For a typical Strat, why 2 Tone knobs?

[rauchman]

Greetings,

Just picked up a Screamin' Deals Black Korina Strat body that I'm salivating working on. As my mind contemplates possibilities, regarding the pickups / controls....

Typically, Strats have 1 master Vol and 2 Tones, and neither of them touch the bridge pup. I'm thinking of just having a Master Vol and Master Tone. Any downside to this? What am I giving up by not having 2 Tone controls?

 

[db82]

It's totally preference. Personally I'd rather have one knob that does the the one thing and I don't ride my tone knobs, so it's not a big deal for me to have only one (or none in two of my strats). I also think people frequently agonize over controls/configurations while neglecting what you can accomplish by investing time in adjusting pickup heights.

Using only one you "lose" :
1) The ability to "set and forget" independent knobs so that when you hit the selector switch it's already rolled off where you want it relative to the positions that the control is active in.
2) Using different values for different pickup combos. With two tones you can independently tweak how each control behaves, i.e. use two different cap values.

But it's an opportunity to gain something else if it helps you get what you're after in using the instrument - a cap value selector, a blower or a kill switch, using a high pass/low pass style control set, etc... or just put a dummy pot in the third hole and tell your friends "that's where the toannnn comes from."

 

[supertruper1988]

For a typical strat I will wire the bridge to tone 2 instead of the middle. I then roll it off to about 7 and it improves the sound of a the strat bridge pickup quite a bit.

 

[Strat Avenger]

Because 72 years ago, Leo Fender didn't know any better.
My 1990 Fender American Standard Strat came from the factory with the middle Tone control wired also to the bridge pickup.
The early Strats had 3-way selector switches (not 5), so you wouldn't have two tone controls in parallel like in the #2 and #4 positions.

Personally, I have no use for a Tone control on the neck & middle pickups. If I had a single Tone control, I'd wire it to the bridge pickup only, which is what I am doing on my Tele build.