Hendrix's burnt Strat sells for $604,000

Doug Beaumier · Post by **Doug Beaumier** » 5 Sep 2008 12:48 am

$604K for a '65 Strat that Jimi torched at a London show in 1967. The buyer is a collector from Massachusetts.

<b>CLICK</b>

Jeremy Threlfall · Post by **Jeremy Threlfall** » 5 Sep 2008 1:00 am

Dweezil Zappa wass selling another burnt Hendrix Strat a few years ago.

I can feel a series of special replica "relics" coming on ....

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 5 Sep 2008 2:25 am

$604 thousand ! Someone has a great job !

Fascinating ,in the photo above , the body is burnt but not the plastic pickguard/pups cover . ( area by the 3 knobs and edge of plastic cover leading up to the lower horn)

was this the original guitar as it was after the burning ?

Jimmy obviously had great aim with the lighter fluid !

Rick Johnson · Post by **Rick Johnson** » 5 Sep 2008 4:40 am

Maybe Fender will reissue
these as "relic" guitars

Rick

www.rickjohnsoncabs.com

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 5 Sep 2008 5:13 am

I bet there are a few strats on fire tonight around the world trying to get that look.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 5 Sep 2008 8:01 am

Hummph. It seems both the original owner, as well as the newest owner, had more money than they knew what to do with. $:\$

Doug Beaumier · Post by **Doug Beaumier** » 5 Sep 2008 9:42 am

He said he would have the guitar converted for right-hand playing - Hendrix was left-handed - so that he could play it himself.

All he has to do is change the strings. It's a standard guitar strung for a lefty.

Fender made a Hendrix Stratocaster a few years ago. The hardware on the guitar was "upside down". It was a standard right-hand guitar, but the output jack and the knobs were on top, and the tuners at the bottom of the headstock, etc.

Jon Moen · Post by **Jon Moen** » 5 Sep 2008 11:21 am

Doug, I think the nut would have to be replaced.

Jon

Doug Beaumier · Post by **Doug Beaumier** » 5 Sep 2008 11:29 am

I think you're right, Jon. In that case, the guy should leave the guitar as is IMHO.

Ron Whitfield · Post by **Ron Whitfield** » 5 Sep 2008 12:15 pm

I've never gotten the bottom line skinny on how JH changed the nut to handle the reversal of the strings. If he just grooved out the thinnest saddles to accept the fatter strings, then the small gauges would rattle around in the larger grooves.

If the new owner changes anything on this guitar, he should be horsewhipped and hog tied, then dealt with harshly.
What kind of clown would buy a rare historic item like this and then mess with it? Oh yeah, one with more $ than brains...

Doug Beaumier · Post by **Doug Beaumier** » 5 Sep 2008 2:16 pm

I agree! The new owner would be a fool to alter this guitar.

As far as the nut, a guitar shop can custom cut a nut from a blank:

I've been reading different reports on line about the price paid for this guitar. Evidently his bid was about 500K, so the additional money must have been the auction house's "buyer's premium"... a rip-off fee charged by auction houses to the Buyer... for absolutely no justifiable reason, as far as I can see. The auction house is already getting their 20% (from the seller), so what's the Premium (from the buyer) for? They all do it, and they all get away with it. So the House takes 20% from the seller, AND charges 15% to the buyer... for the privilege of buying from them.

In that scenario the House is getting 35%.

If I were Selling this guitar I would not sell through an auction house. The buyer's premium inhibits bidding. Bidders figure the BP into their bids, so the high bid is not as high as it might otherwise be. This Page explains the buyer's premium pretty well.

Doyle Weigold · Post by **Doyle Weigold** » 5 Sep 2008 3:23 pm

I bought a new strat in 56 or 57. serial # 15327. I was offered $5,000 for it 20 years ago. It's pretty beat up after the 6 nights a week jobs. Spose if I burn it a little the price would go up. Still in the closet. Doyle

Doug Beaumier · Post by **Doug Beaumier** » 5 Sep 2008 4:24 pm

I bought a new strat in 56 or 57. serial # 15327. I was offered $5,000 for it 20 years ago.

