Like others have said the best solution is to refine your strumming and picking, doing so will give you better control.The more disciplined your strumming and fretting the better your overall sound will be.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

An extremely minor hand adjustment is far from an absurd solution where millions of push-picking Strat players throughout the decades evidently agree. Further, I cannot think of a single person in this group who has had their playing technique suffer and/or progress stymied as a result of this marginal repositioning.

Frankly, what I find absurd is altering and impeding the function of a guitar's components for the sole purpose of avoiding such a minuscule shift.

I hope this doesn't anger you too.

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You dig?

haha well when you say it like that i don't get mad

it was more based on the fact that he has to change the way he strums or picks because he is hitting the volume know once out of 1400 strum's or whatever, that's absurd. now if he was hitting it every two or three then he would need to change something up in how he plays. plus he was asking what he could to do to his guitar to avoid this problem not his playing

but if i'm wrong one that i will say sorry, cause i'm nice like that

Good one Martian!

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

You guys do know you have stratocasters right? With a pickguard that can handle issues just like this? Just get a different pickguard or drill a new hole in the one you have!



Viola!



Look! The magical changing volume knob!

ORCRiST

I used to have this "problem". Then I stopped picking near the bridge, picking over the middle pickup. Then I had a new "problem" of my pick striking the middle pickup, lol. Now I play in between the moddle and neck pickups on my strats, and I feel this is the sweet spot, especially for blues styles. Every style of guitar, be it a Strat or a Les Paul has their own unique feel, and you have to play differently according to the instrument. Maybe you should get a different guitar to play the songs where you palm mute a lot. If you have to have a Fender tone for this, a Telecaster may be a great choice. Every guitarist needs more than 1 guitar anyway, am I right?

I had this problem when I first started playing guitar - my first guitar was a Strat. My solution was to start playing Teles - and I did that for the next 10 years. I just got a Strat again last year and I don't have the problem so much anymore, but occasionally I notice I do bump the knob. Maybe just some tape over the knob? OR, you could try a bit of that "mac-tac" putty under the knob (remove it, put a small blob, and replace the knob).

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I'm firmly in the 'modify the guitar to suit your style' rather than 'modify your style to suit the guitar' camp.

I like where the Strat's volume knob is positioned: it allows me to alter the volume with the minimum of hand movement, which is particularly useful when doing swells. But I do bump it when playing near the bridge, which was why I came up with the blu-tac solution to stiffen the resistance in the knob. Trial and error led me to the optimum compromise between enough resistance to beat the occasional bumping but at the same time still being able to turn the volume knob easily with my pinky (as is my habit).

It's just to plug the hole. It's not hooked up to anything. That was my quick solution to having a clean way to plug the hole rather than put a piece of tape over it or buying a new custom pickguard. That particular LED part fits perfectly snug in the hole and there's a nut on the underneath side to secure it even further.

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Another guitarist I play with just invented a similar problem for the Jazzmaster. She plays acoustic mostly, and when she got onto my Jazzmaster she strummed hard like she was banging an acoustic and hit the pickup switch down to the bridge position pretty much straight away. Wasn't the sound for that song, tho it's a great sound!
I might take my strat to the next gig, the controls should be further away from her strum!

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"...Compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees, I am an Apeman."

Maybe with push-picking Martian, and possibly for the reason in the OP. But it's a much more difficult task to palm mute a high E string and B string (Palm muted single note alternate picking on the high E and B) with the volume knob in that spot. In our music, we do that often. Is it impossible? Certainly not. I know that I have to put my pinky behind and between the Volume and upper tone knob (resting it on the tone knob) to accomplish it. I did it for a long time before deciding to make the Vol Pot shift. It's more of an annoyance than an impossibility to me.

For myself, my comfort while doing this was more important than having 2-separate tone knobs when I felt it wasn't needed. In some cases, with certain people, it's just as absurd to have separate tone knobs for a neck and middle pickup. The only thing that design is good for is the 4 position (and/or the 2 depending on how you wire it), which I typically don't use very much anyway, if at all. I find it even MORE absurd to have that setup with a 3-position switch setup like my AVRI (and others that I've swapped the 5-way for a 3-way).

For me, neck and middle, 1-volume and 1- master tone, and I'm good to go. I can palm mute the high E and B with ease and comfort, I don't find it too difficult to reach the Volume Knob in it's new spot, and I rarely use the tone knob given my preferences to neck and middle pickups in general.

I post this respectfully just for some clarity on why I personally do this to my guitars. And why others might as well.

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HaleAmano- House Of Sharks (Now On iTunes)
http://www.reverbnation.com/haleamano
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This thread is intense. After reading all of your inputs, I'm so self conscience that I can't begin to strum straight quarter notes without sweating from nervousness.

BTW, I've hit the PUP selector switch occasionally, too. The main reason I hit the PUP switch or the Volume knob is because I don't stand still enough when playing. Maybe if I sat in a chair and focused on my hands during gigs rather than running around on stage...nah.

This thread is really beginning to fascinate me on multiple levels.

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I say remove the pinky on the offending hand...

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Some years ago I was fortunate enough to be at a Gary Moore gig in a very small venue and standing about 3 yards away from the man himself, which gave me the opportunity to observe his technique at close quarters. I noticed that he adjusted his volume knob and pickup selector fairly frequently during numbers - particularly the volume knob, which I think was in order to cut out the fizz from his amp during 'spaces' between the notes. As a consequence during some numbers his hands were flying around his Les Paul, which as you know does not have its controls particularly close to hand. I remember thinking, hmm, I can adjust the same controls on my Strat without taking my pick from the strings (volume) or with a natural down or upstroke of my hand (pickup selector).

Now don't get me wrong, Gary Moore clearly has no difficulty whatsoever with the necessary movements on his LP and certainly didn't need to look down to find the appropriate switch/knob. But for a mere mortal such as myself, it's great to be able to make those adjustments easily, because I need all available concentration on the notes in order to come anywhere what he produces. Indeed I would characterise my efforts as playing (more or less) the same notes, not making the same sound!

(BTW, he didn't bump his volume knob once )