Modifying Your Guitar | Switch postions

Dan Armstrong was the electronics guru behind Jimi Hendrix's fabled 'magic switch'. Although he never came clean about that one, he did publish a very cool switchless series wiring mod for Stratocasters (see Fig 8).
Knurled Tele knobs are easy to grip, but push-pull pots are tricky on Strats because the knobs are tapered. Armstrong's ingenious system uses the 'middle' tone control as a blender/mixer, while the 'neck' tone control becomes a master tone for all three pickups. When the blend control is set at 10 the five-way switch will work the same, but the blend control provides four new pickup configurations. In position 1 the blender gradually adds the middle pickup to the neck pickup in series; in position 2, the neck pickup fades out of the neck/middle parallel combination and is gradually replaced by the bridge pickup, in parallel but out of phase – a thin, wiry tone that's truly killer when it comes to funk and spiky rhythm playing.
Best of all, you can keep some neck pickup in the mix to maintain body and weight. You can do the same in position 4, where the bridge fades out and an out-of-phase neck pickup fades in with the middle pickup. The last position is the coolest, because the middle and bridge pickups are combined in series. Regardless of the blend setting, position 3 is always the middle pickup on its own.
Once you get used to the layout, it's very flexible and useable. Positions 2 and 4 offer a tones for a variety of styles, and because they are fairly thin and medium output, switching over to either of the series settings is dramatic and effective. Best of all, you don't just get A or B: the blend control allows all points in between. In positions 2 and 4 I found myself retaining just a hint of the in-phase pickup to thicken things up, and I was still able to instantly switch to a thick humbucker tone.

Verdict

You might end up deciding you prefer things the way Leo left them, but these mods are worth trying. Some just enhance what you already have, while others will provide you with tone you never realised your guitar could make. Good luck – and don't burn your fingers.