilities. The majority of his unreachable playing was due to his flamenco type finger picking ( i.e. bass notes with the thumb and picking of high notes with his fingers ,simultaneously..flamenco style in its roots. The effects simply exagerrated this style. : ) He was original in how he heard notes and executed them.

Hendrix had to come to England to be 'discovered', and then re-exported back to the US.

The Experience were modelled on Cream, this was the perfect launch pad for Jimi 's talents .

I always found it interesting that band tensions arose in the Band of Gypsies with more competing ego's.

 

Pagey has a great style. Check out" White Summer " on the Danelectro guitar with the lipstick pickups . Tell me he isn't fantastic then.                                                                                                                                                                                            I don't compare Electric guitar greats..there are too many of them...Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck, EVH, Pete Townsend, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Alvin Lee, John Lennon, Joe Walsh, Mark Farner , and on, and on, and on......indefinitely.             Let's just enjoy their greatness, when it happens.

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Hendrix and Page are 2 enormous artists.

Hendrix "blew his load" with his first album.  An absolut monster of sonic mastery.  The production is top 3 albums of all time.  But IMO his skills tended to be less original afterwards, as he was tried to get past the success of the first album.  Watchtower is sooo overated IMO, lots of Wah and engineering.

Page wasn't purely original, copying licks and leads off of predecessors ahead of him.  Like Einstein and Newton stood on shoulders of giants, so did Page.  Page put everything together and created a masterpiece of musical history, something that may never be duplicated, not because of any special talent, but he was the right person at the right time to discover and produce Led Zep's music.  Gotta give credit to Bohnam, though.