New to electric. Help!

Hey mate! Aren't you lucky. Sounds like you've got a good girl there. :)

I asked a very similar question when I acquired my first electric too. You can find all the responses to that question here.

Hope it helps. If not I'm sure others will chime in with some useful advice. :)

Did she give you an amp with that also? That's really the only way you'll notice any difference when using the knobs/lever

The lever, as said in Bennett's thread, is the pick up selector. It'll switch from the neck pick up (the one closest to the neck), to Neck-middle pick up, a combination of the neck pickup and the middle pick up, to just middle pickup, to bridge middle, combination of the bridge pick up(closest to the bridge) and the middle pick up, to just bridge.

The neck pickup is usually favored for rhythm, and the bridge for solos, however many players use both for both, and it just depends on what you like. I happen to like the warm tone I get from my neck pickup for a lot of my lead work, and the bridge pick up can give some bad..butt, raunchy sounds with distortion.

The tone knobs: Really, the best way to understand these is to play with them. Turning the tone up for the neck pick up will make it sound richer, while turning it down, will make it sound...duller. Think of Clapton's tone in Cream's Sunshine of Your Love, he got that by turning down the tone knobs all the way on his guitar.

Hope that helped a little.

It should be added. The tone knobs usually only work with the middle and neck pickups respectively.