In the 1970s Uli Jon Roth was a Strat-slinger with the Scorpions who loved to modify his guitar to sound like a violin. By the early 1980s he wanted more.
“Coming from the violin, a lot of the techniques in my head had the logic of that,” he tells Guitar World. “The leads were very demanding, coming up into cyberspace – traditional guitars could not do that.”
That’s how his brainchild the Sky guitar became a reality in 1983, with the help of luthier Andy Demetriou. “It was the highest-playing guitar on the planet at the time,” Roth says. He tweaked it throughout the decade. “I don’t turn the amp up; I don’t need to.
“With the Sky guitar I can drive the amp. If it’s set to three to five, not 10, I can make the amp sing like there’s no tomorrow, straight from the guitar. The guitar is like a spaceship; like a Formula 1 car.”
That’s not the only magical guitar he’s associated with. Through ex-wife Monika Dannemann, who’d been Jimi Hendrix’s last girlfriend, Roth has held – and possibly played – Hendrix’s famous black Strat.
“I was awestruck when I first was in the room with it, with all the history,” he admits. “How can you describe these things? Of course, the Jimi vibe is there, fully.”
It’s tucked away in a vault, he reports, because “too many people were after it.”
“If it got in the wrong hands, people would rip the strings up and play it themselves. That should never happen. Who could make it sound like Jimi? I think it should be seen by the public, but absolutely in a protected environment.”
Your journey with the Sky guitar started long ago. You were modifying guitars in the ‘70s before it became commonplace in the following decade.
“The first thing I came up with was putting extra frets on the Strat because I was always running out of frets at the top end. Eventually I had the idea to put two extra frets onto my main Strat, and that worked beautifully.
“I was mainly modifying the tremolo bars. We did that in the early Scorpions because I kept breaking them! You can see the first one I modified on the cover of In Trance, on that white Strat.”
How did you go from there to developing the Sky guitar?
“I wanted to have the register like a violin, which is completely impossible on a normal guitar. With a Strat, because of the layout of the cutaway, there’s a limit to how high you can place frets. You don’t want to jeopardize the position of the first pickup, which is vital.
“The idea came after the luthier, Andy Demetriou, had done such a great job of adding the extra frets to my Strat. He said, ‘I can build you any guitar you like.’ It was like a lightbulb moment for me.
“As I drove home I kept thinking. I’d never really questioned the Strat – it was perfect as it was. But I had a secret penchant for the sound of a Les Paul, which you can’t get on the Strat. I kind of wanted it all!”
When did you start to develop the first Sky guitar?
“It was just after Christmas 1982. I was meditating a lot at the time, so I went into a dark room and I just sat and tried to envision the guitar. I wanted at least an octave more – but it also had to be aesthetically beautiful; pleasing in terms of symmetry. After a while of sitting there I started seeing shapes.
“The first thing was kind of like a teardrop shape. After a little while, the guitar was really clear in my mind, so I opened my eyes and drew it. And that’s exactly as the Sky guitar looks now, except for the headstock.”
The active pickup system had a gain stage of 80dB. You could blow up any amp with that – and I did!
One of the innovations of the Sky guitar was that the pickups were under the fretboard.
“The pickups were a problem. I think it was Andy’s idea to put them there. He said, ‘It’ll be possible because it’s just wood, and it won’t take away from the sound.’ Sure enough, he built the first one in the spring of 1983, which, I think, had 38 frets. It looked exactly as they do now, but the paint job was different.”
Early Sky guitar had different pickups. Why did you change to the Oram Mega-Wing?
“It sounded beautiful when I was playing it unplugged; it was alder, just like the Strat. But as soon as I plugged it in, it was less than convincing. It just wasn’t good.
“Then I met an engineer, John Oram, in England, who asked, ‘What would the ultimate pickup look like for you?’ I told him, and his first response was, ‘That’s pretty much impossible!’ But he made it possible. I think it took about three years to develop the entire system.”
What were you looking for?
“I had a dream of an active system which we called ‘Mega-Wing.’ It had four coils, and originally it was able to switch from power humbucking to perfectly clean. It had a gain stage of 80dB; you could blow up any amp with that – and I did!”
Did you have trouble finding an amp that could handle the pickups?
“Certain amps didn’t look kindly on them. I blew up Vox AC30s, which lasted about half an hour, and Fender Twins lasted an hour. I jammed with Steve Morse once, and liked his 5150 amp, so they sent me two. They sounded great for about 10 seconds, then they were fried!
“I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to use that gain stage to the maximum!’ I learned which amps were indestructible – old Marshalls Super Leads and the Blackstar Artist. When I play AC30s I don’t turn the gain up, and I make sure there’s enough headroom.”
You worked with Dean for a while but you’re building the Sky guitars yourself now.
“I think I met Elliot Rubinson, the owner of Dean, at the NAMM show. He managed to convince me after quite a while – he was very persistent – that it would be a good idea to put the guitar on the market. I was very reluctant, but he said I’d have complete freedom to experiment.
“That was a very tempting offer. Most companies would have commercial considerations, but he knew I was way out there, and didn’t think in terms of commercial and non-commercial.
I said, ‘Give me one good reason we should sell you the Hendrix guitar.’ He said, ‘Well, the money’
“So we made a limited edition of 50. After Elliot passed away, I thought, ‘There will never be another Elliot Rubinson,’ so I moved away from Dean and opened my own small operation. We building the guitars to order, and there’s like a two-year waitlist right now.”
For a time, you were essentially the caretaker of Hendrix’s black Strat. What’s the story there?
“Well, that guitar is not mine. It belongs to the Dannemann family. When Monika was alive, it was always just sitting there, but I never played it.”
Never?
“Maybe I played a few notes on it, but I didn’t want to break a string. It’s the only Hendrix guitar that’s in exactly the condition he left it. And it’s the one he played through his last year on a lot of shows. He played Machine Gun with it at the Band of Gypsys concerts. He also played it on his last gig in Germany, when I was backstage.”
Where is the guitar now?
“It’s in a vault at the moment. We hope to exhibit it alongside Monika’s painting one day. I know somebody tried to buy it for a crazy amount of money when Monika was alive.”
What were they offering?
“I mean, 30 years ago, a million dollars was a lot of money. I guess it’s still a lot of money – but not for some people! The number two guy at Microsoft, Paul Allen, who made the Hendrix museum in Seattle, offered a million dollars at the time. But Monika said, ‘This guitar is not for sale.’”
Is there any truth to the story that an art dealer from the Middle East offered nine million dollars for the black Hendrix Strat?
“Yeah, that’s true – I had that guy on the phone and I said, ‘Give me one good reason we should sell you the guitar.’ He said, ‘Well, the money.’ I said, ‘That’s not a good reason.’ It was a short conversation!”
- Roth is currently adding tour dates to his 2025 schedule.
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