Anyone know why Hendrix played right handed guitars upside down? Did Fender not build guitars for lefties back then?

It was an affectation. Basically it was his thing. It made him stand out.

There are only two things that are technically different. The slant of the bridge pickup, and the lengths of string between the nut and the tuning machines. Oh, and the nut is reversed, but that doesn't do anything. You can argue about what effect those other differences have.

His guitars were strung left-handed. He was a true left-handed guitar player.

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Don't forget the polepiece heights!

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You dig?

The slant of the bridge pickup may well have affected the tone since the bass strings were being played through the poles normally set up for the treble strings and vice versa for the treble strings. Also I understand that after his death they found his Martin acoustic in his flat, on which he composed many songs, was strung right handed!

just a question how can a magnet be set up for bass or treble? Hendrix never played staggered pole pickups those would have made a difference but they didnt come out until 1974 i think.

Actually, with Strats, you've got that backwards. Flat polepieces started appearing in Strat pickups around 1975 or so. Any Strat in Hendrix's lifetime would have had staggered polepieces.

The original Strat's polepiece design looked like this (coincidentally, this is a 1974 Strat pickup):

http://www.chrisguitars.com/pickup-fen7 ... bridge.jpg

Of course, this is a right handed design.

The proximity of the individual polepiece to the string directly affects how easily the magnet and in this case, the polepiece will absorb the string's vibrations. As you can see, unwound strings will pick up easier than wound strings' and the width of either affects this too. The original Strat pickup polepiece design was for a wound G string. Hence, and at the risk of being redundant, this is what you are looking at above. What you see above is the stagger which would lend itself to a right handed guitar player having all his or her strings picking up at the same volume with a wound G string.

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My bad.

One major difference that was missed is the flipped around cutaways.

When played upside down, access to the upper frets is greatly hindered!

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

I think he did it just cause it was easier to get right handed strats.
He would go into guitar shops and buy 6 or 7 at a time. I'm sure a lot of music stores around the country didn't have a lot of LH guitars in stock.
I think if he was the type of guy who held on to his guitars for any length of time he would of had left handed guitars.

I believe it was because back in the day they didn't make cheap entry level left handed guitars when Jimi was a young lad, so when his dad bought him his first guitar he had to switch the nut and strings and whatnot. You have to figure when Hendrix was young the solid body guitar was just emerging onto the spotlight, the cheapest ones were Supros, Danelectros, and others who really didn't offer left handed at the time, so he had to adapt to survive so to speak ^^.

Edit: Fender did built left-handed guitars at the time, but they were in very limited quantity and were usually higher priced as a result. Just figure the amount of guitars they could put out in a year was about 5-10% of what they can due today, probably less.

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I traded my car in for a microphone.

Not at all! There was a point where for those of us who already know, we learned this stuff too.

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In Hendrix's case though, he had LONG fingers where the 'wrong' cutaway didn't seem to be an impediment at alll.

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Yeah, I read somewhere that he would get a whole bunch of Strats and take parts from several of them to make one he really liked.

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"My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives." Blazing Saddles...

That's a good way to put it.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Lefty's were usually special order. Hendrix had some huge hands. He never seemed to have a problem with reach.