Encore blaster E2 telecaster project

I decided to buy a cheap guitar and try to make it nice, both because I enjoy the challenge and also to hone my skills on something not too precious.
I liked the general specs of this one, got it for £90 delivered from gear4music
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Comments

  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    First impressions :-1: 
    Very lightweight body, some chinese tone wood, lovely finish, body looks 1 piece or extremely well matched
    Head stock finish joint is a bit iffy on 1 side
    Great neck shape, fairly wide and reasonably chunky d. Nut width 43 mm. Feels a bit rough though, will need some sanding. I can fell the fingerboard joint. The fretboard needs polishing and oiling.
    Barely any finish on it which I like.
    Frets are a good size and pretty well installed, but sharp fret ends. 
    Switch selector is the nastiest I’ve ever felt, but all the electronics are going.
    The nut is disgusting, the action is high and the sustain not great.


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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    The tuners are ok ish, I will try keeping them. Bridge is a bit scuffed but seems decent. The saddles are poor and not compensated though, I bought some £8 wilkinson brass ones.
    I didn't bother plugging it in as I knew the ceramic pickups would be dreadful.
    I bought a set of Tonerider hot classic pickups for about £50.
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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    Also bought a tusq nut for a fiver.
    Took the strings off... errr I don't think that's how ferrules are supposed to work.
    A bit of superglue should do the trick though


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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    The finish seems to scratch if you look at it funny so I'll have to be quite careful. Some of the edges are less well buffed than the rest, should be easy to fix if I'm careful.
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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    Nice project, I like to see junky guitars made good......
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    The neck joint is not bad, fairly tight, but there is a tiny amount of side to side play once the screws are off.
    It's so little that even a veneer shim either side would be too much.
    I could shim the sides and then sand them but I'm worried it would be difficult to take off equal amounts on either side and it would end up off center.
    Suggestions ?
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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    lysander said:
    The neck joint is not bad, fairly tight, but there is a tiny amount of side to side play once the screws are off.
    It's so little that even a veneer shim either side would be too much.
    I could shim the sides and then sand them but I'm worried it would be difficult to take off equal amounts on either side and it would end up off center.
    Suggestions ?
    Don't bother, IMO it's not worth the effort if its that close....
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    Argh, so after I spend time sanding the neck and making the shape all nice, I notice this, which in hindsight was fairly obvious:

    Just WTF these frets are all over the place, the one on the left of the marker obviously much wider than the previous one, and the last 3 look iffy too...
    I had checked various things when I got the guitar but thought surely frets should be in the right place   :'(
    So options are : 
    - I fix it... To be honest a refret is a bit more work than I was intending to do on this guitar, and it will look like crap with obvious marks, not to mention the faf of remeasuring all the frets
    - I get a new neck and keep this one to practice fret dressing.

    I think I will go with number two. Now to find a neck with the right dimensions....
    I guess I should also measure the distance of the bridge to neck now !!!!

    I'll try getting a partial refund from g4m, I've bought ££££k worth of kit from them ( I'm also into synths, sigh ) so they should be able to make a gesture.

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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    If its any consolation I would have taken fret spacing for granted too!........What a bummer, but I guess it will come right somehow, all part of the fun!...
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    edited April 2017
    Thanks In the end I remeasured all the frets last night and found two that were really bad so out they came, I bought some veneer that will hopefully match and will attempt to conceal and refret these two.

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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    Nothing to lose and good experience if it all goes well or tits up....good luck!
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    So I've had limited time to work on this , but here is what I have learnt so far =)  :

    - Sanding a filled fret slot while having other frets next to it, and attempting not to leave marks and to preserve the radius is hard.
    - Cutting a straight and accurate brand new fret slots into a fretboard that's already radiused and fretted is hard

    The first two frets went ok, though I did inadvertently score / scallop the fretboard a bit while tidying up the slots that were plugged with rosewood veneer and superglue.

    Then I did a third fret and rushed it and ended up with a fret that was not only badly positioned but also not straight ( because my slot had a belly in the middle ).
    So I took it out, and ripped large chunks of fingerboard next to it. I've resurfaced it with superglue and dust, this time the surface is pretty good ( starting to get the technique down :) ) though the color match isn't great, you can clearly see what's wood and what's superglue if looking for it.

    If I had to do it again, I think it would have been easier and cleaner to just do a full refret so that I could have used a radius block to tidy up the fret board after filling the slots.

    Other than that I've also stripped the finish and recut the headstock to something less offensive. Will post pics later
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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    edited August 2017
    So, after various other things taking priority, I'm finally done with this.
    It's by no means perfect but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
    First the fretboard and frets : the repairs are not invisible but look ok, the intonation is good and I did a pretty decent job with the fretwork, in fact the action is one of the lowest of my guitars.


    I refinished the neck with Tru Oil ( or rather Crimson's oil which is the same thing but thinner as far as I can tell ) and wax.
    Compare the headstock with the nasty paddle there was before



    Electronics were entirely replaced and I installed ToneRider pickups.
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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    Oh and after I had put everything together and started doing the setup, I noticed that the neck was tilted towards the player. While this didn't really affect playability and could be compensated for at the bridge it looked rather bad.
    Looking at the neck heel it didn't take long to figure out why - theres about 0.6 mm missing on one side, pretty shocking workmanship from the factory


    Since I had already refinished the neck and because it was safer I decided to make a shim rather than attempt to plane it.

    Didn't take very long with a number 4 plane and the super glue and masking tape trick to hold a bit of pine.
    I know ideally it would have been maple but I honestly don't think anyone would notice, and I had some thin scraps of pine around.


    Getting the angle and thickness right was mostly trial and error, checking with some callipers that neck plus shim were the same thickness on both sides.
    The main difficulty was making sure it wasn't sloping towards the back or front of the neck pocket.


    In the end it turned out ok and fixed the issue nicely.
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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    Final verdict ?  I had fairly low expectations at the end, but was pleasantly surprised.
    While no one will mistake it for a high end guitar, it actually plays and sounds as well as any american fender I've had my hands on, and has its place amongst my other past and present guitars, some of which were pretty expensive.

    Not bad for something that cost under £200 including upgrades, and was absolute garbage out of the factory.
    I did put quite a few hours into it but it was a good learning experience.
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  • lysanderlysander Frets: 574
    I did extensive comparison against my Warmoth partscaster yesterday, which inflation adjusted cost about 5x as much, and has much better hardware and boutique pickups, and supposedly much better wood...
    ...and I preferred the encore's sound and play-ability by some margin.

    Part of it is the slightly wider neck which I prefer, and the strings being slightly higher on the body ( though both have similar actions ) on the Encore, which I find more comfortable for hybrid picking.

    But the sound thing really took me by surprise. They both have similar sustain but the encore is more balanced and defined,
    the Warmoth has slightly muddy lows in comparison and sounds a bit harsher.

    The bottom line for me is that electric guitars can be strange things sometimes.
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