The legendary Fender Stratocaster: Its most famous players

The almighty Fender Stratocaster- the guitar most people think of when they hear the word ‘guitars‘. A mainstay in the music industry since its invention, and will continue to be for a long time. Lets look at the players who made this axe the legendary guitar that it is today.

• Iron Maiden. All three members of Iron Maiden have at one time or another played with a Fender Stratocaster. Other than Steve Harris, Dave Murray is the only other founding member of Iron Maiden that is still with the band. Throughtout the years he used a Fender Strat, which up untill 1990 he was using Paul Kosoff of the band ‘Free’s Stratocaster. Fender have released a signature model of the guitar, with Hotrail pickups and Floyd rose tremolo system, two items rarely seen on any Fender guitar. Murray’s guitar partner in Maiden Janick Gers also favours the strat and Adrain Smith, although usually photographed with many different guitars also plays Strats.
• Eric Clapton. Ol’ ‘slow hands’ as hes known, has played as many guitars as most people have had hot dinners, using everything from a Gibson Les Paul from his days in Cream and a Telecaster when he was in the Yardbirds. But he is most famous for using a Strat, namely the infamous ‘blackie’, which he used up until its retirement in 1985. ‘Blackie’ was sold at auction to raise funds for the ‘Crossroads’ rehab centre and the guitar was sold for just under a million dollars. Clapton swapped over to Fender Strats in 1969, and never looked back.
• Jimi Hendrix. Widely considered by most people to be the best guitar player ever and revolutionised the way we look at the electric guitar. Hendrix first started playing the Fenders in 1966, and used them mostly for recordings. Hendrix also tried out many different styles of guitars before choosing a Fender Strat, much like Clapton. Hendrix was left handed and took to stringing the guitars in reverse order and playing them upside down, as left handed guitars cost more and were difficult to find. As a birthday gift Clapton had bought Hendrix a left handed Strat, but Jimi sadly died before he could get the said gift. A strat was the guitar which Hendix set on fire on his 1969 Monterey international pop festival performance.

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