“Leo Fender got it wrong and Hendrix corrected it”: Richard Fortus explains the simple tweaks used by Jimi Hendrix and Joe Perry that improved the Stratocaster beyond its original design
Richard Fortus believes Jimi Hendrix inadvertently fixed two glaring issues with Leo Fender’s Stratocaster design, and they’re mods he’s since made to some of his own electric guitars.
In a recent interview with Total Guitar, the Guns N’ Roses and Dead Daisies guitarist said that Hendrix’s flipped playing – which saw him employ a right-handed Strat as a leftie – actually helped improve the guitar’s tone.
According to Fortus, by flipping the guitar upside down and therefore reversing the angle the bridge pickup sits at, and also reversing the headstock – a novelty some believe improves tuning stability – Hendrix vastly improved the guitar’s design.
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, who Fortus spends much of the interview waxing lyrical about, noticed how those quirks impacted the guitar’s tone and promptly followed suit. In doing so, Fortus believes both players “corrected” Leo’s original design with such simple tweaks.
“I think it probably came from his love of Hendrix,” Fortus ponders. “But having a left-handed headstock, you’ve got more string length on low strings where you want it, which is probably why Hendrix had such a piano-like low-end.
“I think Joe figured out that if you have a left-handed headstock, it increases the tension on the low strings and the top strings are going to be easier to bend. A lot of the photos that you see of Joe, he’s using either a left-handed Strat or a left-handed neck.”
(Image credit: David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images)
As a fan of both Hendrix and Perry, Fortus also decided to take up the trend. It was especially influential when designing his Strat-style James Trussart Steel-O-Matic signature guitar – an instrument that gets plenty of stage time with the Dead Daisies.
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The Stratocaster celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2024, but despite the instrument’s longevity, Fortus asserts: “Leo Fender sort of got it wrong, and Jimi Hendrix corrected it. Reversing that angle of the bridge pickup makes a big difference. It makes more sense.”
Crafting his signature axe with Trussart, then, provided the opportunity to rebuild a Strat-style guitar from the ground up. He believes the improvements that such minor tweaks deliver speak for themselves.
Joe Perry playing a reverse headstock-equipped Strat (Image credit: Getty Images)
“It gives me a lot more brightness on the low end, more attack,” he believes. “The low end is tighter and thumpier, and so we did that on this guitar. We reversed the bridge pickup, and also up here I put a left-handed headstock on it so the tension is on the low strings, really where you want it.”
Not all of Fortus’ Strats have received this treatment. Discussing his 1960 Strat with MusicRadar in 2019, he said its vintage Unicorn pickup was “the best-sounding Strat bridge pickup I’ve ever heard”, and therefore no such modification was made.
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