So tonight I decided to take the challenge and wire up my bridge pup to share the tone pot with the middle pup. As I tested the pup and loved the results, it made me think. Why is the MIM strats have the bridge pup wide open, but all the MIA strats have the bridge on the 2nd tone control and the middle/neck on the 1st tone control? My theory is Fender wants the MIA's to sound better so they make sure the tone control for the bridge will allow the pup to sound less like an ice pick. Just my theory, but I cannot figure out why they would wire the MIM differently from the MIA. Lost in translation when crossing the boarder? I think not....

Am I the only one who noticed the standard wiring to be this way???

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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You're pissing in the wind.

Leo's original Strat wiring configuration had the bridge pickup wired only to the volume control. Thus, tradition -- pure and simple. There's no "conspiracy".

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

+1 to Arjay's comment,.....study your Stratocaster history!
My '59 Reissue from Wildwood came wired the original way....so you can still buy some MIA Strats with no bridge tone control....and I'm sure there are others.

All of the MIM Classic Series Strats are wired thus.

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

It is absolutely hilarious how many people seem to be just now "discovering" this tone wiring.

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Bill

Its not a new discovery it was something I thought about mentioning when I was jumping a wire to add a tone control to the bridge.

Yes, I understand the MIM strats are set up like the original's from back in the day. I'm talking about today, what's coming out of the factory now, not 10+ years ago. Apparently Fender realized their guitars may sound better with a tone control for the bridge PUP on their American Standards. But how hard is it for the Mexican Standards to be the same? And why would they be different with they are both labeled "Standard" which implies the guitars are their basic models/configurations but there are variences in them....

Nothing like stirring the pot when all I was doing was asking a question from a humorous point of view and seeing all the history lesson buffs come out of the woodwork.

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Some of us aren't "history lesson buffs",and we didn't "come out of the woodwork"...we are old enough to have played and owned Strats in the '60's,(me at least,and some others),and those Strats were Pre-CBS,the real deal that all the Reissues,Custom Shop,and lots of modern Strats are based on.
Maybe your question,or humorous conspiracy theory,sounded like a person who actually really didn't know....some I'm sure who will read this will learn something,maybe you have too.
btw...you made the statement in another thread that you "believe 95% of tone is in your hands not the tools you wield".....is the tone controls and your rewiring of the bridge tone part of the other 5%?

You guessed it! I need that little 5% to get my tone just right!

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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The reason they STILL do it now is a easy benign one; cost controls. Its easier quicker, and faster if the people on the line are doing all the wiring the same way, I believe its that simple.
I threw in a series/ parallel switch, and I swear I had to take the pickguard off 3 or 4 times to get the tone controls to work properly. The first time, the neck tone worked, the bridge was wide open and couldn't be turned down, and the middle pickup sounded like it was set to 0, no matters what I did. The second time, it all worked, but the middle didn't. The last one of the night, was the strangest one. The neck tone controls the middle, the second tone pot doesn't, EXCEPT if I have the switch to series, then both tone knobs work on the middle pickup. But the neck (along with the bridge) is controlled Nby the second tone control(???). At first I thought, I can live with this for a while, I don't feel like taking theneck off again to get to the pots. But after playing for an hour, I realized this isn't going to work. The bridge tone hash a high/low cut filter I made. At first I thought it'd be good to have that control the neck too(whch has a regular high cut filter tone control). But I ride the volume and tone knobs, and getting to thesecond tone to adjust the neck, the one that's omst used is a p9ain, and the circuit doesn't seem to work as well with the nack and brdge pickup attached to it. So tonight, I get to do all over again.

Onj a side note, I havge to figure a way so that when I actigvate the series wiring, a different capacitor comes into play. I've had strats before with series wiring, and a different cap, they sounded more like a humbucker when 2 pickups were totether in series. With the typical .022, it sounds just like the regular position 2 & 4, only louder.

but the wiring I had to do was rather simple. Just a 1/4" wire connect to parts of the selector switch together. Very, very simple and rather cheap to do.

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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I've made that change on the guitars that I own,except the '59 RI....I guess I'll leave it that way.
I like having tone control on the bridge pup....the ice pick treble isn't my thing...like you said,a simple jumper wire does the trick.

the first thing i did to my strats was re wire them so that all the pups have tone controll... tho on my MIM (got overwound texas specials in it) i run both tones on full and it sounds awsome going through my chained amps.

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