Well this is a crazy thread, and I'm a huge Buckethead fan and grew up on Hendrix. I don't even know how to express my feelings here. I think erasertime is right to a point, but in general, it's not right to match the two against each other. It's hard for a lot of Buckethead fans to rank the Buck. My friends and I always want to say he's number 1, but that he's tied with the greats. It's just too hard to rank all the guitarists under the same headers.
and eraser.time, you should really check out some more of Buckethead's work. There are better examples than Colma, and Soothsayer. That's all anyone listens to, but Buckethead has tons of albums that best it. For starters, Population Override is probably the most emotional work he's done. Too Many Humans is one of the best tracks of all time in my book. If I were to use Too Many Humans as an example, I think we might start to develop an argument. Most people have no idea the depth of Buckethead's playing is. Even you might not eraser.time. I've heard just about every piece he has and I guess I would pick him over Jimi, but to declare a numbered definitive list is impossible.
I don't know if I'm making sense here, but Jimi is amazing. If Jimi hadn't died, perhaps he could have expanded more, but Buckethead does have the ability to do everything from bluegrass, to shred, to emotional blues, electronic, avantgarde.
Solo for solo Buckethead takes the cake (if you don't like shredding, he still has amazing non-shredding solos). As far as song-writing or composition, Jimi wins. Jimi has many more notable songs. But then again, Jimi's more of a household name and got plenty of airtime.
My review of his In Search of the... boxset has some of my favorite songs of his already posted in it. You may enjoy it here:
http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ye-vision.html