I was looking at the custom player strat and was curious about the custom switching. If i'm not mistaken, it's just a five way switch. What is so special?

Judging solely on your description and not on the strats
Actual specs. I don't know that particular strat, unless you
Mean classic players 50s, either way there is absolutely
Nothing special about a 5 way switch .
Other than they already removed the 3 way switch that an avri comes
With and replaced it with a 5 way. Giving you position 2 and 4

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"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

oogway, kungfu panda 2008

I meant Classic Player. Thanks for the clarification. Fender's website and GC website both say custom 5way switching. I hadn't even thought that the guitars from the 50's came with 3way switches.

Actually it is special on the CP50s
The neck&middle position is changed to be neck&bridge.

Not so, according to Fender's own spec sheet......

http://www.fender.com/products/search.p ... 0141102303

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Yeah, that's weird. In the Overview of the CP50's, it mentions "custom pickup switching" which, in the past, meant position 4 for neck + bridge in the CP50s. Now, the specs define the switching as standard 5 position switching..

I wondered about that claim myself, OG. The only thing that's really different between the actual wiring of a CP50 and a Classic '50s model is, on the CP model the middle pickup is RW/RP for hum cancelling in positions 2 and 4.

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

My hunch is that the specs are wrong. They might have done a copy-and-paste on the specs when they redid the website and then didn't edit the pickup selections... Then again, a lot of people rewire the switch to be the same as "standard" wiring so Fender may have decided to go back to the original "standard" pickup selections. That would be kind of strange, though, since the custom pickup selections are a unique feature of the CP50's...

Classic Player 50s n/m position is indeed neck and bridge - atleast in '06...just got a NOS one and tested it.

I think this is correct. I bought one back in January and indeed the neck/middle position was neck/bridge. I hated it actually. The "custom switching" I mean. Took it to a luthier and told him I wanted it rewired to standard 5-way and he took it apart and looked at it and said I would have to replace the switch, which I don't think is correct but I didn't bother to argue. Wasn't totally enamoured with the guitar anyway. It was ok, but paled in comparison to my AV '57 RI so I wound up getting rid of it.

I also noticed that the specs on the Fender website stated the 5 standard positions but that's a mistake on their part.