As you probably know, Jimi Hendrix used mainly a Fender Stratocaster guitar through Marshall Amplifier stacks along with several effects pedals. He also did extensive sound manipulation in the studio. The main pedals he used where the Vox Clyde McCoy Wah Wah pedal (told to me by my friend and music coach Andy Aledort who recently played with Jimi Hendrix's remaining original Post Experience Band members, Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox in Fuji Japan with The Jimi Hendrix Experience July 31st & Aug 1st, 2004 and he recently performed with Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble Band for Stevie's 50th Birthday party! Andy once saw a picture of Jimi holding one upside down that bore a pic of Clyde McCoy who was a famous trumpet player way back when. Clyde wasn't the best trumpet player in the world, but was famous for the special quacky wah effect he produced. The Clyde McCoy Wah was created to emulate that effect.

Andy Aledort is one the all time greatest guitar players along Robin Trower and Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush, nearly having all his recordings down pat, note for note and that's saying a lot! Click his name above to learn more about Andy Aledort and Frank Marino who took much of Jimi's music and transcended it in his own amazing way. Now back to the gear. Jimi also used a Uni-Vibe to get that watery swirling sound you may have heard on songs like Machine Gun, Hey Baby and Robin Trower's "Bridge Of Sighs". He also used an Octavia pedal designed by his technical whiz Roger Mayer to get those high harmonic sounds heard on the solo in "Purple Haze" and several other songs. He used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and a Leslie rotating speaker device heard on many songs played through several high-powered Marshall Amplifier stacks turned up to 10 to get the wild distortion and feedback. All of those pedals were used in different combinations to get various effects, plus other studio effects to get other otherworldly sounds. In contrast to the hundreds of pedal types available today, Jimi really only had a few effects to create such a vast sonic palette of sounds that to this day, many of them still can not be duplicated..

Below are some of the effects pedals that produce those sounds including the Sweet Sound Ultra-Vibe (Uni-Vibe clone no longer made, that is the closest available to the original using all original geranium transistors and photocells that produce the watery swirling effect), the Clyde McCoy Wah Wah pedal re-issue, a Voodoo Labs PROCTAVIA, that emulates the original Roger Mayer Octavia and in my opinion has a little extra kick, The Voodoo Labs SUPERFUZZ gets a fairly consistent original Arbiter Fuzz Face tone using the same geranium transistors. The problem with the Fuzz Face is that no two geranium transistors sound the exactly same and the new Dunlop Fuzz Face sounds too grainy for my taste. The SUPERFUZZ uses a combination of geranium and silicon transistors and seems to have nailed the Experience Era tone. The Digitech Digi-Delay has great delay sounds and what's unique about it, is it has a reverse tape sound, perfect for playing "Are You Experienced!" I also use a Flanger once in a while, not often and the Maxon Auto-Filter which Andy turned me onto. It gets an otherworldly low bottom type wah based on pick attack and sounds wicked. Jimi would have loved one of those. You can hear it on Andy's site in the new video section on "Born Under A Bad Sign #2".

To house it all and keep wiring setups to a minimum I use the Pedal Pad Pedal Board MPS-XL purchased at the link below. It has a built-in noise reducing power supply, a Patch Pad Stereo routing module for routing signals and loop throughs and a 2-tier setup that can be configured on a ramp or 2 steps with all the wiring hidden underneath! Sure beats breaking cables, beating up the pedals and getting lots of shorts!

Last, but not least, I play a white Fender Strat American Series with maple neck and a Fender Blue Sapphire US Highway 1 Strat with a rosewood fret board, both of them have been modded with Fender Custom Shop '69 pickups for obvious reasons. The maple neck seems to get a brighter Woodstock type tone and the rosewood neck on the Highway 1 gets mellower blues "Red House" type tones and both of them have huge thumping bottom end with transparent highs that shine through and trail off into beautiful harmonic tones when run through an overdriven amp. I use a Marshall MG 100 DFX amplifier for some songs and my newly acquired vintage 1965 Supro amp which purportedly is the same amp Jimmy Page used to record Stairway to Heaven and the Stones used to record their first album. What a sweet sounding tube tone this little honey gets. I'm in the process of installing a Jensen re-issue speaker to get the Fender tones Jimi used from time to time and an extension cabinet loaded with a Celestion G12 Heritage speaker which is purportedly the same speaker Jimi used in his Marshall stacks. The amp isn't powerful enough to gig with unless it's mic'd. Surprisingly, tough, at only 5 Watts and several high gain pedals, it can rattle some windows. Interestingly, Jimi's first guitar that his dad bought him was a Supro. The Marshall amp is solid state, but has fantastic tonal control with the contour shaping and gain control along with the FDD dampener to emulate tube sounds. I'm hoping to be getting a Marshall Plexi stack for the road though when we're ready to hit it. Please feel free to email me with any questions at support@areyouexperienced.net