Guitar Blog

Guitar Project: Encore "Guitarist" model

I've just received a parcel by courier containing this.

It's an Encore budget model guitar, this version specially commissioned by Guitarist magazine back in the late 1980s (I think... else it may have been the early 90s). This is another "sold as seen" eBay purchase on my part, so whilst the guitar is incomplete, the £21 it cost me hardly broke the bank.

Most obviously it is missing its pickup. That's easily solved. It is also missing two bridge saddles. Again, these are cheap and easy enough to replace. There are two ferrules missing on the machine heads, but a closer inspection reveals that the machine heads are cheap and nasty and most likely wouldn't do a very good job at keeping the guitar in tune, being the single strip open-backed type. Fortunately I'm expecting another eBay win to be arriving shorty - namely a set of machine heads taken off a Squier Strat. Or something like that.

Otherwise the neck is fine, in general good condition with one or two minor knocks. The body is quite tatty and would need refinishing. I couldn't tell what the material was as that black is everywhere - in the pickup cavity, in the control cavity on the back, etc. So, I took the neck off and found an unpainted spot in the neck pocket. Looks like it's MDF or some very dense kind of chipboard! Ho hum! Well, at least that tells me that sanding it down and giving it a clear finish is an unwise move.

So, I'm thinking of ideas for this one as a project. I was toying with the idea of making it into a travel guitar - putting a simple on-board amp and a little speaker into the body in the area between the pickup and neck, but there's only 4 inches to play with there so it might be tight.

But I'm sure we can do something with this beastie.

Another option might be to discard the body altogether, keeping the neck which is the best part of this guitar (it's actually a one-piece neck - that droopy head is not scarfed on - which is unusual coming from a budget instrument).

I have a Telecaster style body arriving soon. Possibly I could marry this neck to that body. It's certainly worth trying out.