how to avoid hitting knobs and switches

keep practicing!

 

Yep. Practice a little more restraint, or, alternatively, one pickup wired straight to the output jack. No more switch, no more knobs, no more problems.

 

You can turn the plate around so that the swich is at the rear, but that won't help with the knobs. Something I saw recently, a Pbass thumbrest mounted just above the control plate. 'Course, this particular guitar also has a bottle opener just behind the bridge, too. Wish I had taken a picture of that one.

 

You've just gotta move your right hand slightly towards the neck, and get comfortable strumming there.

dsutton- we're talkin' Strat, but you're thinkin' Tele...

 

Right on both counts.

Ever see those pictures of Buddy Holly's Strat with the p'up covers worn through (softer material back then) due to being played with the right hand further forward? There's really no way around it if you're going to be strumming much. You'll get used to it.

 

The volume knob on a Stat is horribly placed.
It looks lousy, but you could take the knob off.
Or, move the vol pot to the middle tone position, and have only one master tone at the bottom.

Pete Townsend would have a problem with the pup selector switch, but you have to be really aggressive to hit it when playing.
On Teles, I can't get in there to switch the pups - it's too tight to the volume knob.

 

I know folks that take the remove the knob and take the cover off the switch..
fyi
I have problem with m strats

 

Warmoth sells a pickguard on which you can specify the volume control location. I have the same problem sometimes with my Strat; I wish I'd gotten the alternative location. Right now I'm just too lazy to put another pg on it, so I live with it.

Had I known when I modified this Strat, I'd have put the volume control in the alternate position.

Click on the Warmoth button at the top of the TDPRI page and then go exploring. Or, just click on this link: http://www.warmoth.com/Pickguard/StratPickguard.aspx

 

I have lots of experience of this kind of thing. Try wearing the guitar a little - or maybe more than a little - higher, so that in playing rhythm the pick crosses the strings near the neck pickup, or even closer to, or indeed over, the end of the fingerboard. Lots of enthusiastic strumming may over time cause a bit of wear to the pickup cover, but it should help greatly in avoiding the situations you've described.

 

Yup, it's just a matter of modifying your picking trajectory. Ashtray bridges on teles used to bother me a lot as well, but after playing teles with ashtrays for years, I feel strange on a tele with a flat plate type bridge like a Gotoh.

And oddly, after getting used to playing teles with ashtray bridges, I seem to have less problems with strat volume knobs and switches as well--the strat vol knob would be in the ashtray bridge area of a tele and I seem to have learned to avoid that area while picking.

In the past, I had considered having a strat pickguard made with only 2 controls, a master vol and master tone, where the two tone knobs are on a strat, but this doesn't seem quite as necessary any more.

George

 

I move the volume down one hole. Home Depot sells the hole plugs. I also use a a push pull volume so I can either use the neck and bridge pickup together or series feed the middle pickup with the neck or bridge. I use a TBX tone control. It's adjustable up to 1000K ohm which you need if your feeding all three pickups off of the same tone control.

 

This.

 

Give it time and practice... I was doing this when I first got my Strat a month or so ago, but it's gone away for the most part. Still think I might "flip" the pup switch so that down and back" is the neck position and vice-versa. I don;t d it as much, but every so often I will nail the pup switch and end up on the bridge pup (not my favorite place on a Strat). The Volume knob is no longer an issue and having it where it is is just REALLY handy.

Good luck and keep on practicing...

Cheers

Dave

 

I've been playing a Strat for more years than I care to think about and I still do this.

The trick I've found is to take the plastic knob off the switch - makes all the difference.

 

I don't have a problem with the knobs, but the middle pickup always gets in my way. I dropped it where it's almost flush with the pickguard.

I agree with the adjust your technique crowd.

 

On a couple non vintage strats I've moved the jack to the back of the body & moved the switch to where the jack was. You'll never hit the switch again but no help for the knobs.

 

Totally agree. It's not unusual to have to adapt your technique a bit when picking up a different guitar model.

I had similar "playability" issues years ago moving from a Strat to an ES-335. The shorter scale length of the Gibson and the feel of the bridge under my palm took some getting use to, but enough practice took care of it.

 

Learn to play a Tele with a box bridge. It will reign in any extraneous hand movement.