Various Finishes for Les Paul / SG / 335 etc. Axetec Guitar Parts UK. SW003: PICKUP SELECTOR SWITCH Tip: Don't under-estimate the value of clean contacts in your guitar's signal chain. That scratchy switch could be robbing your guitar of tone! It's a good idea to clean, or replace, switches and jack sockets regularly - sometimes 'vintage' means. I've come to the conclusion that I am hopelessly in LOVE with the look of a 3 pickup Les Paul & Firebird, but abso-friggin'-lutely can't stand the middle position (bridge +middle p'up) sound. I've tried several different combos, and recently just wired both my LP & FB to have a dummy pickup in the middle position and gone back to stock wiring.
Fender Telecaster-style controlsThe original Telecaster models had odd control functions that seemed to intentionally skirt around the obvious, giving a preset bassy sound from the neck pickup position and no combination of the two pickups together.Many players rewired their guitar to a more conventional arrangement, though, which also became standard from Fender after 1967: one master volume control, one master tone control, and a three-way switch to give you neck, bridge, or both pickups. This arrangement appears on many, many guitars with two pickups where the maker wants to keep things simple.
Fender Stratocaster-style controls and variationsWith three pickups, the Strat had a lot of potential sonic versatility right out of the box, which wasn’t entirely tapped with the three-position switch originally used (giving just each pickup individually). Many players learned to balance this switch between the neck-and-middle and middle-and-bridge position to yield funky in-between tones.In the ’70s, a replacement five-way switch became commonly available. The original had control layout of master volume and an individual tone control for neck and middle pickups, but none for the bridge, which was also a little odd, because the bright bridge pickup is likely to need taming more than the others.