Lindy Fralin Blender Pots

What does a blender pot do?
A blender pot will fade in the neck pickup to the bridge position and bridge pickup to the neck position.

At first glance that doesn't particularly sound like much.
A Fender Stratocaster has a five position switch in an attempt to give the Fender player combinations in pickup selection that Gibson players have always had.
On a two pickup Gibson, if the  pickup selector switch is up, the neck pickup is in use.
If the switch is in the middle position, both pickups are active.
And when the switch is in the down position, the bridge pickup is the active one.

When I got my first Strat in 1972, they came with three position switches. To obtain a blend you had to "balance" the switch in between detent positions. A tough task while playing.

So Fender sought to make the pickups' palette more broad.
But this freezes one into a set of specific combinations.
And really doesn't allow for a mix of 1/3 each or anywhere in between.
Pickup Matrix

Enter Lindy Fralin. Mostly known for the boutique pickups bearing his name,  he got his start in the 1990s hand winding pickups. They still do that today - each pickup done to the customers specifications.

Back to the pickup selection conundrum at hand.
Lindy developed what is refered to as a blender pot that allows one to blend the output of all three pickups.
You sacrifice one of the tone controls. In it's place  you have a master tone control and a blender.

By rolling in more of one pickup or another I get the widest tonal brush. Easily manipulated while playing.

It took a total of forty five minutes from start to finish. Only two wires need to be attached. The old tone pot is removed with all it's original connections intact. (The one wire that was on the five position switch & the ground tied to the other tone control are removed along with the capacitor in between the pots lugs)

The Blender Pot has two wires - the left most is soldered with the hot wire from the neck pickup. The wire on the middle lug is then soldered to the same terminal as the hot wire from the bridge.
To complicate matters, Squiers use cheap switches that have a small printed circuit board rather than hard lugs.
 Squier Wiring
After a bit of decoding - left most Blender wire to terminal #3 on the pc board and the wire in the middle of the Blender to terminal #1 - I had it wired and test driven.

I found it really lets you take control of that Fender "Quack." And isn't that something we all could use a little more of?