[Rock_X]

Seriously.

All the electric guitars I've owned (four or five) have had a five way toggle switch. And I never use the damn thing.

I swap between rhythm and lead using effects. I always leave my switch in the middle position because it seems the loudest. And, often my hands are too busy to worry about flicking the switch. Curses when I accidentally bump it.

So, guys, what's the story with the toggle switch.

My perfect guitar would have one knob- volume, nowhere near the pickups, and an on/off toggle, a-la Les Paul.

[lucifer]

Playing with toggle switch is awesome.

[Hippæ]

[lucifer]

Also Tom Morello uses it as a killswitch. Example, solo on Bulls On Parade.

[Tex]

I have a Brian May replica Red-special with three pickups each with it's own independent on/off switch and phase switch. There is theoretically like 16 or so different settings, which seems a bit much - and it is: I mainly use it much like any other guitar i.e. neck+centre OR bridge+centre 'in phase'. Despite all the options. In very specific circumstances though, it can be really fun to whack them 'out of phase' - many of the combinations sound awful with a regular amp set-up and really, the amp needs to be set up with the pickup configuration that you'd like to use in mind.. Means it's pretty pointless within individual songs cause it takes slightly longer to change from one good tone to another, but loads of different tones can be achieved from song to song.

the 5 position toggle on a strat say, I have never understood. I only ever used the bridge or neck. Also, I tended to use the neck for lead and the bridge for rhythm.

Confusing cause on another guitar I have the pickups are wired in backwards so the neck pickup is actually in the lower toggle position and the bridge is in the 'up' position.

It's an arse trying to remember the different toggling requirements of each guitar.

grr,

[Brent]

One of my custom guitars has 2 humbuckers, controlled by 2 two-way slide switches and a 3 way lever switch. The slides switch each humbucker's coils from series to parallel and the lever is like a les paul (neck only, both, bridge only)

My latest guitar is just a Les Paul switch, but the volume knobs are wired so one pickups volume is totally independent of the other (on a lot of factory wired LP and similar guitars, the volume knobs are somewhat tied in together).