SWITCHTASTIC

If you’re after more sounds, look no further than the Brit-designed and manufactured Free-Way, reckons Dave Burrluck

- Dave Burrluck

As long as we’ve had the electric guitar there have been two main types of pickup selector switch most commonly in use: the ‘Gibson-style’ toggle switch, and the ‘Fender-style’ lever or blade switch. You can count the other types of pickup selector switches used in the past 60-something years on the fingers of your left hand. These are very basic switches that have barely changed at all. Today, we have more varieties of these ‘standard’ switches than we did back in the 1950s, and that includes a price scale from touring pro to starter quality.

The three-position (or three-way) toggle switch is typically used on a twin-pickup guitar selecting either or both combined in parallel. The lever switch in its basic form again offers three positions but is more flexible, and used on the single-pickup Esquire, two-pickup Telecaster or three-pickup Stratocaster, for example.

Its two-pole design also means various more tricky wiring hook-ups are possible. Of course, back in the day, Strat players found they could jam the three-position lever switch in the famous in-between positions and the five-position lever was born. More recently the four-position lever became a neat Tele mod – adding the two pickups in series in the extra position – while a six-position lever can be used to add neck and bridge in parallel, like a Tele, to a Stratocaster’s classic five sounds.