Reading the comments from the knuckleheads who hate on this guitar crack me up, I have owned Strats made in the U.S.A,Mexico,Japan,Korea ect... When I was in Guitar Center, I saw a Jimi Hendrix MIM, plugged it in to a Little Vox Modeling amp and this guitar was a BLAST to play!! Sounds AMAZING! Looks AMAZING, the quality is INCREDIBLE. Best bang for the buck ever!
I agree on the tone for the bridge pickup - super easy mod - tiny peice of wire and a dab of solder on 2 of the terminals on that 5 way switch. Done! All my Strats have this done to them. A good tech can do it in under twenty minutes - including removing strings and putting them back on!
It's nice to hear the cons alongside the pros. These days so many commercial entities seem like they're afraid to be honest. Thanks, John! I just wish this one were US made.
I have a black US made one. It’s amazing but it was almost 4k. The middle pickup is also no RWRP so it’s hum city in every position. It’s the Fender Custom Shop Voodoo Child strat. They have 2 white ones left at Wildwood as of this writing and since they’ve been there since 2017 they’ll cut you a deal.
In the 90's Fender U.S.A put out a limited edition "Jimi Hendrix Tribute Stratocaster" I always wanted one, but they became instantly collectable and cost a grip of money, So when these came out, I bought one, FANTASTIC GUITAR!!!
Great playing and great review. Don't always love his rig rundowns but this is a fantastic review. I love that he's honest and points out the things he doesn't love or agree with. Great work John
Yeah, that one had some cringe. Hendrix was using the most up to date stuff available. When it wasn't available, he had people like Roger Mayer create it. He def would be looking at the most modern stuff available today.
Why am I watching this. I have the purple one and it sounds freaking awesome. Never letting this bad boy go. This guitar was the reason why I sold my gibby Les Paul
Great review John, you have done a great job, as usual. I own this guitar and it's amazing, i have owned many strats over the years and this guitar has some serious mojo going on, very unique sounding. I ended up using it on 2 albums so far and counting.....
I've recently had access to an older Mexican Strat for about 3 months. I'm amazed at the playability and real Strat sound. It's leaving and I've been looking at the higher end ones (Elite, American 50's) but honestly it's down to this or a Mex Delux. This is just something different and cool . Forget the exact historic stuff. Sounds and looks bitchen. I'm thinking the new violet. Now that is different. That color and that crazy header? Awesome. May need a tweed case to go with it. I love Jimi but this guitar also stands alone as something special as well for me. Great vid and great playing amigo! Cheers
I will admit the medium jumbo frets take a little getting used to. But after a few licks your right at home with your riffs and it becomes home. Took me a day to warm up to this guitar but when I did it was amazing!
6:12 he talks about tone control for the bridge . For those of you that don't know It really is an easy thing to do to get tone control for your bridge, This is how. Pull your guard , On the switch you will find 4 lugs on each side, What you need to do is locate the non spring side of your switch Or the opposite side of your pickup wire lugs for the switches that don't have a spring, , You simply solder a piece of wire to the 2 farthest lugs that are towards the bridge side of the switch, yes the last to lugs solder those together with a piece of wire and you have bridge tone control. You need to do nothing else.
At last a Strat with the top two strings' pickup poles at a proper height! For lead playing I have a real problem with the low output you usually get on the top two strings on Strats.
Pickups look and sound VERY similar to the ones in my Classic 70's Stratocaster...even the polepiece stagger is the same, albeit reversed for this particular Strat!
