John Frusciante’s 1963 Fender Stratocaster (White, 2022 Tour)

During the 2022 Unlimited Love tour, John was seen using a white battered Fender Stratocaster. The wonderful “jfgear” Instagram page immediately figured out that this is the same guitar owned by the Guitar-EXP collection, who claim that this is one of Jimi Hendrix’s original Stratocasters. Not only that, they claim it’s one of Jimi’s most important Stratocasters – they claim it’s Linda, the only guitar that Jimi carried with him when he came over to the UK in 1968.

Is it really Linda?

Based on the image that we have of Linda, there are a few differences between that guitar and the guitar that John can be playing in the photo above.

The most glaring difference is the Fender logo on the headstock. If we look at the logo on the Linda, we’ll notice that it’s almost at the very edge of the headstock. On the guitar that John is playing, the logo is really just not in that same place. There is a bigger gap to the edge of the headstock than there is on the guitar that Hendrix is playing.

Was it even Jimi’s?

Even though the guitar clearly doesn’t match the original “Linda”, there is a chance that it was one of the many guitars that Jimi played in his career. If you look at the list of Stratocasters that Jimi played, there are at least a few candidates that could fit the description of this guitar.

But, at this time we will not go into trying to match it to one of Jimi’s other white Stratocasters – the burden of proof should be on whoever first claimed that this is “Linda”. What we do know, based on our understanding of how the actual “Linda” looks, the guitar that John Frusciante played during the 2022 tour, is not “Linda”.