Wild Dog

One of the best things about the early days of guitars built overseas were some of the names given to certain pickup combinations. British guitar builder, Burns, added this particular term to its 3-pickup models in the 1960s. Essentially, “Wild Dog” was a combination of the bridge and middle single-coil pickups. At the time, Burns was the only guitar with that combination available. Today, Strats have 5-way switching and it’s easy to get the bridge and middle pickups selected. But in the 1960s, Strats came with only three positions on the pickup switch, which let you choose bridge, middle, or neck pickups, but no combinations. However, some Strat owners found that if they carefully balanced the blade switch in a certain “in-between” position (often referred to as “out-of-phase”), they could achieve the same combination; another “in-between” position yielded the middle and neck pickups together. It wasn’t until 1977 that Fender actually installed a 5-way pickup switch on the Strat!