Right-Handed Lefties and Left-Handed Righties…My obsession with Hendrix and upside down Stratocasters
As many of you know, Jimi Hendrix was left-handed, but played a right-handed Fender Stratocaster – turned upside down! I’ve always been fascinated with not only the sound of Hendrix on that right-handed upside-down Strat, but with the way it looked as well. There’s something about the whammy bar on top and the tuners on the bottom. I was really intrigued, so number of years ago I bought a righty Strat, turned it upside-down and restrung it. This was definitely the closest I’d ever come to sounding like Hendrix! I even had a friend “distress” it to make it look like it was 50+ years old, and went so far as to put cigarette burns on the headstock. (see me with my Strat below)
Well, I never actually knew what made his distinctive sound so unique. Then I ran across this article in Popular Mechanics magazine about how flipping and restringing a standard right-handed Fender Stratocaster fundamentally changes the string tension and microphone location. That’s what produced Hendrix’s signature mix of bright highs and delicate lows.
Here are the highlights:
- The rear pickup on the traditional Stratocaster is intentionally slanted – capturing the higher strings near their base – where they have a more piercing tone. On Hendrix’s guitar, it catches the higher strings farther up, so instead of shrieking, they sing.
- Guitar pickups are mini-microphones, with a pole magnet aligned below each string. And the distance between the magnet and the string varies for each string. But by reversing the orientation of the traditional Stratocaster, Hendrix changed which strings were closest to their magnets, and consequently, most prominent in the mix. Pretty crazy stuff.
- Conversely, Hendrix’s low strings were comparatively tighter, which made them sound less booming and twangy.
- On a traditional Strat, the highest strings (E, B) are the longest. When turned upside-down, they become the shortest, so they don’t have to be pulled as tightly to be in tune. For Hendrix, that made them easier to bend, like on “All Along the Watchtower.”
- Fender’s headstock design makes every string a different length, so restringing the guitar upside-down changed which strings were longest. This altered the subtle overtones produced by vibrations on the unplayed part of the string above the top of the neck, near the tuning keys.
What’s really amazing is that I doubt Hendrix ever thought about any of this. He just had a tough time finding a decent left-handed guitar, especially back in the day. So Instead, he snagged a cool Strat , flipped it over, restrung it, and ta-da! The rest is history.
From http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/music/a17922/jimi-hendrix-backwards-stratocaster/
I played upside down r/h guitars in ’60’s&’70’s [ &later] because l/h ones were very rare. You get used to that, in so much finally playing a l/h guitar felt novel.
Re Hendrix, I believe he was used to playing flipped guitars & went through so many he needed to get standard ones that were readily available. His sound had nothing to do with dynamics of being upside down. Get real, the sound was in his head & fingers & the guitars , pedals & amps were up at 10. He could have played anything [& did as he did not usually own the guitars he played in his early days] & sounded unique or “Hendrix”..Oh yes, we can all hear those subtle tones of maple neck & reverse headstock during the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock.!
I am doing this too! I came across a “very” inexpensive lefty strat “style” clone and after years of (occasionally) thinking about it, flipping a lefty to standard.
Way fun!
“I was really intrigued, so number of years ago I bought a righty Strat, turned it upside-down and restrung it.”
Hi Stephen, I think you meant “lefty Strat”.
I never took up playing guitar, mainly because LH instruments were either: hard to come by, never what you were looking for, or, quite a bit more expensive than the RH equivalent.
Even when I walked into a music store and asked for a RH Strat to be “flipped” with a LH nut, I was discouraged from doing so. I just gave up in the end.
The selection these days is better, but still far short of the choice right-handed players have. Understandably, it’s economies of scale.