No bandage required.

Looking like some R2D2 from another world is in fact the electronic components required to make a very simple tone mutilation circuit for your guitar. Fender must think this is a good idea as they have added this 10c mod to their new Professional Series instruments. Never equaled but often copy.
This mod has been around for a number of years in various forms and is now being seen in mainstream manufactured guitars and basses. Good or bad?
So what is it and how does it work. Well it simply (the twisted wires) attach (soldered) across two lugs of your volume pot. With your volume fully open or fully closed there is no effect and your 'tone' is normal as if the filter network wasn't there. I hear you say.. but my vol is either wide open or off. Well you don't need a treble bleed circuit. For those that actually use your volume control, without the TB circuit as you decrease the volume control so to will your treble (high frequencies). For some players this phenomena isn't too good, less volume equals less edge. As a Stratocasterist myself I find this decrease in edge, some know this as ice, an enhancement to the 'tone' circuit. Adding this simple capacitor/resistor treble bleed to the circuit as you decrease you volume from (say) 10 down to 8 you no longer loose the edge as the circuit allows the treble to 'bleed' through. I personally find this aurally unnatural and the TB does affect the sweep of the volume control. Without the TB circuit, decreasing the edge (10-8) the volume appears to decrease but the body of the sound remains. With the TB circuit and the wider sweep required to notice a volume drop (10-5) you may retain the edge but you loose the body of your tone. For the life of me why would Fender put a circuit in a guitar that made it sound gutless? It's a bit like the pull pots for single/double coil switching. Short out half the pickups expecting it to sound like a single coil and what do you get? A gutless sounding humbucker. Though all is not lost with the Treble Bleed circuit. I'm not enough of a guitar historian but my first experience with a TB circuit was with an old Gretsch in the 1960's that had a Master volume control. Along with the normal two volume controls for each pickup and a single tone control the signal then passed through a Master volume control with TB circuitry. Now this is a usable system where you have your 'normal' system plus a Master volume to set the over all output of your instrument. Gretsch certainly had some innovative ideas although some were pretty out-there, but that's another blog. I may be talking out the hole of my fuzz box but I think to have a TB circuit in what now is the American Standard Stratocaster and Tele's (the Pro Series) is wrong. To still have it in a Gretsch as an additional Master volume is cool. But then using a TB circuit in a one volume control instrument may just be a good thing if you're into a multi pedal board setup. Wot me know!