We followed Greg Wright in the clubs in New Orleans in the mid to late 70's. Not only is he a great talent, but a really nice guy. As young punks he always made time to talk with us, sign albums and make us feel special. We hated to see him head to CA.

Sorry..however coming from someone who does'nt know alot about much...I have to say in reading your "posts" that if you go back on watch the fist air play that Hendrix got he is playing a guitar for a right hander...period! With the strings as they would be for a "right-hander. As time short as it was for a man so gifted... he still used a right handed guitar, however he strung it correctly. The special Bio just this year so it so well. And if we really get down to brass tacs, I know many a musican that to this day believed that Hendrix wrote..."All Along The Watchtower"...can you believe that? And that was not the only song he "covered" by his (one of) "idols"

Peace out to you all...enjoy

Besides taking a right handed guitar and flipping it the other way and putting the bass string (E) up top and the small(high E) at the Bottom , he lowered the strings down one step,thats why he could bend the strings easier,,,,,,,,, for those that dont have mirror vision , next time take a mirror next to the tv set while playing a jimi hendrix concert, you can see the chords better like a right handed player , you can comprehend how he plays to get the chords right, (fwiw)   Hope this Helps,,Best David

i like jimis playing over bob dylans all along the watch tower even though bob wrote the song

Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater is the only guitar player who played a right handed guitar that was flipped around and played left handed without changing the strings back. Notice here that the high E is up on top.

That means everything he played has been improvised!

 

http://www.piedmonttalent.com/images/artist_sets/EddyClearwaterJPEG1.jpg

I'm a southpaw as well. Many of us can flip a right-handed guitar and play it left-handed without re-stringing. I got into my last band by doing that when asked to sit in. I've never seen a righty who can flip a left-handed guitar and play it though.

{ rattra said }
Also, Jimi didn't change the original orientation of the pickups...therefore, the pickup poles that were intended for specific strings are orientated with different strings (EBGDAE vs EADGBE).  There are Fender pickups that are available called "reverse-68s" sold by Musician's Friend for us right-handers that want to get the same string/pickup orientation that Jimi got.
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thats interesting I'd never considered that.
Though I can't see it making that much difference with the sound that Jimi Hendrix had?
but it does sound like a good marketing gimmick.

The only hint that it might go beyond marketing is that, on a genuine Strat pickup, there's one pickup pole that sticks up (I resist the too-easy metaphor), so for Jimi it switches from the G string to the D string.

One thing many people don't know is that Jimi was not as equally skilled but none the less skilled in playing a righty guitar with an unchanged string set up a la Albert King. I read stories where he would pick up a guitar thar was strung for a righty and flip it and play it. One is when he used to redo Noel Reddings bass parts he would just flip Noel's bass and play that way. About the strings it wasn't only the down tuning that helped with bending notes really high, but also the gauge of the strings. He usually used a string off of a banjo for the high E which would equate to using a 9 gauge and on the B string he had a 10 gauge string.

About the pick-ups the fact on strats today you have 5 positions instead of 3 is in part due to jimi. mixing the neck and middle, and middle and bridge gives an out of phase sound which is famous by hendrix. He would get this with a 3 position switch by resting the switch between positions .

James

Jimi was the master.  I used to waver in my mind as to who is the greatest guitarist ever.  After watching live fotage of Jimi especially from the Montery Pop Fetival, to me he is clearly the greatest.  He and later Stevie Ray Vaughn tuned down all the strings down a half step, the E stings for instance went from E to E flat.  I'm not sure that it was only to allow them to bend the strings easier though.

yes but the cat sure could play it man

Hey smartie pants, if you ever new a lefty that learned to play guitar on his own, you would know that they usually borrow a friends righty guitar and learn to play upside down.  When a lefty gets their own guitar then he decides righty lefty upsidowny rightsidupsy........ this being said i think jimmy could have F%*Ked IT UP any ol' way.

I saw Hendrix 3 times in concert, and 1 time in a late night jam after a concert. In concert he used a right handed guitar strung for the left hand. One night in San Antonio, after a concert, I was at a club with the band Sweet Smoke playing. About 20 people were there. Hendrix and Mitch Mitchell came in. Jimi took the bass player's right hand bass, flipped it and played it. He then took the guitar player's right handed guitar, flipped it and played for about an hour. Much later in life I had a dream where we were at a lake house, and Hendrix was there. He played along to Secret Agent Man on an acoustic. I asked him, "When you're playing, do you even know if the guitar is strung for right or left?" He replied,"All I know is it has 19 strings and I play it."

mtm105:

Also his mother was native American and because his father was black, he had self-esteem issues due to the complexity of his heritage.

Man, you should have just left it at the first paragraph. Please don't get into what, if any, self-esteem issues Jimi might have had, or anyone else for that matter, because you are not inside anyone else's head. OK? There were alot of pressures from alot of sources that Jimi had to deal with, but NO ONE is in the position to comment on the man's psychological situation. Even those close to him at the time merely speculate about his various issues. What matters is the incredible music he created while he was here, and I'm sure that's all he'd want us to be talking about.

"He had self-esteem issues due to the complexity of his heritage." PLEASE! So then, "pure-bred" white people don't ever have self-esteem issues? Riiiight...

 

Sideways, in gravey.

Somebody is selling pickups with "reversed pole pieces"? Um, why not just take the original pickup and flip it around 180 degrees?

On the serious side, I've always wondered if the reverse pole pieces were part of Jimi's sound. Or did he flip his pickups?