The original idea of the pick up switch was a rythm/lead switch. Playing with the neck pickup gives a sound more suitabe for rythm playing, and the bridge pickup gave a sharper, piercing tone for playing lead. You can use the neck pickup when playing rhytm and in the middle of a song, just switch to bridge pickup for a solo. Then with the fender 5-way switching, you could get a great many more sounds than just neck or bridge...