I do almost exactly the same thing as you do, Tommo.
@leftycat honestly I’m not sure - I also favor escaped downstrokes and did my formative practicing on a Strat, but we’re a sample size of two, so who knows.
2 Likes
This is still an issue for me, my work around has been to constantly make sure the vol is full for this kind of playing, I have disconnected the middle tone knob, one knob is plenty to deal whilst furiating 
edit: on the YJM the bridge tone knob has a notch at full and has higher friction, putting one in the vol position may help some. Not sure what that part model is.
I’m surprised there are no volume dials with some kind of latch, to fix it to a certain volume, like a push pull type thing.
Fender has a brand name for that, something like a TBX tone knob or something. I forget exactly. The gist is, it’s a 250k knob (I think - it could have been 500) for its taper, but at full when it clicks into that notch, it becomes a 1meg pot. It’s not QUITE like having no tone knob in the circuit, but its closer.
I’ve also never gotten the Vol-Tone-Tone Strat thing either. I have two Strats, and the first has a custom Vol-Tone layout (though the knobs are in the normal outside positions) with a master tone, and while the second is V-T-T, the second tone knob is at least wired for both the middle AND bridge, so that has some sort of tone circuit on it too. The bridge is bright enough on a Strat anyway, I’ve neber understood why you would want to run that direct to te output without having even the option of softening it a it with a tone knob.
1 Like
That’s interesting, didn’t think it was a Fender specific part, I wonder why they only put it on the second tone knob, it makes perfect sense to use it on both.
I disconnected my two tones a while back on this strat, I need to put the bridge back on the tone circuit, it’s can do with some some help balancing with the neck, I just wanted to see how much I could get out of it bypassed.
Yeah, it’s strange how they wired strats forever with the bridge wide open, though I think like a decade ago I got into country and started to love the tele, and that’s when I embraced the ice picky thing, its a strange thing but once you get that country chicken pickin thing down, you kinda know what to do with it, can’t explain it, but icepicky becomes your new wepon. I used to hate the sound of a clean ice picky tele, but then I heard Roy Bucannon’s I’'m a Ram, blew my mind, then the rest of the pickers followed, was hell of a trip. Stole a lot of licks.
Since I posted that track, I have to post Sean Costello’s version, the groove is to die for, though it’s not country.
So, there are two main reasons for this, for two applications.
-
I first used one of these back in the late 90s or early 2000s when I swapped my stock Fender pickups for a set of Gold Lace Sensors, to go noiseless. These were a little less bright than stock singlecoils thanks to their noiseless design (though, pretty close, IMO, from what I recall), and Fender recommended this control as a tone knob for all positions because the 1meg indent would let a tiny bit more high end through and raise the resonant peak a hair, and give it a more “traditional” Strat voice, though we’re talking at the margins here.
-
I suspect they originally designed this control as a middle/bridge master tone, to allow the bridge pickup to be brought into the tone circuit so you could roll it off if you wanted to, but also have it behave quite a bit more like a traditional “tone bypassed” bridge position control (come to think of it, they might have suggested neck/middle and TBX bridge, I forget exactly) when it’s in the 1meg indent, rather thn the 500k or 250k taper for the rest of the control. It’s not quite the same as fully bypassed, and IMO we’re talking small differences here anyway between straight-to-output and a 250k tone control, but it’s a bit closer.
Singlecoils, true singlecoils at least and not stacked humbuckers that are wired to cancel hum but sound like singlecoils, do behave a bit differently with q 250k tone knob than a 500 or 1 meg, they sound a little fatter not necessarily because the tone knob rolls off high end so much, but because I understand the added resistance lowers the resonant peak a little making them seem fatter and fuller. If you like a really “hi-fi” Strat sound with an etremely open high end, a 500k or 1 meg pot is something worth trying to get there, but again while we’re talking pretty subtle changes I do think singlecoils sound a little fuller with 250k pots.
But, like, bigger picture, if you’re running a Strat with 500k pots because you also have a bridge humbucker running or something, these are small enough differences that I wouldn’t overthink it.