The Last Bass Outpost

Allegedly the Telecaster neck was fitted by West Coast Organ and Amplifier Service after Jimi threw it offstage and broke the original. This comes from a lengthy thread on the Metro Amps forum, and there is some skepticism of the claims made within.

I recently put together a mutt Stratocaster for myself, but I changed the shape of the neck pocket to accept a Tele neck, rather than grind down the heel of the neck.

I took exception to the advice "Play it safe by removing only two or three strings at a time so that you don’t cause the neck tension to go out of whack". It doesn't say which tree to remove!

First post, and it is about guitars! 

Hendrix played a white Strat with a Telecaster neck at the Newport festival in 1969. It isn't especially clear which instruments this thing was made from. Hendrix held on to those two maple neck guitars through all of 1969. For example, he used the black/maple Strat for much of the video'd 1969 Stockholme gig and the Lion's share of the video'd 1969 Albert Hall gig. The Tele necker is an odd instrument as it just appears, then vanishes again. Did he break the neck on the white Woodstock Strat and therefore it was rocking a 2nd neck at Woodstock? I guess it would be hard to tell. Quite what happened to the donor Tele is also a mystery.

Hendrix played his lefty V for a chunk of the Isle of Wight gig in 1970 due to interference through his amps. I think that Freedom sounds great with that meatier tone as a result and it does make me wonder what it would have sounded like if Hendrix had done more on Gibson instruments. He did have that psychedelic V around 1967, a staple-top Alnico Custom and a three-pickup white SG as well, but seems to have reserved these for slower blues numbers. The exception being the freeform cover of Sunshine of your Love from the 1969 Stockholme show and, probably, the version of the same tune from the Albert Hall gig as well. Both versions have quite a sludgy droning bass solo from Noel for good measure.

On the subject of Martin Turner, I went into Red Dog music here in Edinburgh a few years back and spied a lovely white Epiphone Thunderbird, albeit with black hardware. Apparently Martin Turner had been in the week before and turned this T-bird down in favour of another white model they had in stock. I almost bought the losing T-bird out of sympathy.