Great review John and great playing. I love you on Rig Rundown..you're the best! On the JH Strat, I bought one on the provision that I could return it if I didn't like it after 3 days (Willcut's Music out of KY---just super people, can't recommend them enough!). I actually ended up sending the guitar back. It's a gorgeous looking Strat indeed by there where things I just didn't like. First off the Pickups. I just couldn't get past the hum and noise--horrible and most modern players will take and instant dislike to that. I've been playing since the early 70's so this brought back bad memories of Strat's I owned yrs ago. Secondly, the pickups are really low out put which is no necessarily a bad thing but it reminds you why Hendrix used Fuzz boxes etc to achieve his sound because these PU's will not really push you amp at all on there own....not like, say, Texas Specials will. Another thing about this guitar is the reverse headstock. You will either love it or hate it and as big a Hendrix fans as I am--I surprised myself in that I really disliked it. It just changes your orientation to the neck--it's strange. So what it boiled down to was that it just seemed in the end to me, aside from the novelty, just an other Strat, and not a particularly good one compared to the two other Strats in my collection: A MIJ 50's copy, and one I really, really love--an American Special with the big headstock, Texas Specials and jumbo frets. It's so much better than this one I just couldn't bring myself to keep the JH Strat. Bottom line is that I strongly suggest any potential buyer go to a local music shop and test one out before making the plunge...otherwise you may end up being underwhelmed, and disappointed.
Very interesting and I learned a lot! Love these informative vids instead of when guys show off a guitar they just play and play instead of sharing cool info.
Just my thoughts, .....Probably not hearing the E or the A string adding to the low end of this guitar since it is all past the nut, but the pick up in reverse, that might be where the magic is coming from.
+Kern Ramsdell the magic came from his fingers and only his fingers. That's all you need to play like Hendrix his fingers& soul.most of 67/68 Hendrix play his Gibson flying "V" no Stratocaster in the mix, He still managed to sound like Hendrix with a Gibson, So it has not a lot to do with this gimmick
+Pistol Walker He always sounded like himself but he actually used a Strat a helluva lot more and you don't get that upside down sound with Gibsons because you have Symmetry in string lengths to the posts and in the (not angled) pickups and the level poles. Don't be a misery guts - Go and try one out :-)
It's more about string tension than more low end in my opinion. The extra string length adds tension, so the bass strings stand up to rhythm playing a bit better, while the treble strings are shorter, resulting in less tension for soloing and bending. Similar to the theory behind multi=scale guitars. I feel that the reverse headstock and reverse slanted bridge pickup actually improve upon the strat design (as would having a tone pot wired to the bridge pickup; seriously, how often has anyone ever rolled off the tone on the middle pickup?).
DETRIK. FX Hmmmm... For a guy saying it all came From only his fingers and his soul, you sure got a lot of Jimi Hendrix gear on your channel.... And of course Jimi is gonna sound like Jimi, due to his style. I believe Kern was referring to The tone that Jimi was pulling out of the strat.
I know many people are not sold on this and claiming that Fender is making a cash grab, but as a guitar/bass specs nerd, I'm actually glad that Fender finally created this model. It's not exactly like how Jimi's guitar was, but it just makes sense in terms of how the control scheme is set up on the signature model. You won't have a bunch of guitarists having to adjust to Jimi's original setup. I sympathize with the purists out there that appreciate the fact that it didn't stop Jimi playing a lefty as a righty, I just tend to agree with what is being said in the video.
And I think you're absolutely right to pair the strat with the Fender Supersonic combo. I do exactly the same. They've been made for each other. My archtops and gretsch guitars I use a Vox ac 30 which I also deem right for a Country Gentleman or an Epiphone Casino...
I always mod my Strats whether they have a single coil or a humbucker in the bridge so that the tone knob for the middle also works for it. Just take a small piece of wire and follow the wire that comes off the bottom tone knob to the switch, look at the lug its connected to, and see the empty lug next to it. Solder that small piece of wire between the two to create a bridge and there ya go, tone control on the bridge. Simple mod that all Strats should come with right out of the factory.
+Noah Steiger Yes me too ! What I don't get is all the "nay sayers" . It is a quality guitar. Even if you are not going to play Hendrix stuff on it . It is such a sweet playing and sounding instrument.
