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Hi, I'm Mike Lewis at the Fender Custom Shop.
And right now, we're going to talk about the modified '51
Nocaster wiring.
What's so special about that?
Well, in the old, old days, before the electric bass
was invented, the Telecaster was wired completely different
than it is today.
And a lot of it was to compensate for the fact
that we didn't have a bass.
The way it worked was in the rear position of the switch,
you got your bridge pickup, and this knob
was a blender for the neck pickup.
The second position was just the neck all by itself
with no tone control.
And then the forward position, or the third position,
was also the neck position with a great big fat 0.05 capacitor
on it that made it sound like this, very, very bassy,
almost like just turning the tone control all the way down.
And you know this was done because we didn't have a bass.
We had a bass, but you couldn't hear it.
It was before the electric bass.
So what we've done is we've modified
this wiring a little bit in the forward position,
so it's actually a much more usable sound
for today's playing.
But let's take a listen to what this sounds like.
Here's the bridge, full out, no tone control.
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All read counterclockwise, we've got the bridge in the neck.
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Now the beauty here is that you can blend
it all kinds of different ways.
And what I say is these are the lost broadcaster
sounds right here.
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Just a little bit a neck rolled in.
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A little bit more.
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Little bit more.
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Now you can start to hear it.
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A little bit more.
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Little bit more.
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Until all the way.
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Pretty nice.
Now the middle position is just the neck all by itself.
There's no tone control.
The effect of that is there's less load on the pickup.
So it's going to sound louder and clearer.
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Listen to that balance between the neck and the bridge.
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So that neck pickup was almost as loud as the bridge.
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OK, so what's happening up here in the forward position?
Still have the neck pickup, we just got a small capacitor
on it, so 0.001.
OK, so it just rolls off a little bit of the highs
so it's not so bright.
And there's a 10 K resistor in there
to actually lower the volume just a little bit.
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Let's compare that with the neck pickup.
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There we go.