Encore Thinline Tele

Encore's version of a thinline tele. Typical tele design/features. They started out with a good idea, but somewhere along the way lost it in the execution. Their idea of a thinline body was to hollow out some piece of hardwood?, cut an f-hole in the top and glue a piece of plywood on the back. The bridge plate is a piece of light gauge galvanized plate. Ditto for the 3 bridge pieces - lightweight galvanized plate just bent to shape. The 3 pieces are so long that they interfere with each other in lateral travel so it is imposible to get the guitar intoned. Huge thick heavy neck with little frets. Neck mortise in the body so far off that a thick piece of cardboard shim inserted to get the neck at the right angle to the body. Tuners that hold just long enough to play one song or so.

I like tele's in all shapes and sizes. I tried to find a place in my heart for this one but. alas, it had to go. I would have had to spend too much on it in upgrade parts to make it a minimum keeper. The sound of this guitar, given all the design/construction flaws, was pretty decent with the stock pickups/electronics. That's assuming that I could ever get the neck pickup to work properly. The volume level for the D string was almost non-existent??? The other strings were OK. The bridge pickup was fine for all the strings.

This guitar had probably a couple of previous owners, so there were some finish issues. Surprisingly, the finish on the body was pretty tough and looked OK. The metal finishes were genrally intact. The neck to body fit was a joke. The ashtray bridge cover was fit onto that wonderful galvanized bridgeplate by a few tabs along the side that left big gouges in the body beside the bridgeplate. Nice design boys. Electronics were not noisy after I resoldered a couple of loose connections, etc.

Leave it in the closet at home. Keep it by your side when you are watching old 'AL Kabong' cartoons, and maybe you can nail somebody with it.

Just who is Encore anyways? I've seen a couple of other guitars with similar head shapes and general design features (like that galvanized bridge thing) and there was no name. Maybe one of the previous owners took the name off and doubled the resale value of the guitar.

I take chances on alot of weird looking guitars with online auctions. I really got caught on this one. I just had to have a thinline tele style guitar, and I got this one. Luckily, the seller was honorable and agreed that the product was somewhat misrepresented in the auction text and I got my money back, except for the amount of shipping. I consider that a cheap lesson and will be much more careful in the future.