+Bristol Blue I agree...SCREW the negative people who have a problem with this great guitar!! I own the black model. And even though I modded the hell out of the guitar (that's just me...rarely does an 'off the shelf' guitar meet my needs) it is a sweet instrument! The hell with authenticity....which would be a left body and a lefty neck; that would be uncomfortable as hell to play!
Well....let's just say...it's almost unrecognizable... I changed out the neck to a flatter radius...12".....with a better mirror image logo. And I changed the pickups to noiseless.......DiMarzio Virtual Vintage..... I think it's an infinitely better guitar now.... scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/12801676_10208067863708342_4734131130430000650_n.jpg?oh=500f471a2432ff986e21fa1a1f45ec02&oe=57F21140
+Bernie Koestlmaier Because it gets in the way and is a step too far for the mass market. The price would also increase because you need extra routing . I often thought the same thing until I started doing some homework on the subject, because before they did this guitar ,there hadn't been one since the 90's so i was considering building one. To be fair, I could have spent a lot more had they not beat me to it ! Try one - you will love it :-)
***** 2 piece maple? Not Fender ,either a maple neck with rosewood 'board or 1 piece maple neck. No separate pieces of maple. This guitar and it's logic have been described over & over ......
Is it just me that thinks it’s so cool that they made a right handed guitar, string normally, but just with a reversed headstock to make it look like how Jimi Hendrix would flip his guitar upside down. How he played, since it was a right handed guitar, and flipped, the high e string would be what faced you, not low E. Pretty crazy man
Na, Jimi switched the strings so that it would be like a real left handed guitar. The low E was closer to his face & the high E closer to the ground, just like when right handed people play.
@@EricRennerYT I did not, the delivery got pushed out another 6 months…….thats one year plus, since ordering the guitar, my wife is in the middle of stage three cancer, so I canceled the order, need to save those pennies
See THIS is what Fender should have done with the bridge pickup to begin with. Makes the 4th, 5th, and 6th strings sound better at least to my ear imo. Not to mention palm mutes sound way better too. Ive owned a few strats and I never understood why they angled that pickup on all of their strats even teles too.
Great playing man ! I bought mine a week ago and it is awesome. Glad you showed that it's not a one trick pony and when playing Jimi stuff, a little hum adds to the flavour in my opinion. Mexican Strats such as these might be £200+ over the Std. MIM but are £300 below an American Std and far below the price of a USA vintage re-issue. Lets be honest ; only one man ever sounded like Jimi... that was Jimi ! Don't stop this from being a brilliant guitar for anyone in the market for a nice Strat which oozes mojo ! Thanks Jimi , Fender & the guy in the video :-)
John is an awesome guitarist and pedal steel player in Nashville, friend's and he is also a great singer and his wife Megan is an amazing fiddle player and singer. so if you dislike anything this man plays you have to be out of your mind, just go to Nashville and try to get in our click you better be a monster player or stay home cause you wont last 3 months in Twang town and thats if you end up playing on the street and fighting for a corner, this man and his wife has played with people that you would only dream of so you dislike people come to Nashville and bring it on, love ya John keep picking and grinning..
Another great review by John, who is sooo by far the best reviewer and interviewer on the PG staff. I hope they're paying him as such! I agree with his comment about the tone pots - to me, the knobs on the Strat have never made sense. I always move to two pots, leaving the current volume pot hole empty, because I always hit it when I'm playing, and I wire the tone to control the whole overall tone, more like a two knob PRS. If you wrap your pinky around the volume knob you wouldn't want it moved, but if you hit it all the time, there's no law that says you can move it. I also manage to hit the damn switch at least once while I'm playing. But the good news is that the Strat is THE mod platform of the guitar world. It's easy to mod and everyone does. Side note - I'd pay real money if John would stop pointing with his middle finger. Back in high school we had a social studies teacher named Mr. Rowan who always did that, and we'd snicker, and he wouldn't know why. He was a really nice guy, though. Just like John.
