The Fender Mustang has two three-position switches, the center being “off”. Sliding the lever switch either way from center reverses the electrical phasing of the coil in the pickup. The pickups are in series with each other and can be in phase in two positions or out of phase in two positions. Reversing the electrical phase of the coil can make the pickup noisier if allowed to come in contact with your fingers or strings.

The purpose of the solid cover is to insulate the strings and fingers from touching the poles. If the strings touch the pole, it could cause the pickup to short out. If the fingers touch the poles, extreme buzzing can occur. Both can happen when reversing the electrical polarity of a pickup with exposed poles. If you install vintage style Strat pickups with raised poles, you will have this problem. Vintage style pickups have the coil wound directly around and touching the rod magnets. When the coil polarity is reversed the inner coil becomes positive and makes magnet rods buzz like touching the end of a guitar cord plugged in an amplifier. Try using Fender pickups that are wound on nylon bobbins. The magnets are insulated by the inner walls on the bobbin.

For the neck pickup you will need to slide out each magnet (one at a time) flip over 180?’s and re-insert to reverse the magnetic field. They are usually all South Top and by doing the above will make the neck pickup magnetically all North Top. This will give you a humbucking effect when both are used together. Normally the neck pickup is reverse wound from the bridge pickup but the wires can be reversed with ease on the slide switch.

When working on your instrument, draw a schematic diagram showing where all the wires are originally connected. Fender Mustangs are great guitars for beginners and professional alike. Adrian Belew has used them for years and I remember watching a TV show called “Shindig” and seeing a guitarist named Jerry Cole playing one during many of his solos. You can still find them at a pretty good price.