Jimi played an Ice Blue Metallic Stratocaster just like mine. See below.
Jimi played an Ice Blue Metallic Stratocaster just like mine. See below.
Mix and Match Parts
Being my Stratocaster body shows signs of abuse, and the neck is pristine, could Jimi have swapped out the necks?
"The team would vary from time to time, but most often in mid-’67 there was Gerry Stickells (road manager) and Neville Chesters (roadie), and sometimes Roger Mayer (technical support). They were exploiting the Strat’s screw-together construction and would strip and swap bodies, necks, pickguards, controls and more. This makes it especially difficult to determine, in hindsight, how many Strats Jimi used.
We’ll almost certainly never know for sure, but there were probably no more than 15 base instruments – regularly repurposed and chopped about, sometimes with the same neck appearing on several bodies – right up to the point in 1968 when, as we’ll see, Jimi appeared to settle on two primary instruments."
Read full article: www.guitarworld.com/features/jimi-hendrix-fender-stratocasters
Hendrix Played a 1966/67 IBM
As you can see the dates on the pick- ups are dated 12-22-66 which means the guitar probably shipped form the Fender plant in January of 1967. Making this a 1966/67 like Hendrix used. Hendrix liked the neck position and would choose his guitars based on that front pick up. My neck pick-up shown here has an incredible reading of 6.37k ohms, very rare for this year guitar. Not to mention the middle pick up measures 6.37k and bridge reads 6.1k ohms respectively. All three pickups are original and untouched. http://guitarhq.com/pickups.html
The Story
In 2014 I bought this guitar on an Ebay auction. At the time, I thought I was just buying a 1966 Stratocaster re-fin in cinnamon red. My goal was to re-paint the guitar to a more desirable color. I started removing the pickgaurd and bridge assembly and began sanding. Halfway through the process, I discovered another color underneath the red. Could this be the original color? So meticulously for 8 hours I carefully removed the paint by hand with a razor blade. To my surprise, Ice Blue Metallic was the color that was revealed. I started researching the color and found between 1965-1969 Fender was only offering this custom color. After putting it all back together, I said very cool but how is it going to sound? Owning a Olympic white 1971 and Black 1972 I had something to compare it with. Nothing prepared me for what I was about to hear. When I started playing the IBM...I was truly amazed! It has incredible resonance, perfect tuning up and down the fret board, and the pickups are unlike any I have ever heard.
I truly lucked out!
Fast Forward...
I started googling "Fender Ice Blue Metallic" and on some of these sites discovered Jimi was playing this exact model. Doing further research, I found this rare video (see link below) of Jimi playing the guitar.
No one really knows what happened to Jimi's Ice Blue Metallic Stratocaster. That's what fascinates mucical historians to this day. There are several speculations. Maybe the guitar was stolen, destroyed or given away, but nobody knows for sure. It appears through hmy Stratocaster is the same make, model, color and year that Jimi played in 1967-1968. Being the Ice Blue Metallic, a rare color for Fender, production was being cut for all Fender guitars making 1967 the lowest production year of the Stratocaster. I thought there was a chance mine is the one he played on but through further investigation my lower horn of the the guitar does not have a hole for the strap. So I guess that eliminates my guitar.
At 3:00 minutes into the video he changes his white guitar to the Ice Blue Metallic.
https://www.strat-talk.com/threads/rare-hendrix-playing-his-blue-strat.404653/