Doyle, add another zero to that number, plus a few more dollars... and get some insurance!

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 5 Sep 2008 8:12 pm

bring it over and we can roast some marshmallows!

Archie Nicol R.I.P. · Post by **Archie Nicol R.I.P.** » 6 Sep 2008 3:14 am

Look what I found. I'm gonna be rich!

Arch.

Joe Casey · Post by **Joe Casey** » 6 Sep 2008 5:27 am

I got beat out on the bid..All I had was 603.000...Oh well back to my Silvertone that I got at a garage sale for 50 bucks..

Michael Johnstone · Post by **Michael Johnstone** » 6 Sep 2008 6:08 am

Hendrix would either flip the nut and reshape it or make a new one from scratch. He was pretty good at maintaining and setting up his own guitars.Only in the last couple years of his life did he have others do that stuff. He was also one of the first guys I heard of that would pour a few drops of beer into the 3-way pickup switch causing it to rust slightly and thus stay put in the in-between positions easily - this was years before 5-way switches. That guitar BTW is the first one he ever burned. He did that in London shortly after he first arrived on the scene there and did it to stir up controversy in the local music press. He burned his hand pretty bad in the process. The famous picture in the first post where he's squirting lighter fluid on the flaming guitar was about a year later at the Monterey Pop Festival and was captured on film.That's the guitar that Dweezil has the body from and my friend Bobby Robles still has the neck which he got from the late great luthier Rex Bogue who kept it around his shop hanging on a nail for years.

Kevin Hatton · Post by **Kevin Hatton** » 6 Sep 2008 2:19 pm

Rumor has it that he started buning his guitars after he first heard "In A Gadda Da Vida".

Barry Blackwood · Post by **Barry Blackwood** » 6 Sep 2008 5:20 pm

Caveat emptor.

Ron Whitfield · Post by **Ron Whitfield** » 6 Sep 2008 9:13 pm

Thanx, Michael, I figured you would know and I was hoping you'd give up the facts.

As I heard it, the burnt Strat that Zappa had was from a Florida gig.
The Monterey Strat was red and hand painted by Jimi, ala his first Flying V, and was of course smashed to bits. Many of those bits have been secured and an attempt to re-complete it has been in progress for years.

I was on my way to Monterey, at age 12, with no knowlege of Jimi yet. Had I made it, I probably wouldn't have been lucky enuf to catch him and would have been even more bummed today.
As it was, I got ditched somewhere near Bakersfield, and the Chief of Police for that town gave me and my buddy a ride all the way home, in LA, just in time for dinner!

CrowBear Schmitt · Post by **CrowBear Schmitt** » 7 Sep 2008 1:26 am

i had understood that Jimi got to settin' his guitbox on fire to upstage the Who

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 7 Sep 2008 4:37 am

You can just see Hendrix on stage slam his guitar down howling with feedback, squirt just a little lighter fluid on the bottom bout, very carefully squirt just a little around on the top being sure to miss the pickguard (so that he didn't damage it), then very carefully set the top and lower bout on fire... I would personally need a blowtorch to burn wood that deeply, but then everyone knows how talented Hendrix was.

- anybody wanna buy Garcia's middle finger?

Mike Perlowin RIP · Post by **Mike Perlowin RIP** » 7 Sep 2008 7:18 am

I'm gonna set fire to my strat. Maybe the dude will but that too,

Dick Wood · Post by **Dick Wood** » 7 Sep 2008 10:46 am

I was on my way to Guitar Center to look at some guitars and I seemed to have lost my wallet with $604,000 in it and I was wonderin if anybody has seen it?

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 7 Sep 2008 3:51 pm

I found it up here in NJ & I went to the Guitar Center for you. I bought 604 Strats for you.

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Hendrix's burnt Strat sells for $604,000

Hendrix's burnt Strat sells for $604,000

How did Jimi rework the nut?

Finally!