Those 2 tone knobs control the tone of the neck and middle position pickups, respectively. Not sure how much you use those 2 pickups, but it adds some tonal versatility if you use them a good bit.

Oh I use them But Can't it all be wired into just a single tone pot. of course it can, why not?

Because the Fender Gods decreed that a strat have 2 tone knobs?

Just a guess...

OK, nevermind.

I'm still hungup on 250k, or 500k pots. I finally went with the 250k's. I called Stewmac and was put on hold for a bit because they had to argue it out themselves. The consensus was 250k across the board. Honestly, I have no idea why you need to have two tone pots. I'd say Erk's answer just about sums it up.

The thing that always got me was that on Strats it's the bridge p/u that need a bit more sublety in the tone and it's the one without the tone knob. I think it goes back to the notion of the bridge being the "lead" p/u and the neck being rhythm. When the Tele and Strat were invented, only jazz and some country music would have had extended guitar solos, so perhaps a lot of players didn't even use the bridge p/u. I've had axes where I couldn't even tell you whether the bridge p/u worked.

1] Having two tone controls allows you to set and keep a different tone level for each pickup. So when you switch to it you don't have to fiddle with the tone. Like on Gibsons.
2] Roll back the tone a bit in the middle and bit more in the neck and you increase the contrast between the pickups. I'm guessing that's the reasoning behind choosing the neck and middle for the tones instead of the bridge.


If you are happy having the same tone setting across pickups, there is no reason why you shouldn't make it a single global control and use the freed slot for something else (killswitch? miniswitch? pencil sharpener?).

Fender's Jimmie Vaughan strat has the tone knobs controlling the neck and bridge pickups, leaving the middle to fend for itself.

Linus, for single coil pickups the "standard" is 250k, hums it's 500. And ibzrg, gibsons have a tone for each pickup for example les pauls, 335s and sgs.


Personally, I would rather have one tone knob for all and save the other holes for volume knobs since I use them more often than the forbidden tone knob. I have a gibson v and it has 2 volums and one tone, and that tone knob is only cool cause it's a skull knob. I nearly never touch it.

duh, well ok.

Actually, many Gibsons use 300k volume and tone controls. But 500k is the accepted value for modern humbuckers.

I actually use the tone controls quite a bit when i play strats. By turning the middle pickup's tone down and moving the selector switch to the first notch position (bridge and middle), I can nearly imitate the sound of a really fat humbucker. The neck pickup's tone control I tend to leave wide open, but for an old-school warm jazz sound, the tone is almost always rolled back.

The cool thing is there are no set rules on how to wire guitars. Heck, early strats only had 3-way switches!