In this excerpt, from an interview with Jimi Hendrix, late 1967, he discusses guitars, and why his preferred guitar is the Fender Stratocaster:
I’ve got about eight guitars, but the two I use are the Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Flying Angel which is shaped like a letter A and is extremely rare in Britain. I play a Fender Stratocaster because it gets used pretty hard in the act and it’s the only one that which will stand up to it. Everyone’s screaming about the seven-year-old Telecaster and the twelve-year-old Gibson and the ninety-two-year-old Les Paul. They’ve gone in an age bag now, but it’s nothing but a fad. The guitars nowadays play just as good. You know, the salesman is always telling you that Chuck Berry took this one to the bathroom with him and he didn’t have any toilet paper, so watch out for the pick guard.
I tried the Telecaster, and it only has two sounds, good and bad, and a very weak tone variation. The Guild guitar is very delicate, but it has one of the best sounds. I tried one of the new Gibsons, but I literally couldn’t play it at all, so I’ll stick with my Fender.
The Stratocaster is the best all-round guitar for the stuff we’re doing. You can get very bright trebles and the dep bass sound. I use light gauge strings, and I put them on slightly higher so they can ring longer. I don’t like to use mikes. To get the right sound it’s a combination of both amp and fretting. It’s a simple trick. I turn the amplifier knob really fast once, twice. That gives the singing, whistling tone – the electronic tone. The trick then is to control this tone with the fingers. It doesn’t make any difference what size the amps are as long as I know I have it. I’m not necessarily trying to be loud. I’m just trying to get this impact.
Source : JIMI HENDRIX - STARTING AT ZERO By Leon Hendrix, Bloomsbury 2013
