I also like how they did away with the plastic scratch guard so as not to cover up the maple top and just set the pickups directly into the body.

The two knobs are a single voume and tone for all 3 pickups. But the volume has a switch on the top that can be pressed ( S1 Fender call the system ) that then changes the wiring of the pickups and the 5 way selector then becomes 5 new settings where the coils are run in series and parallel ie the single coils are paired to work together like the 2 coils in a humbucking pickup.

Here is a pdf from Fender that shows the different pickup configurations. http://www.synthzone.com/misc/

As it is just adding some wiring options it is a wonder Fender didn't think of doing this years ago.

So were you able to return the Ministar?? It sounds like a nightmare. Well a nice idea but awful implementation. But the Les Paul with the P90s sounds very sweet. I bet that has nice gritty bite to it. Where did you find that?