Charity shop Encore ENCR2 - any chance this can this be rescued ? - Update

AK99

Saw this languishing in the corner of our local charity shop and took pity on it. Cant find any references to the model on 'tweb so am assuming it was a budget thing to start with, but  I like the look of the neck and the woods in it, and even if I have  to bin it...well ...the €10 has gone to a good cause anyway.  (Before I start - by way of total disclosure, I have zero skills or expertise in woodwork, or anything even remotely involving trying to set up an acoustic guitar.)

To me, the neck looks to be sitting at entirely the wrong angle to the body. I was wondering could this be fixed - without recourse to a professional in the field - or is it one to let go and forget about ?



^ Truss rod loosened, sitting with the strings loosened off, out our back.



Nice skunk-stripe, jack doesn't seem to be connected to very much.



Tuners are ok. Big issue is the neck - the action is about 10mm high at the 12th fret ...





Backing off the truss rod aint going to fix that.



Looks to me like the bridge has separated from the top:



Another possibility that strikes me is that the brass strip with the saddles cast in it is way too high.

Is there anything could be done to get it back into playable condition - or is it just too much work and hassle do you think ?

Funkfingers

You have pretty much answered your own question.

The wooden bridge base is lifting from soundboard. The saddle is too tall - with or without a transducer strip in the slot beneath.

It is difficult to say from photographs alone how much lower the action will go. The guitar might serve for slide.

Overall, you are looking at a laminate soundboard, a plastic back and a piezo transducer. It is never going to sound especially good.

AK99

Thanks FF. Just as you were posting, I finally managed to find some more info on the things from Youtube of all places. A guy posted a video saying they were an unusual beast because even though the materials aren't too bad, the guitars came from the factory with a bridge which makes them impossible to lower the action sufficiently, or intonate properly:



His fix:



There has to be a better way than that surely - just replace the bridge altogether ?

ICBM

Neck joint distortion/collapse is a known problem with these.

I'm guessing from the missing truss rod cover that someone has already adjusted it to the limit...

Fixing the bridge and lowering the bridge saddle will help, but not enough by the look of it. To make it really playable it will most likely need a neck reset - not too difficult for a professional as I think the neck is bolted on, but you have to remove the fingerboard from the top as well.

Funkfingers

AK99 said:

There has to be a better way than that surely - just replace the bridge altogether ?

Since the bridge is already coming away, you might as well detach it completely. If practical, remove a millimetre or two from the underside of the wooden base. 

Change or file down the bridge saddle.

My tastes would extend to removing the piezo transducer and its control unit. Try a quick-mount soundhole pickup. If it sounds okay, consider installing it permanently via the output jack socket.

WezV

For a tenner its worth a play if you're interested in guitar construction...not a lot to lose.

Neck angle first.   I'm  not familiar with these, but if it doesn't have bolts inside the body then you can try and remove the fretboard and see what is going on.   What can you see through the sound hole towards the neck... cameras on phones make it much easier to see what is going on these days.

Hopefully you find a way  to get the neck off and increase the angle slightly

If you cant see anything  obvious to help you remove the neck at this point and the join seems solid, another  option is to add a wedge under the board you just removed.  Its a little tricky to cut such a shallow long wedge shape, but can be done by glueing a even thickness shim to the whole back of fretboard and hand planing it down to a wedge, or knock up a long router thickness jig to cut the wedge.  Many ways to skin a cat depending on the skills and tools available


Check and double check the angle before anything is reglued. 



You also need to reglue the bridge.  Again, some heat and a knife ahould pop it off.  Clean off old glue, check the fit, key both surfaces and epoxy in place.   A few bamboo sticks under a heavy table make an acceptable go-bar system for light clamping.  

ICBM

There's only a very limited amount you can take off the bottom of the bridge, or you'll go through into the ball end channel on the back edge.

The bridge saddle on these is an unusual type of integrated piezo pickup - the outer part is a metal (or metalised plastic, I can't remember for certain) channel, in which a bare piezo strip is placed, then similar metalised saddles sit on top of it, so the saddles themselves are part of the pickup. Lowering it isn't easy - if there isn't a shim under the whole unit, the only simple option is to rout the slot deeper. It is possible to file down the saddles from underneath a little (not much), but it's tricky to keep them all the correct heights. You may be best removing the whole thing and fitting a plain saddle - if you can find one wide enough - with a more conventional pickup strip under it - or an internal contact pickup, or a soundhole pickup as Funkfingers suggested...

And at the end of the day you'll still have a cheap plastic bowlback guitar, so I probably wouldn't even consider any of this unless it's a project you can do yourself at little to no cost...

AK99

Comments and insights noted and much appreciated FunkF Wez and ICBM.

A quick check with the verniers suggests the neck is perhaps too far gone for even the thinnest of replacement bridges. Turning towards thoughts of a neck reset, for a 10 quid crappy guitar, it wouldnt make much sense

Given that it was a 10 quid outlay though, I am drawn towards this 'ghetto' reset:



What d'yez reckon - for the cost of a few clamps, the loan of a steamer and plenty of patience, worth a shot ?

AK99

Well, turns out the ghetto reset works.
 (Pic heavy this..)

