1998 Encore E1B
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1998 Encore E1B |
This must be one of the cheapest electric guitars on the market. These retail from £45. I bought mine in 1998 for £49. I was a predominantly playing bass at the time, but wanted a cheap electric to fiddle with and perhaps write songs. I saw it in the window of Hobbs Music in Lancaster, which was as ever entirely deserted. The shop was usually empty because the man who ran it had a reputation for being miserable and rude, and gave the impression he would rather you had not sullied his doorstep. On leaving the shop a few minutes later clutching my new Encore E1B, I learned two things. Firstly, Hobbs Music’s reputation was entirely deserved. The owner truly is a rude and surly grumblefuttock. The second thing I learned is that the cardboard boxes that new guitars come in are amongst the most awkward shapes to carry ever.
Encore position them selves in the market as the people who make your first guitar. They have no aspirations of greatness, artistry or desirability, they just want your first ever guitar to be an Encore. And they seem to be pretty successful at this. I remember at school all my mates had got an Encore (or an out of tune Marlin Sidewinder with shit stickers on) to play Nirvana songs on, and Encore’s guitars can still be found in most guitar shops that aren’t too snobby to stock entry level instruments. They make a range of electric and acoustics, and basses, the styling of which are clearly heavily influenced by Fender.
I imagine their marketing logic goes something like this: Most people’s first guitars will be bought for them by their parents when they are young teenager into whatever rock music is fashionable. Spotty teenage kid hassles parents until they give in. The parents have a choice. They can either completely fail to understand the motivations of their teenage offspring and buy them a nylon strung acoustic from Argos, which is NOT rock and roll and will only serve to generate comments such as “Why do you never play that lovely guitar you wanted to so much?” Alternatively they go to a music shop, where Dad goes to look at the Fender Strats like his teenage hero Hank Marvin had. He looks at the price tag, and reels. He figures there is a high likelihood his child will get bored of playing guitar once he or she realises it requires learning and study to get to a stage where chicks are impressed, so he wants to spend as little as possible. He also realises the kid will need and amp and wires and stuff, and hey! Encore sell the whole shebang in a box for less than £150. And if the kid never plays it, he bloody well will, because it looks pretty “groovy”.
Inoffensive body shape |
This guitar costs £45. Be under no illusion that the build quality is going to be wonderful. Corners have been cut wherever they can be.
The body is a laminate construction. This is fine, because at this level you want something to learn on, and you are not going to too bothered about tone. Chances are people playing this will either have a completely clean tone their guitar teacher makes them use to practice chords, or they will have everything on their 15 watt amp turned up to the max so all you can hear is white noise. A solid bit of wood would be a waste of rain forest here. Also the laminate is nice and light, which is good for the nippers. The body is also pretty small, noticeably smaller than a strat. Again, this is good for the little uns, and makes the big uns look HUGE like Eddie van Halen did when he had that teeny little guitar.
Headstock, with upgraded tuners |
The maple neck is not a bad piece of wood on my example. It even has some small “bird’s eye” markings although I’m quite sure this is accidental. The fingerboard is rosewood, and is not badly done at all for a guitar of this level. The frets are a little rough and ready. But get better once they are played in. The headstock is not angled back from the neck, but dropped back ala telecaster. This hardly gives the strings any break angle at all across the thin plastic nut.
I think the shape of the headstock is most successful. Because Fender hold the copyrights to the strat and tele headstock shapes, other guitars makers have either disregarded this copyright, or have come up with an alternative. Most, in my opinion, have failed to come up with a decent headstock design. Even very high-end makers like Suhr have headstocks that are plain ugly, and do not compliment the rest of the guitar. Whilst the headstock on this Encore is clearly from the same family tree as the Fender design, it is subtly different, and still a very pleasing shape.
Neck joint |
The most interesting thing about the neck on this guitar is that there is no truss rod! This most make it unique amongst production built electrics. (If you know otherwise, let me know!) To compensate, the neck is really quite thick, with a big U shape. If you like very thin fast necks you will hate this, but if like me you like a big handful of neck, it’s fine. Infact the thickness of the neck is almost the same as the thickness of the body, which is admittedly quite thin.
The neck is bolted to the body with four screws and a plain chrome plate. I took the neck off once, and there was a piece of card in the neck pocket. Presumably it was there to make the neck fit snugly after a botched job cutting the pocket. This is pretty disgraceful, but for £45 you don’t expect a Fender Micro Tilt neck joint do you?
Very basic hardware |
This is as simple as you can get. There is one cheap as chips humbucker, a volume, a tone and a hardtail bridge. Although the bridge is cheap, it is adjustable for intonation and string height. The output jack is on the front face of the guitar. Despite never having used a case or even a gig bag and having lived in the vilest student house, and having moved several times and being generally abused for several years, I have never had a problem with the electrics. The tone pot has never made much difference to the tone, but both volume and tone are silent in operation. (no crackles) and the guitar is earthed properly.
The hardware that lets this guitar down are the tuning machines. They are diabolical. They are the open backed kind mounted on a single strip of soft metal. I put up with them for several years, during which I really struggled to keep the guitar in tune for more than a few minutes. About a year ago I bought a £25 set of replacement tuners. Even though these replacement ones were still pretty cheap (a decent set of machines will cost upwards of £60) they have made a huge difference to the guitar. It now stays in tune almost indefinitely, it feels much more stable and the tone has improved dramatically. You should certainly consider this upgrade if you are planning on buying one of these. When you are learning guitar it can be very disheartening for everything you play to sound like shit. If your guitar won’t stay in tune, you are not doing yourself any favours.
You could also consider replacing the pickup. I haven’t bothered because I mostly use mine for sitting on the sofa, watching telly and practicing scales, and I don’t need an expensive pickup for that.
Complete view. The headstock looks big because the body is so small. |
It sounds OK. There’s not much point talking too much about the sounds on offer here, because it doesn’t matter. It is unlikely this guitar will ever be used for anything other than solo practicing or if it’s lucky, playing in a band in someone’s garage. It provides adequate sound for that. The type of person who buys this guitar will not be too bothered about finding his perfect tone. As you would expect the majority of the tone comes from the pickup as the body is so small and light and made of laminates, and there is little sustain on offer. If you are a learner, you won’t notice this. It sounds fine.
For the price (£70, including the machine head upgrade) this is a surprisingly good little guitar. It plays just fine, it stays in tune, and it’s small and light and comfortable for practicing. There are clearly many areas in which it could be improved further, but this would only make it more expensive.
For a first guitar, I think this is ideal. I would choose one of these over a Squire Strat because this is smaller and easier to handle for a new player, and there is no vibrato (often incorrectly called tremolo) bridge to worry about. Learners have a head enough time keeping in tune as it is, without having the added ball ache of a wobbly bridge. There is a wobbly bridge equipped version of this guitar available too, the E1BTR. I would recommend the hardtail version, if you can find it. Unfortunately the wobbly bridge version seems to be what ships with the everything in one box kits that are sold. You won’t be disappointed with a Squire Strat, or even one of the Vintage Strat-a-likes which a re supposed to be pretty good. You should just nail down the bridge first!
Tom du Pré. 21st September 2005. www.masht.com