Legend has it that Leo Fender designed the Stratocaster with three pickups to give him an edge in marketing the guitar as most guitars of the day had no more than two pickups. Having an extra pickup means that he could sell a guitar with more tones, more flexibility, and at the same time help create an image for Fender that would promote them as being unique and innovative. The decision to use 3-way switches was because 1) they were readily available, and 2) they allowed a means to select each of the pickups which was all that Fender intended. It wasn't until years later that someone discovered that by positioning the selector switch between two of the contacts that you could come up with two additional, and very cool sounding tones.

     Technically what is happening is that you are combining two pickups in parallel. Many people describe this sound inaccurately as "out-of-phase". To truly get an out-of-phase sound, one of the pickups has to be wired 180 degrees opposite of the other pickup. This creates a nasal, honking, extremely hollowed out sound with a noticeable drop in volume. This is a very different sound.

     Ok, so Fender has now made it easy for us to access two of the parallel combinations by installing 5-way selectors on the current production guitars, but are there any other interesting parallel combinations available? The answer is a definite "Yes"!

     There are actually two more combinations - the outer two pickups (neck and bridge) which give you a Telecaster-like sound, and all three pickups at once which gives a great, complex, full-bodied sound. Both of these sounds are very usable and are likely to become some of the most liked sounds to come from your guitar.

     You can add these sounds to your guitar without having to make any external or permanent changes, by using a push-pull pot. The push-pull pot will replace the lower tone control and, while still allowing you full use of your tone control, will allow you to switch on your neck pickup at any time by simply lifting up on the tone control knob. This yields the following pickup selections:

Position #1 - Neck and Bridge

Position #2 - Neck, Bridge and Middle

Position #3 - Neck and Middle

Position #4 - Neck and Middle

Position #5 - Neck only

     Of course when you push down on the tone control knob, the selector switch works the way it did originally. To add these new tones to your guitar, pick up a 250k or 500k push/pull pot and follow the accompanying diagram. The original wiring is for the most part left alone. Basically you will be rewiring your tone control on the potentiometer section of the new push/pull pot and will be connecting two wires from the switch section of the push/pull pot to the 5-way selector switch.