Did you notice that too? Whew! I thought I was seeing things for a minute, but I guess that's a switch throw arm hiding in between the knobs and Selector Switch. Oh, but it's not there for looks. It's there for a great reason. Let me give you a little history course of this switch's purpose...
It was sometime mid 1972, right after the release of Dark Side of The Moon, that David added a slide switch to give him more tonal capabilities. Since they didn't have a 5 way switch as a standard for strats at the time, this modification gave the 3 way switch the ability to activate the neck pickup as well as the bridge pickup at the same time, giving it a somewhat Jazzmaster type tone. It also allows the middle pickup to be activated with the neck pickup as well. Sometime after a short tour in the US in 1973, he returned the Black Strat back to a standard setup. It was until autumn of 1978 that he returned the second switch back onto the Black Strat and has been there ever since.
It has not been noted when this second switch was ever used on any of Pink Floyd's albums, but I feel that Bjørn Riis, webmaster and creator of Gilmourish.com (www.gilmourish.com) can give you more insight of using this switch for certain tones around the albums this modification was present in the recordings.
As the real Black Strat has a custom bent bracket glued to the underside of the pickguard to hold the switch in place, Fender uses a DPDT Salecom T80-T series toggle switch with a specially-designed bracket to hold the switch in place on their Black Strat. They simply add jumper wires across the poles to to make this a simple SPDT switch. This switch is an on/off/on switch and it only utilizes the off/on portion, so when the switch is deactivated (off position), it does not engage the Neck pickup, putting the switch in the center position and when it is toggled down (on position) it turns on the Neck pickup.
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| Fender Custom Shop David Gilmour Black Strat "Magic Switch" (Courtesy of Overdrive) |
Nonetheless, this is one crucial add-on I need to make this a true Black Strat, and for this I went to Craig of Overdrive Custom Guitar Works to answer my prayers.
This bracket has been custom-made by Craig Wells of Overdrive Custom Guitars, made out of stainless-steel, bent and shaped in the same form as the Custom Shop brackets found in the Black Strat Relic. The switch that is included with the bracket is the SPDT Salecom T80-T series switch. This is also an ON/OFF/ON switch but set as a single action switch rather than the double action switch. The original Black Strat uses a SPDT switch from RS Electronics, and Fender Custom Shop uses a Salecom T80-T series DPDT switch instead, possibly due to production cost limitations, availability. It is unknown why Fender did not go with the SPDT switch originally used in the Black Strat.
The switch is mounted at a specific angle to align with the routed hole on the pickguard. The height is adjustable via two hex nuts. It also includes a star washer and beauty washer (for clearance) to hold it all in place. The bracket is then held in place by using the mounting holes of the Volume and Tone Potentiometers
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| Black Strat "Magic Switch" Mounting Bracket (Courtesy of Overdrive) |
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| Top of Stainless Steel Bracket with Salecom T80-T switch |
Now that I figured what I gives me a warm bass punch with the clear high's from the Black Strat, what else do I need to make this a true Black Strat? I know! What about the capacitor? Since it is known that the capacitor does change tone quality when using the Tone Potentiometer, let's see what he used for it and get in on this Black Strat!
David Sarmiento
