I was looking for something else in the garage and came across this abandoned Encore. I think we bought it out of Argos for one of the older kids. It’s a very basic budget guitar.
I’ve already got a number of strat/squier clones so I want to try and do something different with this one. I’ve been reading about the Albert Hammond Jr stratocaster that Fender has recently launched. The selector switch is rigged differently so that the neck and bridge pickups can be selected together. So while this guitar is black (the Fender Albert Hammond Jr Strat is a lovely Olympic White) since I ought to replace the pickups anyway and its three way selector switch is damaged, I think that’s what I will do with it. I tried plugging in my strum buddy to see how it currently sounds but it’s not working. Maybe the output jack is broken, I will have to take a look.
The tremolo bridge looks a bit corroded so I might replace that as well. I will cut the strings, take off the scratch plate and back plate and see what this looks like inside.
So strings are cut and I am trying to get the scratch plate off. All the screws are corroded but as well the screws aren’t like regular screws I have seen on my other guitars. I manage to get some of them off but the remaining mean I have to figure out how to remove corroded cheap screws that won’t give way to a screwdriver. As I work with the screws I notice the white pick guard has a little crack so think I will replace it. The more I get into this project I wonder whether anything apart from the weathered volume and tone knobs and the weathered pickup guard cases are just total garbage and I should start from scratch instead.
So with a little brute force I get the remaining screws off the pickguard and get to look inside. What a shock! I know some people say Encore guitars are ok but really looking at its innards I still am in doubt whether I should use this body at all.
This camera angle gives a good view of the layered plywood.
These are some of the corroded screws that held the pickguard. They are just so not like the screws on every other guitar I have which are made to make it easy to get inside and customise.
And it turns out that the pickguard is a weird size nothing like standard. So the notion of replacing it is a non starter (unless I want to hack the plywood). The pickguard plate isn’t the same dimensions as a regular strat/squier plate.
So since I had a project in mind I’ve gone and bought a black squier on ebay that will be a much better base for my project. I am still in two minds what to do with this Encore. Part of me thinks I should just junk it. I found it in the garage, it was a bad purchase. Typically we probably got it from Argos thinking it was a starter guitar for one of the kids. But its awful, tries to look the part but it’s just made different from a lot of lovely strat clones you could pick up for cheap on Ebay.
I can’t help it I think I am going to put some parts into this guitar because at the worst I can pick up a body and neck and rehome all the parts. My replacement tremolo bridge arrived and of course it’s a different size from the encore mimic toy version.
Putting aside the aging and corrosion the original Encore tremolo bridge is just so bad compared with a regular squier/strat bridge.
I know this could be a total waste of time and energy but I decided despite all the wonky parts to the Encore that I will give it a go. After all if a cigar box can be a guitar surely I can do something with the Encore.
So I got some sticky copper tape for shielding the body and applied that, nicking some of my finger tips as I did it. That stuff is sharp.
There are two cavities. One massive gaping cavern and a small cavity for the power jack. Both get lined and and yellow wire you can almost see here connects the two shields.
Since I am trying to build a faraday cage to reduce interference, I put copper tape on the inside of the backplate and the whole pickguard.
I bought a pre-wired set of knobs and 5 way selector switch so I load those onto the Encore scratch plate as it’s a little less deep than a proper pickguard plate. Which means if I put a proper sized pickguard on this I am going to have to hack a bigger hole for the tremolo block. So to avoid that I am going to try and work with the Encore plate. Of course the real 5 way selector switch has different screw dimensions from the Encore’s 3 way selector. So I will have to cut extra holes for those.
I’ll worry about how to hide the original holes on the Encore plate later. I used a pin vise hand drill to cut a couple of extra holes for the selector switch in the plate. I also had to cut the plate a bit around the tremolo block as a real block is slightly wider, and I slightly widened the cut outs for the pickups in order to fit the pickups from my squier project into this plate.
The tremolo block screws are longer than the ones used in the Encore so they did a bit of damage to the top layer of the plywood. However it’s all hidden in the back cavity and the block seems steady.
I am re-using the pickups from a Squier I bought on Ebay for this.
I soldered the pickup connections and the connections to the output jack and tremolo ground. Then put the plate on and strung the first low string. Unfortunately the guitar was dead. Examining it I found a broken connection to the output jack then had to work through most of the wiring with a multimeter checking connectivity before I traced the problem to a bent lug on one of the tone pots that meant it was shorting into the shield. Fixed that and it plays. Part of the reason for the problem is that though the cavity is massive it’s not quite deep enough to house real parts, the Encore parts are all slightly smaller.
The final niggle was with the old volume and tone knobs. These would go on but were too small so I had to replace those with a set of black Fender volume and tone knobs that I happened to have. And with that, project complete!
I wouldn’t recommend modding an Encore. By the time you replace everything you could have picked up a proper guitar instead for the same budget. But I saw this as a challenge.
So after discussion we realised this had been my daughter’s guitar. Since she’s still interested in learning I’ve given her it back. It should be a much better learner guitar now.
Project Cost
Old Encore from the garage £0
Pre wired 500k pots and 5 way switch £8.49
Estone tremolo bridge with bar £6.18
Copper foil tape £10.99
Fender volume and tone knobs £9.09
Tiger black guitar strap £4.99
Cahaya 40 41 inch gig bag £14.99
Project cost £54.73
Robbie's Guitar Projects 