1) The hand built / 'custom' rig. Truss rod loosened, fretboard flat, metal bar clamped to it to ensure it stays flat, Back of the body strapped down, and a pivot block placed below the front of the body to raise it so the neck can be bent down under load.
Body of the guitar with the exception of the neck area packed with rags.



2) Body clamped at the rear, strap round the neck to tension and bend the neck downwards over the pivot. Note the other bit of high tech kit - the wallpaper steamer with hose (steam generation / insertion into the neck area within the body for the purposes thereof )



3) Benchmark - starting angle / height of the neck around the bridge area



4) Steam applied to soften the wood / adhesives around the neck join, clamped down, and left to its own devices for a week(ish)



5) Preliminary result - couple of mm improvement. Resteam, leave, check, repeat



6) The final result 4 weeks, 3 iterations later (including one in the reverse direction one because I overdid it with the previous one) - and restrung to check the action





7) Rough and ready measurement suggests about 2/3 mm at the 12th fret. Chuffed with that




Raised the brass bridge a tad with some toothpicks underneath to stop the low E buzzing, and it now plays not too badly at all. Haven't got as far as tightening the truss rod yet - will leave it to settle for a week or so, and then see how everything settles down, but so far looks promising. 

I might have saved this one from going down the bin / parts salvage route. 

ICBM

Fantastic! I really wouldn’t have expected that to work.

AK99

Thanks ICMB. Tbh - I didn't either (and moreso when I overdid the correction and had to reverse the process by bending the neck upwards for a week). But the thing only cost me a tenner contribution to a deserving charity - and it was always going to be an entertaining experiment anyway. Not sure I'll be taking on commission work on necks anytime soon mind you

Next job - the electrics..

BillDL

Great job, and all done without buying any fancy expensive jigs or tools.  Sometimes it just takes a good bit of ingenuity, planning, some calculated risk, and probably a lot more uncalculated risk.

AK99

Yes, there's definitely a touch of the "fools rushing in" syndrome  at play here. Total outlay was 10 euros for the s/h wallpaper steamer, which the better half has since spotted, and assures me will be put to much better use.

Good luck with that..honey

ICBM

AK99 said:

Next job - the electrics..

From memory, these are just a dual concentric passive volume and tone control, and sound *shit*. If so, there's nothing you can do with it as-is to make it better - the passive components simply load the pickup too heavily and ruin what little tone it has, which can't be corrected with external EQ. What you need to do is either: remove the pot, connect the pickup directly to the output jack and use an external preamp; or find an active preamp with a similar single-hole mounting, either for a plain volume control or the same sort of stacked vol/tone arrangement.

I *may* have such a preamp in my box of old spare parts... if so you're welcome to it for the cost of postage. No promises though, I can't remember for sure .

AK99

Appreciate the offer @ICBM. Might very well take you up on that if you do manage to come across it

I think I get the gist of what you suggest - but by 'pickup' do you mean the little brass saddle/piezo gubbins with the lead coming out of it ?

ICBM

AK99 said:

I think I get the gist of what you suggest - but by 'pickup' do you mean the little brass saddle/piezo gubbins with the lead coming out of it ?

Yes, the whole thing is the pickup, it’s not a separate strip underneath like most piezo transducers.

AK99

Gotya. I like the look of the brass saddle, and was tempted to just leave it in and remove the electrical bits - but if you did happen to come across a preamp that would work in it, having come this far, I'd love to give it a shot and restore the old thing to something at least as good, or possibly better than  former self.

If you do come across anything - drop me a PM, and if you don't - hey no worries, appreciate the offer anyway

Kittyfrisk

As a 'good bodger' myself, I'm very impressed by what you managed to do there.
 A+   

AK99

^ As they say where I grew up  'hanking-ewe Kittyfrisk

Funny thing, as I'm getting older, I realise (with a lot of help of Youtube admittedly) I've started turning into my grand-father. He had a shed with all kinds of odds and ends of that he kept, and generally knew how - or was at the very least always up for a shot - to get most things working again, with whatever kit he had in the shed. (I also have lots of jam-jars with virtually every nut and bolt I've taken off stuff in the past stored in them somewhere- just in case.. )

ICBM

AK99 said:

If you do come across anything - drop me a PM, and if you don't - hey no worries, appreciate the offer anyway

Damn, I found it but it's a two-knob one - not dual-concentric - I had remembered wrong. Given the curvature of the side of the guitar there, it won't be possible to drill the other hole and have it fit.

That leaves making it into a better passive system as probably the best/least-cost option - the easiest is to remove the controls completely and wire the pickup directly to the jack. Second best would be to remove the dual-concentric control and fit the highest value plain volume pot you can find - 1M minimum, 2.2M better, 5M or 10M best but are difficult to find. The problem is that the low impedances of the stock controls suck all the bottom end out of the tone and make it harsh and tinny - the tone control only helps because it rolls off top-end, but that doesn't produce a good result, only less horrible.

AK99

Not to worry - thanks for the thought anyway. Quickest solution perhaps is to go for the direct wiring option - and bypass the vol/tone with a view to seeing how it sounds. I can keep an eye out for a high resistance volume pot in the meantime, and grab one if it turns up.

Interested to see what it sounds like amplified now