Accordo: Jimi Hendrix's big headstock Strat

Last century the turning point came in January 1965 with the arrival of the misdeed: Leo Fender, weighed down by health problems that kept him from his usual mega work schedule, formalized the handover of the company that bore his name to CBS, a colossus of the music industry. Leo tucked 13 million dollars in his pocket (an absurd sum for the time) and dedicated himself to his health. Instead, CBS dedicated itself to the progressive demolition of the company that in 15 years had changed the face of music with its revolutionary instruments.

The first to pay was the Stratocaster, which, at the end of 1965, after using up the stock of necks in the warehouse, was to acquire a new bigger headstock, destined to contain a larger more visible logo, which made its appearance in late 1967. In addition to this aesthetic detail, the other modifications (all thought up immediately, but introduced between 1966 and 1967 when the pre-CBS stocks started to run out) was the new neck plate with the engraved F, the new machine heads designed by Forrest White in 1965 and made in-house, the new vinyl scratch plate that replaced the celluloid one (inflammable, but that started to turn a delightful greenish-white color after just a few months), new fretboard markers in imitation pearl plastic, a new, thicker polyester coating and the new "maple cap" neck with fretboard in applied maple, to replace the classic monoblock maple neck.

After the witch hunt that flared up during the epidemic of vintage-mania of the mid '80s, fans and collectors came to realize that the guitars of the early CBS period ‒ those from the sale to the introduction of the micro-tilt in 1971 ‒ were in no way inferior in quality or sound to the idolized pre-CBS models. One of the reasons for this rediscovery was Jimi Hendrix, the man who, with a Fender Strat, was to change the sound of rock forever.

Jimi was beyond the instrument. When he didn’t have a dime he had a dream: ‘I want a white Strat,’ recalls Ernie Isley, leader of Jimi’s first proper band, the Isley Brothers. In actual fact, his talent was such that he could have played a shoebox with elastic bands just as well, but with his rigorously upside-down Stratocaster ‒ bypassing the traditional lack of left-handed instruments ‒ he was one. He might hit it, smash it, burn it, but through his Marshalls he always drew sounds from it that were inaccessible to others and were destined to make rock history.

At that time, vintage-mania hadn’t yet exploded, in the '60s of the boom new stuff was always considered better than old stuff and when money started rolling in, Jimi made sure he wasn’t without guitars, buying them in lots almost always from Manny's on 48th street and then scattering them round the globe, in one piece in different hotels, in pieces or in cinders backstage after his wildest concerts. Even if everything passed through his hands, the configuration he preferred was the white maple-cap with which he hit the most important stages in his career, and that endured as the symbol of his unattainable genius.

One curious note. Not many people know that Jimi Hendrix was the first artist that Fender tried to officially dedicate a guitar to, much earlier than the official birth of the Artist Series with the Eric Clapton model in 1988. In 1980 the Californian company tried to prevent its decline by turning to its glorious times of yore. The 25th Anniversary saw the light in 1970, the first Stratocaster without micro-tilt after eight years, and then “The Strat” was born, but the marketing men were urging the company to make even more striking instruments, able to hold their own against ever-fiercer competitors. It was Mudge Miller, marketing rep at the time, who asked for production of a guitar inspired by the legendary Jimi. John Page, founder of the Fender Custom Shop (at that time working at Fender) recalls that the "Hendrix Stratocaster" never went into production, but was a special edition desired by Miller for a pool of Texan dealers. Five prototypes were built along with 25 definitive examples, identified by a decal with an M on the headstock.

They were white, with a right-handed body and a left-handed neck in monoblock maple, and so had little or nothing to do with the instruments Jimi used. Despite this they are much sought after by today’s collectors and see stratospheric price tags, also because one of the prototypes was bought and played by Stevie Ray Vaughan (read the story here of the other Fenders dedicated to Jimi).

Alberto Venturini, renowned collector of vintage instruments, lent us a gorgeous original Fender Stratocaster from 1969. It left the factory a year after the Strat that Jimi Hendrix used at Woodstock (as chance would have it, exactly when “ours” was in the throes of being born), and is practically its twin: large headstock, four-screw neck plate with a large engraved "F" screwed into a neck with truss rod access at the base and a three-way selector, as was once the custom. The relic delivered to us is a real lady whose only difference from the historic white Strat is her rosewood fingerboard.
We decided to entrust her to the canny hands of Michele Quaini, who, for the occasion put her through her paces with some of Jimi’s most famous riffs.

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