I built (or more accurately had someone else build, lol) a Warmoth custom strat, and left that first knob position empty (not even the hole) for that same reason (made worse by a very loose pot on my previous strat). Reverse large headstock, HSH pickups and a ghost piezo system in the bridge, making the remaining controls a magnetic volume and a piezo volume (and an output jack that can use either a regular or stereo cable).
Great review as always. As far as this particular Strat though...You could just buy a reverse slant pickguard, take off the String Tree and add a couple winds to the "e" and "B" strings to prevent them from slipping off the nut. That would make them slinkier. Or just get a higher profile String Tree. Though I must admit that something does happen to the feel of the guitar when you flip the Headstock (which I don't care for but it does). I can see people buying them as a collector's item. Purists can just flip a lefty Strat. If it's your first or only Strat, just be happy with it and play it!
great review and it's a dealmaker for me...hard to find really good strats these days, every demo I've heard of this model sounds dead f'n on...but this is by far the best review and great chops...wish I had that fluidity, but I'm not bad for a drummer...
John , another great review also Kudos on your Rig Rundowns especially your recent ones like Uli John Roth and the amazing Dave Stewart. Youre such a freat player it makes me wonder how come we dont hear any of your own music or bands on YT, Perhaps I havent looked hard enough for one. Peace!
John, your guitar neck looks awful goofy... Doh! Man, you sound so great playing that super cool guitar! Love the adjusted pickups, it sounds different for sure. Nice video, thanks!
Thank you Premier and John for a great review as others have stated. Today you helped me a lot because I have this guitar and have been tempted to swap out the pickups ( why I cannot imagine) to The Duncan Jimi Signature Pickups. Because of your tone examples I would have to be nuts to take these USA Vintage 65's out. Perfect Hendrix sound and unique strat tonal differences for non Jimi tunes. The Duncan's are a powerful pickup set and bright to my ears, if not a bit thinner sounding than these 65's. I just turned down a special offer online from a big vendor to purchase at 10 % off. I know the Duncan's would be cool on other strat's but here in my Fender Jimi Signature Strat, I got a real Hendrix tone. Yes, it would of been interesting with the Jimmy Vaughan bridge tone pot wiring you mentioned and also a leftie tremolo to have the tremolo bar in your palm like Jimi had off the bass string side. But this blows away the 1997 Reverse logo and body model Fender created. John you just saved me 400 bucks. That's Premier in my world. Loving you from Nashville, Jodi Anna
That's an awfully cheap fix. I can see returning it for a replacement that was correct, but if you really liked the guitar other than that detail, it's such a cheap and easy fix, even if you pay someone to do it for you...
One thing i seem a bit confused about is i have often seen hendrix playing an it strikes me that he used to just flip the guitar and have the strings upside down as well, which is a feature i have noticed with a lot of the old blues guitarists. They just played the guitar in complete reverse. I have to say I love this guitar, I have had a lot ofo guitars over the years, and aside from a Japanese Jaguar i had for a very long time, it's always a strat that i come back too. I guess i'm just not the biggest fan of humbuckers. But I always find the guitarist with the most distinctive feel always end up with strats and teles, althought there are some phenomanal players of Les Pauls, and they do have a beauty, I just love the pure tones of strats. I reallly want one of these guitars! hahaha
Was'nt Hendrix strat a maple fret-board glued on to a maple neck? Tell us about the wiring! Tell us everything. Sounds fantastic, I think the pickups are the biz!
Thank you! Great playing! Did you notice any difference in D and G string balance when using neck or middle pickup. Do they pop out louder because D and G magnet poles are pretty high?
+harlon57 Try it ! Not really small like some other MIM's. Compared to my USA '52 Tele the neck feels slim but in reality doesn't feel different IMO to a USA standard Strat .
harlon57 That's interesting. In retrospect it is a different shape to my other Strat. That's the MIM 60th Annie ,which is almost identical to the older USA '57 Re-issue .
