Telecaster Switch Wiring

ZenOvertone

I've rewired my Nashville Tele to a different arrangement of the tone control, using the second switch wafer like a Strat so the tone control is only connected on the bridge pickup, seems to add a little more to the neck & middle pickups with them wide open. 
Just wondered why Fender wired the traditional 3-way Tele switch the way they do and not like a Strat as above - any ideas?   

Funkfingers

Firstly, it would have been difficult to wire your first design in the same way as your second - something that had yet to be devised. 

Secondly, with only two pickups and a CRL three-way switch, it is necessary to have the jumper connections to get the neck/both/bridge arrangement to work at all.

The switch was originally intended to select between one of three options on a military field radio.

ZenOvertone

Many thanks 

ICBM

The Tele switch wiring was almost certainly devised to minimise assembly time on the finished guitar - by reducing the number of operations when connecting the pickup wires to the pre-assembled control plate loom, which could only be done once the pickups were mounted in the guitar.

On the Strat, this was simplified even further by having both the pickups and switch on the pickguard so the only connections that had to be done at final assembly were to the jack and spring claw.

The cheaper Musicmaster and Duo-Sonic have the whole electrical assembly on the pickguard. All these little bits of time saved allow the guitar to be produced more cheaply.

Of course they then went and blew it completely on the Jaguar! But that was always meant to be an expensive guitar...

thegummy

Isn't an obvious answer so people could adjust the tone of the neck pickup?

Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

Funkfingers

thegummy said:

Isn't an obvious answer so people could adjust the tone of the neck pickup?

Yes.

The very first iterations of the Broadcaster circuit had no tone control at all. Instead, the selector switch offered
• neck PU + capacitor (preset “bass” tone)
• neck PU
• bridge + blend pot to mix in neck PU

The tone control arrived with the 1952 circuit revision, replacing the blend function.

The only way to get both pickups on simultaneously was to lodge the selector switch lever between the first and second positions.