Bristol Blue my current favorite is my 2013 Fender Select Strat HSS with channel-bound fretboard and hand-oiled birdseye maple neck. i.imgur.com/3FdySbo.jpg
spectacular tone from your playing and pro mic'd Super Sonic amp set-up -very nice to hear a stellar musician break it down- I agree in regards to the tone control / modern 5 way switch...Fender def. should have designated it to the bridge. Hendrix might find the 9.5 modern radius too small for his hands-
To what end? To make it more difficult and/or awkward to play? It's not going to change the tone, just the playability. Same reason why they didn't use a lefty body; who wants the knobs under their wrist and forearm? Or the cutaway shorter?
@@ASPEDBUSDRIVER1 I don't think SRV used a top-mounted wang-bar because it was harder to play, the opposite I would think. I've got a 1997 Hendrix Tribute, which has a top-mounted wang-bar, and it's easier for me to use than my Nash strat with bottom mounted wang-bar. when you aren't using it, it just fallout of the way, and where it screws in barely gets in my way. Using a reverse body takes getting used to, but now I prefer it, as does Eric Gales, along with Hendrix.....
Ironically, the Jimmie Vaughan MIM Strat has the bridge pickup wired for the bottom tone control, leaving the middle pickup "open". This is easy to change as you only have to move one wire at the five position pickup selector. Hell, I can barely solder and I pulled it off on my other Strat. If inclined, one can get a P90 sound outa that there bridge pickup. Now, if only the MIM Hendrix Strat had a LEFT HANDED TREM, I would buy one.......
I wish they would have turned the entire body upside down. The way jimi had to play his. Then it would have really felt like a hendrix tribute guitar. That was a cool look. Jimi gave to a already fantastically styled guitar.
@@kitoyobeni1 I checked out Jimi Hendrix's images, and have some kind of sense about how big his hand was, and he's got pretty big hands, maybe that's why it wasn't a problem for him to play higher frets.
Hey boss. Did you set this guitar up first? I have another much older MIM Strat set up with 11's and compared to it, my new Hendrix Strat (with 10s I presume) has intonation issues and sounds thin and is not nearly as loud. Is that all in the set up and strings. Normally the neck pickup is lusciously fat and bluesy. Not so much on my Hendrix... I'm considering returning it but everyone else is super happy with theirs???
I bought an old left handed Squire for $100.00 reversed the nut and tuned down to Eb. That was just for fun. If you think that buying a ceratin guitar will make you sound like Hendrix, good luck. You have to think like him. You have to embrace every thing about him. Listen to Randy Hansen, he's close. Hendrix playing a Gibson sounds like Hendrix.
It certainly gets you closer, with the reversed pickups with staggered poles and bridge pickup slant. That said, for many it's all about the look anyway and copping that Jimi look, while still maintaining the playability of a right handed body (for righties, of course). I do prefer the mirror image headstock logo used on the previous Jimi model, the Voodoo strat though. Fender's left handed logos always looked odd to me...
My oldest friend Dale does an amazing job imitating Hendrix ...but the key word here is imitating..I'd rather hear an original take on his sound... Dale did put out some very interesting originals using his incredible cloning abilities though...
I did the same! the only thing I regret is not keeping up with my violin, and I was pretty good too, but don't even have a recording lol (this was in the late 90s).
May be the mix but those pickups are too scooped, too selective in the upper frequencies. If you listen to his guitars and handtone shaping, he really tries to pull out the mids. A sort of island of mids emerges that is woody and clean while the lows and highs are pushing harder. I am reminded of the envelope filter.
Woke up with G.A.S this morning! :D I ... need ... more ... gear !!! I ... need ... umm ... A FENDER STRATOCASTER!!! I think I've found which one. A trip to a local music store for some hands on Jimi Hendrix Experience is doctors orders.
